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With Great Power #333... 22 Panels with Larry Stahl · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. Returning tonight is writer Larry Stahl.
• 0:10
  Larry Stahl: Oh, I remember.
• 0:11
  Tad Eggleston: Fresh off of nowhere to go but up.
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: and making his, C2E2 panel debut.
• 0:20
  Larry Stahl: You know?
• 0:21
  Tad Eggleston: He's just trying to take the world by storm here.
• 0:24
  Tad Eggleston: And now he's got a story in Exciting Comics number 62?
• 0:32
  Tad Eggleston: from Antarctic called Midwest Mana Power.
• 0:39
  Tad Eggleston: And… I read it!
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: And… I'm intrigued, but what I've seen so far is really just an introduction. So, Larry, you wanna…
• 0:50
  Tad Eggleston: You want to pitch it to us?
• 0:52
  Larry Stahl: Alright, so, for Midwest Man of Power, debuting in Exciting Comics No. 62 from Antarctic Press, is essentially…
• 1:03
  Larry Stahl: the story of a Gen Z burnout named Maxwell Allen Neyer, who is given superpowers, from his,
• 1:12
  Larry Stahl: essentially dying ex-superhero grandmother. And so, with him being a burnout, and being young, and still trying to figure out exactly what he wants to do with his life, he needs to find out within himself whether he wants to be a superhero, or whether he's any good at it.
• 1:29
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, it's, it's very much a…
• 1:33
  Larry Stahl: A coming of age, but, like, a coming of age that happens a little…
• 1:37
  Larry Stahl: Later in life, because he didn't really have a sense of direction before.
• 1:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I didn't get a feeling for how old he was, so I wasn't thinking of him as a burnout, but I figure you write him, so if you want to call him a burnout, you can call him a burnout.
• 1:56
  Larry Stahl: Well, I mean, that's kind of the thing, you know, it's, you know, he… he…
• 2:03
  Tad Eggleston: He seemed like a typical… early 20-something Gen Z to me, like…
• 2:09
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 2:10
  Tad Eggleston: only, like, add the powers means that, like, he has to consider way more than most 20-something Gen Zs have to consider in terms of what they're gonna do with their lives.
• 2:24
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, and like, that was kind of the fun of the story, you know? And to be completely honest, the position that I wanted to put Max in was very similar to a position that I was in at the age of 21. You know, I was very inspired
• 2:41
  Larry Stahl: Weirdly, by… I can't remember if I brought this up the last time that, I was.
• 2:47
  Tad Eggleston: It doesn't matter, there's only 3 people that listen to all of the episodes. Hi, Mom. Hi, John. Hi, Adam.
• 2:55
  Tad Eggleston: You're allowed to say it again.
• 2:56
  Tad Eggleston: I don't remember.
• 2:58
  Larry Stahl: Jeez.
• 3:00
  Larry Stahl: Okay, so if I…
• 3:04
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Larry, I record a lot of these. I'm not expected to… it's not personal that I don't remember.
• 3:11
  Larry Stahl: So, like, most people don'.
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: Remember, word for word. You're allowed to repeat yourself. It's something that's allowed on this planet.
• 3:18
  Larry Stahl: Well, well, I'm not, I'm not… like, I didn't take it personal or anything, I'm just trying to… I was laughing about it, because I was like…
• 3:28
  Larry Stahl: It was the acknowledgement of 3 listeners, and then… so that threw me off.
• 3:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 3:35
  Larry Stahl: I don't remember.
• 3:36
  Tad Eggleston: a lot, that's a fourth.
• 3:40
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you plug me in American Nature Presents newsletter, but I'm not at all certain that you listen, because you always plug whatever got posted last.
• 3:54
  Larry Stahl: Well, that's a thing about… I mean, you have a great show on here, man, and that's all about trying to show people what's new and hot and hip, you know, because, like, if… because doing American Nature Newsletter…
• 4:06
  Larry Stahl: I trust…
• 4:07
  Tad Eggleston: I get it, but every once in a while, I'm sitting there going, well, that was a cool interview, but, like, two before it was a superstar, man.
• 4:17
  Larry Stahl: I'm just, I'm just, I'm just trying to, you know, with doing that weekly, I try to keep it current. You know…
• 4:23
  Tad Eggleston: But Larry, I put out, like, 4 episodes a week, like, 2 before that is often still weekly.
• 4:33
  Larry Stahl: Getting me on a lot of technicalities here, man.
• 4:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, if… when do you do the American Nature Presents newsletter?
• 4:42
  Larry Stahl: I…
• 4:44
  Tad Eggleston: What'd the next one be?
• 4:45
  Larry Stahl: The next one, we were actually thinking about pushing it to Friday, just because of my work schedule between this and the writing and yada yada.
• 4:52
  Tad Eggleston: When was the last one?
• 4:54
  Larry Stahl: Wednesday.
• 4:55
  Tad Eggleston: Last Wednesday. Right. So… If you put it out this Friday.
• 5:03
  Tad Eggleston: It'll be you, rather than Liam Sharp.
• 5:08
  Tad Eggleston: And no offense.
• 5:11
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, no, I'm not gonna talk about myself!
• 5:14
  Tad Eggleston: Are you kidding?
• 5:14
  Larry Stahl: Kidding me?
• 5:16
  Larry Stahl: No, no, no, no, no, no, that's the best, because…
• 5:20
  Larry Stahl: I put updates on what I'm doing in there sometimes.
• 5:23
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I'm messing with you. I'm messing with you.
• 5:26
  Larry Stahl: I know, I know! Look, look, look, you're giving me questions, and I'm giving regrettals.
• 5:31
  Tad Eggleston: You have had too much come too easy to you over the last year. So, you know, I gotta knock you down a peg a little bit every once in a while.
• 5:38
  Larry Stahl: Please knock me. If I'm gonna be honest, I am encouraging being knocked down a few pegs. It's…
• 5:46
  Larry Stahl: I'll take… I'll take a taser, I'll take a baseball bat, I'll take…
• 5:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I have baseball bets, but I don't like hitting people with them.
• 5:55
  Larry Stahl: Okay, okay, fine.
• 5:56
  Tad Eggleston: Like, people are more likely to break them, and then I can't use them on baseballs.
• 6:03
  Larry Stahl: Are any of them, Louisville Sluggers?
• 6:06
  Tad Eggleston: All of them are Louisville sluggers.
• 6:08
  Larry Stahl: Hell yeah, that's the way to go.
• 6:12
  Larry Stahl: Those ones are my favorite to be hit with.
• 6:15
  Tad Eggleston: Wood ones.
• 6:16
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:18
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
• 6:20
  Larry Stahl: What if…
• 6:21
  Tad Eggleston: If I break them on you, I can't break them on baseballs. And if I'm gonna break them, and let's be honest, would bats break?
• 6:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'd rather break them swinging at baseballs.
• 6:33
  Tad Eggleston: That's just me.
• 6:36
  Larry Stahl: And, and, I mean, I mean, hey, though… If, like, let's say… Okay, so.
• 6:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess I have some of the broken ones around, I could just hit you with one of the broken ones.
• 6:48
  Larry Stahl: So, but then… but then here's what you do. You see, I remember when I was a kid, I went to a Fort Wayne Tin Caps game, and I remember they had their wooden bats that they would break on the field, and they would sell… they would have whoever was using the bat at the time sign the bat, and then sell the broken bats.
• 7:05
  Tad Eggleston: Cool.
• 7:06
  Larry Stahl: That's what you do.
• 7:07
  Larry Stahl: Is, you know, because you run… you run one of the greatest comic podcasts, what you do.
• 7:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, but not one of the most listened-to comic podcasts. I mean, thank you! I'll take the compliment, but not one of the most listened to. And we all know that in comics, like, quality and value don't always go together.
• 7:29
  Larry Stahl: It's the same in music and movies and…
• 7:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it is, but like… In music.
• 7:40
  Tad Eggleston: It's not David Bowie's first album.
• 7:44
  Tad Eggleston: in an original pressing that is worth a lot of money. It's… it's Ziggy Stardust in an original pressing. Whereas, like.
• 7:54
  Tad Eggleston: Hulk's first appearance is worth way more than Planet Hulk.
• 7:59
  Tad Eggleston: Even though Planet Hulk is a much better story.
• 8:03
  Larry Stahl: Right.
• 8:05
  Tad Eggleston: Witchline's first appearance is worth Way, way, way more!
• 8:12
  Tad Eggleston: than, say, Sam Keith's Marvel Knights Wolverine.
• 8:17
  Larry Stahl: Right, right.
• 8:18
  Tad Eggleston: That's a much better story.
• 8:20
  Larry Stahl: I was really hoping you were gonna keep harping on the first appearance of Hulk, because, like, isn't it funny how they just, like, retroactively changed a bunch of stuff within the first, like, within the first few issues? At first, it was the, oh, he becomes the Hulk when it's dark.
• 8:34
  Larry Stahl: And then, like…
• 8:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't even remember half of that stuff, but yes, superhero comics, Larry, particularly for the first decade or so, they weren't actually known for their adherence to continuity.
• 8:47
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, you got Peter Palmer, Scott Summers' name was Slim Summers.
• 8:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 8:56
  Larry Stahl: Who's out here naming your kid Slim? You're giving him body dysmorphia before he even has a chance to…
• 9:02
  Larry Stahl: Hey, here.
• 9:03
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean… It's almost like…
• 9:08
  Tad Eggleston: They didn't expect people to read them… again.
• 9:12
  Larry Stahl: Which is a solid point.
• 9:15
  Tad Eggleston: I was actually… on the way out, my wife likes to listen to… Conan needs a friend.
• 9:24
  Tad Eggleston: And one of the ones we listened to on the way out here was with Patton Oswalt.
• 9:29
  Tad Eggleston: And they got… they got into talking about…
• 9:35
  Tad Eggleston: Lost in Space. Have you ever seen any of the original Lost in Space?
• 9:39
  Larry Stahl: I honestly can't say I have.
• 9:41
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. So, like…
• 9:44
  Tad Eggleston: One of the things they talked about is they were pretty certain that the way the episodes were written
• 9:50
  Tad Eggleston: Was, like, the writers would go to the prop…
• 9:57
  Tad Eggleston: storage, and just look for cool things, and then write the, we found a Cleopatra headdress, so we're gonna have a puff of smoke on this planet, and then Cleopatra will appear, and turn everybody into mummies.
• 10:13
  Larry Stahl: It's almost like they were just creating short-term entertainment with whatever they had in front of them.
• 10:20
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, we're talking, like, 1950s and 60s TV. They had no idea that there would be DVD. They had no idea that there would be streaming. There wasn't VHS. It aired once.
• 10:37
  Tad Eggleston: It was never gonna be seen again. Was their strong, strong assumption.
• 10:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 10:48
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, I, you know, but… Well, all of…
• 10:52
  Larry Stahl: How did… I think we were talking about baseball bats… Pretty sure that's.
• 10:56
  Tad Eggleston: But we eventually got to early superhero comics.
• 11:00
  Tad Eggleston: And their lack of strong continuity. I mean, Superman couldn't fly for, what, 2 or 3 years? He just jumped really high.
• 11:07
  Larry Stahl: Wasn't… wasn't that an invention of…
• 11:12
  Larry Stahl: Trying to think here, because it's so strange with, like, Superman.
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be brutally honest, when it comes to any superhero lore except maybe Daredevil,
• 11:25
  Tad Eggleston: You could say anything you wanted, and I wouldn't be able to refute you.
• 11:28
  Larry Stahl: Well, it's a good thing you got on our…
• 11:30
  Tad Eggleston: Not a superhero expert in any way, shape, or form.
• 11:34
  Larry Stahl: It's a good thing you got on a Midwest Man of Power at the ground floor, though, right?
• 11:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, here's my thing.
• 11:43
  Tad Eggleston: Flies fast, cool, but, like…
• 11:46
  Tad Eggleston: you missed the opportunity shown to you by Bryce Ingman and Mark Russell with… with,
• 11:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, God, I can't remember the name of their traffic superhero, who has twice the strength of a human man.
• 12:02
  Tad Eggleston: You know, you could… you couldn't.
• 12:06
  Larry Stahl: a pedestrian?
