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Milestone Book Club #34 - Hardware #26-28 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Tad Eggleston: Recording.
• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to the Milestone Book Club on 22 panels. I am joined by the Brothers Anderson, new relation, Ted out in Minneapolis, and Marcus out in Albany.
• 0:18
  Tad Eggleston: How's it going, guys? I just realized that you're both in state capitals.
• 0:22
  Ted: No, I'm not. I'm in Minneapolis, not St. Paul. Oh, that's true, yeah.
• 0:29
  Marcus Anderson: I was gonna say, I, definitely am a native, but I'm no longer in Albany either, so neither of us are exactly…
• 0:37
  Tad Eggleston: I'm in the region. Slightly. You're slightly outside of the state capital, and Minneapolis, St. Paul, and any other state would be one city.
• 0:48
  Ted: There's a reason they call us the Twin Cities, of course, but yes.
• 0:52
  Ted: The Metroplex, whatever you want to call it, anyway.
• 0:55
  Ted: But yeah.
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: I think if it weren't for the fact that Twin Cities sounds so cool, and if you combine them into one city, you wouldn't be able to call them the Twin Cities anymore. They would have been one city a long, long, long, long time ago.
• 1:07
  Ted: Yeah, well, they'd have to change the name of the baseball team.
• 1:10
  Tad Eggleston: That's my point.
• 1:11
  Ted: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:12
  Tad Eggleston: That's my point.
• 1:14
  Tad Eggleston: But you're right. Technically, St. Paul is the capital.
• 1:18
  Tad Eggleston: It's okay, not many people know all the state capitals and everything. I used to know them all thanks to that Animaniac song, but that's…
• 1:25
  Tad Eggleston: That was pretty much my, my.
• 1:30
  Ted: Yeah, your education on it too, yeah.
• 1:33
  Ted: Goodbye.
• 1:35
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, at least I knew that it was Albany, not New York City for New York.
• 1:40
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:42
  Tad Eggleston: When was the last stage you're like that? You know, Sacramento, not L.A.
• 1:46
  Ted: Oh, no.
• 1:47
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but Sacramento… I mean, it's weirder when it's, like.
• 1:52
  Tad Eggleston: the… I mean, for both Kansas and New York.
• 1:57
  Tad Eggleston: I don't understand why they're not like Oklahoma. Oklahoma City is the capital.
• 2:03
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, Kansas City, yeah, Missouri.
• 2:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, really, the Kansas City that we really know isn't even in Kansas.
• 2:11
  Marcus Anderson: You know, we should save this for our Carmen Sandiego spinoff that we're…
• 2:15
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, yeah.
• 2:18
  Ted: I was gonna make a…
• 2:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, where in the USA is Carmen San Diego is never as popular as the Where in the world, but I did prefer it.
• 2:25
  Marcus Anderson: Right, right. Way back in the computer game days. Actually, I don't know. No, I had the computer game, and… oh, see, that's a whole other tangent, but yeah, I was about to say. Yeah, okay.
• 2:35
  Ted: No, I…
• 2:35
  Marcus Anderson: But…
• 2:36
  Tad Eggleston: But you can't throw out stuff like that and not expect.
• 2:39
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 2:39
  Tad Eggleston: down the route.
• 2:40
  Marcus Anderson: No, I hear you.
• 2:43
  Marcus Anderson: I was trying to think of a nice little tangent, but, you know, I mean, we all recently went down the rabbit hole of, hardware meets Death Wish, meets,
• 2:52
  Ted: Yeah. Oh, boy.
• 2:54
  Tad Eggleston: Is Marissa the Lady Death Wish? Or is that a dick? Because there was somebody who was called Lady Death Wish, and I'm like, what? Huh?
• 3:04
  Ted: Was it there? Am I going.
• 3:05
  Tad Eggleston: I think so.
• 3:06
  Marcus Anderson: I don't think formally, but was it maybe on a cover or something? Is that what it was?
• 3:10
  Ted: That would… that would make sense.
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: I remember reading the words.
• 3:14
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 3:15
  Marcus Anderson: No, you're right, it's in there. This is way before Lady Deadpool…
• 3:19
  Tad Eggleston: Or a lady… .
• 3:22
  Ted: Lady Spider-Man.
• 3:23
  Tad Eggleston: Bullseye, so, like, we can't say they're stealing it from…
• 3:28
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 3:29
  Ted: Yeah.
• 3:29
  Tad Eggleston: Marvel. No, I mean, that's the thing is…
• 3:32
  Ted: is, like, in the Death Wish miniseries, there definitely was that idea that Marissa was sort of becoming his…
• 3:40
  Ted: apprentice, student, whatever, you know, whatever we want to call her. Like, that was a…
• 3:46
  Ted: You know, a semi-formal… idea of that, and this just sort of… this… this miniseries continues that…
• 3:55
  Marcus Anderson: Yes. Sort of.
• 3:57
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, it's an interesting follow-up.
• 4:00
  Ted: It's an interesting one. It is… so, okay. So, actually, before you… before you tried it in, Marcus, like, Ted and I were talking a little bit about our feelings about this one, because it's… it is a different one from the first… it's a different one from a lot of things. It is a… it is a weird slice of comics.
• 4:19
  Marcus Anderson: Yes.
• 4:20
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I feel like it's…
• 4:22
  Ted: Not even a negative way, just like…
• 4:24
  Ted: It is… yeah, sorry, what were you just saying?
• 4:26
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like it's kind of trying to be the… the milestone universe…
• 4:32
  Tad Eggleston: 2000AD crossover… that's not bad. I didn't… yeah, I didn't really have a better way to, like, compare it to anything, but, like… That just popped into my head as I was… as I was reading the issue backwards here.
• 4:47
  Ted: Yeah.
• 4:48
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you know, this… this has, like…
• 4:53
  Marcus Anderson: Hmm.
• 4:54
  Tad Eggleston: a judge… dread feel to it, to, like, the art style.
• 5:00
  Ted: Yeah. Who did the art on these? It was one of the.
• 5:03
  Marcus Anderson: Prentice, Prentice Rollins, but I don'.
• 5:06
  Tad Eggleston: We're just round.
• 5:06
  Marcus Anderson: Pretty, pretty early for Princess Rose.
• 5:10
  Ted: It's… it is a…
• 5:12
  Ted: Okay, so I was kind of trying to figure out how to describe this when I was talking with Tad about this, like, so, the first Death Wish miniseries, by comparison, is kind of realistic and great.
• 5:23
  Marcus Anderson: Grounded. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:25
  Ted: Yes. Like, in the same way that Dirty Harry is realistic and grounded. Like, it's still… yes, it is still wildly insane. Actually, that's maybe not a good comparison, because Dirty Harry was based on… well, whatever, anyway.
• 5:38
  Marcus Anderson: Well, and Death Wish definitely references that, too.
• 5:42
  Ted: That's the whole thing, it's about the guy who's pushed too far. I mean, that's not the movie he's… anyway. But yeah, like, it's… it is…
• 5:49
  Ted: by comparison, it is extremely crowded and realistic. And then we have this, which is…
• 5:57
  Ted: Gonzo is all hell. Parentheses, complimentary. Like, I mean that in a positive way, I really do. But boy howdy, this one is fully embracing the fact that it's in a superhero universe, and, like, going ham on what it is actually doing.
• 6:13
  Ted: Like, it is extremely self-aware as to how silly and stupid some of the stuff in here is. Like, it knows how dumb some of these plot points are, I think.
• 6:24
  Ted: I don't think I'm mistaken in that. But also, like…
• 6:29
  Ted: In a fun way, you know? It knows what it's doing. So…
• 6:33
  Ted: Yeah, I mean, do we wanna… what's… do we wanna do the recap? Do we wanna kinda get into what actually happens in this?
• 6:39
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 6:41
  Ted: we start with… I mean, we can't even really call it a recap, but it is, like, it's, you know, hardware… er, not hardware, Deathwish, sort of.
• 6:49
  Marcus Anderson: being put in prison for the horrible things that he did in the Death Wish miniseries.
• 6:55
  Ted: And then we see the little boy get…
• 7:00
  Ted: Does the boy have a name? I actually have forgotten. But, like, there's a young boy in a weird cyber prison thing somewhere.
• 7:09
  Ted: Who gets pulled into a,
• 7:13
  Ted: giant monstrosity mouth, cyber mouth thing, and then we just have the sound effects of him having horrible things done to him. And then…
• 7:25
  Ted: God, it's… this… this just starts at 100 and doesn't slow down. We go to Death Wish in prison.
• 7:33
  Ted: Which, this is, like, I mean, Mark… not Marcus. Ted, you mentioned, like, this was sort of the part that was, if not silliest to you, at least, like, a thing that struck you as extremely silly, that, like.
• 7:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he just asks for the keys, and they give them to him.
