Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / Pulp Blotter Book Club #18 - Jonah Hex part 3

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Pulp Blotter Book Club #18 - Jonah Hex part 3 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:03
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the Pulp Blotter on 22 panels. I'm joined by Mark Pratt, Sean Harkle Road, Chicago area actors, playwright.
• 0:13
  Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing. Anybody got anything to plug before I forget?
• 0:18
  Mark Pracht: Nothing right now.
• 0:20
  Tad Eggleston: We're all between stuff.
• 0:23
  Mark Pracht: I am… yeah.
• 0:25
  Tad Eggleston: Well, then I'll give a shout-out to Psychocomicology's purchase of Modern Age Comics in Algonquin.
• 0:33
  Tad Eggleston: head out there and see Edgar and Lee, and hopefully one day me.
• 0:36
  Tad Eggleston: And, you know, buy your comics and…
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: hang out and have places. It's a huge store, so I'm looking forward to what can be done with it.
• 0:48
  Mark Pracht: Huge. It's HUGE!
• 0:50
  Tad Eggleston: It is. It's really big.
• 0:54
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 0:54
  Sean Harklerode: reach.
• 0:55
  Mark Pracht: Huge.
• 0:57
  Tad Eggleston: So… Jonah Hex.
• 1:02
  Tad Eggleston: And.
• 1:03
  Mark Pracht: For our listeners, we're meeting much earlier in the morning than we usually do, so if
• 1:09
  Mark Pracht: I'm a little slower on the uptake,
• 1:14
  Mark Pracht: I've only had 1 cup of coffee, not 4.
• 1:17
  Tad Eggleston: I'm actually about to start my first cup of coffee, so…
• 1:22
  Sean Harklerode: Anyway. I moved straight to Coca-Cola.
• 1:26
  Mark Pracht: In the glass bottles, no less.
• 1:27
  Sean Harklerode: In the glass bottles.
• 1:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the glass bottles are better.
• 1:31
  Mark Pracht: Is it Mexican Coca-Cola? Is it…
• 1:33
  Sean Harklerode: No, this is, now, these… they do these around Christmas time.
• 1:39
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:40
  Sean Harklerode: I think you can get them around all the time, but they do them around Christmas, especially.
• 1:45
  Sean Harklerode: You can get them a little cheaper.
• 1:50
  Tad Eggleston: So… I don't know.
• 1:53
  Tad Eggleston: See, the… the…
• 1:55
  Tad Eggleston: da-da-da-da.
• 1:56
  Mark Pracht: one, one, I, I, I did a, I did a, like, to, to our subject today, and, and I, I, it was, it was really funny. I was doing, I was doing another podcast about a week ago,
• 2:12
  Tad Eggleston: Cool. Which one?
• 2:14
  Mark Pracht: Splash pages?
• 2:16
  Tad Eggleston: Cool.
• 2:18
  Mark Pracht: And one of their questions to me at the end was, like, what was… what would be your dream project to work on? And I said, if somebody would let me write Jonah Hex.
• 2:29
  Mark Pracht: I would be all in, so…
• 2:32
  Tad Eggleston: I think so.
• 2:33
  Tad Eggleston: Jonah hacks into a play.
• 2:34
  Mark Pracht: I know you could turn it into a play, but, you know.
• 2:38
  Mark Pracht: But…
• 2:40
  Tad Eggleston: So reach out to those people at Netflix.
• 2:45
  Tad Eggleston: Get them during transition, when they're saying yes to everything.
• 2:49
  Mark Pracht: I… you know what? I… this… this is really off-subject, but I've been… I've been listening to a lot of people who, like, I have a… my…
• 3:01
  Mark Pracht: Social media sphere has a lot of, like, writers and people who work in
• 3:07
  Mark Pracht: Stuff like that, and they were talking about how
• 3:12
  Mark Pracht: There's a lot of fear, because apparently a lot of people have pitched projects to Netflix as far as comic book adaptations, and Netflix is like, we have no interest whatsoever in anything print.
• 3:25
  Mark Pracht: And now, that company owns DC Comics.
• 3:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:30
  Mark Pracht: And… that's… scary.
• 3:34
  Mark Pracht: For a lot of people. And.
• 3:37
  Tad Eggleston: Though, the one thing I will toss out is what Heidi McDonald said, which is that…
• 3:46
  Tad Eggleston: the success of the recent Superman movie, probably protects it, at least for now.
• 3:54
  Mark Pracht: I think that… I… I think that that protects… DC Entertainment.
• 4:00
  Mark Pracht: I don't know that that protects their publishing arm. Sean and I were actually talking about this the other day, like, walking into comic shops and just seeing
• 4:10
  Mark Pracht: Reprint issue after reprint issue after reprint issue, and…
• 4:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 4:15
  Mark Pracht: you know, facsimile issues and additions, and I'm like, man, that does not…
• 4:23
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and we all know that the comic industry is not entirely DC and Marvel, but…
• 4:31
  Mark Pracht: you know, especially for, like, comic shops and stuff, like, they're important, you know? Yeah. And,
• 4:40
  Mark Pracht: For the health of the industry. And, but, the idea that… you know.
• 4:49
  Mark Pracht: like, those facsimile… at a certain point, I think the facsimile thing is sort of like, huh?
• 4:57
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like…
• 4:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, really…
• 4:59
  Mark Pracht: We're doing a fantastic… Go ahead.
• 5:03
  Tad Eggleston: Now that they're…
• 5:04
  Sean Harklerode: for a while.
• 5:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but now that there are variant covers on Fast Simile Editions, in some ways, I think it's as much…
• 5:12
  Tad Eggleston: A way to have more variants out there, which…
• 5:16
  Tad Eggleston: I have a love-hate relationship with. You know, the stores that know how to use them, it works great for the stores that have that right audience, it works great for,
• 5:27
  Tad Eggleston: And it's certainly a good thing for cover artists.
• 5:31
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because it's a quick 500 to 1,000 bucks to do a cover, which, you know,
• 5:43
  Tad Eggleston: is, like…
• 5:46
  Mark Pracht: I, I mean…
• 5:47
  Tad Eggleston: Five interior pages.
• 5:48
  Mark Pracht: You know, I think that… I think that, you know, for myself, I mean, and this is, like I said, this is way off the subject matter, what we're supposed to talk about, but, like, if I'm gonna buy a facsimile edition of something.
• 6:02
  Mark Pracht: I don't want a variant cover.
• 6:04
  Tad Eggleston: I, I understand this. I just… I just…
• 6:08
  Tad Eggleston: But all I'm saying is, I think when it's…
• 6:13
  Tad Eggleston: facsimile stuff, it's even easier for a store to know whether it's worth them buying, so you don't have stores buying things that they're not going to be able to sell as commonly, while still making that variant cover
• 6:28
  Tad Eggleston: market happy, because it's out there, they can do their special orders, or go to the stores that know they can sell them, and being able to pay more artists.
• 6:37
  Tad Eggleston: Sure. So, as much as I think they're dumb.
• 6:45
  Mark Pracht: I mean, yeah, look, look, everybody should buy what they want to buy, I'm not saying that. I just… to me, it's like…
• 6:51
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I guess what I'm saying is, when it's on a facsimile rather than a new comic, it makes it that much easier for the store to know whether or not it's worth them.
• 7:02
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 7:03
  Tad Eggleston: With a new comic, you never know which cover is… I mean, A cover's somewhat safe, but after that…
• 7:11
  Mark Pracht: Well, I…
• 7:12
  Sean Harklerode: Having the, like, when they did…
• 7:15
  Sean Harklerode: number ones, and then they did Crisis, and secret Wars.
• 7:23
  Sean Harklerode: is a way to have those comics out that I didn't feel I needed to. I could read them in their original format.
• 7:32
  Sean Harklerode: And not feel like I needed to keep them in a vault.
• 7:34
  Mark Pracht: Right? Right.
• 7:39
  Tad Eggleston: Though I don't keep my secret wars in a vault.
• 7:41
  Mark Pracht: And… well, yes.
• 7:44
  Sean Harklerode: I keep my Secret Wars in a little box.
• 7:47
  Sean Harklerode: That says, from the… vault of Victor von Doom, because I thought that was.
• 7:53
  Mark Pracht: Oh, okay.
• 7:55
  Tad Eggleston: I think I…
• 7:56
  Mark Pracht: Actually, it's resets.
• 7:57
  Tad Eggleston: That's a secret wars.
• 7:58
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, I thought, I thought that, you know, when they announced that, the crisis… Facsimiles.
• 8:07
  Mark Pracht: And I was like, oh, they're gonna… you're gonna do a whole year of this. That's kind of cool. I mean, like… and, you know, like, to me, that's a… that's a watershed series that is…
• 8:18
  Mark Pracht: like, I read that series now, and I'm like, this is fucking awesome. Like, I kind of wish they had…
• 8:25
  Mark Pracht: gone all the way with it, and just kept to it, but whatever, you know, they gotta re… readjust. But anyway, like, it was a groundbreaking idea, and, like, doing it… what was it?
• 8:37
  Mark Pracht: 40 years after the fact? Like, that's awesome.
• 8:41
  Mark Pracht: But all the reprinting of the tabloid editions, like Sean and I have talked about that, those things are awesome!
• 8:48
  Mark Pracht: You know, and, Like,
• 8:54
  Mark Pracht: when we were doing Mark of Cain, the cast got these, you know, facsimile editions of Detective 27 and signed them, and that's… I love that.
• 9:03
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and the fact is that, you know, I can have the cast all sign it, and it doesn't feel like I'm destroying something.
• 9:12
  Mark Pracht: Even though our director did, but whatever.
• 9:16
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean, I… you know, it's… it's…
• 9:19
  Mark Pracht: like… like, those kind of, like, Detective 27, Batman number 1, Action number 1, Superman number one, like, I understand, like, why you would want a facsimile edition. Especially, like, I think that this Detective 27 is actually… it's in modern size, rather than Golden Age size.
• 9:39
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 9:39
  Mark Pracht: I dig the fact that they're printing them in Golden Age size now. I mean, like, I think that's cool. But I mean, like, it's also, like, I see these things, and I'm like, why are you doing a facsimile of, like.
• 9:52
  Mark Pracht: Batman number 14 that doesn't seem to have any… historical…
• 10:01
  Mark Pracht: relevant, you know? I mean, maybe it's the first appearance of some villain or something, and I'm just not picking up on that or whatever, but it just seems like
• 10:09
  Mark Pracht: Okay.
• 10:11
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 10:12
  Sean Harklerode: It all confuses me.
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, to a certain extent, they've always confused me, particularly the ones that aren't
• 10:28
  Tad Eggleston: aren't, like.
• 10:30
  Mark Pracht: Historically relevant?
• 10:32
  Tad Eggleston: Big-time historically relevant.
• 10:33
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 10:34
  Tad Eggleston: But… what I will say is that, like.
• 10:41
  Tad Eggleston: Something that was less true of comic shops 20 years ago than it is now is that they had their own personality.
• 10:53
  Tad Eggleston: Like, what makes a great independent bookstore now makes a great independent comic shop, which is that they're built around…
• 11:02
  Tad Eggleston: the owner's theme.
• 11:05
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it used to be everybody ordered everything, or most of everything, or there was a really good…
• 11:13
  Tad Eggleston: you know, there's a pecking order. It's like, okay, if I'm not ordering everything, I'm ordering everything put out by Marvel, DC, Dark Horse Image.
• 11:21
  Tad Eggleston: Or Image Dark Horse, depending on the years, right?
