Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / Milestone Book Club #40 - Static Shock ep. 1-5

Transcript

Milestone Book Club #40 - Static Shock ep. 1-5 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to the Milestone Book Club on 22 Panels. I am joined by the brothers Anderson, No Relation.
• 0:12
  Tad Eggleston: And tonight, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're going tangential. one of those handful of, 22 Panels podcasts that's not strictly about comics. We watched a cartoon.
• 0:26
  Tad Eggleston: We watched the first 5 episodes of Static Shock from, was that 2003?
• 0:33
  Marcus Anderson: To… 2000.
• 0:34
  Ted: Yeah, it was 4 seasons, 2000 to 2004. I thought it was a little longer than it actually ended up being. I was talking about this with a friend, and it was… I thought it went all the way to, like, like, 5 seasons? Or at least, like, it hit 100 episodes, which is, you know, the, the, the.
• 0:52
  Marcus Anderson: syndication.
• 0:52
  Ted: Yeah, syndication. 2000. But no, it's 2000, 2004-ish, it's, 52 episodes, so…
• 1:01
  Ted: you know, kind of a standard run, I guess, but it's like… I thought it went for longer, unfortunately, but unfortunately it didn't.
• 1:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, those are short seasons, too.
• 1:09
  Ted: Well, yeah, I mean, 26 episodes, it's kind of standard if you look at it that… er, no, 13 episodes, you're right, yeah.
• 1:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:16
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know, I mean, it's… It sucks, but
• 1:22
  Ted: It's… I mean, to get right into it, I liked it a lot. I mean, we were talking about this, you… I mentioned that I had actually not seen it before, and you were kind of surprised by that.
• 1:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and I haven't… I hadn't either, so Marcus was the only one revisiting.
• 1:36
  Marcus Anderson: Well, and to be clear for me, sorry, Ted, I'll get right back to what you're saying. For me, I did not see it when it was on, because I was…
• 1:45
  Marcus Anderson: Like, fresh out of college, and…
• 1:47
  Marcus Anderson: doing… doing young man stuff, you know what I mean? I was just kind of, like, busy, and I just… I wasn't making…
• 1:52
  Tad Eggleston: cartoons?
• 1:53
  Marcus Anderson: Not… well, no, not even. I wasn't drawing a hard line. It was literally just, you know, I was in my early 20s, and I,
• 2:01
  Marcus Anderson: my first apartment, and you know, like, I didn't… also, this is… 2000 is long enough ago
• 2:08
  Marcus Anderson: for you kids, all the kids that listen to 22 panels, that you… you kind of had to be in front of the TV. I mean, you could, like, TiVo things, but for the most part…
• 2:17
  Tad Eggleston: You have a handful of kids that listen.
• 2:19
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I know, I'm not quite you're.
• 2:23
  Tad Eggleston: No, I just… for a second, I was gonna call out my brother Adam, but as a kid, he's, you know, 42.
• 2:29
  Ted: Yeah.
• 2:32
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, no, but, like, all I… I guess what I was saying is, like, I… it just totally flew over my radar, and you… you guys know how die-hard of a milestone person I am, but I just… I just totally missed that. It's not even like today, where, like.
• 2:46
  Marcus Anderson: you know, if we had what, you know, information traveled the way that it does today, I surely would have seen somebody post about it and been like, oh, shoot, there's a static TV.
• 2:56
  Tad Eggleston: 2000 is, like, just before the internet truly exploded.
• 3:02
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like, you didn't even… I don't even think, like, high… I feel like I got my first high-speed…
• 3:08
  Marcus Anderson: Ish internet in, like, 2003, maybe.
• 3:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:12
  Marcus Anderson: I think I have it.
• 3:13
  Tad Eggleston: A little bit earlier, but my dad worked in tech.
• 3:16
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 3:17
  Ted: That's about… that would be about when I got high-speed internet, I think, too, is around 2,000-ish.
• 3:23
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 3:23
  Ted: No, same deal.
• 3:25
  Marcus Anderson: So I have seen it before our current viewing, but I… but that was, like, it had been out for years at that point, when I found it out.
• 3:32
  Ted: Well, and also, like, this is… this is a show where they start talking about having the internet in it, like, they're, you know, they're accessing the web and, like, doing research into, like, oh, we did this subway station closed, and stuff like that, and it's like, oh boy, this is… this is old… not old.
• 3:46
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I love it, though.
• 3:47
  Ted: No, it was great!
• 3:48
  Tad Eggleston: I will say that it does fit in with… like, I remember starting…
• 3:57
  Tad Eggleston: In the late 90s, mid to late 90s, like, there were the competing afternoon
• 4:05
  Tad Eggleston: cartoon lineups, you had your Disney afternoon that had…
• 4:09
  Tad Eggleston: your DuckTales, your Tailspin, Chippendale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing, etc.
• 4:15
  Marcus Anderson: I remember the anime series, too.
• 4:16
  Tad Eggleston: then you had the… the Warner Bros. afternoon, had Batman the Animated Series, and, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Animaniacs, and I… I… I definitely…
• 4:29
  Marcus Anderson: It's interesting. Wait, did you have them on different networks? Because for me.
• 4:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 4:33
  Marcus Anderson: Where I lived, they were on the same network.
• 4:36
  Tad Eggleston: We had them on different… Disney Afternoon was on WGN, and the Warner Bros. Afternoon was on WFLD.
• 4:45
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, no, here it was on, 23. It had both.
• 4:50
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe the other way around? Yeah. I don't remember. Yeah, no, they were competing afternoons for us. And this… this… I mean, the reason that… is as soon as the… the… as soon as I heard the… the opening theme song, I started thinking of, like, Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures. I'm like, okay, this fits in…
• 5:09
  Tad Eggleston: with the Warner Bros. afternoon.
• 5:11
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:14
  Ted: I was more of a… I was more of a WB guy than I was a Disney guy, but I did, for a while, I was really watching, like, Rescue Rangers, and I guess some Talesman and Darkwing Duck.
• 5:24
  Ted: But it was… it was very much, yeah, they were two different… Too different.
• 5:28
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, that's interesting.
• 5:30
  Tad Eggleston: I always… I was the guy that changed the channel, because I could go from… DuckTales.
• 5:37
  Tad Eggleston: skip… Chip and Dale in favor of Batman, and then come back for Tailspin.
• 5:45
  Marcus Anderson: news.
• 5:46
  Tad Eggleston: my preference.
• 5:47
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I think on our channel, the…
• 5:50
  Marcus Anderson: you know, DuckTales, which I watch a lot.
• 5:53
  Marcus Anderson: Darkwing, I think that stuff came on earlier, and then Batman would be, like, 4, 4 PM or something like that, but…
• 6:00
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 6:00
  Ted: Yeah, but this would have come on… I mean, that's the thing, is I'm talking… like, we're all talking about stuff that we were watching in, like, the mid-early 90s.
• 6:07
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, this is…
• 6:08
  Ted: Yeah, and that's the thing.
• 6:09
  Tad Eggleston: Like, this is…
• 6:10
  Ted: Just a little too long.
• 6:11
  Tad Eggleston: But, but those blocks continued. The, the, the…
• 6:14
  Ted: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 6:14
  Tad Eggleston: Which shows were parts of them changed? You know, Gummy Bears was one of the early Disney Afternoon, and Darkwing Duck was much later, and…
• 6:26
  Marcus Anderson: Those theme songs went hard, man. You had…
• 6:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 6:29
  Marcus Anderson: Gummy bears… Bouncing here, there, everywhere, man. I mean, of course DuckTales is timeless, you know.
• 6:35
  Ted: It feels this time.
• 6:36
  Tad Eggleston: My wife is like a hurricane here.
• 6:39
  Ted: I have to say, it's great that, like, the Batman theme is so intense and recognizable, despite being completely wordless.
• 6:47
  Marcus Anderson: Right, right.
• 6:48
  Ted: Yeah, no, stuff like that. I gotta say, I will… I do feel like this theme song was a little weak.
• 6:53
  Ted: I do know it changes in, like, Season 3, I think, of the… of Static. It… it… they get a different theme song, apparently, so I'm… I'd be looking forward to that, because I feel like.
• 7:02
  Marcus Anderson: I mean, you have to… you have to think it's definitely… I mean, we just referenced it, it's definitely a different era, right? This wasn't even… I would say even in those intervening, like, 5 or 6 years from, like, you know, DuckTales and…
• 7:15
  Marcus Anderson: And all the other shows, or maybe more, to be honest. But, whatever, like, that,
• 7:20
  Marcus Anderson: I do think that this was…
• 7:23
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know, I don't think you had as… by that point, the more vocal theme songs were going out. Although that… maybe not, because I… admittedly, I wasn't watching a ton of animated stuff.
• 7:35
  Marcus Anderson: At that point. That's a good point, though, yeah.
• 7:37
  Ted: I wonder if vocal.
• 7:38
  Marcus Anderson: laser.
• 7:38
  Ted: Anyway. But yeah, no…
• 7:39
  Marcus Anderson: Internally, though, I really, I kind of want to just get into it, but, like.
• 7:44
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah. I think this show definitely… Like, underscores, like.
• 7:49
  Marcus Anderson: the genius of Dwayne McDuffie, and his ability to kind of navigate the two worlds pretty seamlessly, because, you know, we know that he's no stranger to animation. I didn't realize until after the fact that he…
• 8:02
  Marcus Anderson: had done, like, Ben 10 and stuff that was… had nothing to do with, like, pre-existing comic properties. But he's, like…
• 8:11
  Marcus Anderson: I think this is a good example of just him…
• 8:14
  Marcus Anderson: being able to navigate, like, and this is definitely an adaptation in the sense of, you know, it's not setting out to be like, alright, we're recreating Static Issue 1, you know, 2, 3, etc. Like, you kind of get all new villains, and then you've seen where I'm pretty sure Eben…
• 8:31
  Marcus Anderson: didn't show up in the original comic run, but then Edmund, like, is a… was an early villain in the.
• 8:39
  Ted: Yeah, he's like the… Season 1, yeah. He's like the core… he's like the core… not even villain, he's the… he's the core… Yeah.
• 8:46
  Marcus Anderson: Antagonist, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Of that art, yeah.
• 8:48
  Ted: Yeah, and that's interesting, like, this is something… you mentioned that this doesn't start off as a straight adaptation of the…
• 8:55
  Ted: like, the first issue, which, yeah, good… I mean, it hits a lot of the points, like, it hits a lot of the major elements of it. It's, you know, it's very much… Static has problems, you know, he's in love with Frida, he has problems with the local… with… with friggin', what's his… God, what is it?
• 9:12
  Marcus Anderson: Last week, Francis.
• 9:13
  Ted: Francis, yeah. Like, it, it, you know, it hits, and then he, you know.
• 9:18
  Ted: he basically gets offered a gun, which is to say he is forced to take a gun on the, you know, on the presumption that he'll use it to shoot… to shoot Francis in the Big Bang, which, in this version, because they have a lower budget, is like six guys having to punch up in a…
• 9:33
  Marcus Anderson: Well, actually, you know what's interesting? Not to cut you off, but, like, yeah, I definitely noticed that right away, but it does, it does seem like, maybe the camera was zoomed in on this particular…
• 9:45
  Marcus Anderson: scrap, because if you look at just the sheer number of, you know, Bang Babies after the fact, for new listeners, that's just the term in the show. I'm not saying anything, untoward. But, you know.
• 10:01
  Marcus Anderson: It's, oh, yeah, sorry, it does appear that you definitely see more people showing up with powers than what we actually saw, is my only point.
• 10:10
  Ted: That is true, yeah, and they make a point that, like… I mean, that's the thing, this is… I was trying to… I was kind of trying to put this into words, I don't really have the best way to put it, but, like, it's…
• 10:18
  Ted: Okay, I mean, one of the great parts of the Milestone books we keep talking about is that they all have this… they all hit different notes, but they are in the same world. Icon and Hardware and Static and the Shadow Cabinet and the Blood Syndicate all hang out together, they're in the same world, and I love watching them bounce off each other.
• 10:34
  Ted: For a show that is explicitly just about static.
• 10:38
  Ted: to the point where you can't really bring in anyone else, that sucks in kind of the broad view of, like, boy, it would be nice to also then have, you know, Icon show up for a few episodes. It'd be cool to have hardware pop in.
• 10:51
  Ted: If, I mean, if you can't.
• 10:53
  Marcus Anderson: I haven't seen the entirety, but I do… I do think some characters come in. I don't know about how…
• 10:57
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I don't know. I mean, Batman does.
• 11:00
  Ted: Well, I mean, unofficial… doesn't he… isn't it a thing where Static crosses over to Batman… or, like, Batman Beyond? What's the…
• 11:06
  Tad Eggleston: No, I just… I just know that Kevin Conroy as Batman is in 5 episodes. I'm looking at the IMDB.
• 11:13
  Ted: Oh, damn, okay, well, maybe I got that wrong. Well, in any case, I mean, the thing is, though.
• 11:17
  Tad Eggleston: No, I think he's all… he also crosses over to Batman Beyond, but…
• 11:21
  Ted: Oh, yeah, he does that for sure, I know that much.
• 11:23
  Tad Eggleston: Also, I just noticed that Winnie Cooper is Frida.
• 11:28
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, I had noticed that. No, I wanted to talk about the cast.
• 11:30
  Ted: Oh, the casting…
• 11:31
  Marcus Anderson: Notable people in the cast, yeah.