• 12:07
  Tad Eggleston: more… more specific, and… and… and made it, like… like, you know…
• 12:15
  Larry Stahl: Well, you see, here's… here's kind of the thing about it. With the creation of the character.
• 12:21
  Larry Stahl: Now, being a kid that grew up in the northwestern corner of Ohio, where we didn't even have a Walmart in our county, the towns are very small, and they're few and far between.
• 12:33
  Larry Stahl: when I was a kid, I used to have these fantasies, you know, when you're a kid reading superhero comics, you want to be a superhero, you know? You have the…
• 12:42
  Larry Stahl: The power fantasy in that.
• 12:44
  Larry Stahl: And so, when I was originally…
• 12:48
  Larry Stahl: putting this story together, originally the only joke of it was going to be the idea
• 12:54
  Larry Stahl: Of this is a superhero that exists in an area where he is seemingly not useful at all.
• 13:03
  Larry Stahl: And then it's also, like, I thought to add insult to injury to the character and really give him an uphill battle, especially, let's say, future stories that we do, he's really put up against some stuff where he actually…
• 13:16
  Larry Stahl: needs to be a super powerful superhero in the Midwest. You know, even, like, with the strange power set, it's not like he's bulletproof. It's not like he's super strong.
• 13:28
  Larry Stahl: You know, he has to learn to work with what he's given once he is put into a situation where he might actually be of some help.
• 13:36
  Larry Stahl: You know, it's really that whole adage of, like, you know, you want good drama, put your main character through hell.
• 13:42
  Larry Stahl: And weirdly, his part of Hell, as well, is kind of having…
• 13:47
  Larry Stahl: This really strange, specific power set.
• 13:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the first piece of advice I have for him.
• 13:54
  Tad Eggleston: Is slow down when you get the cats out of trees.
• 14:01
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, yeah, cause.
• 14:04
  Tad Eggleston: You'll have to read it to know. If you know, you know.
• 14:09
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, we will, we will…
• 14:11
  Tad Eggleston: Slow down when saving cats from trees. Also, just for the record, no matter how much the cat pretends that it's stuck up in a tree, it will come down when it's hungry.
• 14:23
  Larry Stahl: You see, that's what… that's what I'm saying. Like, if I'm gonna be honest, you know, like, you… you see a.
• 14:29
  Tad Eggleston: I have chased many a cat up a tree.
• 14:32
  Larry Stahl: You see it in the news, and then, like, you… it's almost like that phenomenon of you've never seen your neighbor bring in their groceries. I have never once seen the fire department get called for a cat stuck in a tree.
• 14:46
  Larry Stahl: I have questions.
• 14:47
  Tad Eggleston: You've seen that on the news?
• 14:50
  Larry Stahl: I have seen that. You know, when you grow up in the area that I grew up in, there's not.
• 14:54
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 14:56
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't seen that on the news. I've seen that on, like, Leave It to Beaver.
• 15:01
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah!
• 15:03
  Larry Stahl: I mean…
• 15:05
  Tad Eggleston: No, I don't even know if I've seen it on Leave It to Beaver. I've seen it on Pleasantville, when the fire department was surprised that there was anything they were supposed to do other than get things out of trees.
• 15:21
  Larry Stahl: But yeah, no, this is a character that could use… you know what? You know what, Tad?
• 15:27
  Larry Stahl: What other bits of advice do you have for this character, okay?
• 15:31
  Tad Eggleston: That's my biggest bit of advice, is slow down. But also, like, you know…
• 15:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the same advice that I'd give anybody in that situation. Don't think about what you're not.
• 15:47
  Tad Eggleston: Think about what you are, and do what you can to make a better world. Don't think about the things you can't do to make a better world.
• 15:55
  Larry Stahl: Right, like, and that's… that's kind of… that's kind of the thing about this story, you know, cause…
• 16:02
  Larry Stahl: Let me, let me, let me kind of give you… cause I was, I was, I was talking a little bit earlier about…
• 16:09
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry that I've been, like, completely, completely, like, atypical in my interview style today, and just caught you completely off-balance, and…
• 16:17
  Larry Stahl: The thing that caught me off balance was the viewers thing, because I was like, I don't know if you should say that on your own podcast.
• 16:24
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, have… this is how I also know that you don't listen.
• 16:29
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because… because I think I say that almost every episode.
• 16:34
  Larry Stahl: Well, whoa, I know.
• 16:35
  Tad Eggleston: And I know that it's not entirely true.
• 16:38
  Larry Stahl: Just because I know that you say it a lot doesn't mean I think it's something you should do.
• 16:44
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but part of it is, I, I, I,
• 16:55
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just being honest, like, I know of 3 people that listen to all episodes, I get minimum 30 downloads an episode. I assume that that means that 30 people auto-download, and, like.
• 17:09
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have good data on streaming. Or at least I'm not convinced that I have good data on streaming.
• 17:16
  Tad Eggleston: Versus downloads.
• 17:18
  Larry Stahl: You know what, maybe, maybe the
• 17:20
  Larry Stahl: downloads you're getting, maybe one of those guys is distributing it elsewhere. They're doing it.
• 17:25
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's entirely… what I get psyched about is, like, once a month or so, there will be a new location that downloads 300 episodes all at once.
• 17:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, we have worldwide distribution, Larry. And for that matter, what I get excited about is when I'm at a Comic-Con, and I hand my card to somebody, and they already know who I am.
• 17:48
  Tad Eggleston: That one, that one feels really good.
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: So, like…
• 17:52
  Tad Eggleston: it's more my commentary on, I don't know what my coverage is, and that's not all my fault, and I don't care, and I want to say hi to my mom, and my brother, and my friend John, and my friend Britt, because they listen the most, and at least among the people who tell me about it.
• 18:10
  Tad Eggleston: But every once in a while, I even get an email from somebody that I don't know.
• 18:15
  Larry Stahl: Yeah!
• 18:16
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, honestly, man, there's nothing more elating
• 18:20
  Larry Stahl: to me than receiving an email from somebody being like, oh, hey, like, you handed me a business card, like, 3 months ago, and I really like what you're doing, you know?
• 18:31
  Larry Stahl: That, that, that always feels great.
• 18:33
  Larry Stahl: But, but yeah, no, you threw me off guard, but we're gonna, we're gonna get it back on the rails, man.
• 18:39
  Tad Eggleston: What rails?
• 18:43
  Larry Stahl: the, the, 20, the 22 Panels podcast trails.
• 18:47
  Tad Eggleston: Do you have rails?
• 18:50
  Larry Stahl: I figured you had rails. They're… they're theoretical rails that I assumed were in place.
• 18:57
  Tad Eggleston: I think I left them in my other pants.
• 19:02
  Larry Stahl: Okay, alright.
• 19:04
  Larry Stahl: Okay, that's okay then. We're going freeform. Don't we have a book coming out together here soon too, Tad?
• 19:09
  Tad Eggleston: We do. We do.
• 19:13
  Tad Eggleston: I have, like, 6 or 8 pages in it this time.
• 19:17
  Larry Stahl: I… I have… I have… And for everybody listening, this is American Nature Presents No. 4, FOC.
• 19:23
  Tad Eggleston: What? You're gonna tell them what it is? They were supposed to figure it out on their own.
• 19:27
  Larry Stahl: They were what…
• 19:28
  Larry Stahl: This is… you say there's 4 people listening, do you want… do you want the 4 people listening to have to do investigative…
• 19:36
  Tad Eggleston: listening are still giving me a hard time to give them signed copies of… well, two of the four people listening are still giving me a hard time to get them signed copies of American Nature Presents No. 3. So, if I let them know that number 4 is on the way, they'll be that much more upset that I haven't gotten them copies of number 3 yet.
• 19:54
  Larry Stahl: Well, it's really fortuitous that we're talking, Tad, because I work for American Nature.
• 19:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I have copies! They just don't live in the same place, and I haven't put them in the mail or anything like that.
• 20:10
  Larry Stahl: with Greg, I feel like… I feel- I feel like I'll be able to… I can make it happen.
• 20:18
  Tad Eggleston: I told Greg I wanted some back issues this time around, because I've talked to a cartoonist recently that… or, I'm sorry, a comic writer recently that has been meaning to get into it and hasn't, and I'm like, I know I have some of the issues.
• 20:34
  Tad Eggleston: But I don't have all of them, and I'd like to send him close to a complete set.
• 20:39
  Larry Stahl: I'm gonna be honest, I was… you know, I have their hardcover, beautiful hardcover put together.
• 20:45
  Tad Eggleston: I have that, too.
• 20:46
  Larry Stahl: But, like, I've been wanting to get some of the single issues, and when I was up at Chicago for C2E2, I went to Challengers.
• 20:55
  Larry Stahl: And they had, like, the newest printing of Issue 1 on the rack.
• 21:01
  Larry Stahl: But I had a friend who wanted to get into their stuff since I had been working for them and telling them all about Santos Sisters, and I ended up just handing over the new printing of Issue 1 that I bought, because I was like, no, no, no, you need to read this, just take it.
• 21:17
  Tad Eggleston: I got five and a third pages this time.
• 21:20
  Larry Stahl: Five and a third in the newest American… Yep.
• 21:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yep, I've got a page and a third is my… is my normal column.
• 21:29
  Tad Eggleston: And then I have 4 pages of my interview with Jason.
• 21:33
  Larry Stahl: Heck yeah.
• 21:34
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, honestly, I'm really excited for people to get their hands on that issue, so I guess we're kind of plugging that right now, too.
• 21:40
  Larry Stahl: It's a, it's a.
• 21:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean…
• 21:42
  Larry Stahl: neither issue.
• 21:42
  Tad Eggleston: People should get it just for the interview with Jason. My questions were okay, but his answers were amazing.
• 21:50
  Larry Stahl: Right, I mean, I mean, honestly, that's, you know, even back before I knew Greg and Fake, and I was reading American Nature, like, like, everything about that book is a trove.
• 22:00
  Tad Eggleston: Also, also… Ty, did you see Tyler's illustration of me this time?
• 22:06
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:07
  Tad Eggleston: He drew me as a Jason Bird.
• 22:10
  Larry Stahl: That's awesome.
• 22:12
  Larry Stahl: I remember Issue 3, they, they re… what was that? They redid the, the giant-sized man-thing picture from Stan?
• 22:20
  Larry Stahl: It's like you land…
• 22:21
  Tad Eggleston: Is that issue 3? I thought issue… Issue 3, I thought, was the Jeff Goldblum… lounging, I'm not Daredevil.
• 22:31
  Larry Stahl: Oh, okay, that's what that was homaging then, because what my brain went to immediately was that picture of Stan Lee completely naked on the couch with the giant-sized man thing. That's where my brain went.
• 22:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I suppose that's possible, too.
• 22:45
  Larry Stahl: Similarly pose.
• 22:46
  Tad Eggleston: I think that's more of… I think they were thinking Jeff Goldblum.
• 22:51
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah… You know, all art is interpretive, folks, and…
• 22:59
  Larry Stahl: But yeah, yeah, no,
• 23:04
  Larry Stahl: Man, we are… we are all over the place tonight. Oh my own.
• 23:07
  Tad Eggleston: Welcome to 22 Panels.
• 23:09
  Larry Stahl: But yeah, no.
• 23:12
  Tad Eggleston: End of the week. And I've been driving all day.
• 23:16
  Tad Eggleston: Riding or driving, but, you know.
• 23:19
  Larry Stahl: Today is… today is technically my Saturday, but because of,
• 23:23
  Larry Stahl: this event I got coming up on Sunday, you know, I'm gonna have an extended weekend in a way.
• 23:30
  Larry Stahl: So, that's kind of nice. So, end of the week, wind down, we're just having fun.
• 23:34
  Larry Stahl: Just having fun checking it all out.
• 23:43
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry, I'm also responding to a text, because I do that sometimes. You were supposed to fill the gap, man. Keep talking!
• 23:52
  Larry Stahl: Okay, okay, okay, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine.
• 23:54
  Larry Stahl: So.
• 23:55
  Tad Eggleston: amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic. Marvel comics are neither marvelous nor comics. Discuss.
• 24:07
  Tad Eggleston: You're not old enough to even know what I'm referencing, do you?