• 11:24
  Tad Eggleston: And now, I mean, the challenge for owners is they have to pick and choose.
• 11:33
  Tad Eggleston: more wisely, rather than there essentially just being the comic shop starter kit.
• 11:39
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 11:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah, but at the same time…
• 11:42
  Tad Eggleston: The advantage to both owners and consumers is that they… they can personalize and work to what fits… they're…
• 11:54
  Tad Eggleston: Sales scheme, their personality, their whatever, more.
• 12:01
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, boy.
• 12:01
  Mark Pracht: Oh, no, I get that. I mean, like, look, but I, like, I…
• 12:07
  Mark Pracht: And certainly, like, you know, if you're gonna do…
• 12:11
  Mark Pracht: if I was running a shop, right?
• 12:14
  Mark Pracht: I'd be spending a lot of time with these, with these,
• 12:20
  Mark Pracht: Jeez, the word just escaped me, facsimiles.
• 12:24
  Mark Pracht: Because, like, I would be, like… Okay.
• 12:29
  Mark Pracht: That's weird. But I mean, like, do you… I mean, like, I can't imagine a comic shop not ordering
• 12:39
  Mark Pracht: every new Marvel comic, or every new, at least.
• 12:45
  Mark Pracht: several issues of a new DC or Marvel comic, right?
• 12:50
  Tad Eggleston: Are we talking a new first issue, or are we talking a…
• 12:55
  Mark Pracht: I'm talking about the currently running series.
• 12:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 12:58
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like.
• 12:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman guarantee…
• 13:03
  Tad Eggleston: But… but some of the lesser titles, and some of the miniseries, by issue 2 or 3,
• 13:10
  Tad Eggleston: They're pull-box only.
• 13:12
  Tad Eggleston: At a lot of stores.
• 13:15
  Mark Pracht: See, that… that's crazy to me.
• 13:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 13:19
  Mark Pracht: Like, yeah.
• 13:19
  Tad Eggleston: But those are the stores that are heavier on graphic novels, or…
• 13:25
  Mark Pracht: Oh, sure. No, no.
• 13:26
  Tad Eggleston: You know, or don't have strong foot traffic, you know, I mean, it depends on your store.
• 13:33
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 13:33
  Tad Eggleston: you know.
• 13:34
  Mark Pracht: Oh, no, yeah, no, look, I… what was that place over on…
• 13:40
  Mark Pracht: Western that was on the… like, it was the basement floor of that place that.
• 13:45
  Sean Harklerode: Variety Comics.
• 13:46
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, and it was, like, and that guy was, like, like, it was… it was, like, old-school comic shop. That dude was, like…
• 13:54
  Sean Harklerode: Please.
• 13:54
  Mark Pracht: But that guy was like, he walked in there, and he's like, who the hell are you? You know?
• 14:01
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, and it's like, but, you know, like…
• 14:06
  Mark Pracht: It was just piles of crap in there, and… but, you know, and obviously we're past that now, but, you know, that guy.
• 14:14
  Tad Eggleston: Not entirely, I've been in shops lately.
• 14:16
  Mark Pracht: pops.
• 14:18
  Sean Harklerode: Well, okay, I'm not… I almost named…
• 14:22
  Sean Harklerode: the junkiest shop that I know, but I won't.
• 14:27
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, and the.
• 14:28
  Sean Harklerode: I'll share that privately, because, I mean, I think he knows he's got a junkie shop, but…
• 14:35
  Sean Harklerode: Remember last week's up on Devon? That was…
• 14:39
  Mark Pracht: I remember, like, when we were doing the plays, and I was trying to go around to all the comic shops I could find, and drop off postcards and stuff, I went in some places that I was just like.
• 14:55
  Mark Pracht: What… what are… is this a business?
• 14:59
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's… that's one of the weird things about a comic shop.
• 15:03
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 15:04
  Tad Eggleston: There are lots of comic shops that can keep the lights on with… Two or three major pull…
• 15:17
  Tad Eggleston: people, so as long… and sometimes it's even easy major pull people. Like, almost every shop I've ever known has, like, one customer who gets everything DC. Like, literally everything DC, or everything Marvel, or sometimes both.
• 15:36
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, and that's… I mean, like, to bring us back around, and then we can get on to talking about.
• 15:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 15:42
  Sean Harklerode: Jonah Hex?
• 15:43
  Tad Eggleston: don't hex.
• 15:44
  Mark Pracht: Cool, yeah. But, I mean, like, you know, that's what's scary about this Netflix thing.
• 15:50
  Mark Pracht: is that… I do think there is… A pretty reasonable chance that
• 16:00
  Mark Pracht: they may shut down all of their publishing, or sell off the publishing to somebody else. Right. You know?
• 16:07
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, you said Batman number 4?
• 16:11
  Sean Harklerode: 14.
• 16:12
  Tad Eggleston: 14?
• 16:13
  Mark Pracht: I was just picking a number out of the air.
• 16:16
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, well, but it is kind of ironic, and could be a really… One of the…
• 16:28
  Tad Eggleston: One of the stories in Batman number 14 is Swastika over the White House.
• 16:40
  Tad Eggleston: I can see why people would want a facsimile of that right now.
• 16:47
  Tad Eggleston: It also has the case Batman failed to solve.
• 16:54
  Mark Pracht: So, I picked a number out of the air that actually has…
• 16:59
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I know they're doing a facsimile of, sensation number 38, which is
• 17:04
  Sean Harklerode: the cover is Wonder Woman, with Santa's bag, you know, on a rooftop, so that's coming out next week.
• 17:12
  Sean Harklerode: I think New Gods No. 1 is getting a…
• 17:15
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah, I saw that. I mean, like, it… it's…
• 17:22
  Mark Pracht: I, you know, I don't know, I just… I think that this…
• 17:24
  Tad Eggleston: And otherwise, most of the characters are making their only appearance.
• 17:30
  Sean Harklerode: I think they're… they're reprinting Two-Face's first appearance soon.
• 17:36
  Tad Eggleston: There is a… Good story.
• 17:38
  Mark Pracht: I might have to get that. I mean, you know, Two-Face is my favorite Batman villain.
• 17:48
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, gee, if only…
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna ask an aside, just because we're… we're considering…
• 17:55
  Mark Pracht: Only…
• 17:56
  Tad Eggleston: deeper dive into it at some point. If Two-Face is your favorite Batman villain, are you a big fan of…
• 18:04
  Tad Eggleston: the Long Halloween trilogy, or…
• 18:08
  Mark Pracht: I have a page from, I believe, the third issue, I have the original artwork for that on my wall.
• 18:16
  Mark Pracht: I can't remember what page, what issue, but…
• 18:18
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, but…
• 18:19
  Mark Pracht: toothpaste page.
• 18:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But you also like Dark Victory and then Last Halloween, or…
• 18:26
  Mark Pracht: I, I have,
• 18:29
  Mark Pracht: I like Dark Victory, I like Long Halloween. I actually really like all of those. There's many things about them that amuse me. I think Jeff Loeb as a writer is…
• 18:43
  Mark Pracht: he… he… he does a lot of things that I kind of go, oh, okay, I know where you got that.
• 18:50
  Tad Eggleston: Like… Right.
• 18:51
  Mark Pracht: like, there's a lot of, you know, Godfather riffs and stuff like that, and, you know, I…
• 18:58
  Mark Pracht: it… I have… I just have… I have kind of… I have this strange relationship with Jeff Loeb. So,
• 19:05
  Mark Pracht: that's…
• 19:05
  Tad Eggleston: No, it just, it came up between Phil and I on the regular episode recently.
• 19:12
  Tad Eggleston: And… No.
• 19:12
  Mark Pracht: I actually love Long Halloween, and…
• 19:15
  Tad Eggleston: I view the three of them, including the most recently finished one, as kind of the… saga of Two-Face.
• 19:25
  Tad Eggleston: And also as, hands down, the best work Jeff Loeb has done. I think Jeff Loeb…
• 19:31
  Mark Pracht: Oh yeah, 100%.
• 19:32
  Tad Eggleston: Gets a lot of credit as a great writer.
• 19:35
  Tad Eggleston: really because of those. And I'm not saying he's a bad writer, but… but I don't, like, nearly…
• 19:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he's… he's always best with Tim Sale.
• 19:45
  Tad Eggleston: So… After… after the long Halloween stuff, it's like the Daredevil yellow, Spider-Man blue…
• 19:55
  Mark Pracht: African American.
• 19:55
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 19:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right. The stuff that he did with sale elsewhere.
• 20:01
  Tad Eggleston: Superman for that.
• 20:02
  Mark Pracht: We're all seasons, actually.
• 20:03
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 20:04
  Mark Pracht: brings me to tears, actually. I think it's…
• 20:06
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, yeah.
• 20:08
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so I don't wanna, I don't wanna say at all that Jeff Loeb is not a good writer, but, like, he's definitely one of those writers where certain stuff is way better than others.
• 20:20
  Mark Pracht: Well.
• 20:21
  Mark Pracht: The only thing… the only thing about it is that he tends to be like, oh, I'll throw in this bit from…
• 20:29
  Mark Pracht: Like, Long Halloween is full of Godfather stuff.
• 20:33
  Tad Eggleston: Hell yeah.
• 20:33
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 20:34
  Mark Pracht: And I know… I know it doesn't offend me or anything, but it also, like, and I sometimes chuckle over it, and sometimes I kind of groan about it. That's… that's the only… that's the only thing that I, you know, that… it's like, okay, come on, Jeff.
• 20:50
  Mark Pracht: We know what this is.
• 20:53
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 20:55
  Mark Pracht: But anyway, Jonah Hex.
• 20:58
  Tad Eggleston: Jonah Heck.
• 20:59
  Mark Pracht: If you're suggesting a long Halloween book club or something like that, I would…
• 21:03
  Tad Eggleston: At some point. Yeah, yeah. Or at least an episode, yeah.
• 21:06
  Sean Harklerode: I picked up last Halloween, but I haven't read it yet.
• 21:11
  Sean Harklerode: So I've been.
• 21:11
  Tad Eggleston: I enjoyed it.
• 21:13
  Mark Pracht: I thought it was good, I did miss Tim Sale.
• 21:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 21:17
  Mark Pracht: every time they put in a Tim Sale cover or something, I'd be like, man…
• 21:21
  Tad Eggleston: Well, everyone had a Tim Sale cover.
• 21:23
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, I know.
• 21:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 21:25
  Mark Pracht: That's… it's what I'm saying, is that I would look at the Tim Sale cover and be like, yeah…
• 21:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, but I think they did a… I will say, I think they did a good job at curating
• 21:36
  Tad Eggleston: Not only a who's who of great artists to do the issues, but kind of working to their strengths the way
• 21:44
  Tad Eggleston: the way sales strengths were worked, too. So they weren't being sale, they were being themselves, but having the story…
• 21:54
  Mark Pracht: This, actually… Again, Not true.
• 21:58
  Tad Eggleston: This actually leads into Jonah Hex, because…
• 22:01
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, it does lean into Joan Hampton. That does.
• 22:03
  Tad Eggleston: That's one of the beauties of this book.
• 22:06
  Mark Pracht: Yes, but it's an interesting thing, like, I've talked to you guys, I'm reading this Tomorrow's book about Marshall Rogers, Brightest Days and Darkest Nights, or whatever it's called, I don't remember. It's a great book.
• 22:19
  Mark Pracht: But one of the things that I found really fascinating was that Marshall Rogers died
• 22:25
  Mark Pracht: Right as he was starting work on a third Dark Detective run, with Engelhardt Scripts.
