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22 Panels Episode #208 - Dissect the Form · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to 22 panels.
• 0:09
  Tad Eggleston: Episode 208, the end of our Fourth season.
• 0:18
  Tad Eggleston: Well, technically, our first…
• 0:21
  Phil: You know what? No, it shouldn't be, because we had, we had a, .
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: a leap year.
• 0:29
  Phil: Oh, there we go.
• 0:31
  Phil: time, foilingess once again.
• 0:35
  Tad Eggleston: Cuz, cuz, cuz, like, 10… or 1114, I was just looking at it recently.
• 0:43
  Tad Eggleston: Our first episode was…
• 0:45
  Phil: November 13th.
• 0:47
  Tad Eggleston: November 13th.
• 0:49
  Tad Eggleston: So, double up on Andrew?
• 0:51
  Phil: nursery for me.
• 0:53
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, we'll call this the penultimate. We'll make 210 the beginning of…
• 1:00
  Phil: That makes sense.
• 1:00
  Tad Eggleston: of season.
• 1:03
  Tad Eggleston: Season 5.
• 1:04
  Phil: Wow. Right.
• 1:06
  Tad Eggleston: Astounding. So, yeah.
• 1:09
  Tad Eggleston: 22 Panels, episode 208.
• 1:13
  Tad Eggleston: the actual penultimate issue episode of Season 4. We jumped the gun last week.
• 1:20
  Tad Eggleston: We realized here, on the air, for your listening pleasure. Across the internet webs… is, phil?
• 1:30
  Phil: Ayy! Hey, Don!
• 1:32
  Tad Eggleston: Today, we will dissect the form of comics.
• 1:37
  Tad Eggleston: Or at least talk about the comics that, that, that made us further dissect the form, but .
• 1:45
  Phil: Got your… got your 2D scalpel ready, sir?
• 1:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… maybe.
• 1:53
  Tad Eggleston: But, but first, we should,
• 1:58
  Tad Eggleston: Take a look at some news.
• 2:02
  Phil: Yeah, it was a stark.
• 2:03
  Tad Eggleston: I'm, I'm gonna… I'm gonna start with, my Dodgers…
• 2:11
  Tad Eggleston: I'm thinking of them as my Dodgers right now, because I've been rooting for them so hard.
• 2:15
  Phil: Ironically, I would, like.
• 2:18
  Tad Eggleston: Completely be happy if… Toronto 1.
• 2:24
  Tad Eggleston: But this is… this is where my Phantom is these days.
• 2:28
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you, Craig Calcatera, for writing a book on rethinking fandom that turned out to be a lot of things that I was already
• 2:36
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of towards myself, but that… that…
• 2:39
  Tad Eggleston: That makes sense, not just because, like…
• 2:44
  Tad Eggleston: he and I have, always had some… some similar thoughts on baseball, but also because, like, I had been reading his blog since… since he was still a lawyer.
• 2:57
  Tad Eggleston: And not a professional baseball writer, so… so, like, we probably got there kind of together.
• 3:06
  Phil: You tagged along on the journey, and he never knew.
• 3:08
  Tad Eggleston: And he probably was among the major influences on how I…
• 3:13
  Phil: So if you had to… if you had to boil down the thesis of that book, as, as tightly as you can, what would it, what would it be of, you know, I… I have to imagine that it influenced more than just your thoughts on baseball.
• 3:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, essentially that, like, fandom's supposed to be fun.
• 3:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, like, do what's fun for you, and you don't actually have to, like, live and die with your stuff, or you… like, if you appreciate a sport, you can appreciate it even when it's…
• 3:47
  Tad Eggleston: teams that are rivals of your teams, it's like…
• 3:51
  Tad Eggleston: It's… in a lot of ways, it's like…
• 3:55
  Tad Eggleston: another way of putting it, and, like, I haven't read it in a while, I need to re-read it.
• 4:01
  Tad Eggleston: But another way of putting it would be, be mindful of your fandom. Yeah. Be aware of, like…
• 4:09
  Phil: What you feel and why, and…
• 4:12
  Phil: Oh, yeah, that's… that's a… that's a big one for me, too. And you have control over that. Yeah, yeah.
• 4:18
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I will be the first one to admit that, like, both the Red Sox and the…
• 4:25
  Tad Eggleston: Cubs winning their World Series made it,
• 4:28
  Tad Eggleston: Way easier for me to become much more of a baseball fan and much less of a team fan.
• 4:34
  Phil: Mmm.
• 4:34
  Tad Eggleston: Mom.
• 4:35
  Phil: I felt like those, those… the sort of missing links were filled.
• 4:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right. The quest had been accomplished.
• 4:43
  Phil: Yes, yes.
• 4:44
  Tad Eggleston: But, like…
• 4:53
  Tad Eggleston: Also, you know, it was made way easier by the fact that As we become…
• 4:59
  Tad Eggleston: more and more polarized by a nation. Baseball teams are owned by billionaires, and many of the white millionaires that play baseball go
• 5:11
  Tad Eggleston: Big year!
• 5:13
  Tad Eggleston: are awfully conservative. So, so, like…
• 5:22
  Tad Eggleston: It's easier to distance yourself from both teams and players in a lot of ways when… when,
• 5:29
  Tad Eggleston: Some of them you out, like, outright dislike when they open their mouths off the field.
• 5:36
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 5:39
  Tad Eggleston: So, but… But, the game itself is still just beautiful.
• 5:44
  Phil: Yeah.
• 5:45
  Tad Eggleston: And Otani is a force to behold.
• 5:49
  Tad Eggleston: And credits a manga for him deciding to, like, be what he is. So…
• 5:58
  Phil: Wow.
• 5:58
  Tad Eggleston: And is apparently a, a rabid manga reader. It's, it's, it's, like, he's got his iPad with his Shonen Jump and Viz Apps and what, whatnot in the dugout. That's incredible. Like, he… Yeah. He can most commonly be found reading manga, like, when he's relaxing in the clubhouse.
• 6:18
  Tad Eggleston: From all reports, anyway.
• 6:21
  Tad Eggleston: So… so, like, the fact that the baseball player that most… most…
• 6:31
  Tad Eggleston: Resembles a comic book superhero?
• 6:34
  Phil: Yeah, holy cow.
• 6:36
  Tad Eggleston: Is actually a, a fan of, of comics.
• 6:39
  Phil: Oh, wow.
• 6:41
  Tad Eggleston: It just makes it that much easier to… to love him.
• 6:46
  Phil: So, this is… I am now… I am now imagining a, a dream episode where you get to talk, showing baseball comics with Okai. Oh, yes.
• 6:55
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, with Ohtani? Oh, I would talk any comics.
• 7:00
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:01
  Tad Eggleston: It wouldn't have to be baseball comics. I mean, major would have to come up, because, like… Sure. And I'd have to go read more of it.
• 7:07
  Phil: Right, right.
• 7:07
  Tad Eggleston: It's difficult, because it's not imprinted in the United States, which doesn't mean it's impossible, but…
• 7:12
  Phil: Yeah.
• 7:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 7:13
  Phil: Yeah. If only we Americans had better taste.
• 7:17
  Phil: Right, right.
• 7:20
  Tad Eggleston: But this is also the, the, the point to point out for, for everybody,
• 7:27
  Tad Eggleston: I sent out the first round of invites, and I'm certain there will be more, but in case there happens to be anybody listening.
• 7:34
  Tad Eggleston: The 22 Panels Baseball and Comics Roundtable for 2025 has been scheduled for November 18th, come one, come all. If I haven't sent you an email, and you…
• 7:45
  Tad Eggleston: Want to be involved, and you love baseball and comics, you can email me at 22panelsPodcast at gmail.com.
• 7:55
  Tad Eggleston: If I know you already, you will be immediately added to the list, but as Phil can attest, even if I don't know you, that doesn't…
• 8:02
  Tad Eggleston: Guarantee whatsoever that I wouldn't be willing to… Include you in our festivities.
• 8:12
  Phil: listener, if you have not talked to us yet, but you would like to, now's your chance.
• 8:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 8:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's definitely one of my favorite 22 panels things of the year, is the Baseball and Comics Roundtable, of which this will be our…
• 8:27
  Tad Eggleston: Fourth.
• 8:29
  Phil: Heck yeah.
• 8:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, moving on, Fanagraphics, in its 50th year, announces a, a new imprint to Kumi Graphics.
• 8:41
  Phil: That's exciting, yeah.
• 8:43
  Tad Eggleston: where they will do East Asian comics. They've already been printing East Asian comics from…
• 8:49
  Tad Eggleston: It's just in their main line for… for…
• 8:53
  Tad Eggleston: At least a decade now, maybe a couple.
• 8:57
  Tad Eggleston: But, they're now going to have an imprint
• 9:01
  Tad Eggleston: That focuses exclusively, they've got 4 titles lined up for next year. I think next year's are all…
• 9:09
  Tad Eggleston: manga, but they have the… they… they…
• 9:13
  Tad Eggleston: emphasize East Asian, because while they're starting in Japan, they want to go to Korea, to China, to the Philippines.
• 9:21
  Phil: That was a question I was thinking of, of the emphasis seems intentionally broad to be more than just a manga imprint. So yeah, it'd be… it'd be so cool to see comics from all of the region around there.
• 9:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right. And that's one of the things that I love about Phantographics already, is that, like, they bring us European comics, they bring us…
• 9:43
  Tad Eggleston: Occasionally South American comics. They even had a fantastic anthology of Brazilian comics a couple years ago.
• 9:52
  Phil: I do remember hearing about that, that sounded super cool.
• 9:55
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 9:56
  Tad Eggleston: Bravo.
• 9:57
  Phil: Mmm.
• 9:58
  Tad Eggleston: COVID.
• 9:59
  Tad Eggleston: So, so that they're already an imprint that, that actively seeks out
• 10:07
  Tad Eggleston: Or not an imprint, a publisher that actively seeks out
• 10:10
  Tad Eggleston: comics from around the world. So, it's, it's exciting, too.
• 10:17
  Tad Eggleston: To know that they're going to put, or ha… have… Theoretically, a group of people.
• 10:26
  Tad Eggleston: Putting a greater emphasis on.
• 10:29
  Tad Eggleston: on, the East Asian market.
• 10:32
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah.
• 10:34
  Tad Eggleston: What kind of week has it been? Holy shit.
• 10:38
  Phil: Yeah.
• 10:39
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, at least for the moment…
• 10:44
  Tad Eggleston: Federal courts have… have ordered the Trump administration to disperse the funds that Congress set aside for SNAP to SNAP, and… and people will not,
• 10:57
  Tad Eggleston: Start going hungry today?
• 10:59
  Phil: That'd be great, if we could do that.
• 11:01
  Tad Eggleston: it will be great if that continues to hold up. This administration being this administration, I expect it to be…
• 11:16
  Phil: Not great. Bad.
• 11:17
  Tad Eggleston: No, I expect it to be appealed.
• 11:20
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, we'll see how all sorts of things happen there.
• 11:25
  Tad Eggleston: I do want to point out for anybody who is unaware that, like, whatever the Trump administration says about the legality of continuing to fund SNAP during the shutdown, first of all, they made the opposite decision on WIC just, like, 2 weeks ago, so,
• 11:46
  Tad Eggleston: they could use the same law that allowed them to continue funding WIC to fund SNAP, and this isn't even just, like.
• 11:54
  Tad Eggleston: I think they could. It has happened in every other government shutdown ever.
• 12:00
  Phil: Wow.
• 12:03
  Tad Eggleston: So… and just way too many of the Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud, and saying that they just, they want…
• 12:11
  Tad Eggleston: to…
• 12:13
  Phil: I mean, they want poor people to die.