• 24:11
  Larry Stahl: I will say, I will say, though, I heard you…
• 24:14
  Larry Stahl: And I can't even say I disagree with how things are going right now.
• 24:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I won't go that far, because I have some friends who are exclusive to Marvel right now, and they're doing cool stuff.
• 24:26
  Tad Eggleston: Goodbye.
• 24:28
  Larry Stahl: I mean, I know that there's some really cool stuff going on over there.
• 24:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, for the first time in ages, DC is doing more cool stuff. However…
• 24:38
  Tad Eggleston: They still have this whiteness problem.
• 24:42
  Tad Eggleston: Which is particularly annoying, given that they have Milestone.
• 24:47
  Larry Stahl: Yes. Which, which is also really strange.
• 24:52
  Tad Eggleston: All I'm saying is, like…
• 24:55
  Tad Eggleston: There could be a static ongoing. I'm certain that there are stories, and I'm certain that there is a market.
• 25:02
  Larry Stahl: And also, I know that when, DC started their initial, like, all-in, they did have a Black Lightning series going, and then that just kind of fell to the wayside.
• 25:11
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but that was always a miniseries.
• 25:13
  Larry Stahl: It was always a miniseries?
• 25:15
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm?
• 25:16
  Tad Eggleston: The last, the last ongoing series… with… A… a black main… character.
• 25:31
  Tad Eggleston: in DC… in their mainline continuity. So they have, like, the absolute Green Lantern is… is…
• 25:39
  Tad Eggleston: Jon Stewart. So, like, it's not that they haven't done a handful of miniseries and whatnot.
• 25:48
  Tad Eggleston: But, like…
• 25:51
  Tad Eggleston: In the last 20 years, it's been 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
• 26:01
  Tad Eggleston: 17. 17 miniseries in the last 20 years have had a central character that was black.
• 26:10
  Larry Stahl: That's… outrageous.
• 26:13
  Tad Eggleston: And it has been 1,214 days since February 14th.
• 26:20
  Tad Eggleston: 2023, with issue 18 of I Am Batman.
• 26:25
  Tad Eggleston: was the last… Ongoing series with a black character.
• 26:31
  Tad Eggleston: that DC.
• 26:34
  Tad Eggleston: Printed.
• 26:36
  Tad Eggleston: So… And again, They have the rights to print Milestone.
• 26:44
  Larry Stahl: Right, which is like… and then didn't they also have, the milestone initiative that they were doing there?
• 26:49
  Tad Eggleston: They did!
• 26:50
  Tad Eggleston: They did! So they found a number of great creators, almost all of them have been on this podcast.
• 26:59
  Tad Eggleston: First, because we did… we had half of the milestone initiative on all at once, but second, because a number of them, Julio Anta, Damon Hampton, you know, have continued doing great stuff, and keep coming back.
• 27:16
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, isn't, Damien?
• 27:22
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 27:23
  Larry Stahl: Damien.
• 27:24
  Larry Stahl: Oh, you had him on the show recently, right?
• 27:26
  Tad Eggleston: Damon Hampton. Damon.
• 27:28
  Tad Eggleston: Not Damien, Damon.
• 27:31
  Larry Stahl: Sorry, I'm sorry.
• 27:31
  Tad Eggleston: A-I-M-O-N.
• 27:33
  Larry Stahl: Dane. Okay, yeah, sorry.
• 27:35
  Tad Eggleston: Damon Hampton I had Julio Anta on recently, too.
• 27:39
  Larry Stahl: I actually, I, I, I met Damon, when I.
• 27:42
  Tad Eggleston: It was great.
• 27:43
  Larry Stahl: We actually, just before the convention.
• 27:47
  Larry Stahl: We did a signing at Chicago Comics, and he was the first guy to walk right up.
• 27:51
  Tad Eggleston: No, Damon's… Damon's amazing.
• 27:54
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah.
• 27:56
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, I… I… DC has yet to comment.
• 28:02
  Larry Stahl: On that, don't they?
• 28:04
  Tad Eggleston: Probably not, but there's no upside to them commenting. I mean, really, they either need to put out a book or…
• 28:13
  Tad Eggleston: Stay quiet.
• 28:15
  Larry Stahl: Yeah.
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: Mostly, I just, like…
• 28:21
  Tad Eggleston: There's only so far I'm willing to praise DC right now, even when they're doing good stuff. And you know me, 90% of what I read isn't Marvel or DC.
• 28:31
  Larry Stahl: Right, right, exactly.
• 28:32
  Tad Eggleston: But But again, it's particularly irksome, given that, like…
• 28:40
  Tad Eggleston: It would be so easy to have a static book.
• 28:43
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, I mean, they've… I mean, they've got…
• 28:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, seriously.
• 28:47
  Larry Stahl: Larry's going on.
• 28:48
  Tad Eggleston: Have you read the old Milestone comics?
• 28:51
  Larry Stahl: No, I was actually meaning to,
• 28:54
  Larry Stahl: Weren't they going to take the original static run and do it as a compact edition, or did they do that newer one?
• 28:59
  Tad Eggleston: I think they might have done… I think they might have done… not the initial run, because the initial run was, like, 50 issues, but I think they might have done the initial arcostatic as a compact edition, but dude, you should buy yourself the $50 Compendium.
• 29:17
  Tad Eggleston: The first one.
• 29:18
  Larry Stahl: Okay.
• 29:18
  Tad Eggleston: 5 now, and a sixth on the way.
• 29:21
  Tad Eggleston: But you should buy yourself the first one, and just read it, because it's got, like, in reading order, and you're gonna go, holy fuck, there were superhero comics this good in the early 90s?
• 29:36
  Tad Eggleston: How have they been out of print for so long?
• 29:40
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, cause that's kinda, that's kinda, you know, a lot of,
• 29:45
  Larry Stahl: I grew up as a Marvel boy, and every time I would find
• 29:49
  Larry Stahl: because I didn't have a comic book store anywhere close to me when I was a kid. I would have to, like, live off of the Marvel comics that I was able to find at garage sales…
• 29:57
  Larry Stahl: You know, that kind of thing.
• 30:00
  Larry Stahl: You know, but that being said, when it comes to DC, I just recently have started
• 30:06
  Larry Stahl: Not even reading any of the newer stuff, just going back and reading what everybody talks about, you know, like, when it comes to, like.
• 30:13
  Larry Stahl: Geoff Johns, or, you know,
• 30:16
  Larry Stahl: Brad… Brad Meltzer's Justice League. I've been going back and starting to read all that, so I definitely…
• 30:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, see, all of that comes after Milestone.
• 30:24
  Larry Stahl: Right, right, exactly, you know, and that's my thing. I want to go back and read my.
• 30:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, Milestone was going on…
• 30:33
  Tad Eggleston: Contemporary with, like, the image revolution.
• 30:38
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, that lines up. That's, like, early 90s, mid-90s.
• 30:43
  Tad Eggleston: 93 and 94 is when milestone started.
• 30:48
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, like… I mean, you go…
• 30:55
  Tad Eggleston: like, pull up on League of Comic Geeks, like, any week that a milestone book came out, and, like, there are a couple of Vertigo books that might be as good.
• 31:05
  Tad Eggleston: And that's it.
• 31:08
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 31:12
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, I definitely, if I were…
• 31:14
  Tad Eggleston: Not high points for anything else. And the number of people who got their starts at Milestone, I mean, John Paul Leone, Jimmy Palmiati.
• 31:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 31:27
  Tad Eggleston: So much good stuff.
• 31:29
  Tad Eggleston: But that's for the Milestone Book Club Podcast. We talk about Milestone a lot on this pod… on this podcast. So, like, I don't need to go completely down the milestone rabbit hole.
• 31:41
  Larry Stahl: Well, hey man, good comics are good comics, dude, you know?
• 31:44
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I guess… I guess,
• 31:48
  Tad Eggleston: I guess where that comes in is, like…
• 31:52
  Tad Eggleston: You have one Danger Will Robinson moment in the first issue of Midwest Man of Power, and so far, you're handling it very, very well.
• 32:03
  Tad Eggleston: And I just hope you don't wind up peeing on the third rail at any point, because I'd have to bitch-slap you.
• 32:13
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because… because when he shows up late,
• 32:20
  Tad Eggleston: To, to, to save the day.
• 32:23
  Tad Eggleston: it, like…
• 32:24
  Tad Eggleston: It would be easy to… to treat the team's reaction as an overreaction, except if you, like, really look at
• 32:34
  Tad Eggleston: Who's reacting, and the history of
• 32:37
  Tad Eggleston: white male superheroes coming and saving the day, and blah blah blah. So I think… I think you… you handled it well, where he doesn't…
• 32:47
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't get angry at them.
• 32:49
  Tad Eggleston: Just so long as it continues to not be, oh, I need to go show them, rather than just be me.
• 32:57
  Tad Eggleston: That will be… good.
• 33:01
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely, you know, I was…
• 33:05
  Larry Stahl: Like you said at the start of the show, man, I…
• 33:08
  Larry Stahl: I was really happy for this to be a setup for numerous things if we were to continue what we're doing here in the future.
• 33:17
  Larry Stahl: But that being said, you know, even just… that's kind of the whole point of it, you know, Matt…
• 33:23
  Larry Stahl: Max, you know, he has to find his own way, and he has to do it in such a…
• 33:30
  Larry Stahl: dramatic fashion, but also while he's finding his own way, he's… It's… I don't know, he's living…
• 33:39
  Larry Stahl: He's very much a grieving, and he's an angry, sad, grieving…
• 33:45
  Larry Stahl: Boy, that gets candid this entire sense of purpose.
• 33:51
  Larry Stahl: And, like, there's a lot of character stuff going on at the same time, and…
• 33:56
  Larry Stahl: you know, I really, I really hope that with what I'm doing here, you know, because, like, I'm gonna tell you right now, everybody that you met in this book is not a one-off.
• 34:04
  Larry Stahl: You know…
• 34:05
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, God.
• 34:06
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, no, everybody, everybody that.
• 34:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you lay a good foundation, and I think I know you well enough to know that the story is not going somewhere that Ethan Van Skyver would be happy about. But, like…
• 34:24
  Tad Eggleston: just because of the world we lived in, and I know you know the point, and I'm trying not to read it, ruin it for listeners, while at the same time trying to make clear to listeners that it's worth reading, and I'm not trying to scare them away. There is that, like, brief moment where I'm like.
• 34:41
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and…
• 34:46
  Tad Eggleston: The girls just called out the guy For inadvertently being a jackass.
• 34:54
  Larry Stahl: Yeah.
• 34:56
  Tad Eggleston: This could go horribly, horribly wrong.
• 35:00
  Larry Stahl: Well, and like, not only that, you know, the audience of it as well. It's not… it's not just…
• 35:09
  Larry Stahl: a s- a miss…
• 35:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 35:12
  Larry Stahl: It's not just a scolding, it is a full-blown spanking. You know?
• 35:19
  Tad Eggleston: And he probably doesn't deserve a full-blown spanking, But…
• 35:27
  Tad Eggleston: Knowing the world that those girls come from, like…
• 35:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the things that I would always tell my son at any time
• 35:44
  Tad Eggleston: Anytime he was in a situation where… because he came of age at the height of Me Too.
• 35:51
  Tad Eggleston: So every once in a while, he'd be in a situation where, like.
• 35:54
  Tad Eggleston: He felt like he was being unjustly treated because… because…
• 36:00
  Tad Eggleston: There was he said, she said going on, and in spite of evidence, or in spite of what he thought was evidence.
• 36:08
  Tad Eggleston: organizations around him, or groups that he was part of, would lean towards the girl, and I'd sit there going, yeah, but Jonah, you gotta realize that there's been, like, a thousand years of the opposite.
• 36:20
  Larry Stahl: Right.
• 36:20
  Tad Eggleston: So if we swing too far for a few years while we're finding, like, actual equality.
• 36:29
  Tad Eggleston: That's a good trade.
• 36:32
  Larry Stahl: Right, and like, and that's… and another thing that I would love to explore, you know, we explore it here for certain, because, you know, like, with the themes that we're talking about.
• 36:44
  Larry Stahl: But, like, I also… It's so strange, when I initially pitched this book.
