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Transcript

Brit's Cabinet #5 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to a,
• 0:07
  Tad Eggleston: Much delayed, it's been a while.
• 0:10
  Tad Eggleston: edition of Brit's Cabinet, so long that I read the books that we talked about reading for it a long time ago, and didn't get an opportunity to re-read them, to be ready to talk about them now. So, I called tonight a reset. We're just gonna…
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: We're just gonna talk comics, talk…
• 0:30
  Tad Eggleston: Talk the world, talk autism, talk…
• 0:33
  Tad Eggleston: whatever, I want to hear more details about your San Diego Comic-Con experience, because Britt actually got written up in the beat for his San Diego Comic-Con Autism Panel.
• 0:46
  Tad Eggleston: Which was… which is a cool thing to see.
• 0:48
  Tad Eggleston: Always fun now when I see… see the pictures of friends of mine pop up.
• 0:54
  Tad Eggleston: In my news… news articles.
• 0:58
  Britton Payne: Yeah, that was really fun. It's a panel I've done a bunch before, as you know, which you saw at,
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: I saw… I saw… I saw a version of it, yeah.
• 1:06
  Britton Payne: It's C2E2.
• 1:07
  Tad Eggleston: My version didn't have Dennis Camp, though.
• 1:10
  Britton Payne: It did not. This was an exciting one. So the panel is autism and comic books, and in it, the premise of the… the original premise, at least, was that I would just talk about the… the history of
• 1:19
  Britton Payne: literally every explicitly autistic character who ever appeared in the history of comic books. And when I started, it was about 22, and I've since uncovered more and sort of expanded my parameters a little bit to include some webcomics.
• 1:31
  Britton Payne: And I found… I think I'm up at about, I don't know, 35-ish at this point, which is still not a colossal number. And then there are some characters and comics that don't exactly fit my parameters, but still sort of count, so I throw those in at the end, just to let people know if they're looking for that kind of a thing.
• 1:47
  Britton Payne: they can certainly find it. But this one was particularly special. I, there were a couple of comic books that came out recently that have explicitly autistic characters that were very big, very popular.
• 1:58
  Britton Payne: comics, or by popular writers, or even just by big publishers, that I got to include when I did it at WonderCon in March, and then when that got accepted to do it again at San Diego Comic-Con.
• 2:09
  Britton Payne: I reached out to a couple of these writers, and in particular.
• 2:13
  Britton Payne: I tried to find out how to get ahold of Dennis Camp, and I don't think I ever heard back from him, just because I wasn't… I don't know that I had a good contact for him. And I went to a panel where he was getting interviewed by Scott Snyder, and he was super cool, and it was a really interesting panel, and my goodness, that guy's got an interesting life. And then afterwards, I just stuck my flyer in his hand. That was a Friday, I guess, when I saw his panel, and I stuck a flyer in his hand that said, hey, I'm doing a panel on Sunday.
• 2:38
  Britton Payne: will you…
• 2:39
  Britton Payne: and it's called Autism and Comic Books, will you be on my panel? And he says, yeah, can my wife come? And I'm thinking, like, yeah, yeah, it's not gonna be a sold-out panel. My personal, you know, panel on Sunday at lunchtime isn't going to be a sold-out panel, but I was like, yeah, sure. And I didn't realize… oh, and then that night, he won… he and his book.
• 2:56
  Tad Eggleston: Everything.
• 2:56
  Britton Payne: Absolutely.
• 2:57
  Tad Eggleston: They won everything.
• 2:58
  Britton Payne: Absolutely more human mandatory.
• 2:59
  Tad Eggleston: Assorted crisis events?
• 3:02
  Britton Payne: Four Eisner, specifically, this one book, you know, that I wanted him to talk about.
• 3:07
  Britton Payne: Because in, as Tad, you and I have talked about a bunch, there are… there's a… and don't spoil the ending of this story, let me… let me sort of get through this part, but the, there's a character in there, the son, Tyler, and he, especially in issue 12, which was the final issue of the series, he is
• 3:23
  Britton Payne: really coded as autistic, and the language that the parents use in talking about him and his therapies and the expression of his challenges all line up with my experience with an autistic son.
• 3:38
  Britton Payne: And so, I wanted him to be on the panel, in part, to just confirm that he intended this kid to be autistic.
• 3:44
  Britton Payne: And, so when he said yes, I sort of took that as a… at least a tacit acknowledgement that, yeah, he did intend the kid to be autistic, but he didn't say that when I spoke with him. What he told me was that his wife… his wife is autistic. And so, when he won those Eisners, Friday night or Saturday or whatever it was, I was like, alright, he's gonna be too busy to come to my little panel on Sunday. And so I thought I had a coin flip chance of him being there, but he showed up, he was there with his wife.
• 4:09
  Britton Payne: And then what I didn't realize is he intended his wife to be on the panel.
• 4:12
  Britton Payne: And, like, she turned out to be wonderful and lovely, but what I… you know, he could have asked if a cactus could be on the panel, and I would have said yes. I mean, that's perfectly great. And then she turned out to be terrific, and, like, a really, really good panelist. But, he gets up there, and through the course of our conversation, I say what I said to you, which is that, hey, this kid Tyler, a lot of people are speculating that he's autistic, and he says, yeah, Tyler's autistic, and so is the father. The… and I think, Tad, you might have also flown him.
• 4:36
  Tad Eggleston: I was the one that said, John.
• 4:38
  Britton Payne: Yeah.
• 4:39
  Tad Eggleston: That was part of my strong, strong assertion in our book club of a sort of… Yeah.
• 4:46
  Britton Payne: Well, you were spot on, and I think even a long time ago, you had said something, like, you were like, I really think something very.
• 4:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the first time we talked about it back… I mean, because we talked about it on… on Brit's Cabinet, we put it with Alienation… Alienated, the Takisoma book.
• 5:03
  Tad Eggleston: Because you… you had a lot of use of color for… Emotion and… and…
• 5:09
  Tad Eggleston: secondary site in both of them.
• 5:13
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, 6 issues in, I was… I was already starting to feel that way, but the back 6…
• 5:19
  Britton Payne: The back 6 made it more clear, but even more so than I quite had locked into. Yeah, but you had been pretty strong on that.
• 5:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it just… it… it… it… it…
• 5:31
  Tad Eggleston: paralleled my own experience so much.
• 5:35
  Britton Payne: That's really interesting for you to hear, because that's what,
• 5:38
  Britton Payne: what Dennis had said about his work, and then something else, which I'll also get to, another… he sort of broke news on the panel, which was super exciting to me. I was surprised that no one else seems to have asked him about this, as I've heard, you know, a whole bunch of interviews about the book, and with him, but, you know, whatever, I guess maybe other people were looking for other things also, because it's a really rich work, and…
• 5:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 6:00
  Britton Payne: you can talk about lots of different things in it. He puts a lot of thought into it, and it's a very rich topic, but whatever. So, it just happened to be on my panel that, as far as I can tell, he broke the news. So, he said that both the son and the father were autistic, and of course, their autism expressed itself in different ways. And then on the panel, he explained that the… the…
• 6:18
  Britton Payne: one of the emotional cores of the book, especially once you've read issue 12, is, you know, it's an exciting adventure book that has all kinds of cool things going on in it, but he made it clear, also.
• 6:29
  Britton Payne: that the emotional core of the book was the relationship between the father, the son, excuse me, the father, the wife, and the son. The wife is neurotypical, the father is one flavor of autistic, the son is another flavor of autistic.
• 6:40
  Britton Payne: And that John And in… and that John, specifically, was modeled on Dennis' wife, Katie's dad.
• 6:49
  Britton Payne: who she says is autistic, and that he was never diagnosed and never acknowledged it, and sort of felt the stigma of it, so didn't want to be diagnosed and didn't want to address that. And that Katie herself was diagnosed as autistic, but only later in life.
• 7:04
  Britton Payne: And then I think she said maybe one or two of her other siblings were… were neurodivergent, and so, the complications that his…
• 7:13
  Britton Payne: failure… failure's not exactly the right word. The fact that he did not address his autism, in his life meant that there were complications that led to his family relationships, including with his kids, which were Katie and Katie's siblings. And,
• 7:27
  Britton Payne: That formed the emotional core of Dennis' work… Dennis' work on, Absolute Martian Manhunter. So the…
• 7:36
  Britton Payne: the book itself, for anybody in the audience who hasn't read it, is a reinterpretation of the classic Martian Manhunter
• 7:43
  Britton Payne: character from DC Comics, except for in this one, there's a real detective named John Jones, who's like a hardscrabble, dragnet, you know, type classic detective, and he gets whacked in the head, and then when he wakes up, he's got an alien in his head.
• 7:57
  Britton Payne: And it is a… it's a good guy alien.
• 8:00
  Britton Payne: but it's also a surreal alien, and so the alien and John Jones struggle to occupy this mind together while they try to solve a couple of crimes, which turn out to be part of a bigger conspiracy that are essentially an alien invasion, to just super simplify it. And it is complicating John's
• 8:18
  Britton Payne: perceptions of the world. It's interrupted… it's becoming a challenge for him to sort of interact socially.
• 8:24
  Britton Payne: So… so it operates on those two levels, where the character, Dennis is saying that the character is specifically autistic, and also the alien is serving as a metaphor for autism, and how he interacts with the world. And so it's this really rich book for somebody who's been doing the kind of work that I've been doing, especially, and like I said on the panel, I can't wait to forget it and reread it.
• 8:45
  Britton Payne: just because that's the way my brain works, is that I'll mostly forget it and then reread it and have another rich experience.
• 8:51
  Tad Eggleston: I'm lucky enough that I mostly forget things really fast.
• 8:54
  Tad Eggleston: I rewrite it now.
• 8:56
  Britton Payne: You can reread it faster than I can. And so Dennis' conversation was wonderful. Katie was wonderful. She was talking about her experiences, and she's a social worker, and she's an activist, and had her autism journey as an adult, as I think you may have as well, Tad.
• 9:12
  Britton Payne: And she seemed to have found the relief that a lot of late-diagnosed autistic people seem to have. And I talked to… so… but my thing, when I talk on my panel, the reason I focus on explicitly autistic characters is because
• 9:23
  Britton Payne: the work that I do with my nonprofit, The Autism Scene, is targeted to kids. It's targeted to.
• 9:29
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 9:29
  Britton Payne: specifically kids' pop culture and getting more explicitly autistic characters into kids' pop culture. My purpose being that I'm trying to help neurotypical kids better understand their autistic peers, and I think, just given my Rolodex and my background, I'm an entertainment attorney, I've worked at Nickelodeon, Warner Brothers Animation, DC Comics over the years, and
• 9:49
  Britton Payne: Trying to get more explicitly autistic characters into kids' pop culture so that
• 9:55
  Britton Payne: kids who watch these shows and consume this content will better be able to understand their autistic peers, and the modeling that you see, maybe in Dora the Explorer, or SpongeBob, or, you know, Fairly OddParents, or I guess I just named 3 Nickelodeon shows, but whatever, that's…
• 10:11
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he…
• 10:12
  Britton Payne: That's what I have in my mind. You know, that when you see your buddy, Spongebob, interact this way with an explicit autistic person, and then you've got a kid in class who's got the word autistic associated with them, it makes it easier to translate the empathy and the understanding than if
• 10:28
  Britton Payne: the character on the screen is only coded as autistic, but never mentions autism. So the fact that autism is never mentioned in Absolute Martian Manhunter was something that
• 10:37
  Britton Payne: I thought was a worthwhile topic. I'm not, like, mad at Dennis or anything like that for not saying the word autism, but I do want to know, you know, what was his rationale. And, he… he had a really thoughtful response, I think. It's… he acknowledged my point about
• 10:53
  Britton Payne: for kids, that there being a benefit to seeing… having the word used, you know, the saying, like, oh.
• 10:59
  Britton Payne: this character is autistic, understanding that kids will better be able to, you know, will destigmatize, and also, at an early age, and better be able to translate, an understanding. But that his observation, and especially in speaking with Katie, is that there are people out there who are adults, who may be autistic, would benefit from
• 11:18
  Britton Payne: forgiving themselves a little bit, or better understanding themselves, but…
• 11:22
  Britton Payne: Think of the stigma first, and won't seek help.
• 11:27
  Britton Payne: Or won't even self-reflect, and that his reason for not using the word is that he felt he could better help those people, because those are the people who represent the thing that touched him, which I assume is empathy for Katie's father, and the impact.
• 11:43
  Tad Eggleston: Well, probably empathy for Katie, too, because, like, one of the…
• 11:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I can't speak for Katie, obviously, I haven't even met her, but I know one of the issues for me with getting the late diagnosis is you spend so much your life knowing that something's not quite right, and most of the outside influences
• 12:04
  Tad Eggleston: or most of the outside world is trying to put really terrible labels on it, you know? Lazy.
• 12:11
  Tad Eggleston: Defiance.
• 12:13
  Tad Eggleston: you know,
• 12:14
  Britton Payne: Especially if you're older, you know, if you are in your 60s or 70s now, you know, the things that were being said about autistic people, if anything, was being said at all, or even about people with those traits was a lot less forgiving than, you know, than the.
• 12:27
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
• 12:28
  Britton Payne: Of teenagers now.
• 12:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, like… That, that, to me, is one of the…
• 12:36
  Tad Eggleston: the greatest reliefs first about self-diagnosing, and then about when I actually got an official diagnosis and started, like.
• 12:45
  Tad Eggleston: Working various therapy along those lines is like, oh.
• 12:50
  Tad Eggleston: Like, no, this isn't a character flaw.
• 12:53
  Britton Payne: Right.
• 12:54
  Tad Eggleston: This… this is… I feel things differently.
• 12:58
  Tad Eggleston: I'm wired differently. I think differently. And is it a pain in the ass that I'm 40-something and having to rethink?
• 13:07
  Tad Eggleston: essentially my response to, like, almost every sensation, particularly ones that make my life more difficult. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass, but at least I now have…
• 13:20
  Tad Eggleston: a broader vocabulary and a wider toolbox to work with, versus the just, oh no, this is just a character flaw. The only solution is for you to suck it up and…
• 13:35
  Tad Eggleston: Be normal, even though it hurts.
• 13:38
  Britton Payne: Yeah, and look, a preference, obviously, is for it not to be stigmatized, but especially there are going to be some people who feel it is a stigma, or who can't let go of that, or who are willing to accept it in other people, but not in themselves, and so that was Dennis' point, you know.
• 13:51
  Tad Eggleston: death.
• 13:51
  Britton Payne: Using the word, is that he wanted to be able to help the people who did feel stigmatized.
