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Pulp Blotter Book Club #25 - Palomino vols. 5-6 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the Pulp Blotter Book Club on 22 Panels. I'm joined today by Dan Luneland, Mark Pratt, and Sharon Harkle-Rode to discuss the final two chapters of
• 0:17
  Tad Eggleston: stefan Frank's Palomino. So, what'd you guys think?
• 0:24
  Tad Eggleston: I will note… I will note quickly that I did notice more panels this time around.
• 0:30
  Dan Newland: Okay.
• 0:34
  Sean Harklerode: or… Wonder.
• 0:37
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 0:37
  Sean Harklerode: Spreads, or…
• 0:39
  Tad Eggleston: No, actual panel. More panels per page.
• 0:43
  Tad Eggleston: There were some one- and two-page spreads, but there wasn't… there wasn't the egregiousness that… that…
• 0:49
  Tad Eggleston: That, that, that sometimes irked Mark.
• 0:54
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 0:55
  Mark Pracht: Mark's irked all the time. No one really cares about Mark being.
• 0:58
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, you.
• 0:59
  Tad Eggleston: I care about Mark. Live your life.
• 1:03
  Sean Harklerode: That way.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I agree that, like, I don't live my life that way. I don't spend all of my time trying not to allow Mark to be irked, but I do care when he's irked. I like him not to be irked.
• 1:20
  Mark Pracht: Ert, I just…
• 1:21
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
• 1:23
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I, I, I just, look, look, my point comes down to, I, I kind of like comic books that I…
• 1:30
  Mark Pracht: can't read in 5 minutes. So, I… I mean, that's… that's…
• 1:37
  Mark Pracht: That's a thing for me, so…
• 1:39
  Tad Eggleston: I get it.
• 1:40
  Mark Pracht: And, and yes, there were more panels, but I, like, especially…
• 1:45
  Tad Eggleston: Still read it fast.
• 1:46
  Mark Pracht: I still write fast, and I still think that… I mean, like…
• 1:55
  Mark Pracht: I I don't know. I mean, like, I didn't feel surprised at how it ended up.
• 2:03
  Mark Pracht: You know.
• 2:05
  Mark Pracht: I didn't feel that's and that's that's about that's almost all I have to say. Like when we did the time jump.
• 2:13
  Mark Pracht: several volumes ago, I was like, okay, so the… that dude's gonna be… end up being the big bad, and… and… and it's, you know…
• 2:24
  Mark Pracht: I don't know.
• 2:25
  Dan Newland: That is one problem with time jumps in mysteries, is you can count the number of people who existed before the time jump and after, and it has to be one of the people that was in both situations, so there's only… your list of suspects
• 2:38
  Dan Newland: dimmed substantially. I really… I mean, I'd read all of this before, but I reread it again getting ready, and I think a lot more did happen in this one.
• 2:48
  Dan Newland: Like, there were a couple of the earlier books that I'm like, very little really happened during this volume. This one, a lot of stuff did happen. And I liked it. I think that it was cool. I liked the character.
• 2:58
  Dan Newland: So, but yeah, I, it.
• 3:01
  Mark Pracht: I mean, you know, it like a lot did happen, but it's also just sort of like the last volume is just one long chase.
• 3:10
  Mark Pracht: And I think that there were some things that were added that suddenly just sort of appeared like the weird.
• 3:18
  Mark Pracht: Magical drug haze.
• 3:20
  Mark Pracht: mother ghost thing, I was sort of like, this seems, like, not…
• 3:26
  Mark Pracht: Related to what we have seen before,
• 3:31
  Mark Pracht: It sort of entered a magical realism sort of area that I felt like the rest of the story didn't have. I also felt like there was a whole bunch of stuff that was set up before the time jump.
• 3:44
  Mark Pracht: That just sort of got…
• 3:46
  Dan Newland: Mmhm.
• 3:47
  Mark Pracht: pushed aside. I mean, like, the whole story about,
• 3:51
  Mark Pracht: the… the rock star, and the daughter, and… and… and I was like, okay, that'll probably come back somehow.
• 3:59
  Mark Pracht: Or at least, you know, and, you know, she showed up and… and…
• 4:04
  Mark Pracht: Provided some information at the, at the Palomino before it shut down, and I was like, oh, okay, is that it? Has to be something more, you know.
• 4:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I think some of that is, like, if you read…
• 4:19
  Tad Eggleston: And in some ways, this does make it…
• 4:23
  Tad Eggleston: Less perfect, and make me… make me kinda hope that he revisits that part, because…
• 4:29
  Tad Eggleston: I think it became a separate story,
• 4:34
  Tad Eggleston: Because in… in the… the back matter of…
• 4:39
  Tad Eggleston: Volume 5, he writes about where the story changed, because initially, he'd actually had Dad living, and when he sat down to start writing it, it just didn't feel right anymore. It felt like it was the daughter's story, not the dad's.
• 4:56
  Tad Eggleston: and therefore, I think that that led to some of the threads being… Cut.
• 5:08
  Tad Eggleston: And I think… I mean, for me.
• 5:15
  Tad Eggleston: The first time I read the time jump, It was a little jarring.
• 5:22
  Tad Eggleston: But because that… that year, I think, actually, 3 volumes came out. So there was the time jump.
• 5:33
  Tad Eggleston: And the first two volumes with the daughter.
• 5:36
  Tad Eggleston: Kinda came out together.
• 5:40
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I started to feel where he was going.
• 5:46
  Tad Eggleston: Relatively quickly, so it wasn't…
• 5:50
  Tad Eggleston: you know, there'd been enough time since I'd been reading the other story, and then I got this part, and it's like, oh…
• 6:00
  Tad Eggleston: Whoa, and then immediately it was, I moved into, oh, he died.
• 6:06
  Tad Eggleston: And I was able to kinda go, okay, so, like, we're gonna have a bunch of loose ends there, because he's dead.
• 6:14
  Tad Eggleston: What is this story now?
• 6:19
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, look, I, I, and I, I always feel like I talk too much, but,
• 6:24
  Tad Eggleston: You don't at.
• 6:24
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I I'm I was thinking about this as I was finishing it up. And okay, and maybe I am a dull wooded dunderhead. But
• 6:36
  Mark Pracht: I'm still not 100% clear why the partner dude killed the wife and the mother.
• 6:45
  Mark Pracht: Because that seemed to be… Or what that had to do with anything.
• 6:50
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean.
• 6:51
  Mark Pracht: Because he was trying to cover it up. Right. And, and I mean, I shouldn't say kill it because it was that, that drug guy.
• 7:00
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 7:00
  Mark Pracht: was the murderer, but I mean, like, he still was, like, trying to cover it
• 7:04
  Mark Pracht: And I'm not… I'm not 100% clear on that. And what was really nice at the beginning, and I really did enjoy the first few volumes, right? Because I… I mean, I was like, okay, this is a… this is an interesting world for a detective to live in. I like the idea that he's a musician, and that it's this country-western subculture in LA, and all of these things.
• 7:23
  Mark Pracht: And then, and they… it was… it was doing the classic,
• 7:28
  Mark Pracht: okay, there's, like, 3 mysteries going on, and I was like, okay, at some point, they're all gonna come together, and they're all gonna be part of the same mystery, right? Like, who killed the wife, the, the,
• 7:42
  Mark Pracht: the, the, the, the dead mother, and then, the, the daughter and the rock star. And I thought, you know, sooner or later, all of these, these, you know, like, it, that's classic.
• 7:55
  Mark Pracht: noir detective storytelling, is, like, these things that seem disconnected suddenly come together, and you're like, oh, it's all connected. And I… so I was kind of waiting for that, and…
• 8:08
  Mark Pracht: even when we made the time jump, I was like, okay, I'm waiting for this to all be… all be connected, and it seemed to me like the only connection between any of this stuff was that the, the evil partner dude
• 8:22
  Mark Pracht: Had his fingers in all of it. And it's like, okay, But why? You know?
• 8:30
  Dan Newland: Yeah, I, I get, I get that actually and.
• 8:33
  Dan Newland: It is… it is… Weird, because…
• 8:37
  Dan Newland: I was watching Brandon Sanderson a while ago, he does writing lectures, and he says that there's two different types of writers that I think George Martin talked about. You've got architects and gardeners, and the architectures are people who, like.
• 8:49
  Dan Newland: you know, write out a big outline, and they know exactly what's going to happen, and they sort of fill it in as they go. And then you've got gardeners who just sort of like take a bunch of ideas and start writing, and they have no idea what they're going to end up with. Things just sort of grow right, and it appears that that he's one of the one of the gardeners. But the problem is that.
• 9:09
  Dan Newland: You know, in real life, yeah, when somebody's in the middle of…
• 9:13
  Dan Newland: in their 40s or whatever, and just die in an explosion, there's gonna be loose threads going on. But I think in the book.
• 9:20
  Dan Newland: We expect if somebody introduces mysteries and questions, they're going to solve them, you know. And so it is a little interesting that there was a lot of stuff.
• 9:30
  Dan Newland: That did just seem to… I mean, in a very real way, like, he just…
• 9:34
  Mark Pracht: Yep.
• 9:34
  Dan Newland: He's got all sorts of things going on in his life, and then he dies
• 9:37
  Dan Newland: Well, that sucks. That sucks a lot for us, because we're partially invested in some of those stories, and now we don't get an answer for them either.
• 9:44
  Dan Newland: Well…
• 9:45
  Sean Harklerode: One of the…
• 9:46
  Mark Pracht: Well, go ahead, Sean.
• 9:48
  Sean Harklerode: A lot of this feels to me like a first draft.
• 9:52
  Mark Pracht: -H.
• 9:52
  Sean Harklerode: like this I… yeah, it just feels like…
• 10:00
  Sean Harklerode: Stuff is there, and then it doesn't mean anything, and then… I kinda turned against… These novel… these volumes…
• 10:09
  Sean Harklerode: When… They opened the diary.
• 10:15
  Sean Harklerode: To the first thing she reads is when she happened to run into them on the pass.