• 36:51
  Larry Stahl: it… I kept telling people, I'm like, look, it's… it's… you know, it's punchy-punchy, it's capes, it's… it's that. But, like, really, the story… like, the capes and the costumes are just set dressing, it's really…
• 37:06
  Larry Stahl: it's really a drama. Like, it's a drama about…
• 37:10
  Larry Stahl: people going… going through things, and like, I don't know, it's like lack of… It's… People not, like.
• 37:18
  Tad Eggleston: Good superhero books are.
• 37:21
  Tad Eggleston: Are, are, are a vehicle for telling some sort of… more…
• 37:29
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, you know, like, I really…
• 37:31
  Tad Eggleston: story.
• 37:33
  Larry Stahl: like, with Max, it's… it's really just like…
• 37:38
  Larry Stahl: where, where I was gonna get with that, earlier,
• 37:42
  Larry Stahl: The story… and I even, I even dedicated my grandmother at the beginning of this issue. The story all comes from, my grandmother's passing back in 2021.
• 37:52
  Larry Stahl: Early 2021, like, I was…
• 37:56
  Larry Stahl: 21 years old when she had passed, and when I was a kid, my grandmother, used to play a lot of music, she was a musician, she…
• 38:05
  Larry Stahl: they called it the Opry Barn, but really, it was, like, her and her friends getting together and playing bluegrass music, and they'd have, like, banquets, and…
• 38:12
  Tad Eggleston: Cool.
• 38:12
  Larry Stahl: That kind of thing, but she used to love singing and playing music. She'd get on the piano.
• 38:18
  Larry Stahl: You know, while they were all performing.
• 38:20
  Larry Stahl: And when I was a kid, that, like, really inspired me. I was like, man, like, you know, I would love to play music someday. And I really started seriously considering playing music when I was getting into my early 20s, you know, because, you know, I'm working, I, you know, I want to explore a passion of mine.
• 38:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 38:38
  Larry Stahl: And my grandmother passed away.
• 38:41
  Larry Stahl: And when she passed away, and they were, going through all of her stuff, you know.
• 38:46
  Larry Stahl: they, I get a call from my aunt, and she's essentially like, Larry, we know that you love playing music, do you want grandma's music equipment?
• 38:58
  Larry Stahl: And I inherited all of the stuff that she used to use to be able to do all of her weekly performances in this opera barn that she would run.
• 39:07
  Larry Stahl: And so… When that happened, I went…
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: discovered that she was a DJ?
• 39:15
  Larry Stahl: Oh my gosh.
• 39:16
  Tad Eggleston: stuff at the Opera Barn, but the other stuff was done in a warehouse downtown.
• 39:21
  Larry Stahl: Why is my grandma sampling Sugar Hill gang? Yeah, yeah.
• 39:28
  Larry Stahl: Grandma, that's a lot of Sugarhill gang records.
• 39:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, you know, I mean, good music is good music.
• 39:35
  Larry Stahl: Right, exactly. So…
• 39:38
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, so when… when I inherited all of that, that's the thing in my head that made me go, maybe this is what I'm supposed to do.
• 39:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 39:47
  Larry Stahl: You know, and so I went full tilt into music, and anybody that scrolls far enough back on my Instagram will see that I used… I was in a touring punk rock band for 4 years.
• 39:58
  Larry Stahl: And if you saw… if you saw pictures of…
• 40:02
  Larry Stahl: you know, like, the PA… it's my grandmother's PA that we were dragging with us everywhere to Athens, Ohio, Cleveland.
• 40:10
  Larry Stahl: all that. So, that's kind of where the story came from. That was, like, the final piece that took me from my original concept of, what would a superhero even do if he lived in the area I lived in? And then taking that
• 40:24
  Larry Stahl: I mean, too.
• 40:24
  Tad Eggleston: To be honest, he'd bring water during drought.
• 40:29
  Tad Eggleston: He… he'd help with plowing the fields.
• 40:34
  Larry Stahl: He…
• 40:35
  Tad Eggleston: He'd protect the cows in tornado season.
• 40:38
  Tad Eggleston: Probably beat up a lot of racists?
• 40:44
  Larry Stahl: Well, I… There's…
• 40:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, unless you… unless you're lucky enough to live in one of the rare… I mean, cause…
• 40:57
  Tad Eggleston: You're white, so, like… that…
• 41:01
  Tad Eggleston: generally means you live in a small rural area that is white. And generally, the only small rural areas that aren't…
• 41:12
  Tad Eggleston: don't involve… more racist than I'm comfortable with. I'm not saying everybody is racist.
• 41:19
  Larry Stahl: Not saying that…
• 41:20
  Tad Eggleston: at all.
• 41:20
  Tad Eggleston: But don't involve more racists than most of us are comfortable, is just because they're primarily Brown.
• 41:30
  Larry Stahl: Well.
• 41:31
  Tad Eggleston: There are rural areas that have mostly…
• 41:34
  Tad Eggleston: Mostly African American and or Hispanic people, and they tend not to be racist.
• 41:43
  Larry Stahl: Well, right, and, and, and like… Because that…
• 41:47
  Tad Eggleston: More of them are south of…
• 41:48
  Larry Stahl: rep, too.
• 41:49
  Tad Eggleston: south of the Mesa Dixon, the north of it as well.
• 41:53
  Larry Stahl: Well, here's something that I want to bring up, and anybody that listens to the show, email me at Larrystallauthor at gmail.com, and let me know what.
• 42:02
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow.
• 42:04
  Larry Stahl: Okay. When I was growing up, where I grew up, because it's very funny that you talk about South, you know, I…
• 42:15
  Larry Stahl: there were kids I went to school with. We… we're from Ohio. We're closer to being Canadian… like, the northwest top corner of Ohio, right across from where Fort Wayne, Indiana is. Right.
• 42:26
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
• 42:26
  Larry Stahl: We're closer to being Canadian than we are Southern.
• 42:32
  Larry Stahl: Right.
• 42:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like… Kentucky was kinda on both sides, so, I mean, you're about equidistant.
• 42:42
  Larry Stahl: I just… I… Riddle me this, Batman.
• 42:47
  Larry Stahl: What… why did all of the kids I went to school with
• 42:53
  Larry Stahl: around the time country music started getting really popular in, like, the late 2000s… or the early 2010s, while all the kids I went to school with that didn't have.
• 43:04
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, country music started getting really, really popular in, like, the late 80s, early 90s with Garth Brooks and Alan Jackson and George Strait, but, like, they were actually making
• 43:17
  Tad Eggleston: Music that was, like, Inspired by both Johnny Cash and the Beach Boys.
• 43:23
  Tad Eggleston: And then, then, by the late 2000s, it became, what if we took pop music and put on a cowboy hat?
• 43:33
  Larry Stahl: Well, right, and that's what I'm saying, like, and I… I didn't know if it would be, like, too weirdly, because, like, I'm… okay, so I'm… I'm 26, and so I don't…
• 43:41
  Tad Eggleston: I had a brief country music phase, which is why I know the difference.
• 43:45
  Larry Stahl: Okay, so, okay, so, thank you for that.
• 43:47
  Tad Eggleston: I will still defend my brief country music phase.
• 43:51
  Larry Stahl: It was…
• 43:51
  Tad Eggleston: I wasn't strictly a country music guy, and I started to notice when it stopped being good.
• 43:58
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, okay, okay, so… so… The moment I…
• 44:01
  Tad Eggleston: About, like, 1993 or 4.
• 44:05
  Tad Eggleston: Good, consistent.
• 44:06
  Larry Stahl: Why did a bunch of the… just the dudes, too! Why did a bunch of just the dudes that I went to school with suddenly develop country accents when Luke Bryan's I Don't Want This Night to End came out?
• 44:19
  Tad Eggleston: Cause they thought that it would make the girls like them.
• 44:27
  Larry Stahl: Please give me, like… I'm not kidding, if any…
• 44:31
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not saying that it worked.
• 44:34
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no, no.
• 44:36
  Larry Stahl: But, like… Right, I mean… It just baffles me, because, like.
• 44:40
  Tad Eggleston: Why do early 20-something guys do any stupid things?
• 44:46
  Larry Stahl: Well, maybe they get handed superpowers by their dying grandmother and feel like that's what they're supposed to be doing.
• 44:52
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but he hasn't done stupid things yet.
• 44:56
  Tad Eggleston: In fact, if anything, if anything, like, the stupid thing he did was like, oh, I got here late, rather than just cleaning up, or…
• 45:09
  Tad Eggleston: just going away. I'm going to talk to the girls…
• 45:16
  Larry Stahl: To chew.
• 45:17
  Tad Eggleston: Try to be cool.
• 45:19
  Larry Stahl: You see, you see, that's… that's kind of the thing, you know, cause, like, Max as a character…
• 45:24
  Tad Eggleston: just started cleaning up, and let them notice or not notice, he would have been fine.
• 45:30
  Larry Stahl: Right.
• 45:31
  Larry Stahl: But, like… I'm sure the…
• 45:33
  Tad Eggleston: When he asked them if they needed help cleaning up. That just hits on so many levels. First, do you need help? After you just kicked ass? Second, hey, ladies, you gonna clean up this mess? I'll help you out.
• 45:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right, exactly, and come on!
• 45:48
  Larry Stahl: I do… I do also kind of want people to ponder this. I know the answer, but I want people to ponder this. How much of Max doing that was also because he knew cameras were rolling?
• 46:01
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if he knew cameras were… I just assumed that, like, he was too oblivious to realize that cameras were rolling. Because if he DID know that cameras were rolling, then you're right, he's stupid.
• 46:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right, because…
• 46:17
  Larry Stahl: And it's so strange, because, you know…
• 46:20
  Tad Eggleston: I wanted to be anywhere but on camera at that moment.
• 46:24
  Larry Stahl: Right, right, and like, and with the book being out for pre-order, I, I don't know, I, I…
• 46:29
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's not really answered in this book. You'll start to get answers for that in the next story, so I hope we haven't ruined much.
• 46:39
  Larry Stahl: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, cause that's, that's…
• 46:42
  Tad Eggleston: That's kind of where I started. Like, in terms of not knowing exactly how to talk about this book, is… is this book…
• 46:50
  Tad Eggleston: Is very much a teaser.
• 46:53
  Larry Stahl: Yes, and…
• 46:54
  Tad Eggleston: Don't learn a lot yet.
• 46:57
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, and you know, and I can't wait to tell more of that story, you know? I've got…
• 47:04
  Larry Stahl: I've… I've…
• 47:05
  Larry Stahl: definitely got plans for in the future, what we're going to do, and the same way the first time I was on here, when you read Nowhere to Go But Up Part 1, which, by the way, all three parts are out now. If there is anyone out there that does remember that.
• 47:21
  Tad Eggleston: They are! They are! You can find them on Comixology, or if you get lucky enough to find Larry, or you go out to,
• 47:32
  Tad Eggleston: modern Age Comics in Algonquin. I think we've still got some copies left.
• 47:39
  Larry Stahl: Yeah.
• 47:40
  Tad Eggleston: There are actually some physical ones.
• 47:42
  Larry Stahl: I seriously, I need to get a website up and running. I've been so busy running around here, there, and everywhere.
• 47:49
  Larry Stahl: I never had the time to sit down.
• 47:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you should, you should… like, I mean, what you need to do is figure out who you're using, like…
• 47:57
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, there are ways.
• 47:59
  Larry Stahl: But that being said, the same way how that was the case the first time I was on here, with Exciting Comics number 62,
• 48:07
  Larry Stahl: As of right now, Everybody on the team, letterer, artist, writer, everybody we… have more, we…
• 48:16
  Tad Eggleston: Mary, Ryder is you. You're not supposed to speak of yourself in the third person.
• 48:22
  Tad Eggleston: Not unless you're Ricky Henderson. Ricky Henderson can do whatever Ricky Henderson wants to do.
• 48:28
  Tad Eggleston: Rest in peace.
• 48:30
  Larry Stahl: But every, every, every…
• 48:33
  Tad Eggleston: Even Deion Sanders, it wasn't cool.
• 48:36
  Larry Stahl: I didn't… didn't say it was… didn't say it was cool of me to refer to myself as a writer in the third person, but we're… we're all on board to do more of this story, but as of, as it stands right now.