• 11:32
  Ted: But just to finish my thought, I mean, what I was noticing and what I thought was really interesting is that, like, if you are gonna have a show that is essentially just one of the milestone characters, it works really well to anchor it on static, because he is, like, you know, he's the one who's easy and accessible for the kids to get into, he's the one who is…
• 11:50
  Ted: He has a… there's a very logical way for him to get involved with, like, oh yeah, there's other bang babies, oh no, another kid is mutated and is terrorizing the school, or whatever. Except it turns out he's not a bad kid, because that's how bang babies work, like…
• 12:02
  Ted: it's… it's… it's an extremely logical start point. I'm making this sound like it's some sort of calculated move, and it's… it's probably just also that, like.
• 12:10
  Marcus Anderson: I think they also had to do what… just, like, licensing and making it coherent, too.
• 12:15
  Ted: Yeah, there's gotta be that too, but, like, for all that, it works really well as an extremely solid foundation of, like, yeah, Static is gonna be our viewpoint character on the world of Dakota, that works really well. It does mean that, I mean, it's… it's kids TV, they had to flatten out some of the… some of the nuances, they couldn't.
• 12:34
  Marcus Anderson: Well, that was where I was going, but yeah, go ahead, sorry.
• 12:36
  Ted: Yeah, I mean, Totstreet can't be a straight-up obvious racist, he's more just sort of a cackling maniac who… he's…
• 12:43
  Marcus Anderson: He's still racist.
• 12:44
  Ted: He's still.
• 12:44
  Marcus Anderson: He's still rigged.
• 12:45
  Ted: It's racist, but it's like, it's toned down.
• 12:46
  Marcus Anderson: I know it when I see it.
• 12:48
  Ted: Yeah, no, I mean, you're not wrong, but… but yeah, like, they… he's, you know, he's throwing, like, exploding hot dogs, you know, he's not trying to lead a would-be, you know, group of neo-Nazis. Like, it's… it's toned down, and I don't even mean that in a bad sense, because, like.
• 13:03
  Ted: it's, you know, it's the WB at 5 o'clock on, you know, school day afternoons, like, I get it, but…
• 13:09
  Ted: it is a… it is a somewhat flattened version of Dakota. Like, you know, the cops aren't the one deploying the tear gas, they just happen to be, oh no, the,
• 13:19
  Ted: The… the… there was a bunch of, like, hazmat barrels in this… in this yard where the battle was going down, and they blew up, and that's why everyone is.
• 13:26
  Marcus Anderson: No, no, I'm pretty sure it's album-related. I think it might come in later.
• 13:30
  Ted: You're right, I'm sorry, you are right that they had the stuff there. I totally forgot that Alva was even involved.
• 13:35
  Marcus Anderson: Here he is.
• 13:35
  Ted: I don't know. But yeah, I mean, this isn't me, like, this isn't me ragging on the show at all. It is just interesting to me what… sort of what elements they had to… to…
• 13:44
  Ted: flattened to make it work, and to make it, I think, palatable to a… you know, to a WB audience. So, no, I…
• 13:55
  Ted: I like it a lot, it's just, it's interesting to see what they changed.
• 13:58
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think… well, I mean, obviously, I think any time you look at an adaptation, especially to another…
• 14:04
  Marcus Anderson: you know, genre and even, like, age demographic, like, that is gonna be the question going in. I… I think… but I guess that was where I was going. I was talking about, like, the genius of Dwayne McDuffie, and somebody who's adept at working in both, you know, comics and, animation for kids, is… I think he found a way to…
• 14:23
  Marcus Anderson: Keep enough of the quarter.
• 14:27
  Marcus Anderson: Of it, walking inside up, like… Show them.
• 14:32
  Marcus Anderson: for kids, even, like, you know, some of the beats, and keeping enough. Like, you know, and then,
• 14:40
  Marcus Anderson: So, for instance, like, the essence of who Virgil is, is the same, and even his family. I was, I was a little bummed that, you know, in this story, like, you know, he's tragically lost his mom.
• 14:52
  Ted: Yeah.
• 14:52
  Marcus Anderson: And I do think they get into that a little more as the series goes, so it keeps the, you know, I mean the focus on the core of Static, his sister, and his dad, and it does create some interesting,
• 15:05
  Marcus Anderson: Dynamics, you know, in a sense that…
• 15:08
  Marcus Anderson: you know, you see a family that's working through grief and loss, but is also, you know, still very much a unit. Virgil and Sharon, they're always squabbling, but there's a lot of love. It's interesting, too, because,
• 15:23
  Marcus Anderson: there was definitely a big sister element to Sharon in the comic, but…
• 15:28
  Marcus Anderson: It's in… in the dynamic here, is that…
• 15:34
  Marcus Anderson: And you can see where I think maybe because mom's gone, like, Sharon is also, like, kind of, like, stepping up in a…
• 15:40
  Marcus Anderson: Big sisterly way, you know, maybe in a nurturing way, too, despite the fact that they're beefing with one another, and they're squabbling, you know.
• 15:50
  Ted: Yeah.
• 15:50
  Marcus Anderson: I do, but I, I, I, yeah, I like it.
• 15:53
  Ted: Yeah, sorry, I was just gonna agree that I think that it was a really, like… I do kind of wonder how much of it was just like, well, if mom's dead, that's one less character than is.
• 16:03
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, 100%. I think they… like, for instance, Virgil's friend group, which I love from the comics, like, it really… it got whittled down to Ricky. I do think Richie, which, you know, Richie's great, you know, and I do think they do also… I'm pretty sure at some point they do explore, you know, him being queer.
• 16:22
  Marcus Anderson: But, or do that. I forget.
• 16:24
  Ted: I tried to look into it. I don't think that actually comes up. Okay, maybe not. I really… I don't… don't quote me on that. I don't know for sure, but I think I…
• 16:34
  Ted: Yeah, I think it's mentioned as a thing that doesn't get addressed, which…
• 16:38
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, okay.
• 16:39
  Ted: surprise me, unfortunately, but yeah, no, I…
• 16:41
  Marcus Anderson: Well, I almost feel like if the show was, like, I'm gonna say, like, 10 years later, like, they would have definitely… Yeah, yeah. Well… well, let's see, if we think about it…
• 16:52
  Ted: It's…
• 16:52
  Marcus Anderson: It's so, it's so funny because, truly, what, 09…
• 16:58
  Marcus Anderson: is when, you know, the Obama-Biden administration finally, like, legalized, marriage equality, and you really kind of saw it rippling from there when it came to, like, mainstream
• 17:14
  Marcus Anderson: representation and acceptance. So yeah, I guess you're right. You said 5… I'm gonna say… I'm gonna say 9 years, really.
• 17:21
  Ted: Yeah, I was just… I mean, I was just spitballing, but no.
• 17:23
  Marcus Anderson: Because it feels like, like, oh, we've had, like, you know, mainstream, like, queer representation for a while, but it's more recent than we would think, you know what I mean?
• 17:33
  Ted: There's… yeah, I mean, the show that… the show that was the show that really defined me as a kid for the stuff that I really loved was, Gargoyles, and.
• 17:41
  Marcus Anderson: Hmm.
• 17:41
  Ted: like… the creator of that, Greg…
• 17:44
  Ted: Wiseman? Eastman? Oh, God, I can't remember his name. The guy who was the creator of that show has said that, like, very specifically, yeah, there's a character who probably would have been queer if we could have gotten away with it, like, 10 years later. So I think it's a similar thing, where, like, I'm sure they would have tried to get away with it if they could have.
• 18:04
  Ted: If it had been, you know, 10 years later. But, yeah, it, you know…
• 18:08
  Ted: It's… that's the situation. But yeah, I also, I mean, looking ahead a little bit, I… so again, I didn't watch any of this, I kinda had to look some stuff up, but I know that they also give Richie superpowers later on. Sorry, spoilers on that shit, I should've…
• 18:22
  Marcus Anderson: It's alright, I mean, it's a 26-year-old show.
• 18:26
  Ted: Yeah, but yeah, it's a thing where, like, Richie has sort of a prolonged exposure to bang baby gas, basically, gets, like… I think he gets, like, inventing… super inventing powers or something, basically, so he can, like, have gadgets and go out with Virgil and do stuff. But,
• 18:39
  Ted: like, they find a way to make sure he stays important to the series, even if he can't actually, like, do as much superheroing stuff. And I do… I think that fits very well with the whole, you know…
• 18:51
  Ted: static friend group and, like, characters getting to, sort of, getting to… to interact with each other in, you know, interesting ways, and explore different relationships beyond just good guys and bad guys. I mean, heck, the whole, like, the whole thing with Eben coming in…
• 19:07
  Ted: Alva is there as a villain, although I think they used the character design for that guy Silver, er, not Silver, St. Cloud from.
• 19:16
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I know what you mean.
• 19:18
  Ted: Cobalt, yeah, it's weird, because it's like, that doesn't look like Alva, it looks like the other guy. But, but he is there, but the.
• 19:24
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, also, I want to talk about character designs later, but go ahead.
• 19:27
  Ted: Yeah, oh, that, I mean, that's a real solid space to talk about, yeah. But, but yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, the villain that I think is the most…
• 19:36
  Ted: I think iconic and, like, recognized as the best creation of the show, from what I know, is Eben. There's a reason that they brought him into Season 1, because he ends up being… he's the natural foil for Static, like.
• 19:48
  Ted: Hotstreak is sort of a straight-up evil guy. Like, he is obviously… we hate him, no matter, you know, he's racist.
• 19:55
  Marcus Anderson: Garbage.
• 19:55
  Ted: He blows stuff up, he throws exploding hot dogs… I can't get over the hot dogs, man, like, the hot dog thing is just so…
• 20:00
  Marcus Anderson: It's a… it's an anime show.
• 20:02
  Ted: I know, I know, yeah. But, like, you know…
• 20:05
  Marcus Anderson: I do think you have to… We have to remember, we're… We were solidly adults.
• 20:11
  Ted: Yeah, no, you're right.
• 20:13
  Marcus Anderson: It's okay, man. I try to dive back into me. When I… actually, not to cut you off, but when I watch this, I really do think, like… I'm like, oh shit, I would have loved this.
• 20:22
  Marcus Anderson: Like, when I was in high school, even as somebody who discovered static as a teenager who was static's age. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I would have enjoyed this, this quite a bit.
• 20:33
  Ted: Yeah, no, I mean, I still enjoyed it. I definitely think that there's a lot to enjoy to it. It's interesting, I'm just sort of coming into it blind and being like, oh.
• 20:41
  Ted: And also knowing a little bit about, sort of, the process of getting a show made, and it's like, oh, here's a thing they had to cut, here's a thing they had to shrink, here's a thing they had to blah blah blah blah, like, you know, it's a little bit like, oh, yeah, the mom's dead, that's one less character design, like…
• 20:55
  Ted: I'm being… I'm being super cynical about it, but also, like, you know, I know kind of how it works. But,
• 21:02
  Ted: But yeah, there is a lot to like about it. I like this a lot. I found myself really getting into, their versions of all these characters, and it being, you know, a slightly goofy superhero thing with some interesting character dynamics to it. Like, I mentioned Eben more… like, yeah, the whole thing about Eben. Like, I think Eben is a really good, really interesting…
• 21:22
  Ted: villain for the show, because, I mean, he's a villain, but he's, you know, he's the villain who's kind of got a point, you know? And I think that's always a really good character type to have hanging around. So, yeah, I.
• 21:33
  Marcus Anderson: No, actually, can I say that to that point, like, you're right, and that's where…
• 21:39
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, because it's not… like, I think, superheroes, villains, antagonists work the best when their powers are some type of thematic representation of
• 21:52
  Marcus Anderson: of something more, you know? Because it's so easy just to be… I remember being a kid, and doing, you know, my earliest comics, and being like, oh, what is it?
• 22:01
  Marcus Anderson: I was racking my brain for, like, what's this guy's powers gonna be? How am I gonna make him not like somebody else? And it felt like, as a kid, like, oh my god, all the powers have been done. But, you know, I was young enough where I wasn't thinking about, like, well, what do I want to say?
• 22:14
  Marcus Anderson: thematically through the powers, which is way more important. So you could have somebody
• 22:19
  Marcus Anderson: That, whatever, shoots beam from his eye… beams from his eyes, which a million other characters have done, but if… if there is something, like, where that is, like, a relevant power, like, story-wise or thematically, like, that's what matters.
• 22:33
  Ted: No.
• 22:34
  Marcus Anderson: Because almost everything's been done when it comes to powers and stuff. But, like, yeah, like, I do like that on this show, that that seems to be,
• 22:42
  Marcus Anderson: you know… and Evan is a perfect example of where, like, thematically, the powers and the way he presents make a lot of sense to who his character is.
• 22:54
  Ted: Yeah, I… I like… I like Evan a lot. I also liked, again, looking ahead, I know that Rubber Band Man sticks around as a character and has some interesting walking the line of hero and villain.
• 23:07
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, also played by Kadeem Hardison.
• 23:10
  Ted: You were gonna mention, like, casting at some point. Holy shit, this show's cast isn't.
• 23:15
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, it's got an incredible cast.
• 23:16
  Ted: Where's Trent Darby's in that episode?
• 23:18
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I recognized Kadeem Hardison instantly when, when Rubber Band Man started speaking. I had to look it up, and that's when I started seeing everybody else that I recognized.
• 23:28
  Ted: Oh, God, yeah, no, it's, like, this… this show's casting is so… is so good. It has such a deep well of characters to draw on, people to draw on. God, yeah, no, I… I… oof, man.