• 10:20
  Sean Harklerode: And it was just all too convenient, cute, And…
• 10:25
  Sean Harklerode: From that point, my brain was like.
• 10:29
  Sean Harklerode: done with it.
• 10:31
  Sean Harklerode: I… I can't explain it. I just…
• 10:34
  Sean Harklerode: From that point on, everything was contrived, I felt.
• 10:38
  Mark Pracht: Mmhm.
• 10:40
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, and the thing is, is like, it, it, I totally understand what you're saying, Dan, about like, there is a real, there's a realism to the idea that, you know, this guy just is killed. And, and what does that mean? But.
• 10:55
  Mark Pracht: that… At a narrative level.
• 10:59
  Mark Pracht: we introduce his daughter, who can't just let that go, who wants to know. So then, I, as a reader, am like, yeah, I want to know, I want to know what all of this stuff is, and we sort of, like… and, you know, I still don't…
• 11:14
  Mark Pracht: there's other things. I mean, and this… I think this goes to, like, feeling like a first draft, because, like, I absolutely agree with you, and I think that you're right. There are architects and there are gardeners, but the best gardeners
• 11:26
  Mark Pracht: Like, do a draft where they just let everything grow, and then they go back and they say, okay.
• 11:32
  Mark Pracht: does all of this work, you know? Does all of this play out? Do I leave things hanging? And it's okay to leave things hanging.
• 11:41
  Mark Pracht: If, if you, if you feel like it's intentional, right?
• 11:45
  Mark Pracht: So…
• 11:47
  Mark Pracht: quite honestly, like, if the death of the mother had been left hanging as this thing that's just unknowable, and we never understood it, I would have been like, that's great.
• 11:59
  Mark Pracht: because that's that's the kind of thing that drives people to have these obsessions to answer questions, but that you know it's sort of like
• 12:08
  Mark Pracht: it's sort of like Batman, right? I always felt like that when they actually introduced Joe Chill, it kind of broke something, because now…
• 12:17
  Mark Pracht: something that was just unknowable, and that was that… that it was constantly eating at him to have to do what he does, became this thing that was just, okay, that's what happened, right? And that's who did it. And I just… I don't know, I think that,
• 12:36
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, I really struggled with that as I was getting closer, because, like when I realized that the final volume was just going to be this chase. And you're right. A lot of stuff happens. But I was also like, I was like, Okay.
• 12:49
  Mark Pracht: Are we gonna get flashbacks in the context of this chase, where things are… Becoming more and more clear.
• 12:57
  Mark Pracht: But then they got in this drug haze, and I was just like, I really… and, like, that whole thing where everybody got drugged just kind of confused me. I was just like, I don't really understand what this is or what it adds to it.
• 13:10
  Mark Pracht: Other than pages.
• 13:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I, to, to me, it, it, it.
• 13:20
  Tad Eggleston: redefined her mother.
• 13:23
  Tad Eggleston: Now her mother's not strictly the tragic victim that, like, her mother was running around on her father, her mother was drugged out, her mother OD'd. You know, it's not…
• 13:39
  Tad Eggleston: It's not this huge, I mean, yes, there's an unsolved mystery, but it's not this, this huge malicious unsolved mystery, it's, it's like
• 13:51
  Tad Eggleston: It's an unsolved mystery because she her Oh.
• 14:07
  Tad Eggleston: That's the word I.
• 14:07
  Sean Harklerode: Bet.
• 14:08
  Tad Eggleston: Perfect.
• 14:08
  Sean Harklerode: naming the victim here.
• 14:10
  Tad Eggleston: Now, I'm not trying to blame the victim here
• 14:12
  Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, certainly she was, but, but, but she's, she's, she's a victim of herself as well as a victim of.
• 14:20
  Mark Pracht: Sure. Sounds great.
• 14:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 14:24
  Tad Eggleston: But the reason that it's a mystery is because, like, the debauchery… is…
• 14:31
  Tad Eggleston: An inconvenience to a rich person, it's not, it's not that he had her killed, it's that, like
• 14:39
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like, there's ambiguity about whether, yeah, he had her finished.
• 14:45
  Tad Eggleston: Arm.
• 14:47
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, to me, it's like Walter White, you know.
• 14:50
  Sean Harklerode: You know, not resuscitating, you know, not helping.
• 14:54
  Sean Harklerode: The Kristen Ritter character in Breaking Bad, right? Right. She's.
• 14:59
  Sean Harklerode: She could live if you helped her.
• 15:02
  Tad Eggleston: And I also think that, that like, as far as it goes with
• 15:08
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the partner who wound up then also being essentially her, her stepfather or her adoptive father is like, he'd been a dirty cop.
• 15:20
  Tad Eggleston: or at least…
• 15:21
  Tad Eggleston: a mildly dirty cop. You know, he'd been the guy that was willing to… to do the thing for money on the side or whatnot. It's not clear that he's, like.
• 15:33
  Tad Eggleston: It's not clear that he's the guy that cleans everything across the board at that point, or just the guy that happened to get sent among plenty of cops that, like, were happy to clean up the messes of famous people.
• 15:49
  Tad Eggleston: But when he gets there and it's somebody that he, he knows it throws him.
• 15:58
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, there's an element that he becomes worse because he never forgave himself for that, but then it also becomes he's constantly having to do more and more things to…
• 16:10
  Tad Eggleston: to… Cover up.
• 16:14
  Tad Eggleston: what he did.
• 16:17
  Mark Pracht: Sure, yeah.
• 16:18
  Mark Pracht: Dude.
• 16:19
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 16:21
  Tad Eggleston: Cause he seems to genuinely… I mean, the hard part for me is when he decides that he needs to kill her. That doesn't make sense to me, except that he's…
• 16:33
  Tad Eggleston: Except as, like…
• 16:34
  Sean Harklerode: He said…
• 16:35
  Tad Eggleston: There's…
• 16:36
  Sean Harklerode: I'm not going to hurt you.
• 16:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:38
  Sean Harklerode: And then… And then he's…
• 16:40
  Mark Pracht: Right. To try to shoot her, yeah.
• 16:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that only makes sense to me in that, like, somehow everybody's drugged, which means there must be, like.
• 16:49
  Tad Eggleston: Literally something in the air at the house.
• 16:56
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like to what Sean just said, like one, there was a moment when I was reading it and I got to page.
• 17:04
  Mark Pracht: It's 59 in our two-page version of the final volume, and
• 17:09
  Mark Pracht: She's running away from him, and she gets on this ladder.
• 17:14
  Mark Pracht: And starts climbing downward, and he's over her with a gun.
• 17:19
  Mark Pracht: and doesn't just shoot her, right? And I was like, oh, well, maybe he doesn't really want to shoot her. Then he follows her down, and immediately starts shooting at her.
• 17:29
  Mark Pracht: And she's literally, like, 5 feet away from… and I'm like… It… it just seemed like…
• 17:38
  Mark Pracht: And you know, like there's there's a hundred ways that you can say that, like the intention was this, but the visual didn't support it.
• 17:46
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I can say that about a dozen movies where I'm like, okay, intellectually, I think I understand what you're trying to get at, but the visuals are not making that clear. Right. So. But I mean, in that particular moment, I was just like, well, Jesus, dude, why don't you just shoot her? She's right.
• 18:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, what I also wonder… And, and like.
• 18:08
  Tad Eggleston: I will be the first to admit that I am an oddity, that I love, love things that
• 18:18
  Tad Eggleston: are ambiguous. You know, part of what I like about some parts of this is that, like, I have to think about what the motivations were, or why this is different, or…
• 18:31
  Tad Eggleston: whatever, and I know that I'm weird that way.
• 18:35
  Mark Pracht: But, but, even…
• 18:36
  Tad Eggleston: Even as I'm listening to you thinking about it, I'm sitting there going, is he essentially committing the cop version of suicide by cop?
• 18:46
  Tad Eggleston: Has he decided that he needs her to kill him?
• 18:50
  Tad Eggleston: And he's decided that she won't do it unless she feels like she's in danger?
• 18:56
  Sean Harklerode: So he knows that she can turn the water on?
• 19:00
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know but, but he knows that they're in a dangerous spot where he might.
• 19:05
  Mark Pracht: See, because I think that, here's my rebuttal to, because I love ambiguity too. I love it when I'm not really sure about the motivations of characters. I love it when I'm, I love anti-heroes and I love characters that do.
• 19:25
  Mark Pracht: That sometimes do what you think is right and sometimes don't. And and it's like that that like I love that. But it also like.
• 19:35
  Mark Pracht: I think that in terms of storytelling the ambiguity has to mean something right, and I think that just…
• 19:44
  Mark Pracht: The ambiguity of what… what… I personally, okay, I feel like this last volume is
• 19:55
  Mark Pracht: Trying to take this chase.
• 19:59
  Mark Pracht: And stretch it out.
• 20:01
  Mark Pracht: to long enough where it feels worthwhile to do another Kickstarter for it.
• 20:08
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 20:08
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 20:09
  Mark Pracht: I mean, that's my really cynical take on it, and I totally admit that it's cynical, and that doesn't mean that I don't think that there's artistry involved here, there's interesting things going on, but it's also, like.
• 20:24
  Mark Pracht: there… there are parts during this… like I said, there is a lot going on, just like Dan said, but there are parts during it where I'm like, Jesus, this feels like this could have wrapped up 5 pages ago, you know, like… like…
• 20:38
  Tad Eggleston: Though, I mean, and like.
• 20:42
  Tad Eggleston: As I'm listening to you, I'm remembering some of my more initial reactions. I read it… I read it…
• 20:48
  Tad Eggleston: Re-read it last night, but, but, like, after a ball game.
• 20:52
  Tad Eggleston: After prepping show notes.
• 20:55
  Tad Eggleston: Et cetera, but as you're talking, I'm going, what I liked about some of the drawn-out portions of the chase.
• 21:05
  Tad Eggleston: Is it's when I remembered.
• 21:08
  Tad Eggleston: To think about those 15 years.
• 21:11
  Tad Eggleston: Those 15 years where she became his daughter, and he lived with the fact that he'd killed her father.