• 48:49
  Larry Stahl: Exciting… think of Exciting Comics 62…
• 48:53
  Larry Stahl: as almost… in a, like, an Amazing Fantasy XV-type deal.
• 48:59
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 48:59
  Larry Stahl: Where we are going to do more. And it will be somewhere.
• 49:06
  Tad Eggleston: But you need to have the fans say, we want more. We want more.
• 49:11
  Larry Stahl: prove what I'm saying.
• 49:12
  Larry Stahl: And…
• 49:14
  Larry Stahl: I… we all 100% own the rights to it, and if for some reason anybody out there is like, hmm, I'm looking for something to publish.
• 49:24
  Larry Stahl: by all means, you can snatch us up, man. Like, we're free agents.
• 49:28
  Tad Eggleston: For one day, you can learn how to use Kickstarter.
• 49:31
  Larry Stahl: I, I actually…
• 49:32
  Tad Eggleston: You're enough of a pitch man that I think you and Kickstarter would get along.
• 49:37
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, no, I, I do have plans for something like that, but I cannot elaborate.
• 49:45
  Larry Stahl: But it is not tied to Midwest Manorpower.
• 49:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:50
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, I, but we, we definitely…
• 49:55
  Larry Stahl: The story is definitely going in a direction that…
• 49:58
  Larry Stahl: You know, like, everything that we've talked about here, you know, like, once people get their hands on the book, they're going to see that this is…
• 50:06
  Larry Stahl: This is definitely… A story about, you know, like, your coming-of-age…
• 50:16
  Larry Stahl: this is a kid figuring it out. This is a kid figuring out what he's supposed to do with his life. This is a kid figuring out, you know, how to… how to grieve, and how to…
• 50:28
  Larry Stahl: You know, be a functioning adult in today's world.
• 50:32
  Larry Stahl: and… It's, it's very much that. We just, we just hide it.
• 50:37
  Larry Stahl: behind, you know, Max's, homemade costume, and, and his, his goggles,
• 50:45
  Larry Stahl: He has been, quoted, they… this is not my words, but he's been quoted to, dress like ass.
• 50:53
  Larry Stahl: You know, so it's… it's…
• 50:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they are kind of your words, you're the writer.
• 51:02
  Larry Stahl: No, no, no, I didn't say that, what are you talking about? What are you talking about, Tad?
• 51:06
  Larry Stahl: I wouldn't say that.
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: writing.
• 51:08
  Larry Stahl: I wouldn't say that about my own character, I… I… I love Max, what are you talking about?
• 51:12
  Tad Eggleston: You're the writer.
• 51:15
  Tad Eggleston: If anybody says it in the book… You said it.
• 51:20
  Tad Eggleston: If I had to cite it in a research paper, I would cite it to Larry Stahl, not some character in a book.
• 51:29
  Tad Eggleston: And because I'm me, I'd make it clear that it was Larry Stahl.
• 51:34
  Tad Eggleston: the… the writer, not Larry Stahl, the baseball player.
• 51:40
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, didn't I come… didn't we come across another Larry Stahl?
• 51:44
  Tad Eggleston: like we came across another Larry Stahl.
• 51:46
  Larry Stahl: Oh, it was, it was, it was in a… it was in a book.
• 51:51
  Larry Stahl: You sent me screenshots of it.
• 51:53
  Larry Stahl: Oh, man.
• 51:56
  Larry Stahl: Trying to… because you literally gave me the person's name.
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: Of course I am.
• 52:01
  Larry Stahl: I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 52:03
  Larry Stahl: He did the, he did the… What if with Marvel.
• 52:10
  Larry Stahl: The animated show, if I'm not mistaken.
• 52:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, oh, that's right! It was, yeah, it was, it was Stefan Fra… it was in Palomino. There's a Larry Stahl in Palomino. Yeah, not that… not that Larry Stahl either.
• 52:23
  Larry Stahl: As soon as you sent that to me, I laughed.
• 52:26
  Tad Eggleston: But, like.
• 52:26
  Larry Stahl: so hard.
• 52:27
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, the baseball Larry Stahl, I mean, this is why I had to ask. The baseball Larry Stahl is from Belleville, Illinois, so not that far away from you.
• 52:41
  Larry Stahl: Maybe, maybe we got him… You know, it's so funny, because, like, when you're a kid.
• 52:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I was totally expecting him to be your grandpa.
• 52:52
  Larry Stahl: No, no. I mean, funny enough, my grandpa's name was Larry.
• 52:57
  Tad Eggleston: Are you certain that he wasn't a Major League Baseball player?
• 53:00
  Larry Stahl: I am… I'm.
• 53:01
  Tad Eggleston: From 1964 to 1973, so you wouldn't have been alive yet.
• 53:06
  Larry Stahl: As a matter of fact.
• 53:09
  Larry Stahl: It's less glamorous, but he was still a pretty interesting guy. My grandfather, Larry, was a security guard for Mansfield Prison in the 1970s in Mansfield, Ohio.
• 53:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, once again, Larry Stahl, the ballplayer.
• 53:26
  Tad Eggleston: Retired in 1973. He could have become a prison guard afterward. Except that he did… he did die in Illinois.
• 53:35
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, no, my grandfather passed away from a heart attack in my grandma's living room in 1989.
• 53:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that also doesn't work out, because Larry Stahl, the baseball player, died this year in Caseyville, Illinois.
• 53:51
  Larry Stahl: I seriously… I swear to God, all these questions are… I feel like I'm on trial on this episode, dude.
• 53:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it does feel weird that there are so many Larry Stahls, and you're not… I didn't know that Stahl was that popular of a name. Larry has been at various times. It's really just this generation that is kind of weird that you're named Larry. But, like…
• 54:16
  Tad Eggleston: Larry Stahl, and you're not…
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: you're not related to any of the other Larry Stahls? Ironically, the Larry Stahl in the comic was also not named for the ballplayer.
• 54:31
  Larry Stahl: Okay. Do you happen to know where… what the origins of that Larry Stahl are? Like, like, like, why was that.
• 54:38
  Tad Eggleston: Give me a second, I might.
• 54:40
  Larry Stahl: You might! Oh, lord.
• 54:42
  Tad Eggleston: I know, I know that I texted with him about it.
• 54:45
  Tad Eggleston: Because I sent him a copy of the baseball card when… When.
• 54:56
  Larry Stahl: He didn't bring… you didn't bring up the guy that writes American Nature Newsletter tab?
• 55:00
  Tad Eggleston: No, I, I did bring you up.
• 55:04
  Tad Eggleston: I, I did bring you up.
• 55:07
  Larry Stahl: I know that there's cooler Larry Stahls out there.
• 55:13
  Larry Stahl: There's definitely more noteworthy Larry Stahls out there.
• 55:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it looks like,
• 55:23
  Tad Eggleston: He didn't… he didn't tell me, so I think it… he just said that's a fun…
• 55:27
  Tad Eggleston: Coincidence, I've never heard of him.
• 55:30
  Larry Stahl: I'm gonna have to talk to this guy. As soon as you sent that to me, I found…
• 55:36
  Larry Stahl: him on Instagram, and tagged him in a story, and said.
• 55:40
  Larry Stahl: like, like, it has occurred to me that I'm in your book.
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: You gotta read his book now, you gotta order his book.
• 55:49
  Larry Stahl: Well, of course you are.
• 55:49
  Tad Eggleston: back as Kickstarter?
• 55:53
  Larry Stahl: Is it, I don't… I need to… I actually need to go find that Kickstarter.
• 55:58
  Tad Eggleston: I think it's over now. It was running when I told you about you being in the book.
• 56:07
  Larry Stahl: Oh, man… You know what?
• 56:10
  Larry Stahl: Maybe… Do you know, do you know if he's got another one coming up?
• 56:16
  Tad Eggleston: No, but you can just go to Dark Planet Comics, that's, that's his…
• 56:20
  Larry Stahl: I'll have to…
• 56:21
  Tad Eggleston: planet duck.
• 56:23
  Larry Stahl: So, it's actually kind of funny.
• 56:26
  Larry Stahl: Right now, I'm setting up a signing tour for Exciting 62.
• 56:31
  Larry Stahl: And, for the signing.
• 56:35
  Larry Stahl: one of the signings we're setting up, I can't really talk about the details right now, but it sounds like the store wants to have the CGC out to authenticate.
• 56:44
  Larry Stahl: our signatures.
• 56:46
  Larry Stahl: And at that one, maybe if I buy a copy of his book, maybe if I ask the CGC to grade it, and be like.
• 56:52
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 56:53
  Larry Stahl: first appearance of Larry Stahl.
• 56:58
  Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately.
• 57:03
  Tad Eggleston: I think he only distributes through himself and Ingram, so a lot of stores… like.
• 57:11
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, no, no, no, no, I would… I would order it online, and then just bring
• 57:15
  Larry Stahl: on the day, and be like, this is the first appearance of Larry Stahl.
• 57:19
  Tad Eggleston: And they're all… they're all graphic novels.
• 57:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You generally don't… I really don't slab a graphic novel.
• 57:28
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, I was gonna say, do they slab graphic novels?
• 57:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I suppose they would, but, like…
• 57:35
  Larry Stahl: I mean, don't they also slap video games?
• 57:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't understand why they slab anything.
• 57:41
  Larry Stahl: Like…
• 57:44
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't that eliminate the point?
• 57:48
  Larry Stahl: Well, yeah. Like, I mean, that's kind of how I feel about action figures, too, though. You know, like…
• 57:53
  Tad Eggleston: I open all of my action figures.
• 57:56
  Larry Stahl: Right, exactly, like, like, like, for example, like, I, I know no, no, like, everybody listens to this audio-wise, but behind me, I've got some McFarlane toy statues in the back.
• 58:05
  Larry Stahl: Okay? And it's like.
• 58:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and they're in boxes. What's wrong with you?
• 58:10
  Larry Stahl: No, they're not boxes, what are you talking about?
• 58:12
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
• 58:13
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, no, no, I've got… every statue that I have behind them, I have put, like.
• 58:19
  Larry Stahl: Like, I've got the red and blue Todd McFarlane Spider-Man statue back here.
• 58:24
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 58:24
  Larry Stahl: You put, like, the David Michelinie, Todd McFarlane omnibus behind it.
• 58:29
  Tad Eggleston: I see, I see.
• 58:29
  Larry Stahl: Gotta give it, like.
• 58:30
  Tad Eggleston: What I'm seeing is the background.
• 58:33
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah.
• 58:33
  Tad Eggleston: That makes more sense.
• 58:35
  Larry Stahl: Yeah.
• 58:35
  Larry Stahl: This would be rea- if people could see this room, I've got all my collectibles and stuff down, it's really neat.
• 58:43
  Larry Stahl: But yeah, no, I always take myself… I've even got, like, an X-Men shelf.
• 58:47
  Tad Eggleston: I used to… when I was in high school.
• 58:51
  Tad Eggleston: the local comic shop would sell me Star Wars stuff at cost, because I'd open it in the store, and he'd get to play with it.
• 59:00
  Larry Stahl: Oh!
• 59:03
  Larry Stahl: So…
• 59:03
  Tad Eggleston: So it wasn't… he wasn't even… he left it at… at… like, cause that was an era where a lot of times, like, it was something that, that, like…
• 59:16
  Tad Eggleston: He could have gotten… Three or four times recommended Retail price for, right?
• 59:26
  Larry Stahl: Right, right.
• 59:26
  Tad Eggleston: It was supposed to be 8 bucks, he could have sold it for 25, easy. But I'd get it for 4 bucks, because I'd open it and let him play with it, too.
• 59:36
  Tad Eggleston: Because he owned the store, he couldn't bring himself to open any of them.
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: And I once got something for free, because he really wanted to play with it, and it wasn't something that I actually cared about.
• 59:52
  Tad Eggleston: Because I'm both not a Boba Fett guy, and it was the one that, like, had the totally oversized rocket launcher type thing, and I'm like…
• 1:00:02
  Tad Eggleston: A, I've got 4 Boba Fett's already. B…
• 1:00:07
  Tad Eggleston: Like, that's not in any of the movies. He's like, but I want to play with it!
• 1:00:12
  Larry Stahl: I will say, this is more of a nostalgia thing, and I have two versions of this figure, one out of the box, one not.