• 7:46
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 7:47
  Ted: first of all, he's in the weight room, shirtless, with the Death Wish mask on. Like, he's still wearing it in prison. And then he's…
• 7:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, don't get me wrong, I know that it's, like, a serial killer of children, so, like, I kinda get it, but you'd think that there would at least be a piece of dialogue from one of the guards to either go, like, I hope this works…
• 8:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Either slight protest, or at least some, like, acknowledgement that, like.
• 8:16
  Ted: This is insane.
• 8:17
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, we have a monster out there, and we're sinking a monster on it, what could possibly go wrong?
• 8:24
  Ted: Yeah, like, Death.
• 8:25
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, that's interesting, because I didn't even read it. I mean, obviously, the TV is on in the one room.
• 8:32
  Ted: I just kind of read it… oh yeah, maybe… so you guys read it as it's, like, an organized, like, look, he's gonna go take care of this.
• 8:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's how I read it.
• 8:41
  Ted: I actually… well, I could see it being either way. I think I more read it just as they're so terrified of him, they know that if they don't give him the keys, it'll be even worse. I don't know, it could very well be either way, but yeah, the basic idea is Death Wish sees on TV some kid has been horribly killed or mutilated?
• 9:00
  Ted: And he just gets so intensely angry, he stands up, and he just walks over the guard and says, just give me the keys. And the guard just hands over the keys, terrified. And it's like, he, you know, Death Wish is… it's either Death Wish is so scary and intimidating that the guards just give him the keys, or…
• 9:15
  Ted: The guard realizes that only a monster can stop a monster.
• 9:18
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, maybe a little bit of both.
• 9:20
  Ted: I mean, it kind of doesn't matter. Deathwish gets out of prison, and the way that… God.
• 9:28
  Ted: The rain on my face tasted sweet. Tasted like blood. Like, it's… it is…
• 9:33
  Marcus Anderson: Very dark night returns.
• 9:35
  Ted: What is that?
• 9:36
  Marcus Anderson: Well, just that panel is very Dark Knight Returns.
• 9:38
  Ted: It's… it's Dark Knight Returns, and it's like… it's… it is Gonzo Camp Dark Knight Returns, and I'm pretty sure it knows it. Like, it's… it is…
• 9:46
  Ted: It is so goofy, I can't even…
• 9:49
  Ted: I mean, here's the thing. I'm not trying to say it's like, oh, this is a comedy, but I am trying to say that, like, it's doing something very specifically…
• 9:57
  Ted: wild in a way that not even the first Death Wish miniseries was doing. Yeah.
• 10:02
  Ted: Deathwish finds the owner of a, chat… yeah, what's the term I'm looking for here? An internet cafe, who he saved from, like…
• 10:14
  Ted: What was it?
• 10:15
  Marcus Anderson: and…
• 10:15
  Ted: See, he…
• 10:16
  Tad Eggleston: Something.
• 10:17
  Ted: Somehow…
• 10:17
  Tad Eggleston: Nothing seedy.
• 10:18
  Ted: Yeah, this guy owes him a favor, because Deathwish made him, or, like, got him out of a jam or something. He apparently immediately finds out that, like, oh yeah, the guy who's been mutilating children is some cyber twisto named House.
• 10:32
  Ted: Oh, my…
• 10:32
  Marcus Anderson: I do… I do like Twisto as the…
• 10:36
  Ted: Oh, as.
• 10:36
  Marcus Anderson: The refrain.
• 10:37
  Ted: Yeah, as, like, the go-to, like, weirdo insult or something, I don't quite know what its purpose is, but…
• 10:43
  Marcus Anderson: Good, though, I mean, I might start, you know, using it in the real world.
• 10:47
  Ted: Freeze, Twisto! My personal favorite was when the guy in the internet cafe called him.
• 10:52
  Marcus Anderson: Right, he tried, he tried to say it, yeah.
• 10:54
  Ted: Yeah, he called the full version, which is Twister, which, okay, sure, I guess, like, it's…
• 10:59
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I read it that he was trying to, you know, do the same thing, but he just didn't get it right.
• 11:05
  Ted: That's… yeah, no, that's what I meant. Yeah, it's… it's…
• 11:08
  Ted: Yeah, he pulls the gun on Death Wish, and Death Wish, of course, immediately disarms him and makes him, like, helps him log on in a single page break, he has already logged on and found House online, and is now pretending to be a little boy.
• 11:19
  Tad Eggleston: I also have to say that, like, As, as, like,
• 11:28
  Tad Eggleston: baiting sexual predators go. Either… either, like.
• 11:34
  Tad Eggleston: the kids on the internet are even dumber than we can possibly think, or they do a very, very bad job of making Alice seem like he's actually somebody that would entice somebody to come meet with him.
• 11:49
  Ted: Well, to be fair, what then immediately happens is, as soon as Deathwish gets off the line and goes to meet House, he is immediately accosted by…
• 12:00
  Ted: He's immediately casted by…
• 12:02
  Marcus Anderson: Of course, sir. Yeah.
• 12:03
  Ted: Cyberwana. Cyberwana, which… Oof. I don't even, like…
• 12:10
  Marcus Anderson: No, no, alright, so you know what's funny?
• 12:13
  Tad Eggleston: Are Cyber Buana and House the same? I think they are.
• 12:16
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, no.
• 12:17
  Ted: Cyberwana is, like, his enforcer guy. He's like a… he's like a weird chrome skeleton.
• 12:22
  Tad Eggleston: This is how much I didn't get it.
• 12:24
  Ted: He's… Cyber Buana, every time I say that, it's… I can't… I cannot say that with a straight face. Cyber Buana is, like, a chrome dude with a cyber pith helmet, who rides around in a little, like, floating sh… sled thingy, and, like, hunts with a cyber crossbow thing.
• 12:43
  Ted: And he immediately starts trying to attack Deathwish, and Deathwish is, you know, a…
• 12:50
  Ted: strong killer guy, but, like, he's fighting a cyber dude, so he's like, okay, I need some extra hardware to take it down, and of course, that means he goes to fight hardware. So he goes to…
• 13:01
  Ted: Alva, who's watching the opera, which is like a cyber-themed, like,
• 13:07
  Ted: kabuki thing? I don't quite… it's, you know. And basically forces him to give him a line to hardware in a scene that's, like, it's actually quite funny that he's, like, got his knife to the throat of Alva's date, and Elva's like, yeah, come on, it's ringing, it's ringing, he's calling him on his cell phone, it's…
• 13:25
  Ted: I… I don't know how funny this comic was meant to be. I think it was meant to be pretty funny, because it's…
• 13:31
  Marcus Anderson: I think there's some intention, yeah.
• 13:33
  Ted: Yeah, I don't think it was, like, meant to be a laugh-a-minute parody, but, like, it's…
• 13:37
  Ted: It's trying to be funny in a way, and it's succeeding.
• 13:40
  Marcus Anderson: On that note, on that note, because you made me think
• 13:44
  Marcus Anderson: the four… maybe just when you were talking about the difference in tone, you know, between this and, the miniseries, and my theory, and obviously, you know, we'd have to…
• 13:56
  Marcus Anderson: we don't have Maddie Blaustein to, you know, tell us, but I would say
• 14:02
  Marcus Anderson: that series was so serious, it… it definitely had a mission, you know what I mean? In order to articulate that… that experience of, I was gonna say Maddie, of, Marissa, you know, as a trans detective.
• 14:18
  Ted: Yeah.
• 14:18
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, and you know, one real notable difference that jumped out to me when I was reading this one is, A,
• 14:26
  Marcus Anderson: Whereas in the last one, there was, like, all types of, like, you know, like, bigotry and misgendering and everything. That didn't happen in this one. And I read that almost as.
• 14:35
  Tad Eggleston: There was a little bit of bigotry.
• 14:37
  Marcus Anderson: In this one?
• 14:38
  Marcus Anderson: Well, yeah, well.
• 14:39
  Tad Eggleston: There was the House N.
• 14:40
  Marcus Anderson: To Marissa? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about specifically Marissa's character, and we could talk about that later. But, but with, Marissa, I read that almost, like.
• 14:56
  Marcus Anderson: I think that goes hand-in-hand with maybe the overall difference in tone of this, because I felt like the first series was really serious, because it was dealing with serious subject matter, and I think Maddie had such a mission to… to articulate this experience, you know what I mean? And everything that, you know, a detective
• 15:16
  Marcus Anderson: like, Marissa would experience in this situation, and then this one is kind of like, alright, like, we know who she is, we know what she's been through, we just want to tell a crazy comic book story, you know what I mean? And it almost felt like they were getting in the sandbox to get to play with different toys.
• 15:30
  Ted: Yes, and see, this… what I… what I feel like, I don't know if this is, you know, fair or not, but, like, what I feel like happened was the first… the first Deathbush miniseries can… doesn't really need to take place in a…
• 15:44
  Ted: in a superhero universe of any sort? Like, it's… it's realistic enough that it could just be its own…
• 15:51
  Ted: you know, mini-series taking place aside from anywhere else. Like, there's very little that connects it to Milestone stuff.
• 15:59
  Ted: Whereas this is absolutely taking place in the madcap 90s cyber-goofiness of Milestone. Well, not Milestone specifically, but like that era.