• 21:20
  Tad Eggleston: The 15 years that we know very little about, except… What?
• 21:26
  Tad Eggleston: And mother. No, I think, I think his, his wife who's dying of cancer became her mother.
• 21:33
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it even, it even comments on the fact that she doesn't visit as much because it's hard.
• 21:41
  Tad Eggleston: you know, so, like… There are levels where, where there's just like.
• 21:53
  Tad Eggleston: I I think of
• 21:58
  Tad Eggleston: And, you know, I don't know if Stefan's gonna be interested in revisiting this or not. I know… I know when I talked to him that one of the big reasons he didn't do it is that, like, while there's a story there, it certainly wasn't this story. It's, like, a whole different story, her time in between. It's not…
• 22:16
  Tad Eggleston: It's not a noir, it's not a mystery, it
• 22:20
  Tad Eggleston: You know, but it, but it like.
• 22:24
  Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite…
• 22:25
  Mark Pracht: It's a college comedy. No.
• 22:28
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 22:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, kind of, except probably more dramedy with like drum tragedy.
• 22:39
  Dan Newland: I mean, the thing to me that I think is interesting with this is
• 22:44
  Dan Newland: I've watched a lot of detective shows, I'm sure we all have, you know? Yeah.
• 22:49
  Dan Newland: I love the big sweep.
• 22:51
  Dan Newland: But I think if we sat down and analyzed everything going on in the Big Sleep.
• 22:56
  Dan Newland: You know, there, there are some movies, and I think maybe this is as a comic book.
• 23:01
  Dan Newland: that…
• 23:02
  Dan Newland: And especially with the way he writes it and draws it, where everything is big, full-page spreads, and you just are trucking through and flipping pages. It feels more like… and really, it's interesting, because when Mark talked about the fact, like, that chase takes up the whole last volume, almost.
• 23:19
  Dan Newland: You know, this is a guy who's done work in Hollywood and shows and the like, and this is really probably a classic third act, big set piece chase that's the thing you end the movie with.
• 23:32
  Mark Pracht: You know? Oh, yeah.
• 23:33
  Dan Newland: And and it makes sense as that that.
• 23:36
  Dan Newland: If you don't think about it too much, and you just sort of let it go by, I think this is a fantastic, fast sort of just…
• 23:46
  Dan Newland: Fun detective story.
• 23:49
  Dan Newland: I would have preferred it had stayed in the 70s.
• 23:53
  Dan Newland: Because I loved that time, and it really… I'd never seen anything like that. Once you get to the sun-washed 90s with everybody sitting in their glass houses up in the hills, that's the same Mulholland Falls movie that's been made 150 times in the last 20 years, you know. But…
• 24:13
  Dan Newland: But nonetheless, it does seem like, yeah.
• 24:16
  Dan Newland: I don't think you need to even be cynical about him stretching it out, though. I think this is just his style.
• 24:24
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no.
• 24:25
  Dan Newland: He uses a lot of digital pages to tell his story, and he's just expecting you to be flipping through.
• 24:33
  Mark Pracht: Well, look, 100%, like, Stefan should tell the stories the way he wants to, but like myself, like, I say this all the time about theater, right? Anybody who comes into the theater and sits down and watches the show gets to have their opinion of it. Like, and it's not.
• 24:52
  Mark Pracht: And it's not my business to go out and say, no, no, no, what you really need to think is this, right? But that doesn't mean that I need to change the show to make them happy, right? It's a symbiotic relationship between artist and audience.
• 25:12
  Mark Pracht: You know, everybody gets to have their opinion and You know.
• 25:18
  Mark Pracht: And… and…
• 25:19
  Mark Pracht: I think we live in a world where everybody wants to tell you what your opinion should be, and… and I think that,
• 25:28
  Mark Pracht: That's…
• 25:30
  Mark Pracht: That's like what we do here on this show, right, is discuss. And that's why this is valuable. I would, if somebody asked me if this was worth reading, I would totally say, yeah.
• 25:43
  Mark Pracht: You may dig it. Like, I thought it was okay. You may like it a lot.
• 25:51
  Mark Pracht: But, you know… I do… you know, for me.
• 25:58
  Mark Pracht: For me, like, what you were talking about, about, like, the big third act.
• 26:03
  Mark Pracht: Action set piece, which that's totally what it is, right?
• 26:07
  Mark Pracht: But it also struck me like.
• 26:10
  Mark Pracht: And it's something that I've become hyper aware of.
• 26:13
  Mark Pracht: And… and it's… It's…
• 26:17
  Mark Pracht: it's unfair of me to be hyper-aware of it, but I am, is I become hyper-aware of how many times I feel like people are creating some sort of graphic novel, or graphics, you know, or comic, or whatever, because they think they can sell it.
• 26:33
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 26:34
  Mark Pracht: To a TV show or to a network or to a studio or whatever and.
• 26:41
  Mark Pracht: There is a lot of time during this.
• 26:44
  Mark Pracht: That I was like, huh.
• 26:47
  Mark Pracht: Okay, so the 70s, that's season 1.
• 26:51
  Mark Pracht: And then we do the time jump, and that's season 2.
• 26:56
  Mark Pracht: And then… you know, we proceed through the story, you know what I'm saying?
• 27:01
  Mark Pracht: And, that's neither good nor bad, but it is something that I start to clock.
• 27:09
  Mark Pracht: And, in a life where I feel like
• 27:16
  Mark Pracht: shit should just exist as what it is, you know? Like, it's okay if somebody wants to adapt something, but I… certainly, I, like, I adapt shit all the time, but…
• 27:26
  Mark Pracht: I also, you know, it's like…
• 27:31
  Mark Pracht: I think about it all the time with, like, Watchmen, right?
• 27:35
  Mark Pracht: that I think that if you take Watchmen out of the concept of a comic book.
• 27:41
  Mark Pracht: It becomes diminished because.
• 27:44
  Mark Pracht: To me, that work of art is actually about What the medium is.
• 27:50
  Mark Pracht: Right? The way it's set up, the way it works on the page, the way the art relates to the language, you know, the way the panels are designed, like, all of that is…
• 28:02
  Mark Pracht: And no matter how
• 28:07
  Mark Pracht: Page to screen, you go with it, you're still losing that, because you can't… you don't see those…
• 28:14
  Mark Pracht: 9-panel Ditko pages.
• 28:18
  Mark Pracht: that… that have the the. Anyway, this is a long ass answer to like, just.
• 28:26
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 28:29
  Mark Pracht: every time… every time I start to smell like something is designed to be sold as something else, I…
• 28:36
  Mark Pracht: kind of get…
• 28:38
  Dan Newland: So I fear to ask this because I don't want to get to the point where I think this. But what is it that are the signposts where you start to feel that
• 28:46
  Dan Newland: Something was written… To be sold rather than written just to be produced as a comic book.
• 28:52
  Mark Pracht: I took quite honestly, I mean, and this is, this is truly unfair of me. It's when I start to smell.
• 29:00
  Mark Pracht: decompressed storytelling.
• 29:02
  Mark Pracht: When I feel like it's… Almost designed as a storyboard rather than a.
• 29:09
  Mark Pracht: A comic book.
• 29:11
  Tad Eggleston: See, and this might be because I got to know Stefan personally.
• 29:16
  Tad Eggleston: before this was all done, but like, from knowing him, like, I also see what you're talking about, but since I know that he never stopped on his day job, and this was, like, the night and weekend
• 29:31
  Tad Eggleston: type project.
• 29:34
  Tad Eggleston: Like, when I see those parts, it's like, oh, he must have been working really hard in here. And, and, and, like, wanted to get some pages in, wanted to tell some story, and, like, it…
• 29:48
  Tad Eggleston: Like, and I think, I think as something that, that like.
• 29:54
  Tad Eggleston: I don't want to call it a vanity project, but it was a personal project, and he self-published it, and he didn't… didn't have, like, a specific editor. He had… he had people that went through it and… and whatnot, but it wasn't… wasn't something where anybody else had a final say. I think that there's probably more…
• 30:12
  Tad Eggleston: Then with a lot of books, stuff that happened.
• 30:15
  Tad Eggleston: in part… I mean, we talked about it in the Kirby Club. It's like, oh, Jack was overworked this… this month. There's a lot of full-page spreads.
• 30:25
  Mark Pracht: 100.
• 30:25
  Tad Eggleston: One…
• 30:26
  Mark Pracht: 100%. Like, look, you know, I've talked about, like, I'm starting to work on a script for a comic book project. And one of the things my artist said was, don't give me a page with 12 panels on it.
• 30:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 30:43
  Mark Pracht: 'Cause, like It's, you know, it's about, it's about
• 30:49
  Mark Pracht: Navigating your time, you know, with the possible, the possible financial reward, and, and that, that totally makes sense, and like, I understand that, and, and I respect it, and look, and.
• 31:03
  Mark Pracht: I am in no way trying to impugn Stefan, like.
• 31:07
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I know you'.
• 31:08
  Mark Pracht: You know.
• 31:09
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just…
• 31:10
  Mark Pracht: I'm just saying.
• 31:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was just talking about the different response to the same stuff because I totally get what you're saying. And I, I was, I was going, oh, but every time I saw that, this is what I thought rather, you know, it's, it's again commentary on the reader as the, as the final collaborator. Sure. Like, like where we come from and what we.
• 31:33
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but it's also, like, I think that… The way Stefan
• 31:38
  Mark Pracht: Sets up his… his panels is… that… They're…
• 31:46
  Mark Pracht: again, this goes back to when I read, Eisner Miller.
• 31:50
  Mark Pracht: Right? And they spent all this time talking about the… the length… the amount of time between panels, and how that's… that's…
• 31:59
  Mark Pracht: an inherent part of the storytelling. And I feel like with Stefan, there's never a lot of time between panels. It's like shot, shot, shot, shot. And that makes total sense because he works in TV and he works in film and he works in animation.
• 32:13
  Tad Eggleston: You can absolutely tell that he's an animator that loves comics, not a cartoonist.