• 22:35
  Mark Pracht: And I was telling you about how apparently, like.
• 22:39
  Mark Pracht: DC Editorial just hated Marshall Rogers' artwork for some reason.
• 22:44
  Mark Pracht: And they, dan DiDio brought Engelhart and Rogers back to do Dark Detective 2, and then they were gonna go right into Dark Detective 3, and then Marshall died, and…
• 22:58
  Mark Pracht: All of these artists were like, we'll finish it.
• 23:02
  Mark Pracht: We'll finish it.
• 23:03
  Mark Pracht: And we'll have Terry Austin do the inking, and we'll just, we'll finish it in tribute to Marshall. And DC Editorial said,
• 23:13
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and it's… it's funny, because it's exactly…
• 23:17
  Mark Pracht: what's… it's exactly what's happening with last Halloween, you know, or happened with last Halloween, you know? It's like, okay…
• 23:24
  Mark Pracht: We're gonna… we're all gonna jump in and do one issue, or two issues, or whatever, and… Man.
• 23:31
  Mark Pracht: That's really sad.
• 23:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, between the fact that I don't…
• 23:37
  Tad Eggleston: I certainly don't know him personally, and I know some people who like him a fair amount.
• 23:43
  Tad Eggleston: But since Didio has left that top role, we've heard a lot about… The…
• 23:53
  Tad Eggleston: work environment at DC during Didio's run that… that makes me wonder if whatever else there, you know, whatever… I mean, maybe he's a great creator and a great guy, but… but he doesn't seem to have been a great…
• 24:09
  Tad Eggleston: leader.
• 24:11
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, like, the whole thing with the… yeah, this is… but, you know, if I'm remembering correctly, this Hex series started
• 24:22
  Mark Pracht: While he was there?
• 24:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 24:26
  Tad Eggleston: No, he was there.
• 24:28
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I do… I've… I think that… I really…
• 24:35
  Mark Pracht: I think New 52 was a real mistake.
• 24:40
  Mark Pracht: And we've kind of talked about that. This book transitioned to All-Star Western, for New 52.
• 24:51
  Mark Pracht: Jonah Hex. And I lost… All interest, because it…
• 24:58
  Mark Pracht: became about trying to tie Jonah into the larger DC universe, and I'm like, I don't care about this. You know?
• 25:05
  Mark Pracht: I, I want… I want these weird… spaghetti Western… vaguely horror…
• 25:17
  Mark Pracht: stories. Anyway, but that should lead… let's talk about Jonah Hex, because it's.
• 25:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, let's, let's, let's jump into…
• 25:26
  Tad Eggleston: And if we wind up going backwards some, that's okay, because, like.
• 25:32
  Tad Eggleston: Not all of us were through 4 volumes last time, including myself. I think I was in the middle of the fourth volume. But technically, we did Luck Runs Out and Bullets Don't Lie, which are issues 25 to 36.
• 25:47
  Tad Eggleston: of that Jonah Hex run.
• 25:50
  Tad Eggleston: And had some really good stuff.
• 25:54
  Tad Eggleston: Most of it, I think, was single-issue story.
• 25:59
  Tad Eggleston: I think there might…
• 26:00
  Mark Pracht: Very, very few…
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: Issue story in there?
• 26:04
  Mark Pracht: I… I always love… I always love Valho, there'll be an issue, and…
• 26:09
  Mark Pracht: Then, like, 4 or 5 later, something'll come back, some elements, you know?
• 26:14
  Sean Harklerode: Right, there are a few of those, like Return to Devil's Paw, and…
• 26:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:20
  Tad Eggleston: But continue… there was a lot of Jordy Burnett.
• 26:26
  Tad Eggleston: It had the Darwin-Cook issue.
• 26:30
  Tad Eggleston: Beautiful.
• 26:34
  Mark Pracht: Darwin.
• 26:37
  Mark Pracht: Love Darwin.
• 26:38
  Tad Eggleston: I had the very horror issue with Giuseppe Kaminculi.
• 26:44
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, the grind… the grind house?
• 26:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, grind heist.
• 26:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 26:52
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, but like, like I said, in terms of tying the beginning, I really appreciate how… These…
• 27:05
  Tad Eggleston: stories… like… Art is always spot-on for the stories, and the stories are often very different from each other.
• 27:19
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 27:19
  Tad Eggleston: The character of Hex is Hex, but, like, so you know that there's an element of really working with the writers
• 27:30
  Tad Eggleston: As plotters, and working into… How can we do this in a way you know…
• 27:40
  Mark Pracht: Well, I would be really curious as how…
• 27:45
  Mark Pracht: What the… what the artistic process was.
• 27:49
  Mark Pracht: Because, like, if… if I remember cur… like, if I remember what I've read about
• 27:58
  Mark Pracht: Palmiati and Gray is that they did work Fullscript.
• 28:02
  Mark Pracht: But I have to admit, I have to imagine that
• 28:06
  Mark Pracht: The one exception to this might be Geordi Bernay, just because he does so many of them, you know?
• 28:12
  Mark Pracht: If there's one consistent artist that seems to show up over and over again, it's Geordie Brene. But I mean, like.
• 28:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 28:20
  Mark Pracht: I, I, I have to, I have to assume… that…
• 28:24
  Mark Pracht: when they were like, hey, Darwin, you wanna draw one of these? Darwin might have said, I want to do something set in Canada, you know?
• 28:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 28:33
  Mark Pracht: during the winter, and so then they… Right. They write that script. And,
• 28:40
  Mark Pracht: But to what… to the larger point, like, what's incredible about having such a strong and well-defined character as…
• 28:50
  Mark Pracht: Jonah. And when I say well-defined, he's also super surprising at times, like, you can never really tell when he's gonna be like, I don't care, or…
• 29:00
  Tad Eggleston: Or suddenly Care.
• 29:02
  Mark Pracht: Suddenly care more than you could ever imagine.
• 29:05
  Mark Pracht: But that's…
• 29:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's never quite as surprising when he says, I don't care, than… than…
• 29:14
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, you know, but it's like, when you have a character that grounded and that set.
• 29:20
  Mark Pracht: Because, like, clearly, I, like, I can't am… I, like…
• 29:23
  Mark Pracht: I could make guesses as to what Palmiani and Gray, like, I'm sure they had this idea of, like, what triggers… what triggers… triggers Jonah.
• 29:34
  Mark Pracht: to action, and what triggers Jonah to… Inaction, right?
• 29:41
  Mark Pracht: Good, you know, like, To walk away from something, right?
• 29:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 29:46
  Mark Pracht: But…
• 29:47
  Mark Pracht: once you have that, you can pivot that character into… especially, like, and that's part of the joy of the Western genre, like, you can pivot into so many different ways, and so many different styles, and so many different tones.
• 30:01
  Mark Pracht: And… It all works because that character is so… Solid, right?
• 30:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 30:12
  Mark Pracht: And it's the same… actually, speaking to the art, it's the same thing. You can have a very cartoony one.
• 30:18
  Mark Pracht: that works.
• 30:20
  Mark Pracht: And you can have one that's super realistic. There's one… there's one in here, it's in the same volume as the Darwin Cook one, where it's like… I almost think the art is a bit too mannered.
• 30:34
  Mark Pracht: I can't… I don't remember who the artist is.
• 30:37
  Tad Eggleston: The Return to Devil's Paw?
• 30:39
  Mark Pracht: No, Outrunning Shadows.
• 30:47
  Mark Pracht: Ugh, I don't know, I know this artist, I can't remember who it is, though.
• 30:52
  Mark Pracht: did a bunch of Star Wars.
• 30:55
  Mark Pracht: I know.
• 30:56
  Mark Pracht: where… It almost became… Like, you can tell that it's all photo-referenced.
• 31:05
  Mark Pracht: To the point where everything just seems… Inert, you know?
• 31:11
  Tad Eggleston: Blah blah blah blah…
• 31:13
  Mark Pracht: I didn't have to go all the way to the beginning.
• 31:15
  Sean Harklerode: There were a couple where I felt the… I mean, I appreciate… I mean, this felt like a…
• 31:20
  Tad Eggleston: Do you remember the… the… Plot of the story…
• 31:26
  Mark Pracht: It started with burying the case with… it was the one where he was trying to give it all up.
• 31:36
  Mark Pracht: He was burying the case with the Confederate flag on top of it.
• 31:39
  Tad Eggleston: That's actually… that's J.H. Williams.
• 31:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 31:43
  Mark Pracht: I just thought… I thought that artwork was… inert.
• 31:50
  Mark Pracht: No offense to JH, I've seen other work that I thought was wonderful.
• 31:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:00
  Tad Eggleston: The cover was really good, though.
• 32:02
  Mark Pracht: Oh, no, no, no, that's not, that's, Mark Saris… Saracio?
• 32:10
  Mark Pracht: It's the one right after the hunting trip, the… the…
• 32:15
  Mark Pracht: I'm looking at the credits right now.
• 32:17
  Mark Pracht: A crude offer is J.H. Williams.
• 32:22
  Mark Pracht: Because I'm the one…
• 32:23
  Tad Eggleston: in between the two.
• 32:24
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I don't… I don't remember.
• 32:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't know Mark Spiracio.
• 32:32
  Mark Pracht: Spiracio, sorry.
• 32:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:36
  Mark Pracht: Sometimes my eyes don't work.
• 32:38
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's okay.
• 32:39
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 32:40
  Mark Pracht: But, yeah, no, like, yeah.
• 32:46
  Mark Pracht: Somebody else talk.
• 32:48
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I… you know, we were talking about these varying, art styles, and… Genres and…
• 32:57
  Sean Harklerode: It felt like a change between the first, three volumes.
• 33:03
  Sean Harklerode: And… and I read 4, 5, and 6.
• 33:07
  Sean Harklerode: It felt like…
• 33:11
  Sean Harklerode: there may have been some editorial decision, it was like, alright, we're gonna broaden this out. It's not as much just horror. We've got sci-fi, you've got Edison, you've got… or maybe that was in 4.
• 33:24
  Sean Harklerode: you've got… Like… almost fantasy, you know?
• 33:31
  Sean Harklerode: So it definitely felt like broadening out, and, you know, the art styles. It felt like… of… you know.
• 33:41
  Sean Harklerode: It was a hodgepodge.
• 33:43
  Sean Harklerode: You know?
• 33:45
  Sean Harklerode: just a collection of things, and I like that
• 33:48
  Sean Harklerode: it reminded me of Conan, in a way.
• 33:52
  Sean Harklerode: In that… Yeah.
• 33:53
  Sean Harklerode: Every story was a little different, and we picked up hex…
• 34:00
  Sean Harklerode: you know, we had some really young… we had, like, the really young Hex…
• 34:05
  Sean Harklerode: I don't remember the name of that story, but then we had Old Man Hex, you know, meeting his son.
• 34:12
  Sean Harklerode: You know, so it really put me in mind of how, you know.
• 34:17
  Sean Harklerode: Howard treated Conan, you know, he would just tell what story he wanted to tell at any time, and it could be King Conan, it could be Conan the Barbarian, it could, you know.
• 34:29
  Mark Pracht: phone and the freebooter, you know, yeah. Like, yeah, I think that it's… it is very, very, very,
• 34:38
  Mark Pracht: well, Pulp Fiction.
• 34:39
  Sean Harklerode: Alright.
• 34:40
  Mark Pracht: Like, I mean, like, it is like, okay, we're just gonna… whatever point in this man's life we want to talk about, we'll talk about. And… I… what I wonder about it is…
• 34:52
  Mark Pracht: like, I know… I do know, like, this series was very popular.