• 12:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, they want Americans to feel pain and blame Democrats.
• 12:19
  Phil: Well, I mean… Oh… is it…
• 12:26
  Tad Eggleston: I just…
• 12:26
  Phil: I sigh at that so hard, because, I mean, it's…
• 12:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, before we get into… actually, I'm gonna, we're gonna, as we so often do,
• 12:42
  Tad Eggleston: Heather Cox Richardson has us.
• 12:51
  Tad Eggleston: from last night's letters from an American.
• 12:56
  Tad Eggleston: Why… What? What?
• 13:07
  Phil: Google is failing us, but this is… this is the, series of reportage where she, tracks everything that happens each day in America.
• 13:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Heather Cox Richardson is a, a,
• 13:23
  Tad Eggleston: historian by trade, but, like, 4 or 5 years ago, maybe 10 years ago now, I forget exactly when, she started on Facebook and eventually moved it to Substack, just collecting the news of the day that she thought historians would need in the future.
• 13:43
  Tad Eggleston: To make certain that there was a record somewhere.
• 13:47
  Tad Eggleston: For… for future historians to… But,
• 13:56
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I appreciated it, and, and, like, she was kind enough not to, to identify
• 14:04
  Tad Eggleston: the news outlet that answered, or that asked this question, though I'm certain I could figure it out if I went through her citations, but representative Joe Neguse of Colorado was asked yesterday.
• 14:21
  Tad Eggleston: If we come to November 1st and these contingency funds haven't been released, if nothing has been accomplished in restoring SNAP benefits, will you call on your Democratic colleagues to reopen the government and deal with these shutdown crises immediately?
• 14:37
  Tad Eggleston: Nagoose answered.
• 14:40
  Tad Eggleston: That, in my view, Er, I'm sorry.
• 14:45
  Tad Eggleston: The basis for your question is, and maybe the better way to state it would be.
• 14:51
  Tad Eggleston: If the Trump administration continues to violate law, if the Trump administration unlawfully refuses to release funds so that families in Colorado don't go hungry, if the Trump administration refuses to follow the law as they have for the better course of the last 9 months, violating statute after statute.
• 15:13
  Tad Eggleston: If, in that scenario, these actions unfold, then how will Democrats respond?
• 15:20
  Tad Eggleston: That, in my view, would be a more fair characterization of the question that you've posed, because it does feel a little bit like we're in the Twilight Zone here with an administration that is lawless, violates the law with impunity, is now doing so with respect
• 15:38
  Tad Eggleston: to the release of funds for families that may go hungry. We're here in Washington.
• 15:46
  Tad Eggleston: You're in Washington.
• 15:48
  Tad Eggleston: House Republicans are gone. Six weeks and counting, gone. Literally gone. Won't show up in Washington. Won't do town halls back in their respective districts. And somehow, the question is posed to House Democrats as to how will we respond?
• 16:08
  Tad Eggleston: The Trump administration needs to follow the law. You've heard all my colleagues repeatedly suggest we would like to negotiate agreement in good faith with our Republican colleagues. That is why we're here in our nation's capital. The question should be posed to Republicans. When will they get serious about working with us in good faith so that we can reach an agreement?
• 16:29
  Tad Eggleston: With the fact that Republicans could have just simply abandoned their post for 6 weeks, that the Trump administration could just violate the law without consequence, it should offend
• 16:41
  Tad Eggleston: Everyone.
• 16:43
  Tad Eggleston: It certainly offends me.
• 16:50
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 16:51
  Phil: Yep, so… That, that was, thankfully, a great… I mean…
• 16:55
  Tad Eggleston: Best case, the… the question came from…
• 17:05
  Tad Eggleston: Real media, and it, it, it, it… It represents… The fact that, that…
• 17:14
  Tad Eggleston: Republicans are assumed to be bad actors, but we try to treat them as equals in the media, and Democrats are assumed to be the responsible parties, and therefore get the actual questions in media.
• 17:30
  Phil: Yeah, it's… it's… it's a broken ecosystem, for sure.
• 17:33
  Tad Eggleston: But it's just as likely that it was, you know, some… right-wing…
• 17:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, anybody who's watched a White House press conference lately knows that there's an awful lot of.
• 17:47
  Phil: Are they still throwing people out of those?
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: Well, they don't have to anymore.
• 17:51
  Phil: He's must be.
• 17:52
  Tad Eggleston: questions to start with, Mr. President, thank you so much for protecting us from.
• 17:57
  Phil: Ugh.
• 17:58
  Tad Eggleston: from…
• 17:59
  Phil: This is downright nauseating.
• 18:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 18:06
  Phil: Yeah. So, so yeah.
• 18:08
  Tad Eggleston: that's where we're at. On the flip side, across the pond, Andrew Windsor, and I call him Andrew Windsor because he was stripped of all of his titles and evicted from his residence.
• 18:23
  Phil: So this is… he is now former Prince Andrew?
• 18:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 18:27
  Phil: Wow.
• 18:27
  Tad Eggleston: He's already been former Duke, but now he's former everything. He's just… Montbank, Windsor.
• 18:36
  Tad Eggleston: and homeless.
• 18:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, probably not actually homeless, but you know what I mean.
• 18:44
  Phil: residencies.
• 18:45
  Tad Eggleston: Which, which, given that, like,
• 18:52
  Tad Eggleston: Given that, like, his, connections to Mr. Epstein are… are, Not… new news?
• 19:08
  Tad Eggleston: Indicates, in a lot of ways, that, there's way worse
• 19:16
  Tad Eggleston: On him that has been reported already, and… and.
• 19:20
  Phil: Yeah.
• 19:21
  Tad Eggleston: His brother is trying to be out in front of it.
• 19:25
  Tad Eggleston: Rather than reacting to it. This is where I will point out that,
• 19:31
  Tad Eggleston: Our president, was also a good friend of… Of Jeffrey Epstein, and .
• 19:41
  Phil: I even wrote him a birthday card.
• 19:42
  Tad Eggleston: And one of the reasons…
• 19:47
  Tad Eggleston: that the House Republicans have continued to vacation is because if the House were to come back into session, they would have to
• 19:56
  Tad Eggleston: Seat… a deli to Grishava from…
• 20:04
  Tad Eggleston: Arizona, who has been elected to the House of Representatives, but not sworn in yet, because the House has not been in session, but who would also add her name to the discharge position to force a vote
• 20:22
  Tad Eggleston: on whether or not to demand release of, the Epstein files, which would be expected, or is expected, should it occur, to pass overwhelmingly.
• 20:39
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 20:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, House Republicans are going the other way from Prince Charles. Rather than getting out in front of the grenade, they're desperately, desperately trying to
• 20:57
  Tad Eggleston: Fall on top of it.
• 20:59
  Tad Eggleston: Meanwhile, their dear leader.
• 21:04
  Tad Eggleston: this week, bumbled his way through Asia, and redesigned the Lincoln bathroom.
• 21:12
  Phil: Was this… time is kind of blurring together for me. Was this the week that he… he was also complaining about a very difficult, IQ test that he was given that… that…
• 21:23
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, you mean… the Montreal Mini Mental? Yeah. That, that, like, a perfect score. A perfect score means that you're, like.
• 21:33
  Tad Eggleston: It means that you can compete with the average kindergartner.
• 21:41
  Tad Eggleston: It's… it's not designed to… it's not designed to…
• 21:45
  Phil: It's there to test cohesion.
• 21:47
  Phil: Not…
• 21:48
  Tad Eggleston: It's not designed to test your intelligence, it's designed to figure out whether or not you need to…
• 21:57
  Phil: Can you be trusted behind the wheel of a vehicle?
• 22:00
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and whether or not you need significantly enhanced care because your brain isn't working anymore. Yep.
• 22:11
  Phil: This is the… ugh.
• 22:13
  Tad Eggleston: And again, it's not actually hard to game it.
• 22:20
  Phil: Game the test, or…
• 22:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, like…
• 22:23
  Phil: I've known.
• 22:23
  Tad Eggleston: If the doctor wants you to pass, the doctor can make you pass.
• 22:28
  Phil: Oh, you mean they can say, sir, that's not a giraffe, that's a camel?
• 22:33
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, that's not the type of thing, but, like, one of the things that bothers me the most about, like, he always used to quote over and over, man, woman, television, like.
• 22:45
  Tad Eggleston: The 4 items are supposed to be completely… Different…
• 22:54
  Tad Eggleston: and ideally, without any strong tie to the person. So, like, more common would be, like, SOC.
• 23:05
  Tad Eggleston: table.
• 23:06
  Tad Eggleston: blue.
• 23:07
  Phil: Hmm.
• 23:08
  Tad Eggleston: and squirrel. One of them is an article of clothing, one of them is a piece of furniture, one of
• 23:15
  Tad Eggleston: a color, one of them is an animal, right? And those… those cues can be given to you when it gets to the point where you're doing that. The other thing is, like, I know from experience, some doctors misdo that thing, where they'll just, okay, hold those things in your head, and they'll, like, wait…
• 23:35
  Tad Eggleston: A minute, two minutes, whatever, and then ask you to give them to you.
• 23:39
  Phil: Wow.
• 23:39
  Tad Eggleston: Again, the proper giving of the test would be, I give you those four things at the beginning of our discussion.
• 23:48
  Tad Eggleston: And then we do most of the discussion.
• 23:52
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I ask you about who's the president? You know, who's the president would not be a good question for him.
• 23:57
  Phil: I don't Lee knows.
• 23:59
  Tad Eggleston: What's the date, you know…
• 24:03
  Phil: answers Putin.
• 24:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right,
• 24:07
  Tad Eggleston: And THEN I ask you, remember at the beginning, I gave you 4 things, can you tell me those?
• 24:13
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, technically, to pass, you don't even need to immediately be able to tell them.
• 24:20
  Tad Eggleston: The question is, can you tell them after the first queue?
• 24:25
  Phil: Wow.
• 24:26
  Tad Eggleston: It's still a perfect score if, like.
• 24:29
  Tad Eggleston: you're having trouble, and I say, one of them is a piece of clothing, and you say, sock.
• 24:34
  Phil: Wow. One of them is… Furniture. Table.
• 24:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Holy crap.
• 24:41
  Tad Eggleston: So, like… The test he's describing…
• 24:47
  Tad Eggleston: The mere fact that he's describing it publicly as an IQ test is… is, at the very least, a serious sign of his own low IQ.
• 24:59
  Phil: Or, aggressively advanced dementia.
• 25:04
  Phil: Possibly both.
• 25:06
  Phil: They're competing with each other at the moment.
• 25:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
• 25:11
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 25:14
  Phil: Yeah.
• 25:14
  Tad Eggleston: Welcome to…
• 25:17
  Tad Eggleston: But apparently the Lincoln bathroom now has marble floors, which he thinks is much more period-appropriate than the green tiles that were put in in the 50s.
• 25:33
  Phil: Damn.
• 25:34
  Tad Eggleston: Also, gold fixtures, of course.
• 25:36
  Phil: It's gonna be so gaudy. It's… it's… it's…
• 25:40
  Phil: It's one of those things where if there's one thing I know about him, he has terrible taste.
• 25:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think there are pictures out there, because we found out about this when he was…
• 25:52
  Tad Eggleston: truthing it out.
• 25:54
  Phil: Mmm, oof.
• 25:55
  Tad Eggleston: Again, as, like… The government was shut down, and… and…
• 26:04
  Tad Eggleston: People were getting ready to go hungry, he was talking about…
• 26:11
  Phil: building.