• 32:20
  Dan Newland: Yeah, probably it's going to be impossible for him ever not to set off that spider sense of yours, because I think he he thinks in storyboard terms.
• 32:28
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 32:29
  Dan Newland: And then puts those storyboards onto the page, probably largely the way he finds them. And so it's going to feel that way, probably. I do think it's also interesting, near the end of the…
• 32:40
  Dan Newland: You know, when we're talking about him being an animator who loves comics and doing this part-time, there's one… when we talk about things that kind of get me, there's a violation of panel movement rules near the end of the book, when she… right when they're at the end of the chase, when she pulls the big…
• 32:57
  Dan Newland: Crank to, to turn the water on on them.
• 33:01
  Dan Newland: I don't know if you guys have them there, but he does the classic thing where he's got three panels. There's one in the upper left.
• 33:09
  Dan Newland: one directly below it, and that takes half the page, and then the other half of the page is a stacked panel that goes between them. And in the upper left one, she flips the switch.
• 33:21
  Dan Newland: In the next one, as I would call it, on the right, the full page panel, he gets blown out with a bunch of water.
• 33:30
  Dan Newland: And then in the lower left panel, we see the water coming at him and him going, no.
• 33:37
  Dan Newland: And the problem is that in order for that to make sense, you have to read it upper left, lower left, move over to the right. And nowhere in my visual vocabulary does that ever happen. I read upper left.
• 33:52
  Dan Newland: I move to the right, and I see them blown out, and then I come down, and I see them standing there with the water coming at them.
• 33:58
  Sean Harklerode: I think in the printed copy, this is probably two pages, right?
• 34:02
  Dan Newland: Is it?
• 34:05
  Tad Eggleston: I, I…
• 34:05
  Mark Pracht: I think that was a white screen.
• 34:07
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, so that'.
• 34:07
  Mark Pracht: And I don't know, 'cause I'm actually looking at this sequence right now, and I think you might be.
• 34:13
  Mark Pracht: Misremembering it, because she pulls the switch, you see the water coming down the pipe.
• 34:19
  Sean Harklerode: He said.
• 34:20
  Mark Pracht: Then there's a, I think it's a, then that's on one page. Then on the next page, it's her, there's the pipe, you see the fall, he's coming out with all the water, right?
• 34:33
  Mark Pracht: And then there's a close-up of him in the water, going, and then it cuts to… like,
• 34:42
  Mark Pracht: Bird's eye shot looking down.
• 34:46
  Dan Newland: This must be just the way the PDF works. I'm going to share my screen just so that you guys can see anyways. We'll see here.
• 34:55
  Dan Newland: I don't know. Are you guys seeing my screen now?
• 34:58
  Mark Pracht: No.
• 34:59
  Sean Harklerode: No.
• 34:59
  Tad Eggleston: No, but I might, I might need to, to,
• 35:04
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and I know Sean and I are both reading on Kindle, so…
• 35:07
  Dan Newland: Yeah, what I see it as, essentially, is a…
• 35:12
  Dan Newland: Oh, hold it! I bet that… so that's a double… is that a double-page spread?
• 35:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 35:17
  Dan Newland: Okay, the PDF turned it into just one shortened. Okay, never mind then.
• 35:22
  Dan Newland: It, you know…
• 35:23
  Mark Pracht: It doesn't…
• 35:24
  Dan Newland: It does not violate anything except the PDF has violated.
• 35:27
  Sean Harklerode: Thank you.
• 35:27
  Dan Newland: So.
• 35:29
  Dan Newland: The dangers of reading things digitally, I guess, so…
• 35:33
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, there… you know, I don't… I… I…
• 35:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think…
• 35:40
  Mark Pracht: Well, we can get all kinds of nitpicky about that pipe. Right. Because sometimes it seems like, I don't know how people crawl in and out of it, the way it's drawn. Right.
• 35:52
  Sean Harklerode: Sometimes the pipe is just a pipe.
• 35:53
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes. And this… this is where… this is where I'll… I'll toss out for you, dan, that, that…
• 36:02
  Tad Eggleston: like, this is a rough PDF, too. This is…
• 36:06
  Dan Newland: Probably.
• 36:07
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, so it… I don't know if it's formatted to work the way it would normally work.
• 36:16
  Tad Eggleston: Like, some of the pages… are… are one page.
• 36:21
  Tad Eggleston: Spreads and and some of them are 2 page.
• 36:25
  Dan Newland: So in that in that case, though.
• 36:27
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 36:28
  Dan Newland: If I'm looking at this, is there one, two, three… for… 5…
• 36:35
  Dan Newland: After… after she blows them out of the pipe, is there essentially 5?
• 36:40
  Dan Newland: Double page spreads in a row.
• 36:42
  Dan Newland: Yeah, only one of which has more than one panel?
• 36:47
  Tad Eggleston: That's entirely possible, give me a second.
• 36:49
  Mark Pracht: After she blows him out of the pipe.
• 36:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, there's… yeah, it's… it's… yeah, because the… the one…
• 36:56
  Tad Eggleston: The next page is 3 panels.
• 36:58
  Mark Pracht: Three panels, but it is a double page spread of three panels. And then the page.
• 37:03
  Tad Eggleston: Right after that is one panel.
• 37:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, the.
• 37:06
  Mark Pracht: And then there'.
• 37:06
  Tad Eggleston: Which, after that, is one panel.
• 37:08
  Dan Newland: That's.
• 37:08
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 37:09
  Tad Eggleston: And the page…
• 37:10
  Dan Newland: A lot of pages of.
• 37:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 37:12
  Dan Newland: And I was, I literally, I was reading these and I was thinking that they were.
• 37:16
  Dan Newland: Like those were single pages cut in half.
• 37:21
  Dan Newland: And I was still thinking that was a lot of real estate being used for what was being done.
• 37:25
  Tad Eggleston: I think that the next page that's not… a single page.
• 37:32
  Tad Eggleston: Her double-page panel is the 6.45 AM. Yeah, her sitting…
• 37:36
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:37
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, okay.
• 37:38
  Tad Eggleston: But again, I mean, like…
• 37:40
  Mark Pracht: Other police detective who I'm, I actually am really like that character compels the shit out of me. I want to know about that guy. I'm like.
• 37:49
  Dan Newland: Agreed.
• 37:50
  Tad Eggleston: I was like, yeah, no, I don't.
• 37:52
  Sean Harklerode: Well, the.
• 37:53
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know that Stefan is.
• 37:54
  Sean Harklerode: M.
• 37:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, like, this is the end of Palomino, but I don't know if Stefan's completely done with this universe. Kind of like Emil Ferris is done with my favorite thing is monsters, but she's not done.
• 38:10
  Tad Eggleston: with… I'm drawing a blank on the main characters. She's not done with Karen.
• 38:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right, there will be more Karen stories, they're just not… my favorite thing is monster stories.
• 38:23
  Tad Eggleston: Just needs to…
• 38:25
  Mark Pracht: 7 with lawsuit, right?
• 38:27
  Tad Eggleston: No, that's all… it's… she's working on the next books That got sorted out.
• 38:37
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, that… it is… there is an awful lot of real estate that just…
• 38:43
  Dan Newland: Didn'.
• 38:43
  Mark Pracht: Especially for… There's… yeah, there's… like you said, there's 5 double page spreads. One has 3 panels, but
• 38:54
  Mark Pracht: three of them in a row have absolutely no dialogue or captions or anything, and that's fine, but, I mean, it's also, like.
• 39:04
  Mark Pracht: Again, I was thinking about Kirby going, like, it's a lot easier for me to draw a double-page spread than it is.
• 39:09
  Tad Eggleston: And I think there's an element of that, but I mean, to me, I feel like it's.
• 39:16
  Tad Eggleston: And maybe, it's just the way I'm reading it, but I feel like it's… I feel like it's the way it's… it's… it's asking me to read it.
• 39:26
  Tad Eggleston: Like the same way Jesse Lonergan will sometimes draw out time by.
• 39:32
  Tad Eggleston: By putting 40 panels on one image.
• 39:36
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like… Stefan sometimes makes you sit with a scene by.
• 39:45
  Tad Eggleston: Giving you different, I mean, cause, cause really this is all just different angles on the same scene even.
• 39:53
  Dan Newland: So, again…
• 39:54
  Sean Harklerode: Okay.
• 39:56
  Dan Newland: I just sent a share request.
• 39:57
  Tad Eggleston: It's, it's the, it's, yeah.
• 40:00
  Tad Eggleston: It's the aerial, and then the zoom in on her, and then the bring the camera down. It's just kind of a way of making you sit with what's just happened.
• 40:12
  Dan Newland: You know.
• 40:13
  Tad Eggleston: Umm.
• 40:15
  Dan Newland: But what I, I mean, like, again, I read this as, as pages.
• 40:19
  Dan Newland: But to me, I think it works better as a comic.
• 40:23
  Dan Newland: If, instead of having a two-page spread of the guy laying there on the ground.
• 40:29
  Dan Newland: And then a two-page spread of her looking down at something.
• 40:34
  Dan Newland: you have the top of that page be him laying on the ground, and the bottom of the page being her looking down, where you've got actually the object of what she's looking at still in your frame of reference. What this is doing is it's asking me to look for a while at the guy on the ground.
• 40:50
  Dan Newland: And then I looked for a while at her… Face.
• 40:54
  Dan Newland: But I've lost the connective tissue that could be there. Same thing with the next two pages. You've got her walking way out of the pipe, and then you've got, like, the dawn coming.
• 41:05
  Dan Newland: Here's…
• 41:06
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas…
• 41:06
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I'm very dramatic.
• 41:09
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 41:10
  Sean Harklerode: I feel.
• 41:11
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean.
• 41:11
  Sean Harklerode: Do you and Ted, you may have talked to to Stefan about this.
• 41:18
  Sean Harklerode: You know, I think at the end of the 6th volume, maybe the 5th volume, he has a bit of his script.
• 41:24
  Sean Harklerode: And it looks to me like it's maybe written in screenplay format.
• 41:29
  Tad Eggleston: I think it is.