• 13:57
  Tad Eggleston: I think, I think for me, that's why it's important to have both.
• 14:00
  Britton Payne: I totally agree. It absolutely is important to have both, but that means that it's important to have Dennis' version.
• 14:06
  Tad Eggleston: And I also think it's rea… like…
• 14:10
  Tad Eggleston: I think about the way so often, like, it often gets talked about that, like, change happens very slowly and then very quickly. But what doesn't really get talked about a ton is the why of that, and the why of that is often simple math.
• 14:27
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if you grow up some way, Then, when you're the person… That's in the decision-making.
• 14:35
  Tad Eggleston: like, the story I always tell, and it was… it was WGN Radio's sports program, but it was right after the Supreme Court ruled
• 14:48
  Tad Eggleston: gay marriage.
• 14:50
  Tad Eggleston: legal everywhere.
• 14:52
  Tad Eggleston: And, and the…
• 14:54
  Britton Payne: Wrge of Fel.
• 14:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, right after Oberger film. And…
• 14:59
  Tad Eggleston: Dave Kaplan was saying, like, I brought my daughter over, and I'm like, oh, you gotta watch this, this is history, you know? And she looked at me, and she's like, you mean they couldn't get married already? That's dumb.
• 15:10
  Britton Payne: There's a great line in some Paul wrote…
• 15:13
  Tad Eggleston: 16, right? And it had just never occurred to her, like.
• 15:16
  Britton Payne: Yeah.
• 15:17
  Tad Eggleston: Cause for… for her…
• 15:20
  Tad Eggleston: For her generation, sure, there were some old cranks that still didn't like, but, like, it never occurred to her that that meant that, like, they were…
• 15:31
  Tad Eggleston: not given rights.
• 15:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so… so that's why, I mean, the more I think about it, the more I think, like, your goal of getting the word
• 15:41
  Tad Eggleston: in as much kids' fare as possible.
• 15:46
  Tad Eggleston: So that before they can have this stigma, they're already thinking of autism as just a different flavor.
• 15:53
  Britton Payne: Yes, that's exactly right. And that's why I think it's important, or at least that's why I think the… why I'm.
• 15:59
  Tad Eggleston: But I also think it's important to have different-looking autistic characters. You should… I mean, because autism should be… you should have the word autism, and this is where… where I'm certain it's an uphill battle sometimes with…
• 16:11
  Tad Eggleston: with,
• 16:14
  Tad Eggleston: children's content creators, because they want to simplify things as much as possible, so to take character A, who is non-verbal and…
• 16:24
  Tad Eggleston: you know.
• 16:27
  Tad Eggleston: withdrawn, et cetera, and call them autistic, and character B, who talks a ton and bounces off the walls autistic, you're gonna have people going, wait a minute, that can't be right. It IS right!
• 16:44
  Britton Payne: Yeah, that's why, in part, I think it's a numbers game, and I definitely think about it that way, where I don't…
• 16:49
  Britton Payne: I want people to do, I don't know, quote, good
• 16:54
  Britton Payne: representations of autism, but that is not my initial focus. My initial focus is volume. You know, let's just get lots of them out there, and hopefully, you know, the writers who decide to take on that task, and the executives who
• 17:06
  Britton Payne: are willing to approve it are aware that their reputations are on the line, and so that they might want to do a smidge of research. And, you know, they're not always going to get it right, but I'm, at the moment, not
• 17:16
  Britton Payne: I am not.
• 17:17
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, at least in my limited experience looking at the autism community, particularly since the autism community started being
• 17:28
  Tad Eggleston: More autistic people than just autistic parents.
• 17:33
  Tad Eggleston: We seem awfully forgiving of those that have their hearts in the right place.
• 17:40
  Britton Payne: That's what I've observed, too, especially, you know, and there are things, obviously, that evolve over time, and I think certainly plenty of people are going to be vocal if they see something they don't like, but…
• 17:51
  Britton Payne: Hopefully…
• 17:52
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I just… the example that I'll use is, like, you don't hear a lot of love for Rain Man in the autistic community right now, but, like, if a discussion gets going, there's a lot of people that appreciate that it exists.
• 18:07
  Britton Payne: Yeah, it's… Rain Man's a funny mix. I mean, I'm not really the right person. I have opinions, but I'm not…
• 18:12
  Britton Payne: I'm not autistic, and I'm not in that part of the community to, like, pass judgment on it, but what I do observe is, as a person who grew up in that era, that was my sole
• 18:21
  Britton Payne: exposure to autism for, like, a generation. Exactly. And so, to my mind, you could have the next one representation of autism for a generation be a different or better representation, if that's what you felt was necessary, but I think it's more important to have more representation of autism rather than better.
• 18:39
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's kind of my point, though, like.
• 18:42
  Britton Payne: No, no, I know, yeah, we both agree, yeah.
• 18:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, like, but that's…
• 18:45
  Britton Payne: So…
• 18:46
  Tad Eggleston: The broad argument for more is that, like, there's not as big of a risk as you think, because the need for representation is huge, the spectrum is broad, so, like, it's not as hard to make somebody who
• 19:04
  Tad Eggleston: is autistic.
• 19:06
  Tad Eggleston: As… as one might.
• 19:08
  Tad Eggleston: think, so really…
• 19:10
  Britton Payne: There's also safety in numbers, you know, the more people… I've said this to you before, too, but in Hollywood, there's this truism that everybody wants to be…
• 19:19
  Britton Payne: There's a big rush to be first, to be second.
• 19:21
  Britton Payne: You know? Like, nobody wants to break.
• 19:24
  Tad Eggleston: I was actually gonna say, it's… you know, I mean, that's probably what you guys like to tell yourselves. From the outside, it looks like there's a big rush to be first to be fifth.
• 19:33
  Britton Payne: Maybe, maybe. Sometimes it takes time to get things through. But, the… another thing that was interesting, talking about, you know, the volume of characters, Dennis also revealed on the panel that he had been writing Tony Stark Iron Lad in his Ultimates run, which was a very well
• 19:49
  Britton Payne: recent run of an Avengers iteration.
• 19:51
  Tad Eggleston: Which I haven't read all of, but as soon as you said that, I went, oh, yeah.
• 19:55
  Britton Payne: Well, I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't. But he says that he is writing… he has written, or he wrote Iron Lad, which I'm assuming is a young Tony Stark. I read it, but I don't quite remember it, as autistic.
• 20:08
  Britton Payne: And so, that's another character from him, but another Marvel character who has been… where the writer has explicitly noted that they're writing the character as autistic, even though the word doesn't appear in the book. As far as I know, Reed Richards from the Fantastic Four under Ryan North, he says that he is also writing that character as autistic.
• 20:25
  Britton Payne: So, and that's pretty cool, and then there's.
• 20:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I wanna say that,
• 20:30
  Tad Eggleston: Grant Morrison actually called him autistic back in…
• 20:34
  Britton Payne: Yeah, so there was a… in… about 20 years ago, Grant Morrison.
• 20:39
  Tad Eggleston: Might actually be closer.
• 20:40
  Britton Payne: She described it as… it's in my presentation, I think it's… I think it's 2003, I think it's 2003, but I could be wrong about that. But it was, it was Sue implying that Reid might be autistic. And, and…
• 20:57
  Britton Payne: it was, like, something like Sue walks in the room and says, hey, did you read up on any of those articles about Asperger's that I showed you, or something like that? And then, about 10 years later, Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, I think is how you say his name, wrote something like, Reed looks directly at the camera and says, I've diagnosed myself with a mild case of autism that I'm working on a cure right now.
• 21:16
  Britton Payne: So that's, you know, like, okay, that's not… that's not how we would say it in 2026.
• 21:20
  Tad Eggleston: that there are two parts of that I don't like. I actually recently went down the rabbit hole on an Atlantic article talking about the quote-unquote rise in mild autism, and whether or not that was hurting the people who had real autism, and I'm sitting there going.
• 21:38
  Tad Eggleston: Motherfucker, are we really having infights like this?
• 21:42
  Britton Payne: Yeah, yes.
• 21:45
  Tad Eggleston: But second, like, autism isn't something that can or should be cured.
• 21:50
  Britton Payne: And that's also a… yeah, that's a position that you find a lot in the autism community, too, so I try to be mindful about that when I talk about it.
• 21:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I don't think…
• 22:02
  Tad Eggleston: like, because I work with what we call low-incidence kids. You know, the kids that need
• 22:09
  Tad Eggleston: a lot of extra help in various ways. I'm not saying that, like, if we found ways for… kids…
• 22:20
  Tad Eggleston: To be able to do… kids and adults, to be able to do more things for themselves in a way that they found comfortable, and not…
• 22:28
  Tad Eggleston: oppressive, etc, that that would be a bad thing, but I don't view that as a cure. A cure is somehow making it all go away, and not only do I not think that we can do that, I think that we would find that that would… very quickly, that that would be a be-careful what you wish for
• 22:47
  Tad Eggleston: type of thing, as I suspect that much of the innovation throughout history has been done by autistic people, seeing as we think differently, and thinking differently tends to be
• 22:58
  Tad Eggleston: One of the things that leads to
• 23:00
  Tad Eggleston: Great art, or new invention, or… or really anything new!
• 23:06
  Britton Payne: Yeah, or, yeah, or, diversity in ways that Darwin would find, advantageous. Yeah, so another cool thing that came out recently, and it hasn't
• 23:18
  Britton Payne: that I talk about in the panel is, the character Fair Play. So, Superman movie, for people who are less familiar with DC Comics or with the characters, last summer, Superman movie breakout character Mr. Terrific in the comic books has a son.
• 23:31
  Britton Payne: And the son was recently created by Jeremy Adams, about 5 years ago now, I think. And then Jeremy,
• 23:37
  Britton Payne: has written this character, who's roughly 10 years old, and he's a super genius, as autistic, but made him explicitly autistic in this… earlier this year in DCKO, The Kids Are All Fight Special, where they introduce him
• 23:50
  Britton Payne: And they're introducing all the different characters, and in his introduction, it says his birth name, and his powers, and specifically, that he's autistic. So now, canonically, he is literally the first explicitly autistic
• 24:02
  Britton Payne: DC Comics superhero in the history of DC, which is pretty great.
• 24:08
  Tad Eggleston: That's awesome. Though I have always read his dad as autistic. I know it's not explicit, but I've always read him as autistic.
• 24:15
  Britton Payne: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Tad Eggleston: I've never read a Mr. Terrific and not thought of him as autistic.
• 24:19
  Britton Payne: Yeah, yeah, I could see that.
• 24:21
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of like, I'd never thought of Reed Richards as anything other than optimists.
• 24:26
  Britton Payne: But… so the son is now canonically autistic, but that was a one-shot. That was… and it was, I thought, well-written, and in the context of a really fun, like.
• 24:35
  Britton Payne: you know, knock-down, drag-out comic book, adventure, and so that was really cool, but it was a one-shot. And in talking to Jeremy about it, he's like, yeah, and I just hope somebody, you know, when you create a character, when you… some of the creators that I've spoken with who do that kind of work say, like, oh, you want to put a toy in the toy box.
• 24:52
  Tad Eggleston: And,
• 24:53
  Britton Payne: As referring to creating a new character that maybe can become part of
• 24:56
  Britton Payne: this DC world that he… or superhero world that he loved so much for his whole life, now he can say he put a toy in the toy box. But, you know, you hope then that somebody picks it up and runs with it and does something with it. And what was cool is that they've announced a new Teen Titans comic book written by Kyle Higgins.
• 25:15
  Britton Payne: And drawn by…
• 25:17
  Britton Payne: DiNicola? Danielle DiNicola, I think is an artist's name? I think that's who it is. And it's coming out September 2, I want to say. It's a new Teen Titans comic book. It's headed by Jason Todd, the second Robin.
• 25:32
  Britton Payne: And who's kind of the bad boy of the… of the former Robins. And so he's leading a group of otherwise young, you know, teenage superheroes, one of whom is Fair Play. So they give him a costume redesign.
• 25:43
  Britton Payne: And, that's cool to me that he's been picked up. But you still wonder, like, okay, he's in there, will they…
• 25:49
  Britton Payne: Will he be autistic? Will he be explicitly autistic? How they do the characterization? And I'm very excited to see it, because the artwork sort of…
• 25:56
  Britton Payne: if I'm looking for it, I would say, oh, that… the body language…
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: Danielle Diene Coelho?
• 26:04
  Britton Payne: Yeah, I don't know how to say your name, but, Daniel DiNicola. So, if you look at the artwork, you can see that there are 5 or 6 characters on the team, and the Fair Play character has a decidedly distinct body language relative.
• 26:20
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 26:20
  Britton Payne: to the other players.
• 26:21
  Tad Eggleston: Well, like, between the chest pack and the… The high collar, and the…
• 26:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I'm just looking at the picture here and thinking he's coded autistic. He couldn't.
• 26:36
  Britton Payne: be, right? Like, he could not be. But since I'm looking for it, and since we know a little something about the character, and this is just preview work, so I've been trying to get ahold of Kyle Higgins and, you know, looking for anybody to say anything particular about it, and Danielle also, I think I emailed her today, but my intention was to try and, you know, interview her for my nonprofit, just to get some kind of
• 26:57
  Britton Payne: Let me find out about it.
• 26:58
  Tad Eggleston: For me, looking at this preview image, the only thing that could make him code more autistic is if he had a pair of headphones on.
• 27:05
  Britton Payne: Well, yes, and so… and I think he might have a pair of headphones around his neck, right?
• 27:10
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you can't tell, because it's got the high collar.
• 27:13
  Britton Payne: Oh, the high collar, okay. Yeah, so…
• 27:15
  Tad Eggleston: his mouth.
• 27:16
  Britton Payne: Yeah, and so I'm…
• 27:18
  Tad Eggleston: Again, like, that's not a hugely… it's not, like, a hugely common autistic thing, but it's not an uncommon autistic thing.
• 27:26
  Britton Payne: Yeah, and yes, and you know, as we've discussed before, autism presents in many different ways, but if you were to look at that character and someone said, as drawn, this character is autistic, you could say, oh, I see it.
• 27:36
  Britton Payne: You know, I, I…
• 27:38
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 27:38
  Britton Payne: the artist took that into consideration, and did a pretty decent job of, you know, representing autism in that character. A flavor of autism, at least. So, I'll be curious to see how that comes out, but I'm very excited about it. I'm very glad that in this ongoing series, they got Kyle Higgins, who's a pretty hot writer right now. Is he Power Rangers that he's doing right now, or Radiant.