• 26:13
  Phil: Free building.
• 26:14
  Tad Eggleston: he'd… he'd… remodeled the Lincoln bathroom.
• 26:19
  Phil: Woof.
• 26:21
  Phil: Oh…
• 26:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah, that is the President of the United States, everybody. Let us…
• 26:29
  Phil: Please, please.
• 26:30
  Tad Eggleston: Talk about some new-to-order comics.
• 26:33
  Phil: Whenever we need comics.
• 26:35
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna start with, I'm so excited for this, Babs, the Black Road South. Did you read Babs? Babs.
• 26:41
  Phil: I… no, I should, I mean…
• 26:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 26:44
  Phil: That's hilarious.
• 26:45
  Tad Eggleston: It's Garth Ennis and Jason Burroughs, like…
• 26:47
  Phil: I do enjoy Ennis, and Burroughs is great.
• 26:49
  Tad Eggleston: I'm actually gonna call it, and hopefully I won't have anybody who has more right to say this disagree with me, but I will say a…
• 27:02
  Tad Eggleston: feminist, subversive,
• 27:09
  Tad Eggleston: pastiche of sword and sorcery books. Okay. Babs is sharp, subversive, hilarious, and absolutely one of the best comics of 2024, says CBR. And now, the hit Ennis Burroughs sword and sorcery satire returns.
• 27:26
  Tad Eggleston: A day of over-the-top carnage in a gladiator arena leads Babs and her partner in barbarism Izzy, directly into a strange, unfamiliar, bizarre situation.
• 27:38
  Tad Eggleston: They actually have money.
• 27:40
  Tad Eggleston: That's good, right?
• 27:42
  Tad Eggleston: Wrong, because it's about to lead them down a dark, horrific road to the devastated wasteland of Morden.
• 27:51
  Tad Eggleston: in stores on January 14th.
• 27:58
  Phil: From Ahoy.
• 28:00
  Tad Eggleston: From Ahoy.
• 28:03
  Phil: Alright, this is where I'll say I had no idea what this book was when I picked it. It is Club Zodiac, number one, from writer Caden Phoenix, artist Phineas Conrad, Maritza Gomez, Cope, and Fanny…
• 28:19
  Phil: Artegia?
• 28:20
  Tad Eggleston: From our claim, probably.
• 28:23
  Phil: Ortega, my apologies, from acclaimed creator Caden Phoenix, visionary behind the groundbreaking Latina superhero universe, a la Brava, comes her bold, new, all-ages saga of myth, magic, and destiny, raised in a world once ruled by the goddess Hecate. Three identical sisters, North, Dips, and Sept.
• 28:40
  Phil: flee their orphanage after a dire warning from their teacher, Miss Nyx. Their mission, find Hecate and stop Medusa's uprising before it engulfs the kingdom of Illust.
• 28:52
  Phil: On the run, the triplets are saved by a mysterious lion named Lena, who joins their quest, but Lena hides a secret that could shatter everything. She's Hecate herself, and the girls…
• 29:02
  Phil: And the girls she's protecting are her daughters. To defy a deadly prophecy, she's traded her life to the fates, and now fights in the shadows to destroy the traitors threatening her world and her family.
• 29:14
  Phil: That is gonna be in stores January 21st from… this is Keen Spot.
• 29:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 29:24
  Tad Eggleston: Night City No. 1 from Matt Kent and David Lapham.
• 29:32
  Tad Eggleston: A legendary hero is caught between two worlds. By day, he soars as a symbol of hope. But the moment he falls asleep, he enters a universe devoid of heroes, and he leads a mundane life. As the pressure of his dual universes mount, his heroic self begins to crack.
• 29:50
  Tad Eggleston: Pushing him toward a mental breakdown, in a world that measures the loss of
• 29:55
  Tad Eggleston: Human life that occurs when he takes one night off.
• 30:00
  Tad Eggleston: The weight of his responsibility becomes too much. Ultimately, he is left with a choice. Embrace his extraordinary abilities, or seek solace in the ordinary. Will he stand tall in a world that needs him, or find peace in a simpler existence?
• 30:18
  Tad Eggleston: This is from Dark Horse Comics.
• 30:21
  Tad Eggleston: in stores on February 4th.
• 30:26
  Phil: I just gotta say, from that cover, that cover is looking very different in Lapham's style, unless it was by a different artist. Cover… no? It says cover by Lapham, so… that is…
• 30:36
  Tad Eggleston: And yes and no, I've seen… that fits… that fits some of his superhero stuff.
• 30:41
  Phil: Okay, I didn't know he did superhero stuff.
• 30:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, I mean, he started out in the Valiant universe.
• 30:46
  Phil: Okay, okay, alright.
• 30:48
  Tad Eggleston: original, original Valiant universe.
• 30:50
  Phil: Right.
• 30:51
  Tad Eggleston: He's done some Batman work.
• 30:53
  Phil: Okay.
• 30:54
  Phil: I mean, it sounds great. Sounds absolutely great. Reminds me of Revolver, one of the other Matt Kent books I've read, so yeah, I would definitely pick this up.
• 31:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, there you go.
• 31:10
  Phil: Alrighty, next up, we've got Spirit of the Shadows. Embrace your fear. The Spirit of the Shadows draws near. From the darkest recesses with an acclaimed cartoonist Nick Cagnetti and co-creator Daniel Ziegler comes the most visually stunning, outrageously otherworldly, and hauntingly heartfelt superhero horror hit of 2026. Once, Eric LaRue was a mortal musician.
• 31:34
  Phil: Selflessly devoted to his music and his true love.
• 31:37
  Phil: Katerina.
• 31:38
  Phil: Until his sudden death plunged his soul into the carnival-like torments of the spirit world beyond our own.
• 31:45
  Phil: Now, reborn as a phantom with fleeting memories of his life among the living, and forever cursed to bear the arcane costume his corpse wore to the grave, Eric will claw his way back from the infernal plains to uncover the mysteries of his own life, and avenge the dark sins that transformed him into the spirit of shadows. In stores, January 28th.
• 32:06
  Phil: From Oni. This is Oni, alright.
• 32:11
  Tad Eggleston: it's, original graphic novels.
• 32:16
  Tad Eggleston: Speaking of Phanographics, bringing us fantastic things from other lands, Cordo Maltese, Stable of Venice and Other Adventures.
• 32:27
  Tad Eggleston: Artist Hugo Pratt's most famous creation, the indefinite… Teagueable. Defetegable?
• 32:35
  Phil: No, I think it's indefatigable.
• 32:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:38
  Tad Eggleston: Sailor Cordo Maltese sails back to American readers after a far too long absence in Cordo Maltese, Fable of Venice and Other Adventures. Cordo, a modern Ulysses who's wandering in the early decades of the 20th century, take him
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: to the most fascinating places on Earth is a hardlock, hard-driving, iconoclast anti-hero who values freedom and independence more than wealth and status. In Fable of Venice, a riddle from a deceased friend plunges Cordo into a phantasmagorical mystery
• 33:11
  Tad Eggleston: thriller that zigzags between the solidity of dreams and the fluidity of reality. A frantic chase in 1921, Venice ensues.
• 33:21
  Tad Eggleston: Up twisting stairs and down tangled alleys as Cordo vies against Freemasons, occultists, budding fascists, and his friend, suddenly back from the dead, in a mad scramble.
• 33:33
  Tad Eggleston: To secure a mystical emerald that will open the doors of forbidden magic and unravel time and space itself.
• 33:40
  Tad Eggleston: In addition, the collection of quintessential seafaring adventures also presents the Cordo Maltese Classics The Secret of Tristan Bantam. So much for Gentlemen of Fortune.
• 33:52
  Tad Eggleston: And The Seagull's Fault, making this book an exciting introduction to Pratt's work. In Stars on January 14th from Fanta Graphics.
• 34:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Cordo Maltese. I haven't read enough of it, because it's been mostly out of print in the United States, but,
• 34:12
  Tad Eggleston: Some of the most fantastic adventure.
• 34:15
  Tad Eggleston: comics. Ever.
• 34:19
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 34:20
  Phil: Oh yeah, I definitely need to seek it out. Next up, we've got CyberPhoenix from Andy Sato. In the near future, Dr. Yu Wang and her family, eager to use technology to enhance human evolution and adapt to the changing environment, have all vanished. Only the eldest daughter, Ling Hoi, managed to escape with the help of her artificially intelligent mechanical pet.
• 34:43
  Phil: Aye aye.
• 34:44
  Phil: Despite…
• 34:45
  Phil: Desperate, yes, desperate, she seeks out her aunt, Wang Yam, and the MI Mountain Spirit Powder Academy, and recruits her assistants in finding the rest of their family in stores January 28th from Nakayama Press.
• 35:01
  Tad Eggleston: Nakama Press. Nakama Press, my apologies. I don't know what my eyes are doing this morning. Of Mad Cave.
• 35:07
  Phil: Subsidiary of Mad Cave, Nakama Press.
• 35:12
  Tad Eggleston: Lab Press is, is releasing a…
• 35:16
  Tad Eggleston: bunch of books in January that had previously been distributed, or previously solicited over at Diamond. I think some of them have seen the world, but I think this is… particularly since so many of them are coming out at once, I think that it's a case where, like.
• 35:34
  Tad Eggleston: They're… they're definitely,
• 35:40
  Tad Eggleston: having… having dealt with, distribution issues with the demise of Diamond, and trying to get caught up on what had been a more…
• 35:51
  Phil: Spread-out publishing plan, and suddenly became, we have a lot of books on hand.
• 35:57
  Tad Eggleston: But that's speculation. Maybe they intended to bring them all out at once, but I think they've got, like, 5 books coming out.
• 36:06
  Tad Eggleston: That I know have been solicited for a while, so I'm pretty certain that some of them are out in the wild, but…
• 36:14
  Tad Eggleston: I… I also haven't personally seen any in the wild, so I know that…
• 36:19
  Tad Eggleston: So, anyway, Super Science is from N. Alessandro K. and M.K. Perker. Super Science is a sci-fi comedy about a world where the limits of human imagination have become real. For five days, the entire sky over 12 spots across the globe turn purple.
• 36:37
  Tad Eggleston: The result was in each location, professional engineers and scientists, as well as tinkerers, amateur inventors, and high school science teachers, were able to create scientific and engineering breakthroughs in ways far surpassing the world's top scientific institutions.
• 36:52
  Tad Eggleston: Our story starts 3 years later in Los Angeles, where a breed of actual superheroes and supervillains are emerging
• 36:59
  Tad Eggleston: Dealing with this new phenomenon is LAPD's new Mad Scientist Division, including no-nonsense Sergeant Esmeralda Villanueva and her idealistic young partner, Officer Jack Mantle.
• 37:12
  Tad Eggleston: Other characters include manipulative industrialist Bert Montague and his lab assistant, Felicia Barry.
• 37:19
  Tad Eggleston: Perpetually unlucky Karen Katz, a former biology teacher who has turned herself into a human-cat hybrid. Esmeralda's son, Gabe, who might be the smartest teenager on the planet, nefarious supervillain Dr. Cornelius Overland, and his nemesis, bumbling superhero gas giant.
• 37:37
  Tad Eggleston: The graphic novel follows up on Super Science Chapter Zero and ships in a gold foil stamped.
• 37:44
  Tad Eggleston: Cloth slipcase.
• 37:46
  Phil: Fancy.
• 37:48
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 37:50
  Phil: Sounds very interesting. Alright, next up is Wallflower, a graphic novel from
• 37:57
  Phil: Yasmin Omar Atta, and that is from the author of the critically acclaimed… oop…
• 38:04
  Phil: critically acclaimed Nehra… oh, just so you scrolled up a little bit. And the Djinn comes a stunning graphic novel about a girl who must uncover the truth behind her strange visions.