• 16:09
  Marcus Anderson: Good.
• 16:09
  Ted: And, like, This is it being…
• 16:13
  Ted: aware… it is so aware of how much stuff there is to play with, because, again, like.
• 16:21
  Marcus Anderson: I don't… I can't even articulate how goofy I find the idea of cyberwana.
• 16:26
  Marcus Anderson: But, like…
• 16:27
  Ted: That's only the character you're gonna get in a superhero comic universe, and especially a superhero comic universe, that already is…
• 16:33
  Ted: dealing with and has, you know… it has elements of race and racism and colonialism and imperialism and all that in its… in its DNA. Like, it… it is there for a reason, and it is…
• 16:46
  Ted: maybe a little bit more… I don't want to say pointed, because there's been some pretty pointed stuff in Milestone, but it's definitely…
• 16:52
  Ted: It's a lot more pointed than anything you saw in the first Death Wish miniseries, I'll say that. But yeah, that is…
• 16:59
  Ted: It's… it's so… I mean, and it only gets weirder from here. So, okay. So yeah, Cyber shows up, first fighting Deathwish, and then, of course, fighting Cyberwana and…
• 17:10
  Ted: There's, like, a lady who, like, transformers herself into a, like, a spear?
• 17:15
  Ted: like, not Metroid style, but, like, she has sort of an unfolding armor backpack. Again, like, this is superheroes.
• 17:21
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very, very 90s cyborg stuff.
• 17:25
  Ted: Yes. Hardware kind of gets his ass kicked, at which point Deathwish is like, shit, alright, well, I guess I gotta call in someone else then, too. And of course, he calls in the only other person he knows, who is Marissa Rahm. Ram. Ram? I never…
• 17:40
  Marcus Anderson: I believe it's Rome.
• 17:41
  Ted: It's wrong, well, like, it should be ROM, but then, like, one of the…
• 17:45
  Ted: I think the title of that issue is something like… of the next issue is, like, ROM to the Slaughter, so Ram to the Slaughter… well.
• 17:52
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, okay.
• 17:54
  Ted: I mean, it's a written joke, who knows? Anyway.
• 17:57
  Ted: Yeah, so… Hardware gets his ass kicked, unfortunately, by the various cyber kids.
• 18:03
  Ted: of House who… I mean, we'll get it eventually, but, like, House is more than just a dude, it's a whole, like…
• 18:12
  Ted: mental cyber complex thing. It's… oof.
• 18:15
  Ted: Anyway, and then,
• 18:20
  Ted: then Marissa… then Deathwist shows up at… in Marissa's bed, like, I think kissing her, or, like, he kisses her awake, she's having a nightmare.
• 18:27
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, that part's a little weird.
• 18:28
  Ted: Yeah, about Dana, and, like, she makes a joke about, like, you know, at least buy me dinner or something for… I don't remember the specifics.
• 18:35
  Tad Eggleston: Lizard sheep vomit pretty seriously.
• 18:36
  Ted: Yeah, oh yeah, she pukes up, looks like blood, even.
• 18:39
  Tad Eggleston: blank, blank.
• 18:41
  Tad Eggleston: fire hose.
• 18:42
  Tad Eggleston: Strength.
• 18:44
  Ted: Yeah. And then he tells her, basically, you know, okay, we got another… we got another cyber twisto. And they go off, and Marissa, like, shaves her head again, gets herself, you know, ready to… to go out and kick some ass again in, like, the…
• 19:00
  Ted: latex catsuit thing that she had at the end of the miniseries, and oh boy, the band's back together again! I really… this… it's…
• 19:09
  Ted: this is getting to bring Marissa's story, which is already, like, we liked it, I liked it a lot. I thought it was a… I thought it was a fun, interesting…
• 19:16
  Ted: weird element to add to the Milestone universe. Now she gets to actually hang out with, like, superheroes and supervillains.
• 19:23
  Marcus Anderson: Which…
• 19:24
  Ted: I… yeah, I… I… this was so much weird fun. It's… This is… this is…
• 19:32
  Ted: this is Maddie and Eve doing Gonzo, and I like that Gonzo. So… Issue 2…
• 19:41
  Ted: I… I can't even remember how some of this plot goes, but, like, Issue 2, they…
• 19:45
  Marcus Anderson: Well, early on, we get to… sorry, not to cut you off, but…
• 19:48
  Ted: Please do, I'm kind of late.
• 19:49
  Marcus Anderson: The point that… the point that,
• 19:51
  Marcus Anderson: tad bitch, and, you know, happens where there's a confrontation. Well, so,
• 19:57
  Marcus Anderson: hardware, sorry, hardware, basically, you know, mentions in his narration that he's only got some of his armor, which is interesting, because you get to see… they have put him in situations before where he's, like, you know, up against it.
• 20:11
  Marcus Anderson: And maybe he's without his suit. In this case, like, he's got, like, some, and he's got his, like, inner shell thing for.
• 20:19
  Ted: Yeah, it's a polarized shell…
• 20:21
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 20:22
  Ted: Yeah, I did like that, that it was an interesting way to keep him still somewhat super, but not, like, having.
• 20:27
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah.
• 20:27
  Ted: gadgets. He's got, like, the polarized magnetic liquid shell thing, which makes him not fully invulnerable, but, like, he's kind of tougher, but he doesn't have all his gadgets. It was a nice little…
• 20:38
  Ted: I don't even want to say twist, because it wasn't, like, a huge deal, but it was, you know.
• 20:42
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, it's taken really long time.
• 20:43
  Ted: full armory.
• 20:44
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, it's not quite a full depowering, but it's like taking your hero and…
• 20:49
  Ted: Yeah.
• 20:49
  Marcus Anderson: Taking away, like, 50, 60% of their tools, you know? Yeah. Which is, you know, I always like when they do that, because it's kind of like…
• 20:58
  Marcus Anderson: In some ways, I don't know, I'm not…
• 21:01
  Marcus Anderson: anti-Ironman, but he's always a character where it's kind of like, you know, he's…
• 21:05
  Marcus Anderson: He's a… he's a rich man who built this suit, you know?
• 21:09
  Ted: Yes.
• 21:10
  Marcus Anderson: And that's cool, but it's always interesting when you see those kind of characters really have to rely on something other than just this.
• 21:17
  Ted: Yes.
• 21:17
  Marcus Anderson: So yeah, so that was interesting. And then the part, you know, what Tav was referencing.
• 21:23
  Marcus Anderson: Which is the only part that gave me a bit of pause when,
• 21:27
  Marcus Anderson: when, Cyber One, you know… and then, you know, there's a part that gives some context to it later, but, like, you know, Cyber One is having a face-off
• 21:37
  Marcus Anderson: With hardware, and they're doing, like, you know, classic banter, except for the fact that,
• 21:44
  Marcus Anderson: Cyber One, you know, a hardware asks if he knows who he's dealing with, and CyberWana says,
• 21:52
  Marcus Anderson: Yes, the new house negro, except he doesn't say Negro. Yeah.
• 21:56
  Ted: Thank you for being the one to cover that, because, yeah, that was…
• 22:00
  Marcus Anderson: Well, this is my thing. This is my thing. I mean, well, A, I have a rule. I don't… I'm… I… racism is very, very much a part of our world in America, so it's… I don't have issue with it being portrayed in stories. My only thing is I don't like when it's portrayed and it's, like, goes unchallenged, like, you know what I mean? Or…
• 22:19
  Ted: Yes.
• 22:21
  Marcus Anderson: or there's no counter to it, or… or there's not something inherent in the narrative that's like, this is messed up, you know? That being said, like, it does come around… and also, for what it's worth.
• 22:34
  Marcus Anderson: I do…
• 22:35
  Marcus Anderson: it's often kind of messy and misses the mark sometimes when non, you know, non-Black writers try to, like, really grapple.
• 22:44
  Ted: Yes.
• 22:44
  Marcus Anderson: So that part, like, definitely gave me pause when I first read it.
• 22:48
  Ted: I do… the uncharitable reading that I have of this is that this is Maddie trying to ensure… not ensure, but injecting… injecting… I don't even want to… I don't want to make it sound that bad. This is Maddie realizing that race is a major part of any
• 23:05
  Ted: story in America, but, like, you know, it's part of, again, the DNA and milestone. There's elements of that, and it's not something she can afford to not be aware of, and this is the character, and this is the conflict that gets the most of it, and so…
• 23:20
  Ted: What she's having this conflict be about is…
• 23:25
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, well…
• 23:25
  Ted: ultimately that relevant? I mean, it is, but, well.
• 23:28
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, well, she brings in something later that adds a little bit of relevance. I'll just spoil it.
• 23:34
  Ted: Yeah.