• 27:56
  Tad Eggleston: Is he doing Power Rangers 2? I just… I know of his massive Versh.
• 28:00
  Britton Payne: Yeah, well…
• 28:01
  Tad Eggleston: this massive verge. Yes. Or at least what I've read of it. I haven't read enough of it.
• 28:05
  Britton Payne: I've… I've only read a couple… I guess I read the first story arc, and agree, it's a really fun… he's a fun writer. I remember him back from when he did Nightwing, which… I guess that will take us to the Cabinet when we're ready.
• 28:18
  Britton Payne: Yeah, there's a couple things we've touched on already that will apply to this episode of Cabinet. But, so I'm excited to see what that… what happens with that, and I'm hopeful based on the materials that I've seen. But I have not seen any kind of confirmation.
• 28:32
  Britton Payne: I realize this is, like, a niche thing to be concerned about, whatever, but it's the… it's something that I've sort of put some effort into. And then the last thing I wanted to say on the topic is… is that,
• 28:42
  Britton Payne: I mean, I guess I'm saying this on a podcast, so I'm sort of committing myself to it, but when I did this presentation at, Emerald City Comic-Con, somebody who I… who was an academic, who was there, and I hung out with for a minute, she said that I should write… turn this panel into a book. And I said, no, I didn't want to do that, and I knew she was an academic, and I knew how hard it is to write an academic book, and… and I don't really have a reason to write an academic book, because I'm not trying to be a professor, I'm not trying to get tenure, I don't even have a master's degree or anything.
• 29:06
  Tad Eggleston: I would argue that you don't… I mean, could there be an academic book from this? Sure, but I think it'd be just as good as a…
• 29:15
  Tad Eggleston: Non-academic nonfiction.
• 29:17
  Britton Payne: Well, I apparently have come around, because I'm now feeling like I have more stuff to say than I can fit in this panel. And the last 2 or 3 times I've done the panel, I've had to, like, whip through the slides and skip things that I… that I love talking about, and I love… and I think are very important. So I think I'm going to try and figure out how to do… how to get the comprehensive version of the material that I've been working on out there somehow, and I think a book is going to be
• 29:42
  Britton Payne: part of it, so hopefully over the next year or so, I'll…
• 29:45
  Britton Payne: I'll have the opportunity to sort of turn this into a book. And then, if you've got a book, you've got an excuse to go out and talk about the book.
• 29:52
  Tad Eggleston: That's true.
• 29:52
  Britton Payne: on the book, too.
• 29:54
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I mean, I think…
• 29:58
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if anybody's done it, but it'd be a worthwhile thing to do.
• 30:04
  Tad Eggleston: I would be willing to bet that you have a… Significant portion of the… comics creative community that…
• 30:16
  Tad Eggleston: Is either diagnosed or identifies Somewhere in neurodivergence.
• 30:25
  Tad Eggleston: A lot more of them, I think, have ADHD.
• 30:29
  Tad Eggleston: diagnosis, or that's what they're comfortable identifying with, though I know there's also a lot of borderline personality, and I know that there's a lot of…
• 30:39
  Tad Eggleston: autism, or… It, you know, because, again, like, comics are a weird art.
• 30:46
  Tad Eggleston: You have to think in ways that are different than other mediums.
• 30:52
  Tad Eggleston: And I would be willing to bet that artists in general
• 30:55
  Tad Eggleston: Wind up coding more neurodiverse than the general population.
• 31:00
  Tad Eggleston: But it seems to track a lot of people, so I think it would be…
• 31:04
  Britton Payne: Maybe you've got a book in you, too. Yeah, that could be.
• 31:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's… you met Andrew. I mean, Andrew already…
• 31:13
  Tad Eggleston: He just had his, his, what was it, ABCs of ADHD?
• 31:18
  Tad Eggleston: Or something just came out, and he's got a neurodiversity one coming.
• 31:24
  Britton Payne: Well, so that was what I wanted to share about with Sandy.
• 31:26
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, we're scheduling…
• 31:27
  Britton Payne: It was very nice seeing people and running around, and I didn't get to go to as many panels as I usually do, but I did enjoy myself. One of my son's friends, who… okay, I guess we're still talking about autism, it's funny. One of my son's friends is this kid, Declan McConville, awesome kid.
• 31:42
  Britton Payne: They… they went to school together, they got acting class together in this, like, in this very small, low-key acting class, and they're buddies, you know, and
• 31:50
  Britton Payne: Declan is an actor, and his dad has helped him, you know, go out and audition and do fun things, and for his talent show, he did a scene as Paw Jode from the 1939 Grapes of Wrath, which was.
• 32:02
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 32:03
  Britton Payne: He was so sincere and serious in giving this, like, heartfelt speech, you know, from the end of the.
• 32:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, when you were talking about representation, I was thinking that I… I rewatched Atypical last time.
• 32:13
  Britton Payne: Oh, yeah, I haven't seen the final season, but I've watched a bunch of that.
• 32:17
  Tad Eggleston: I guess I'm a few episodes away from finishing the final season in terms of my rewatch, but…
• 32:23
  Britton Payne: Damn.
• 32:24
  Tad Eggleston: But,
• 32:25
  Britton Payne: So in any event, so Declan was there, and the reason he was there is that there's this movie called The Sandlot, a baseball movie, so you probably know.
• 32:31
  Tad Eggleston: I love the sandlock.
• 32:31
  Britton Payne: So I've never seen it, but I know what it is.
• 32:33
  Tad Eggleston: Woohoo!
• 32:34
  Britton Payne: Yeah, you know. And and so they're… the guy's coming up… I mean, I guess you're older.
• 32:39
  Tad Eggleston: Other than me too, so that's allowed.
• 32:41
  Britton Payne: Yeah, I mean.
• 32:42
  Tad Eggleston: Because you were a teenager when it came out, and it's, it's, it's like the…
• 32:45
  Britton Payne: Might have.
• 32:46
  Tad Eggleston: Middle school baseball movie?
• 32:48
  Britton Payne: I think it came out in the early 90s, and I was in… I would have been in my 20s, yeah.
• 32:52
  Tad Eggleston: Are you that much older than me?
• 32:54
  Britton Payne: I was born in 1970.
• 32:55
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 32:58
  Tad Eggleston: And I was born in 1980, yeah, okay.
• 33:00
  Britton Payne: Yeah, yeah, that counts as older. So they made that movie, and now these kids are young adults, and they got together and they decided they wanted to make something of a spiritual sequel to The Sandlot. So it's the same actors from that, movie as adults now who are coaching their own kids' baseball teams. So, you know, that's…
• 33:20
  Tad Eggleston: It's amazing.
• 33:20
  Britton Payne: It's basically the setup. So they did a panel at Comic-Con in a pretty big hall, which was really fun, and they had those 8 guys, or however many there were, and they had really fun chemistry. Like, middle-aged men who've known each other since forever, who…
• 33:34
  Britton Payne: unlike a lot of actors, they… they seemed like they didn't care to say the right thing, you know, because a lot of them gave me… gave you the impression, oh, I'm gonna say goodnight to my son. Hey, good night, Freddy, have a good night's sleep, okay, bud?
• 33:48
  Britton Payne: Say hi, Mr. Tad.
• 33:50
  Britton Payne: Hey, Mr. Tad, I have to go to sleep, so goodnight!
• 33:53
  Tad Eggleston: Sleeping is a good idea. It's good for you.
• 33:55
  Britton Payne: I'm telling… I'm telling Mr. Tad about Declan at Comic-Con. And so, they did this panel, and they had the eight, you know, actors up there, and they were, you know, busting each other's chops, and they were very fun. It felt like a very real set of relationships. And Topanga, I don't know what her real name… I forget what her real name is, but the woman who played… she was a girl then, she's an adult now, played Topanga, is the wife of the lead
• 34:17
  Britton Payne: character in the sequel show, and it's called Dugout Dads. And so Declan is the son in Dugout Dads, and he's like the, I guess, not very good at baseball kid, I think that's what his role is. And so Declan is autistic, and he got called up to the stage to introduce himself. And he was so charming and quirky and wonderful, and I wish there was video. I videotaped it, but I…
• 34:42
  Britton Payne: I didn't get the screen, and I didn't have a good view of him. So, you can only really hear the conversation, but he just.
• 34:48
  Tad Eggleston: That's right.
• 34:49
  Britton Payne: so quirkily charming, it was really great. So I'm hopeful that the show does well, and that it's only gonna be.
• 34:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 34:55
  Britton Payne: I don't mean to be diminishing it, but it's gonna be released, like, on YouTube somewhere, somehow, in about a week, I think. But he was charming, and it was great, and so that was a really fun thing in Comic-Con, was to see a friend of my son get pulled up on stage and essentially charm.
• 35:10
  Tad Eggleston: August 26th on YouTube.
• 35:12
  Britton Payne: Yeah. So,
• 35:14
  Tad Eggleston: I will be all over that.
• 35:16
  Britton Payne: Good, good. I mean, yeah, I mean, it seems like it's right up your alley. If you know the movie and you're a baseball guy, like.
• 35:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the Sandlot is one of my top 10 baseball movies.
• 35:24
  Britton Payne: Oh, wow, that's amazing.
• 35:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 35:27
  Britton Payne: You didn't enjoy this?
• 35:27
  Tad Eggleston: It's not just I know the movie, it's…
• 35:30
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I'm not alone with that.
• 35:35
  Britton Payne: Oh, no, no, no, I recognize it's a… there were a lot of people there, and a lot of people getting signatures for stuff, like, really adamantly wanting to get signatures. They had to clear everybody out of the room because the next panel was coming in, and there was a long line of people who were upset that they didn't get their signature that they wanted at that very moment. And then there were people in cosplay from the movie, the original movie, which was really fun, too. So that was cool, that was a very cool experience, and, you know, there's always great cosplay, and if you go
• 36:00
  Britton Payne: to theautismscreen.org and go to the press releases, or if you go to the beat, so Heidi McDonald's.
• 36:06
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't dance beast.
• 36:07
  Britton Payne: They… so Tamar Dar ran an article about my panel, the one I've just been talking about, and in that, you know, is the summary of the whole panel, including some other.
• 36:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, just to give you an idea, Britt, Joe Poznansky just did a top, I think, 75 baseball movies, acknowledging that, like, the top, or the 75 to 50 are, like, bad.
• 36:32
  Britton Payne: Nice.
• 36:32
  Tad Eggleston: starts getting good, or debatably good, somewhere in the 50s, and, like, he, he, sent out… I don't know if he actually said anywhere all the people he sent it out to to get votes, but, like, Michael Schur was one of them,
• 36:48
  Tad Eggleston: friend of 22 Panels, Derek Gold was one of them. The sandlock came in…
• 36:56
  Tad Eggleston: In front of the bad news bears.
• 37:00
  Britton Payne: That sounds about right. I mean, given the… given the core…
• 37:02
  Tad Eggleston: Number 7.
• 37:03
  Britton Payne: given the age cohort of people who would likely be participating in that poll, like, I'm sort of in the old edge of.
• 37:10
  Tad Eggleston: You're younger than Poznatsky.
• 37:12
  Britton Payne: I'm, like, the youngest person who would care about Bad News Bears, probably.
• 37:17
  Tad Eggleston: I love the bad.
• 37:19
  Britton Payne: Oh, did you really? Oh, okay, maybe I'm wrong now.
• 37:20
  Tad Eggleston: Bad News Bears is one of my top 3 baseball movies.
• 37:24
  Britton Payne: I feel like, oh, hey, I stand corrected. I mean.
• 37:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to a certain extent, like…
• 37:30
  Tad Eggleston: When you get into people who love baseball movies, when they were made doesn't matter anymore.
• 37:36
  Britton Payne: Oh, really? Oh, okay, interesting. Well, then,
• 37:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's kind of like great comic books, like, like…
• 37:44
  Tad Eggleston: I don't probably have the same affinity for 80s comic books in general that you do, but I bet you our favorites are very similar.
• 37:54
  Britton Payne: Interesting. I was just listening to a podcast that was… it's Tony DiZeneca's… no, wait a minute. Todd DiZago's, podcast, and he was talking about top 5 comfort comic books, and he was interviewing somebody like Walt Simonson. It wasn't him, but it was somebody like that.
• 38:09
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, one of my cats is named after Walt Simonson.
• 38:12
  Britton Payne: Oh, neat. So they were going back and forth.
• 38:13
  Tad Eggleston: Walter Odin Meatball.
• 38:15
  Britton Payne: They were going back and forth talking about their… their comfort comic books, and they… they were mentioning things that they acknowledged were not particularly great comic books, but that were when they were the right age, and so they were… they were talking…
• 38:29
  Tad Eggleston: Comfort Wars will always be one of my comfort comic books, because it was the first book I bought.
• 38:33
  Britton Payne: Which one?
• 38:34
  Tad Eggleston: Secret Wars.
• 38:35
  Britton Payne: It was Secret Wars, yeah.
• 38:36
  Tad Eggleston: I was 4 when it came out, and it had all the heroes on the cover, and that made it the best.
• 38:41
  Britton Payne: Yeah, and then the doll's in the toy store, too.
• 38:43
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
• 38:44
  Britton Payne: Well, so this guy had said.
• 38:46
  Tad Eggleston: They have them all.
• 38:47
  Britton Payne: I think his name was Walter, he was talking about… you might not kind of key into this, there were… there was the original Teen Titans run in the 60s, and then it.
• 38:54
  Tad Eggleston: kind of.
• 38:55
  Britton Payne: brought it back briefly in the 70s, and then it came back with Marv Wolfman and George Perez in 1980.
• 38:59
  Britton Payne: So he cited the, like, 7 or 8 issue run, that was in the late 70s, or mid to late 70s.
• 39:07
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 39:07
  Britton Payne: And it's a quirky, weird set, and I love them also, but I got them as back issues, basically. He was getting them off the stands. And that was his thing, and he's like, look, they weren't that great, but I loved them.
• 39:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 39:20
  Britton Payne: as comfort foods go, like, they bring me back to that time. Right, right. Yeah, so I feel the same way. I've been rereading.
• 39:27
  Tad Eggleston: But, but I, but I…
• 39:27
  Britton Payne: Justice League lately from Dick Dillon, from starting from, like, 1967 up to about 1980.
• 39:33
  Tad Eggleston: And, like… People your age are the most likely to, like, say, like…
• 39:41
  Tad Eggleston: enjoy the Bad News Bears Breaking Training.
• 39:45
  Tad Eggleston: Which is… which is not a good movie, or a good baseball movie.