• 38:14
  Phil: For as long as Marlena can remember, she has seen flowers growing on everyone she meets. Personalized poppies and daisies and roses of every color that give away what their owners truly feel. Invisible to the rest of the world, the flowers have always felt too overwhelming, too much for Marlena to take in when they don't always match what their owner shows. She's long since given up convincing anyone else that they're there.
• 38:37
  Phil: Until she meets Ash, a charming transfer student who can somehow see these mysterious flowers, too. Unfortunately for Marlena, Ash wants nothing to do with her, but as their thorny connection blooms, so do hidden secrets buried years ago. In this stunning graphic novel where dreams are woven into reality and not everything is as it seems, Marlena and Ash must unfold the truth together, no matter where it may
• 39:01
  Phil: Gonna be in stores January 13th from…
• 39:07
  Tad Eggleston: Viking Books? Viking Books subsidiary of Penguin.
• 39:10
  Phil: Thank you, yeah, that, that sounds really great.
• 39:13
  Tad Eggleston: does.
• 39:14
  Phil: And it's got this, this nice,
• 39:16
  Phil: evocative, cartoony style with overlapping flowered images, so yeah, I'm excited.
• 39:21
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, couple of collections.
• 39:24
  Tad Eggleston: Anybody who's paid attention over the last year knows that I love Star Trek Lore War from Christopher Cantwell, Colin Kellen, Jackson Lansing, Ryan North, and a collection of artists, like… well, we'll get into those in a second.
• 39:42
  Tad Eggleston: Many, many, many great artists. So, Lore War shows us a universe rebuilt in Lore's image. The crews of the Theseus and the Defiant are scattered across the universe with no memory.
• 39:56
  Tad Eggleston: of who they once were. Some even worship Lore as their god. Lore has won, his rule is absolute.
• 40:03
  Tad Eggleston: But the Cisco remains, and there are forces who wish to remind him of his power.
• 40:08
  Tad Eggleston: From Eisner-nominated writers of Star Trek, Jackson Lanson and Colin Kelly, the critically acclaimed writer of Star Trek Defiant, Christopher Cantwell, and Eisner-nominated writer of Shaq's Best Day, Ryan North, along with artists David Tinto and Derek Charm, and a…
• 40:25
  Tad Eggleston: Whole slew of others.
• 40:27
  Tad Eggleston: comes the next big Star Trek event. This, yeah, this… this capped off… Like, 3 years?
• 40:37
  Tad Eggleston: Of Star Trek, from… from Cantwell, Kelly, and Lansing, and… and was just…
• 40:44
  Tad Eggleston: everything was… was outstanding, but… but Lore War was… was just a wonderful… Wonderful cap.
• 40:53
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 40:55
  Phil: Alrighty, and then we've got Texarkanum from Christopher Monfetti, and illustrated by Miguel Martos.
• 41:04
  Phil: Horror in the heartland. Dark Horse Comics presents Texarkanum, a new horror miniseries that matches unfamiliar mythologies and American identities into one new story. Television writer and producer Christopher Monfenty. America is a melting pot for the unknown. Ghosts and gods, angels and demons, horror stories, and tall tales. They've traveled from across the globe to collide here in rural Heartland.
• 41:27
  Phil: Cowboy arcanist Avery Bell has spent a very long lifetime among them. When a centuries-old land feud escalates into the supernatural, when two warring families threaten a low country apocalypse, only Bell can unearth the truth.
• 41:44
  Phil: That's gonna be in stores from Dark Horse Books on sale March 10th, 2026.
• 41:55
  Phil: And then we've got the final order cut off.
• 41:59
  Phil: Coming up next week.
• 42:05
  Tad Eggleston: Final letter cutoff for Monday, November 10th, Black Panther Intergalactic No. 1 from Victor Lavelle and Stefano Nessie at Marvel. Giant-sized criminal number 1 from Ed Brugemaker, Sean Phillips, Image.
• 42:19
  Tad Eggleston: Exile from Eric Creek at Uncivilized, The Final Symphony, a Beethoven Anthology from Brandon Montclair, Frank Marafino, and various artists at Z2. The Future Is, Volume 1!
• 42:30
  Tad Eggleston: from Black Mountain from Fred Van Linty, Ennio Buffy, Mario D'Alessandro at RECA, Habitat No. 1 from Joshua Dysart, David Lapham, and Bill Sienkiewicz.
• 42:41
  Tad Eggleston: A bad idea, Mansect.
• 42:44
  Tad Eggleston: From Koa Shinichi, it's uncivilized, our soot-stained heart.
• 42:49
  Tad Eggleston: From Joni Hogg and Stipin Morian at Mad Cave, Queen Kodiak from Christopher Greensleet, Ricardo Ficcini at Maverick Mad Cave, a quick and easy guide to healthy relationships from Mariah Rose Marie at Oni, Stray from Rio.
• 43:04
  Tad Eggleston: Kamio and Yu Takahara at Titan, and the Blood Brothers… er, not and, because we've got a couple more. The Blood Brothers Mother from Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso at Distillery, UFO Mushroom Invasion from Shirakawa Marina at Uncivilized, and Rack and Rune from Chris Cappel.
• 43:24
  Tad Eggleston: and Alex Arismendi from Maverick Mad Cave. Currently crowdfunding, we have Rigsby, Wisconsin, Volume 2, Burn It Down, from S.E. Case at Iron Circus, on Kickstarter through November 6th. Magaka, A Kaiju, and Omega.
• 43:41
  Tad Eggleston: From Juan Ponce and Lear Noiz on Zoop through November 7th, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, a storytelling game from Hunter's Entertainment. On Kickstarter through November 12th. The A1 Deadline Special, edited by Dave Elliott, with work from Steve Dillon, Brett Ewens, Gary Leach, Steve Pugh, Shaky Kane, Alan Martin, Jamie Hewlett, Ilya, Dave Gibbons, Rald, Marcellius, Chloe McVeel.
• 44:06
  Tad Eggleston: Allison Sampson, Rufus Dayglow, Glenn Fabry, Umar Dida, Keck W, Dan Whitehead, Kathay Kwan.
• 44:14
  Tad Eggleston: I think that's actually just Kathy Kwan.
• 44:17
  Tad Eggleston: Gloria Kiley, Mark Shea, Lauren, Laura Martin.
• 44:23
  Tad Eggleston: Eric Donovan, Evan Dorkin, Alice Pasquini, Matt Hardy, Peter Milligan, P.J. Holden, Robin Jones, Lucy Sullivan, and
• 44:33
  Tad Eggleston: Dave Elliott himself, and more on Kickstarter through November 12th.
• 44:38
  Tad Eggleston: And now I get to do it again. Witching Season, a witch horror comic anthology, edited by Kat Calamia, Phil Falco, and friend of the podcast, Michelle Abinator, with…
• 44:49
  Tad Eggleston: work from.
• 44:51
  Tad Eggleston: Heather Antos, Alex Segura, Chrissy Williams, Tilly and Susan Bridges, David Bohr, Dan Parent, Stephanie Williams, Miranda Munt.
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: Bailey Rosenlund, Paulina Ganacho, Philip Sevey, Jadzia Axelrod, Ry Hickman, Mark Abnett, Francis Stokes, Andrea Daly.
• 45:07
  Tad Eggleston: Augusta, Kanakis, Lauren Knight, Piper, Whitaker, and more from Lifeline Comics on Kickstarter through November 13th. And Tom the Dancing Bug, a collection from Ruben Bolin.
• 45:22
  Tad Eggleston: Clover Press on Kickstarter through November 20th, and How to Draw 2026 from Terry Moore at Abstract Studios on Kickstarter through November 28th.
• 45:33
  Phil: you know, I gotta say, 2026 might not be that bad if it's drawn by Terry Moore.
• 45:37
  Tad Eggleston: 3 amazing books this week. I could have really cheated, because…
• 45:45
  Tad Eggleston: Not only did the two Batman series enders satisfy quite well.
• 45:51
  Phil: A whole heck of a lot of a backp.
• 45:52
  Tad Eggleston: Absolute Batman 2025 Annual was… was fantastic, so… so I'm gonna lead off with Absolute Batman 2025 Annual, Batman and Robin Year 1, No. 12, and Batman The Last Halloween, number 10.
• 46:08
  Tad Eggleston: With work from… God, I have to do this again, I'm gonna need oxygen. Danny Warren Johnson, James Heron, Meredith McLaren, Mark Wade, Jeff Loeb, Chris Samney, Matteo Scalera, at DC Comics.
• 46:22
  Tad Eggleston: Also, the fact that there weren't a lot of new comics meant that I finally got to… I read all of Money Shot Big Bang, including number 5, which came out this week, and it continues to be excellent and funny and…
• 46:38
  Tad Eggleston: sexy and satirical. From Tim Seeley, Patton Oswalt, and Garth Graham at Vault Comics, and I think I've mentioned this before, but… but it seemed like a good week to throw it in again, particularly because,
• 46:52
  Tad Eggleston: Chapter 18 wrapped up a story arc, and this looked like it was kind of like a one-chapter interlude type thing, that… that…
• 47:00
  Tad Eggleston: Reminds you of, kind of, the…
• 47:03
  Tad Eggleston: premise of the series, and has kind of some human moments. Harakazi Mound, Chapter 19, Obey the Rules, from Togo Goto and Kenta Matsura, Shonen Jump slash Viz. It's the ongoing,
• 47:22
  Tad Eggleston: high school baseball comic that I have been reading, because.
• 47:26
  Phil: Nice.
• 47:27
  Tad Eggleston: Mangakas know that baseball has lots of drama and is worth writing.
• 47:30
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 47:31
  Tad Eggleston: That's the funny thing.
• 47:32
  Phil: I, it, you know, it's like, I…
• 47:35
  Phil: I don't… I mean, I'd never seek out to watch a game of sports, but would I read sports comics? Heck yeah, that sounds fascinating, you know? I've heard there's some really great baseball manga out there.
• 47:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and honestly, like… If you read baseball manga and like it.
• 47:55
  Tad Eggleston: I think more than any of the other sports manga that I've read, like, it would make you more likely to enjoy watching a baseball game. Maybe not on TV, but… I can play that, yeah.
• 48:07
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, like, an actual baseball game.
• 48:10
  Phil: Well, and that's the thing, I've always been able to follow the sports, just because I, you know, grew up in a sports-based household, you know? Right. So it's not like I'm confused, it's just that I'm not.
• 48:22
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I understand, but I didn't mean, like, teaching the game. I mean, I mean, like, appreciating the game.
• 48:28
  Phil: I see what you're saying.
• 48:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, all of the baseball manga that…
• 48:32
  Tad Eggleston: I have read, have been really… Really great at…
• 48:38
  Tad Eggleston: Expressing a lot of the nuances of beta.
• 48:41
  Phil: small.
• 48:42
  Tad Eggleston: But make it…
• 48:43
  Phil: Yeah, it is…
• 48:44
  Tad Eggleston: what it is. And in some ways, that probably means that I should read more of their sports manga, because maybe I would wind up with a greater appreciation of their sports. Maybe… maybe… maybe that's more how… how mangakas look at sports than…
• 48:58
  Tad Eggleston: That it is the sport that I love, who knows?
• 49:01
  Phil: Interesting. There's certainly a lot of opportunities, so one of these days…
• 49:05
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe we'll make a study of it?
• 49:07
  Phil: Yeah.
• 49:07
  Tad Eggleston: But, if we can find a comic about curling, that would be all over that.