• 23:34
  Marcus Anderson: But, like, the… it turns out, like, after Cyber Bond is defeated eventually, and you… you see the identity that Cyber Bonda is, in fact, a Black man, in suit, and there's… I guess there's an element of, like, maybe…
• 23:50
  Marcus Anderson: self-hate, but also irony, right? Because, you know, the term, like, you know, like, like House Negro refers to this idea, which…
• 24:00
  Marcus Anderson: has some… some historical accuracy, but is often misapplied to… to reality, because, like, the popularized version, is that. Essentially, you know, you had enslaved people who worked in the house, and you had enslaved people who worked in the field, and people who worked in the house were treated better.
• 24:17
  Marcus Anderson: It's definitely a fallacy in the sense of…
• 24:20
  Marcus Anderson: slavery is slavery, and, like, you know what I mean? And, like, it's not, like, by any means people worked in the house of trees special. It also carries with it a connotation, I'm talking definitely in community. It carries with it a connotation that,
• 24:35
  Marcus Anderson: the…
• 24:37
  Marcus Anderson: that, that, you know, essentially, like, how's… like, Samuel Jackson's character in Django, if you guys have seen it. Like, just somebody who's, like, who will, who will turn you out, turn you, and I'm not, I'm not, pro-Jango…
• 24:51
  Marcus Anderson: This is a good reference point, but it's like, the character will, like, sell out everybody else, essentially, and tell on you. However, where it's a bit… the modern understanding and application of it is kind of ahistorical, is the fact that, oftentimes people who worked in the house were, like, pretty instrumental in escapes and rebellions, because they had intel.
• 25:11
  Marcus Anderson: You know what I mean? And they would…
• 25:12
  Marcus Anderson: help people, so… it's interesting, because, like, you know, definitely in communities sometimes, it's a useful…
• 25:20
  Marcus Anderson: metaphor, maybe, for, like, people who are, quote-unquote, for the cause and people who aren't, but it's also wildly imperfect and somewhat historically inaccurate. Going back to this story, though, that's just a little history lesson, but coming back to this story.
• 25:37
  Marcus Anderson: the… I think after much later, near the end of this arc, where you find out that,
• 25:45
  Marcus Anderson: Cyber Bueno is Black, and he's saying to hardware that the new, you know, the new,
• 25:54
  Marcus Anderson: House Negro, essentially, I think what he meant was, like, there's a bit of irony, because he's somewhat referencing himself, you know, and this person has been made to serve this quote-unquote master, you know what I mean? And so it's interesting, because in hindsight, after learning who he is, is that, like.
• 26:14
  Marcus Anderson: he's hoping for a way out in the fact, or just that maybe he won't be the only one. So I think there's a little bit of a thing, and they have an exchange later, because hardware,
• 26:26
  Marcus Anderson: pretty much takes him out, and right after he said something else messed up, and hardware's basically like, let's see, let's see who this racist is, and.
• 26:35
  Ted: too.
• 26:35
  Marcus Anderson: the mask, and then he finds out that it's a Black man, and they have a conversation. So I think Matty is trying to do more. I think by, like, keeping that reveal till much later, it just leaves people like me being like, what the hell, man?
• 26:50
  Ted: Yeah, it comes out of… it does come a little out of nowhere. Like, I get the whole… it's very… it is very of the time. It is very 90s to have, like, the cyber villains. It is, you know, to have the chromed-out, like, little, you know, eyepiece monocular thing, like, that's a very 90s type of villain. She's also doing this thing of making it this…
• 27:08
  Ted: somewhat bizarre imperialist-colonialist stereotype with the pith helmet and everything, which I… okay. And then, I mean, I took it… I mean, I think there's a couple different ways to sort of interpret exactly what she's doing. I took it to be a thing of, like, House is this weird, brainwashing-y, corrupting force
• 27:26
  Ted: that has sort of made this guy into a self-hating black man, perhaps? I don't…
• 27:32
  Marcus Anderson: I didn't…
• 27:32
  Ted: really think to interrogate it too deeply. It seemed a little bit…
• 27:37
  Ted: it seemed a little bit secondary to the main considerations of the story, so… I don't know, I kind of maybe didn't interrogate it as much as I could have.
• 27:44
  Marcus Anderson: Well, well, real quick, real quick, and actually, that's a good point. You reminded me that, obviously, there's a double meaning, because they don't spell a house the way you spell it, they spell it H-A-U-S.
• 27:54
  Ted: Right, it's the German.
• 27:54
  Marcus Anderson: It was…
• 27:55
  Ted: So there's also, like, the techno house thing, I guess, I assume, is that.
• 27:58
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 27:59
  Marcus Anderson: But… and then the other… the other bit of context is… I'll just read it. So, basically what Cyber Bonus says after… I know we're going out of order, but after what Cyber Bonus says is, it's alright, let the man see…
• 28:12
  Marcus Anderson: what he wants to see. We can't all be as fortunate as you, brother, he says to Hardware. Then he says, house found me when I was just a kid. I knew if I wanted to play with the man's toys, I was going to have to play the man's game.
• 28:26
  Marcus Anderson: But I guess a brother like you wouldn't know anything about that. Which actually is, you know, is a bit of mirroring, right? It's a villain-hero mirroring, in the sense that, obviously, he's very much describing, you know, Curtis's situation with, with Alva.
• 28:42
  Ted: Yeah, there's… I mean, Curtis' situation with Elva is already such an interesting…
• 28:48
  Ted: Situation that kind of merits its own discussion, which we've already had, but, you know.
• 28:53
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 28:54
  Ted: Like, it's… it is very much its own thing, and Curtis' own feelings of…
• 29:01
  Ted: guilt, hatred, you know, anger at being used. I mean, there's a lot of… there is so much mixed into what he feels and what he does, obviously, that's so much a part of his character, that this is… Cyber One of the character doesn't know about when he's saying this, it's…
• 29:18
  Ted: It's complicated, it's weird, it's messy. I kind of just chose to read it as, like, yeah, this is Maddie.
• 29:24
  Ted: Trying to go a little further, and not necessarily having the full… sort of… you… I don't know, it…
• 29:32
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:33
  Ted: It's… it's messy, it's interesting, it's… it's maybe… it's the… it's the unfortunate part of what is otherwise, I think, a very fun, very weird…
• 29:41
  Ted: little book, so…
• 29:42
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I almost think if Maddie was like, hey, Marcus, would you like to give this script a pass? I would've been like, this is cool. Maybe, just have a little more implied self-hate racism, and maybe
• 29:59
  Marcus Anderson: we don't have to wait until the very end to see the payoff of why that's taking place. Or even by taking out that word and just maybe making him a little condescending, you still could have gotten the same effect. But yeah, it's cool, it's cool, though.
• 30:14
  Ted: There's… yeah, it's… it's a… it's a…
• 30:17
  Ted: messy. Like you said, messy. It's… it has its… Yeah.
• 30:22
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I don't think we need to belabor it, it's just…
• 30:25
  Ted: Yeah, I want to get to the other parts, because the other parts are more fun, I think. There's… this is… this is doing its own weird thing, and it's much… it's extremely fun in a set of very specific ways that I think is really worth talking about.
• 30:38
  Ted: That, yeah, so… okay, so Maddie, er, Maddie, we keep… we keep confusing Marissa and Maddie, which I think is.
• 30:45
  Marcus Anderson: We'll see you.
• 30:46
  Ted: Obviously, kind of saying something, but anyway. Right.
• 30:49
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Marissa is Maddie as well, it's…
• 30:54
  Tad Eggleston: I was even called that at one point in the story.
• 30:57
  Ted: God, I forgot that! She actually is called that. I totally… God, I really done that.
• 31:02
  Ted: Yeah. But yeah, so, they end up trying to go after House. I'm trying to… I'm trying to keep a lot of this straight, because there's so much that's…
• 31:13
  Ted: in 6 different directions.
• 31:14
  Marcus Anderson: Essentially, there's, again, kind of like a three-way showdown, because Hardware is fighting Cyberwana, Deathwish and Marissa show up, and they fight. Marissa ends up… did she get captured? Or she… wait, she ends up… how'd she end up?
• 31:34
  Ted: How does.
• 31:34
  Marcus Anderson: Somehow it does… that part is a little unclear. If anything, like, my only notes on this is there's certain… it moves quickly… oh, I see, so I want to, like, grabs her out of the dumpster. But, like, there's certain parts that… it's almost like blink and you miss it in the art, you know what I mean? Or, like, like, what's… these little key plot details?
• 31:54
  Ted: Yeah, it's… it's not super clear.
• 31:57
  Ted: in ways that sometimes are kind of fun, and like, you kind of get to play with it and figure out, like, oh, I guess that's why we're doing this now? But…
• 32:04
  Marcus Anderson: And I don't… I don't dislike the art, like, it's cool, it does its job, it's kind of got its own…
• 32:12
  Marcus Anderson: mood, you know what I mean? It kind of fits the mood that we've been describing.
• 32:16
  Ted: Oh, yeah. I… I actually think the art is kind of fun overall. I think it's… it's rough. I think, like you said, it was… it was,
• 32:22
  Ted: Oh, why am I forgetting his name?
• 32:24
  Marcus Anderson: Rollins.