• 1:00:18
  Larry Stahl: One out of the box, one in the box.
• 1:00:20
  Larry Stahl: And I just found the one in the box recently.
• 1:00:23
  Larry Stahl: back in, 2009, Marvel, like, Hasbro, once they got the toy license to Marvel, they did this 3 and 3 quarter inch line, where it was, like, smaller figures, more in scale, with, like, plastic…
• 1:00:36
  Tad Eggleston: Size line.
• 1:00:37
  Larry Stahl: Yes. And they… they did all these Marvel figures, and when I was 19…
• 1:00:42
  Tad Eggleston: We'll sometimes buy figures that are other sizes, but that's the best size figure.
• 1:00:47
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, and I completely agree. I wish… I wish Hasbro would bring it back. I would… if they brought that toy line back, I would be collecting them apart.
• 1:00:54
  Tad Eggleston: that can fly the Millennium Falcon.
• 1:00:57
  Larry Stahl: Right.
• 1:00:58
  Larry Stahl: And… cause, like, they were doing playsets for this and everything, and they weren't even, like, hammy-hokey playsets, where it was, like… like, I don't know, like, you get, like, a Batcave playset, and they were like, with missile launching action, there's, like, a random missile launcher inside of the Batcave for no reason, or whatever.
• 1:01:13
  Tad Eggleston: Though… though I did, and I haven't… I haven't opened them yet to start taking pictures and stuff, but I did recently buy…
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: The Inigo Mantoya.
• 1:01:26
  Tad Eggleston: From Princess Bride action figure.
• 1:01:28
  Tad Eggleston: And… the McFarlane… Robin Batman 666 action figure at the same store.
• 1:01:37
  Tad Eggleston: And I need to take the picture where it's the two of them.
• 1:01:40
  Tad Eggleston: and, like, caption it, you know, Robin Trades Up.
• 1:01:46
  Larry Stahl: I…
• 1:01:48
  Tad Eggleston: Or maybe Dick Grayson trades up.
• 1:01:51
  Larry Stahl: Well, so, this is…
• 1:01:55
  Larry Stahl: in… they had that toy line back in 2009, and there was a few special, very large figures that they did in this toy line. There was a giant sentinel that was almost like…
• 1:02:08
  Larry Stahl: I don't know, it's like a… it's like a… almost a couple feet tall.
• 1:02:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I remember that.
• 1:02:12
  Larry Stahl: They did a giant Galactus. When I was 9 years old, I was…
• 1:02:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, Galactus needs to be, like, as big as you to be… to scale in that line.
• 1:02:21
  Larry Stahl: Right, but that being said, like, you know, even being able to have, like, a small.
• 1:02:26
  Tad Eggleston: I'm always annoyed when they don't go all out to go to scale.
• 1:02:30
  Larry Stahl: Well, I mean, they have now, you know, like, Hasbro does those Haslab projects, and, like, their… their Galactus that they have for the.
• 1:02:38
  Tad Eggleston: I'll be there.
• 1:02:38
  Larry Stahl: That line is literally… yeah, it's literally, like, almost 4 foot tall.
• 1:02:42
  Larry Stahl: Like, it's.
• 1:02:43
  Tad Eggleston: The one time I ever bought an entire set of Legends so that I could put together the figure that you could put together when you buy the whole set was for Thor Ragnarok, so I could have my.
• 1:02:58
  Larry Stahl: Gladiator Hulk.
• 1:02:59
  Tad Eggleston: Gladiator Hulk, yeah.
• 1:03:01
  Larry Stahl: But the… my dad, I was 9 years old, he took me to Toys R Us, because there's, like, a whole… there's, like, a whole special story behind this, where…
• 1:03:10
  Larry Stahl: I go into Toys R Us, and they had this big… like, they had a bunch of the giant Galactus figure, it came with a little Silver Surfer. So cool, right?
• 1:03:20
  Larry Stahl: And…
• 1:03:21
  Larry Stahl: I saw the price, because my dad was like, I'm not spending that much money on you, like, it's your birthday, and we're at Toys R Us, but, like, I'm not going all out, just grab a couple things. And the price underneath of the Galactus seemed to be…
• 1:03:34
  Larry Stahl: Like, it was, like, $200.
• 1:03:36
  Tad Eggleston: $50.
• 1:03:37
  Larry Stahl: It was like, you know, it was like $20, supposedly. That's what the price said underneath of it. So I remember grabbing that, and I grabbed a,
• 1:03:46
  Larry Stahl: It was an Iron Man, like, a single Iron Man figure from the same toy line. He had the bleeding edge armor from the Matt Fraction.
• 1:03:53
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:03:53
  Larry Stahl: And so, I run up.
• 1:03:56
  Larry Stahl: they… they scan the Iron Man figure, you know, it comes up, like, $12, whatever, and then they scan the Galactus, and she goes, alright, your total is, like, $250.
• 1:04:07
  Larry Stahl: And my dad's like, what? And she's like, yep, $250. And he was like, how expensive was this one? It said back there it was, like, $20.
• 1:04:16
  Larry Stahl: And she goes back there, the employee… because there was, like, nobody else in there, it was, like, right after Christmas. You know, my birthday is December 30th, so, like, nobody's shopping anymore, they've spent all their money.
• 1:04:27
  Larry Stahl: So, we walk back there, and she sees that the spot where it was supposed to be was to the right, but it was like somebody slid all of the figures to the left. It wasn't me!
• 1:04:40
  Larry Stahl: It wasn't me!
• 1:04:41
  Tad Eggleston: Wasn't you.
• 1:04:43
  Tad Eggleston: Totally wasn't you.
• 1:04:46
  Larry Stahl: But then again, if I were to admit that it was me, nobody from Toys R Us here in America could come after me anyway.
• 1:04:51
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, they did go bankrupt after they were bought by… by private equity.
• 1:04:57
  Larry Stahl: They probably went bankrupt because people kept buying Marvel Universe Galactus figures that were worth $250.
• 1:05:04
  Tad Eggleston: No, they went bankrupt because the private equity sold
• 1:05:09
  Tad Eggleston: all of their property, because they owned most of their buildings. So, not only did the private equity saddle Toys R Us with
• 1:05:20
  Tad Eggleston: With the debt of their own sale.
• 1:05:23
  Tad Eggleston: But, they then sold all of the property to themselves, and started renting the stores
• 1:05:31
  Tad Eggleston: to themselves, so Toys R Us had to make way more money to be able to break even, and eventually it didn't, but they made all the money, and there was just nothing left when they bankrupted Toys R Us.
• 1:05:45
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, see, that's… it's such a shame, though.
• 1:05:48
  Tad Eggleston: That's the way private equity works.
• 1:05:50
  Larry Stahl: Well, right, but I mean, I just mean it's a shame in general that Toys R Us isn't… because, like, now I'm an adult, I have money, I want action figures, why do I have to go into… why do I have to go into Walmart and pray that a scalper didn't buy everything?
• 1:06:06
  Larry Stahl: And, ugh, that's a whole thing, but…
• 1:06:08
  Tad Eggleston: This is why you get to know your local comic shop.
• 1:06:11
  Larry Stahl: Right.
• 1:06:12
  Larry Stahl: Like, modern age has the…
• 1:06:15
  Larry Stahl: Modern Age has a wonderful selection of McFarlane. They do.
• 1:06:19
  Larry Stahl: But yeah, no, so the woman went back there, saw that they were all slid over, And…
• 1:06:26
  Larry Stahl: the woman must have heard my dad and I talking at the register about how it's my birthday, and she pulled, like, the actual price tag out for the figure and was like, happy birthday.
• 1:06:39
  Tad Eggleston: what year was this?
• 1:06:42
  Larry Stahl: sold us the Galactus for $20. And I, I, I… 2009? 2010?
• 1:06:50
  Larry Stahl: Oh, you're trying to find out what this figure goes… oh, dude, it goes.
• 1:06:53
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:06:55
  Tad Eggleston: Cause, cuz… Okay… I guess… I guess they didn't close until 2018.
• 1:07:05
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah. It was literally as soon as they turned it over.
• 1:07:08
  Tad Eggleston: There were an awful lot of Toys R Us Employees that, like…
• 1:07:16
  Tad Eggleston: Were told that they were losing their jobs at, like, A horrible time.
• 1:07:26
  Tad Eggleston: But also told that they were expected to stay until the end.
• 1:07:32
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeesh.
• 1:07:34
  Larry Stahl: So you were trying to see, like, why the frame of mind was the way.
• 1:07:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was trying to figure out if it turned out that, like, she already knew that she wasn't gonna… and actually, Toys R Us had a ton of seasonal employees, too, so it is also possible that she already knew that, like.
• 1:07:55
  Tad Eggleston: Mid-January, she didn't have a job at Toys R Us anymore anyway.
• 1:07:59
  Larry Stahl: Right! But yeah, no, so I, you know, when I was a kid, that was, that Galactus was my favorite figure.
• 1:08:06
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it should be.
• 1:08:07
  Larry Stahl: And so, you know, and having it all those years, you know, like, I got a puppy when I was a teenager, puppy chewed a couple, the fingers off. I still kept it, though.
• 1:08:18
  Larry Stahl: And so, recently, I came across somebody on Facebook Marketplace, of all things, that was selling the Sentinel from the same line that I never had when I was a kid, and the Galactus together for, like, $300.
• 1:08:33
  Larry Stahl: And I talked him down to $2.50 and took home both of them.
• 1:08:36
  Larry Stahl: So I've got my original Galactus out of.
• 1:08:39
  Tad Eggleston: You've got your chewed-up Galactus, and your not-chewed-up Galactus.
• 1:08:43
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, I keep the notch chewed-up one in the box, but…
• 1:08:47
  Tad Eggleston: Silly.
• 1:08:48
  Larry Stahl: the Sentinel that I got.
• 1:08:50
  Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, if you keep the not-chewed-up one in the box, how can Galactus fight Galactus?
• 1:08:58
  Tad Eggleston: Like, Mirror War Galactus.
• 1:09:01
  Larry Stahl: No, you got a really good point. But that wouldn't make any sense, though, because in the Marvel Universe, Galactus is, like, a multiversal being.
• 1:09:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but the whole point of action figures is that you don't have to stick to.
• 1:09:13
  Larry Stahl: You know what I mean.
• 1:09:14
  Tad Eggleston: universe's rule.
• 1:09:17
  Tad Eggleston: You could have Galactus fight Galactus in the Mirrorverse and have Spock save the day.
• 1:09:24
  Larry Stahl: I don't… I don't have any Star Trek things. I had some of the Next Generation…
• 1:09:27
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, Hello Kitty saved the day.
• 1:09:30
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, I… I… Is there a Hello Kitty in here? Because we do have Hello Kitties in the house.
• 1:09:36
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know what I mean?
• 1:09:39
  Larry Stahl: Yeah?
• 1:09:39
  Tad Eggleston: You could have your dog save the day!
• 1:09:43
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, I just chew the fingers off of the new one!
• 1:09:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah!
• 1:09:50
  Tad Eggleston: the new one from beating up the old one.
• 1:09:53
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, I guess.
• 1:09:56
  Larry Stahl: It's hard to argue.
• 1:09:57
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:09:57
  Larry Stahl: Logic.
• 1:10:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right, we've been wacky for this whole time, but we're completely off the rails now, and I'm getting tired. So I'm gonna get into closing questions. I have a new closing question since the last time you were on, I think.
• 1:10:13
  Larry Stahl: Okay.
• 1:10:14
  Tad Eggleston: I don't remember for certain whether you've heard this one, so if it sounds familiar, you gotta try to answer it with something else.
• 1:10:23
  Larry Stahl: Okay.
• 1:10:24
  Tad Eggleston: But, obviously, I don't remember what your answer was last time, because I don't remember if I asked this question last time.
• 1:10:34
  Tad Eggleston: But,
• 1:10:36
  Tad Eggleston: I have been doing this podcast for a little less than 5 years now, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
• 1:10:43
  Tad Eggleston: The… the people that I call my friends…
• 1:10:48
  Tad Eggleston: the… the conversations that I get to have, the emails that I trade with… with…
• 1:10:54
  Tad Eggleston: With people that used to be names on… on… on the page of my favorite artifacts.
• 1:11:00
  Tad Eggleston: the things that I've gotten to do.