• 23:39
  Ted: But yeah, like, I… I…
• 23:42
  Ted: knowing that they have this… I mean, again, as with a lot of the other stuff in Milestone, you don't necessarily have characters who are good guys, bad guys, you have characters who are dynamic and interesting and kind of flow from one to the other, like Rubber Bandman, who we haven't gotten to in the main Static series, but he does… I mean, we know that he becomes a character. In fact.
• 24:01
  Ted: I wanna say he's the character that,
• 24:03
  Ted: He's… I think his creation is credited to, Matty Bostein.
• 24:08
  Marcus Anderson: Mmm.
• 24:09
  Ted: because I think she wrote the issues of… of…
• 24:13
  Ted: Static that he first appeared in.
• 24:15
  Ted: Don't quote me for certain on that, but I kind of think that's the case, so, anyway.
• 24:20
  Marcus Anderson: In the… in the original run, is that what you're talking about?
• 24:22
  Ted: Yeah, in, like, it's like, it's like static number 33, so, like, we, you know, we stopped at 75, or didn't stop, but, you know.
• 24:28
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 24:29
  Ted: So yeah, we haven't gotten there yet, but that's when he first appears, which of course is before the actual show did, so, yeah.
• 24:34
  Ted: So yeah, I'm… I'm curious to see how he gets handled there, but knowing… having looked ahead and knowing that he is a character who walks the hero-villain line in a way that sounds interesting, again, it's like, yeah, that's… that's a milestone… that's a milestone thing right there, that's a milestone.
• 24:51
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 24:51
  Ted: have those characters who can do that, so…
• 24:54
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I want to talk about that for a minute, because, like, I really like… he was… that was episode 5, I believe, right?
• 25:00
  Ted: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:00
  Marcus Anderson: What I really liked about it is, you know, with cartoons, it can be very formulaic. It's like, good guy, bad guy, which, you know, you just alluded to the fact that he, like, walks the line. What I really liked is that…
• 25:14
  Marcus Anderson: Because I will say, especially as I've gotten older in my…
• 25:18
  Marcus Anderson: My views on, like, you know, law enforcement, etc.
• 25:23
  Marcus Anderson: And just approaches to…
• 25:26
  Marcus Anderson: just the issues with the criminal justice system and the ways that stuff like propaganda trains us to think, well, you just lock up the bad guys. You web them up, they hang up there, and then the police come again and wait till an hour for the webs to dissolve, and then they're locked up. Problem solved, you know what I mean? And, like…
• 25:44
  Marcus Anderson: obviously, you know, the real world doesn't work that way, and I like that, you know.
• 25:51
  Marcus Anderson: Virgil, like, when he first, him and Richie are checking out their new rat-infested, hideout that Richie recommends, and
• 26:01
  Marcus Anderson: they… they see, like, a rubber band man chasing, Icepack, the, you know, a big poppin' rapper's, you know, limo as it's driving away. And you know…
• 26:13
  Marcus Anderson: from what Robert Man is saying, that he's… he has been wronged and slighted in some way, but they haven't, you know, quite revealed it yet.
• 26:22
  Marcus Anderson: And so, you know, Virgil goes after him, and he goes to stop him. And in a lot of, like, superhero things.
• 26:29
  Marcus Anderson: first of all, there's the, like, they gotta punch it out for an hour before, you know, they're like, hey, wait a minute, like, maybe we don't need to… whatever. And this doesn't really take that long, because it almost seems… because it seems like Virgil's being… he's got some restraint, he's being, like, observant as more information presents itself.
• 26:48
  Marcus Anderson: You know what I mean? So it's… I appreciated that, like, I noted it as I was watching. It wasn't like, well, I'm the hero, and this guy is positioned as the bad guy, so I gotta just, like, try to, like, you know.
• 26:59
  Marcus Anderson: Totally subdue him.
• 27:01
  Marcus Anderson: without asking any questions, or, you know, you know what I mean? And, like, and even, and Rubber Ben Man, similarly, he doesn't, like, start trying to, you know, knock…
• 27:11
  Marcus Anderson: static out right away. He does get frustrated because he's really driven by, you know, revenge, or getting what's owed to him.
• 27:22
  Marcus Anderson: So when Virgil doesn't 100% back… back down, it's not even when Virgil doesn't back down, it's when Virgil basically intervenes to the point where Icepack is getting away. That's when, you know, he basically lashes out at Virgil. Because initially, he's like, look, I don't have any beef with you, you know, static, whatever.
• 27:41
  Marcus Anderson: So I don't know, I just, I thought that was, like, kinda…
• 27:45
  Marcus Anderson: Nuanced storytelling in the sense that it's not like, good action figure, bad action figure, let's mash them together.
• 27:51
  Ted: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Marcus Anderson: Until the runtime's over.
• 27:53
  Ted: Yeah, and I mean, even in, like, even in ways that were a little more…
• 27:58
  Ted: I don't want to say, like.
• 28:00
  Ted: The episode I'm thinking of, episode 3, the one with, I don't even remember his name, the kid who becomes Destruct, you know. He's, like, the popular kid at school who suddenly determined, gets powers, and he's convinced he could join Eben's gang. He's a less interesting and less nuanced version of that same character. Not to say bad, but just, like.
• 28:20
  Ted: when they hit Rubberband Man, that's when you get a really good version of, like, oh, this is interesting, here's a guy who's got a legitimate beef, he and Static have to kind of hash things out and figure out who's in the right and who's in the wrong and everything, and like that. That's, you know, the thing of Destruct is sort of the…
• 28:36
  Ted: Not the prototype, but, like, it's the… well, and it also, I mean, that episode.
• 28:41
  Marcus Anderson: The way I…
• 28:42
  Ted: And that episode is really about setting up Eben, too, so…
• 28:44
  Marcus Anderson: I was gonna say… what's… no, I think this is… because there are two different types of stories to me, like, for instance, in the episode Rubber Bandman.
• 28:54
  Marcus Anderson: like, he's kind of set up, as far as the main super-powered antagonist, in that episode, so it kind of, like, you know, he's a little bit more centered in the narrative. Destruct is centered more as, like, I'm gonna say, like, almost as, like, a vehicle for the…
• 29:10
  Marcus Anderson: The viewer, in a way, because he's arguably… a regular…
• 29:16
  Marcus Anderson: Kid that's thrown into a, you know.
• 29:19
  Marcus Anderson: messed up situation. I mean, like, he literally feels like he can't go home and face his mom, you know, and so it's kind of like the idea of being an outcast. And then I'm gonna say, like, to be honest, if you think about it,
• 29:34
  Marcus Anderson: like, even just, like, culturally, there's a… there's a… I mean, Black people aren't a monolith, but, like, you know, when it comes to, like, socioeconomic situations and everything, there's a lot of… there are a lot of situations. I've known…
• 29:47
  Marcus Anderson: people where it's kind of like, like, they don't necessarily, always go home, and, you know, for a variety of reasons, that can be kind of complicated. And so, in some ways, I almost feel like there's some representation there. In this case, it's because he's just been turned into…
• 30:03
  Marcus Anderson: So I'm just a monster, and he's like, I can't go face my mom like this, I'm a monster.
• 30:08
  Marcus Anderson: So, and then, like, that one, it was more about, like.
• 30:13
  Marcus Anderson: the moral choice for him, you know, of being essentially an outcast and being… well, I mean, you talk about gangs, right? And, like, fam… them providing family, you know, and again, in our copaganda world, it's like…
• 30:29
  Marcus Anderson: Cops, good guys, gangs, bad guys, but it's like, it's more complicated than that, and for a lot of people.
• 30:34
  Marcus Anderson: A lot of good people get involved with gangs because they are seeking family and protection and, you know…
• 30:43
  Marcus Anderson: and structure, and, you know, so… and safety. So, so I'm just saying, like, that's literally, if you look at it, that's what's happening with Destro. He's a regular kid that's on a good path, he's a star athlete,
• 30:57
  Marcus Anderson: But his powers, like, you know, or his changes start happening, and he's basically a monster, essentially, as far as he's concerned, and the world.
• 31:07
  Marcus Anderson: And it happens very suddenly, too, while he's on the bus, so it's kind of like,
• 31:13
  Marcus Anderson: You know, he's dealing with the trauma of everybody recoiling from him.
• 31:18
  Ted: That's… no, that's true, that's a much better way of looking at it, thank you. That… that is…
• 31:22
  Ted: You're, yeah, you're right, I, I do…
• 31:25
  Ted: Yeah, I would see that more as just… that episode is more just like an excuse… not an excuse, but, like, the reason for that episode is to bring in…
• 31:32
  Ted: Eben as a character who's got a point of view, but you're right, I mean, there's more to it than just that, so… No, that's interesting. I, I,
• 31:39
  Ted: Ugh.
• 31:41
  Ted: But yeah, I… I… of the episodes we watched, so yeah, there's the first two episodes, which are kind of a two-parter, sort of, more or less.
• 31:50
  Ted: it's Static gets his powers, Francis gets his powers, they fight for a bit, they have some fun action to it. It's… it's more or less what the, you know, first few… first couple, issues are.
• 32:04
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, it does kind of mirror it, in the sense of Virgil being very in his head. Yeah.
• 32:11
  Tad Eggleston: Is there definitely similarities.
• 32:13
  Ted: Yeah, and also, like, it hits the, you know, it hits the static being the quippy guy, the Spider-Man kid who is always making jokes. I do love that one of the first things that he does, like, literally, I think his first line in the series is him correcting some guy's,
• 32:31
  Ted: AAVE, because he says something like, no, no, no, it's what up with that, not what's up with that, you know? I thought that was… that… I don't think Dwayne McDuffie wrote that episode, but that felt like a McDuffie thing, you know? Like, in the best possible compliments.
• 32:45
  Ted: But yeah, like, I… you know, he, he, he takes on a bunch of, like, you know, gun runners, he does his cool mag… he has cool magnetic, watch magnetic stuff,
• 32:55
  Ted: we get those two episodes sort of establish what Bang Babies are, what's going on with that, and then eventually we get to…
• 33:01
  Ted: He's the only bang baby who's sort of apparently on the good guy side, who knows, but yeah. And then we get into, from there, we have the episode with Destruct, we have the episode with…
• 33:13
  Ted: Like the, oh, the, the, the blob, the… The weird blob, amoeba.
• 33:20
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, oh, the bacteria, because in the episode, that was one, yeah, thing that was affected by the gas that wasn't a human being. It was bacteria.
• 33:29
  Ted: I don't know if they did… well, no, you know, I was about to say, I don't know if they did that in the… in the comics, but then I remembered, wait, they already had a dog. Like, they had a dog and plugs in the.
• 33:38
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:38
  Ted: But yeah, and then we hit, episode 5 is the Rubber Band Man 1, and that's those first 5 episodes that we watched, and they're a really good…
• 33:47
  Ted: I… I mean, I like them as giving a very clear indication of, sort of, the…
• 33:52
  Ted: the… I don't want to say the ethos, that sounds way too…
• 33:55
  Ted: you know, high-minded, but I mean, like, you know, the foundation of what this show is doing. You know, we have this kid, and what Static has always been, which is the kid who cares about his neighborhood, the kid who maybe is, you know, sometimes in over his head, but always has a quip ready, and is, you know, funny, and we've, like, watching him and rooting for him.
• 34:12
  Ted: you know, exactly what… exactly what we wanted in a show like this, so I… Yeah,
• 34:19
  Ted: I don't know, I'm trying to think where to go next. I know you wanted to… you mentioned talking about the character designs.
• 34:24
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, so I really like it, and I think this ties into a few things that we talked about before, like, for instance, we talked about,
• 34:31
  Marcus Anderson: the trimming down of the cast, and I do think it's, like, you can see where, they're working within maybe the budget and the scope that they had. And so the character designs… I like them a lot. I think that they, and just thinking about it from an artist and illustrator's perspective.
• 34:50
  Marcus Anderson: You can see where, they stylistically
• 34:54
  Marcus Anderson: chose a style that's, like, you know, that looks cool, like, the… the characters are very expressive, you know, but they're,
• 35:06
  Marcus Anderson: there is a… I'm gonna say a deceptive simplicity, because that's one thing that's hilarious. And I've had things, like, where, for instance, Big Jim, I employed a style that, you know, appears, like, you know, simpler, but, you know, there's a lot… there's a lot going on, so I understand where sometimes… but then, like,
• 35:26
  Marcus Anderson: people will look at it and be like, oh, this is a really cool style, and even though it's, like, really… it's a simple style, whatever. And, like, you can tell that it's, like, the efficiency of animation, and…
• 35:38
  Marcus Anderson: the… I think… I do think the characters are very expressive, which is, like, super important.
• 35:44
  Marcus Anderson: They do… First of all… Yeah, go ahead, sorry.
• 35:47
  Ted: I was just gonna say, one very specific thing I loved was statics, like, the way they do statics dreads, or are they…
• 35:52
  Ted: however they.
• 35:53
  Marcus Anderson: Look, this is hilarious to me, because I will say, even going back to the original, I love Jean-Paul Leon. I don't…
• 36:01
  Marcus Anderson: Quite know what he intended initially.
• 36:04
  Ted: Like, you…
• 36:05
  Marcus Anderson: You know what I mean? Because it's kind of one of those things that's kind of in between. People over the years have definitely decisively made them locks. And, like, on this show, they are, yeah, yeah, he's got dreadlocks on this show.
• 36:18
  Ted: They're great, like, it's a great silhouette, you know, they…
• 36:21
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:21
  Ted: really well.
• 36:22
  Marcus Anderson: Definitely, yeah.
• 36:23
  Marcus Anderson: Which is super important in character design, for your character in silhouette to still be recognizable.