• 41:30
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. So, which is really cool, you know, not the…
• 41:34
  Dan Newland: Mmhm.
• 41:35
  Sean Harklerode: Because he can freestyle as he's breaking it down into pages.
• 41:40
  Sean Harklerode: Like that, so…
• 41:42
  Sean Harklerode: You know, I think that, again, it's his animator's eye. This is the camera angle. This is the shot that I would see, you know, in the finished product if he's working in his other medium.
• 41:54
  Sean Harklerode: And I, I…
• 41:55
  Mark Pracht: 'Cause…
• 41:56
  Sean Harklerode: I can see where he's going with that.
• 41:58
  Mark Pracht: I can see it, but I mean, actually, Dan talking about that, about having the two panels, it actually made me think of this. What if the closeup of her is on the top, right, with her eyes looking down, and then we flip the image of him lying on the ground and put that below?
• 42:18
  Mark Pracht: So she's actually, her eyes are actually looking down at the body on the page as we look at the page.
• 42:26
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, and, well, I get where you, where you're.
• 42:29
  Mark Pracht: Stefan, call me. No. Yeah.
• 42:31
  Tad Eggleston: And don't completely disagree with you that that would be something that would absolutely work. Why this works for me is…
• 42:39
  Tad Eggleston: in looking at her face, and right now I've got that page up, I'm not just thinking of her looking at the… at the…
• 42:47
  Tad Eggleston: At the body on the ground, I'm, I'm looking at her and, and the fact that she's confronting.
• 42:53
  Tad Eggleston: discoveries about her mother the fact that she's missing her father the fact that like her whole life is built to this moment but she's got a lot of life left so what's next I I like it it becomes a panel that's about her not a panel that's about her having just
• 43:14
  Tad Eggleston: Throwing this guy over a cliff.
• 43:19
  Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense?
• 43:21
  Mark Pracht: It may.
• 43:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, I don't… like, whether that's what you want or not, but like, even to me, going into that next panel, where it's now this zoom out, and she's down on the beach, and looking very alone…
• 43:38
  Tad Eggleston: And then finally, like, the cars start showing up, and, and, and…
• 43:43
  Tad Eggleston: And you've got, okay, I'm starting to put myself back together.
• 43:47
  Mark Pracht: But, like, okay, Ted, look, I'm gonna, I'm gonna… I'm gonna start riffing
• 43:53
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Look out, everybody. So, like…
• 43:55
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you.
• 43:56
  Mark Pracht: If part of this, look, part of the thing is that this dirty cop character being her surrogate father.
• 44:04
  Mark Pracht: I kind of got that, but I also felt like she was so disconnected from everybody that I didn't really like.
• 44:13
  Mark Pracht: like, it didn't really register with me that, oh, these people raised her. I was sort of like, okay, I don't really know what happened, but clearly she knows these people, she has a relationship with these people, but I didn't feel that familial connection, right?
• 44:28
  Mark Pracht: But I'll I'll stipulate that that's that's accurate, and that's what was intended. So
• 44:35
  Mark Pracht: To me, like if we're wrapping up this story, right?
• 44:40
  Mark Pracht: not trying to build out into 30 other things, right? But we're wrapping up this story. So what she's found out is that a lot of, like, all of this pain that she's been dealing with and the loss that she's been dealing with actually comes from this man who
• 44:55
  Mark Pracht: she saw as a surrogate father, right? Right. That he covered up the death of her mother, he killed her father, he, you know, like, all of these things, right?
• 45:05
  Mark Pracht: And so in that moment, as a wrap up to this story.
• 45:10
  Mark Pracht: The moment… like, if this is her surrogate father, and he did all of these things, and she killed him.
• 45:17
  Mark Pracht: Then that moment is between her and that body.
• 45:20
  Mark Pracht: And then, you cut to her walking down the beach, and she's alone, and it's like, okay.
• 45:26
  Mark Pracht: Now what? Right? And I think that.
• 45:30
  Mark Pracht: On a psychological level, That… Is more clear and direct and.
• 45:40
  Mark Pracht: But… Cohesive as a narrative point, then…
• 45:51
  Mark Pracht: All… all of this other stuff, right?
• 45:55
  Mark Pracht: But that's… that's just me, right?
• 45:58
  Mark Pracht: Right. Anyway.
• 45:59
  Dan Newland: Thanks guys, have a good day.
• 46:02
  Mark Pracht: Why?
• 46:03
  Dan Newland: So stories like this always make me hate myself a little bit, too, because I always want…
• 46:08
  Dan Newland: writers and storytellers to sort of trust their audience more, and trust that you're gonna… you're gonna make the connections you need and everything, and then they actually do it in a story like this, where you really have to put it all together at the end, and have your… they don't have a big wrap-up about, well, I guess we caught the big bad who killed your dad, and, you know.
• 46:26
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:27
  Dan Newland: And and then I and then I'm sort of like missing it and I feel bad about myself.
• 46:33
  Sean Harklerode: Hahaha.
• 46:34
  Dan Newland: It would have been kind of nice to just have them wrap it up and tell me what I'm supposed to be feeling right now instead of all this work I have to do.
• 46:43
  Sean Harklerode: I, I, I just feel, and, and, you know, I kind of.
• 46:47
  Sean Harklerode: Earlier on, you know.
• 46:49
  Sean Harklerode: Let my, how I felt about the last 2 volumes, but I really enjoyed the 1st.
• 46:54
  Sean Harklerode: The first bit of this, And I, I feel like…
• 46:58
  Sean Harklerode: It reminds me of Saturday Night Live. Endings are hard, right?
• 47:03
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 47:03
  Sean Harklerode: How many great sketches do you see on Saturday Night Live that have a terrible ending? You know, and it happens all the time, and I'm not saying this is terrible.
• 47:11
  Sean Harklerode: ending, but it is… I enjoyed the milieu, I enjoy… I really enjoyed the 70s, I really enjoyed, you know, the father character. It didn't really connect as much with… with the daughter,
• 47:25
  Sean Harklerode: She… she seemed disaffected.
• 47:29
  Sean Harklerode: And that's really about all I got.
• 47:31
  Mark Pracht: From her.
• 47:34
  Sean Harklerode: Throughout. But I, I actually like the, the mid 90s milieu too, because, you know, I'm a Gen X guy, you know, that's, that's my time.
• 47:43
  Sean Harklerode: And so I really, I really enjoyed all the world building.
• 47:47
  Sean Harklerode: But the bad thing is, things have to end, and you have to wrap things up, and so sometimes it all gets a little compressed, and…
• 47:55
  Mark Pracht: 7.
• 47:56
  Sean Harklerode: is tightened up. I think while we were looking through at the double-edged spread, I did want to share that there is a page, I think it's page 25, where the girl in the pink bikini throws pink coke up in the air, and that's where people get dosed.
• 48:14
  Tad Eggleston: Pink.
• 48:15
  Tad Eggleston: Is it pink Coke or pink God knows what?
• 48:19
  Sean Harklerode: Well, it's pink something.
• 48:21
  Tad Eggleston: Cause they…
• 48:21
  Sean Harklerode: There we go.
• 48:22
  Tad Eggleston: hallucinating more than…
• 48:24
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, butter… butterfly.
• 48:25
  Tad Eggleston: And I, I mean, I don't have actual experience with any of this. So, I mean, if any of you have have history is cocaine.
• 48:33
  Mark Pracht: Totally like Terry Cousins.
• 48:35
  Tad Eggleston: It just… if it causes hallucinations, too, but I didn't realize that that was…
• 48:41
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, it could be some sort of freebase, it could be whatever. I mean, like, it, like, part of the whole deal with the, with the, the butterflies and everything is it kind of make. It's like I talk about the magical realism thing that suddenly sort of erupted where it's like.
• 48:56
  Mark Pracht: Okay, alright. I mean, and I understand that that kind of thing is hard to, dramatize in any sort of visual way that doesn't seem…
• 49:07
  Mark Pracht: That, like, trying to find a new way to visualize that is always a challenge for whoever.
• 49:12
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because I do think that he was trying to really make it out that when they find this guy, that she's blamed for the…
• 49:20
  Tad Eggleston: He's just so fucked up out of his mind that he can't tell her what happened.
• 49:26
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 49:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know, anything she manages to come to is going to have to come.
• 49:31
  Tad Eggleston: in some different way.
• 49:36
  Mark Pracht: Well, I.
• 49:37
  Tad Eggleston: Whether or not it's the right choice, I don't know, but that's…
• 49:41
  Mark Pracht: That, to me, almost suggests that the idea that the death of the mother is this unknowable thing, that you're never going to get it.
• 49:50
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and.
• 49:51
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, kind of riffing off Dan's thing. Let me, let me, because I got this. Like, I do, I do, I 100% agree that I would rather storytellers trust the audience, right?
• 50:04
  Mark Pracht: But that doesn't… It doesn't absolve you from making sure that.
• 50:11
  Mark Pracht: You have a real coherent.
• 50:15
  Mark Pracht: point of view on what the ending is, because I think, like, you don't have to take the audience by the hand and lead them directly to it.
• 50:24
  Mark Pracht: But it has to be something that is very…
• 50:27
  Mark Pracht: All the pieces have to be there to just say, okay, that's what it is, right?
• 50:32
  Mark Pracht: And then the audience can take it where they want. But I mean, I think that.
• 50:36
  Mark Pracht: It, it, it, part of this whole thing with the mother, it's still.
• 50:42
  Mark Pracht: bugs me, just because I think that, again, to what Dan said about the reality of, like, people die, and…
• 50:49
  Mark Pracht: They die, right?
• 50:50
  Mark Pracht: And… that… Most people who lose a family member or lose a parent to some sort of Criminal Act.
• 51:02
  Mark Pracht: Are never gonna get an answer about it.
• 51:04
  Mark Pracht: It's highly likely that it's just going to be some random act of violence that happened and that the desire to have a rational explanation for it becomes even more important than actually finding that rational explanation.
• 51:23
  Tad Eggleston: And that's where I… Go ahead.
• 51:25
  Mark Pracht: I think what you're talking about, where the guy is so fucked up, he can't.