• 39:50
  Tad Eggleston: But, if you happen to be alive at the right time.
• 39:55
  Tad Eggleston: And you got to have the… I mean, it's kind of like, I probably like the Mighty Ducks 2 way more than I should.
• 40:03
  Tad Eggleston: Mighty Ducks is a movie that can transcend its time. It's better than that. The sequel is not. But if you were the right age at the time, it's a comfort thing. Yeah.
• 40:14
  Tad Eggleston: What I'm saying is both the Sandlot and Bad News Bears are more than just comfort fodder.
• 40:20
  Britton Payne: Well, that's good, that's good. Yeah, Bad News Bears, I remember seeing it and wanting to see it, but I also remember it having, like, a little bit foul language, and I think I.
• 40:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 40:29
  Britton Payne: young… I was a little.
• 40:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 40:30
  Britton Payne: be allowed to see their homework.
• 40:31
  Tad Eggleston: 6 or 7 when it came out.
• 40:33
  Britton Payne: I guess, I mean, I don't know what years they came out. I know there were a couple of them, but I remember one was in the movie theater, and I wanted to go see Jungle Book, and it was sold out, and so I said, can we go see Bad News Bears? My mom said no. Because I… I'm sure because of the potty language and stuff. There was definitely some language.
• 40:48
  Tad Eggleston: Japanese language. But it was well done with language.
• 40:51
  Britton Payne: I'm sure it was. I mean, I vaguely remember… because I eventually did see it, and I'm sure that the language that they used would not
• 40:57
  Britton Payne: hold up today, because I know some things that they said that just would not… that would not be smiled upon by today's audience.
• 41:03
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, like, this actually… Bad News Bears is actually a great example of…
• 41:09
  Tad Eggleston: intent matters. Like, we always talk about this… this or that wouldn't hold up today, and most of the people talking about that, or, like, talking hard about that, are people who want to say things for the wrong reasons, and don't understand why there are consequences for that.
• 41:26
  Britton Payne: I think, I mean, there is a character named Lupus.
• 41:30
  Tad Eggleston: There is.
• 41:31
  Britton Payne: And I feel like… and my recollection is that they used some language there that we probably wouldn't use.
• 41:37
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, I mean, they dropped the N-word. They, they, they, they, they…
• 41:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they're…
• 41:43
  Tad Eggleston: They drop some things that shouldn't be dropped, but they're also… I mean, I'm not… I'm gonna try to figure out how… how…
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: how to say this without saying the actual words, because I don't… I don't feel… feel like…
• 41:56
  Tad Eggleston: I don't feel like it's my place to say the words, but, like, there's a point where Tanner's like.
• 42:01
  Tad Eggleston: we've got just a group of N's, S's, and pansies.
• 42:07
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like, immediately has one of them
• 42:10
  Tad Eggleston: Or, like, one of them turned, you know, one of the other players turned to him and go, representing the vast majority of…
• 42:18
  Tad Eggleston: Or something along the lines of, you know, as one of the few people on this team that isn't a Jew and Sir Pansy, you should watch yourself before we kick your ass.
• 42:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so it's like the stuff came out, but there were consequences for it. It wasn't like, oh, he's cool because he's…
• 42:43
  Tad Eggleston: dropping… you know, slurs. It was, oh, even from his teammates that like him.
• 42:52
  Britton Payne: Yes.
• 42:53
  Tad Eggleston: And then… and then later, like, he's the one that digs into Timmy Lupus the most, but then there's a scene where he literally takes on… I mean, and Tanner is, like.
• 43:03
  Britton Payne: Yes, Tanner's the kid with the anger problem, right?
• 43:06
  Tad Eggleston: so small… the small kid with the anchor, right? I… I have not seen…
• 43:10
  Britton Payne: And I don't know that I've.
• 43:13
  Tad Eggleston: going on, Timmy?
• 43:15
  Britton Payne: It's very possible I've never seen it, so I'm probably not the right person to have this conversation with, but, like, Heidi McDonald or whatever, like, your baseball friend.
• 43:22
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, we've talked, we've talked.
• 43:23
  Britton Payne: You guys should have.
• 43:24
  Tad Eggleston: We've got to spare. We have!
• 43:25
  Britton Payne: You do have a special episode. Yeah, absolutely. Alright, well, speaking of special episodes, do you want to slide over to Britt's Cabinet?
• 43:32
  Tad Eggleston: We can!
• 43:33
  Britton Payne: Alright.
• 43:33
  Tad Eggleston: We can, let's…
• 43:34
  Britton Payne: So today, the part.
• 43:35
  Tad Eggleston: Or we could just talk about what you've been reading lately, whatever works best for you.
• 43:38
  Britton Payne: Let's do the Cabinet. We could… we could… I have… lately, I've been reading old stuff anyway, so we may as well have the structure for it. I subscribe… one of the things I did at San Diego Comic-Con was subscribe to DC Infinite, which is their, you know, their comic.
• 43:53
  Tad Eggleston: I have… I have that subscription. Yeah.
• 43:56
  Britton Payne: I've been digging through that, and it's been funny to see what I want to read, and it…
• 44:00
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna give a big plug right now, both to you and to our listeners. It just wrapped up, and I'm a little sad that there won't be any more, but Andrew Iden's DC Go series, Taste of Justice, is just outstanding.
• 44:14
  Britton Payne: I briefly looked at it, and yeah, I'm gonna try and dig more into that.
• 44:16
  Tad Eggleston: I love it.
• 44:17
  Britton Payne: I looked at the ish episode that had, Red Tornado
• 44:22
  Britton Payne: and Martian Manhunter, I think, because I was…
• 44:24
  Tad Eggleston: I remember what they called.
• 44:25
  Britton Payne: for Martian Manhunter. Yeah, they did some cooking or something.
• 44:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's the whole thing. I mean, every episode… every issue is built around cooking something.
• 44:34
  Britton Payne: I see, I see, yeah.
• 44:35
  Tad Eggleston: And in fact, while they don't give you the explicit recipe, Andrew went out of his way to write it in such a way that if you wanted to make what they were making, you could probably do it from the comic.
• 44:47
  Britton Payne: That's really fun. That's cool. He's a cool guy.
• 44:50
  Tad Eggleston: I love Andrew.
• 44:51
  Britton Payne: But I found myself reading, Justice League, and so, and specifically Dick Dillon, the artist for Justice League. So he was a Justice League artist for, I don't know, almost maybe 100 issues, which is such a long period of time. I think that was.
• 45:05
  Tad Eggleston: When was that?
• 45:06
  Britton Payne: roughly 67 to 1980, he was replaced by George Perez, but he was… he was the main and possibly only penciler on Justice League for a decade or so.
• 45:16
  Britton Payne: And so he starts with the anchor Sid Green, who makes it look like 1960s DC Comics, and by the end, he's got Frank McLaughlin.
• 45:25
  Britton Payne: Which makes him look like Neil Adams. And so I'm curious to see, as I read through, how… how much am I noticing the evolution? I'm sure when he got hired, he was hired to sort of replicate the Wayne Boing look, the big boxy DC Comics characters, and then… but I know that by the end, he's got that sort of lean, you know, gymnast sort of look, with dark inks and, like, moody.
• 45:46
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and bringing up the inks also raises the question, like, what was the pencil or inker…
• 45:53
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because… er… what's the word I'm looking for? Work division, because…
• 46:01
  Britton Payne: Oh, yeah, how tight?
• 46:02
  Tad Eggleston: Different teams work really, really differently in terms.
• 46:05
  Britton Payne: Yeah, I don't know.
• 46:06
  Tad Eggleston: There's a lot of stuff out there where almost all of the detail is from the inker.
• 46:11
  Tad Eggleston: And the penciler really gave the page layout and the poses.
• 46:16
  Britton Payne: Yeah, yes, I don't know the answer, but I'll be curious to see, just as a reader, how it unfolds. So, when I graduated law school in 2007, one of the gifts that I gave to myself… oh, I did an internship at DC Comics in 2006-ish, and I got to go visit the library up there.
• 46:34
  Britton Payne: At DC Comics, where they had bound essentially all of their books as reference materials, and they bound them with, you know, leather-bound
• 46:41
  Britton Payne: books that looked like law books to me. And so, since I was gonna go be a lawyer, I thought it'd be cool to take some of the books from my collection.
• 46:50
  Britton Payne: and bind them together in a similar way. And I found the same bindery, Brewer Cantelmo, that was down the street from where DC's offices were at the time, and where my office happened to be in New York City at the time. So I…
• 47:03
  Britton Payne: decided which books that I wanted to get bound. I picked various runs of comic books that I really liked, and I…
• 47:09
  Britton Payne: brought them over to Brewer Canelmo, explained what I wanted, they had them try and make them look like what I remembered the DC Library looking like, and they bound these books. So now, behind me, in my various offices over the years, I'll have, like, this collection of books that look like law books. And when you look closely, when you look closely, it says the Payne Collection, my last name is Payne.
• 47:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 47:28
  Britton Payne: And it says, you know, the title of the book and some of the creators of the book. So that's the part of the Payne collection, or excuse me, of my cabinet that I thought we'd love to.
• 47:37
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't it.
• 47:38
  Britton Payne: today.
• 47:38
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 47:39
  Britton Payne: And I'm gonna quick, quickly show… That means this is gonna be superhero heavy.
• 47:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's okay, but while you're walking, I'm gonna tie it to a couple other 22 Panels episodes. The first is we've talked to Scott Bryan Wilson a couple of times. Scott Bryan Wilson was the guy at DC who was charged with
• 47:59
  Tad Eggleston: Really traipsing all over the country to track down
• 48:03
  Tad Eggleston: the issues they were missing for that library, and when he was… Given that job.
• 48:09
  Tad Eggleston: There were a few thousand, and when he left that job, there were…
• 48:13
  Tad Eggleston: I want to say less than 50.
• 48:16
  Britton Payne: Wow, that's… I mean, that's… that's a huge technical…
• 48:19
  Tad Eggleston: Find all sorts of…
• 48:21
  Tad Eggleston: back issues. But then the other thing is, like, I haven't seen the bound ones at DC, but I'm pretty certain that the set in…
• 48:30
  Tad Eggleston: and Paul Levitz's den is… is… is the same, and he did show that to us. He's got, like, built into the wall bookshelves that you, like, you pull out, and they're… they're, like, the bound volumes of everything.
• 48:47
  Britton Payne: So, I have something somewhat similar. So, if you look behind me, there's a plant in the way, but you can see…
• 48:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 48:52
  Britton Payne: I mean, I know nobody listening can see anything, but that's one shelf where I have them, but I'm gonna look at this shelf over here for now. And, I've become friendly with the archivist at DC as well recently, and he… he is in the process of scanning as many of these things as he can, so he's getting exposed to… and he says he really loves the Golden Age books, so he is…
• 49:11
  Britton Payne: currently trying to, you know, get those, I suppose, into DC Infinite, but also maybe to get better quality books and to be aware of what, you know, we don't have. So, I'm just gonna put.
• 49:21
  Tad Eggleston: If I ever get you… if I ever get you to come to, ohio with me for CXC.
• 49:27
  Tad Eggleston: One of the things they do at the Billy Ireland is scan and restore Old art.
• 49:36
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's awesome. A lot of times when you see, like, a Phanographics collection of old, old
• 49:46
  Tad Eggleston: Comic strips or whatever.
• 49:49
  Tad Eggleston: Ireland has been involved in… And… getting the best possible art for them.
• 49:56
  Tad Eggleston: Looking at Elseworlds Superman Batman from 94. Yeah, so the first book that I'.
• 50:00
  Britton Payne: pulling out.
• 50:00
  Tad Eggleston: This is not free.
• 50:01
  Britton Payne: Excuse me, I'm not pulling it out for any particular reason other than it was on the top of the pile that was by my hand. And you can see at the bottom, it says The Payne Collection, 94-2003, Elseworlds, Superman, and Batman. So, I loved the Elseworlds books when they came out.
• 50:14
  Tad Eggleston: Do you have the Chakin' Thrill Killer in there?
• 50:17
  Britton Payne: Well, what I did was I picked the ones that were my favorites, so let's go through and see which ones I did pick. The first one in this… this is just the Batman and Superman ones, and they're just the ones that I like. There's also… I have a separate one that's JLAJSA.
• 50:30
  Britton Payne: And so the very first one, as you can see, is Holy Terror by Alan Brenner and Norm Brightfogel. It… I don't quite remember the plot of this one.
• 50:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that was one of the vampire ones.
• 50:43
  Britton Payne: Oh, so he's a vampire in this one? Okay.
• 50:45
  Tad Eggleston: I forget if he's a vampire or deals with a vampire.
• 50:48
  Britton Payne: And then… but then the second book that's in this collection is.
• 50:51
  Tad Eggleston: the speeding bullet.
• 50:52
  Britton Payne: One of the great… one of the greatest.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: That's a great one.
• 50:54
  Britton Payne: Essentially.
• 50:55
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't that… is that… is that Eduardo Riso?
• 50:58
  Britton Payne: No, Eduardo Barreto.
• 50:59
  Tad Eggleston: a Beretto, yeah.
• 51:00
  Britton Payne: Yeah. Yeah, it's James, or James DeMatis, I forget what it is now. Right.
• 51:04
  Britton Payne: I've heard of before.
• 51:05
  Tad Eggleston: both ways.
• 51:06
  Britton Payne: And it is great. Yeah, I've spoken with him, and he doesn't seem to care one way or the other, but I would like to try to remember.
• 51:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 51:14
  Britton Payne: And it's… it's… this book is great. This is,
• 51:17
  Britton Payne: Clark Kent, or excuse me, Kal-El lands with the Waynes, basically. Yeah.
• 51:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:22
  Britton Payne: same experience as Batman, and he becomes Batman with Superman's powers. That's roughly what it is. And I remember really liking that one a lot. Some of these I haven't read in a very long time.
• 51:34
  Britton Payne: Batman Houdini by Howard Kakin, and John Francis Moore, and Mark Chiarello. That…
• 51:40
  Tad Eggleston: Hey! Couple of people that I know and like.
• 51:44
  Tad Eggleston: I have original Chiarello art on my wall.
• 51:47
  Britton Payne: Oh, no kidding. I don't…
• 51:49
  Tad Eggleston: Mark and Howard have been on the show for a couple of times.
• 51:52
  Britton Payne: I don't recognize the name, but
• 51:54
  Tad Eggleston: Mark Chiarello was the, the art director at DC for a long time.
• 51:58
  Britton Payne: Okay, that makes sense.
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 52:00
  Britton Payne: Well, it's a beautiful.