• 36:30
  Ted: Yeah, I'm not even a visual artist, but I've done, like, comics classes. One of the first things I do is talk about, like, yeah, you gotta have a silhouette that you can read, and then I just draw, like, Bart Simpson's silhouette, and every kid is like.
• 36:39
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, like, I like, I like his costume on the show. It's like, they took,
• 36:47
  Marcus Anderson: Because he's… you know, when you think about the different versions of static over the years, he's had, several different ones. The… usually a coat is one… is one standard, and that goes right back to issue one, where he had the yellow coat over the blue costume. But this one's cool. This is, like,
• 37:07
  Marcus Anderson: a version… this is almost like the… a bridge between some of the versions that would come later, because,
• 37:14
  Marcus Anderson: You know, it kept the coat, it added, you know, a little bit more elements, because his… his original comic book costume was pretty…
• 37:22
  Marcus Anderson: Pretty simple, right? Like, it was pretty much on…
• 37:26
  Ted: It was the black body stocking, he had, like, the light.
• 37:28
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah. They're the lightning bolts.
• 37:30
  Ted: I love the baseball cap. The baseball cap was one of my favorite parts of.
• 37:32
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:34
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, definitely, so…
• 37:35
  Ted: Yeah, I do… I mean, it's interesting that they gave him those kind of chunky gloves, because I can't imagine those being fun to animate, like, panel to frame to frame. Like, that's gotta be a pain in the neck to do those gloves. But they were… I mean, they were cool, but it was just like, really? You don't want to just go with, like, silhouette glove hands or something?
• 37:52
  Ted: But yeah, I… like, the costume is great, I do love that, you know, it…
• 37:56
  Ted: it… it had, like you said, I think the code is great,
• 38:00
  Ted: And, like, the character designs in general, like the rubber band man, again, going back to him, what an ideal character to have in your… in your animated show, because then you show the guy stretching, you show the, you know, the sliding and the… all that stuff, that's really… that's… that's gotta be a blast to do.
• 38:15
  Marcus Anderson: Beautiful.
• 38:16
  Ted: And, like.
• 38:18
  Ted: I think Francis was maybe taking a little… I don't know, I was about to say taken too far, but, like, he's the villain, you gotta take him pretty far. You gotta make him exaggerated. But, like, everything is… is… again, like, simplicity…
• 38:32
  Ted: Not in a…
• 38:33
  Ted: not in a negative way at all. Like, in a sense of, like, yeah, you want it stripped down to a point where you can see the silhouette, and you can get the sense of who this character is.
• 38:43
  Ted: just from the very, like, moment you see them. So, no, I think… I think the… I think the character designs are great. The versions that you guys saw, did you… did it have a thing where, like, at the end of every episode, but just before the
• 38:55
  Ted: They had the little sped-up sketch thing.
• 38:56
  Marcus Anderson: What are you?
• 38:57
  Ted: Yeah, I love that, that was great.
• 39:00
  Marcus Anderson: That was really cool.
• 39:01
  Tad Eggleston: Were those Dennis Cowan's hands?
• 39:04
  Marcus Anderson: I'm not, like…
• 39:06
  Tad Eggleston: Dennis Cowan's hands to me, and I know he directed A bunch of episodes.
• 39:11
  Ted: I would have been surprised, just because I feel like that would have been probably the, you know, one of the rank-and-file animators, as it were, but I don't… I don't actually have any idea, I'm just guessing.
• 39:22
  Ted: But yeah, I… that's a good question, actually, I have no idea.
• 39:25
  Marcus Anderson: Either way, it was, yeah, it was really cool.
• 39:27
  Ted: It was, and yeah, like, just getting to see how they prioritize, like, the shadows on Eben's face to give him, like, a recognizable face, while also, like, no readable features, I thought was a really neat.
• 39:40
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, there's a lot of really smart choices, like, in that way, yeah. I like it a lot. One thing that's interesting, and this is more audio than visual, one thing that happens canonically in the book, which…
• 39:54
  Marcus Anderson: I was like, oh, it would have been cool if they carried it over, but I'm sure it's just… whatever, it's like the simplicity of cartoons, and they're not gonna cover everything that us adults think of, but, like, is the fact that…
• 40:07
  Marcus Anderson: They don't ever spell it out, but you can tell through the word balloons that Virgil is using his static
• 40:16
  Marcus Anderson: electricity powers or whatever to disguise his voice. Yes. Because his word balloons, you know, he's got regular word balloons when he's Virgil, but he's got those more, like, you know, the types of jagged word balloons they give you in comics if you're, like, speaking through a radio.
• 40:33
  Ted: Yeah.
• 40:34
  Marcus Anderson: something like that. Which I always thought was such a cool touch. When I realized what they were doing, I'm like, oh, okay, that's really smart. Because, like, you know… and I realized this at a certain point when
• 40:44
  Marcus Anderson: he's speaking to Frida as Static, and his, just like, you know, his Virgil voice, which, I mean, look, so many, so many superhero on-screen representations, they don't disguise their voice, even when they're speaking to their crush, so…
• 41:00
  Ted: It's… it's not…
• 41:00
  Marcus Anderson: Not the first time, but it actually would have been cool if they just added a little metallic tinge to his voice, like.
• 41:06
  Ted: That would have been, you know, like, yeah, I mean, you work with… you work with the medium you've got, but no, that wouldn'.
• 41:11
  Marcus Anderson: That'd be a fun…
• 41:12
  Ted: a fun way to do that, but no, I… I mean, you're right, and that's the thing, like, you… like…
• 41:18
  Ted: Now that I think about it, I mean, like, other elements that had to change when they translated from comics to animation, like, I think… I mean, again, Rubber Bandman is a great example. That's a character that design… that's a set of powers that works so well in animation, because that's, like, what it's designed for.
• 41:33
  Ted: But, like, the glowing sort of aura that goes around whatever Static is using his powers on, you know, you gotta kind of have that to indicate, like, oh, yeah, he's using his magnetic powers or whatever to… Yeah.
• 41:48
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know, I'm just thinking of other things that, like, had to change for whatever reason to make it,
• 41:52
  Ted: to make it work in animation as opposed to on the page, but yeah, I… I… I like it a lot. I mean, I really think that it's a great…
• 42:02
  Ted: it's a great adaptation of… of… of the milestone stuff. I do… I am curious to what degree they're gonna… they're gonna, like…
• 42:12
  Ted: prioritize…
• 42:14
  Ted: Alva over, like, Eben and other characters who are, you know, bang babies, who are actually powered ones, as sort of…
• 42:20
  Ted: the villains of the show, and I know that, like, you know, not every character's gonna be a villain, etc, etc, but, like, I'm just curious what the…
• 42:29
  Marcus Anderson: Larger antagonists are.
• 42:31
  Ted: Yeah, and also, like, how they're gonna structure it, you know, like, are they gonna have,
• 42:37
  Ted: God, I'm trying to think now. I'm trying to think of, like, other static… like, specific static stories now from the comics. Like, I'm trying to remember specific things…
• 42:45
  Ted: that he did, or that happened. There was the one… was this the one that was, like, guest-written by Kurt Busiak or something, where it's like he… he sees a bunch of kids worshipping some…
• 42:55
  Ted: you know, like, imitating some cool gangster in the neighborhood, and so he tries to make himself into a role model and ends up looking like a dork over it, I don't remember.
• 43:02
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, there's a lot. I think that's the great thing about static, is,
• 43:09
  Marcus Anderson: I guess even when I think about that stuff he's been through, the…
• 43:14
  Marcus Anderson: there's, like, certain themes. Like, I don't know, not too long ago, we read…
• 43:19
  Marcus Anderson: the arc where it was, like, his father had a heart attack, and…
• 43:24
  Marcus Anderson: it was kind of like… and as I remember, I think the villains were kind of weird, and not maybe top-tier villains, but I remember really…
• 43:32
  Marcus Anderson: like in that run because, it just, like, it was the essence of what static is, which is, like, a kid that cares a lot and is always trying to do the right thing, and he messes up, and he's having a lot of trouble balancing everything, which obviously goes right back to Peter Parker as an influence,
• 43:53
  Marcus Anderson: But, like, yeah, I guess with Static, it's like, you think about some of the big stuff he's dealt with, it's like, yeah, you'll have times where,
• 44:01
  Marcus Anderson: He was dealing with the… The hate groups, you know, and then…
• 44:05
  Ted: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:07
  Marcus Anderson: You had the, the militant dude also, he was kind of, like, caught in between all that.
• 44:13
  Ted: Commando app.
• 44:13
  Marcus Anderson: Commando X, yeah, yeah. So it's like, yeah, I mean, I think that's the beautiful thing about static, is it's like…
• 44:20
  Marcus Anderson: His… a lot of stuff he faced were reflections of, like, of the world, you know, that…
• 44:25
  Ted: Yeah.
• 44:26
  Marcus Anderson: That was out there.
• 44:27
  Marcus Anderson: Oh.
• 44:28
  Ted: It does.
• 44:29
  Marcus Anderson: Interesting.
• 44:30
  Ted: Yeah, it does make me wonder, like, to what degree are they gonna
• 44:33
  Ted: how explicitly are they gonna cover racism in this show? Like…
• 44:38
  Ted: having not watched it when it was… none of us having watched it when it was out, but, like, I'm curious to what degree…
• 44:44
  Ted: The wake.
• 44:46
  Ted: No, I, I, I, you know.
• 44:47
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I think it'll be treated…
• 44:49
  Marcus Anderson: I have seen… I've seen a little bit further ahead, so I think there's… there's definitely one, episode…
• 44:57
  Marcus Anderson: Where it's dealt with, and I won't spoil it. I think it's not too long after this?
• 45:05
  Marcus Anderson: But it's kinda… Yeah, like, it's not like,
• 45:12
  Marcus Anderson: you know, the hardcore violent white supremacists that, you know, Virgil is facing. It's more on a, you know, person-to-person basis and navigating a situation.
• 45:25
  Ted: You figured it would be, yeah.
• 45:27
  Marcus Anderson: So they don't… they definitely don't not grapple with it, but I do think that they, yeah, they can't get…
• 45:34
  Marcus Anderson: as deep into it as, like, the book will. Because one of the things I told you back when we reviewed Issue 1, and I noticed this back in… when I was in high school, I really appreciated, because, you know.
• 45:47
  Marcus Anderson: there… this is a little piece of my lore, you know. I… I definitely knew… knew some white dudes in high school that, you know.
• 45:56
  Marcus Anderson: thought that they were, you know, blacker than the Black kids because they had their starter jackets, they had their whole costume.
• 46:04
  Marcus Anderson: And…
• 46:06
  Marcus Anderson: and they affected their manners of speech and being in a way that, you know, automatically signified Blackness, apparently. But at the same time, I did see some of these same kids
• 46:21
  Marcus Anderson: when you put them in the right situation, will say the most racist stuff, you know what I mean? So it's like, it's the classic example of, you know, wanting to be Black, but…
• 46:31
  Marcus Anderson: Maybe not caring about the people, and also,
• 46:36
  Marcus Anderson: and also just kind of, like, not wanting to be black, not wanting to have everything that comes with it, you know, wanting the outward trappings. And, in the comics, Hot Streak slash Francis, that's exactly who he is. Because it's not even, like, later on, it's not even, like, he…
• 46:53
  Marcus Anderson: comes back and is racist after he's been thwarted, it's like, right out the gate, right out the gate, he's, like, being pretty racist and static, while having black kids in his crew.
• 47:04
  Marcus Anderson: So it's kind of like, you know, and that's, like, that's true to life for a certain type of kid. So I actually appreciated the nuance of, because one thing that's really annoying about the 90s
• 47:15
  Marcus Anderson: I knew racism when I saw it. Most Black people knew it when they saw it. That being said, there was this kind of, like, on a more mainstream level, there was this nonsense idea that if somebody wasn't, like, saying slurs, that they'd get the benefit of the doubt, and that they're not racist, you know?
• 47:34
  Marcus Anderson: And now, it's like, a lot of people, not all people, but a lot of people… a lot more people have a maybe more nuanced idea of the ways that racism and white supremacy show up.
• 47:42
  Marcus Anderson: But, you know. So anyway, I say all that to say, Hi, Streak.
• 47:48
  Marcus Anderson: on the show is, like, you know, I feel like it's still in there, but, like, they, for instance, weren't able to have him say some of the stuff that he said in the book that really underlined…
• 47:59
  Ted: N-word or anything. No, I…
• 48:01
  Marcus Anderson: Good.
• 48:01
  Ted: And that's, like, I do… I… yeah, I should be clear about what I'm saying here. It's not that I'm saying that, like, oh man, he has to be spouting off racist drivel to be a racist asshole. No, it's more just, like, I'm curious how much they'll be able to do in the.
• 48:17
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah. No, I wasn't correcting you, I just was more… No, I didn't think it was that way either.
• 48:21
  Ted: Yeah. Apologizing at each other about this. But, but yeah, I… I… it's…
• 48:29
  Ted: There was something else I was gonna say in there. I… I finally… this is… this is gonna… I… I feel bad about how long this took me, but I finally saw Cinders for the first time this weekend.
• 48:39
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, yeah, yeah.
• 48:40
  Ted: Took me, took me way.
• 48:41
  Tad Eggleston: You're hitting me. I still need to…
• 48:43
  Ted: Oh, my God.
• 48:43
  Marcus Anderson: do intend.
• 48:45
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, it's got vampires.
• 48:48
  Ted: Why?