• 32:25
  Ted: Yeah, it's one of his early works, I think, which does show, but also, like.
• 32:31
  Ted: it's… there's fun to it, you know.
• 32:33
  Marcus Anderson: Absolutely.
• 32:34
  Ted: tapping there.
• 32:35
  Marcus Anderson: True.
• 32:35
  Ted: But yeah, it's somehow… okay, so Hardware gets taken first by House, he manages to, I think, escape? But Marissa gets taken,
• 32:49
  Ted: Death Wish… Oh, Death Wish has, like, a… Deathwish, like, kind of snaps, again.
• 32:56
  Ted: He has snapped once, but now he snaps a second time, because he… Like, season…
• 33:02
  Marcus Anderson: There's a bunch of…
• 33:02
  Ted: A bunch of kids as, like, his… as, like.
• 33:05
  Ted: you know, cyber twisto terrorists and murders them all.
• 33:09
  Ted: and then is, like, there's a full-page splash, I think, of him, like, weeping, covered in blood in the rain, and it's like… it is… it is maxed-out melodrama weirdness here.
• 33:20
  Marcus Anderson: So, wait, wait, quick question about this part, because this is one of the parts that was a little unclear to me.
• 33:24
  Ted: Yeah. I… yeah, I had to look it up, too.
• 33:27
  Marcus Anderson: Well, alright, so there's this… because they're obviously… most of the people that are surrounding them are the kids who have been, like, turned into cyborgs, but then…
• 33:36
  Marcus Anderson: There's what appears to be, like, a blonde woman.
• 33:41
  Marcus Anderson: Like, I didn't read her as a kid. Is that… is that, like, a… is he seeing his wife, or is that…
• 33:49
  Marcus Anderson: Or is this a person who was really there? I guess this could be a person who was really there.
• 33:53
  Ted: Good question.
• 33:54
  Marcus Anderson: I just don't know if they established this character before.
• 33:57
  Ted: Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, I'm…
• 34:03
  Marcus Anderson: I mean, they're blonde like Marissa is, but it's drawn slightly different than Marissa, so I don't think he's seeing…
• 34:09
  Ted: Yeah, and I don't remember what his… what his wife or kid looked like, so I don't…
• 34:15
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, alright, well, we don't have to dwell on that. I just was curious if either of you could tell who that was.
• 34:21
  Ted: Yeah, not off the top of my head, and I mean, it kind of doesn't matter, because what it comes down to is, basically, he goes against his pledge of only, you know, killing the deserving, because he kind of snaps. There's literally even the sound effect snap, which I thought was kind of hilarious, and kills them.
• 34:38
  Ted: and then realizes, oh shit, I've been, you know, murdering kids or something, and… And it…
• 34:45
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, well, if you think about the character, that's, like, really…
• 34:48
  Marcus Anderson: assigned day. And he's… he comes away from it like, oh, damn, like, I… Oh, yeah, that's kind of…
• 34:53
  Ted: the end of him in the story, almost. Like, he doesn't do much, which is appropriate, because this is a hardware book, so kind of hardware should get the lion's share of what actually happens. But, yeah, Death Wish kind of just taps out at that point, because he has finally broken his one sacred bow, and it drives him insane.
• 35:09
  Marcus Anderson: Yes.
• 35:10
  Ted: And then… Issue 3, we finally get the payoff of all this bizarro nonsense, where it's…
• 35:19
  Ted: So, Marissa is in, like.
• 35:24
  Ted: Okay, God, yeah, so, Hardware steals some of Cyberblana's armor after killing him, I think that's an issue too.
• 35:32
  Ted: No, that was gonna.
• 35:34
  Marcus Anderson: No, no, no, that's near the end of the… Right, yeah.
• 35:37
  Ted: Yeah,
• 35:39
  Ted: Yeah, that's right. Deathwish has basically gone insane, so hardware… leashes him using, like, a tractor beam thing to make him lead.
• 35:46
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Ted: him to… to make him lead hardware to house?
• 35:50
  Marcus Anderson: It's… oh, god, yeah. And, like, the dialogue of all this, by the way, is so…
• 35:55
  Ted: like, amped up to 11 here, you know. Hardware, or, Death Witch League.
• 35:59
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, no, wait, I'm sorry, he leaves Death Wish, yeah. Mario, go ahead. Oh, that's what you said.
• 36:03
  Ted: Death Wish leaves Hardware, because Death Wish is, like, pointing him the right way, and hardware has one that's, like, tractor beam leash gun thing? Yeah. But, like.
• 36:11
  Ted: you know, they… they… they come into this warehouse where there's, like, this enormous deep hole with wires and cables and blood stuff, like, dripping into it, and hardware… Deathwish goes, the relentless clang of Vulcan's hammer as he forges a new millennium. And it's… it's really…
• 36:27
  Ted: It is deliberately over the top.
• 36:30
  Ted: Yeah, this place had the same ambivalent allure of the reptile house. Dread wounds open into hypnotic coils, vibrant with ancient sexual meaning.
• 36:39
  Marcus Anderson: He's a reader.
• 36:41
  Marcus Anderson: He knows his literature.
• 36:42
  Ted: He is, like, he's… this is… this is so theatrical in a fun way, like…
• 36:49
  Ted: it's so weird and wild, and again, Gonzo.
• 36:54
  Ted: Yeah, Marissa has a dream, and then it turns out to be a dream within a dream, and he's going crazy. She's being sort of both tortured and also perfected by House, which is this enormous, like, 3-foot-tall cyber head with a mouth open that turns out to be full of nanotechnology.
• 37:11
  Ted: His hardware hacks his way in with a friggin' machete, so it looks almost like he's hacking his way through a jungle.
• 37:17
  Ted: Finds all the kids cocooned up,
• 37:22
  Ted: fights Cyberwana and the woman whose name I forget.
• 37:27
  Ted: Ultimately, finds Marissa, who's been…
• 37:32
  Ted: cybernetically… messed up? Is, I think, the technical term? Like, she's got all these weird implants and… and…
• 37:38
  Marcus Anderson: Right.
• 37:39
  Ted: Yeah, it's…
• 37:42
  Ted: Death… er, Hardware Kills, Cyberwana, that's where he has the speech that you said, where he takes off the mask, you know, servers he's black, and… yeah.
• 37:51
  Marcus Anderson: Marissa gets up, she now looks like a cross between…
• 37:55
  Ted: God, I don't know, Tank Girl and Seven of Nine, she's, like, bald, completely shaven, and has this weird cybernetic bug thing on her abdomen.
• 38:03
  Ted: covering her up, and, like, has a cyber Kodak, cannon arm.
• 38:10
  Ted: And then it, like, it ends pretty…
• 38:14
  Ted: It ends kind of anticlimactically after the Cyberwana battle, because it… they basically get to the heart of the machine after all the nanotechnology starts breaking down, and discover it's basically this incredibly old, pathetic, like.
• 38:27
  Marcus Anderson: Poscoe.
• 38:28
  Ted: Yeah, the… Baron Voldemort Klein, this, you know, ancient German aristocrat who's been…
• 38:34
  Ted: He's just a skeletal dude who's just using all this nanotechnology as a giant fake
• 38:39
  Ted: Funhouse? I don't even know.
• 38:42
  Marcus Anderson: It's kind of like a Venture Brothers villain, I don't know if you guys remember that.
• 38:45
  Ted: Yeah, it's… oh, God, that's such a good way to put it. But, like, I mean, the panel in here that kind of sums up the whole thing for me, and which I have saved on my computer, and have had for years, because it just struck… it struck me so much as, like, the ethos of this thing, is the bit where
• 38:57
  Ted: Marissa had just gotten off the table to shoot down Cyber Buana's sidekick, and says to hardware, what's the matter? Never seen a one-armed, pregnant, preoperative, cyborg, transsexual, psychotic ex-cop before?
• 39:08
  Marcus Anderson: Sure.
• 39:08
  Ted: And hardware just goes, you forgot, bald. And, like.
• 39:12
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, he doesn't miss a beat.
• 39:13
  Ted: What's…
• 39:13
  Marcus Anderson: You know, big up hardware, man, because we're talking, like, 1996, and he's not even…
• 39:20
  Ted: paced, man, he knows what… he's cool, he's hip, he gets it. Like, it's just so…
• 39:25
  Ted: God, I mean, over-the-top doesn't even begin to cover it for me on this. Like, he's just… he… this comic is doing the most, parentheses, positive. Like, I love how over-the-top wild all this is, you know? Like, it's doing so much…
• 39:43
  Ted: like, maximum cyber nonsense of the 90s in superhero comics. Like, it's… it's wild. I… I can't help but… but chuckle and love it, even though it did… it makes very little sense on the page. Like, you have to have to go back and be like, wait, is this… is this the thing where it does the… is this… what is this now?
• 40:01
  Ted: Like, it… yeah, I don't know, man. It,
• 40:05
  Ted: It's a wild one. I can't… I can't even really… Yeah.
• 40:10
  Marcus Anderson: Beautiful.