• 52:01
  Tad Eggleston: He also does a lot of baseball art, so, you know, this is… you being the football guy, you don't get to hang out with the cool people when we talk sports rather than comics.
• 52:10
  Britton Payne: I mean, look at that drawing of Joker.
• 52:12
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 52:13
  Britton Payne: Cool. And then, I don't… do you recognize that building? I know this building. It's a… it's a New York City building.
• 52:18
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's the, I forgot… is it the Flatiron?
• 52:21
  Britton Payne: Yes, the flat iron building.
• 52:23
  Britton Payne: It's a beautifully rendered book.
• 52:25
  Tad Eggleston: In Brooklyn, right?
• 52:26
  Britton Payne: long time. No, no, it's in,
• 52:28
  Tad Eggleston: It's amazing.
• 52:30
  Britton Payne: Street in Manhattan, yeah. It's in the publishing district, basically. I mean, they call it the Flatiron District. And then another similar one, so this is called Batman Darkest Night, and it's if Bruce Wayne got picked to be the next Green Lantern.
• 52:42
  Britton Payne: Okay.
• 52:43
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think I ever read that one.
• 52:44
  Britton Payne: It's Mike W. Barr, who I believe was Batman and the Outsiders. There were…
• 52:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 52:49
  Britton Payne: James Obar, who I think was the crow.
• 52:51
  Tad Eggleston: I think… yeah, I think Mike W. Barr also did Batman Year 2.
• 52:58
  Britton Payne: Alan Davis drew that, right?
• 53:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but Barr's the writer.
• 53:04
  Britton Payne: I think you're right, and I think Alan Davis and…
• 53:07
  Britton Payne: I want to say McFarland, is that right? I don't know. Yeah, I think you're right, though. I think you're right. He was… he was a big writer around that time.
• 53:14
  Britton Payne: And so.
• 53:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Batman Year 2, I just looked up, is…
• 53:19
  Britton Payne: Is it Alan Davis? Was I right?
• 53:22
  Tad Eggleston: Mike bar… And… Alan Davis?
• 53:30
  Tad Eggleston: Paul Neary, Alfredo Alcala, Mark Farmer, and Todd McFarlane.
• 53:35
  Britton Payne: Yeah. Yeah, Farmer's good, too. I mean, I guess he's mostly.
• 53:38
  Tad Eggleston: over 3… over 3 whole issues, so… so that can't all be pencilers. Pencilers were Davis and McFarlane.
• 53:46
  Britton Payne: That makes sense.
• 53:47
  Tad Eggleston: were Neary, Alcala, and McFarlane.
• 53:50
  Britton Payne: Yeah, Neary typically inks Alan Davis, so that's not surprising to me. So that was… I remember really loving these books, and you gotta remember when they came out, too. I mean, these were coming out around 1995, and so that was post-crisis, so pretty
• 54:04
  Britton Payne: you know, everything was… I'm telling you stuff you already know, but pre-crisis 1985,
• 54:09
  Britton Payne: there were multiple Earths and all that kind of stuff. And then the editorial mandate.
• 54:12
  Tad Eggleston: We're about to start reading Crisis in our…
• 54:15
  Tad Eggleston: Bronze… Heroes of Bronze Book Club.
• 54:18
  Britton Payne: Oh, that's fantastic. Well, I loved it. I've read that.
• 54:20
  Tad Eggleston: We're actually gonna be reading Crisis side-by-side with Secret Wars.
• 54:24
  Britton Payne: That's really fun. I read those off the rack, all of those.
• 54:27
  Britton Payne: Yeah. But, so to address Elseworlds, you know, in 1985, they basically put all the heroes that had been on different Earths onto one Earth. And that was the mandate of DC Comics for the next 10 years, is that no alternate Earths, no imaginary stories, it's all in this single continuity. And they, you know, they did their very best to make it work, and occasionally people would sort of cheat a little bit, but that was basically the ethos. So for 10 years.
• 54:52
  Britton Payne: you weren't really seeing these alternate imaginary stories. So when they, started doing the Elseworlds line, which kind of came out of Gotham by Gaslight, which I… my recollection is that was not an official Elseworlds, but is considered the first Elseworlds.
• 55:07
  Britton Payne: And that was successful, so they started doing other similar kinds of things, you know, essentially what-ifs.
• 55:14
  Britton Payne: So, after 10 years of having none of that, this was all fresh.
• 55:17
  Britton Payne: new ground. It was very exciting at the time. Now there's a glut of it, and it's boring. But back… I mean, unless it's extraordinarily well done, like the absolute universe.
• 55:26
  Britton Payne: But back then, this was so fresh, and even a bad Elseworlds idea was usually a fun read. And so I can't entirely speak to the quality of some of these things, I just remember the feeling was so wonderful. So then this was Man of Steel by Priest, Bright and Schultz. I'm not quite sure who Bright is, but it's got a Mike Mignola cover.
• 55:43
  Tad Eggleston: Mark Bright Bright. Mark Bright did a lot.
• 55:45
  Britton Payne: Oh.
• 55:46
  Tad Eggleston: or MD Bright, did a lot of, milestone.
• 55:54
  Britton Payne: Oh, okay, gotcha, gotcha. So this appears to be a post-apocalyptic story, that's essentially Batman and Superman, and it was in Superman Man of Steel.
• 56:04
  Britton Payne: That was when they did, the Elseworlds line had been so popular that they decided one year, I'm assuming it was 96, but I could be wrong about that. Oh, no, 94, there it is. That the… all of the…
• 56:16
  Britton Payne: annuals that year were gonna be Elseworlds. And so, like I said, they weren't all great, but I don't know, everybody was on board, and I enjoyed them quite a bit.
• 56:23
  Britton Payne: There was a Green Lantern one where… by DeVries, Zachary, and Pipoy? I don't really recognize those names too well, but it appears to be a Jon Stewart Green Lantern in a Nazi-occupied America.
• 56:37
  Britton Payne: And the two, it appears that the two people who are the poster boys for this Nazi thing are Hal Jordan and
• 56:45
  Britton Payne: Guy Gardner. So, I don't remember that one at all, but…
• 56:50
  Britton Payne: it looks pretty cool, and it looks like, you know, they took big swings, which was, again, just really fun, I think, when people take a big swing, even if it may not be a perfect book. John Byrne did the Superman in Action Comics Annual that was… and I guess there was also something by Louis Simonson and,
• 57:06
  Britton Payne: I forget what Yanki's first name was, J-A-N-K-E, but it was, Superman in Revolutionary Times. So, you know, those kinds of stories had been told.
• 57:17
  Britton Payne: But this was one, you know, this was where they… they really invested in it, I thought. And as if…
• 57:23
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I think the Elseworlds took deeper dives into it. A lot of times…
• 57:29
  Tad Eggleston: and you know DC better than I do, so, like, absolutely correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like a lot of the ones before Elseworlds, it was more along the lines of, like, when Star Trek goes back in time, where, like, it.
• 57:44
  Britton Payne: Oh, yeah.
• 57:45
  Tad Eggleston: Is this Superman put in the old…
• 57:48
  Tad Eggleston: West, or whatever, whereas Elseworlds was, what if…
• 57:55
  Britton Payne: Yes, and they could kill characters, they could dramatically change them, you know, which sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't. So then there's Shadow of the Bat, Elseworlds Annual was The Tyrant by Alan Grant, Joe Staten, and then Rainey and Adelini, whoever they are.
• 58:09
  Britton Payne: And I have no recollection of this one. I'm kind of just, like, thumbing through it to see if I can figure out what was the premise.
• 58:16
  Britton Payne: But it's really… the art is really cool. Oh, and it's got Anarchy, this character Anarchy from the 90s, who has since gone away.
• 58:23
  Britton Payne: It looks like we're seeing a lot of the Rogues Gallery. I don't know, it kind of looks like maybe, Bruce Wayne gets made king of the world or something like that. Superman at Earth Ends by Tom Veach and Frank Gomez. I don't know who Frank Gomez is, but it seems like it's… it looks like a, you know, Kal-El as Commandee or something like that. Right.
• 58:42
  Britton Payne: Let's see…
• 58:43
  Britton Payne: Dark Allegiances by Howard Chaikin. So that was just a standalone Elseworlds, and it kind of looks like Fritz Lang's Metropolis a little bit, like an Art Deco-y version of Batman.
• 58:56
  Britton Payne: Elseworlds Finest, which is sort of like the, it's John Francis Moore and Kieran Dwyer and Hilary Barda, and it kind of looks like, Edgar Rice Burroughs-era artwork.
• 59:08
  Britton Payne: with Superman and Batman, so it kind of looks like pre-pulpy, maybe even late Wizard of Oz-type stuff. But it definitely has, like, that old-timey Flash Gordon, you know.
• 59:18
  Britton Payne: I'm about to say Milt Kenneth, as if I really knew what that meant, but that era, so that… maybe if the superhero's been created, like, 10 years before. And then, did you say Thrill Killer? Howard Chaikin and Daniel Bird? Yep. Yeah, so I have that one in there. But I think this might be the sequel, I'm not sure. This is Thrill Killer.
• 59:33
  Tad Eggleston: killer.
• 59:34
  Britton Payne: Robin?
• 59:35
  Tad Eggleston: No, Thrill Killer, and then Thrill Killer 62.
• 59:38
  Britton Payne: I see, okay, so I think I only put in Thrill Killer. My recollection is I didn't care for the second one as much as the first.
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: Right. No, the first one's much better.
• 59:46
  Britton Payne: Yeah, and so… and it's super cool, like, it's this… so this looks like… this is a very noir, like, sexy, kind of, you know, very Howard Chaikin story, starring Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson, having an adventure.
• 59:59
  Tad Eggleston: And a female joker.
• 1:00:00
  Britton Payne: Superman War of the Worlds, Roy Thomas, so, you know, you know that this is gonna be historically, well-researched, and it looks like if the War of the Worlds story happened and Superman responded, that's what this would be.
• 1:00:15
  Tad Eggleston: Just last week, and I love this, Kyle Baker got to do the IDW Roar of the Worlds, which was War of the Worlds if Godzilla responded.
• 1:00:25
  Britton Payne: That's awesome. That's really funny. Elseworlds Finest?
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: The Godzilla Monster Piece Theater has been amazing.
• 1:00:34
  Britton Payne: Oh, yeah? Yeah. There's been so much Godzilla content lately.
• 1:00:37
  Tad Eggleston: IDW's been knocking out of the park with the Godzilla stuff lately.
• 1:00:40
  Britton Payne: Mmm.
• 1:00:41
  Britton Payne: Elseworlds' Finest is Supergirl and Batgirl.
• 1:00:45
  Britton Payne: It's written by Barbara Kiesel, and with the art by Matt Haley and Tom Simmons. I don't know Matt Haley or Tom Simmons, but Barbara Kiesel was a big writer in that era, an editor, I believe. I happened to see her at Comic-Con just a couple weeks ago, and she gave a wonderful seminar. It was designed for writers, so I wasn't really in the right room.
• 1:01:05
  Britton Payne: But, it was about how to break through, writer's block, essentially, or how.
• 1:01:11
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna come up.
• 1:01:12
  Britton Payne: with your ideas, or how to be inspired, and she walked around the whole crowd, which some people didn't like because they couldn't hear her very well, but my daughter thought was wonderful. She's like, oh, she's a teacher, but she walks around. You know, she thought that was a really cool move to her. And,
• 1:01:26
  Britton Payne: and really a… and she's a very inspirational person, I found. She would be wonderful if I was an editor, because she seems, you know, ready to kick the tires and help you, you know, work on your ideas and stuff, and she's… she's, you know, an odd bird, but, you know, at some level, who isn't? And, I thought she was wonderful. I really enjoyed going to her panel. So I'm not quite sure what the
• 1:01:45
  Britton Payne: premise is of this book, but it kind of looks like what if, you know, Batman and Superman were women?
• 1:01:51
  Britton Payne: And it's got a lot of fun characters. There's an ambush bug that makes him look like a Kirby character.
• 1:01:56
  Tad Eggleston: There's a big Barda, too.
• 1:01:58
  Britton Payne: Yeah, there's Barda, there's a Muscle Bound Joker, these are… I don't know, some of these… as I look at these, I'm like, God, maybe I should reread these. I mean, I bound them because I love them, but I also bound them 20 years ago, so I don't necessarily remember them very well.
• 1:02:14
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, Paul's book!
• 1:02:16
  Britton Payne: Yeah, so now, do you know this book very well?
• 1:02:18
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I know this book so well.
• 1:02:19
  Britton Payne: So I read it, I remember thinking it was quirky and weird and awesome, but I don't remember a blessed thing about it. What do you remember?
• 1:02:25
  Tad Eggleston: Batman is 100 years old.
• 1:02:28
  Britton Payne: Oh, is that what the premise is?
• 1:02:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah!
• 1:02:30
  Britton Payne: So it came out, you know, in this era when, Batman Year One was a big deal. I mean, this is 10 years.
• 1:02:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:02:39
  Britton Payne: But, Batman Year One was a big deal, and then there were… there were year one graphic, excuse me, annuals. There was one year where they did all the annuals, that's year one, so that you would go back and see early in your heroes, your favorite hero's career.
• 1:02:50
  Tad Eggleston: I know, this was Batman as a 100-year-old.
• 1:02:53
  Britton Payne: Yeah, oh man, this is making me think I need to reread this whole volume, this whole collection.
• 1:02:56
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I definitely need to reread that one again.
• 1:02:58
  Britton Payne: Gosh.
• 1:02:59
  Tad Eggleston: I love Paul Pope, period.
• 1:03:02
  Tad Eggleston: His… his… his seminal… Creator-owned work, THB, is finally being collected at first, second.
• 1:03:10
  Tad Eggleston: The second volume just came out, and I'm reading it right now. I can't recommend Paul Pope enough.
• 1:03:18
  Tad Eggleston: He's got a very…
• 1:03:19
  Britton Payne: I've got a very distinct style, and I know that.
• 1:03:21
  Tad Eggleston: He does.
• 1:03:22
  Britton Payne: that book was very well received, and people really liked it a lot when it came out, so it's… I'm glad that it's still… people still like it. Okay, Gotham Noir by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. That's right! The 100 Bullets team.
• 1:03:36
  Tad Eggleston: Not quite the first thing they did together, but really early.
• 1:03:40
  Britton Payne: you can tell, sort of, from… even just from the name, Batman… Yeah. Gotham Noir.
• 1:03:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:46
  Britton Payne: What it is, and just leafing through it.