• 48:48
  Marcus Anderson: Why did anybody say that? It's… look, this is a work of art that should be appreciated by everybody, and it's a beautiful thing, and Ryan Coogler is the man.
• 48:58
  Tad Eggleston: I believe you, and I agree with you, and I will watch it, and… but, like…
• 49:03
  Marcus Anderson: If it helps, if it helps… It is… And… incredible, powerful, Period piece.
• 49:13
  Marcus Anderson: That's… that's got really compelling characters.
• 49:18
  Marcus Anderson: And, the vampires are not the central thing. They're a thing that happens, and there are even, like, thematic layers. There's thematic layers to them being vampires, but it's not just about, like, this is a vampire movie, if that makes sense.
• 49:34
  Tad Eggleston: That I get, and that part is why I will see it, but the person that's known me the longest and watched the most movies with me, and is one of the people that's recommended it, I asked him the straightforward question, because it's the only Quentin Tarantino movies that I've ever… only ever seen once.
• 49:52
  Tad Eggleston: Compare it to Dusk till dawn.
• 49:56
  Tad Eggleston: Cause I can handle dust till dawn until the vampires show up, and then I'm done!
• 50:01
  Marcus Anderson: Okay.
• 50:02
  Tad Eggleston: And he said I might have to, like.
• 50:04
  Tad Eggleston: Watch it in the right mood.
• 50:06
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, okay.
• 50:07
  Ted: I was so worried that I was gonna be yelled at for being the guy who took this long to watch.
• 50:15
  Marcus Anderson: I mean, I'm jokingly yell.
• 50:16
  Ted: No, no, no.
• 50:17
  Marcus Anderson: But I, but he…
• 50:18
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, I, like, I feel bad for not having watched it.
• 50:21
  Marcus Anderson: No, no.
• 50:22
  Tad Eggleston: since it hit streaming, I've been meaning to watch it. You and Joe Illage recommended it how long ago? It's been on my list.
• 50:30
  Tad Eggleston: The soundtrack is amazing, I've listened to the soundtrack last week. Oh, that's cool!
• 50:34
  Ted: Okay, you're…
• 50:34
  Marcus Anderson: Alright, you got extra credit for that.
• 50:36
  Marcus Anderson: Yes.
• 50:37
  Ted: Yeah, I still haven't listened to the soundtrack, so yeah.
• 50:39
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, let's do it immediately, because it's like, yeah.
• 50:43
  Ted: Let's stop the… let's stop the podcast here. No, I'm kidding.
• 50:45
  Marcus Anderson: I'll do it. I mean, I don't know if it'll, demonetize or mess with 22 panels.
• 50:51
  Ted: point.
• 50:51
  Marcus Anderson: But, you know… I would.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: The one time, and it didn't actually get taken down, but the one time I ever got, like, a YouTube notice for anything was when I played, apparently, just… just barely too much. I didn't get any, like…
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: it was… Trying to remember the… the… the… specific…
• 51:18
  Tad Eggleston: event in, like, the world that had me decide to play music over Tyler talking about the event recently. But one of the things that I played was the intro to the Monkeys, and I played just enough of it
• 51:31
  Tad Eggleston: that, that I got the, the, the notice from YouTube about…
• 51:37
  Tad Eggleston: But not for the other song that I'd used, so apparently I didn't use too much of that song.
• 51:43
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah…
• 51:44
  Ted: Anyway, just to… just to get back to Ernst…
• 51:47
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:48
  Ted: No, no. No, I… I… having finally, you know, watched it, like, there's that line in there that, like, you know, nobody want… everybody loves us, nobody wants to be us, you know?
• 51:59
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's…
• 52:00
  Ted: That is exactly…
• 52:01
  Marcus Anderson: Super real.
• 52:02
  Ted: Yeah, it's the entire point of that, and that's absolutely the thing that's a part of that.
• 52:06
  Marcus Anderson: Of course, everybody loves the blues, but they just… the problem is they just don't love the people.
• 52:10
  Ted: Yes, thank you. Yes, the Delroy Lynn Oles line, yeah.
• 52:13
  Tad Eggleston: I love the blues and the people who make it.
• 52:17
  Marcus Anderson: Food.
• 52:18
  Ted: No, I, I, I was… It's…
• 52:24
  Ted: Yeah, I'm curious to see exactly what they do with Francis, and how to make… and how they… how they keep him…
• 52:30
  Ted: I don't want to say keep him relevant, but, like, what exactly they do to him as the series goes on, because that's… they… they could do a lot with him, or they could just kind of have him be a nuisance who shows up, and I don't… I have no idea what the…
• 52:42
  Ted: what the plan is for any of it, so I… I'm really curious what they do with him.
• 52:46
  Marcus Anderson: I arguably don't necessarily think he has to be…
• 52:49
  Ted: Oh, no, I don'.
• 52:50
  Marcus Anderson: It's not that I think… Only because… yeah.
• 52:54
  Ted: Go ahead.
• 52:55
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, no, no, no, I'm just gonna… that… I think that's all, only just because… it's like, I…
• 53:00
  Marcus Anderson: Even in the, comics mechanics.
• 53:04
  Marcus Anderson: Like, for instance, like, the classic thing is, like, Flash Thompson, which, obviously, at a certain point, Flash has gone through all kinds of permutations. Side note, I recently was reading the…
• 53:16
  Marcus Anderson: I've been reading the arc where,
• 53:18
  Marcus Anderson: you know, Flash is framed by Ned Leeds for being Hobgoblin, which is a… and then… and then Flash is on the run, it's a great, crazy, weird story.
• 53:29
  Tad Eggleston: I gotta tell you that one of my… one of the only Venom runs that I enjoy is the Flash Thompson Venom.
• 53:36
  Marcus Anderson: Okay.
• 53:37
  Tad Eggleston: for me.
• 53:38
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, but that's the thing. Yeah, so sorry, I totally went on a… on an ADHD side quest, but what I was really saying was that.
• 53:46
  Tad Eggleston: And I've been holding off my ADHD side quest.
• 53:49
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, no, look, it's… I fight mine all the time. But, no, what I was… what I actually was talking about is the fact that, like, in that classic motif, especially back when Peter was in high school, you know, Flash was a recurring bully antagonist.
• 54:06
  Marcus Anderson: And I think with… by the time you get to static, they weren't as reliant on, like, you know, how streets gotta pop up all the time. And I appreciate that, because I can't stand high streets.
• 54:18
  Ted: Yeah.
• 54:19
  Marcus Anderson: And I feel like… I almost feel like he… his role was served just in the opening couple issues of Static, where essentially Virgil has to…
• 54:31
  Marcus Anderson: Dig inside and figure out what it is, what's his block, you know, mentally.
• 54:38
  Marcus Anderson: That's, like, preventing him from really standing up to his bully, you know? So it's almost like, when Virgil beat him.
• 54:46
  Marcus Anderson: the first time, it was, like, dealt with. And then he does pop back up as his true racist self, in his racist final form, you know, and and Virgil, you know, has to stop him again, but he's… I don't honestly know how Streak is interesting enough. I think it's more what he presents for our hero.
• 55:06
  Marcus Anderson: as an obstacle than him being a character that needs to be a… like, he's not…
• 55:13
  Marcus Anderson: He's not like a Green Goblin to me.
• 55:15
  Ted: Right. And, I mean, now that you mention it, I kind of forgot that in Season 1, what they do with him, which I think was an interesting attempt to twist it, he, like, joins up with the feds.
• 55:27
  Ted: Right? Like, isn't that the thing where he shows.
• 55:28
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, you're right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 55:30
  Ted: He's suddenly working for… it's not Alva, it's…
• 55:34
  Marcus Anderson: Right, there's, like, some, like, anti-metahuman, they're locking up all the kids, and he's aiding them, basically.
• 55:43
  Ted: Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's a… that's a… that's…
• 55:45
  Tad Eggleston: Ice.
• 55:47
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, essentially, essentially…
• 55:49
  Ted: It is.
• 55:49
  Marcus Anderson: It is, yeah, yeah.
• 55:50
  Ted: But yeah, like, that's… that's what they did to make him relevant in the Season 1 series, which I think was an interesting swing. I mean, I kind of forgot about it until we just talked about it, but I was like, oh yeah, shit, that is what they did, and it did… it… it was an attempt to keep him…
• 56:05
  Ted: interestingly… not scary, but just, you know, villainous, like… Yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, I,
• 56:13
  Ted: I think that's… I think you're right that he doesn't need to stick around, it's more just like I'm curious what they'll do to… Right, right. Because, you know, presumably you make that character design, you're gonna have to… you're gonna have him show up at least a couple times, you know? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:26
  Ted: Yeah, so, but yeah, I, I, I, he's… yeah, I do think Eben is the real… is the real breakout character of the TV show of Static.
• 56:35
  Ted: as, like, the new… the sensational new character find of the year 2000. So I'm… I want to see how… what they do with him. I mean, you'll notice, like, in that theme song, it's, you know, Rubberman shows up, Rubberman Man shows up, Static beats him. I think, isn't it Hot Streak shows up, he beats him, and then Eben shows up, and he's the real, like, threat for…
• 56:56
  Ted: So then he moves him, too.
• 56:58
  Marcus Anderson: do the intro thing where, you know, and a lot of shows did this, where it's kind of like, look, we gotta just mash it together, but because the way they cut the intro, he looks at the alarm clock, he's like, I gotta get to school, so it literally looks like he beat all the villains on the way to school and still made it in time for all of them.
• 57:14
  Ted: Which, again.
• 57:15
  Marcus Anderson: Which is, it's, it's like cute little, like, yeah, little… Animated intro type thing.
• 57:22
  Ted: Well, it gives you the sense of what the, you know, what the character is, what's important to him, what's the, you know, what's the relationships he's got going on. I mean, you think back to the classic Batman the Animated Series opening.
• 57:31
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 57:32
  Ted: emphasizing, like, his stealthiness, sort of his ability, but, like, the fact that he's only…
• 57:37
  Marcus Anderson: Go ahead.
• 57:38
  Ted: shadow, yeah, the hand-to-hand, and also that it's, you know, he's silent protector, watching over everything, whereas Virgil's like a kid in school, he's got friends, he's got a community, and that's, you know, that's his… his,
• 57:52
  Ted: milieu, I guess? I don't know. You know, that's the thing that matters for him, and I think that, you know, it suits the show perfectly well.
• 58:01
  Marcus Anderson: Definitely.
• 58:02
  Ted: Yeah, I… Shoot, I don't know, I don't really know what else to say about all this.
• 58:07
  Marcus Anderson: One thing, one thing I…
• 58:08
  Tad Eggleston: Time for my ADHD 10.
• 58:09
  Ted: Okay.
• 58:11
  Tad Eggleston: Holding onto it.
• 58:12
  Marcus Anderson: thing, real quick.
• 58:13
  Marcus Anderson: I just want to think… you know, Static has… and I think we've talked about it, he's got a long legacy. I absolutely love Miles Morales, but definitely, like, I feel like, you know, you… you don't get to Miles Morales without Static. Oh, no. Like, a lot… a lot of what…
• 58:31
  Marcus Anderson: is there… and Miles is his own thing, he's not derivative. Same as Static isn't derivative of Peter Parker. He's just, you know, they're… they're kind of taking this archetype and taking it to new places. So… but, interestingly.
• 58:45
  Marcus Anderson: One of the things, and I think it kind of underscores How this show plays…
• 58:52
  Marcus Anderson: Tonally with… while still taking elements of,
• 58:56
  Marcus Anderson: of the core of the comic, but also doing stuff that's real, like, I don't know, just fun kids' TV stuff. There's, like, goofy hijinks, like when, the episode with the germ, it's, like, Frida and her, like, you know, school newspaper nerd.
• 59:15
  Ted: Yeah.
• 59:15
  Marcus Anderson: They're, they're, like, you know, they're trying to do, like, student activism, and so they're, they're, like, sneaking in, because, as I remember, I think the, the teachers, or whoever's, like, over the newspaper, was like, look, you can't do this story, so they want to get evidence and do this unauthorized story.
• 59:35
  Ted: the paper, I love that, that was so good.
• 59:36
  Marcus Anderson: Right, yeah, so they get locked… there's, like, a whole, like, kind of, like, comical hijinks, thing where, like, Richie and.
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: This actually perfectly leads into my tangent. Oh, great, okay.
• 59:47
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, cool.
• 59:47
  Tad Eggleston: isn't fully a tangible.
• 59:48
  Marcus Anderson: Wait a second, we might be about to talk about the same thing. Let's see if it is.
• 59:53
  Marcus Anderson: Well, where I was going, because it's gonna be about the janitor, is what I was gonna talk about. But, like, when that whole thing is happening, right, there's, you know, there's the antagonist, maybe even more so than the germ.
• 1:00:08
  Marcus Anderson: This episode is this, cranky old janitor that's just, like, always, like, giving the kids a hard time.
• 1:00:15
  Ted: Mr. Janice, I think his name?
• 1:00:16
  Marcus Anderson: I think, yeah, Janice, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was thinking about it, I was like, yo, this is…
• 1:00:21
  Marcus Anderson: it was just funny, like, the way the little beats are playing off. It's arguably, almost like, Three's Company brand, you know what I mean? Like, hijinks or whatever that's going on. But then, Mr. Janice, he really is, like, an annoying antagonist, and then I was like, oh, I don't know if you guys have played the…
• 1:00:39
  Marcus Anderson: Sony Spider-Man games, but there's, like…
• 1:00:42
  Ted: Yes.
• 1:00:43
  Marcus Anderson: In the… do you know what I'm talking about? In the… in the… Spider-Man?