• 40:11
  Ted: Okay, so it ends basically with Marissa saying, like, well, I guess I'm gonna go off and raise my messed up cyber baby, and she was never seen again, unfortunately. Like, as far as I can tell, this is the last appearance of Marissa Ross.
• 40:22
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, is it?
• 40:22
  Ted: anything. Yeah, it sucks! Like, I'm not, I'm not positive about that. I feel like maybe she might have…
• 40:29
  Marcus Anderson: You know what's interesting? Did… because I forget, when we looked up Matty Blastein.
• 40:35
  Marcus Anderson: Is this… is it briefly after this that Maddie kind of goes into animation and other mediums, or…
• 40:41
  Ted: I don't know. I kind of forgot that she did, frankly.
• 40:43
  Marcus Anderson: Because I wonder if they… because…
• 40:46
  Marcus Anderson: Well, I guess what makes me think of this is the fact that, yeah, if you look at where Marissa ends up at the end of this story, right, and you even think about where Marissa started, or even at the end of the last series.
• 40:58
  Marcus Anderson: This is, like, a wild direction to take this character in, and in a lot of ways, it's kind of cool that if somebody was gonna take this very distinct character and take him to such a crazy direction, it's the person
• 41:12
  Marcus Anderson: who created the character getting to make the choice, as opposed to somebody else being like, you know what I'm gonna do with this character?
• 41:19
  Ted: Yeah, the fact that she never shows up again is maybe kind of a blessing in disguise, in that nobody else ever
• 41:25
  Ted: did anything to her that would be outside… I mean, this is very much Maddie's character, obviously. Like, I think it's… that's… yeah, that kind of goes without saying.
• 41:34
  Ted: But also, like, God. So, Tad, you said at the beginning, was this on the podcast, or after we started, or before we started, where you said something about how, like, this reads as a fusion of, like, Milestone and 2000 AD?
• 41:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that was on the podcast.
• 41:49
  Ted: I mean, what I actually…
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: It's got a little Jodorowski, like, Meta Barons going, too.
• 41:55
  Ted: Yeah, oh, so, I mean, what… oh, god, the Meta Barons, that's… okay, that's the other one, but I was also thinking, like, heavy metal, but that's also a French comic scene.
• 42:02
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I mean, I think…
• 42:05
  Ted: Was Better Burns in heavy metal?
• 42:07
  Tad Eggleston: Might have been.
• 42:08
  Ted: Was it in… I don't know.
• 42:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 42:10
  Ted: It's been a while.
• 42:12
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I know that, that heavy, heavy metal had… Plenty of.
• 42:22
  Ted: Versions and spin-offs and etc.
• 42:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, Meta Barons was actually, Juan Jimenez.
• 42:29
  Tad Eggleston: But… but… Meta Baron spun from the ankle, the ankle was…
• 42:36
  Ted: Okay.
• 42:38
  Tad Eggleston: was… was, da-da-da-da… Mobius.
• 42:43
  Ted: And was…
• 42:44
  Tad Eggleston: Definitely originally… well… You know, who's very associated with
• 42:50
  Tad Eggleston: And it was definitely published by Less Humanoids, so whether it was actually.
• 42:55
  Ted: Right.
• 42:55
  Tad Eggleston: printed in heavy metal or not, it was… at least.
• 43:00
  Ted: Some of its publications have been by the company. Yeah, and it's very much of that milieu. Like, it's… Right. It's part of that, yeah. It's… and, like, again, all of this that I'm saying is I think of it as a compliment. Like, it's… it's… it's more gonzo, perhaps, than I like a lot of my comics, but…
• 43:17
  Ted: I get it, and it's fun as hell, and it's weird, and it's wild, and yeah, the story ends somewhat happily with…
• 43:24
  Ted: Maddie… er, Marissa Rahm.
• 43:28
  Ted: Cyborg, pre-op, transsexual, cyborg, psychotic ex-cop going off to raise her… CyberTwisto Baby, with…
• 43:38
  Ted: apparently alone in the… in the wilderness of the world? I don't quite know. It's…
• 43:44
  Ted: It is a wild one.
• 43:47
  Ted: And…
• 43:49
  Ted: it's… I don't even know, man. It's fun. It's such a weird… I would say it's such a weird experiment for… for Milestone, but, like, I mean, they were also doing stuff like Cobalt and Zombie were their own weird experiments in their own ways. Like, it's not that far off from what they were doing.
• 44:03
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 44:04
  Ted: Again, in a good way. But, like.
• 44:07
  Ted: yeah, I don't really know even what else to say about it. Like, I loved this. It was…
• 44:10
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, I mean, yeah.
• 44:11
  Ted: It was a fun… it was a fun bunch of nonsense. Even if not all the parts hung together, like…
• 44:17
  Ted: It, you know, I had fun the whole way through.
• 44:20
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 44:22
  Ted: Even if it's never quite got Cyberwana, but, like, that's… I don't know, man. That's its own thing.
• 44:26
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know if you need to.
• 44:27
  Tad Eggleston: I had fun, I probably need to read it again sometime where I'm a little more awake.
• 44:34
  Ted: Oh, God, yeah.
• 44:36
  Tad Eggleston: I think having it be the last thing I read as I was falling asleep.
• 44:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, oftentimes, Milestone works for that, because they're relatively straightforward superhero comics, and I don't have to…
• 44:52
  Tad Eggleston: to think too hard about the plot, and I can just think of the… The social commentary type stuff?
• 45:00
  Tad Eggleston: But this one was like… like you said, it was… it was like… one part European sci-fi.
• 45:11
  Tad Eggleston: inside of the Milestone universe.
• 45:14
  Ted: Yeah.
• 45:15
  Tad Eggleston: It twisted my brain a little bit.
• 45:17
  Ted: Yeah.
• 45:18
  Tad Eggleston: I liked it, but I'm not entirely certain that it actually worked.
• 45:27
  Ted: I mean…
• 45:28
  Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
• 45:29
  Ted: I get that. I also don't know if, like.
• 45:33
  Ted: I don't even know if we can talk about things working or not in Milestone. Sorry, that makes it… that makes it sound like I'm infantilizing what Milestone was doing. It's not that I feel like Milestone was, oh, it's so weird and experimental. It's more just, like, I feel like Milestone has had its…
• 45:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I still think you can, because… I mean, I love the fact that they're experimental, but sometimes you experiment and it works, and sometimes you experiment and it doesn't, and I felt like this was an experiment that, at least this time through, did it. Now, now, like, it… it…
• 46:04
  Tad Eggleston: it did enough things well that if they decided that they wanted to do it again, I'm certain that they would have done a better job, and maybe it would have hit their mark better. But, like…
• 46:15
  Tad Eggleston: I don't… you know, there's a certain…
• 46:20
  Tad Eggleston: Mix of seriousness and absurd that you get in… European sci-fi of this sort.
• 46:31
  Tad Eggleston: That they just don't… White get? Like, they're not serious enough.
• 46:39
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, that's fair. But, like, the seriousness, like, again, like, I mean, just going back to what I was talking about with the child predator, like, reading those screens, like, I don't know any kid who would actually get sucked in by that.
• 46:55
  Ted: It's, I mean…
• 46:56
  Marcus Anderson: Well, also, this…
• 46:58
  Ted: Predators after-school specials of the 90s type thing.
• 47:01
  Tad Eggleston: I understand, but… No, I'm agreeing. I mean, I'm agreeing that it's… yeah. But, like, if you're gonna do a serious topic like that, and you can mix that serious topic with this absurdity, but you have to give the weight to the seriousness.
• 47:17
  Tad Eggleston: Rather than making it almost farcical.
• 47:20
  Ted: That's fair.
• 47:21
  Marcus Anderson: I will say this, I will say this. For me, I think you both bring up accurate points.
• 47:28
  Marcus Anderson: I feel like…
• 47:30
  Marcus Anderson: They did what they set out to do, and mileage definitely, you know, may vary with that.
• 47:38
  Marcus Anderson: for me, like, I… was… I enjoyed this.
• 47:43
  Marcus Anderson: what it was. It's not, like, amongst my, like…
• 47:47
  Marcus Anderson: favorite arcs in Milestone, but I thought it was, like, I thought it was, like… Competent, it was…
• 47:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no.
• 47:55
  Marcus Anderson: I thought, oh, no, no, yeah, no, I'm just saying my take. I'm just saying it was like…
• 47:59
  Marcus Anderson: consistently wacky. Like, you know what I mean? It was a… and yes, you're right, there was serious subject matter in there, but there was a consistent tone, I think? Right.
• 48:10
  Marcus Anderson: with that kept me into the… for me, it's like, can you keep me in the world that you're building with this story, you know? And they did hold me in this particular world, in this tale that they were spinning, you know? That being said, like, yeah, I mean, I don't think that.
• 48:27
  Tad Eggleston: And I…
• 48:28
  Marcus Anderson: the time.
• 48:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I think I, like, 99% agree with you. Like, my thing is they held me in the world, they just didn't help… hold me in the book.