• 49:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, Phil, why don't you take a walk?
• 49:18
  Phil: Alright, I'm walking here. This is the Honorable Dissection mentions. These are, you know, comics that,
• 49:28
  Phil: I, again, just…
• 49:29
  Phil: While we're thinking about the great responsibility of what are the books that made you want to dissect the form. These are more early ones, as my full pick is more recent. First up, to continue the trend of putting a different Alan Moore book each week is the Bo Jefferies Saga, with Stephen Parkhouse. I don't know where it originally was published, but I'm pretty sure you can get a complete edition from Fantagraphics these days.
• 49:52
  Phil: This is, here's the thing.
• 49:57
  Phil: This book, The Bo Jeffries Saga, it is… it's weird. It's… it's weird even by Alan Moore standards. It's…
• 50:04
  Tad Eggleston: top shelf.
• 50:05
  Phil: Top shelf, there we go. Okay, so…
• 50:07
  Tad Eggleston: is… is…
• 50:08
  Phil: I think.
• 50:09
  Tad Eggleston: Where you can get it right now.
• 50:10
  Phil: Should've known. Wikipedia said that Phante Graphics published it, at least at some point.
• 50:17
  Tad Eggleston: That might mean that they were one of the original…
• 50:20
  Phil: Yeah, I think it has a bit of a sordid publishing history, because I'm pretty sure pieces of it were created, you know, far apart from each other. But it's…
• 50:31
  Phil: it's a weird little book. It… for some reason, I… I can mentally mark it as, like, kind of a before and after I read it. It definitely… it shifted my opinion of Alan Moore, because…
• 50:44
  Phil: I mean, it's… first of all, it's… it's… Probably the most…
• 50:49
  Phil: humorous thing of his that I've read.
• 50:52
  Phil: Oh.
• 50:52
  Tad Eggleston: Have you read Jackie Quick?
• 50:54
  Phil: No, I have not. Yeah, but I… which is not to say… I think after having read this, I found more of his humor works, and started to see more of the humor in his works.
• 51:05
  Phil: And it's… it's a really great book. It really is. It's one of those that, from any other creator, it might be my favorite, but for him, it's, like, my fourth favorite, and it's still absolutely incredible. Then there is The Nightly News by Jonathan Hickman from Image Comics, his magnum opus of charts and graphs, that was actually his very first work to get into the comic book industry. Not the very first, because he did a
• 51:30
  Phil: couple covers and other little things, but this was his breakout work.
• 51:33
  Phil: it was a book that, when I read it, I actually didn't really like it until I got to the end notes that were sort of commenting and pastiching and making fun of himself as he's doing it, and that kind of helped me understand the work a little better, so…
• 51:47
  Phil: Similarly, with the first volume of Phonogram from Kieran Gill and Jamie McKelvey, eventually Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles, that was another.
• 51:57
  Tad Eggleston: Of course.
• 51:58
  Phil: Kohl's, my… I… I… Kohl's, Clayton Kohl's.
• 52:01
  Phil: Kohl's, thank you. I, I, I'll remember that one day. That was another book, Rupert… Rupert…
• 52:09
  Phil: Rue Britannia was… I enjoyed it as I was reading it, but I enjoyed it even more once I got to the end notes that clarified, the character David Coles, and
• 52:20
  Phil: by extension, Karen Gillen's opinions on music, sort of giving brief descriptions of the bands that he refers to as disdain or disgust. It's even another level of interesting intersection in that I like it better in black and white than I do recolored.
• 52:37
  Phil: Which is Minor Blasphemy. And then lastly, the… the book that almost took
• 52:43
  Phil: Took the main spot is,
• 52:46
  Phil: Uber Invasion number 7, which I refer to as the Flash issue, because, Uber is a book that is World War II with, superheroes instead of tanks for all the horrific glory that that entails.
• 53:01
  Phil: This is an issue where the Americans developed an alternate type of superhero that used super speed.
• 53:08
  Phil: By means of slowing down time. And this single issue of five…
• 53:14
  Phil: men with super speed trying to take down, you know, the equivalent of Superman, and all they have are diamond-tipped knives.
• 53:24
  Phil: It's absolutely incredible. It's one of those where if Uber is never finished, I will still…
• 53:30
  Phil: remember it fondly, because this one issue was that damn good. It's quite possibly my favorite… my single favorite comic about super speed as a concept. But yeah, from there, how's One Piece been lately, Tad?
• 53:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I was just… before we get there, I was just gonna say, like, impressive… impressive that you just took a walk of, I think, books that I own at least digital copies of all of?
• 53:56
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't think I've read any of them.
• 53:59
  Phil: Oh, wow! I mean, the… honestly…
• 54:03
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 54:03
  Phil: that's probably… well, I'd probably flip Phonogram and Nightly News, but that's just about the order I recommend them to. Yeah, I mean, Bo Jeffries is short, and it's…
• 54:13
  Phil: Yeah, it was probably the fastest I've gotten into an Alan Moore book as well, so I can't recommend that one enough.
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: No, I haven't. It's been on my list for a while. I just… I think I might even have that one physically as well, I can't remember.
• 54:27
  Tad Eggleston: I have a lot of comics, Phil.
• 54:29
  Phil: I understand. I know how it is. I've got… I've got a handful of books behind me that I haven't read, you know?
• 54:41
  Tad Eggleston: I am…
• 54:43
  Tad Eggleston: I think I forgot to update the number here, too. I think… I think we're… one of these days, I'll actually go back and find out exactly how many weeks of one-pace race we have.
• 54:52
  Phil: Right?
• 54:53
  Tad Eggleston: But.
• 54:54
  Phil: We should ask Tyler if he's kept reading One Piece or not.
• 54:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we'll figure that out sometime.
• 54:58
  Phil: He's been fantastic.
• 54:59
  Tad Eggleston: Pretty busy. I'm sure. I did read another volume, so I'm 614 chapters in.
• 55:06
  Tad Eggleston: We are now, deep, deep under the sea at, at,
• 55:15
  Tad Eggleston: at.
• 55:17
  Phil: You're saying there's a pirate submarine of some sort?
• 55:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, kind of. It's more that they're able to coat their ship in a bubble.
• 55:26
  Phil: Oh, that's normal.
• 55:27
  Tad Eggleston: ship.
• 55:27
  Phil: Okay. That's pretty… that's actually… that's pretty good.
• 55:31
  Tad Eggleston: We're in, like, the town of the mermaids and mermen and fishmen… Fishman Island, I think, is what it's called.
• 55:38
  Phil: That's pretty funny.
• 55:40
  Tad Eggleston: So… So, yeah.
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: More fun, and hilarity, and drama ensued, and… And I enjoyed myself.
• 55:51
  Tad Eggleston: I read a volume last night.
• 55:54
  Tad Eggleston: So, 614 chapters in, only 500-some-odd to go.
• 55:59
  Phil: Yeah, wow, yeah, not… just… really, you're just over halfway?
• 56:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 56:05
  Phil: Oh, wow.
• 56:06
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not even… let me, let me tell you.
• 56:08
  Phil: I swear, last I checked, you were… you were… I don't know, but while Tad's looking that up…
• 56:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but remember, it's not done.
• 56:17
  Phil: I know!
• 56:18
  Tad Eggleston: I know. So, like, every week, A new chapter comes out.
• 56:22
  Phil: you have to read more than a chapter a week to finish it, you know, I mean…
• 56:26
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, they're… they're up to $11.63.
• 56:29
  Phil: Okay.
• 56:30
  Tad Eggleston: As of October 26th? Just over halfway, gotcha. With the next chapter coming out in 2 days.
• 56:35
  Phil: Goodness.
• 56:37
  Phil: It really is. It… it… I know, I know you guys started out saying one-piece race, but it really is the one-piece marathon.
• 56:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah? Marathons are also races.
• 56:46
  Phil: That's a good point. Touche. To… to my dismay, I have failed to actually read manga for another week, but in…
• 56:56
  Tad Eggleston: So this is… this is sad, because I read a volume of Nana this week.
• 57:00
  Phil: Nana? Okay.
• 57:01
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I read, I read…
• 57:03
  Tad Eggleston: I got up to date on, on Harikaze Mound.
• 57:07
  Phil: Right? Oh my gosh, so you're… this is… and this is where…
• 57:10
  Tad Eggleston: So I, like, did your job and read other manga, too.
• 57:14
  Phil: I know.
• 57:15
  Tad Eggleston: AND read a volume.
• 57:17
  Phil: Tad carrying… Carrying this podcast single-handedly.
• 57:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:20
  Phil: All the way up a mountain. But on Hoopla, at the end of the month, I went in a rush of using up all of my borrows and checked out the first 6 or 7 volumes of Mob Psycho 100, which I've heard is great.
• 57:34
  Tad Eggleston: I've heard good things about, but I haven't heard good things. I haven't read any.
• 57:37
  Phil: I'll investigate, you know? I will… I will be sure to let you know of at least one volume. I'm planning to institute in my reading schedule Manga Mondays, where I…
• 57:45
  Tad Eggleston: Everyone.
• 57:45
  Phil: volume of manga every Monday.
• 57:47
  Tad Eggleston: There you go.
• 57:49
  Tad Eggleston: There you go.
• 57:51
  Tad Eggleston: So, let's, let's talk about, comics that, that…
• 57:57
  Tad Eggleston: I think we both chose ones that, like, it would have been easy to go with things like understanding comics, or… Yeah, I almost did. …or whatnot, and I think we both… we both went a different way and went with… with… with books that… that made us think about the form.
• 58:12
  Phil: And dissect the form.
• 58:14
  Tad Eggleston: I, I went with… One that I don't think enough people have read.
• 58:20
  Phil: I've heard of that, but I haven't read it myself, and I…
• 58:23
  Tad Eggleston: It's actually, it's actually, Elsa Chartier's debut.
• 58:27
  Phil: Oh, okay. She and Pyrrhic…
• 58:32
  Tad Eggleston: initially did it on French Kickstarter.
• 58:37
  Phil: liquid.
• 58:38
  Tad Eggleston: Infinite Loop… Infinite Loop is a… it's a time travel book, it's an adventure, it's got some romance, but more than anything, it has…
• 58:50
  Tad Eggleston: one of… The absolute masters of comic storytelling.
• 58:57
  Tad Eggleston: who is… Also, can't be described as anything other than a prodigy, because, like, she taught herself
• 59:07
  Tad Eggleston: In her 20s, by reading a lot of comics, and absorbing, you know.
• 59:12
  Phil: That's incredible.
• 59:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, hearing her talk about how she learned to do comics, and for that matter, when I talked to her, one of the things she told me was that, like.
• 59:24
  Tad Eggleston: by the time she was doing November, she was planning things out a lot, and.
• 59:29
  Phil: thinking.
• 59:29
  Tad Eggleston: about page layouts, et cetera, a lot. Whereas this book, she did a lot from her gut.
• 59:38
  Phil: Okay.
• 59:38
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going, like, that's crazy to me, Elsa, because that means your gut is totally ridiculous when it comes.
• 59:48
  Phil: comic storytelling.
• 59:49
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, just… I'm flipping through it. Look at the panel usage, look at… I mean…
• 59:54
  Tad Eggleston: Eric did the lettering, but I'm.
• 59:57
  Phil: Oh, wow.
• 59:57
  Tad Eggleston: and she did the sound effects, she colored it. I mean, look at this building, like, coming apart, you know. She already, like, in her first work, is, is fantastic at
• 1:00:14
  Tad Eggleston: Using all aspects of, you know, different panel…
• 1:00:19
  Tad Eggleston: shapes, different effect shapes, charts. I mean, you were talking… I did. You know, will you survive the Tellurx?