• 1:03:48
  Tad Eggleston: It's, it's before they started doing criminal.
• 1:03:51
  Britton Payne: Yeah, it lives up to it, and so that's pretty cool.
• 1:03:53
  Tad Eggleston: Proto-criminal right there.
• 1:03:54
  Britton Payne: Let's see, and oh, and then this one looks like World's Funnest, yeah.
• 1:03:58
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, funnest by Evan Dorkin. I think that's where they finally… oh, is it all Evan Dorkin?
• 1:04:03
  Britton Payne: Well, I doubt it. I think it's more than.
• 1:04:05
  Tad Eggleston: I think… I forget if it was in that one right there, or in a reprint that had that in there, that they finally,
• 1:04:14
  Tad Eggleston: printed Superman's Babysitter.
• 1:04:17
  Tad Eggleston: The Kyle Baker story.
• 1:04:18
  Britton Payne: Oh, I don't know.
• 1:04:20
  Tad Eggleston: Find out if it's there.
• 1:04:20
  Britton Payne: Let's see.
• 1:04:21
  Tad Eggleston: That was the first story to win an Eisner before it was published, because initially, it had been axed and not published, but it got out, and it won the Eisner.
• 1:04:33
  Britton Payne: Oh, that's really funny. No, this does not… it has a lot of different artists, but it seems to only have one story, but I'll…
• 1:04:39
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:04:40
  Britton Payne: it, just to see if maybe it's… maybe that's not true. And so.
• 1:04:42
  Tad Eggleston: I think there was, like, a 100-page… Giant reprint of it.
• 1:04:47
  Tad Eggleston: Years later.
• 1:04:48
  Britton Payne: I mean, this is a long…
• 1:04:49
  Tad Eggleston: Tad…
• 1:04:50
  Britton Payne: Yeah, boy.
• 1:04:51
  Tad Eggleston: the, the, the Superman's favorite, I think it's Letitia Lerner.
• 1:04:59
  Britton Payne: Oh, Captain Karen and the Amazing Zoo Crew is in here, too. So, what it is, is that there seems to be… it's just one story starring Mixelplick and, or Mixius Pitlik, depending on how pedantic you feel like being, and Batmite, and they're… they seem to be roaming through different universes, so that…
• 1:05:18
  Britton Payne: The different artists are handling some of these different universities.
• 1:05:20
  Tad Eggleston: Gotcha.
• 1:05:21
  Britton Payne: that they're popping through. And as I, as I look through it.
• 1:05:25
  Britton Payne: Oh, they have old… old-timey… oh, Alex Ross?
• 1:05:29
  Tad Eggleston: Alex Ross?
• 1:05:30
  Britton Payne: Can you see that? I did. He's got Mixoplick and Batmite, and of course, his Batmite is dressed like,
• 1:05:36
  Britton Payne: the Batman 66, the…
• 1:05:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 1:05:40
  Britton Payne: Adam West version. In fact, it looks like a… an impish version of Adam West.
• 1:05:46
  Tad Eggleston: Adam West. That's pretty funny.
• 1:05:47
  Britton Payne: Yeah, and it also, as drawn, it looks like, somehow, it's drawn in the style of Kingdom Come. It kind of looks like McStiplic, and Bat might get stuck in Kingdom Come.
• 1:05:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:05:58
  Britton Payne: It blows the ink off the page.
• 1:06:00
  Tad Eggleston: You can…
• 1:06:02
  Britton Payne: See that little detail?
• 1:06:03
  Tad Eggleston: Man, that's amazing.
• 1:06:04
  Britton Payne: So that's pretty fun. So that's vol… that's one volume of The Payne Collection, that little… that little traips down memory… memory lane. And appropriately enough, I don't know how much longer you want to go, but let's… let's at least do one more book, because the next book that happens to be in the…
• 1:06:21
  Tad Eggleston: So, looking at that, I don't know if you've come across them, but Andrew Coltrane and I
• 1:06:28
  Tad Eggleston: Just felt like doing something silly last week, and we did what we're calling the
• 1:06:34
  Tad Eggleston: The, Neurodiversity theater, goes mad.
• 1:06:39
  Britton Payne: We, we…
• 1:06:40
  Tad Eggleston: We picked a random issue of Mad Magazine and read it together on air, commenting as we went.
• 1:06:45
  Britton Payne: No, I have not seen that one yet, that's really cool.
• 1:06:49
  Tad Eggleston: And we plan to do it again, and hopefully we'll get even better at it. I don't know how well we did with the first one, but but I think if we did things other than mad, things like that World's Funnest would definitely be the type of thing that we'd have to pull up.
• 1:07:03
  Britton Payne: That does seem like it's the, that version. You know, it's funny you talk about Mad. At Comic-Con, San Diego Comic-Con this year, DC… their booth was celebrating, I believe, the 1950s, and so they had a whole… they had a whole wall full of television screens playing the George Reeves Superman show from the late 1950s, early 1960s.
• 1:07:22
  Britton Payne: And it, they would play the pilot, or at least the origin story, which I'd never seen, and they showed, like, a little rocket ship, like, Ma and Pa are driving around, and…
• 1:07:32
  Britton Payne: And and then they, you know, they see something going through the sky, and they drive over, and there's a crashed little rocket that looks like it was made out of an oil drum, you know, like a big oil drum, and it's on fire, and then Paw Kent goes in there, and he pulls out a baby. Like, he rescues a baby from the fire, like this little wrapped-up little swaddling thing. And, I never realized Paquent was such a stud, like, going into a burning thing and saving a baby, that was cool.
• 1:07:54
  Britton Payne: But I'd never seen… I'd seen that show a lot when I was a kid, but I don't think I… I had no recollection of seeing that episode. And while in the… in one of the giveaways was Mad Magazine. They gave away a,
• 1:08:05
  Britton Payne: a facsimile edition, I think, of the first issue of Mad Magazine.
• 1:08:08
  Tad Eggleston: Sweet.
• 1:08:09
  Britton Payne: It wasn't the mad that I knew as a kid in the 70s and 80s, but it was pretty cool that, you know, it was the first one.
• 1:08:16
  Tad Eggleston: Well, the, the… the… The first 27 issues were still considered comics.
• 1:08:23
  Britton Payne: Yeah, this was comic-sized.
• 1:08:25
  Tad Eggleston: And they… and they were color.
• 1:08:29
  Tad Eggleston: And they switched over to the black and white magazine format in response to the Comics Code.
• 1:08:38
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, gotcha. Way of getting around it.
• 1:08:41
  Britton Payne: Gotcha, that makes sense. Well, so, okay, so then the next volume from the Payne Collection, from the.
• 1:08:45
  Tad Eggleston: What if?
• 1:08:46
  Britton Payne: is what if 1981 to 1984? So my guess is that of that original run, this is probably the second half.
• 1:08:52
  Britton Payne: Because I loved that series when it came out, for the same reasons that, you know, that I like the Elseworlds stuff, too. Marvel was so much younger at that time. So the first one was, what if Thor and the Avengers had battled the gods? And when these came out, you know, 1981 to 1984, so Marvel was only 20 years old.
• 1:09:10
  Britton Payne: And if you think about that now, that means this would only have covered back to 2006, you know? What was going on in Marvel in 2006? Like, was that Civil War, possibly? You know?
• 1:09:23
  Britton Payne: I mean, possibly.
• 1:09:23
  Tad Eggleston: No, it was between the two civil wars.
• 1:09:26
  Britton Payne: Well, no, I mean 20 years ago, 2006. Oh, was… so, Civil War is more than 20 years ago?
• 1:09:32
  Tad Eggleston: I think the… I think the… the one…
• 1:09:36
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like it was, give me a second.
• 1:09:37
  Britton Payne: I don't know, I mean, the point is… the point that I'm making is that because the continuity was so young, I mean, they hadn't even done any resets at that point, you know? They were still trying to say, like, oh, these are the same X-Men that you read.
• 1:09:50
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, it was 06-07, so it was 20 years ago, good call.
• 1:09:54
  Britton Payne: Just to give you a sense of, like, the window of time we're talking about. So that means that when these things, you know, what if Thor and the Avengers had battled the gods? I'm sure by now, they've had Thor and the Avengers actually battle the gods. But back then, that could have been a, you know, that would have been a pretty interesting.
• 1:10:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and generally the way the what-if worked was they took a particular moment where one decision was made, and made a different decision. So, I mean, you'd have to look at it. I would be…
• 1:10:22
  Tad Eggleston: willing to bet that, like, the Watcher sets up, in the first couple of pages, a time where they could have battled the gods, and… and didn't for some reason.
• 1:10:34
  Britton Payne: So the cover seems like, you know, the editor…
• 1:10:39
  Britton Payne: gave it a different title than what was on the inside of the book. On the cover, it says, what if Thor and the Avengers battled the gods? And on the inside, it says, what if Thor fought Odin over Jane Foster?
• 1:10:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, that's still fighting a god.
• 1:10:52
  Britton Payne: But it's, it's by Peter Gillis, and that was what was kind of interesting, I mean, I remember even binding these things, and thinking it was such a high-profile book, dealt with such big, cool stories, and it was written by somebody I'd never heard of. Like, I don't know who Peter Gillis is still. But it was drawn by Rich Buckler and Dave Simons, who I think we just…
• 1:11:11
  Britton Payne: we saw a… maybe it was Simmons in the other one. And then Denny O'Neill and Mark Grunewald are the editors, and to give you a sense of when this was, also, Jim Shooter was the editor-in-chief, and Al Milgram was art assist.
• 1:11:24
  Britton Payne: Is what it says. So these guys are, taking Marvel stories. The next one is, what if Captain America Had Been Elected President? And on the cover, you can see, I see Jerry Ford, Ronald Reagan.
• 1:11:35
  Britton Payne: Nick Fury, probably Mark Grunewald, you know, a couple of other, luminaries of that era. That's probably supposed to be George H.W. Bush. That looks like,
• 1:11:47
  Britton Payne: read and Sue.
• 1:11:49
  Britton Payne: What if Phoenix had not died? I mean, that's kind of ironic, right? At the time, that was fresh.
• 1:11:57
  Tad Eggleston: Eight issues from here will be, what if Elector had lived?
• 1:12:01
  Britton Payne: Yeah. Well, so, okay, if… what if Phoenix had not died? Let's see. That was, Mary Jo Duffy. Oh, Joe Duffy is so nice. I got to meet her at New York Comic-Con a while ago, and then recently she shouted me out and was like, oh, it's so nice to meet Britt Payne, and I was like, I can't believe she remembers me, that's so exciting.
• 1:12:17
  Britton Payne: And then Tom DeFalco and Mark Grunewald were the editors. So it's wild that, like, this hot, hot book from that time gets pushed over to Joe Duffy. Gosh, I wish I'd… I have to throw her a compliment on Facebook or something, because that was really cool. What if Daredevil became an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D? That one is…
• 1:12:35
  Britton Payne: Let's see… I can't read it. Michael?
• 1:12:39
  Britton Payne: Fleischer. Oh, Michael Fleischer, okay. And then Tom Sutton is the art. No, I'm sorry, that's for What If Ghost Rider Were Separated from Johnny Blaze? So there must be a second story in this, in this book, because that's…
• 1:12:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it wasn't uncommon for them to have a couple of stories in them.
• 1:12:54
  Britton Payne: Yeah, I remember one of my favorites that had a split, and I don't know if it's in this volume, was What If the Beast… yeah, I thought Frank Miller did this one, he did. So the… Matt Murdock Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, is Mike W. Barr and Frank Miller and Klaus Jansen as writer… writer, co-plotters, and penciler.
• 1:13:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:13:13
  Britton Payne: as you look at it, it looks like Frank Miller Klaus Jansen.
• 1:13:16
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:13:17
  Britton Payne: You know, but I.
• 1:13:18
  Tad Eggleston: So Barr was probably involved in the writing side.
• 1:13:20
  Britton Payne: I assume just the writing, yeah, and that Frank Miller was probably, you know, a co-potter and sort of a writer. Yeah, but it's sort of… if you're reading Frank Miller… if you're rereading Frank Miller Daredevil.
• 1:13:31
  Britton Payne: this should definitely be part of your reading. Okay, so here's one that I still remember, like, a little Easter egg in this next one. It's, what if the Avengers Defeated Everybody? And on the cover, it's the old… the very first lineup of the Avengers. It's no cap, even.
• 1:13:46
  Britton Payne: It's, which I guess means something in 2026. No cap, I'm not sure. Hopefully I didn't say anything offensive.
• 1:13:51
  Tad Eggleston: CAP actually is to lie, so no cap would be…
• 1:13:56
  Britton Payne: Oh, that I'm telling the truth? Well, I am telling the truth, so that's it.
• 1:13:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:13:59
  Britton Payne: Okay, so, so what if the Avengers defeated everybody, and I don't… okay, let's see, Steven Grant, he's a pretty big deal writer, and then, Alan Kupperberg and Al Gordon. I don't really know Al Gordon.
• 1:14:10
  Britton Payne: And DeFalco… Tom DeFalco is the editor, and Jim Shooter is still the big boss. What if the Avengers were the last superheroes on Earth? So, for some reason, it looks like there's a bad guy who…
• 1:14:20
  Britton Payne: it looks like Kang, or some iteration of Kang, but I think this is the one where somebody, like the collector, grabs up all the heroes and puts them in, like, suspended animation. Okay, here it is. So this is… I guess there's no page number on this one, but in… on this… on this page.
• 1:14:36
  Britton Payne: you can see some… whoever this bad guy is, who's kind of in maroon colors, he's got all of the superheroes and supervillains, like, on a shelf, right? And so, I'm gonna show Tad what I'm looking at, and if you're listening, this shelf is all the X-Men, and then you've got the.
• 1:14:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 1:14:52
  Britton Payne: evil mutants, and Doc Ock, and then you've got, I don't know, Annihilus and Mole Man and a couple of people, they… this stone, the gray gargoyle, I think he's called. And then who do you… can you tell who that is that my finger's pointing at? You can only see half his body. It's Popeye.
• 1:15:07
  Britton Payne: It looks like a doll case. Oh, Mile High Comics, there's the big ad for Mile High Comics right there in the middle. And Peter Gillis does another one here with Ron Wilson and Joe Sinnott, and it's a,
• 1:15:22
  Britton Payne: it's a Black Bolt story. It's not clear whether it's an Elseworlds or just, like, a… you know, an extra story that they threw in there. It's not drawn by Kirby, but it has that sort of wide-faced, blocky kind of look.
• 1:15:34
  Britton Payne: It's drawing the Inhuman, so it stands to reason. What if Spider-Man's clone lived? I mean, how crazy is that?