• 1:00:47
  Ted: In the witch?
• 1:00:48
  Marcus Anderson: there's… there's a, like, a level where… because the Spider-Man games are… they're incredible, like,
• 1:00:55
  Marcus Anderson: But they… and they do, like, a lot of, like, interesting emotional beats and flashbacks, and the Spider-Man 2… in Spider-Man 2 specifically, like, Harry Osborn plays, like, a significant role in the game, without spoilers.
• 1:01:10
  Marcus Anderson: But, there is a level where it's like a flashback to when they were in high school. Oh, no, no! Peter and Harry go to their old… they break into their old high school in the present day, but it's also kind of like they're flashing back and talking about
• 1:01:26
  Marcus Anderson: when they had, been in high school back then, and there is an antagonist janitor character that's pretty much the same character. Like, you know what I mean?
• 1:01:36
  Ted: I forgot about that.
• 1:01:36
  Marcus Anderson: And, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. I wonder if that's, like…
• 1:01:41
  Marcus Anderson: I just wonder if that's, like, really direct, you know? Because there are a lot of things where you see statics influence in other media, you know, and, like, that's kind of on the nose one, but maybe it's a coincidence. I mean, if you have, like…
• 1:01:53
  Tad Eggleston: This janitor's kind of a less Scottish groundskeeper Willie.
• 1:01:58
  Marcus Anderson: That's true. Oh, is that where you were going with this?
• 1:02:00
  Tad Eggleston: Where I was going in general was…
• 1:02:03
  Tad Eggleston: And part of this is, like, it plays differently in animation versus…
• 1:02:09
  Tad Eggleston: comics, so I really had to sit with it
• 1:02:11
  Tad Eggleston: for a second, and I watched a number of the episodes twice.
• 1:02:16
  Tad Eggleston: I was caught off guard by the slapstick, and initially, it… it… it turned me off, because, like.
• 1:02:24
  Tad Eggleston: I think is… I think of static as… as humorous, but it… but, like…
• 1:02:30
  Marcus Anderson: It's serious.
• 1:02:31
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, but yeah, like, you're dealing with serious… serious stuff.
• 1:02:38
  Tad Eggleston: But then, again, like, between… between thinking about how the mediums are different, and thinking about the target audience being younger, it, like, really grew on me, particularly in those fourth and fifth episodes.
• 1:02:51
  Tad Eggleston: You know, the slapstick element of both the germ episode and the bouncy ball episode was just…
• 1:02:59
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Tad Eggleston: It was fantastic. Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  Marcus Anderson: Which one?
• 1:03:02
  Tad Eggleston: But, but it, it, it, like, it took me a minute.
• 1:03:06
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 1:03:07
  Tad Eggleston: to not have it rub me the wrong way and make it feel like it was… it was taking… I mean, particularly because the way that we have looked at the milestone universe is through a pretty…
• 1:03:20
  Tad Eggleston: serious social lens? Like… It initially is like, oh, are we just making light of all of this stuff?
• 1:03:28
  Tad Eggleston: And they're not. I'm not saying that they were, but, like, that was my… My initial knee-jerk reaction.
• 1:03:39
  Tad Eggleston: And it took kind of that second watch to go, oh, no, it's, it's…
• 1:03:45
  Tad Eggleston: this is… this is in line with The Simpsons, and with…
• 1:03:49
  Tad Eggleston: you know, Phil Lamar is heavily involved with, Futurama, and, and, like, definitely with Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures, where, yes, there's stuff going on, but we're gonna make kids laugh, too.
• 1:04:05
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, no, definitely, definitely. And then you, you know, if you think about it, I mean, we all…
• 1:04:12
  Marcus Anderson: Weren't in the target age when this came out.
• 1:04:15
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 1:04:15
  Marcus Anderson: But, it's like… so it's like cartoons,
• 1:04:20
  Marcus Anderson: there's different trends. I'm… I'm somewhat familiar with, like, some of the shows of this period, mostly through, like, a lot of the students that I was teaching in the early arts, like, you know, because they would, you know, I was teaching art, and, like, so a lot of the characters they would want to draw would come straight from these shows, like…
• 1:04:36
  Marcus Anderson: I don't… I might be getting the dates wrong, but, like, a lot of the kids, they would, like, reference, like, Fairly Odd Parents, and, like, a lot of these other shows that were a little bit after me. And, you know, I've since seen a lot of these shows, but I wasn't seeing them.
• 1:04:49
  Tad Eggleston: Those are definitely ones that my kids were watching.
• 1:04:51
  Marcus Anderson: Right, so then there's… Yeah.
• 1:04:54
  Tad Eggleston: Probably a little bit after this, cause, cause…
• 1:04:57
  Tad Eggleston: My son was born in 01.
• 1:05:01
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:02
  Tad Eggleston: And I know… I know that there were still new fairly odd parents when he was, like, 2 to 5.
• 1:05:07
  Marcus Anderson: Right. So that's interesting, because even the shows that I'm referencing, like, to your point, are even a little bit after this. And then, like, you know, for us, we're thinking about, like, the shows we've referenced so far are, like.
• 1:05:19
  Marcus Anderson: 90s shows, animaniacs, Batman anime series, etc. So, in some ways, for me, this kind of exists in a space where I wasn't watching a lot of the contemporaries of this show. Right. You know, and… but, I mean, I guess I bring that up because I know
• 1:05:33
  Marcus Anderson: comedy in general, but definitely.
• 1:05:37
  Tad Eggleston: Apparently, OddParents did start in 2001, in a 10-season series.
• 1:05:42
  Marcus Anderson: Right. But point being, like, like, definitely, like, when you look at conventions, or just,
• 1:05:49
  Marcus Anderson: you know, of the medium, like, in… in, well, comic books as well, but also, in animation, they do, they do change, like, as you go from, like, decade to decade, and different things come in and out, so, I'd be… I'm sure this tonally is maybe hitting some of the beats of,
• 1:06:09
  Marcus Anderson: of… You know, 2,000, animation.
• 1:06:14
  Ted: Yeah, it's… I mean, the thing is, is also Static was always… was always a pretty funny… well, I wouldn't say it was always a hilarious book, but like, you know, there was a lot of… there was a lot of wordplay, there was a lot of kids, you know, teenagers being dorks, there was a whole lot of, you know, Virgil playing, Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, and they made a lot of fun of that.
• 1:06:31
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:06:32
  Ted: It was… it was a funnier series than a lot of the… well, even the other Milestone series were, you know, had… had funny bits to them.
• 1:06:38
  Marcus Anderson: Definitely, yeah, there's humor, yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Ted: Yeah, but yeah, I think that it's, it's, you know, it's still gotta be funny, it's just in a different way, and I think it translated largely well. I was also kind of caught off guard by it, I guess, but it wasn't, like…
• 1:06:52
  Ted: Yeah, it wasn't off…
• 1:06:54
  Tad Eggleston: Looks like it might have actually kind of kicked off that second round of… Warner Brothers Animation.
• 1:07:02
  Tad Eggleston: Because Justice League Unlimited… er, Justice League started in 2001, Teen Titans in 2003.
• 1:07:10
  Marcus Anderson: And actually, Dwayne McDuffie… Dwayne McDuffie played, you know, was there for Justice League as well.
• 1:07:16
  Ted: Yeah, and he was… and now that I think about it…
• 1:07:18
  Tad Eggleston: Beyond started in 99.
• 1:07:20
  Ted: Yeah, and Justice League was the one where I know that also, that's where Static shows up. An older Static. I forget if he's still played by Phil Lamar, I wanna say he is, but…
• 1:07:28
  Tad Eggleston: I think he is.
• 1:07:28
  Marcus Anderson: I'm sure he probably is, because he's the voice. He's like the on-screen voice of Static. Also, real quick, while we were talking, I just… I did take a look to see what other milestone characters show up, and, I saw something which was said that I think,
• 1:07:44
  Marcus Anderson: hardware and icon and rocket show up at some point. I didn't even, like, really go into, like.
• 1:07:50
  Tad Eggleston: Well, the, I didn't see any listening for… for Icon.
• 1:07:57
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't actually see any listing for any of them when I was going through the characters, but I did see in the trivia is that the place where Static's dad works is, like, the…
• 1:08:07
  Tad Eggleston: the Augustus Freeman Community Center.
• 1:08:11
  Ted: Interesting.
• 1:08:13
  Ted: Yeah, I can't even remember what his dad is.
• 1:08:15
  Tad Eggleston: I did notice at one point they were on the corner of Milestone and Cowan.
• 1:08:18
  Ted: Yeah, and also there's, like, when he's looking for Evan's, subway station where he's hiding out, it turns out to be Milestone Station. Yeah, no, there's…
• 1:08:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Milestone Station was the milestone in Cowan.
• 1:08:30
  Ted: Oh, was it, that's where the… yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that makes sense. Yeah, it's… like, I… I would love to see there be more milestone stuff in this show, but it's…
• 1:08:41
  Ted: It's very complete unto itself that it doesn't really need it, so I'm okay with it being kind of… Well, I mean, it did…
• 1:08:50
  Tad Eggleston: It did also catch me off guard to have Alva…
• 1:08:53
  Ted: Yeah, Alpha's in there, but also, like, again, I was so confused, I'm like, that's Alpha? And the mayor, too, the mayor looks nothing like she does when she shows up at ICON. That was, I mean, that was more of a minor thing, but it was also just like, wait, that's the mayor?
• 1:09:05
  Ted: She's got, like, the… she's got, like.
• 1:09:06
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, wait a second, I'm seeing something that contradicts that. Maybe I… maybe hardware doesn't. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
• 1:09:12
  Ted: Yeah, I am very curious to know what ends up showing up, but I also…
• 1:09:19
  Tad Eggleston: see that Shaq and Karl Malone were in later episodes.
• 1:09:22
  Marcus Anderson: Karl Malone. Shaq doesn't surprise me as much as Karl Malone. Carl Malone…
• 1:09:27
  Tad Eggleston: act…
• 1:09:28
  Marcus Anderson: I don't even see Carl Malone being able to emote.
• 1:09:31
  Ted: Lucas, see, he…
• 1:09:33
  Tad Eggleston: here is what I thought was particularly interesting about the Carl Malone.
• 1:09:39
  Tad Eggleston: Let me, let me go pull up the episode again.
• 1:09:42
  Marcus Anderson: He must play a cowboy character.
• 1:09:46
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, it's… it's, like, the name of the episode, I think, is, like, Hoop Squad?
• 1:09:51
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, that makes sense. Okay, okay, okay. That's not my go-to out of 90s basketball players, though.
• 1:09:58
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and he plays himself slash some villain.
• 1:10:03
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, oh!
• 1:10:04
  Marcus Anderson: That makes sense.
• 1:10:06
  Tad Eggleston: But, but what caused.
• 1:10:08
  Marcus Anderson: The Jazz were villains.
• 1:10:10
  Marcus Anderson: Let me…
• 1:10:10
  Tad Eggleston: Let me… let me go find it.
• 1:10:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, Coolio was in an episode, too.
• 1:10:17
  Marcus Anderson: I think I remember the… I forget who he voiced, but I remember hearing his voice at some point.
• 1:10:21
  Tad Eggleston: He played Replicon slash Marvin Roper.
• 1:10:25
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, yeah.
• 1:10:27
  Ted: That's another thing, by the way, the structure of this, where every… I mean, it's not gonna be like this all the time, but it's like, oh no, every episode, there's a new Bang Baby just showing up, and it's tearing up, and like, that's such a great way to have, like, an easy way to bring in, you know, one-shot characters, or, like, people who are only gonna, you know, be there momentarily.
• 1:10:44
  Tad Eggleston: Season 4, Episode 7.
• 1:10:48
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, no, go ahead too far. Okay, go ahead.
• 1:10:50
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:10:51
  Tad Eggleston: Has… has, and this is where it's kind of, like, weird to me.
• 1:11:00
  Tad Eggleston: Let's look… you've got characters… are…
• 1:11:06
  Tad Eggleston: Karl Malone slash Pulverizer, Yao Ming slash Center Force, Nash slash Point Man.
• 1:11:13
  Tad Eggleston: Carl Moore.
• 1:11:14
  Marcus Anderson: Are they all on the same team, or are they on different teams?
• 1:11:17
  Tad Eggleston: I… I… I…
• 1:11:18
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, well, we'll get there.
• 1:11:19
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just…
• 1:11:20
  Marcus Anderson: You know what, I'm gonna go ahead and watch this episode ahead. I need to… I need to know… Yeah, I mean, we're gonna go.
• 1:11:24
  Tad Eggleston: We're not gonna get to Season 4 before we go back to reading. I know, I'm just confused.
• 1:11:29
  Marcus Anderson: I'm confessing to you both that I am going to watch this episode this week.
• 1:11:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
• 1:11:34
  Ted: I'm here.
• 1:11:35
  Tad Eggleston: Let me finish, though.
• 1:11:36
  Ted: Oh, good.
• 1:11:36
  Tad Eggleston: Karl Malone plays Karl Malone, but Jen Kuo Sung plays Yao Ming, and Chris is Steve Nash.
• 1:11:45
  Marcus Anderson: That just means they couldn't get Yao. That's hilarious. Of course Karl Malone is the one person they could get. You know what I mean?
• 1:11:50
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I didn't realize this. This is also the episode that has…
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: Steers, or Winchester as Dr. Odium, and David Pamer as Mason Andrews. So, this, this, this episode has, has, like.
• 1:12:05
  Tad Eggleston: All sorts of people who've done all sorts of other stuff.