• 51:30
  Mark Pracht: Actually… Provide any answers.
• 51:35
  Mark Pracht: Like, it almost… to me, it almost, like, muddles it.
• 51:39
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I would say that the drug haze is also unreliable.
• 51:44
  Mark Pracht: Oh, sure.
• 51:45
  Tad Eggleston: She needs an answer so badly that when she's in this drug haze and all she has to work with is this guy is fucked up. Now she imagines her mom fucked up.
• 51:55
  Tad Eggleston: And, and like, everything she I mean, I don't know. There's a lot of room in multiple directions.
• 52:07
  Mark Pracht: Not anymore.
• 52:08
  Tad Eggleston: Again, I.
• 52:08
  Mark Pracht: No.
• 52:09
  Tad Eggleston: I don't like that.
• 52:09
  Dan Newland: Yes.
• 52:12
  Mark Pracht: But the horrible thing that I'm doing here, that I'm doing, is that I'm trying to rewrite the book. And that's just not fair, and it's not right, and it's not justifiable, especially as somebody who claims to be a writer themselves.
• 52:31
  Tad Eggleston: So I…
• 52:31
  Mark Pracht: So I'd be, and that's, but that, but like, because like Stefan should write the story he wants to write, period. So with that, see you guys later.
• 52:42
  Tad Eggleston: What I will say, though, is you just reminded me, I used to literally, like, every creative writing class I was in from, like, high school through college and whatnot, at some point, I would wind up having to write or give a speech to the
• 52:55
  Tad Eggleston: The class about the fact that,
• 53:02
  Tad Eggleston: The more I rip your story apart, the more I liked it.
• 53:07
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
• 53:08
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 53:08
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I don't give this much thought to things that I don't like, more things than I don't like.
• 53:19
  Tad Eggleston: That's…
• 53:19
  Mark Pracht: That's totally true, but it's also like I'm indulging, I'm indulging a bad habit of.
• 53:26
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I.
• 53:26
  Mark Pracht: And I mean, like, look, and I've been through enough workshop environments, it's a bad habit that everybody who feels they have an artistic bent has. It's like, let me tell you how to fix your play. No.
• 53:37
  Dan Newland: Okay.
• 53:37
  Mark Pracht: You don't, that's not helpful, right?
• 53:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, this is kind of like, and you're one of them, you talk about, like, you do like negative, you know, I often talk about, like, I don't talk about things unless I'm gonna…
• 53:51
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't mean…
• 53:54
  Tad Eggleston: I don't mean I won't criticize… I mean, because I've really come to think of, like, there's a difference between reviewing something and criticizing something. And I won't review something that I don't like, because why waste the time? I won't really criticize something that I don't like.
• 54:11
  Tad Eggleston: but that doesn't mean that I won't be critical of something that I do like, kind of the way you're being critical of this now. What, like, you, you know…
• 54:21
  Mark Pracht: The one thing I would say about that is that I think that One of…
• 54:26
  Mark Pracht: this. Okay, this gets into a really big area. But I think one of the biggest problems that the arts in general have in our current society is that we don't have
• 54:40
  Mark Pracht: really strong.
• 54:45
  Mark Pracht: Critical, and what I mean by critical is, I mean, Critics.
• 54:51
  Mark Pracht: Critical voices who are, learned.
• 54:56
  Mark Pracht: And, in general, sort of like…
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there was a time…
• 55:03
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, you know.
• 55:05
  Tad Eggleston: Authors wrote… Criticism…
• 55:08
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Okay.
• 55:09
  Tad Eggleston: other authors.
• 55:11
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, you know, you think about it.
• 55:13
  Tad Eggleston: Where the big piece on a new book in the New Yorker would be written by another author.
• 55:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Sure. It wasn't written by…
• 55:22
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not saying that there are no critics that are also qualified to, but that's kind of how things have changed.
• 55:31
  Mark Pracht: But what like what I'm saying is like, do you think like I, I.
• 55:36
  Mark Pracht: One of the things I like to do when I'm working is I have YouTube going, and a lot of times, I just put on old Siskel and Ebert.
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 55:45
  Mark Pracht: stuff, and I just listened to them talk. And the thing is, is, like, do you, like, how much more
• 55:52
  Mark Pracht: Like even when they're like, this is shit, right? Like there's so much more thought and knowledge and clear.
• 56:04
  Mark Pracht: point of view in the way they would talk about things, and then you go to, like, I don't know, Reddit, or.
• 56:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 56:11
  Mark Pracht: or whatever, and you read these things, and it's like… it's… there's… there's not criticism anymore, or, God forbid, you go to one of those fucking YouTube channels, right? Where…
• 56:23
  Mark Pracht: It, it's content generation. It's not really talking about it. It, it, it was something.
• 56:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes it is, but those are often the ones that don't have many viewers.
• 56:35
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, but I mean.
• 56:36
  Tad Eggleston: 22 panels.
• 56:38
  Dan Newland: I'm listening actually right now to Ebert's, I think it's Ebert's top 100 books or whatever. I got it on Audible. It's the snippets, the 10-minute snippets and all. I absolutely loved all of his old stuff. And partly, it is, I think, that he was a sort of semi-failed screenwriter is one of the things.
• 56:58
  Sean Harklerode: He was spreading the draft.
• 57:00
  Dan Newland: He realized how hard it was. And so he was always somebody who, if he liked it, I'm like, you know, I'm going to give it a try.
• 57:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, I guess, I guess that's kind of my difference is like.
• 57:14
  Tad Eggleston: There's a difference between shitting on something without respecting the effort and craft that went into it,
• 57:22
  Tad Eggleston: I think sometimes it's better to separate your recommendation from your criticism. You know, Cisco and Ebert don't, but they also keep their… they keep it simple with thumbs up, thumbs down. They don't try to do the 1 star, 2 star, 3 star, 4 star, 5 star. It's like…
• 57:38
  Tad Eggleston: And, and they also always make it clear that, like, this is us.
• 57:44
  Tad Eggleston: This is, we're not saying nobody will like this. I've even heard them say, like, if you like this, then this is your movie. It's not mine.
• 57:54
  Mark Pracht: Like, look, I think that… I think that…
• 57:57
  Mark Pracht: You know, there's still people who are angry at them, because they had that whole run in the 80s, where it was, like, all those fucking slasher movies.
• 58:05
  Mark Pracht: And they, you know, and they're like, there's just, there
• 58:08
  Mark Pracht: it's… it's… you know, they were like, it's like pornography. I mean, you're just sort of waiting for that next flash of… of…
• 58:16
  Dan Newland: Okay.
• 58:16
  Mark Pracht: Some mega gore thing. And it's like.
• 58:20
  Mark Pracht: I think that…
• 58:22
  Mark Pracht: I think that they got into a mindset where sometimes when something interesting would come along, they would miss it because, but I mean, like you would hear both like.
• 58:32
  Mark Pracht: it's amazing when you hear them talk about, like, Halloween, you know? Because they're both like, this is a magnificent film, right? And… and…
• 58:41
  Mark Pracht: You know, they missed the boat on on the thing. Both of them do.
• 58:47
  Mark Pracht: But… You know, they… they…
• 58:53
  Mark Pracht: And… and the thing is, is, like, the great thing about them, and I know that… that they themselves talked about how the thumbs up, thumbs down thing was sort of a trap, right? Because it made… and it… and it's a trap that I think we're still living in now, because it's that… it's that,
• 59:09
  Mark Pracht: Goodbye.
• 59:10
  Dan Newland: Sorry.
• 59:11
  Mark Pracht: the binary. It's good, or it's bad. And that if you say you have a 5-star system, and you give something 3 stars, that means, hey.
• 59:21
  Mark Pracht: there's… there's good things here, but there's bad things here, you know? There's just, like, you know, it's… it… it hands the thing off to the audience and says, you need to make up your own mind about whether you want to see this, but,
• 59:34
  Mark Pracht: But,
• 59:35
  Tad Eggleston: I think five stars is about as far as you can go without it starting to get really.
• 59:41
  Tad Eggleston: almost meaningless. And also, I think there's a lot to be said for criticism that's actually just separated from… we're not giving stars or thumbs up or thumbs down. This is the movie, I liked this about it, I didn't like this about it.
• 59:56
  Dan Newland: So, like.
• 59:57
  Tad Eggleston: I'd recommend it to these people. I might not recommend it to those people. I'll almost certainly watch it again or I won't watch it, you know.
• 1:00:05
  Dan Newland: You know, like one of Mark's, what I would, what I would say would be recommendations is I hadn't watched Streets of Fire, like, or at least I hadn't watched it in forever. And you talked about it, went and watch.
• 1:00:15
  Tad Eggleston: I went off and watched it.
• 1:00:16
  Dan Newland: my wife. I did too. This is, this is fantastic.
• 1:00:19
  Tad Eggleston: I did too.
• 1:00:20
  Dan Newland: Would… how would it do if we sat and picked it apart for 4 weeks?
• 1:00:24
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I.
• 1:00:25
  Dan Newland: Honestly, well…
• 1:00:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and like, I thought it was fantastic, but I can think of a billion people that would hate it.
• 1:00:32
  Tad Eggleston: what I liked about it is exactly what so many people I know would complain about it. They'd be like, wait a minute, is it a 50s movie, or is it a futuristic movie? Why are this, what's this, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, but that's what makes it cool!
• 1:00:47
  Mark Pracht: Is it a 50s movie or is it a futuristic movie? Yes. Right.
• 1:00:53
  Mark Pracht: I mean, look, it's, it's sort of like, it's sort of like, you know, like, sorry, that movie, I just love it. It's like when I watch.
• 1:01:00
  Tad Eggleston: Really.
• 1:01:01
  Mark Pracht: Warri.
• 1:01:01
  Tad Eggleston: Enjoyed it a.
• 1:01:02
  Mark Pracht: Warriors, is this a contemporary movie, or is this some sort of weird futuristic movie? Yes! I mean, like, and it… they sort of… they… in… anyway. But I think that,
• 1:01:14
  Mark Pracht: But I think that there was a there was a certain.