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: Is this your first time? Yes.
• 1:00:32
  Phil: Pride.
• 1:00:33
  Tad Eggleston: No. Slide between its legs. Oh, wow. I know Jurassic Park like the back of my hand.
• 1:00:40
  Tad Eggleston: Is it… City Freeze?
• 1:00:42
  Phil: Is it a flow chart? Is that.
• 1:00:43
  Tad Eggleston: That is.
• 1:00:44
  Phil: Oh, I love those! Those are… that's so awesome.
• 1:00:49
  Phil: Is it Benjamin Dewey has done a few of those online that are pretty great? I think it's Benjamin Dewey. Let me look that up real quick.
• 1:00:57
  Tad Eggleston: But… but so, like, I mean, we've got… we've got the Escher influence, but used… used for storytelling effect.
• 1:01:05
  Phil: I love Escher so much. That's a childhood, childhood.
• 1:01:08
  Tad Eggleston: inset panel. I mean, like… She…
• 1:01:12
  Tad Eggleston: effort… I mean, Elsa has always also been, like, one of the best…
• 1:01:20
  Tad Eggleston: And this, I attribute to, like, having come up as…
• 1:01:25
  Tad Eggleston: You know, she was an actress.
• 1:01:27
  Phil: Oh, wow.
• 1:01:27
  Tad Eggleston: she was… a cartoonist.
• 1:01:33
  Tad Eggleston: So, I attribute it to…
• 1:01:40
  Tad Eggleston: That, but, like, she's always been, like…
• 1:01:45
  Tad Eggleston: And continues to be, like, known for, and deservedly so.
• 1:01:50
  Tad Eggleston: the acting of her characters, and that comes through in the first one, too. You know, facial expressions, body language, you name it, like, all of it's telling stories. But the fact that…
• 1:02:02
  Tad Eggleston: the fact that she… I mean, look at… look at this page where, like, the different versions of herself are talking… I mean, just…
• 1:02:07
  Phil: I can't… I can't see your pages.
• 1:02:09
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm… oh, I… I… I'm sorry, I… That's okay. I forgot to… to switch my share.
• 1:02:17
  Phil: I'm having to imagine this. I wrote it down. I… I love November. I love Elsa Chardier's work. I… I'm definitely gonna go buy this. This is gonna be an early Christmas present to myself, because that… as soon as you said a time travel…
• 1:02:30
  Phil: story, as drawn by Elsa Chardier, I was in, and all of this that you're mentioning, the fact that she's self-taught, like, that is just…
• 1:02:38
  Phil: I am…
• 1:02:39
  Tad Eggleston: And in a relatively short amount of time.
• 1:02:41
  Phil: I am simultaneously blown away and hopeful of… oh, so you're saying it is possible.
• 1:02:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, essential… essentially,
• 1:02:50
  Tad Eggleston: Pyrrh decided that he wanted to write comics, so she decided to learn to draw them.
• 1:02:55
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:02:57
  Phil: Wow. Yeah, no, this… and this is her first book.
• 1:03:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Phil: Oh my goodness, Ted is showing me this. It is… there's…
• 1:03:03
  Tad Eggleston: This is their Kickstarter book.
• 1:03:05
  Phil: incredible pages.
• 1:03:06
  Phil: this is… I would not have believed that this is a first-time comic artist, especially one who learned to draw for this book.
• 1:03:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, she said that it wasn't that she did no drawing before that, but she certainly hadn't done, like, comic work.
• 1:03:23
  Phil: Right, right, and comics are such a different beast compared to illustration and artwork in general, which is something that I think about
• 1:03:35
  Phil: quite often.
• 1:03:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, just look at all of the different…
• 1:03:39
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:40
  Tad Eggleston: Timing is… is…
• 1:03:42
  Phil: Yeah…
• 1:03:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like… I actually made a last-minute decision not to re-read this to talk about it.
• 1:03:51
  Phil: Oh.
• 1:03:51
  Tad Eggleston: Because I wanted to do what I'm doing here, where I'm flipping through it and just remembering the visuals. Because the written story itself, it was okay, it was pretty good. What made this…
• 1:04:06
  Tad Eggleston: Was… was not just the visuals, but the fact that, like, the visual storytelling aspect of it…
• 1:04:13
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 1:04:15
  Phil: There's a bunch of non-traditional layouts, there's so much playing with form in this book. Also, I mean, her style looks…
• 1:04:23
  Phil: It's odd in that it's… it's definitely, like.
• 1:04:28
  Phil: an earlier form of her style, but so much of it is still… is still visible, it's still, like, in place. Like, so it's… it's wild how much she's grown.
• 1:04:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's also…
• 1:04:39
  Phil: Like, she started from.
• 1:04:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean… And, like… You can tell how much she loves Darwin Cook.
• 1:04:52
  Tad Eggleston: But you can also tell how much it's just, like… Threw herself into the medium.
• 1:05:00
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:01
  Phil: There is… page here.
• 1:05:03
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the, the…
• 1:05:05
  Phil: It is like a twisting highway swirl, yeah.
• 1:05:10
  Tad Eggleston: Almost like… almost like a whirlpool of a highway.
• 1:05:13
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:05:15
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 1:05:17
  Phil: I'm seeing there are multiple flowcharts in this, which is… which is pretty great.
• 1:05:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, because one of the… I mean, with the time travel, there's, like, a robot that helps them decision.
• 1:05:29
  Phil: Mmm.
• 1:05:30
  Tad Eggleston: You know… Teddy.
• 1:05:34
  Phil: Be careful of that decision robot.
• 1:05:38
  Tad Eggleston: Helps them figure out what things will…
• 1:05:42
  Phil: Right.
• 1:05:45
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, this… this is… this is her reading a book.
• 1:05:49
  Phil: Boom!
• 1:05:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, just, like… The level of influence, the level of… originality, I mean.
• 1:06:01
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:06:02
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I want to call any of it original, Except putting it all together.
• 1:06:08
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that?
• 1:06:09
  Phil: What do you mean by that chart?
• 1:06:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, because, like, as I look at any of the specific stuff, it's like, oh, I could probably find a comic where this was done before, but finding the comic where this and that and this were all done on the same page? That's a whole different thing.
• 1:06:25
  Phil: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:27
  Tad Eggleston: So, it is in itself a wholly original work, but I don't know if she…
• 1:06:34
  Tad Eggleston: Added anything to the lexicon in it.
• 1:06:36
  Phil: Mmm…
• 1:06:37
  Tad Eggleston: Which is one of the reasons why it's such a great deconstruction. It's somebody who…
• 1:06:42
  Tad Eggleston: had just introduced themselves to the lexicon, and… Like, wholly absorbed it.
• 1:06:51
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:06:53
  Phil: I mean…
• 1:06:53
  Tad Eggleston: Spit it back out.
• 1:06:56
  Tad Eggleston: Charlie Adler did a cover, apparently.
• 1:06:59
  Phil: Hmm.
• 1:07:00
  Tad Eggleston: He was quite, like, when they were starting, they saw, you know, she, he was a name that she'd come across that looked like… so they went to a convention in England, and…
• 1:07:11
  Phil: Oh, wow.
• 1:07:12
  Tad Eggleston: in very Elsa fashion, went up and introduced herself and asked for advice.
• 1:07:17
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:07:18
  Phil: Yeah, talk about someone who would have a hell of a lot of advice for you.
• 1:07:22
  Phil: And that's where… I mean…
• 1:07:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:07:26
  Phil: looking at this, that's… that's the thing, is that, I mean, so you talk about…
• 1:07:32
  Phil: you know, adding things to the lexicon, I mean… I guess… I'm…
• 1:07:39
  Phil: I'm trying to formulate an opinion on that.
• 1:07:42
  Tad Eggleston: This is what I'll say is, look at this page here, which I've never seen anything like it, until…
• 1:07:49
  Phil: It's pretty wild.
• 1:07:50
  Tad Eggleston: The book that you're talking about.
• 1:07:52
  Phil: Oh, yeah! Yeah, the book that I'm talking about. You, you, do you want me to…
• 1:07:57
  Tad Eggleston: So in that sense, yeah, no, we'll pass off to you. In that sense, like…
• 1:08:03
  Tad Eggleston: I think the way she was able to mash things together…
• 1:08:08
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've definitely seen other books… I mean, because here's the thing. I've seen other books where the motion is changed by having multiple characters. I've seen other books where a sense of tension is shown by the vanishing points and by the twisting…
• 1:08:24
  Tad Eggleston: Like, again, what she's adding is, oh, you can tell stories using… Tons of this shit.
• 1:08:35
  Phil: Yeah, this is… this is overlapping techniques on overlapping techniques.
• 1:08:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You can do the everything, everywhere, all at once comic, and mind you, this is before everything, everywhere, all at once. Yep, yep.
• 1:08:51
  Phil: What year did this come out?
• 1:08:52
  Tad Eggleston: Give me a second.
• 1:09:01
  Tad Eggleston: Oof, and this is where, a quick preview while Tad's looking up the year. Yeah, take over, because…
• 1:09:06
  Phil: Alrighty, so this is… the book that I picked is, a much more recent one, but one that I have been adjouring from.
• 1:09:14
  Tad Eggleston: 2015.
• 1:09:15
  Phil: instructor. 2015? Awesome. Yeah, that's… that is…
• 1:09:18
  Phil: Holy shit, that… no, I gotta pick that up. But no, the one…
• 1:09:21
  Tad Eggleston: And it drives me nuts that, like, and it shows…
• 1:09:25
  Phil: That is a… that rating needs to be at least…
• 1:09:28
  Tad Eggleston: It's 3.4, that's, that's… On good… well, and what I'm gonna say is, it, it, it shows…
• 1:09:42
  Tad Eggleston: Because honestly, I bet you if I'd read this before I started to really pick up the visual lexicon the way I would, I have, I would have had it more as a 4-star book, not necessarily a 3-star book.
• 1:09:56
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:09:56
  Tad Eggleston: Because, like…
• 1:10:03
  Tad Eggleston: No offense to her partner, Elsa did the heavy lifting.
• 1:10:08
  Phil: Oh yeah, I… this is where… this is where, my opinion on comics has shifted over time, that, the artist always does the heavy lifting. She did even more of the heavy lifting than usual.
• 1:10:24
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I quite agree that the artist always does the heavy lifting. It depends a lot on what kind of direction they get from
• 1:10:34
  Tad Eggleston: Their… their director, stage manager.
• 1:10:36
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:10:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they're definitely the director of photography.
• 1:10:40
  Phil: Yes.
• 1:10:40
  Tad Eggleston: But sometimes they're also the director.
• 1:10:43
  Phil: Yes, and so I guess what I…
• 1:10:45
  Tad Eggleston: I'm pretty certain in this book, she was the director. They're always the director of photography and the actors.
• 1:10:53
  Phil: For the… Yeah, and so…
• 1:10:55
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas… I mean, to put it in, like, movie terms, which is…
• 1:11:00
  Tad Eggleston: It's… it doesn't do it justice, but it's terms that more people understand.
• 1:11:07
  Phil: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:11:09
  Tad Eggleston: The way that a book always is…
• 1:11:13
  Tad Eggleston: is… the writer… Is the screenwriter.
• 1:11:21
  Tad Eggleston: And the artist is the director of photography.
• 1:11:25
  Tad Eggleston: And… the… Set designer, and… The costume designer.
• 1:11:33
  Phil: Yeah, huh.
• 1:11:34
  Tad Eggleston: the actors.