• 1:12:10
  Marcus Anderson: Okay, I just hope they got Steve Nash's hair right. You gotta get the… they get the sweep of his hair.
• 1:12:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:12:16
  Marcus Anderson: You know.
• 1:12:17
  Tad Eggleston: Is that how it looked in, in, in… this was a.
• 1:12:22
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I didn't see… I haven't seen this episode. I've only seen a bunch of season 1.
• 1:12:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:12:28
  Tad Eggleston: I think this is a, yeah, this is a season 4 episode.
• 1:12:31
  Marcus Anderson: Ugh, okay.
• 1:12:35
  Marcus Anderson: I'll rewatch it when we catch up to it, but I am going to watch it this week.
• 1:12:39
  Tad Eggleston: Also, did you guys notice that Christopher Priest gets listed as a creator?
• 1:12:45
  Ted: That is cool.
• 1:12:47
  Ted: Shit, yeah, okay. Yeah, I was kind of wondering, I mean, I noticed that, like, so, I'm pretty sure Dwayne McDuffie wrote the, like, the Rubber Bandman episode.
• 1:12:54
  Ted: And I…
• 1:12:58
  Marcus Anderson: I think he's basically a showrunner, right? It was kind of…
• 1:13:00
  Ted: Yee!
• 1:13:01
  Marcus Anderson: creator.
• 1:13:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't know how many…
• 1:13:05
  Ted: My name is Caroline.
• 1:13:06
  Tad Eggleston: Because he…
• 1:13:06
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, maybe.
• 1:13:07
  Tad Eggleston: It is Creator on all of them.
• 1:13:11
  Tad Eggleston: But McDuffie has written by on 8 episodes.
• 1:13:16
  Tad Eggleston: Episodes 1 through… well, actually, all the ones we've… we've,
• 1:13:21
  Tad Eggleston: No? Yeah, the only one that, that, that, of the five that we've done that he was… that he wrote was the, they're playing my song.
• 1:13:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, the rubber band man.
• 1:13:33
  Ted: Which, again…
• 1:13:34
  Tad Eggleston: The one that he wrote is Episode 10.
• 1:13:37
  Tad Eggleston: Cowan, however, directed the The breed, so the third episode.
• 1:13:46
  Ted: Right, the one with Destruct, okay.
• 1:13:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:13:48
  Ted: Maybe the character's actual name.
• 1:13:49
  Tad Eggleston: And actually, the next episode we'll watch.
• 1:13:52
  Ted: episode.
• 1:13:52
  Tad Eggleston: 6 is a coward.
• 1:13:54
  Tad Eggleston: directed.
• 1:13:56
  Marcus Anderson: Oops.
• 1:13:57
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, kid.
• 1:13:59
  Tad Eggleston: Alright. Dennis Cowan actually directed more episodes than anybody, with 9.
• 1:14:05
  Ted: Huh, okay. Cool. Interesting. I'm… I… I wanna… oof.
• 1:14:11
  Ted: Yeah, this is… I mean…
• 1:14:14
  Ted: I remember poking around in the Wikipedia page, trying to learn a little bit more about the series, and apparently there were attempts to pitch a couple different potential milestone shows. And this, like, there was one that was just sort of like…
• 1:14:29
  Ted: a bunch of different heroes, I think, from Milestone that were all on a team together that weren't really in a team in the original…
• 1:14:36
  Ted: comics, but they were just like, well, let's, you know, we gotta kind of pick the best ones, I guess. That's… that's what I got from my impression of it, I don't remember if that's true or not, but it is, like, I'm curious…
• 1:14:46
  Ted: I'm just… I'm just curious what the… what the process was like, you know? I would love to be…
• 1:14:53
  Marcus Anderson: These network execs, come on. You know they weren't gonna get, you know, most of the milestone stuff through.
• 1:15:03
  Marcus Anderson: Onto the kids' WB.
• 1:15:06
  Ted: But.
• 1:15:07
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah. I mean, and I'm not… that's nothing.
• 1:15:10
  Ted: No, I'm.
• 1:15:11
  Marcus Anderson: Static, because we've all… we've all talked about how, you know, even though static is the youngest, and maybe the…
• 1:15:18
  Tad Eggleston: They made him even younger for the show.
• 1:15:20
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, but out of the milestone run, you know, he was kind of the one with the…
• 1:15:25
  Marcus Anderson: arguably the sunniest disposition. You know, there's dark stuff that happens in aesthetic, you know, so…
• 1:15:31
  Marcus Anderson: They even studied, they had to…
• 1:15:34
  Marcus Anderson: we, you know, tone it down, but we weren't gonna see a Blood Syndicate, animation.
• 1:15:39
  Ted: Well, and also, like, that first, you know, that first issue of Static, like, I kind of went back and reread it, and it's like, oh yeah, he shows up at, like, at Frida's house, having been… having had the shit kicked out of him by… by…
• 1:15:50
  Marcus Anderson: Dude.
• 1:15:50
  Ted: By, by, Francis.
• 1:15:52
  Marcus Anderson: Which, he did, he did get a black eye.
• 1:15:55
  Ted: They did, that's true, and actually, I do appreciate that they did that. And also, you know, again, like, I don't want to sound like I'm saying that, oh, they had to dumb it down or whatever. It is, like, they had to change some things, but, you know, when he's given a gun.
• 1:16:07
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:16:07
  Ted: And, like, it's clear that, like, this is a… this is a big frickin' deal, and he very specifically is like, no, I can't do this, and he, like, throws it into the river. I thought that was great.
• 1:16:18
  Marcus Anderson: You're right, you're absolutely right, because I feel like this marks, like…
• 1:16:22
  Marcus Anderson: Because, you know, I mean, again, we all maybe watch 90s animated stuff.
• 1:16:28
  Marcus Anderson: there was, you know, Batman famously, they did loosen it up by the time they got to Batman Adventures, like, what they could show violence-wise, you know, and they were very limited. So, in a lot of ways, you're right, the fact that on a kid's show… like, you… I'm gonna say, like, even 10 years earlier, you probably wouldn't have seen
• 1:16:48
  Marcus Anderson: a teenage kid character, wrestling with whether or not, you know, to use a gun, or being given a gun by another kid. Yeah. So, they did push, you know, push some of the animated limits.
• 1:17:02
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:17:03
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:17:03
  Ted: Again, I keep thinking of, like, Gargos had an anti-gun episode that I think was one of the, like, the best.
• 1:17:07
  Marcus Anderson: I remember that, yeah.
• 1:17:09
  Ted: Yeah, it's, it's like the.
• 1:17:10
  Marcus Anderson: That's a good-ass show.
• 1:17:11
  Ted: could have done. That's such a good… like, we were… we were…
• 1:17:14
  Marcus Anderson: I think it's a gargoyle spinoff, I mean, you know…
• 1:17:16
  Ted: Here's the thing, apparently, Jordan Peele… is it Jordan Peele?
• 1:17:21
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I did hear… is he working on something? I think I remember hearing something about that.
• 1:17:26
  Ted: Yeah, and it's like, Jesus Christ, just, you know, send me to heaven right now, because that sounds like… that's exactly what I've always wanted.
• 1:17:33
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:34
  Ted: No, I… oof, I can't tell you how much I would give for that kind of thing. But yeah, no, Gargoyles was like, you want to talk sort of sophisticated, interesting, animated shows of the 90s and 2000s. But yeah, that's a separate conversation.
• 1:17:45
  Marcus Anderson: That's true, that's true, that kind of disproves my point, too, but, you know…
• 1:17:47
  Ted: No, no, no, I'm not… sorry, I…
• 1:17:49
  Marcus Anderson: No, but I'm saying, like, it's cool. I don't need to… I don't need to be perfectly right about it, and that's actually… I forgot about gargoyles.
• 1:17:56
  Ted: Well, Gargos, yeah, I mean, that's… there's… yeah, for the tangent for a second, like, there's an episode where…
• 1:18:01
  Ted: for those who haven't seen it, just to, like, do a quick up-to-speed thing, you know, the gargoyles are these guys who have literally been… they were alive a thousand years ago in ancient Scotland, and they get brought back to life in modern-day New York, and one of… and they befriend, like, a cop, which… it's 90s TV, you gotta have a good cop on it, I guess.
• 1:18:18
  Ted: But, but she's like, she's a biracial cop? Anyway, and it's a thing where she, like, forgets to lock up her gun as she gets home.
• 1:18:26
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I remember that.
• 1:18:27
  Ted: And yeah, one of the characters gets ahold of the gun, is kind of waving it around like a kid, and he ends up accidentally shooting her, and then he… he ends up hating guns so much that then, like, his sort of recurring villain character is this gun smuggler, who, you know, God, I love that, ugh!
• 1:18:43
  Ted: Can we do a Gargoyle spin-off series? Like, can that… can we just start.
• 1:18:45
  Marcus Anderson: That's what I was gonna say, I'll talk about… I'll rewatch Gargas and talk about it.
• 1:18:49
  Ted: watch the shit out of Gargon. But yeah, like, the fact that they kept that in static is, again, like, hugely to the credit of the original series, and also the credit to the people who are working on it, who realized, yeah, you gotta have the gun. You gotta have it make it real that it's, like, it's not just, oh, I'm gonna go beat up Francis. It's like, no, give him a gun.
• 1:19:07
  Ted: It's gotta be a thing where you realize just how much
• 1:19:10
  Ted: is at stake, and how much it matters for Static to say, no, I'm not doing this.
• 1:19:16
  Ted: And then, you know, he's still in the fight, he can't really leave easily, so he gets hit with the gas, and yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like…
• 1:19:22
  Ted: Yeah, I… I… I cannot tell you how happy I… this sounds weird… I can't tell you how happy I was when he unwrapped the thing and there was a gun in there. It's like, oh yeah, I know the gun! Sweet!
• 1:19:33
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:19:34
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah. Also, also, you know, another Marcus Black movie reference, but, like, when he…
• 1:19:40
  Marcus Anderson: When he throws the gun in the river, that's, you know, that's also a nod to Juice. You know, Juice was.
• 1:19:46
  Ted: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:47
  Marcus Anderson: you know, which was 1992, you know, which I… yeah, I guess would have been a year…
• 1:19:53
  Marcus Anderson: Before Static debuted.
• 1:19:55
  Ted: I never even thought… I don't… I know of juice, I've never seen it. No, I… that's… I wouldn't be surprised at all if that was in their head to make that a thing, no.
• 1:20:03
  Marcus Anderson: I feel like there's a lot of… after Juice, there was a lot of, like, when a character had to make a choice about violence.
• 1:20:09
  Ted: And he throws.
• 1:20:09
  Marcus Anderson: Throwing your gun in the river is a good, you know, it's a nice cinematic way to underscore their choice.
• 1:20:17
  Ted: Yeah, I'm trying to remember… I re-read that episode… or re-read that issue, because I was trying to remember, like, how does that happen? Like, what's the… he doesn't throw it in the river, there's some other… no, he has it in his hands, I forgot about that. He actually, like, points it.
• 1:20:29
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, he was aiming it, yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:30
  Ted: Yeah, and you get to see down the site, and that was… I mean, that was…
• 1:20:34
  Ted: that was also really good in its own way, and that was, again, like, using the medium in a really cool way. Like, I think that was a really hard-hitting moment for him, and they just did it in a different way, and I think it, you know, both of them worked really well for the medium that they're in.
• 1:20:48
  Ted: Yeah, I… I didn't expect to like this as much as I did. It was a little bit slower than I expected it to… I… I mean, I say slower, it's just like…
• 1:21:00
  Ted: I'm used to, you know.
• 1:21:02
  Ted: Futurama-style, or, like, Simpson-style rapid-fire, every moment is a joke, or whatever line, and, like, this is… or I'm used to Bat… well, even when I rewatch Batman the Animated Series, I'm like, wow, there's a lot of kind of slow shots, we're.
• 1:21:15
  Marcus Anderson: No, there's patient. They're very patient stuff. I've been watching a lot of Batman the MA series recently. Oh, God, yeah. There's a lot of…
• 1:21:21
  Marcus Anderson: Slower stuff.
• 1:21:22
  Ted: Well, and it's also, like… yeah, I mean, now that I think about it, the parts of Batman, the animated series that really stick with me, like, the first Two-Face episode, there's the whole sequence where he's meeting with.
• 1:21:30
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:21:31
  Ted: And he gets, like, hypnotized, he's, like, transforming, almost, in the chair. God.
• 1:21:35
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:36
  Ted: I forgot about that stuff.
• 1:21:38
  Ted: I did want to mention, speaking of Batman the Animated Series.
• 1:21:41
  Ted: Did anyone else… this is such a specific question. Did anyone else think, at a couple points, looking at, like.
• 1:21:48
  Ted: moments where something was either exploding or, like, on fire. Did anyone else think, like, huh, that looks way more, like, high… not high resolution, but, like, that looks way more well-animated than the rest of the series. I wonder if they just reused some of the…
• 1:22:05
  Ted: Did anyone else… am I the only one who noticed that?
• 1:22:08
  Marcus Anderson: It didn't jump out to me. I'll look for it when we watch again.
• 1:22:13
  Ted: there's, like, two moments, there's, like, one is in the one where he goes into Alva's, like, building, and, like, he blows up the, like, the console on the guy's face. Like, something about one.
• 1:22:24
  Marcus Anderson: Are you saying it looked more realistic, or…
• 1:22:26
  Ted: not realistic, but, like, the way that Batman, the animated series, the really good Batman.