• 1:15:40
  Britton Payne: Yeah. That it became, like, the 90s, you know, touchstone story by Bill Flanagan, who I don't know who that is, and drawn by Rich Buckler and Jim Mooney and Pablo Marcos, all these great old names from that era. What if Wolverine had killed the whole.
• 1:15:54
  Tad Eggleston: I have that one.
• 1:15:55
  Britton Payne: It's got this cover that kind of looks like Hulk 181, I think was the number, with Wendigo and then Wolverine kind of diving in, but this time he kills him. And the script is by Rich
• 1:16:06
  Britton Payne: Margopolis, and pencils by Bob Budiansky. And the inks are Mike Esposito. So I've heard of Budiansky and Esposito, but it's interesting to go through this and, like, see…
• 1:16:16
  Britton Payne: a lot of writers…
• 1:16:17
  Tad Eggleston: What if was one of the places where they let people almost try out.
• 1:16:22
  Britton Payne: I mean, it kind of makes sense, right? Because it's one-shots, and you're dealing with… they're not creating a new story out of whole cloth, they're just adapting a story. So I guess that stands to reason. So then there's an Inhuman story, what if the Avengers became pawns of Korvac? So that would have been from,
• 1:16:40
  Britton Payne: spun out of issue 200 of The Avengers, which was sort of a controversial issue. And it was Mark Grunewald, so he… I wonder if he wanted to correct it.
• 1:16:52
  Britton Payne: And I remember really liking that at the time, and that it has not aged particularly well.
• 1:16:56
  Britton Payne: The next one is, what if Dazzler had become the Herald of Galactus, and what if Iron Man had been trapped in the time of King Arthur? So the Dazzler one, I don't really know that much about. It was Danny Fingeroth, who I've seen speak at Comic-Cons a lot, and he's great. He's a real, like, a proper comics historian, as well as somebody who, you know, contributed to the medium quite a bit.
• 1:17:15
  Britton Payne: But the other one, the What If Tony Stark got trapped in the time of Iron Man, when I was a young comics reader, issue 150 of Iron Man had him traveling back in time with Doctor Doom, and so I assume that this is
• 1:17:28
  Britton Payne: a follow-up to that is if he had not been able to come back, and he got stuck there. So, you know, he joined King Arthur's Round Table and stuff, which seems pretty cool. Oh, now we have the, what looks like the Assistant Editor's Month version. I don't know if it actually is.
• 1:17:42
  Tad Eggleston: I love assistant editors.
• 1:17:43
  Britton Payne: It's called What If? Question Mark, and it says, the Marvel Universe has gone crazy, and alternate realities will never be the same again. And it's, it's basically, the cover is,
• 1:17:53
  Britton Payne: like, visual jokes of… with all the Marvel characters. So, Mr. Fantastic is on the cover, and he's all stretched around, but his clothing didn't stretch with him, so now it looks like he's… he's wearing, like.
• 1:18:04
  Tad Eggleston: There is a story inside called, What If the Fantastic Four Were Bananas?
• 1:18:08
  Britton Payne: On the front, they have Thor with his helmet on, but it's kind of pulled down to his nose. They have Captain America wearing a Groucho Mark glasses and mustache. They have Daredevil with a Steve Martin arrow.
• 1:18:20
  Britton Payne: Through his head, they have a fat Iron Man, they have Spider-Man with great big goggles, they have Moon Knight throwing a pie in the face of Silver Surfer.
• 1:18:29
  Tad Eggleston: So, so I, I've got it, I've got it pulled up on the Marvel Wiki. The, the, the…
• 1:18:35
  Tad Eggleston: the stories in this are just outstanding, and I'm assuming that they're mostly, like.
• 1:18:41
  Tad Eggleston: I'm assuming that it's, like, one-pagers?
• 1:18:44
  Britton Payne: But it looks like.
• 1:18:44
  Tad Eggleston: It looks like there… it looks like there are… 74 stories?
• 1:18:50
  Britton Payne: They have Ant-Man giving the Watcher a hot foot. They have, Wolverine is sitting on the floor, scratching his ear like a dog with fleas.
• 1:18:58
  Tad Eggleston: The… the story titles are…
• 1:19:00
  Tad Eggleston: What if the Fantastic Four were bananas? What if Odin were Peter Parker's uncle? What if Don Blake and Tony Stark were brothers? What if Aunt May were Ant-Man? What if Spider-Man married Spider-Woman? What if Reed Richards took postman Willie Lumpkin up on his offer to join the Fantastic Four?
• 1:19:19
  Tad Eggleston: What if Captain America chose to remain no manned? What if…
• 1:19:24
  Tad Eggleston: Rick Jones left Captain Marvel in the negative zone. What if Nick Fury had to wear an eye patch on his right eye? What if the Ghost Rider…
• 1:19:33
  Britton Payne: That's stupid.
• 1:19:34
  Tad Eggleston: possessed grandpa?
• 1:19:36
  Tad Eggleston: What if Ghost Rider had possessed a skater? What if Ghost Rider had possessed a baby?
• 1:19:43
  Tad Eggleston: What if everyone who'd ever been an Avenger remained an Avenger? What if him had married her? What if Black Bolt got the hiccups? What if Galactus ate the Earth? What if Khazar were a middle-aged accountant?
• 1:19:58
  Tad Eggleston: What if Hulk were yellow? What if the invisible girl dyed her hair? What if Power Man were white? What if The Thing were blue?
• 1:20:08
  Tad Eggleston: What if Captain Marvel hadn't died?
• 1:20:11
  Tad Eggleston: What if Phoenix still lived? What if Elektra had survived? What if Dazzler had become a stand-up comedian? What if Marvel Comics and the National Endowment of the Arts presented spidey intellectual stories?
• 1:20:26
  Tad Eggleston: What if Willie Lumpkin were Harry…
• 1:20:28
  Britton Payne: That's really funny.
• 1:20:29
  Tad Eggleston: What if Ghost Rider owned a fast food restaurant?
• 1:20:33
  Tad Eggleston: What if all the superheroes moved to Toledo, Ohio?
• 1:20:38
  Tad Eggleston: What if the watchers in all the realities got together and watched, watchers, watching, watchers, watching, watchers, watching, watchers, watching, watchers, watching, watchers, watching, watchers, watching, watchers?
• 1:20:49
  Tad Eggleston: What if Howard the Duck formed his own super team? What if Thor had a Swedish accent? What if Cyclops energy beams came out of his ears?
• 1:20:59
  Britton Payne: That's on the cover.
• 1:21:00
  Tad Eggleston: What if Wonder Man were a woman, and Power Man were a girl? Yep. What if Black Bolt were a rock star?
• 1:21:08
  Tad Eggleston: What if Daredevil was deaf instead of blind?
• 1:21:11
  Tad Eggleston: What if the Marvel production crew existed in this reality, and the Marvel editorial crew did too?
• 1:21:19
  Tad Eggleston: What if Tony Stark had owned an auto plant instead of a weapons factory? What if Sue Storm had become the thing? What if Moon Knight got all his identities mixed up? What if the Watcher grew hair?
• 1:21:32
  Tad Eggleston: What if Alpha Flight talked like TV Canadians? What if Silver Surfer, White Tiger, Knight Rider, Iceman, and Moon Knight fought Wendigo in a snowstorm?
• 1:21:43
  Britton Payne: I give you a hint what that panel is.
• 1:21:45
  Britton Payne: panel storage.
• 1:21:46
  Tad Eggleston: I just opened it to that page.
• 1:21:47
  Britton Payne: And it's a, it's a blank white panel.
• 1:21:52
  Tad Eggleston: What a Black Panther bought the shroud in a coal mine?
• 1:21:57
  Britton Payne: And that's an all-black panel, and it's written by Tom DeFalco, and the artist is also Tom DeFalco.
• 1:22:04
  Tad Eggleston: What if Moon Knight had 3 different identities? What if King Conan were Bing Conan on the road to Hyboria?
• 1:22:13
  Tad Eggleston: What if Black Bolt hosted a television talk show?
• 1:22:17
  Tad Eggleston: What if Bruce Banner's pants didn't stretch?
• 1:22:21
  Tad Eggleston: What if you went to the movies and had to sit behind the leader?
• 1:22:26
  Tad Eggleston: The leader has a very.
• 1:22:27
  Britton Payne: Tall head, for those of you who don't.
• 1:22:28
  Tad Eggleston: What if Aunt May became the invincible golden oldie?
• 1:22:35
  Tad Eggleston: What if Aunt May became the astonishing Aunt Ant?
• 1:22:40
  Tad Eggleston: What if Aunt May became antifreeze?
• 1:22:44
  Britton Payne: Stupid. What if… what if…
• 1:22:45
  Tad Eggleston: Reed Richards had not invented unstable molecules.
• 1:22:49
  Tad Eggleston: And so that's because their costumes don't.
• 1:22:52
  Britton Payne: stretched, like, the Invisible Woman's costume doesn't turn invisible, just her head. And of course, Johnny Storm, he flames on, and his clothes all burn off.
• 1:23:01
  Tad Eggleston: What if Hulk married the She-Hulk? I love She-Hulk?
• 1:23:04
  Britton Payne: So it's an I Love Lucy parody.
• 1:23:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. What if Hulk married the She-Hulk She-Hulky?
• 1:23:10
  Britton Payne: That's a Dagwood and a Blondie. Blondie.
• 1:23:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right. What if Noren Rad had not volunteered to become the Silver Surfer?
• 1:23:18
  Tad Eggleston: What if Dazzler had decided to become a lawyer?
• 1:23:21
  Tad Eggleston: What if Luke Cage had found the hammer of Thor? What if Doctor Strange were an ordinary musician?
• 1:23:28
  Tad Eggleston: What if Ignacio, the Clown, became Sherlock Clown?
• 1:23:31
  Britton Payne: wait, wait, can I slow down? I know that… I probably shouldn't read this, but it's funny. What if Luke Cage had found the Hammer of Thor? So back then, Luke Cage was somewhat famous for having this, this, like.
• 1:23:40
  Britton Payne: patois that was supposed to be urban, and he just came… he would say, Sweet Christmas and stuff like that, and that has essentially been washed out of the character. Right. But at the time, that was the… that was the character. So they have him dressed as Thor, but his clothing is torn, because that's what happens to Luke Cage. And it's crossing the sort of phony Shakespearean language that Thor speaks with, with this, like, this urban, you know.
• 1:24:05
  Britton Payne: this urban slang way that they presented Luke Cage at the time. So his line is, By the gleaming gates of funky Asgard, you suckers are gonna eat hammer.
• 1:24:16
  Britton Payne: It's so stupid.
• 1:24:19
  Tad Eggleston: Ugh! Then we've got a whole round of Abnoxia the Clown. Do you know Abnoxia the Clown? I don't.
• 1:24:26
  Britton Payne: Yeah, he was a character they were trying to push, but I don't know that anybody cared about it back then.
• 1:24:29
  Tad Eggleston: Sherlock clown, a Bat-like hero, a Spider-Man-like hero, Obnoxia Hulk, Obnoxia Wolverine, Obnoxia Daredevil, Superman-like powers.
• 1:24:41
  Tad Eggleston: or became the Watcher.
• 1:24:43
  Britton Payne: Oh yeah, these are all single-panel jokes that were just…
• 1:24:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:24:46
  Britton Payne: Drawing those characters with Obnoxio's sort of head.
• 1:24:49
  Tad Eggleston: And then, what if Daredevil could see?
• 1:24:52
  Britton Payne: Oh, you know what? Before you get to that, do you remember these ads for Dungeons & Dragons? I don't know if you were the right age to care about them. I just thought they were so cool-looking that I… they… I don't know that anybody ever… they looked like Mike Golden to me, but I don't think anybody ever figured out who drew them. Or at least I never figured that out.
• 1:25:07
  Tad Eggleston: What if Thor got a haircut?
• 1:25:09
  Tad Eggleston: I love that.
• 1:25:11
  Tad Eggleston: My helmet fell.
• 1:25:11
  Britton Payne: No, that's why his helmet fell down at his nose, because he didn't have enough hair to keep it up.
• 1:25:15
  Tad Eggleston: what if Spider-Man had married Black Widow?
• 1:25:19
  Britton Payne: Whatever.
• 1:25:20
  Tad Eggleston: If Iron Man had…
• 1:25:22
  Britton Payne: You know the joke on that one, of course.
• 1:25:24
  Britton Payne: the Black Widow eats spiders, so it shows her, like, using a toothpick to clean her teeth, and, like, Spider-Man's empty costume laying on the floor.
• 1:25:31
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, page… story 72 is, what if Doctor Doom had a sense of humor?
• 1:25:36
  Britton Payne: That shows him, with, Groucho Marx.
• 1:25:40
  Tad Eggleston: tomorrow.
• 1:25:40
  Britton Payne: mask.
• 1:25:41
  Tad Eggleston: What if Galaxis needed quick cash?
• 1:25:44
  Britton Payne: He sells the Silver Surfer because he's made it of silver. That's how he gets cash.
• 1:25:48
  Tad Eggleston: And what if Stan Lee reads this issue?
• 1:25:51
  Britton Payne: And then they show a drawing of Stan Lee, and he goes, you're all fired!
• 1:25:56
  Britton Payne: And that was all by Mike Carlin, who's a lovely guy. I got to know him at Warner Bros. Animation. He and his wife are really nice. Okay, the next one is, What If Electra Had Lived? And the cover is Hannigan and Austin. Oh, and then they have Yellow Jack dying. But, who did the.
• 1:26:11
  Tad Eggleston: Inside, I'm pretty sure can just miller.
• 1:26:13
  Britton Payne: It looks like it, yeah, Frank Miller, writer, Penciler, and Terry Austin, Inker. Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:26:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:18
  Britton Payne: It looks really good. It is.
• 1:26:23
  Britton Payne: I like Terry Austin as an anchor, I don't know that he's well-suited to Frank Miller, just because he doesn't… you know, Frank Miller's a special artist, and I think…
• 1:26:29
  Tad Eggleston: Ironically, I mean, as much as I… I prefer…
• 1:26:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think that Klaus Jansen is the perfect anchor on Miller.
• 1:26:38
  Britton Payne: That's really what I'm thinking, yeah.
• 1:26:40
  Tad Eggleston: My… my favorite single issue of Daredevil is 191, and for the longest time, I just assumed there was a Jansen on inks, and it's not, it's Austin.