• 34:57
  Mark Pracht: for quite a while. And I… I wonder if… That sort of, like…
• 35:04
  Mark Pracht: you know, we were talking about the artists coming on board, you know, it did seem to become this thing where people were like, hey, I've got a free month, I'll do a… I'd love to do a Jonah Heck story. And then that had… that…
• 35:19
  Mark Pracht: as each new artist would come in, Palmiati and Gray, and adjusting to that artist, would maybe
• 35:25
  Mark Pracht: go a little more towards a fantastical thing, or a sci-fi thing, or, you know… because I do think that
• 35:37
  Mark Pracht: I think that Palmiati and Gray are the… the… the anchor that holds the series together.
• 35:44
  Mark Pracht: But I think that… The influx of the artists are… what…
• 35:51
  Mark Pracht: causes… like, I think that the artists are coming in and saying.
• 35:56
  Mark Pracht: I want to draw a Canadian winter, okay? We'll do that, we'll figure that out, you know?
• 36:02
  Mark Pracht: But… there's also the… like, I do think the Geordi Bernay stories are all…
• 36:11
  Mark Pracht: That feels like the regular issues, you know what I'm saying?
• 36:15
  Mark Pracht: He feels like the regular artist.
• 36:18
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 36:18
  Mark Pracht: con… and, and that,
• 36:22
  Mark Pracht: I don't, you know, and I don't know how fast he is, maybe they needed to bring in other people?
• 36:27
  Mark Pracht: Because he couldn't,
• 36:30
  Mark Pracht: Particularly. I mean, in some of… in a lot of ways, like, I love the Jordy Brene stuff. Like, the… the, the… the Bullfighter one…
• 36:40
  Mark Pracht: Fucking love that story.
• 36:43
  Mark Pracht: that was… I, like… .
• 36:47
  Sean Harklerode: You know, we were talking…
• 36:48
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, we're talking about, like, you know, stories you could adapt for the stage. Like, I… I almost think you could adapt this for the stage. I almost do. There would be some challenges, but I almost think you could. Like, I love…
• 37:05
  Mark Pracht: I love how simple some of these stories are, you know?
• 37:11
  Mark Pracht: And, yeah, I don't know. And there's, there's also… it's, it's also…
• 37:17
  Mark Pracht: in a lot… you know, you bring up Conan, it is very similar. The structure of these things is always very similar to Conan. It's like you're always sort of waiting for that moment when…
• 37:30
  Mark Pracht: Hex is just gonna, like…
• 37:33
  Mark Pracht: it's almost… it almost… there's almost always this slow burn up to when you know the violence is coming, you know, when Hex is finally gonna be like, alright.
• 37:42
  Mark Pracht: Fine.
• 37:44
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 37:48
  Mark Pracht: I'm a big fan of this book.
• 37:58
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, man…
• 38:00
  Mark Pracht: Dead air.
• 38:01
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I was just… It's been so long since I was there, apparently,
• 38:09
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if… if everybody else that I ever sent messages to on Twitter has left Twitter, or if…
• 38:18
  Tad Eggleston: they did something to their… their… Direct messages, because I know that I…
• 38:25
  Tad Eggleston: I almost had Jimmy on once.
• 38:28
  Tad Eggleston: And I was trying to figure out if I had an email address for him somewhere.
• 38:32
  Mark Pracht: Oh, I…
• 38:34
  Tad Eggleston: Cause then we wouldn't…
• 38:35
  Mark Pracht: I would love to talk to Jimmy… I know you would. …about how this series worked.
• 38:42
  Mark Pracht: And I would also love to talk to them about that new 52 switch and All-Star Western, you know.
• 38:51
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 38:52
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that part they may or may not want to talk about, because…
• 38:57
  Mark Pracht: I mean, yeah…
• 38:58
  Tad Eggleston: I… I… Particularly because, like, the most recent omnibus has both in it.
• 39:08
  Mark Pracht: I'm just looking at it. So the omnibus… you guys, I know you guys were telling me about the omnibus. It's Jonah Hex and All-Star Western, but it's branded as All-Star Western?
• 39:19
  Tad Eggleston: That's what it looks like.
• 39:22
  Mark Pracht: Let me, let me…
• 39:25
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it says Jonah Heck's All-Star Western.
• 39:30
  Mark Pracht: Weird.
• 39:32
  Mark Pracht: Weird.
• 39:33
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just… I'm literally at Palmiati's Instagram page right now, and I saw it. That's… that's how I…
• 39:40
  Tad Eggleston: Did he have a Kickstarter going, too?
• 39:46
  Mark Pracht: he's always got a Kickstarter going. I.
• 39:48
  Tad Eggleston: Is that an old one?
• 39:50
  Mark Pracht: I had a… I did one of his Kickstarters that was for a…
• 39:55
  Mark Pracht: It was a Western book, like, a female… Bounty hunter…
• 40:04
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, it was… I… I don't… I read it, and…
• 40:07
  Mark Pracht: I kind of read it and forgot it. Oh.
• 40:11
  Tad Eggleston: His most recent one, that looks like it just ended.
• 40:17
  Tad Eggleston: was with Justin Gray again.
• 40:20
  Tad Eggleston: But it was a, a deep sea.
• 40:24
  Tad Eggleston: Pulp science fiction.
• 40:29
  Mark Pracht: They're… I'm always, you know, like…
• 40:36
  Mark Pracht: Kickstarters are so hard for me, sometimes, because I'm like…
• 40:41
  Mark Pracht: Sometimes there's just too much of it.
• 40:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 40:45
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, I, I, like, I really admire, you know, Sean and my friend, Steven Prince, yeah.
• 40:53
  Mark Pracht: Monster Matador, you know, it's like, that's his thing.
• 40:57
  Mark Pracht: And he just kickstarts it.
• 41:00
  Mark Pracht: every time, gets new issues out, and it… it doesn't feel like… I don't feel like I'm inundated with it. It's not like…
• 41:06
  Mark Pracht: sometimes with these bigger creators, it feels like, okay, it's a new month, and I've got 6 new things that I want to try to, you know, kickstart, and it's like.
• 41:16
  Mark Pracht: Alright.
• 41:19
  Mark Pracht: It's too much. Feels too… it feels like too much to me, so…
• 41:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 41:24
  Mark Pracht: Anyway.
• 41:26
  Mark Pracht: But I… I also, Grant, understand that everybody's got to make a living, so, you know.
• 41:32
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, I mean, particularly going back to,
• 41:38
  Tad Eggleston: What we were saying about publishing, and the weird market, like.
• 41:44
  Tad Eggleston: The advantage of a Kickstarter is you get to know…
• 41:49
  Tad Eggleston: Before you're particularly deep into it,
• 41:58
  Tad Eggleston: Whether or not…
• 42:04
  Tad Eggleston: you're gonna make money.
• 42:07
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 42:08
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 42:09
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because rather than…
• 42:15
  Tad Eggleston: you know, making a comic and then trying to sell it, it's, okay, I'm gonna sell this comic, and if I manage to sell this comic, I'm gonna make this comic.
• 42:26
  Tad Eggleston: Which is kind of like what you do in publishing, you just don't have to deal with… the ever…
• 42:34
  Tad Eggleston: Changing corporate landscape of… of, comics Publishing.
• 42:43
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I… I don't know. I think that…
• 42:52
  Mark Pracht: This is a whole different conversation I don't really want to have right now.
• 42:55
  Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
• 42:56
  Mark Pracht: But anyway, I… Sorry, I've just been… I've been flipping through Bullets Don't Lie.
• 43:05
  Mark Pracht: And, that last story…
• 43:11
  Mark Pracht: Seven… Seven Graves 6 Feet Deep by Rafa Gares, or the… with… that's the artist.
• 43:17
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, yeah.
• 43:17
  Mark Pracht: That art was…
• 43:22
  Mark Pracht: gorgeous. It was almost a little too much. It almost felt like there was almost too much going on in each panel, like… it was one of those books where I was sort of like.
• 43:32
  Sean Harklerode: I think that's the last one I read, right? That's the last one in the issue… in 6.
• 43:37
  Mark Pracht: yeah, I think so.
• 43:42
  Mark Pracht: Yep, that's Volume 6. Bullets don't lie.
• 43:45
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, it's the one with the clan and all that stuff.
• 43:49
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, yeah, no, I totally remember. It was…
• 43:51
  Mark Pracht: it was…
• 43:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, like, I love… yeah, I love that kind of artwork. I mean, and… I'm trying to think here.
• 44:01
  Mark Pracht: thinking of other stories that I wanted to talk about, I think.
• 44:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, how about that Darwin story? Because that is…
• 44:17
  Tad Eggleston: one of the most… I mean, aside from it being in Canada,
• 44:26
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the… the him kind of taking a kid under his wing, and…
• 44:33
  Mark Pracht: And then not.
• 44:34
  Sean Harklerode: And then not…
• 44:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right, like… Like that.
• 44:42
  Tad Eggleston: That's just an… I mean, somehow, it feels right. It doesn't feel like… They… they failed the character.
• 44:54
  Mark Pracht: No.
• 44:54
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 44:56
  Tad Eggleston: But it's a… Very different.
• 45:02
  Tad Eggleston: Jonah Heck's story.
• 45:04
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 45:05
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 45:05
  Mark Pracht: Well, no, yeah.
• 45:07
  Mark Pracht: Go ahead.
• 45:08
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, it's like, every time you get to liking Hex, Right?
• 45:17
  Sean Harklerode: There's either something… with a…
• 45:22
  Sean Harklerode: You know, a sex worker, or… you know, this with the kid, where it's like, oh, he's a total asshole.
• 45:34
  Mark Pracht: Yep.
• 45:34
  Sean Harklerode: And it's like, oh, wait, no!
• 45:38
  Sean Harklerode: Although, you know, as the…
• 45:41
  Sean Harklerode: As the kid says, he taught him how to deal with wolves.
• 45:44
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 45:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 45:46
  Mark Pracht: Well, and the thing is, is like, that's also one of those things where you're like, wow, is that kid gonna come back?
• 45:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 45:53
  Mark Pracht: I, like, it, like… Yeah, it… it's so, like… Yeah, like, he's just so…
• 46:09
  Sean Harklerode: in spring.
• 46:10
  Mark Pracht: That story… that story in particular just felt so… there was so much cruelty in that story, which actually, with Darwin's…
• 46:18
  Mark Pracht: and I always sort of feel this way about Darwin. With Darwin's sort of, like, cartoony, you know, art style.
• 46:26
  Mark Pracht: That was weird.
• 46:30
  Mark Pracht: We're on Zoom, and I put my hand up, and it said, Put up a hand raise.
• 46:37
  Tad Eggleston: Weird. Yeah, it does that.
• 46:39
  Mark Pracht: That's fucking strange. I don't like that stuff. But.
• 46:45
  Tad Eggleston: Do it for thumbs up, too.
• 46:47
  Mark Pracht: That's crazy. But no, like, I always love…
• 46:51
  Mark Pracht: you know, because Darwin… when Darwin's own work, you know, could be really hard-edged, but then it had this sort of, like, vaguely kind of Bruce Timm-ish sort of…
• 47:01
  Mark Pracht: you know, cartoony style, and it was, like, so…
• 47:08
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, that story in particular, man, when the kid's father dies, like, that's just horrifying, and like…
• 47:17
  Mark Pracht: The whole thing is just… ugh.