• 1:11:03
  Tad Eggleston: etc. Just, I regularly have to pinch myself. I regularly think back and go.
• 1:11:09
  Tad Eggleston: Was that really me that got to do that? That doesn't seem right.
• 1:11:14
  Tad Eggleston: But that's true of, like, everybody in this industry.
• 1:11:20
  Tad Eggleston: And I know at this point that you've been…
• 1:11:24
  Tad Eggleston: at it for long enough that you've got a story or two like that as well. So,
• 1:11:30
  Tad Eggleston: Give me one of your pinch-me moments. One of your surreal stories of something that happened that never would have happened if comics wasn't the thing that you did.
• 1:11:39
  Larry Stahl: Well, Tad, actually, funny enough, you have to deal with this one.
• 1:11:45
  Larry Stahl: So, we were…
• 1:11:48
  Larry Stahl: You know, we did the… we did the panels that we did at C2E2, which, by the way, were wonderful. I…
• 1:11:53
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you.
• 1:11:53
  Larry Stahl: I really…
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: Best?
• 1:11:56
  Tad Eggleston: I gotta put together proposals for FanX.
• 1:11:59
  Larry Stahl: You did… you did a wonderful job, you know, hosting panels.
• 1:12:03
  Larry Stahl: Oh, you're doing them for Fan Expo as well.
• 1:12:05
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I gotta put together proposals, we'll see.
• 1:12:08
  Larry Stahl: Okay, okay. So… There's a first half to this, where…
• 1:12:15
  Larry Stahl: We were gonna do the first panel on Saturday, and out of everybody there that I was nervous to meet, it was Terry Moore.
• 1:12:23
  Larry Stahl: And…
• 1:12:24
  Larry Stahl: I… you were literally… you were trying to get the hell out of the con, like, you were tired, you did… you know, like, I gotta get this social battery up if I'm about to be hosting, you know, and I was like…
• 1:12:35
  Larry Stahl: You know, like, like, well, you know…
• 1:12:40
  Larry Stahl: No, I… Terry Moore's right over there, can you, like, kinda help me get the jitters out and introduce me to them, you know? And you're like, fine, but after that, I'm leaving.
• 1:12:48
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think I was…
• 1:12:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I might have been, because I was definitely… was definitely at my threshold.
• 1:12:56
  Larry Stahl: You were, you, you, you were.
• 1:12:57
  Tad Eggleston: But I don't think I was quite that gruff, but yeah.
• 1:13:01
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:02
  Tad Eggleston: And I think that was Friday, because wasn't your panel with him Saturday?
• 1:13:05
  Larry Stahl: The panel was the next day, it was Friday.
• 1:13:08
  Tad Eggleston: Friday. Yeah.
• 1:13:09
  Larry Stahl: So, you walk up and you introduce me to Terry, and, like, I was…
• 1:13:15
  Larry Stahl: Maybe I was a sweaty mess because it was me meeting Terry, but I was also kind of a sweaty mess in general. It was the first big con I had ever gone to. You know, a lot of people, just… there was so much to take in, I think my body was just, like.
• 1:13:30
  Larry Stahl: Freaking out.
• 1:13:31
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I get it.
• 1:13:32
  Larry Stahl: But you introduced me to Terry, and he was a wonderful guy. You know, we talked…
• 1:13:36
  Tad Eggleston: He is?
• 1:13:37
  Larry Stahl: quite a bit after you had even been like, alright, I'm gonna… I'm out for the day, you know, see you tomorrow. Like, we had talked for quite a while, okay? And… and by the time the conversation was over, I gave him a copy of Nowhere to Go But Up. And I was like, hey, I know you're a busy guy, you know, just, like, if…
• 1:13:58
  Larry Stahl: Do you ever find yourself, like, the…
• 1:14:00
  Larry Stahl: Just read this sometime, and email me and tell me what you think.
• 1:14:05
  Larry Stahl: Okay, so, fast forward to the next day, we do the panel, you know, see Spike Trotman, Daria, Greg, everybody. Great panel.
• 1:14:16
  Larry Stahl: We get done doing it.
• 1:14:17
  Tad Eggleston: panel.
• 1:14:18
  Larry Stahl: And at the end, I offered to everybody, I had,
• 1:14:22
  Larry Stahl: I had pretty much, like, ash cans of nowhere to go but up. You know, just, like, little tastemakers to hand out to people.
• 1:14:28
  Larry Stahl: And I advertise that to everybody, so I'm standing up there, and I'm starting to hand him out to a couple of people, and the first guy that came up, I go to hand it to him, and Terry walks up, and he puts his hand on the book.
• 1:14:41
  Larry Stahl: And looks at the guy, and says, I read this, you're going to love it, it's brilliant.
• 1:14:50
  Larry Stahl: And so that dude's like, oh yeah, I'm sure I will, thank you, and he walks away. And I knew, I knew Terry, you know, was probably just as exhausted as a lot of us were, being at C2E2, so I look over at him.
• 1:15:01
  Larry Stahl: And I just assumed he hadn't read it, and he was just saying that to be nice, and I went, Terry.
• 1:15:07
  Larry Stahl: you didn't have to say that, you know, like, it's okay. And he went, and I was like, you… there's no way you had time to read that book. I handed it to you yesterday.
• 1:15:17
  Larry Stahl: And he said, oh yeah, I read it, I loved it. It's the best book anybody handed me yesterday.
• 1:15:22
  Larry Stahl: And that was so, like, oh my god.
• 1:15:24
  Tad Eggleston: Barry's totally the type that I can… I can… I mean, I… I didn't know it until now, but he's definitely the type that I could see…
• 1:15:33
  Tad Eggleston: like… Relaxing at the end of a con day by… If not reading all of… like…
• 1:15:42
  Tad Eggleston: Starting and reading until he either decided
• 1:15:47
  Tad Eggleston: That he was too tired, or it wasn't good enough to spend more time with.
• 1:15:52
  Tad Eggleston: Every book that he's handed. He just… he's… he's a,
• 1:15:58
  Tad Eggleston: a wonderfully kind man. But he's also a straight shooter, so he wouldn't say that he thought it was good unless he did.
• 1:16:07
  Larry Stahl: Right, yeah, and, you know, we even had a wonderful conversation after that, kind of talking about, you know, he was talking about, you know, he got his start at writing Antarctic Press, and how he was playing music before he was doing comics, and…
• 1:16:20
  Larry Stahl: We had a really good talk, and since then, you know, we've had a couple of email conversations, and he's been lovely. It was… that moment where he sold my book for me to somebody was a very…
• 1:16:31
  Larry Stahl: pinch-me moment that never would have happened. You know, being a kid that…
• 1:16:34
  Tad Eggleston: No. Yeah, no, that… It… it never gets old, either, like…
• 1:16:42
  Tad Eggleston: you know, more than once, I've had… I've had a similar.
• 1:16:45
  Larry Stahl: It's just, it's…
• 1:16:46
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I'll be introducing myself to somebody, and somebody nearby who that person already knows will be like, oh, I was on that podcast, you'll have a blast.
• 1:16:57
  Larry Stahl: Which, which, and… yeah, honestly, I talk you up to anybody I can, you know, as a matter of fact, I don't.
• 1:17:03
  Tad Eggleston: It's a special moment. I, I, I, I, I,
• 1:17:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm so happy that you got to have that.
• 1:17:12
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, see, and…
• 1:17:13
  Tad Eggleston: And hopefully you'll have many, many, many more.
• 1:17:16
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, Terry's… Terry's such a great guy.
• 1:17:21
  Tad Eggleston: Have I told you my favorite Terry moment, though?
• 1:17:24
  Larry Stahl: What's your favorite Terry moment?
• 1:17:27
  Tad Eggleston: Terry is such a nice guy.
• 1:17:31
  Tad Eggleston: That the first time we had him on.
• 1:17:35
  Tad Eggleston: Like, almost 3 hours into the conversation, he suddenly holds up a post-it note that says, I really need to go.
• 1:17:46
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm just sitting there going, Terry, we're having a blast, but, you know, you can say that out loud.
• 1:17:56
  Tad Eggleston: See, we're little guys, and you're you!
• 1:18:01
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, like… Yeah, man, just, just say something, you know?
• 1:18:06
  Larry Stahl: He's just so, he's just so kind, you know?
• 1:18:09
  Tad Eggleston: But clearly we didn't upset him, because he came back, and he was happy to be on… on… I mean, he was the first person I approached about being on a panel.
• 1:18:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, even… even before you had…
• 1:18:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I hadn't put any panel discussions together, but even before you had reached out to me about
• 1:18:29
  Tad Eggleston: hey, we should do a panel. I had reached out to Terry and said, oh, you're at C2E2.
• 1:18:36
  Tad Eggleston: You know, if I come up with an idea, would you do a panel?
• 1:18:41
  Tad Eggleston: And he'd already said, said yes, so, like, you just wound up giving me the idea, when you're like, hey, so…
• 1:18:50
  Tad Eggleston: What if we did this crazy thing? I'm like.
• 1:18:52
  Tad Eggleston: Not only is it not crazy, but I know how to get it approved.
• 1:18:58
  Larry Stahl: Well, here's something that I'll tell you right now.
• 1:19:03
  Tad Eggleston: Though they approved the one that I wasn't expecting to get approved, so…
• 1:19:07
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah. And that one ended up being a blast, too.
• 1:19:10
  Tad Eggleston: It won't.
• 1:19:10
  Larry Stahl: No.
• 1:19:11
  Tad Eggleston: It was, it was an absolute blast.
• 1:19:13
  Tad Eggleston: And it was really…
• 1:19:14
  Larry Stahl: It's so unfortunate that Eric couldn't join us that day.
• 1:19:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, you know, I mean…
• 1:19:19
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because technically he had an international flight.
• 1:19:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:19:25
  Tad Eggleston: Pretty certain that he wound up being happy that he left when he left.
• 1:19:30
  Larry Stahl: Here's… here's what I'll tell you, though, because I never…
• 1:19:32
  Tad Eggleston: I know for certain, because you've probably talked to him since then.
• 1:19:36
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, he got there, actually, earlier than… like, he got through everything earlier than he was even expecting. He made it to his flight on time. Okay. And, but because of the hassle of that, and, like, him having to control how much he was able to bring with him.
• 1:19:52
  Larry Stahl: the next time he comes down, here to the States, from Canada, he's just gonna drive.
• 1:19:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 1:20:00
  Larry Stahl: Which, like, is worshipped.
• 1:20:02
  Tad Eggleston: And or ship stuff ahead of himself.
• 1:20:05
  Larry Stahl: That's what we were thinking initially, but we were really.
• 1:20:07
  Tad Eggleston: Though it can be interesting with international shipping. I mean, really, as much as he can.
• 1:20:15
  Tad Eggleston: Like, for books and stuff, he should just arrange for, like, a store to order it stateside.
• 1:20:21
  Tad Eggleston: Art, obviously, you gotta bring on your own.
• 1:20:26
  Tad Eggleston: But where is he in Canada?
• 1:20:29
  Larry Stahl: He's, Ontario.
• 1:20:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's…
• 1:20:33
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, like, it's…
• 1:20:34
  Tad Eggleston: Toronto to Chicago is, like, a 6 or 7 hour drive.
• 1:20:39
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, and he, you know, he frequents Toronto, he's pretty much in that area, so he's… Right. Next time he comes down, but yeah, no, I just, I, you know.
• 1:20:47
  Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, there… there are… I mean, if you guys… I mean, because you guys… I didn't… I didn't realize that he'd flown until…
• 1:20:56
  Tad Eggleston: you guys were talking about the flights, when you guys had talked about assigning to her, I had somewhat assumed that, like, you'd met him up
• 1:21:05
  Tad Eggleston: in Detroit or East Lansing, And… and you guys had hit, like, Vault of Midnight, and…
• 1:21:13
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, no, we were…
• 1:21:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's so many shops across… across that… that stretch that you could've…
• 1:21:21
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if you were spending a week setting up shops, you could add one every day.
• 1:21:27
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah, no, we certainly could have, but the only thing that really stopped me from doing that, was a day job, so…
• 1:21:34
  Tad Eggleston: No, I get that, too.