• 1:01:18
  Mark Pracht: Journalistic rigor.
• 1:01:21
  Mark Pracht: to what Siskel and Ebert did that that we have lost. Because now I think I think that the idea of criticism has become kind of like wrapped up in this idea of advocacy.
• 1:01:34
  Mark Pracht: And you always want to advocate for the good, but sometimes I think, look.
• 1:01:40
  Mark Pracht: as we're recording this, and this is… maybe this is a fucking landmine topic, I don't know, but Supergirl just came out, right? And I'm… it's funny, because, like, I have not seen it. Like, obviously my wife is sick.
• 1:01:53
  Mark Pracht: My wife is sick, I… we don't get out as much as we used to, but… yeah, but… and it's… it's like…
• 1:02:00
  Mark Pracht: My my initial my initial reaction to the trailers and everything and and what I've read is it probably I would probably feel.
• 1:02:09
  Mark Pracht: the same way I'd feel about it, about that last Superman movie. It's… it's not as bad as some idiots say, and it's not as good as some idiots say. It's… it's fine, but…
• 1:02:21
  Tad Eggleston: You mean there can be stuff in between awesome and worst thing ever?
• 1:02:26
  Mark Pracht: That when you're talking about art, a binary system is not the most, you know.
• 1:02:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I bring it up a lot. I really, really love Tom Hanks.
• 1:02:37
  Tad Eggleston: Novel.
• 1:02:38
  Tad Eggleston: the making of the next motion picture masterpiece? Because it, like, really lays bare the idea that any movie that gets made at all is a small miracle.
• 1:02:50
  Tad Eggleston: You know, all of the stuff that goes in, all of the things that can go wrong, all of the different people who have opinions and things that they will do or won't do, things that the studios will or won't pay for, blah blah blah,
• 1:03:05
  Tad Eggleston: So I try to remember that more and more when I'm watching movies is is that like there are so few movies that are are the director's perfect vision and even even those movies like we know from history sometimes the director does need somebody to push them.
• 1:03:24
  Dan Newland: M. Night Shimalian's perfect vision is a disaster.
• 1:03:27
  Tad Eggleston: Almost always.
• 1:03:29
  Mark Pracht: Look, like, I, like, I, Sean knows this, like, Megalopolis, right?
• 1:03:34
  Dan Newland: Nope.
• 1:03:35
  Mark Pracht: I think that that movie has lots of problems and is deeply flawed and I fucking love it.
• 1:03:41
  Dan Newland: Well, it'.
• 1:03:42
  Tad Eggleston: Me too. Me too.
• 1:03:44
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, I just think that it's… I like the comic.
• 1:03:47
  Tad Eggleston: More though.
• 1:03:48
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, but it's this amazing vision of something, and it's something that feels personal, and I'm like.
• 1:03:54
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm even gonna toss this out, because I think it will fit this club. We need to pick our next book. I think we should… I mean, particularly because it looks like we've all seen Megalopolis. We should read the Chris Ryle and…
• 1:04:11
  Dan Newland: Jacob.
• 1:04:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it's, it's not, see, that's the thing. It's not an adaptation.
• 1:04:17
  Dan Newland: It is.
• 1:04:17
  Mark Pracht: Mmhm.
• 1:04:18
  Tad Eggleston: No. They got the script. Ryle had access to Coppola. Coppola was very clear, no, I don't want Francis Ford Coppola's comic version of
• 1:04:30
  Tad Eggleston: Megalopolis. I want Chris Ryle and Jacob Phillips Megalopolis.
• 1:04:35
  Mark Pracht: And then I want the money from it. No.
• 1:04:38
  Sean Harklerode: You need so many problems.
• 1:04:40
  Dan Newland: Interesting.
• 1:04:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:04:41
  Mark Pracht: No, I.
• 1:04:42
  Tad Eggleston: If you want, I did talk to Chris Ryle about this so you can go back into the archives and there's an interview with him.
• 1:04:50
  Sean Harklerode: Oh yeah, I know that.
• 1:04:51
  Mark Pracht: You know, I…
• 1:04:52
  Sean Harklerode: So they read the screenplay but then didn't adapt it?
• 1:04:57
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, they adapted the screenplay, but they didn't see any of the movie.
• 1:05:01
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, okay, so they…
• 1:05:03
  Dan Newland: They were making it.
• 1:05:05
  Tad Eggleston: simultaneously to him making the movie. They got to see a handful of things, but one of the cool things is, like, the way Jacob envisioned things often wound up being the way that he'd envisioned things, even though Jacob hadn't
• 1:05:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know, he just picked it up from the script, that sort of thing.
• 1:05:22
  Sean Harklerode: Well, that sounds.
• 1:05:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:05:25
  Mark Pracht: But, let me…
• 1:05:26
  Sean Harklerode: That's how they did the Blade Runner adaptation back.
• 1:05:29
  Mark Pracht: Yep.
• 1:05:30
  Tad Eggleston: Now.
• 1:05:31
  Mark Pracht: But let me finish my thought on this whole thing, the Supergirl thing.
• 1:05:36
  Mark Pracht: The one thing that I have been really struck by, as I have watched people's reaction to it, is that the people
• 1:05:42
  Mark Pracht: There's a lot of people who were very pro, like, it seems like the actual movie made no difference in how people reacted to it.
• 1:05:51
  Mark Pracht: That they just, they knew what they were wanting, that their reaction to it was more about what they felt their duty was to whatever or their own personal narrative about themselves. And the thing is, is like, you know, like you, any human being is going to have that same thing.
• 1:06:10
  Mark Pracht: there, like, we were talking about the slasher movies, that was the Siskel and Ebert thing, that was something that they had kind of got into, but, like, I think it's just so pervasive now, and the entire quote-unquote journalistic, we're going to review movies thing.
• 1:06:27
  Mark Pracht: Is… has become just co-opted into
• 1:06:33
  Mark Pracht: this binary marketing thing, like, you know.
• 1:06:36
  Dan Newland: I mean, it's more than that. Think of it in terms of like, you know, in the 70s, in the 80s, the Supreme Court decided cases based on judicial merits.
• 1:06:46
  Mark Pracht: Mmh.
• 1:06:47
  Dan Newland: So now, essentially, you can basically tell exactly what the result's going to be based on whether conservatives or liberals would favor the ruling. Right.
• 1:06:57
  Tad Eggleston: I'm hoping, I'm hoping that birthright citizenship stays just as a cover for all of the other bad decisions that they've made.
• 1:07:07
  Mark Pracht: Oh, I don't… I don't… I… look, I don't want to get too deep into this. No, we won't. I think that… I think that undoing birthright citizenship would be a really big ask for anybody who is,
• 1:07:21
  Mark Pracht: even… Passingly, aware, you know, like, I don't think. No, I understand. He's gonna vote for that.
• 1:07:28
  Tad Eggleston: And I somewhat agree, but they, but, but it, it shouldn't have even been taken up because of those things. And not only was it taken up, it, it's like the last decision that they're going to announce. So I think they're literally using it as cover for all of, see, we didn't end birthright citizenship. Don't look at all the other shitty things we did.
• 1:07:51
  Mark Pracht: Well…
• 1:07:54
  Dan Newland: But I do think that that's kind of the way it's going these days. Critics are the same thing that, you know, I feel bad having gone to Supergirl that I didn't enjoy it more because I think that every time I don't.
• 1:08:07
  Dan Newland: Feel over the moon for a female led superhero movie. I feel like I'm, I'm failing the team to a certain extent. Yeah.
• 1:08:14
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, and the thing is, it's like… and then you feel like… then you feel like you can't say anything about it, because it's like, you're gonna get branded, you know? It's like… and it's like…
• 1:08:27
  Mark Pracht: I ran out and saw it.
• 1:08:29
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I thought…
• 1:08:30
  Mark Pracht: Okay.
• 1:08:31
  Sean Harklerode: Might pour it open.
• 1:08:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:08:33
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:08:33
  Dan Newland: And it was… it was a middle movie. You know, my family went with me. Kids enjoyed it. My daughter seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. So it could be one of those that, you know.
• 1:08:43
  Dan Newland: Younger women might really enjoy it, it could become a cult maybe.
• 1:08:47
  Tad Eggleston: One of the… one of the biggest problems with any superhero movie for people who are deeply seeped in comics.
• 1:08:54
  Tad Eggleston: is, like… There's always, like, the viewing that, that, like…
• 1:09:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I.
• 1:09:02
  Tad Eggleston: we have to conquer our expectations, and it's almost always this… I mean, unless, for whatever reason, it's exactly the movie we expected it to be.
• 1:09:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right. It's, it's almost never before the second viewing that we're able to truly look at it, stripping away all of what we thought it was going to be.
• 1:09:24
  Tad Eggleston: And just watching it for what it is.
• 1:09:26
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:09:27
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah. No.
• 1:09:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:28
  Dan Newland: I do just wish that as a culture, everybody who's a comic book fan would agree to just go and take their $15 and pay it and go to every comic book movie.
• 1:09:40
  Dan Newland: Because the lesson that some of these people seem to be wanting is, if we just don't go to Supergirl, they'll make the superhero movies we want.
• 1:09:49
  Dan Newland: Whereas the lesson Hollywood's gonna take is, superhero movies are over, let's go and make something else instead.
• 1:09:55
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean…
• 1:09:56
  Tad Eggleston: I'm okay with that.
• 1:09:57
  Sean Harklerode: Got into that because.
• 1:09:59
  Sean Harklerode: were going to see everything, and some of them weren't very good. I mean, I do think that we need to, like, my problem with this movie, and if you.
• 1:10:08
  Tad Eggleston: I miss low-budget movies.
• 1:10:10
  Sean Harklerode: is that they have been lazy.
• 1:10:12
  Sean Harklerode: Right? I felt this movie was a little lazy.
• 1:10:16
  Sean Harklerode: Mmhm.
• 1:10:18
  Sean Harklerode: I enjoyed it.