• 47:20
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I loved every minute of it, but it was like, wow.
• 47:25
  Mark Pracht: That's… that story is just one gut punch after another, you know?
• 47:29
  Tad Eggleston: Well, similar to, we also met
• 47:33
  Tad Eggleston: Was it… was it in this reading, or was it in the part of the reading that I hadn't done yet, that we met Jonah's son?
• 47:41
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah.
• 47:42
  Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… Yeah…
• 47:52
  Mark Pracht: I, I love, I love, I don't know, Ed, I love how… his wife, lady, I don't know.
• 48:02
  Mark Pracht: Shows up every once in a while, just to… fleetingly.
• 48:07
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 48:10
  Mark Pracht: But yeah, no, like… And the way he… God, yes, the story with the son is fantastic.
• 48:18
  Mark Pracht: It's all… it's so good.
• 48:21
  Mark Pracht: It's also…
• 48:23
  Mark Pracht: I'm useless in this series, because all I do is sit here and say, it's so good. It's so good.
• 48:31
  Tad Eggleston: No, you're Chris Farley for this series.
• 48:35
  Mark Pracht: Remember when they threw you into an icy lake, and you were supposed to die, and then you didn't? You crawled out of the ice, and oh, it… that was awesome.
• 48:51
  Tad Eggleston: Excuse me.
• 48:51
  Mark Pracht: Using that example, that's the page that's opening.
• 48:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:58
  Mark Pracht: I… where was that Sun Story? Which one was that in?
• 49:02
  Mark Pracht: That, you know, that is the one thing about this book, is, like, it's hard to remember
• 49:07
  Mark Pracht: Where the stories are.
• 49:09
  Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah, cause they're…
• 49:10
  Mark Pracht: It's all so episodic, and that's not a criticism, that's just.
• 49:14
  Tad Eggleston: And all of it's so good.
• 49:16
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 49:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, it's not like, oh, remember that one good story? It's… They're… they're all good stories.
• 49:31
  Tad Eggleston: So… Yeah.
• 49:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 49:39
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I… Yeah, I mean, I…
• 49:44
  Mark Pracht: I…
• 49:45
  Tad Eggleston: And part of it is it's also our third… third…
• 49:48
  Tad Eggleston: time, and I have noticed that sometimes, like.
• 49:51
  Tad Eggleston: When we hit to the third time on anything, even when it's not episodic, is when it gets…
• 50:01
  Mark Pracht: Well, this is still just awesome. Yeah. Because it is.
• 50:06
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, what haven't I said?
• 50:11
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, like, in… I think it's in Volume 7, where…
• 50:23
  Mark Pracht: sorry, I just… where it's a Jordy Brene-drawn story, where we get to see a little bit of Jonah's mother.
• 50:33
  Mark Pracht: The one where he's got the gunfight, where he's got the steel balls on his arms?
• 50:42
  Mark Pracht: And they show him as a kid where his dad made him hold the two weighted things out.
• 50:47
  Mark Pracht: God, it… Like, I love… I love how they show us a little bit of…
• 50:54
  Mark Pracht: of Jonah's history every once in a while.
• 50:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 50:58
  Mark Pracht: And then tie it specifically into some…
• 51:03
  Tad Eggleston: We got a little bit more of… his Confederate past as well.
• 51:10
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 51:12
  Mark Pracht: That he wears the uniform as a brand.
• 51:15
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 51:16
  Mark Pracht: I think that, yeah.
• 51:26
  Mark Pracht: Although, you know…
• 51:31
  Mark Pracht: I… this is a much deeper story, but, like, I…
• 51:39
  Mark Pracht: Kiona doesn't strike me as a character that carries a lot of guilt about things.
• 51:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I… I go back and forth on that.
• 51:52
  Tad Eggleston: There are times where I don't feel like he carries a lot of guilt, and there are times where I think he's ALL guilt.
• 51:58
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, it's true.
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: And that's why it doesn't matter anymore.
• 52:03
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 52:03
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I mean, there's guilt, and then there's… Kind of feeling that you're… beyond repair.
• 52:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 52:13
  Sean Harklerode: I don't know that he feels guilty about it, but I think he feels the weight of the things he's done, and…
• 52:20
  Sean Harklerode: Has no hope for redemption.
• 52:24
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, he clearly has… he clearly…
• 52:30
  Mark Pracht: It feels no sense of any pending redemption.
• 52:35
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 52:36
  Mark Pracht: He knows he's going to hell, he knows he's gonna burn, he knows… and the thing is, is like… and in a way, his attitude towards everything is like, well, if I'm going, then anybody I think is worse than me just deserves to go there too.
• 52:50
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 52:51
  Mark Pracht: And… I don't know. I… it's… it's… it's… yeah, I, like…
• 52:57
  Mark Pracht: That's why, like, when I was doing that other podcast, and they asked me about that, that, that, like, I…
• 53:04
  Mark Pracht: That, that kind of…
• 53:06
  Mark Pracht: that question would be that thing that I would want to really talk about, like, what…
• 53:12
  Mark Pracht: what… what is the guilt? What, you know… clearly, he has no…
• 53:22
  Tad Eggleston: It's sort of, I mean, I think…
• 53:29
  Mark Pracht: The character itself doesn't have an ethos in terms of, like, political… you know.
• 53:35
  Tad Eggleston: No, but he's got a personal ethos, and I think there's, like, a level where he doesn't even like the fact that he…
• 53:43
  Tad Eggleston: killed… the, Apache that wanted him…
• 53:50
  Mark Pracht: Killed, because it was the son of… his father figure.
• 53:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, I think there's a level in which Jonah is… Jonah has become this, this…
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just gonna say it, Saint of Killers, since that's essentially what… what Ennis…
• 54:20
  Tad Eggleston: based the Saint of Killers on.
• 54:22
  Tad Eggleston: But I don't know that he really, like… Wants to be a killer.
• 54:30
  Tad Eggleston: I think there's a level in which that story where he tried to make a new life is who he…
• 54:39
  Tad Eggleston: wants to be.
• 54:43
  Tad Eggleston: But he always finds himself in these situations where he feels like what what he HAS to be.
• 54:56
  Tad Eggleston: is… At odds with that.
• 54:59
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, look, I think that,
• 55:08
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, I think…
• 55:13
  Mark Pracht: there… I think that… that story… that story where he tries to stop, where he tries to quit.
• 55:23
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, that's sort of a… that's sort of a, A real basic trope of…
• 55:33
  Mark Pracht: Pulp Fiction and Westerns, you know.
• 55:35
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 55:35
  Mark Pracht: You know, it's… it's sort of like…
• 55:41
  Mark Pracht: it's… it's… it's first blood. It's, you know, like, I just… I just wanna get something to eat. I just wanna… I just wanna pass through this town, you know, and… and you gotta push me. You gotta put… you know, like…
• 55:55
  Mark Pracht: and then all hell breaks loose. And,
• 56:01
  Mark Pracht: I think that those… it is…
• 56:05
  Mark Pracht: It's something that you always come to when you're dealing with characters that are…
• 56:12
  Mark Pracht: people of violence, you know? And… Jonah is defined
• 56:19
  Mark Pracht: He defines himself by violence, the world defines him by violence, the world insists that he is defined by violence in a lot of ways, you know?
• 56:29
  Mark Pracht: And…
• 56:34
  Mark Pracht: In a lot of ways, like.
• 56:40
  Mark Pracht: I think it's not…
• 56:42
  Mark Pracht: I think it's not a coincidence that that is the only story where we see that.
• 56:50
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I…
• 56:51
  Tad Eggleston: I also think it's not a coincidence that it didn't quite work, because I think one of the things that makes Jonah work
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: is that… You never quite know that that's what's going on.
• 57:07
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 57:08
  Tad Eggleston: you just kind of feel that that's going on. He doesn't take the joy in killing that they seem to want to put on him. Like, in some ways, he's like.
• 57:20
  Tad Eggleston: the best written Punisher.
• 57:23
  Tad Eggleston: you know…
• 57:24
  Tad Eggleston: And it makes me wonder if there have been runs on Jonah, like, there have been runs on Punisher, where they just completely lose that
• 57:35
  Tad Eggleston: thread of… This isn't actually something that he takes joy in.
• 57:42
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I can, I think… I think that there is, like, that's an interesting thing to ask, I mean, because I do think… I also think that the, the, the setting…
• 57:52
  Mark Pracht: changes that… You know?
• 57:55
  Mark Pracht: Right. In a world where Also,
• 58:01
  Mark Pracht: like, my biggest problem with the Punisher is that the Punisher… is actively
• 58:10
  Mark Pracht: because, like, the Punisher is, like, one of those characters that I… I cannot…
• 58:17
  Mark Pracht: I cannot abide that character, being… quote-unquote hero.
• 58:23
  Mark Pracht: Right? I think that that character is a villain. It was designed as a villain. It should always… that character should always be a villain.
• 58:31
  Mark Pracht: Like, it's a complicated villain. It's a villain that has… that we can be sympathetic about certain things, but I think that there's far too many people who get off on that idea of… of, I'm gonna go out and
• 58:48
  Mark Pracht: Put an end to this shit.
• 58:49
  Mark Pracht: Right. And I think that in a world that is full of… of… Daredevils and Spider-Mans.
• 59:01
  Mark Pracht: there is… That sort of mindset doesn't work for me.
• 59:08
  Mark Pracht: And it's part… it's part of why I really disliked the switch at All-Star Western, where they brought him
• 59:16
  Mark Pracht: first of all, they move him to Gotham City, and suddenly he's involved with, like, the Court of Owls, and there's this whole tie-in with the, you know, and I'm like.
• 59:25
  Mark Pracht: I like… I like these kind of characters in worlds where This is the world.
• 59:33
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 59:34
  Mark Pracht: Like, if you did… if you did a Punisher story where there were no superheroes, and it was just…
• 59:40
  Mark Pracht: rampant crime, I could probably start to go, like, okay, I understand this character, I understand what they're doing, and I understand what the intent here is.
• 59:53
  Mark Pracht: a bad man versus worse man, you know? It's the Elmore Leonard thing, and certainly that is what Hex.
• 1:00:00
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's… that's… that's generally when Punisher works best, is when…
• 1:00:05
  Mark Pracht: Absolutely. Absolutely.
• 1:00:08
  Tad Eggleston: run, Jason Aaron's run, and occasionally, like, Daredevil will pop up, but Daredevil pops up as, like, the, hey, Frank, there's a different way to do this.
• 1:00:17
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:18
  Mark Pracht: But, I mean…
• 1:00:19
  Tad Eggleston: I bring this up because Palmiati is writing Daredevil and Punisher right now.
• 1:00:25
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:00:26
  Mark Pracht: Well, and the thing is… Go ahead.
• 1:00:29
  Sean Harklerode: I've said it before, you know, to me, the Punisher works when you stick with the original origin.
• 1:00:35
  Sean Harklerode: And, you know, when we go back and make him already killing people in Nam.
• 1:00:41
  Sean Harklerode: You know, to me, that… that negates… the origin story.
• 1:00:46
  Sean Harklerode: You know, it makes him much… I feel like it does. I feel like he's a good man who goes bad.
• 1:00:53
  Sean Harklerode: Whereas…
• 1:00:55
  Tad Eggleston: Because the way I understand it, with the num, he was a…
• 1:01:00
  Tad Eggleston: Good man and cop who joined the…
• 1:01:04
  Tad Eggleston: army, and, like, the way Ennis writes all of the Nom stuff, like, had to deal with ridiculous…
• 1:01:15
  Mark Pracht: Well, I think, I think there's.