• 1:11:36
  Tad Eggleston: And in that sense, they are likely doing the heavy lifting. However, sometimes the writer is…
• 1:11:45
  Tad Eggleston: Also, the director…
• 1:11:47
  Phil: Yes.
• 1:11:49
  Tad Eggleston: And the film editor.
• 1:11:51
  Tad Eggleston: And involved heavily in costume and set design.
• 1:11:55
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 1:11:56
  Tad Eggleston: Then it starts to become…
• 1:11:59
  Phil: And I guess… I mean, and one of the ways you can tell this is by looking at.
• 1:12:07
  Tad Eggleston: like… Which… and you can't tell it completely, but, like…
• 1:12:13
  Tad Eggleston: the reason why I won't necessarily, even though Tom will disagree with me, say that Tom's artists do the heavy lifting.
• 1:12:23
  Tad Eggleston: is no matter who Tom King is working with.
• 1:12:27
  Tad Eggleston: The comics wind up being fantastic.
• 1:12:30
  Tad Eggleston: And that's not true of all of the artists that he works with when they're working with other people.
• 1:12:37
  Phil: That's a good point. The… I guess what I would say, where my head's coming from with it, is that…
• 1:12:45
  Phil: when I say that the artist always does the heavy lifting, I say that because I think that
• 1:12:51
  Phil: Drawing a book, Regardless of the amount of…
• 1:12:55
  Tad Eggleston: So, they're definitely the more labor-intensive. Yes, yes, and so I guess what I would do is that… If we think of heavy lifting as labor-intensive, then yes, the artist is always the one doing the heavy lifting.
• 1:13:07
  Phil: That was where I was coming from. I guess the way I would phrase it is that sometimes… like, the writer can also do heavy lifting. You know, Alan Moore clearly does in his scripts, you know, plenty of writers, like you said, Tom King, Kieran Gillum, so many, so many good writers.
• 1:13:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, in terms of work, I don't know that Tom King always does. He seems to have just the knack for writing the script that…
• 1:13:29
  Phil: And that's what I mean, is that…
• 1:13:31
  Tad Eggleston: Bendis, too.
• 1:13:33
  Phil: Modern scripts are more sparse.
• 1:13:35
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but the… the knack for writing the right script for their particular artists.
• 1:13:40
  Phil: That is supposedly the skill of the medium for writers. Right. The goal is to write the best script for the artist on hand, as opposed.
• 1:13:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Tom will call his superpower,
• 1:13:56
  Tad Eggleston: Being able to see the comic in his head.
• 1:14:00
  Tad Eggleston: As the artist will draw it.
• 1:14:02
  Phil: Interesting.
• 1:14:04
  Phil: I, I, I yearn for that.
• 1:14:05
  Tad Eggleston: So while he's writing, he has a really good idea of what it's gonna look like.
• 1:14:11
  Phil: Wow, yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:13
  Phil: I… I… that sounds like a great time.
• 1:14:16
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, take this into Assorted Crisis.
• 1:14:18
  Phil: Right, and I don't know if I mentioned it, but Assorted Crisis Events is my pick. It's an absolutely phenomenal, incredible book. The basic story pitch is, time is having a crisis, you know, this is some sort of superhero… It is.
• 1:14:32
  Tad Eggleston: It's kind of funny that we both, we both picked.
• 1:14:35
  Phil: Time travel? Time related? Not time travel.
• 1:14:37
  Tad Eggleston: Time-related.
• 1:14:38
  Phil: Yeah, I thought that was interesting too, but .
• 1:14:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I think… well, I think it actually,
• 1:14:45
  Tad Eggleston: One of the reasons why so much of the world, like, disdains time travel stories, and even thinks less of comics because of the number of time travel stories, I think is because it's so much harder to do them in other mediums.
• 1:15:01
  Phil: Yeah, it is. Well, not only that, but, like, that… and that's… I mean…
• 1:15:05
  Phil: That's an interesting point. I would love to do a, like, time travel… time travel comic roundup of some sort.
• 1:15:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, it's definitely one of those things that's been kicked around.
• 1:15:18
  Phil: Time in comics is… A different beast entirely.
• 1:15:23
  Phil: It… it's… it is… You know…
• 1:15:28
  Phil: Time is seen as the page.
• 1:15:30
  Phil: As opposed to the time you spend on the page, and nowhere has that been more apparent to me this year than assorted crisis events.
• 1:15:39
  Phil: I mentioned before a couple times that I've been attempting to read this book as
• 1:15:46
  Phil: non-traditionally as possible. What I mean by that
• 1:15:49
  Phil: is that… and this started with the first issue, and in the last, I think, 2 or 3 pages, there was a point where if you read the whole page.
• 1:15:59
  Phil: Normally, you know, the character… you know, dies, and then something different happens on the next page. But…
• 1:16:07
  Tad Eggleston: If you read across the page, across the whole page at once, the experience and the story shifts and changes, and so this…
• 1:16:14
  Phil: This book brings out what I would call creative reading.
• 1:16:18
  Phil: And I think that creative reading is something that comics, lend themselves to so much more than any other medium that I've come across, except maybe video games.
• 1:16:28
  Phil: But the idea that The book is the book in front of you, and…
• 1:16:34
  Phil: you can read it differently. The easiest way is reading issues out of order.
• 1:16:39
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, no, I mean, I always, I always love when,
• 1:16:46
  Tad Eggleston: one of the complaints that people who don't read a lot of comics will have is, I don't know.
• 1:16:53
  Phil: My mom used to say that.
• 1:16:54
  Tad Eggleston: them, or.
• 1:16:55
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:16:56
  Tad Eggleston: to read them, and, and like…
• 1:16:59
  Phil: There's no wrong answer.
• 1:17:01
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, first, there's no wrong answer, but second, I'll say, if…
• 1:17:08
  Tad Eggleston: If something doesn't feel right, then the creator has failed. That just means.
• 1:17:12
  Phil: That's a, that's a confusion.
• 1:17:13
  Tad Eggleston: a mediocre movie, or a mediocre prose book, it's a mediocre comic. Yes, absolutely. Or at least mediocre from your perspective.
• 1:17:21
  Phil: Or a lettering error, something like that. Right. But it happens.
• 1:17:24
  Tad Eggleston: But… A brilliant comic.
• 1:17:31
  Tad Eggleston: It doesn't matter.
• 1:17:32
  Phil: Exactly.
• 1:17:34
  Phil: And the fact is, is that, like, an assorted crisis events.
• 1:17:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Is the book that has lent itself.
• 1:17:42
  Phil: Probably most strongly to that creative reading aspect of, of… where…
• 1:17:49
  Phil: I mean, the whole book is about, you know, warping the characters' experiences of time, and so the more it can warp the reader's experience of time, it feels like the book is happening to you.
• 1:18:00
  Phil: It's… again, it's the reason why I picked… it's funny because that I picked this for dissection, because the reason why it landed in my al- you know, my full pick for dissection, as opposed to just an honorable mention, is I forgot to include it in the honorable mentions for Mind Blowers, because this book is regularly, issue by issue, mind-blowing. It is.
• 1:18:19
  Tad Eggleston: It is. I was so happy when it got extended.
• 1:18:22
  Phil: Yes, I didn't realize it had a chance to not…
• 1:18:26
  Tad Eggleston: It's gonna be… no, it was…
• 1:18:27
  Tad Eggleston: It's only supposed to be 5 issues.
• 1:18:29
  Phil: Oh, I'm so glad they're still going.
• 1:18:30
  Tad Eggleston: did so well that…
• 1:18:32
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:18:32
  Tad Eggleston: That… that they were able to…
• 1:18:34
  Phil: Oh, I would love…
• 1:18:35
  Tad Eggleston: the norm.
• 1:18:36
  Phil: as many issues of this as they can make. And so the other little piece… so…
• 1:18:42
  Phil: here's the thing. Here's part of why I love this comic so much, is that… and this is… this is gonna get a little, a little… a little, spiritual, a little mystical, but, I… I believe that, you know, stories…
• 1:18:56
  Phil: are alive, in the sense that, you know, they are collections of thoughts inhabited by people. It's complicated, it's odd. But, this concept, the concept of a superhero event
• 1:19:09
  Phil: crisis happening to regular, everyday people, I feel like I've been visited by that story. You know, it's been a note… I haven't worked on a book like that, but I've had
• 1:19:19
  Phil: I've had the desire to work on a book like that. The fact that…
• 1:19:24
  Phil: this book came out, and it's even better than anything I could have dreamed of. It's like, it feels like a gift to me personally, you know? Every issue, I am absolutely loving and adoring, because these are the exact things that tickle my brain in the exact way that I'm like.
• 1:19:40
  Phil: you know, one of the earliest examples of this that I felt was, the, the really old image series, The Darkness.
• 1:19:47
  Phil: If you've heard of that one, it's about…
• 1:19:49
  Tad Eggleston: I know it. I haven't read it.
• 1:19:50
  Phil: a hitman who, gets the power of, like, living shadows. It's some… it's some high… it was the kind of thing I… I read it in high school, and the thought was, well, I could've… I could have created this, you know? I've gotten really close a few times, and, you know, and maybe I could have done it better, even.
• 1:20:08
  Phil: For assorted Crisis events, no, absolutely not. This is better than anything I could have done, and I'm loving every second of it. And again, it is… it is…
• 1:20:19
  Phil: it is, to me, it's easily my book of the year. I think it has beaten out Power Fantasy, unless the last two issues of Power Fantasy
• 1:20:28
  Phil: are head and shoulders crazier. If they had ended their ARC 3 this year, that probably would have stayed it, but… I mean, yeah, a story of Crisis events with a bullet, it's just… it's so good. It's so, so good. I… it's… it's quite literally, despite the fact that you also read the series, and you also love the series.
• 1:20:46
  Phil: It is still my answer for the book of… of, yeah, if there's the… your typical ending question of if there's something that you love that not enough people around you know about, talk about it.
• 1:20:54
  Tad Eggleston: We're gonna have to, find an excuse to talk about it more.
• 1:20:58
  Phil: Heck yeah.
• 1:20:59
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, as we move into three books, we hope will be spectacular,
• 1:21:06
  Tad Eggleston: Top of my list is assorted Crisis Events.
• 1:21:10
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:11
  Tad Eggleston: from Dennis Camp and Eric Sawadski at Image. It's almost like the plane.
• 1:21:17
  Tad Eggleston: Nope, because you hadn't put your stuff in yet. Nope. Followed by Space Scouts No. 1 for Matt Kent and David Rubin at Dark Horse, and
• 1:21:29
  Tad Eggleston: This is the… this is a fitting… fitting third book, too, and I… I was late to the Ice Cream Man game. I have a lot of catch-up to do. I read the first trade yesterday.
• 1:21:42
  Tad Eggleston: But otherwise, all I've read is the… they recently did an issue that was all one-page stories written by other people.
• 1:21:50
  Tad Eggleston: Or most of them written by other people. And, and this…
• 1:21:58
  Tad Eggleston: this month's issue, Ice Cream Man, the Mortal… Mortal Coil Shuffle.
• 1:22:03
  Tad Eggleston: is actually a deck of cards. Yeah, I'm gonna need to pick this up. The story.
• 1:22:09
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:22:09
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:22:12
  Phil: This… this concept is… is, again, it feels… targeting me.
• 1:22:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Specifically. Right. I mean, this is… this is… well, like…
• 1:22:21
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like what kicked it off in the mainstream, and like, this is the stuff that we've seen in Raw Magazine and in all sorts of
• 1:22:30
  Tad Eggleston: Indian underground comics for years. We're just completely fucking with the medium, doing.