• 1:10:20
  Sean Harklerode: But…
• 1:10:22
  Sean Harklerode: It just felt like kind of paint by the numbers. Yeah. And I feel like we get a lot of those superhero movies. Like, oh, it's a Marvel movie. People are going to love it. They're all going to go see it.
• 1:10:34
  Sean Harklerode: I think.
• 1:10:34
  Mark Pracht: Well, and the…
• 1:10:35
  Sean Harklerode: Kind of need to withhold and say, hey, we need better movies.
• 1:10:38
  Mark Pracht: Well, and I think, I think that there's an, you know, I think this gets into my own personal grievances, but I think that there's been, like, this fan media thing that has sprung up around
• 1:10:53
  Mark Pracht: being able to, you know, do your list of Easter eggs, and your spoiler reviews, and your blah blah blah blah, and that, like, these people are, you know, whether it's a good living or not, are making a living off of the back of this content.
• 1:11:10
  Mark Pracht: content. I hate that word, but I mean, like, off the back of these movies, and that there is a deep-seated fear that maybe the general public
• 1:11:22
  Mark Pracht: Just doesn't care that much anymore.
• 1:11:24
  Mark Pracht: And then if these things start failing, then what happens to my career? You know, like, like, if I've got, you know, the…
• 1:11:35
  Mark Pracht: Marvel Secrets YouTube channel.
• 1:11:38
  Mark Pracht: And suddenly, like, the the movie going public is like, hmm.
• 1:11:45
  Mark Pracht: then… What's my life worth? You know, it's like, you know.
• 1:11:51
  Mark Pracht: And I…
• 1:11:51
  Tad Eggleston: So before we wrap up, this is where I'll say that I totally don't make my living on this podcast, but we cool if I did. So patreon.com/22 panels.
• 1:12:02
  Tad Eggleston: If you… if you want intelligent, non-beholding conversation about things…
• 1:12:09
  Mark Pracht: And don't worry, Tad has me on quite a bit, so I'.
• 1:12:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:12:12
  Mark Pracht: My mouth is about what I don't like.
• 1:12:15
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
• 1:12:17
  Tad Eggleston: But… but… next, I… I… like, we're drifting from Palomino, and we're in a rare situation where I'm the one that's kind of on a clock today, not a hard clock. So I want to bring us back. Anybody have final… final thoughts on… on Palomino as a whole before we wrap it up?
• 1:12:36
  Sean Harklerode: I… yeah.
• 1:12:36
  Sean Harklerode: I will just go first. I, I say I love the,
• 1:12:41
  Sean Harklerode: I love the milieu, you know, the setting, particularly in the early days, the early volumes and the artwork.
• 1:12:51
  Sean Harklerode: And…
• 1:12:53
  Sean Harklerode: I think it's very interesting. I love… I love the… the end pieces that he writes after each volume,
• 1:13:00
  Sean Harklerode: And, so I recommend it. It's, it's fun. Again, you know, kind of the ending, as we talk about, endings are hard, and never satisfy everyone, but…
• 1:13:12
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 1:13:13
  Sean Harklerode: I'd recommend it.
• 1:13:16
  Mark Pracht: Okay, I'll go. I think I think it's a worthwhile read. I was not blown away by it, but I think that there's a lot of interesting things. I do think it's a little long.
• 1:13:29
  Mark Pracht: I think that at the end.
• 1:13:30
  Tad Eggleston: 661 pages.
• 1:13:33
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don't read the end pieces.
• 1:13:37
  Sean Harklerode: It reads, like, just.
• 1:13:38
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 1:13:39
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:13:41
  Mark Pracht: I just sort of fundamentally don't read in pieces because I think that the work should speak for itself.
• 1:13:49
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, a lot of the end pieces are actually about stuff that's not the book. Depends on which end pieces.
• 1:13:55
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:13:56
  Sean Harklerode: But…
• 1:13:57
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 1:13:57
  Sean Harklerode: What's your thoughts on…
• 1:13:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:59
  Sean Harklerode: I understand.
• 1:14:00
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah. But yeah, when I did note that it was 661 pages and I was like, wow, that.
• 1:14:08
  Mark Pracht: didn't. That was, yeah, that felt like 661 page.
• 1:14:13
  Mark Pracht: So, I mean, I think that, you know, if you wanted, if you're into detective fiction, and I am into detective fiction, so I think it's a good read, it's not a…
• 1:14:26
  Mark Pracht: great read, but it's totally worth your time. If you're into that, if especially if you like, you know, great detective novels, nor detective are all set in La. So this is too so good for you.
• 1:14:38
  Mark Pracht: Hey!
• 1:14:40
  Dan Newland: I guess I also, you know, I liked it. Also a big detective fiction fan, film noir fan, that sort of thing.
• 1:14:48
  Dan Newland: When I got them, basically, I got all 6 volumes within a few days and just burned through them. And I liked the story. I think if you just go in with a I want to sit back for a while and enjoy kind of a fun adventure.
• 1:15:04
  Dan Newland: This actually goes down pretty well. The, you know, that idea of, if I'd had to wait.
• 1:15:10
  Dan Newland: 4 years for the ending of it, and was getting physical volumes where I was, you know, having to to flip through all these. I might have that might have bugged me a little bit, but the pages didn't bother me. It read really fast. I love the supporting characters. And by supporting characters, not only that cop.
• 1:15:29
  Dan Newland: The crazy old musician Johnny Cash dude. A lot of the characters that he popped in just sort of to add some flavor, I thought were really well developed. I loved the 70s as a character, the scenes, like the Palomino itself.
• 1:15:46
  Dan Newland: that ability to develop, and especially in the first volumes, like, dropped me in there, and you could smell the beer and cigarettes when they were wandering around the Palomino, almost. So…
• 1:15:58
  Dan Newland: I do wish they'd stuck in the 70s, just because that, to me, was a more interesting and unusual time. I get that the story took him where he wanted.
• 1:16:06
  Dan Newland: But he has a film law with a twist, you know. You also can see that he's not
• 1:16:14
  Dan Newland: necessarily somebody who's written 100 comics, right? This is not…
• 1:16:18
  Mark Pracht: So.
• 1:16:18
  Dan Newland: Brubaker and, you know, a criminal book that's been developed over years where they've got every storytelling sort of ticked down perfectly. But…
• 1:16:28
  Dan Newland: you know, we were talking also about… about some of the other stuff. I think that for a guy who's doing it all himself, without any editors or anything else, and on his schedule, it's probably amazing there aren't
• 1:16:40
  Dan Newland: more sort of things to pick at in the plot and the like than there are. This is kind of an amazing work for him, basically doing it all himself.
• 1:16:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the, the, I like.
• 1:16:53
  Tad Eggleston: One of the things I love about having these conversations is I learn so much about myself.
• 1:17:00
  Tad Eggleston: I know that that like.
• 1:17:04
  Tad Eggleston: My story of, of coming to this…
• 1:17:07
  Tad Eggleston: affects how I I read it. You know it was recommended by Howard Shakin, you know, when when
• 1:17:14
  Tad Eggleston: somebody that I…
• 1:17:15
  Tad Eggleston: respect as much as Howard says, hey, right after saying there are no new good comics, goes, hey, but you should read this. I'm like, well, isn't that new?
• 1:17:28
  Tad Eggleston: and, and I hit it off with Stefan massively. We've become friends. Like, so that, that… that…
• 1:17:36
  Tad Eggleston: Certainly tempers it as well, but also, like, I realized that I like.
• 1:17:43
  Tad Eggleston: And this is true in music, this is true in movies, I, I, like, A, I just like more than I don't like.
• 1:17:50
  Tad Eggleston: They just do.
• 1:17:52
  Tad Eggleston: And, and like so often when I'm having conversations like this, it's not that I disagree with anything that any of you guys are saying.
• 1:18:01
  Tad Eggleston: It's that, like, the value I put on it is different. It's like.
• 1:18:05
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, you know, yeah, yeah, he did that, but
• 1:18:09
  Tad Eggleston: I… I think that's a feature, not a bug.
• 1:18:13
  Tad Eggleston: And I genuinely mean it. I, you know, I I know I sometimes come off as defensive or whatnot, and I and I try to temper that, but it's really that, like.
• 1:18:22
  Mark Pracht: You?
• 1:18:23
  Mark Pracht: No.
• 1:18:24
  Tad Eggleston: I do try to temper the defensiveness because because I don't want it to sound defensive. It's it is really about the fact that like
• 1:18:33
  Tad Eggleston: I like different approaches. I like to dissect the approach and go, what does this approach make me feel? Do I like that?
• 1:18:43
  Tad Eggleston: Arm.
• 1:18:45
  Tad Eggleston: And yeah, this is a different approach to storytelling than you normally see in comics. But I loved it.
• 1:18:53
  Tad Eggleston: I love it. You know, it's… it's… I'm… I'm… it's one of three books that I'll be… I'll be reviewing in the next American Nature Presents, and… and, like, you know, I'm already working up the things, because, like…
• 1:19:07
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like,
• 1:19:11
  Tad Eggleston: the stuff that everybody loves, I generally love, but also… also, there's often stuff that other people either don't like at all, or are in the middle on, or whatnot, that I love just as much as the stuff that everybody loves. And… I kinda like that about myself.
• 1:19:28
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 1:19:30
  Mark Pracht: I'm like, Ted, you're not alone in any of that. I mean, look, I'm the one over here going like streets of fire.
• 1:19:38
  Mark Pracht: I do.
• 1:19:39
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't say I was alone. I said that I like discovering it, and I like that I'm comfortable with it. Because, like, we're…
• 1:19:48
  Tad Eggleston: So much of our lives are spent, you got to be like everybody else that like when you become comfortable with like, okay, you didn't like that, but I did. So like, that's cool and that's allowed for you not to like it and me to like it. It's just, I like.
• 1:20:07
  Tad Eggleston: I like that.
• 1:20:08
  Tad Eggleston: So, on that note…
• 1:20:11
  Mark Pracht: And we like you, Tad.
• 1:20:13
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you!
• 1:20:15
  Tad Eggleston: For the pulp blotter on 22 panels, we will see you after the next page.