• 1:01:17
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, yeah, but then that… but then, alright, but then… so… And then came…
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: home and wanted to be a good man again, and…
• 1:01:25
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:01:28
  Mark Pracht: So what we're saying is it's exactly like Jonah Hex. No, I'm kidding.
• 1:01:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it has a lot of…
• 1:01:35
  Sean Harklerode: Sure.
• 1:01:36
  Mark Pracht: It's 100% true. Because, I mean…
• 1:01:38
  Tad Eggleston: In that, in that issue where we discover that, that, like, he wears the uniform as… as… a brand.
• 1:01:48
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:01:49
  Tad Eggleston: Like, you discover that, like, He… he joined…
• 1:01:56
  Tad Eggleston: the Southern cause pretty much exclusively because they saved him from slavery, and then when he realizes that, like, they're fighting
• 1:02:06
  Tad Eggleston: for slavery…
• 1:02:10
  Tad Eggleston: And this actually, I think, might be a little bit later. I think this is in the volume that I'm reading now, which is…
• 1:02:17
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Tad Eggleston: It becomes… Oh… wait a minute…
• 1:02:29
  Mark Pracht: Well, look, I think that, like, I think that the NAM stuff, like, I think that…
• 1:02:35
  Mark Pracht: I think there's ways that you could have told Frank Castle in Vietnam stories that could have been interesting and relevant to what happens to him. I think that…
• 1:02:45
  Mark Pracht: We have to be able to see that he is an exceptional soldier, right?
• 1:02:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:02:51
  Tad Eggleston: And this is also where I need to ask, because I am not a Punisher aficionado, I am a Garth Ennis aficionado, are there Punisher stories in Nam that are other than the Ennis ones?
• 1:03:03
  Mark Pracht: I think that the… the NAM book… in the 80s, didn't… Frank…
• 1:03:11
  Mark Pracht: Kind of pass through that book at some point or another?
• 1:03:16
  Sean Harklerode: That sounds right, but I don't know.
• 1:03:18
  Mark Pracht: Because then there was the Ennis book where he was basically, like, the Punisher in Vietnam, and I do take exception to that. I think that… I think that that does…
• 1:03:32
  Mark Pracht: break something.
• 1:03:36
  Mark Pracht: you know, I think that… Like, you can have him be…
• 1:03:44
  Mark Pracht: Like I said, I think that… I think that you could do a Vietnam story with Frank Castle, where he is a one-man army, and he is…
• 1:03:54
  Mark Pracht: doing it for some reason, save his unit, whatever, you know? And…
• 1:04:01
  Mark Pracht: even have, like, a thought balloon or a narration where he says, you know, I have to be careful because I could see a world where I would enjoy this.
• 1:04:09
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 1:04:11
  Mark Pracht: And, then leave it at that.
• 1:04:15
  Mark Pracht: Because I think that Sean's right. I think that the murder of his family has to be something
• 1:04:24
  Mark Pracht: That snaps him.
• 1:04:27
  Mark Pracht: It can't be something that's an excuse.
• 1:04:31
  Mark Pracht: You know?
• 1:04:32
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:04:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess I never stopped thinking of it as snapping him.
• 1:04:37
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, but I think that, like, I think to Sean's point, and Sean can correct me if I'm wrong, is that if he is this sort of psychotic murdering machine in Vietnam, then…
• 1:04:50
  Mark Pracht: What does that snap?
• 1:04:52
  Mark Pracht: you know.
• 1:04:53
  Mark Pracht: like, oh, it just makes him go back to this? Like, if that's the case, then you need to have the story where he comes home, and he's like, oh no, I was… it was wrong, and I shouldn't have done that, and I… but, you know, and instead, it's like,
• 1:05:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'd have to go find it, but I mean, there is a… there is a Punisher story where, like, having come home, there are times where, like, he sleeps in a tent in the yard because he's dealing with the PTSD and he doesn't want to take it out.
• 1:05:23
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, he does have that, I want to be this with my family, and I'm having trouble with that.
• 1:05:34
  Tad Eggleston: So… I don't know.
• 1:05:36
  Mark Pracht: I think… I… I…
• 1:05:39
  Mark Pracht: I've always been sort of a, like, and I'm speaking for Sean, and I shouldn't, but, you know, I've always been more fond of a cleaner sense. Like, if you want me to root for Frank Castle.
• 1:05:53
  Mark Pracht: then you've got to make him somebody that I want to root for.
• 1:05:56
  Mark Pracht: Right. And I think that part of the problem… and look, Garth Ennis is Garth Ennis, right? Garth Ennis has many things that are wonderful about him, and other things that I just can't…
• 1:06:09
  Mark Pracht: stomach.
• 1:06:10
  Mark Pracht: But… I think that…
• 1:06:20
  Mark Pracht: If you want to write Frank Castle as a hero, then you have to…
• 1:06:25
  Mark Pracht: Give me some reason to see… Something heroic in him.
• 1:06:31
  Mark Pracht: Right. And it's not… and I think that… I think that far too often.
• 1:06:36
  Mark Pracht: Okay, I hate to bring… I think far too often, people start, like, giving him speeches and stuff that are really just about, advocating against something that…
• 1:06:48
  Mark Pracht: People have put on that character, right?
• 1:06:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:06:51
  Mark Pracht: Like, I… I… I… I understand what this… I understand why you would want to write the speech where he's telling the cops that you should look up to Captain America, don't look up to me, you know, all of those things. But actually, and I will say this, I thought the scene in,
• 1:07:08
  Mark Pracht: Daredevil Born Again, where he was in the room with all the cops who have the Punisher tattoos on their hands and shit, and he's calling them clowns, was far more effective, because…
• 1:07:20
  Mark Pracht: it wasn't… It allowed him to be…
• 1:07:25
  Mark Pracht: just as crazy as y'all… it really is.
• 1:07:29
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:07:30
  Mark Pracht: I… and I'm… I'm kind of just rattling off shit now, and I shouldn't…
• 1:07:34
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, it's interesting, because I'm also… I'm trying to… I mean, I know you guys think that I'm often… completely off on tangents, but I am, in my head, synthesizing
• 1:07:48
  Tad Eggleston: Trying to figure out what I think of Jonah Hex.
• 1:07:52
  Mark Pracht: See, and I think…
• 1:07:54
  Tad Eggleston: because… There are similarities in the characters, and there are differences in the characters, and… and… .
• 1:08:05
  Mark Pracht: I tell you, I tell you… I tell you what the big difference is to me.
• 1:08:10
  Mark Pracht: and maybe disagree. I think that the fact there aren't
• 1:08:16
  Mark Pracht: 50 billion Jonah Hex t-shirts, and action figures, and
• 1:08:23
  Mark Pracht: you know, I think that the fact that Jonah Hex didn't become this thing that was a market.
• 1:08:29
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:08:29
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, you're not.
• 1:08:30
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 1:08:30
  Mark Pracht: that that… And also, because I think that Palmiati and Gray
• 1:08:36
  Mark Pracht: Don't concern themselves with whether he's a hero or not.
• 1:08:41
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:08:41
  Mark Pracht: they just write Jonah.
• 1:08:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's… that's how I feel about…
• 1:08:50
  Tad Eggleston: Really, Ennis and Clunan are the two people that I think have nailed The Punisher.
• 1:08:57
  Tad Eggleston: the best.
• 1:08:57
  Mark Pracht: And I… and I want to be clear, I think it's absolutely possible to write a really good Punisher story with the centers, the Punisher, and the thing. I just think…
• 1:09:07
  Mark Pracht: that I… I remember when Sean and I went to see Punisher Warzone.
• 1:09:15
  Mark Pracht: with Ray Stevenson playing the Punisher, and…
• 1:09:19
  Mark Pracht: that movie ended, and I think I turned to you, and I said, you know, that just made me want to see a Daredevil movie with the Punisher as the villain.
• 1:09:28
  Mark Pracht: And… And… because, like, at no point did… like, and I thought Ray Stevenson was actually…
• 1:09:37
  Mark Pracht: really good in that movie, yeah.
• 1:09:40
  Mark Pracht: But…
• 1:09:42
  Tad Eggleston: Was that the one with Travolta in it, too?
• 1:09:44
  Mark Pracht: No.
• 1:09:45
  Sean Harklerode: No, that's the one with Thomas Jane.
• 1:09:47
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:09:48
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:09:49
  Tad Eggleston: I think I've seen them both exactly once.
• 1:09:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:09:53
  Mark Pracht: That was the one with… I don't remember who played Jigsaw, but Jigsaw was the villain.
• 1:09:58
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:09:59
  Mark Pracht: Because they actually… he actually drops him into the… the glass grinding thing, and I mean, like…
• 1:10:06
  Mark Pracht: you know, in a lot of ways, who's the guy who's doing it on the Daredevil show now? .
• 1:10:14
  Sean Harklerode: Don Bernthal?
• 1:10:16
  Mark Pracht: Bernthal. Bernthal, you know, like…
• 1:10:20
  Mark Pracht: there's a number of times during that… during, like, watching that show, because, I mean, I do… I like John Bernthal a lot, and I like,
• 1:10:31
  Mark Pracht: and I like that show pretty well, but I think that they… there's a lot of trying to soften that character, you know?
• 1:10:39
  Mark Pracht: And… and I think that, in a way, you have to do that in sort of a… sort of a…
• 1:10:45
  Mark Pracht: Mass appeal kind of product, but…
• 1:10:48
  Mark Pracht: I… I don't know. Like, I have so many… it's funny, but I mean, like, it really does come down to this. I have so many problems with the Punisher as a character.
• 1:10:57
  Mark Pracht: And I have none with Jonah.
• 1:11:01
  Mark Pracht: And I don't know if that's the… if that's the setting, I don't know if that's the way that he sort of exists
• 1:11:07
  Mark Pracht: at least in this series, sort of outside of the mainstream DC universe, you know, they bring in the other Western characters. Like, and we've talked about that before, how, like, a lot of times, like, he meets these DC Western characters, and you're like, this should not work.
• 1:11:23
  Mark Pracht: In this book. But then it somehow does, you know?
• 1:11:26
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:11:27
  Mark Pracht: But… I don't know.
• 1:11:30
  Mark Pracht: All I can say is that I think that that may be the key with it, is I think that there are people who
• 1:11:36
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, I just don't read a lot of Punisher books.
• 1:11:41
  Mark Pracht: I've read some of the Ennis stuff, and I agree with you, like, he does… he probably handles Frank better than a lot of people, but…
• 1:11:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, Ennis is definitely the one that I've read and re-read.
• 1:11:52
  Tad Eggleston: And… and particularly the Welcome Back Frank, that initial 12-issue series, is just…
• 1:11:58
  Sean Harklerode: Fantastic.
• 1:12:00
  Mark Pracht: And that was after…
• 1:12:01
  Tad Eggleston: There's a part of me that doesn't want to be laughing my ass off.
• 1:12:06
  Sean Harklerode: Because, like…
• 1:12:07
  Tad Eggleston: In part, because…
• 1:12:10
  Tad Eggleston: Ennis doesn't make him a hero. At no point am I truly rooting for Frank in that book. If anything, I'm rooting for the cops that are supposed to be getting him.
• 1:12:19
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I also understand that, oh, you're the… you're the two-person task force that is… is…
• 1:12:29
  Tad Eggleston: Set up to take down both the Punisher and the Nucci family.