• 1:22:36
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:22:36
  Tad Eggleston: weird stuff, and seeing… seeing… seeing how boundaries can be pushed. But I feel like in the mainstream, it was kicked off with…
• 1:22:45
  Tad Eggleston: Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo's one-panel issue of Nightwing.
• 1:22:52
  Tad Eggleston: Where the whole thing was one continuous panel.
• 1:22:56
  Phil: So, real quick, Mike Allred did that first, with Madman.
• 1:23:01
  Tad Eggleston: I believe it. I didn't say they'd done something.
• 1:23:04
  Phil: I know.
• 1:23:04
  Tad Eggleston: I said that it kicked off this current era
• 1:23:11
  Tad Eggleston: That's a good point. And Madman also wasn't mainstream. You're right, you're right, that's a good point, that's a good point, that's a good point. It kicked off this current era of people doing really weird experimental storytelling as part of…
• 1:23:27
  Tad Eggleston: Wednesday Warrior-type comics.
• 1:23:30
  Phil: Hmm… I think… and that's the thing is, I think there's always been pieces of that, but you're right.
• 1:23:37
  Tad Eggleston: I absolutely think it says…
• 1:23:39
  Phil: With every generation of comics…
• 1:23:44
  Phil: They're more being made by people who grew up and loved comics, who are building off of things.
• 1:23:52
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this goes back to the discussion that we had briefly about, like, Watchmen owe so much to loving rockets.
• 1:23:59
  Phil: Right, right. Yeah. That… I do think… I do think it is more visual now, because a good, like, 10, 15 years ago, the hot thing for… for people to mess with was ciphers.
• 1:24:12
  Phil: Right. There were a lot of series that came out that.
• 1:24:15
  Tad Eggleston: There's a lot of that going on right now, too.
• 1:24:17
  Phil: Still, yeah.
• 1:24:18
  Tad Eggleston: But, and really, so much of this, like, was happening in newspaper comics in the teens and 20s.
• 1:24:26
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:24:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, a lot of this stuff isn't new, it goes through phases, but…
• 1:24:32
  Tad Eggleston: But where… where a lot of…
• 1:24:35
  Phil: where a comic is a deck of cards. Oh, God. For that matter, sure, the one-page story thing…
• 1:24:42
  Tad Eggleston: feels new, but it's not even new for my lifetime, and with superhero comics, the, Matt, I think it was Matt Fraction's last issue of…
• 1:24:52
  Tad Eggleston: I think it was Matt Fraction.
• 1:24:54
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe Mark Millar.
• 1:24:56
  Phil: Hmm.
• 1:24:57
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 1:24:59
  Tad Eggleston: I wanna say that the Young Adult Superman series.
• 1:25:04
  Phil: Oh, My Adventures of Superman?
• 1:25:07
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, that's new.
• 1:25:09
  Phil: My… or… the, The Adventures of Superman or something? I think I heard.
• 1:25:13
  Tad Eggleston: That sounds right.
• 1:25:15
  Phil: Yeah, I do know that Mark Millar had written some, like, all-agents Superman stuff.
• 1:25:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:25:21
  Phil: was pretty good, but I haven't read any of…
• 1:25:25
  Tad Eggleston: 22 stories in a single bound, so it was Mark Millar. Okay. You know, a collection of one-page stories. So, so, like…
• 1:25:34
  Tad Eggleston: again, it's not… not new, but between Assorted Crisis event being a Wednesday image-type book. Oh, yeah. Between…
• 1:25:45
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I mean, Ice Cream Man is a Wednesday image-type book.
• 1:25:54
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the one panel comic wasn't the only crazy limitation slash conceit.
• 1:26:01
  Phil: In Nightwing, yeah.
• 1:26:02
  Tad Eggleston: That Nightwing did, you know.
• 1:26:04
  Phil: I've heard them doing a few more.
• 1:26:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, it's like, more and more, it feels like… You're seeing Madden-type constraints.
• 1:26:17
  Tad Eggleston: being put on… Superhero comics.
• 1:26:22
  Phil: Yeah, and then that even goes back to the, the, the month in the early 2000s where Marvel did all silent issues for a month.
• 1:26:33
  Phil: We're the very famous New X-Men 1, where we, we learn about, Cassandra Nova, or I don't even think Cassandra Nova's her name.
• 1:26:41
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, I mean…
• 1:26:42
  Phil: Anyway…
• 1:26:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I love two things about that. First,
• 1:26:48
  Tad Eggleston: it makes for some just great comics. But… but second, the…
• 1:26:58
  Tad Eggleston: The more this sort of thing is done, the more likely it is to…
• 1:27:08
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly readers that have good comic shops.
• 1:27:14
  Tad Eggleston: Push readers into other comics.
• 1:27:18
  Phil: Heck yeah.
• 1:27:20
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, like, you were able to say that Mike Allred did that before, you know? I mean, none of the things that I'm talking about haven't been done. I'd have to… I'd have to think about it to figure out a card story again, but I know I've seen…
• 1:27:35
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:27:35
  Tad Eggleston: them on tables.
• 1:27:37
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:27:38
  Phil: Some might even say tarot is the oldest card story. Well, yeah, but I've seen, like, Infinite Loop.
• 1:27:44
  Tad Eggleston: comics, I've seen… Yeah. I've seen comics done as, like…
• 1:27:50
  Tad Eggleston: You know the thing that all the girls had when we were in elementary school?
• 1:27:55
  Phil: Oh, oh, the folding fortune teller?
• 1:27:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
• 1:27:57
  Phil: I want to see comics done that way.
• 1:28:01
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I mean… comics are a nearly infinitely malleable… Right.
• 1:28:10
  Phil: in, Floating World, when I was in Portland, they had sculpture comics. They had a little diagram of sculpture. That was so incredible.
• 1:28:17
  Tad Eggleston: June?
• 1:28:18
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:28:19
  Tad Eggleston: So, like… That's why I get excited any time there's something crazy happening in mainstream comics, because…
• 1:28:28
  Phil: That's true. I mean…
• 1:28:30
  Tad Eggleston: A, it just elevates the medium in general, but it also makes it that much more likely that
• 1:28:38
  Tad Eggleston: People will stretch out of the mainstream to go, oh…
• 1:28:42
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:28:43
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:28:44
  Phil: I… I… that's another reason why I love comics so much.
• 1:28:48
  Tad Eggleston: quickly, a couple of things I know are spectacular. Death Dog No. 1 from Bryce Engman and Allen Robinson at Ahoy. I did confirm with Bryce that this was not
• 1:29:01
  Tad Eggleston: a purposeful tribute to my dog, Potato, but he, he, he agrees that it is a wonderful, accidental tribute to my dog, Potato. So everybody should read Death Dog No. 1.
• 1:29:17
  Tad Eggleston: Both the comic and his prose story at the end could equally be a tribute to my dog, Potato, even though there's no dogs in it.
• 1:29:26
  Tad Eggleston: Just throwing that out there.
• 1:29:27
  Phil: Hmm.
• 1:29:28
  Tad Eggleston: Also out this week are a couple of fantastic books from Fanographics. The Past is a Grotesque Animal, a collection of previous
• 1:29:38
  Tad Eggleston: previous mini-comics and stories, unpublished, published, unpublished, etc, from Tommy Parrish, and Shadows of the Sea, the new Kathy Malkasian novel.
• 1:29:51
  Tad Eggleston: I'll also give quick shout-outs to, to… to podcast…
• 1:30:00
  Tad Eggleston: guests, with their collections finally coming out, Golden Rage, Volume 2, Mother Knows Best. We've talked to Chrissy Williams and Lauren Knight twice, Sophie Dodgson once, huge detective.
• 1:30:12
  Tad Eggleston: by Adam Rose and Magenta King. We've talked to the two of them once, and Adam Rose twice.
• 1:30:18
  Tad Eggleston: Both of those were ones where we talked to them at the beginning and at the end, which is always fun. Check out those interviews, but definitely, if you haven't read them, check out those collections.
• 1:30:30
  Tad Eggleston: Lot of other… a lot of good graphic novels out this week. I'm not gonna get into them. They might go up at… at the website if… if I manage to start updating notes, or Phil starts finding time, or… or… one of these days, we'll start having an updated,
• 1:30:46
  Tad Eggleston: updated blog, as well as just lots and lots of episodes.
• 1:30:52
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, pretty good, pretty good week in other comics. We got Cheetah and Chesire, Rob the Justice League number 4, Birds of Prey number 27, Fractions, Batman number 3, Planet Death No. 2.
• 1:31:06
  Tad Eggleston: Cantwell's Star Trek Red Shirts number 4, which might have also,
• 1:31:16
  Tad Eggleston: inspired his Halloween costume. Oh, nice. R. Crumb returns with Tales of Paranoia, Mark Russell's finishing up Vanishing Point with issue 6, and Chip Zdarsky and Rachel Stott have White House Robot Number 2.
• 1:31:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, and totally forgot, Erica Henderson's Harley and Ivy.
• 1:31:39
  Phil: Yeah, buddy.
• 1:31:40
  Tad Eggleston: Even crimes number one is this week.
• 1:31:42
  Phil: Is that her writing debut? Or did she do short.
• 1:31:44
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I think she's done some writing, too. Okay.
• 1:31:47
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:31:48
  Tad Eggleston: But it's definitely one of the bigger things where she's doing everything.
• 1:31:51
  Phil: Yes. Yeah.
• 1:31:53
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, just a really good week in comics. So, I guess I took Golden Rage away from you.
• 1:31:59
  Phil: That's okay, I… I… that's alright, that's why I had… that's why I…
• 1:32:02
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, Phil. Phil, what do you got in your giant-sized trade waiter graphic novel pics slash I'm adding shit because I'm Phil and I don't follow the rules?
• 1:32:13
  Phil: Hey, you… well, so first of all, I… I am… I am following the rules, because I pushed it to 3, because I was… I was going to leave it at 2, so…
• 1:32:22
  Phil: Thankfully, our rules are both flexible and contradictory. Okay. But I'm also excited for, sort of, Crisis events, and I just… I love the book so much, I can't not tell the world about it for a third time.
• 1:32:33
  Tad Eggleston: with you, man.
• 1:32:34
  Phil: I know, I know.
• 1:32:35
  Tad Eggleston: He's still the new guy.
• 1:32:36
  Phil: I care!
• 1:32:36
  Tad Eggleston: It's not over.
• 1:32:37
  Phil: I am a lifelong little brother, and I am used to it by now.
• 1:32:41
  Tad Eggleston: The hazing period is not over.
• 1:32:42
  Phil: Tyler did a.
• 1:32:45
  Tad Eggleston: almost 4 years.
• 1:32:46
  Phil: There we go.
• 1:32:47
  Tad Eggleston: Four months in.
• 1:32:50
  Phil: The hazing will continue until morale improves.
• 1:32:54
  Tad Eggleston: Morale is down?
• 1:32:56
  Phil: No, that's… sorry, that's a… that's a… it's a work joke of what you usually say.
• 1:33:00
  Phil: Anyway, the, Golden Rage Volume 2 is incredible. If you haven't read it, pick up that trade. Go ahead and watch, Golden Girls meets Battle Royale. And, then this is a book that has been on my radar that I didn't realize was finally out in trade. It's The Slasher's Apprentice from Justin Richards and Val Halverson, er, Haverson at Mad Cave.
• 1:33:21
  Phil: It's, a book about a serial killer, coming of age, queer story, horror, looks absolutely incredible. I love, Haverson's art, he is a badass. So, yeah, go pick that up. It's another good one.
• 1:33:35
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, that's episode 208 in the books. We will see you after the next page.