• 48:37
  Tad Eggleston: It became a chore to read, because while they held me in the world, They didn't give it…
• 48:46
  Tad Eggleston: quite enough to, like… like, alternately, they could have made it a little less serious… they could have made it more farcical, period. They could have not had the child abduction, they could have not had the racial…
• 49:02
  Ted: Elements.
• 49:03
  Tad Eggleston: elements… And just gone full-on… sci-fi weird.
• 49:09
  Ted: Cartoony madhouse.
• 49:10
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:10
  Ted: Yeah.
• 49:11
  Tad Eggleston: And I think it also would have worked better. And again, I applaud them
• 49:16
  Tad Eggleston: I applaud them for the effort, I don't think they failed.
• 49:21
  Tad Eggleston: But I feel like…
• 49:26
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even know for certain what they were going for, but I don't think I could possibly give them higher than a B+.
• 49:34
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, and, like, depending on what they were going for, maybe lower than that, but not… Y-y-you know.
• 49:44
  Ted: I get what you're saying.
• 49:45
  Ted: I think it's a… I think…
• 49:47
  Tad Eggleston: Totally worth reading, possibly even worth revisiting.
• 49:52
  Tad Eggleston: Definitely not one of my favorite milestone arcs so far.
• 49:57
  Ted: That's fair. And it's also…
• 49:59
  Tad Eggleston: It's still way better than the crossover with, like… Superman.
• 50:03
  Ted: Yeah, that was.
• 50:04
  Tad Eggleston: It's just…
• 50:05
  Ted: I… I… the more I… the more I look on, like, other milestone books, the less favorably I look on Worlds Collide.
• 50:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 50:13
  Ted: I mean, I can get why they did it, but also, like, I don't… I didn't want them to do it. It's kind of, like…
• 50:19
  Marcus Anderson: I'm telling you, events… when I think of, like…
• 50:23
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, there's been some that have been interesting, but when I think of, like, my favorite
• 50:28
  Marcus Anderson: arcs of books over the years. It's usually not the events.
• 50:31
  Ted: Yeah, I mean…
• 50:32
  Marcus Anderson: Like, they're few and far between as ones.
• 50:34
  Tad Eggleston: Once in a blue moon, I mean, I think… For me, in events.
• 50:41
  Tad Eggleston: Once in a blue moon, there's one that I'm like, oh no, you should read all of this event.
• 50:48
  Marcus Anderson: I gotta say, even the ones that are one of my favorites, I did not… because I hate it. I hate the fact that they're like, you gotta read every book. In order to read the whole thing, you have to read, like, every book in Marvel that DC. Well, and most of the ones that I'll say that about are ones that aren't…
• 51:02
  Tad Eggleston: as big of a…
• 51:03
  Marcus Anderson: Right. Okay, that's fair.
• 51:05
  Tad Eggleston: Basically, you know.
• 51:07
  Marcus Anderson: Like, maybe, like…
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: They're like the 20 total issues, not the one… I mean, I think the only two, like, nearly 100 or 100-ish issue type events that I think
• 51:21
  Tad Eggleston: are worth reading all of once are Batman, No Man's Land and the original Marvel Civil War.
• 51:30
  Tad Eggleston: But even… even that, like, when I go revisit them, like, I'll cut out
• 51:37
  Tad Eggleston: 40-60% of the issues when I revisit it. You know, they were worth reading once as part of the big event. They're not necessarily worth reading again.
• 51:48
  Tad Eggleston: Even when you're… you feel like revisiting the… the thing.
• 51:52
  Ted: Right. I'd be most interested in revisiting, like, I don't know, DC1 million, just because that was an interesting set of experiments, and everyone was kind.
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 52:01
  Ted: thing.
• 52:02
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's… that's a whole different type of event, too, because they… they barely interact. It's like…
• 52:08
  Ted: Yes.
• 52:08
  Tad Eggleston: It's a series of one-shots with a similar premise.
• 52:11
  Ted: Yeah.
• 52:12
  Tad Eggleston: The hitman.
• 52:12
  Ted: One shot alone is… is…
• 52:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 52:14
  Ted: Wonkers, and it knows what it's doing.
• 52:16
  Ted: Yeah. No, that's… I mean, we're getting off topic, but I do… like, the thing about this is this almost feels like a crossover, you know? This feels like a weird…
• 52:24
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, sure.
• 52:25
  Ted: Like, the Marissa Braum stuff almost feels like a weird image crossover, you know?
• 52:29
  Marcus Anderson: It's… yeah.
• 52:31
  Ted: And that's both good, and sometimes bad, and sometimes just kind of it is what it is. Like, this is when Image was still trying to be a giant shared universe, or, like, they, they…
• 52:42
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I don't know, it's a weird mishmash of tone and ideas. I liked it, but also, I don't know how much more I could have…
• 52:51
  Ted: stood of it. I think it didn't wear.
• 52:53
  Marcus Anderson: I think it's the perfect length, yeah, yeah.
• 52:55
  Ted: Yes.
• 52:55
  Marcus Anderson: Because I know a lot of the arcs have been 4 or 5 issues, and I think, yes, if this had been, like, 5 issues, it would have dragged.
• 53:03
  Marcus Anderson: You know, but, like, I think it… they knew when to get out.
• 53:07
  Ted: Yes.
• 53:07
  Tad Eggleston: 3… 3 was dead on.
• 53:11
  Tad Eggleston: Appropriate.
• 53:12
  Ted: Yeah, that's… there wasn't much more to get out of this thing. It was… again, like, it was fun, I am glad it happened, I don't…
• 53:19
  Ted: Yeah.
• 53:21
  Ted: But yeah, like, I am sad that there wasn't any more Marissa Rahm, apparently, after this, which sucks, but also, like, I get that you wouldn't want to do anything of that without Maddie at the helm, so, like…
• 53:31
  Ted: I, I understand it completely.
• 53:33
  Marcus Anderson: And I guess it's the kind of… It caught him maybe,
• 53:38
  Marcus Anderson: turns Marissa into kind of, like, a legendary character, like a…
• 53:41
  Marcus Anderson: I mean, like a Luke Skywalker where you just spend decades, like, oh, yeah, and you can have your own fanfiction about, like, what… what became of it, you know?
• 53:50
  Ted: What was your weird CyberTwisto baby?
• 53:51
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, exactly.
• 53:52
  Ted: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. No, I get that, like, I get that completely. I do… yeah, it would be fun for someone to pick her up.
• 54:01
  Ted: you know, God, I don't… I don't know, frickin'… Sophie Campbell or someone.
• 54:07
  Ted: God. Now I'm imagining a Sophie Campbell book about Marissa Rahm, and I'm like, oh, that would actually be fun as hell.
• 54:12
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, you know what? Now you got me thinking…
• 54:15
  Marcus Anderson: Because I really do like Milestone Returns. They did establish in one of the crossover books, I'm forgetting the title, I have it upstairs, but it's one of the… it's a book where, essentially.
• 54:27
  Marcus Anderson: the… these milestone characters meet the Returns characters.
• 54:31
  Ted: Yes, I know that happens, I don't… yeah.
• 54:33
  Marcus Anderson: So they all exist. So, I mean, I'd be interested in just seeing…
• 54:39
  Marcus Anderson: them, kind of like how, you know, you got Star Wars and Star Wars Legends, like… Oh, yeah. Yeah, why not just… I would be interested in seeing some continued adventures of the old, Milestone characters.
• 54:49
  Ted: Oh, yeah. Yeah, seriously, DC. Give Sophie Campbell the Marissa Ron book.
• 54:54
  Ted: I don't… I'm… I'm… I am mostly joking, I have no idea if she'd be interested, but, like, she would be.
• 54:59
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I'll… well, no, I… I know, I know that she wouldn't be interested, but, like, they could split the difference on… on…
• 55:08
  Tad Eggleston: The woman that they let go.
• 55:11
  Ted: Oh, Gretcher Faulkner Martin? Oh, that would be wild!
• 55:14
  Tad Eggleston: They could say, they could say, look, you know, we let you go for a reason on the Bat Book, but, like.
• 55:21
  Tad Eggleston: Who do you think there's a book for you?
• 55:23
  Ted: Oh, that's kind of terrible.
• 55:25
  Marcus Anderson: Would she even have them at this point?
• 55:28
  Marcus Anderson: she won.
• 55:29
  Ted: No, and she, honestly, yeah, she should be…
• 55:31
  Tad Eggleston: She actually said specifically that she wouldn't.
• 55:34
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 55:35
  Ted: She's entitled to give them the biggest middle finger in the world, I think.
• 55:38
  Tad Eggleston: She is, but I also think that, you know, I don't want to get deep into it, because I already did on the…
• 55:45
  Tad Eggleston: on the regular podcast. Like, from a strict HR standpoint, They weren't out of line.
• 55:54
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know, I…
• 55:56
  Ted: This is a conversation I actually don't want to have, like…
• 55:58
  Tad Eggleston: how that.