• 1:22:29
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:31
  Ted: do explosions, which I guess was really based off of, like, how, like, Akira was doing explosions. Like, how high-end anime was doing explosions.
• 1:22:38
  Marcus Anderson: And Batman definitely had, like, they were animating overseas in Asia, definitely. Yeah.
• 1:22:45
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, so…
• 1:22:46
  Ted: No, for sure, and that's… I mean, that's kind of what I wonder about, is like…
• 1:22:50
  Ted: I wonder if they got to not reuse, but, like.
• 1:22:54
  Marcus Anderson: Maybe.
• 1:22:54
  Ted: for doing stuff like that. I don't know, I have no idea how the business works, I'm just curious about that.
• 1:22:59
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, it's all the Warner Brothers, I guess.
• 1:23:02
  Ted: Yeah, well, and it's also, like, I'm just thinking about, like, you mentioned them animating overseas, like, yeah, Batman the Animated Series is one of the first series… it might have been the first series to do a, an Akira slide, reference.
• 1:23:14
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, Robin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:16
  Ted: Yes, yeah, yeah, where he's doing the slide on the bike, and I think there's some famous Japanese animator who, like, for years was just, like.
• 1:23:27
  Ted: doing random shots that require, like, really, really good betweens in, like… someone showed me a reel of his stuff once, and it's all, like, minor shots from, like, a Tiny Tunes episode, an episode of Animaniacs, you know, like, the Clayface transformation episode and the two-part thing that introduced Clayface, like, that's this guy.
• 1:23:46
  Ted: And so he was always just… he never, like… I don't think he ever, like, you know, directed a movie or did, you know, major animation or anything in particular, but he did all the really complicated shots in between a bunch of other stuff.
• 1:23:56
  Ted: Like, years later, you're looking like, oh my god, who animated this?
• 1:23:59
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, that's fascinating. Oh, you don't remember his name, do you? I could look it up, but…
• 1:24:03
  Ted: I, yeah, I mean, specifically, like, very specifically, one of the things I remember he animated in the two-parter that introduces Clayface in Batman The End of the series, towards the very end, there's the bit where Batman has him in, like, the TV station…
• 1:24:17
  Ted: Room where the walls are all TV screens.
• 1:24:20
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:21
  Ted: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:21
  Marcus Anderson: And he puts… yeah.
• 1:24:22
  Ted: He puts all his different roles up on the screens.
• 1:24:25
  Marcus Anderson: Right, right.
• 1:24:25
  Ted: starts, like, involuntarily transforming. That scene specifically was…
• 1:24:30
  Marcus Anderson: Oh…
• 1:24:30
  Ted: either animated by… well, I guess not, I mean, it's more than just one guy animating, but you know what I mean. Like, I think he was the, you know, the head animator, or, like.
• 1:24:39
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:24:39
  Ted: the keyframes or whatever, I don't know the specifics. But yeah, I… I want to say it was that, like, that was one of the things that I saw. Someone, like, a few years back on Twitter or something shared a reel of, like, all his major, or, like, most recognizable shots, and that was one of them, so…
• 1:24:56
  Marcus Anderson: I think it's criminal that animators don't get more…
• 1:24:58
  Ted: Oh, my God!
• 1:24:59
  Marcus Anderson: recognition. It's so… I mean, obviously now there's high-profile cases of…
• 1:25:04
  Ted: Oh, shit.
• 1:25:05
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, and this is, what, was it, like, this last week, or maybe the week before, like, a lot of the top Marvel, Cinematic Universe, like, concept artists and stuff got laid on? And it's like…
• 1:25:18
  Marcus Anderson: I think if they're… if they're gonna try to replace them with AI, like, I… I sincerely hope that… or, you know what they're probably gonna do? They're probably gonna try to have, like, a smaller…
• 1:25:29
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know. I don't want to speculate on something I don't know the facts to, but it just bothers me, period, anytime you see artists being undervalued, and
• 1:25:38
  Marcus Anderson: You know… Oh.
• 1:25:39
  Ted: Yeah, hey, we work in comics, we know what that's.
• 1:25:41
  Marcus Anderson: Exactly, yeah.
• 1:25:42
  Ted: Not to be too cynical about it, but no, I mean, I get you, like, it sucks when you realize, like, oh, that's what the purpose of this is, is they're trying to find ways to cut corners, trying to find ways.
• 1:25:53
  Marcus Anderson: Understood.
• 1:25:53
  Ted: Make it more… flexible or whatever, it's like, no, you're just…
• 1:25:56
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, like, thankfully, we've started seeing that, you know, production images of, the last, in the Spider-Verse trilogy, and so it's moving along, so I am…
• 1:26:09
  Marcus Anderson: I'm taking that as a sign that they… they took care of the animators, because that was a big part of what delayed it, was the…
• 1:26:16
  Ted: Lunch, and .
• 1:26:17
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, and just kind of like, you know, some of the animators were…
• 1:26:20
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know if they put their names behind it, but, you know, it came out, like, how rough the working conditions were and everything, so… I'm hoping that they just, they made, concessions, and they're taking care of them.
• 1:26:34
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:26:34
  Marcus Anderson: It looks incredible, though, I can't wait.
• 1:26:36
  Ted: Oh, God, yes, I mean…
• 1:26:37
  Marcus Anderson: I just hope they're taking care of the animators.
• 1:26:39
  Ted: Oh, Jesus, yeah, I'm… it's, yeah, burnout being extremely real. I remember, God, the story that was all over the place, well, just a couple, weeks ago, where it was about, like, Jim Lee suffering from burnout. Jim fucking Lee, head of DC Comics, is, like, being burnt out on… on…
• 1:26:56
  Marcus Anderson: our sister?
• 1:26:57
  Ted: Yeah, or, like, that's kind of… he said something…
• 1:26:59
  Marcus Anderson: That's the joke.
• 1:27:00
  Ted: like… or just… I think it was more just, like, this is why I have to move slowly on some of the things, because he's still doing pages for, like, you know, the Batman, the Hush… the Hush 2.
• 1:27:10
  Tad Eggleston: There are currently two different, volumes of Batman running concurrently.
• 1:27:15
  Ted: And yeah, apparently a lot of the slowness on that is because Jim Lee…
• 1:27:20
  Tad Eggleston: I thought he had some sort of health issue going on.
• 1:27:23
  Ted: I mean, I'm sure there's that too, and it's like that also kind of, you know, same… same thing.
• 1:27:26
  Marcus Anderson: You know, I just was, on Free Comic Book Day, it was,
• 1:27:32
  Marcus Anderson: you know, I was tabling next to, like, a comic friend of mine, and we just were nerding out about, like, you know, all kinds of stuff, and we were talking about, like, a lot of X-Men stuff, and when Jim Lee came in, he was talking about how he loved, like…
• 1:27:44
  Marcus Anderson: how in that area… era, you know, and Jim Lee kind of always had his statuesque
• 1:27:49
  Marcus Anderson: characters, but, like, like, there was a little bit of…
• 1:27:52
  Tad Eggleston: 9 kids.
• 1:27:54
  Ted: Good God!
• 1:27:55
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:27:55
  Ted: The burnout is definitely real. I'm sorry, what were you saying?
• 1:27:57
  Marcus Anderson: But there was a… there was a lot, like, he was just talking about Jim Lee being, like, a little… a little looser and a little freer, because now he, you know, all his characters are, like.
• 1:28:06
  Marcus Anderson: they literally look like they're chiseled out of granite, you know what I mean? And they're like a statue with more colors applied to them. So I almost feel like I'd love to see what would happen if Jim Lee
• 1:28:19
  Marcus Anderson: Freed himself up to be… I don't know, a little looser in what.
• 1:28:24
  Tad Eggleston: Last summer, he was diagnosed pre-diabetic.
• 1:28:29
  Tad Eggleston: Result of decades of poor decisions and work habits. Way too little sleep, way too much stress.
• 1:28:33
  Marcus Anderson: on the.
• 1:28:34
  Tad Eggleston: Way too many late-night carbs under deadline.
• 1:28:37
  Ted: Yeah, I mean, if even the dude who is, like, literally… what is his title at DC these days? I mean, whatever he is.
• 1:28:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's part of the problem, is his title is President, Publisher, and Chief Creative.
• 1:28:48
  Marcus Anderson: That shit is crazy. You can't… you can't do both.
• 1:28:51
  Ted: Like, Joy!
• 1:28:52
  Marcus Anderson: Drawing comics is such a thing. The idea of being the president of.
• 1:28:56
  Tad Eggleston: Father of nine, and still draws and goes to conventions regularly.
• 1:29:00
  Marcus Anderson: Stop.
• 1:29:01
  Ted: Good God.
• 1:29:02
  Marcus Anderson: I can't do that. Like, look, this is a PSA, this is a PSA from 22 Panels and Marcus Kwame Anderson. Like, if you are drawing or writing comics or editing comics, you gotta balance all of that sedentary,
• 1:29:18
  Marcus Anderson: punishing hours with some type of efforts towards wellness, because it…
• 1:29:25
  Tad Eggleston: Well…
• 1:29:25
  Marcus Anderson: It really will… it can wreck you, so you gotta…
• 1:29:28
  Tad Eggleston: This is from his statement, the biggest adjustment has been losing the fifth gear I used to rely on.
• 1:29:36
  Tad Eggleston: p.m. to 4 a.m. to grind out
• 1:29:38
  Tad Eggleston: grind that powered books like Justice League and Suicide Squad. Now I cap drawing at 1AM and force myself to work during the day on weekends, but those hours
• 1:29:49
  Tad Eggleston: Only 25-40% as productive as my old late-night form.
• 1:29:52
  Ted: Oh, man.
• 1:29:54
  Marcus Anderson: I say all this knowing that I draw 7 days a week as well, and I do try to… try to count myself, but
• 1:30:01
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:30:01
  Tad Eggleston: And also, this is where we, you know, he says,
• 1:30:05
  Tad Eggleston: I shouldn't be too surprised by this. Getting older is a constant for us all, and that's where we should,
• 1:30:11
  Tad Eggleston: Remember that he's… he's not…
• 1:30:14
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah. No, I mean, he was a… he was a grown man when I was, in high school.
• 1:30:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:30:21
  Ted: I still have those old issues of, him on X-Men.
• 1:30:25
  Ted: Man, that got me back into comics.
• 1:30:27
  Marcus Anderson: I had great fortune. I just happened to have… this is back in the days when you would get your Marvel subscription straight from Marvel in the brown paper. I just happened to have a Spider-Man subscription when McFarlane came on, and I just happened to have an X-Men subscription.
• 1:30:45
  Marcus Anderson: When Jim Lee came on. So I just was, as a kid, I just… you know, I was already enjoying the series, but then I was like, who the hell is this? Like, you know, and I just opened up these…
• 1:30:57
  Marcus Anderson: These books, it just felt so new.
• 1:30:59
  Ted: Yeah, you got to re… you got to see the stuff that was like, oh, this is changing everything right now in my eyes.
• 1:31:05
  Marcus Anderson: And it wasn't like… it wasn't like I…
• 1:31:07
  Marcus Anderson: caught some industry buzz, and I was like, I gotta check out the next issue of Spider-Man. I just happened to have those… be subscribed to those books, in the mail at that time.
• 1:31:16
  Ted: Yeah, jeez, wow.
• 1:31:17
  Ted: What a time.
• 1:31:19
  Ted: Wow.
• 1:31:20
  Tad Eggleston: When we've started talking about Jim Lee and McFarlane-era Spider-Man.
• 1:31:27
  Tad Eggleston: In our milestone podcast, it's probably the indication that it's time to wrap up.
• 1:31:34
  Ted: Yes, you're not… you're not wrong.
• 1:31:37
  Marcus Anderson: True.
• 1:31:38
  Marcus Anderson: And, I mean, regarding our previous conversation, I'm just gonna go draw some more when we're done with this, so yes, it's probably… probably a good idea.
• 1:31:45
  Tad Eggleston: I'm…
• 1:31:46
  Ted: I'm burnt out on actually just, like, a long day of work, so I'm just gonna be doing something else, but, you know, hey.
• 1:31:52
  Tad Eggleston: So, for the brothers, Anderson, no relation. This is for the milestone.
• 1:31:56
  Tad Eggleston: Book Club, though this time it was the Milestone Watch Club, as it would be for the next.
• 1:32:01
  Ted: And also… I was about to say, are we gonna just keep watching…
• 1:32:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, next cut, let's do Season 1.
• 1:32:06
  Marcus Anderson: I like that. Let's do it.
• 1:32:08
  Tad Eggleston: So, so 5 more episodes, and then, then I think 3 episodes, something like… let me, let me go check.
• 1:32:13
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:32:14
  Tad Eggleston: If Season 1's 12 episodes, then maybe we'll just do 7 episodes, but if it's… 13 will do.
• 1:32:20
  Ted: It's 13, so I think we have to… yeah, well, whatever.
• 1:32:23
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:32:25
  Tad Eggleston: Cause I did notice that there's one that's 15.
• 1:32:29
  Ted: Yeah…
• 1:32:30
  Tad Eggleston: They don't have the even numbers for their seasons.
• 1:32:34
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. It's like… But Season 1 is 13. So yeah, let's do 7, or 6 through 10.
• 1:32:44
  Tad Eggleston: And then we'll do 11, 12, and 13.
• 1:32:48
  Marcus Anderson: I'm good.
• 1:32:48
  Tad Eggleston: In a couple of months.
• 1:32:50
  Ted: Nice.
• 1:32:52
  Tad Eggleston: So, again, for the Milestone Book Club, Brothers Anderson, no relation. This has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.