• 1:26:50
  Britton Payne: Oh, wow, no kidding. I mean, he was a terrific anchor, and I loved…
• 1:26:54
  Britton Payne: I just think of him as being with more traditional artists like them, Perez and Byrne. Greg LaRocque drew What If Yellowjacket Had Died? Isn't he still cooking? Greg LaRoque?
• 1:27:04
  Britton Payne: Maybe not.
• 1:27:05
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe?
• 1:27:06
  Britton Payne: It looks good. What if the Fantastic Four had not gained superpowers, so it sort of has them turning into,
• 1:27:13
  Britton Payne: Challenges the unknown.
• 1:27:15
  Britton Payne: And let's see… oh, the very next one is one of my favorites, actually, I really like that. Well, let's see, did… was that John Byrne? That would have been John Byrne era.
• 1:27:22
  Britton Payne: Cover looks like John Byrne.
• 1:27:25
  Britton Payne: It is John Byrne, look at that, let's see if they can do the whole thing.
• 1:27:28
  Britton Payne: John Burns Story and Art!
• 1:27:30
  Britton Payne: That's right.
• 1:27:32
  Britton Payne: That's cool, I didn't realize there was that extra John Burns story.
• 1:27:35
  Britton Payne: Boy, what a treasure trove What If is. And then a Nova story, which I must confess, I never really cared that much about Nova.
• 1:27:41
  Britton Payne: I re… I really…
• 1:27:43
  Tad Eggleston: Every once in a while, somebody will do something interesting, but…
• 1:27:47
  Britton Payne: What if Beast and Thing continued to mutate? And those were…
• 1:27:52
  Britton Payne: really sad stories. I remember loving them when I was a kid, but boy, they were so sad. Tom DeFalco wrote them.
• 1:28:00
  Britton Payne: Let's see, or Tom DeFalco wrote, what if the thing had continued to mutate?
• 1:28:04
  Britton Payne: And, I think he ends up going crazy, and he might end up dying from the radiation. Yeah, he turns green. Doesn't look good for Ben.
• 1:28:12
  Britton Payne: Did they cure him?
• 1:28:14
  Britton Payne: Oh, looks like they cured him.
• 1:28:16
  Britton Payne: Oh, good for him. And then he got to get married. And that's nice. That's a good ending. What if the beast had truly become a beast? Alan Weiss wrote it?
• 1:28:24
  Britton Payne: Scripture and penciler, yeah, I don't know who Allen Weiss is, but they had him… my recollection is that it's the beast, and then he turns blue and furry, and then he keeps getting more animalistic until they finally have to send him off to the Savage Land to live with Khazar as a pet.
• 1:28:35
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, I have an answer to your Dungeons & Dragons question.
• 1:28:39
  Britton Payne: Yeah, who was it?
• 1:28:41
  Tad Eggleston: Bill Willingham.
• 1:28:42
  Britton Payne: Whoa, that makes sense! Oh, okay, I see it now, yeah.
• 1:28:47
  Britton Payne: Yeah, I remember when he came out with the elementals when I was a kid.
• 1:28:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:28:50
  Britton Payne: one of his first indie books. Oh, look at this in.
• 1:28:53
  Tad Eggleston: That was one of Shelley Bond's first, editorial.
• 1:28:56
  Britton Payne: No kidding.
• 1:28:57
  Tad Eggleston: Jobs, those elementals.
• 1:28:59
  Britton Payne: Kristar, The Crystal Warrior, was a book that was popular. Not popular, I liked it, but it didn't last very long. It was a toy-based book, but it was good, and you can see this commercial for…
• 1:29:09
  Britton Payne: a sort of a Donkey Kong-looking game that seems to involve pigs called Almodar. What if, oh, this one just doesn't say what the premise is, it just says, What If, featuring Daredevil and Captain America. Three stunning sagas of alternate futures. David McElhiney, I guess, did… did one of them.
• 1:29:27
  Britton Payne: Let's see, does it have a title? The Leaving. Yeah, just an alternate reality story, let's see. What's the next one? What if Thor battled Conan?
• 1:29:37
  Britton Payne: I don't know that that would go too well for Conan, but… What if Doctor Strange had not become the master of the mystic Arts? It seems like it's an evil Doctor Strange-looking guy. What if Submariner had seed Atlantis from its destiny?
• 1:29:49
  Britton Payne: See, so I was never that much of a Marvel guy, but I did like all of these things. What if the Invisible Girl had died, and now it looks like Reed's gone crazy because she died? What if Conan the Barbarian were stranded in the 20th century? A Bilsenkiewicz cover with Conan.
• 1:30:03
  Tad Eggleston: That's beautiful.
• 1:30:04
  Britton Payne: Yeah, isn't that awesome? So I was never a Conan guy, and I'm also definitely not a gun guy, but I'll tell you, that's a cool-looking cover.
• 1:30:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 1:30:11
  Britton Payne: Let's see who drew it, though. I don't… I don't remember the inside being as good. Peter Gillis wrote it, the guy who's been writing this thing, and then Bob Hall, who I think was a Workaday artist back then. I could be wrong about.
• 1:30:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:30:21
  Britton Payne: Not trying to insult Bob Hall, either.
• 1:30:23
  Britton Payne: But it looks… to me, it looks like, you know, pretty normal comic book art from that era.
• 1:30:28
  Britton Payne: Another great Bill Sienkiewicz cover, What If Captain America Were Revived Today? which would have been 1984, as opposed to 64, whenever he was revived. What if Hulk Went Berserk? Which seems like a crazy…
• 1:30:41
  Britton Payne: thing to even bother calling a what-if, because isn't this whole thing that he goes berserk, but maybe he goes really berserk.
• 1:30:46
  Tad Eggleston: I think he'd…
• 1:30:47
  Britton Payne: And another…
• 1:30:47
  Tad Eggleston: I've gone berserk berserk yet at that point.
• 1:30:50
  Britton Payne: Yeah, well, another great Bill Sienkiewicz cover, like, a really, really good one.
• 1:30:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:30:54
  Britton Payne: Peter Gillis wrote it. Ron Wilson of Infinity Gauntlet fame is the artist.
• 1:30:59
  Britton Payne: I think he was Infinity Gauntlet. And then we're back to a more normal-looking cover. What if Spider-Man's Uncle Ben had lived? Oh, I wonder what would have happened there. Let's see. Stunning alternate relaxing reality. Let's see, the artist is on the other one.
• 1:31:11
  Britton Payne: What if he'd lived? Peter Gillis wrote it. Ron Friends?
• 1:31:14
  Britton Payne: So another sort of… you might be right that this, this may have, like, operated as a large part of a tryout book. Another good Bill Sienkiewicz cover, what if Loki Had Found the Hammer of Thor? I'm confident that has actually happened in the comics. Peter Gillis writing it again. Kelly Jones of long-eared Batman fame.
• 1:31:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah! Look at this one, Dracula.
• 1:31:33
  Britton Payne: And the letter…
• 1:31:34
  Tad Eggleston: Matt Wagner have their next volume of Draclia coming to Kickstarter soon. So we'll have them back on 22nd.
• 1:31:42
  Britton Payne: Oh, cool. The letterer's name is Squid, and it's kind of odd, because right above the word squid is Inker, and you would think
• 1:31:51
  Britton Payne: Squid would be the anchor, but turns out he was a letterer.
• 1:31:55
  Britton Payne: And that's it for that volume. And my guess is that is the last.
• 1:31:59
  Britton Payne: What if from that run?
• 1:32:02
  Britton Payne: So, let's look at mine.
• 1:32:03
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to remember how many what-ifs were in Volume 1.
• 1:32:08
  Tad Eggleston: I'll be able to find out.
• 1:32:09
  Britton Payne: The letters page was called, Why Not?
• 1:32:16
  Britton Payne: And so, for me.
• 1:32:18
  Britton Payne: for me, that feels like a pretty good place to stop, but on this particular shelf, we don't have to go over them, because you've talked about these books at length, Why The Last Man?
• 1:32:28
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 1:32:31
  Tad Eggleston: We're actually about to read the… about to talk about the first volume of that in the Saga Book Club, while we're waiting for more Saga.
• 1:32:39
  Britton Payne: Oh, wow, yeah. I really liked Why the Last Man? There were a couple of arcs that weren't my favorite favorite, but the premise was great.
• 1:32:46
  Tad Eggleston: I saw.
• 1:32:46
  Britton Payne: If they stuck the landing.
• 1:32:49
  Britton Payne: and…
• 1:32:49
  Tad Eggleston: It's just such.
• 1:32:50
  Britton Payne: It's a fun, fun drive, fun…
• 1:32:51
  Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite stories that's been told on 22 Panels that I hadn't heard
• 1:32:56
  Tad Eggleston: before it was told was Paul Levitz talking about Why the Last Man? Because apparently it was…
• 1:33:04
  Tad Eggleston: it was Karen Berger and Heidi McDonald that pitched that book.
• 1:33:10
  Tad Eggleston: And his initial response was, no.
• 1:33:14
  Tad Eggleston: We're like, well, why not? It's like, it's teenage pornographic fantasy. What do you do after, like…
• 1:33:20
  Britton Payne: The first.
• 1:33:21
  Tad Eggleston: issue, no.
• 1:33:22
  Tad Eggleston: And apparently, he says that… Karen just stared at him and said, Paul?
• 1:33:29
  Tad Eggleston: Do you trust me?
• 1:33:31
  Tad Eggleston: Or, like, I mean, I skipped parts of it. It's like, he said no, they did this whole thing where, like, oh, he's got 60 issues planned this moment, and he's like, no!
• 1:33:42
  Tad Eggleston: Then finally, Karen just stared at him and said, Paul, Do you trust me?
• 1:33:47
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, well, yeah, and she said, then do the damn book!
• 1:33:53
  Britton Payne: Silly.
• 1:33:53
  Tad Eggleston: I did, and when… when the 60th issue came out.
• 1:33:58
  Tad Eggleston: Heidi had moved on and was doing other things. Karen was still there. They invited… invited, Heidi back for lunch.
• 1:34:07
  Tad Eggleston: And he brought in a cake in the shape of a crow.
• 1:34:15
  Britton Payne: I, a friend of mine knows him, somebody who I was working with when…
• 1:34:19
  Britton Payne: Brian K. Vaughn broke as a writer. My first encounter with him was on Detective Comics, and I remember talking to my friend, Jeff Yorks, who's a terrific guy, he produced the most recent… well, he was one of the co-creators of one of the most recent Muppets shows, the Muppets Mayhem, about the band.
• 1:34:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:34:35
  Britton Payne: And we were… we were doing animation at Oxygen Media at the time, and I remember him telling me, you know, that he's got this friend, Brian K. Vaughan, who writes comic books, and I was reading
• 1:34:45
  Britton Payne: Brian K. Vaughan, his detective, and I remember his… I could be… I think I have this right, I mean, this is now 25 years ago, but, he had a… he created a villain called Zeiss, who had, like.
• 1:34:55
  Tad Eggleston: That sounds right.
• 1:34:55
  Britton Payne: for eyes, and he was a super cool-looking villain. That was one where I was like, oh, that guy put a toy in the toy box, because he created a new, cool-looking
• 1:35:02
  Britton Payne: Batman villain, who I think has had a little bit of a life after that.
• 1:35:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:35:08
  Britton Payne: And he also… my recollection is that he was, like, a police officer or something for a little bit, and that he…
• 1:35:13
  Britton Payne: helped, around 9-11, but in a sort of more mundane way, like conducting traffic on the Highway of Heroes, which was sort of where the people were
• 1:35:24
  Britton Payne: Traveling so that they could try and,
• 1:35:27
  Britton Payne: dig out the towers and do their best to try and, you know, try and find people in there. And so I'm pretty sure, if I remember right, Jeff was telling me that Brian was a part of that somehow.
• 1:35:37
  Britton Payne: I could be getting that story confused, though.
• 1:35:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I can't… I can't remember.
• 1:35:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I know I've heard various…
• 1:35:46
  Tad Eggleston: Stories about all sorts of people.
• 1:35:48
  Tad Eggleston: With stuff then, so it's sometimes hard to, to… to know entirely.
• 1:35:57
  Tad Eggleston: Or to keep them straight entirely, is what I mean.
• 1:36:01
  Tad Eggleston: Wouldn't mean to.
• 1:36:02
  Britton Payne: Yeah, me too, especially from 25 years ago.
• 1:36:04
  Tad Eggleston: Didn't mean to imply that, like, there was any, like, possibility that any of the stories that I'd known or heard were false stories, just, just that keeping…
• 1:36:18
  Tad Eggleston: like I said, I can reread something next week, because I don't remember it anymore.
• 1:36:25
  Tad Eggleston: Which I kinda like.
• 1:36:27
  Britton Payne: Yeah, that can… sometimes that can make it easier to get out of bed every morning.
• 1:36:30
  Tad Eggleston: You know… I mean, my memory's good for some things,
• 1:36:37
  Tad Eggleston: But other things, not as much. I think part of it with storytelling is I throw myself
• 1:36:47
  Tad Eggleston: into it so much when I'm reading,
• 1:36:53
  Tad Eggleston: that… that in a lot of ways, it's… it's… I'm… I'm…
• 1:37:00
  Tad Eggleston: I'm experiencing it, so I remember it the way… The way that,
• 1:37:09
  Tad Eggleston: the way that I remember experiences, you know? There are certain parts that stick with me, and other parts that just kinda…
• 1:37:16
  Tad Eggleston: slide.
• 1:37:18
  Tad Eggleston: If that makes sense. But then… but then when I read at a different time, different things will stick, because I'm in a different mood.
• 1:37:26
  Tad Eggleston: Bye.
• 1:37:27
  Britton Payne: That makes sense. I definitely read things differently over time when I reread them. Like, I'm rereading… like I said, I'm rereading these old, you know, Bronze Age Justice Leagues and, Late Silver Age, and mostly Bronze Age, and I'm having a very different experience reading them now.
• 1:37:40
  Britton Payne: They're so sincere, it's really funny.
• 1:37:46
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, well, I need to get up in the morning and go to a doctor's appointment.
• 1:37:51
  Britton Payne: All right. Well, with that, thanks for visiting the Cabinet.
• 1:37:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, and we need to not let it go, particularly now that you're done with all of your bar studying. We need to not let it… and bar studying as in legal stuff. Don't people out there think that our wonderful autism scene guy studies bars and gets.
• 1:38:12
  Britton Payne: Not yet, at least.
• 1:38:13
  Tad Eggleston: He's not the Secretary of War.
• 1:38:22
  Tad Eggleston: For… for Britton Payne, and myself, this has been Brit's Cabinet on 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.