• 1:21:36
  Tad Eggleston: You know, paying bills.
• 1:21:39
  Tad Eggleston: The bane of every cartoonist's existence.
• 1:21:43
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yes. I agree entirely. 100%.
• 1:21:49
  Larry Stahl: But yeah, no.
• 1:21:49
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:21:50
  Tad Eggleston: Standard closing question.
• 1:21:54
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
• 1:21:56
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
• 1:22:00
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules.
• 1:22:03
  Tad Eggleston: But something that you love.
• 1:22:07
  Tad Eggleston: And not enough people around you have experienced?
• 1:22:12
  Tad Eggleston: And you need them to, so that you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:22:20
  Larry Stahl: Here's what I'm going to say, and it's gonna sound like a basic answer, but that also being said, I weirdly… you know, you'll always find me up in Chicago and all that, and that's because that's where the comic people I know are. You know, so, like, I don't really have a lot of, like, fans or anything that I talk to in person.
• 1:22:39
  Tad Eggleston: These days, we gotta get you out to Minneapolis. Minneapolis has got a good comics community, too.
• 1:22:44
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, not only that, I'd love to finally meet Tyler.
• 1:22:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well, Tyler even further from Minneapolis, but we might get him to come to Minneapolis easier than…
• 1:22:59
  Tad Eggleston: Chicagoland, particularly now that his son that used to be in Chicagoland is in college in Ohio.
• 1:23:07
  Larry Stahl: But the answer I've got for you on that is,
• 1:23:13
  Larry Stahl: I am… I started reading Chris Claremont's X-Men.
• 1:23:18
  Larry Stahl: like, from the beginning of his run, and I absolutely adore it.
• 1:23:23
  Larry Stahl: And I know that… I know that a lot of people are like, yeah, yeah, no crap, Chris Claremont's X-Men, you know? But I personally.
• 1:23:29
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know that I've read all of it.
• 1:23:31
  Tad Eggleston: So I get it.
• 1:23:33
  Larry Stahl: But, like, the… I started reading it, I just got past Days of Future Past.
• 1:23:38
  Larry Stahl: That's the point where I'm at right now, and I've been absolutely adoring it, and whenever I'm…
• 1:23:46
  Larry Stahl: Not working on this stuff, or, you know, like, doing my comic stuff, or, working the day job.
• 1:23:53
  Larry Stahl: I find myself frequently…
• 1:23:55
  Tad Eggleston: also comics.
• 1:23:57
  Larry Stahl: Yes. I find myself frequently thinking about Chris Claremont's X-Men ever since I started just reading it.
• 1:24:05
  Tad Eggleston: You know what I just got an advanced reader copy of?
• 1:24:08
  Larry Stahl: What's that?
• 1:24:09
  Tad Eggleston: John Burns X-Men elsewhere.
• 1:24:12
  Larry Stahl: Oh, his… okay, yeah, no, I was really intra… Fanta Graphics is putting that out, aren't they?
• 1:24:18
  Tad Eggleston: No, no. Abrams.
• 1:24:19
  Larry Stahl: Abrams? Okay.
• 1:24:21
  Tad Eggleston: Abrams.
• 1:24:21
  Larry Stahl: Abrams did a wonderful job with that Alex Ross Fantastic Four full circle.
• 1:24:25
  Tad Eggleston: I did.
• 1:24:26
  Tad Eggleston: They did.
• 1:24:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Abram.
• 1:24:28
  Larry Stahl: That is a wonderful book.
• 1:24:30
  Larry Stahl: But, yeah, no, I…
• 1:24:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that's on my list of things to read soon.
• 1:24:36
  Tad Eggleston: G.
• 1:24:37
  Larry Stahl: You gotta, you gotta tell me how it is, man.
• 1:24:39
  Tad Eggleston: Do you have a, a, a favorite… Co-creator.
• 1:24:44
  Tad Eggleston: with Claremont.
• 1:24:45
  Tad Eggleston: So far.
• 1:24:47
  Larry Stahl: I'm gonna be honest, and to some people this might be blasphemous, I think I like Dave Cochrum more than I like John Byrne on the book.
• 1:24:55
  Tad Eggleston: that is actually not blasphemous to a lot of people.
• 1:25:00
  Tad Eggleston: I…
• 1:25:01
  Larry Stahl: Yeah, cause Dave Cockrum, like, I, I don't…
• 1:25:06
  Larry Stahl: essentially, the story I'm about to talk about is the one that ends with, you know, like, Jean Greg coming up out of the water as Phoenix. But, that whole, like, chunk of story where it's, you know, the Sentinels show up at the Rockefeller Center on Christmas.
• 1:25:20
  Larry Stahl: and take some of the X-Men. That whole little 5-issue arc, is seriously so…
• 1:25:27
  Larry Stahl: awesome. Like, the art in that, especially for me, is great.
• 1:25:32
  Larry Stahl: I, I, I love…
• 1:25:34
  Larry Stahl: I think… I think he's my favorite artist out of all the X-Men I've gotten to. I… because… but then again, I've only read that, and then I've read the stuff with John Byrne, and now that I just finished…
• 1:25:46
  Larry Stahl: the last two issues after Days of Future Past, I know it switches back to Dave Cockrum.
• 1:25:52
  Larry Stahl: If I'm not mistaken.
• 1:25:53
  Larry Stahl: I haven't even gotten to… I haven't even gotten to John Romita Jr. and, like, the Mutant Massacre and all that.
• 1:25:59
  Larry Stahl: Or Fall of the Mutants, but…
• 1:26:01
  Larry Stahl: you know, I'm… so far, it's Dave Cochran.
• 1:26:06
  Tad Eggleston: Well…
• 1:26:07
  Tad Eggleston: You are definitely not alone in that. I definitely need to read Claremont's X-Men at some point, so, so maybe at some point, I'll let you challenge me to read it with you.
• 1:26:21
  Tad Eggleston: And we'll do a book club or something, but I'm not ready.
• 1:26:23
  Larry Stahl: Oh, yeah. I'll gladly do an X-Men book club, are you kidding me?
• 1:26:27
  Tad Eggleston: Got a crap ton on my plate right now, and there's no shortage of X-Men podcasts.
• 1:26:33
  Tad Eggleston: So, so that would, that would totally be something that was…
• 1:26:37
  Tad Eggleston: All for me, and filling a hole in my comic… knowledge than…
• 1:26:43
  Tad Eggleston: Then, oh, what the world really needs is another X-Men podcast.
• 1:26:49
  Larry Stahl: Which is…
• 1:26:52
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's me saying that not only are there a lot of X-Men podcasts, but there are a lot of good X-Men podcasts. So, like…
• 1:27:04
  Larry Stahl: I do like to think, though, you know, not that I'm trying to sway you one way or the other, but I think talking about the X-Men also brings up a lot of really good conversations on.
• 1:27:15
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:27:16
  Larry Stahl: What's going on in the world today?
• 1:27:17
  Tad Eggleston: And that's another reason why it's on my list, but again…
• 1:27:21
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, how many book clubs… I mean…
• 1:27:25
  Tad Eggleston: You plug me all the time, but you clearly don't even look through the… all of the… the… the episode, like, names.
• 1:27:35
  Tad Eggleston: So I'll just fill you in. We have a Love & Rockets book club, we have a Heavy Metal Book Club, we have a Milestone book club, we've got the Pope Blotter Book Club, where we deal with, like.
• 1:27:48
  Tad Eggleston: various pulp stuff, so a lot of crimes, some westerns, some sci-fi, you know, the stuff that generally was considered pulps back in the day. We've got what used to be
• 1:28:01
  Tad Eggleston: the Jack Kirby Fourth World Book Club, and has now become the Heroes of Bronze Book Club, because we finished with Fourth World, but we've decided that we're mostly staying Bronze Age-type stuff for now, though we have talked about
• 1:28:16
  Tad Eggleston: doing,
• 1:28:19
  Tad Eggleston: an X-Men Elsewen compare, you know, side-by-side as those books come out, so… like, we might do…
• 1:28:27
  Tad Eggleston: That's a possibility. We've got the Joy Resistance Hope and Survival Book Club.
• 1:28:35
  Tad Eggleston: We've got the Comic Strip Book Club is a little bit less…
• 1:28:42
  Tad Eggleston: Regular. I'd love to get the 2000 AD book club going again, it's been a while.
• 1:28:48
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, and the, the visionaries and inquiries,
• 1:28:55
  Tad Eggleston: Tom King, from a psychiatric perspective, is on hiatus at the moment. But that's a lot of book clubs.
• 1:29:03
  Larry Stahl: It is a lot of book clubs.
• 1:29:06
  Tad Eggleston: And then we've got roundtables and interviews, I mean…
• 1:29:11
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't checked lately, do you wanna… do you wanna take a guess at how many episodes I have?
• 1:29:18
  Larry Stahl: How many, like, of, like, the entire podcast altogether.
• 1:29:22
  Tad Eggleston: Entire podcast, all time.
• 1:29:24
  Larry Stahl: It's gotta be in the thousands, right?
• 1:29:26
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think so, not yet.
• 1:29:29
  Larry Stahl: I'm getting close, jee.
• 1:29:30
  Tad Eggleston: staff.
• 1:29:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's fine.
• 1:29:39
  Larry Stahl: All I'm saying is if you were to ever find.
• 1:29:42
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I would call you. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:44
  Larry Stahl: Yeah.
• 1:29:45
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I don't know how fast I'll get to it. I don't want you to get your hopes up that it'll be, like, tomorrow.
• 1:29:51
  Larry Stahl: No. No.
• 1:29:53
  Tad Eggleston: Among other things, like, I already… I already have, like… I want to do an ElfQuest book club.
• 1:29:59
  Tad Eggleston: Kinda wanna do a Hellboy book club.
• 1:30:02
  Larry Stahl: Where is the Super Pro Book Club?
• 1:30:05
  Larry Stahl: That would be an easy one.
• 1:30:07
  Tad Eggleston: The Super Pro Club?
• 1:30:09
  Larry Stahl: It was a… it was a horrible Marvel, like, NFL…
• 1:30:12
  Tad Eggleston: I know, I have it.
• 1:30:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:30:17
  Tad Eggleston: So, we have currently 875 Episodes.
• 1:30:24
  Larry Stahl: See, I knew you had to… because if I'm gonna be honest, okay.
• 1:30:27
  Tad Eggleston: Less than 5 years.
• 1:30:29
  Larry Stahl: While 1000 is a 4-digit number, and 875 is a 3-digit number.
• 1:30:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, we're close, we're closer to 1,000 than we are to 500.
• 1:30:37
  Larry Stahl: Exactly, that's what I'm saying.
• 1:30:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, no, I get it, I get it.
• 1:30:42
  Tad Eggleston: Like, blank, like, it's… It's… it's… We're chasing it.
• 1:30:51
  Tad Eggleston: It's not impossible that we'd get there this year.
• 1:30:55
  Larry Stahl: What kind of special thing you gonna do for the thousandth episode?
• 1:30:59
  Tad Eggleston: It depends if I notice when it's happening.
• 1:31:06
  Larry Stahl: All I'm saying, dude, the Super Pro Book Club, it'd be, it'd be a quick, simple…
• 1:31:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah… I don't know if I could bring myself to do that.
• 1:31:18
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, that, that, that might be…
• 1:31:22
  Tad Eggleston: It might be too much even for me.
• 1:31:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's… there's so… so little that I won't talk about on this,
• 1:31:32
  Tad Eggleston: On this podcast, but that, that might be.
• 1:31:35
  Tad Eggleston: That might be a step.
• 1:31:37
  Larry Stahl: That's, that's, that's, that's the…
• 1:31:39
  Tad Eggleston: That's…
• 1:31:40
  Larry Stahl: Take the break.
• 1:31:40
  Tad Eggleston: That, that, that, that could be, that could be over the line.
• 1:31:46
  Larry Stahl: Ugh, yeah, I…
• 1:31:48
  Tad Eggleston: Don't get me wrong.
• 1:31:52
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I kind of appreciate its existence.
• 1:31:56
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of.
• 1:31:59
  Larry Stahl: You know, I had that book a long time ago, too, and I don't know where that book went.
• 1:32:06
  Tad Eggleston: So, anyway, for Larry Stahl, this has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next payee.