• 1:12:34
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:35
  Mark Pracht: No, I think that, I mean, I just…
• 1:12:38
  Mark Pracht: But I do think, I think that… and part of my… part of my…
• 1:12:43
  Mark Pracht: Look, having come through the 90s, when the Punisher was just another dude with a bunch of pouches and a huge gun.
• 1:12:50
  Mark Pracht: Right. It, it… that really…
• 1:12:53
  Tad Eggleston: Which, honestly, is part of what turned me off of comics for a while.
• 1:12:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that was a period where I wasn't reading a lot of comics, and a large part of it was that the Punisher was the thing, and I didn't get why the Punisher was the thing.
• 1:13:08
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:13:09
  Tad Eggleston: I was just waiting for him to start shooting jaywalkers.
• 1:13:12
  Sean Harklerode: Well, that's… that's what gives us Azrael.
• 1:13:18
  Sean Harklerode: I wanna get to that.
• 1:13:19
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, you know.
• 1:13:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but initially, Asriel really turned me off because I was young enough and autistic enough that I didn't get the satire.
• 1:13:29
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, sure. I mean, I never really cared for it.
• 1:13:32
  Sean Harklerode: Even after I got it.
• 1:13:34
  Tad Eggleston: I, I don't…
• 1:13:35
  Mark Pracht: out.
• 1:13:35
  Tad Eggleston: love it now, but at least I understand the satire of what Denny O'Neil was doing with them.
• 1:13:41
  Mark Pracht: Sure. Look, look, there's, there is a, like, that whole period at DC,
• 1:13:49
  Mark Pracht: which was, you know, Nightfall, and and also the death of Superman. You know, it was like they were trying to make points.
• 1:13:59
  Mark Pracht: You know, and they all, you know, it's like, oh, you think that Batman should be this, or you think Superman should be this. Okay, we're gonna give that to you.
• 1:14:09
  Mark Pracht: And then we know you're just gonna be waiting for the real guy to come back.
• 1:14:13
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:14:14
  Mark Pracht: And… and the thing is, is, like.
• 1:14:19
  Mark Pracht: I know there's tons of people who are angry about the Death of Superman thing.
• 1:14:24
  Mark Pracht: You know, well, they just brought him back, and it's like, Did you…
• 1:14:28
  Tad Eggleston: You really thought…
• 1:14:29
  Mark Pracht: Gonna go bring them in.
• 1:14:30
  Tad Eggleston: Else was gonna happen?
• 1:14:33
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, like, it's not… like, I remember when those books were… when that book came out.
• 1:14:39
  Mark Pracht: like, I think it was Mike Carlin or somebody was like.
• 1:14:42
  Mark Pracht: Of course we're gonna bring him back.
• 1:14:44
  Mark Pracht: Like, it's Superman!
• 1:14:48
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, and, and, like, nobody ever reported on that, and, and, you know.
• 1:14:53
  Mark Pracht: I don't know. I think that…
• 1:14:56
  Mark Pracht: But I… I… I… there… that's not my… that's not my favorite era of DC, because everything felt so reactionary.
• 1:15:06
  Mark Pracht: everything felt like it was a response to what was going on at Image.
• 1:15:11
  Tad Eggleston: It was.
• 1:15:11
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, yeah, but it's also, like.
• 1:15:15
  Mark Pracht: Just tell better stories, you know?
• 1:15:18
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah.
• 1:15:18
  Mark Pracht: I mean…
• 1:15:20
  Tad Eggleston: would certainly be.
• 1:15:21
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that… and… Ideal. That's… that's all I'm saying, is that it's not… it's not my favorite era, but, like, it was totally a response to…
• 1:15:32
  Mark Pracht: image, and the Punisher, and all of that stuff, you know?
• 1:15:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  Mark Pracht: but… I do think… to bring it back to Jonah.
• 1:15:44
  Mark Pracht: Like, the key is… to… it's like I say,
• 1:15:51
  Mark Pracht: I think Paul Miotti and Gray write this in the best tradition of, like, Elmore Leonard, like I was saying, bad man versus worse men. They never concern themselves with whether Jonah is a hero or not.
• 1:16:04
  Mark Pracht: He's just Jonah.
• 1:16:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think…
• 1:16:08
  Mark Pracht: right, I think you're right about the Punisher, that he is best written in that manner.
• 1:16:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but I also, like, you brought up the t-shirts and stuff, and those are the real-world reasons why they're different. I think the in-universe reasons
• 1:16:22
  Tad Eggleston: That they're so different is… Jonah is never placed in a situation where he's expected to explain.
• 1:16:31
  Mark Pracht: -
• 1:16:31
  Tad Eggleston: And again, like, I've seen situations where Punisher gets put in that situation, he's like, yeah, no, I'm not explaining. And that's really the only way to do it, right? But when you've got Captain America trying to convince him, Frank, you're better than this…
• 1:16:51
  Mark Pracht: I mean, it could be… Probably not.
• 1:16:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it can work a little bit, but it… I mean, in some ways, I think Punisher being involved in
• 1:17:02
  Tad Eggleston: on the side of Captain America in Civil War is one of the things that…
• 1:17:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Punisher should have just sat that whole thing out.
• 1:17:11
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, like…
• 1:17:13
  Tad Eggleston: And not sat that whole thing out, as in somebody invited him to come, and he sat it out. Marvel should have known, we're just not… Punisher doesn't exist right now.
• 1:17:25
  Mark Pracht: Well, like… What… okay. Ugh, here comes… Sean's… Sean's like, I don't have anything to say about it.
• 1:17:36
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, Sean.
• 1:17:38
  Mark Pracht: I don't… I don't need to have a conversation. I think that…
• 1:17:41
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like I'm jumping into something that you guys have talked about ad nauseam already. Probably, but…
• 1:17:47
  Mark Pracht: I think that… And Sean's like, I'm done.
• 1:17:50
  Tad Eggleston: I'm done.
• 1:17:51
  Mark Pracht: I think… bet… The best way to handle a character Like this. That can have…
• 1:18:04
  Mark Pracht: All sorts of political ramifications in the real world, right?
• 1:18:09
  Mark Pracht: Because, like, Jonah does, too. I mean, like, he wears a Confederate outfit, there's, you know, there's… it's the West, it's, like, there's a lot of… there's a lot of racial issues, and Indian issues, and things like that.
• 1:18:21
  Mark Pracht: Is… but that they write him as completely apathetic to anything political.
• 1:18:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I think it'.
• 1:18:30
  Mark Pracht: All about whatever is happening in front of him.
• 1:18:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:18:34
  Mark Pracht: and the injustice that he perceives or doesn't perceive, or whether somebody has paid him to do something, or… and I think that…
• 1:18:46
  Mark Pracht: By writing the character in that manner, I never think about it.
• 1:18:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I also…
• 1:18:54
  Mark Pracht: It might… Float in my… psycho… you know, my psyche a little bit, but it's not…
• 1:19:02
  Mark Pracht: it makes everything subtextual, rather than trying to, you know… because then I think this is the… I think this is the problem that I have with the Punisher, is that now everybody tries to make that stuff textual, rather than subtextual, and that whether… no matter what your stance is on it.
• 1:19:20
  Mark Pracht: It just is like… the character.
• 1:19:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 1:19:23
  Mark Pracht: It really isn't strong enough to carry this, you know?
• 1:19:25
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to put it kind of in more psychological terms, I think Jonah is… Willfully unself-reflective.
• 1:19:36
  Tad Eggleston: And ignorant of his own motives.
• 1:19:39
  Tad Eggleston: And I think that, like, going back to running out on his kid, and the episode
• 1:19:45
  Tad Eggleston: Or the issue where the kid finds him, and then, like.
• 1:19:51
  Tad Eggleston: Teaching the kid to kill wolves, but then walking away from it.
• 1:19:55
  Mark Pracht: What are your opinion?
• 1:19:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right. In both of those situations, he saw, and for that matter, you know, this is why he gets close, but never really close to Tallulah. This is why, you know, any time
• 1:20:09
  Tad Eggleston: where somebody Might ask him either…
• 1:20:16
  Tad Eggleston: Literally, or just by their continued existence at his side.
• 1:20:21
  Tad Eggleston: to explain himself in any way, shape, or form is, like, THE ONLY thing that he's scared of.
• 1:20:29
  Tad Eggleston: the possibility that he could have to look at himself and go, why do I do this?
• 1:20:35
  Tad Eggleston: And this is, again, why the one story where he was trying not to didn't really work, because it came out of nowhere, we didn't know why he was trying not to. He didn't actually show any self-reflection or whatnot.
• 1:20:53
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 1:20:54
  Tad Eggleston: it… you didn't see the growth that got him there. You didn't see… you'd already met his son, so it's like, if you're doing this…
• 1:21:03
  Tad Eggleston: Is this before your son was born? Are we gonna…
• 1:21:06
  Tad Eggleston: Are you gonna meet your wife here, or is it even worse? This is after your son was born, and you're doing this, but you're doing it without your… your…
• 1:21:15
  Tad Eggleston: Kid? I mean, what… what?
• 1:21:18
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:21:19
  Mark Pracht: No, I hear what you're saying. I think… I don't know, I just… I think that…
• 1:21:33
  Tad Eggleston: But I also think that that's a way that character resonates, because, like, Being self-reflective is scary.
• 1:21:41
  Tad Eggleston: for that matter, those of us who are actually, like, healthy and truly self-reflective and work on making ourselves our best possible selves are often most aware of how scary it is. So, seeing the level at which
• 1:21:57
  Tad Eggleston: a person… Will go to avoid having…
• 1:22:04
  Tad Eggleston: To… to look at themselves in the mirror.
• 1:22:12
  Tad Eggleston: I don't want to say there's a comfort in it, but there's a draw to it.
• 1:22:15
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:22:17
  Tad Eggleston: There's a draw to it. It's like, oh, wait a minute. So, I could be blissfully unaware of all of the things that bring me pain, too. All I have to do is shoot a lot of people? Let me think… maybe.
• 1:22:31
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, that's clearly part of it. I mean, yeah, I don't know, I just think…
• 1:22:38
  Mark Pracht: I don't know.
• 1:22:39
  Sean Harklerode: I'm starting with the man in the mirror.
• 1:22:42
  Sean Harklerode: You're starting to laughing?
• 1:22:43
  Mark Pracht: sitting here.
• 1:22:44
  Sean Harklerode: Change his ways.
• 1:22:44
  Mark Pracht: ways.
• 1:22:46
  Mark Pracht: Hey man, no message could have been any clearer.
• 1:22:50
  Sean Harklerode: work.
• 1:22:51
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, but I mean, look, if you look like… if you… look, if you look like Jonah Hex, you don't want to spend a lot of time with him here.
• 1:22:58
  Tad Eggleston: also true.
• 1:23:01
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, really, if you just turn your head a little bit, it wouldn't be so bad.
• 1:23:07
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:23:08
  Mark Pracht: You, I do.
• 1:23:10
  Mark Pracht: I, I…
• 1:23:10
  Tad Eggleston: Turn your head a little bit, then you got that rugged Eastwood thing going.
• 1:23:15
  Mark Pracht: Well, I… actually, that… that is actually one of my…
• 1:23:18
  Sean Harklerode: I can't eat soup.
• 1:23:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he could, but it'd be kind of entertaining.
• 1:23:25
  Mark Pracht: You want some soup?
• 1:23:27
  Sean Harklerode: He's gotta lean his head over.
• 1:23:29
  Tad Eggleston: Now, now, now we gotta, we gotta ask somebody to do us a Jonah Hex eating soup.
• 1:23:38
  Tad Eggleston: Pit up.