• 55:58
  Ted: Yeah, anyway. No, I get what you're saying, though, and it's one of those things where, yeah, I… it's…
• 56:04
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and understand, I have only read her version of the story.
• 56:09
  Tad Eggleston: Based on her version of the story.
• 56:12
  Tad Eggleston: from a strict HR standpoint, I don't think they were on the line.
• 56:17
  Marcus Anderson: Well, HR used in companies traditionally is, as much as they say they are, they're not representing the employees.
• 56:25
  Tad Eggleston: No, I'm aware of that.
• 56:27
  Marcus Anderson: So, I mean, yeah, I mean, I guess you're accurate. I don't know if that makes me agree with them, but yes, by that…
• 56:34
  Marcus Anderson: reasoning, I guess it's HR-ish.
• 56:37
  Marcus Anderson: But I don't agree.
• 56:38
  Ted: Oof.
• 56:39
  Marcus Anderson: I don't… Yeah, this is the conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 56:42
  Ted: The conversation that we're interested in having.
• 56:43
  Marcus Anderson: I'm respecting your boundaries.
• 56:45
  Ted: No, no, sorry, I didn't mean to… yeah. But no, I think that there's… Marissa Rahm is a character who I would only entrust to a very, very short list of writers.
• 56:55
  Ted: Probably pretty obvious reasons.
• 56:57
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, I don't…
• 56:59
  Ted: I don't think any of them would be interested in taking on, and I think she's kind of fine as she is, going off into the sunset and getting to raise her messed up CyberTwisto baby. Like, sure, I… yeah, man. It's great, do it. But yeah, it's… it is a fun…
• 57:13
  Ted: It's a fun, weird thought experiment of a book. It's wild. I… I had a lot of fun with it. I also… I do think you're right, it's a… it's a very weird marriage of…
• 57:24
  Ted: tone and… and… ideas. That doesn't always work.
• 57:29
  Ted: I still have a… I still have some fondness for it. It is also a weird… it is… it does strike me as weird suddenly that, like, oh yeah, the… the… the,
• 57:39
  Ted: the Death Wish, like, story conclusion happens in hardware? Like, that's… that is just sort of an odd place to put it, so I don't quite know…
• 57:49
  Ted: why that happened in the first place. I'm… I'd be curious to…
• 57:52
  Marcus Anderson: I don't… I don't know that Death Wish needs more solo, you know what I mean? It doesn't exactly. Because that was one of the things that I think we pointed out as being smart about the other one, is that…
• 58:04
  Marcus Anderson: I don't know, like, living solely in Death Witch's head for 5 issues, without any other perspective, I don't know that we need that. It's kind of why, like, I just… as much as…
• 58:17
  Marcus Anderson: a misguided young me read a good amount of Punisher, I have no interest in revisiting Punisher, you know what I mean? Like, well, it just…
• 58:25
  Marcus Anderson: I… My third eye is too wide open to go back to that. But, like…
• 58:31
  Ted: Oh, other thing, too, yeah, no, I get it.
• 58:32
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, you know, so, I don't know. One thing I wanted to point out.
• 58:37
  Marcus Anderson: is… in a lot of ways, it's… it's a… it's kind of a happy ending of going off the sunset. I mean, potentially, it allows you.
• 58:45
  Ted: Yeah, I feel… I get what you mean, and I think you're right.
• 58:48
  Marcus Anderson: Well, but especially just in the sense that, you know, I think Marissa's character, obviously, for many reasons, did not think that she was ever gonna be a mom, you know what I mean? Like, and so, like, you could see…
• 59:01
  Marcus Anderson: That, you know, she mentions, mentions that, and, almost like this is a new adventure for her, and maybe…
• 59:07
  Marcus Anderson: She's… she doesn't need the types of adventures she's been having, and, like, she's gonna have the adventure… motherhood of a cyborg baby.
• 59:16
  Ted: Motherhood of a cyborg baby. Yeah, exactly. I want her to, you know, I want her to raise the next Cyber Jesus, or whatever. Like, that's… that's fine. That is… that is a perfectly acceptable ending to her story. It's… it's fun, it's wild, it's goofy. I mean, honestly…
• 59:29
  Ted: There's goofier stuff in Milestone, like, let's be honest. And again, not even in an insulting way, just like, yeah, man, let's just be honest here. They did some weird… they did some fun stuff! They had some weird experiments, some of them worked better than others, like…
• 59:44
  Ted: Yeah, we have, we have shadow…
• 59:46
  Marcus Anderson: cabinet coming up. Not next, but soonish, I think.
• 59:50
  Ted: We've got what?
• 59:50
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, there's another side… shadow… shadow cabinet, excuse me. Shadow Cabinet arc coming up pretty soon.
• 59:58
  Ted: Yeah.
• 59:58
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, they're static next, but a shadow cabinet is…
• 1:00:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Static, and then Shadow Cabinet, and then Blood Syndicate, and then we read just one issue in January, Static 25, before finishing up with Cobalt and Icon.
• 1:00:12
  Ted: Yeah, is the static issue… is that… oh, is that because it's the, it's the 25? Did they do, like, a…
• 1:00:18
  Ted: That's not a time travel thing, is it? Or there's something…
• 1:00:20
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, I know that it got put separately, and I know it's the one that McDuffie quit over, so…
• 1:00:29
  Ted: Really? Okay.
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 1:00:30
  Ted: Yeah, we'll have plenty of.
• 1:00:31
  Tad Eggleston: I figured it was worth giving a single episode.
• 1:00:34
  Ted: Yeah, no.
• 1:00:35
  Marcus Anderson: The crazy thing is it's kind of like a regular issue, in a good way.
• 1:00:39
  Tad Eggleston: But it's a double-sized, but yeah.
• 1:00:42
  Marcus Anderson: I mean, in the sense that it's, you know, for all of the… drama.
• 1:00:47
  Marcus Anderson: You know, the story itself, there's nothing like…
• 1:00:51
  Marcus Anderson: bad or controversial about it, but it's just the DC, like…
• 1:00:55
  Marcus Anderson: Really being stubborn about the COVID.
• 1:00:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I just… the way I looked at it, you know, because I was actually looking through earlier to figure out what we were reading and block it out.
• 1:01:07
  Tad Eggleston: Is either we read it out of
• 1:01:11
  Tad Eggleston: Compendium order and put it with the 4 static that we're doing for next month.
• 1:01:16
  Tad Eggleston: or we'd be doing it with 4Blood Syndicate, or with
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: 8 Cobalt, and neither of those sound.
• 1:01:25
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:01:25
  Tad Eggleston: like, the way to do it. So, I figure…
• 1:01:29
  Tad Eggleston: January's just one issue month. We can kind of look back on everything. We can talk… discuss the… the…
• 1:01:38
  Tad Eggleston: how it all played out. I think there's even a little in the back about… I know that the original cover is in the back.
• 1:01:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I guess it's… there's no essay or anything, there's just the unprinted cover.
• 1:01:53
  Ted: I actually haven't read that part yet, so I'm curious to see what this is all about. I actually… I don't feel like I know the controversy.
• 1:01:59
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:01
  Tad Eggleston: Virgil… Virgil had prophylactics.
• 1:02:04
  Ted: Oh, okay, yes, now I remember.
• 1:02:07
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah, I think we talked about it.
• 1:02:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say, we've brought it up before.
• 1:02:11
  Ted: It's… yes, I… I am… I was blanking on it, but yeah, I get what you're talking about now. Okay. Alright. But yeah, I mean…
• 1:02:17
  Ted: We, yeah, we're at the end of this episode, clearly, I kind of wasn't reading the room on that, but yeah, I am…
• 1:02:22
  Ted: I am excited to see what happens in the next bunch of issues, and go from there, yeah.
• 1:02:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I finally got smart, and I, like, put the reading list in the calendar.
• 1:02:35
  Tad Eggleston: So, if you look at your calendar thing, you can see what you're supposed to read for.
• 1:02:40
  Marcus Anderson: Oh, that's hopeful, yeah.
• 1:02:42
  Ted: Yeah, because people…
• 1:02:42
  Tad Eggleston: The end of the…
• 1:02:46
  Ted: peek behind the curtain here, listeners. Sometimes, we don't always remember, and we have to kind of catch up.
• 1:02:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right. We're, like, trading texts, and it's like, I'm not home, I don't know!
• 1:02:55
  Ted: Is it static? Is it static this week, or is it shadow cabinet? Oh, crap, I can't remember… yeah, no, it's…
• 1:02:59
  Ted: Yeah. Anyway, but yeah, I… this is… this is fun. It was a… it was a weird diversion for Milestone, but also, it was a creator who was gone too soon, and it was fun to see her doing something that was clearly very near and dear to her, and I… yeah, it was a… it was a nice read, and I'm glad we did it. So…
• 1:03:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Marcus Anderson: Yeah.
• 1:03:19
  Tad Eggleston: So, for 22 panels, this has been the brothers. Anderson, no relation on the Milestone Book Club, and we will see you after the next page.