• 1:23:43
  Mark Pracht: Now, I, you know, I… I think that… it's funny, Sean brought that up, you know, that… that there is that sort of two-faced element to it.
• 1:23:51
  Mark Pracht: And… but I think it's… like, I am… I'm always struck when we get the, the right profile.
• 1:24:02
  Mark Pracht: of Jonah, and how… Like, universally, all of these artists, when you see his right profile.
• 1:24:11
  Mark Pracht: it's… he's just a fucking handsome man, you know? You can… and then…
• 1:24:18
  Mark Pracht: You know, he turns to the left profile, and it's like, oh… You know,
• 1:24:27
  Mark Pracht: It, it's, I don't know, there's something, you know, like, I don't know.
• 1:24:34
  Mark Pracht: And then, you know, the other thing is, is, like, I was thinking the other day about the amount of damage that this guy takes in these books.
• 1:24:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
• 1:24:43
  Mark Pracht: The Sawbone story?
• 1:24:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 1:24:48
  Mark Pracht: Where the dude, like, cuts off his toes, and you're like, how does he even walk now? It's like, just…
• 1:24:55
  Mark Pracht: sheer cussedness keeps him from having a limp, you know? It's like, okay.
• 1:25:01
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like.
• 1:25:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that sounds about right.
• 1:25:03
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, like, it's… it's… it's… but I mean, it's true, like, that is sort of, like, that is… it's sort of like, you know, when people say that Batman's superpower is his anger, which I don't necessarily think is true, but, like, if you really wanna… if you really have to assign a superpower to Jonah Hex, it's sheer…
• 1:25:23
  Mark Pracht: cussedness, you know?
• 1:25:26
  Mark Pracht: just, like, and that's the word I'd use, because it's a Western. You know, it's just like, I know, I'm not doing that. I'm not…
• 1:25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's just… I mean, it's also so much more than, like, gumption.
• 1:25:39
  Tad Eggleston: Or, or grit.
• 1:25:40
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:25:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, among other things, like.
• 1:25:45
  Mark Pracht: Well, gumption and grit have some sort of positive image. Right. That's my point. Cussiveness is just like.
• 1:25:52
  Mark Pracht: I'm too angry to die.
• 1:25:54
  Tad Eggleston: Like, with Batman?
• 1:25:57
  Tad Eggleston: You sometimes feel like he's willing the pain away.
• 1:26:00
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 1:26:02
  Tad Eggleston: with Jonah Hex, I don't think that he doesn't feel it.
• 1:26:08
  Tad Eggleston: I think he's in just ridiculous amounts of pain, and he doesn't fucking care.
• 1:26:15
  Mark Pracht: And it just didn't…
• 1:26:16
  Sean Harklerode: Huh.
• 1:26:18
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, you look at my face, you think that that doesn't hurt?
• 1:26:25
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, like, it's like, you know, like, I had a red-hot tomahawk shoved into my face. Do you think cutting off my toes is gonna…
• 1:26:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:26:37
  Tad Eggleston: It hurts! So, what's your point? Let me stick you with this.
• 1:26:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:26:43
  Mark Pracht: No, I think that… I don't know, I think…
• 1:26:46
  Mark Pracht: But, you know, that… but you're right, because, like, people say that Batman's, you know, his anger is his superpower. No, no, no. It's his intellect.
• 1:26:58
  Tad Eggleston: 100%.
• 1:26:59
  Mark Pracht: Because it is exactly what you're saying. He's… he's willing away the pain, he's… It's like, right now, I think it's in Detective, they have the… he's… he's been in…
• 1:27:11
  Mark Pracht: He's got some… he's been infected with some sort of, like, virus or something like that, and they actually say that his skull is fractured, and it's being held together by his cowl.
• 1:27:23
  Sean Harklerode: -Oh.
• 1:27:24
  Mark Pracht: And… and he's just like, I'm not…
• 1:27:28
  Mark Pracht: And it's… but the whole story is written from that perspective. He's just…
• 1:27:33
  Mark Pracht: Willing the pain away. And it's like…
• 1:27:36
  Sean Harklerode: do, Matt Fraction run?
• 1:27:37
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I think.
• 1:27:38
  Tad Eggleston: No, that… no, no, no, that fraction…
• 1:27:40
  Mark Pracht: actions on…
• 1:27:41
  Tad Eggleston: Batman. Batman.
• 1:27:42
  Sean Harklerode: I can't believe it.
• 1:27:43
  Mark Pracht: who's writing, but it's a detective thing. It's somebody has taken the scarecrow formula and turned it into a thing that removes all fear.
• 1:27:54
  Mark Pracht: So, like…
• 1:27:57
  Mark Pracht: there's been this… like, they had this rash of all the scientists that were working on it, like, one lady jumped out of an airplane, she went skydiving, and just didn't put on her parachute.
• 1:28:07
  Mark Pracht: Because she wasn't afraid.
• 1:28:09
  Mark Pracht: You know, it's like…
• 1:28:10
  Mark Pracht: And now he's got, like, 22 hours before he becomes, before he has to isolate himself because he becomes,
• 1:28:20
  Mark Pracht: contagious with this thing. I… it… it's… it's fascinating. I…
• 1:28:27
  Mark Pracht: I've had so many people be like, oh, you should totally read Absolute Batman, and I'm like, I don't have any interest in that.
• 1:28:35
  Mark Pracht: And plus.
• 1:28:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've read enough to know that it's good.
• 1:28:39
  Tad Eggleston: But… it's a different Batman.
• 1:28:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I… I don't…
• 1:28:43
  Tad Eggleston: universe.
• 1:28:44
  Mark Pracht: I don't… I don't… like, maybe it's… it's my own.
• 1:28:49
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it is Tinyan.
• 1:28:50
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I… I don't… I don't care.
• 1:28:53
  Tad Eggleston: active again.
• 1:28:54
  Mark Pracht: I don't…
• 1:28:54
  Tad Eggleston: be tight.
• 1:28:55
  Mark Pracht: No, I don't think it did. It reads, like, a whole new point of view on the whole thing, quite honestly.
• 1:29:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:29:02
  Tad Eggleston: That's cause I'm at the wrong end of the run here.
• 1:29:06
  Mark Pracht: And I… look, I only read Batman and Detective. I… all of the ancillary stuff, I just ignore. I have no idea what's going on in DCKO or any of that shit.
• 1:29:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm not doing DCKO. But I… I'm… I'm weird, is I, like…
• 1:29:24
  Tad Eggleston: try not to read Batman and Detective, except in collected runs, and only read Batman in, like, the miniseries that looks like it will be good most of the time.
• 1:29:37
  Tad Eggleston: Because I just don't like Batman enough to wanna always have two to four Batman books a month, a month.
• 1:29:45
  Sean Harklerode: I, I, I, you know… That, to me, that's… that's my problem.
• 1:29:50
  Tad Eggleston: It's Tom Taylor, right now, with Michael Juggin.
• 1:29:53
  Sean Harklerode: There's… there's just too much. I'd like to… I'd like to be able to read one Batman book a month.
• 1:29:59
  Sean Harklerode: I'd like to be able to read one Superman. I mean, I actually get a few of the Superman books, but… Right.
• 1:30:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, no, right now, I'm doing just the Batman fractions.
• 1:30:12
  Sean Harklerode: I've been gone from Batman for so long, although I have… I did just subscribe to the… to Fraction, just because I like Fraction.
• 1:30:20
  Mark Pracht: That… I would say, like, right now…
• 1:30:22
  Sean Harklerode: back in, because it's like Spider-Man. Oh my gosh, the Spider-Man continuity is…
• 1:30:28
  Mark Pracht: I… like, you know, this is my old man rant. It's like, if… like, and I've told you guys this, like, I love Miles Morales. I think Miles Morales is a fucking amazing character. I really wish Miles Morales was in his own universe.
• 1:30:44
  Mark Pracht: You know? Yeah. Where he is THE Spider-Man, because, like, I… I don't…
• 1:30:50
  Tad Eggleston: I'd like it better that way.
• 1:30:52
  Mark Pracht: I think… I thought it was more resonant.
• 1:30:54
  Tad Eggleston: Of course, I loved the… I loved the… the Ultimate Universe, period. I was kind of sad when they killed it.
• 1:31:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I know, I mean, like, and, you know, like, that's something…
• 1:31:06
  Mark Pracht: if I ever had the chance to say that to Michael or Brian on our little thing, I would say that. I'd say that that was the greatest thing ever.
• 1:31:15
  Mark Pracht: that whole run, from Peter into Miles, all the way to the end, everything that you wrote was great. That is my favorite Spider-Man run, period, is the…
• 1:31:24
  Tad Eggleston: Period.
• 1:31:25
  Tad Eggleston: Ultimate Spider-Man.
• 1:31:27
  Tad Eggleston: Through the end of… Ultimate End.
• 1:31:30
  Mark Pracht: But this is what I'm gonna say. I don't need Ben Reilly, I don't need that, rec Rupp…
• 1:31:38
  Mark Pracht: thing. I don't need Mary Jane to be Venom. I don't need… like, why… I don't need there to be, like, 50 different goblins? I don't… like… like…
• 1:31:49
  Mark Pracht: I feel like… Instead of thinking of a solid story.
• 1:31:55
  Mark Pracht: to tie this into Jonah Hex is, like, that idea of, like, look, you can come up with any different number of stories that work as long as your central character is solid, right? You can put Peter Parker into any number of things. You don't need to just keep coming up with new shit, right? And.
• 1:32:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I think what happens is it'll work really well once, and then everybody wants to…
• 1:32:21
  Mark Pracht: And then you're stuck with it, right?
• 1:32:24
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:32:25
  Mark Pracht: you know, like… and I, I remember, I remember…
• 1:32:30
  Mark Pracht: when they brought Miles over to the mainstream Marvel universe, and I was like, this is such a mistake.
• 1:32:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:32:36
  Mark Pracht: like, this is gonna actually weaken the character, and I think it has.
• 1:32:42
  Mark Pracht: I mean, I think the character's still strong, but I mean, I just think that, like, I stopped reading it, because it was just like, I don't…
• 1:32:50
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't stopped reading it, but I have a tendency to have it pile up and read it in…
• 1:32:55
  Tad Eggleston: Binges rather than…
• 1:32:58
  Mark Pracht: And, you know, and I… the people got angry with me, and they were like, well, the book wouldn't exist if they didn't bring them into the mainstream universe. And I'm like, that… that's… that's nuts.
• 1:33:06
  Mark Pracht: The book exists because it's sold well.
• 1:33:09
  Mark Pracht: And you could have left him as an alternate, you know.
• 1:33:12
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, the multiverse?
• 1:33:14
  Mark Pracht: You know, like, everybody wants multiverse shit.
• 1:33:17
  Mark Pracht: There it is. There's a solid multiverse book there that you could have continued doing, and you could have had crossovers every once in a while. I like the two Spider-Man crossovers that they did.
• 1:33:28
  Mark Pracht: I, I thought that those were really fun. I also loved that that was how Miles got web shooters, you know? You know, was that Peter built them for him and gave it to him. And, and,
• 1:33:40
  Mark Pracht: I… you… all that stuff is, like, people…
• 1:33:45
  Mark Pracht: they start… like, I just think that they're…
• 1:33:50
  Mark Pracht: I was having a conversation, like, somebody…
• 1:33:54
  Mark Pracht: That whole thing came out about Tim Seeley, and the Magic series that he did, and the death threats he started getting, and he had to leave Twitter. Did you see all this?
• 1:34:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I… I mean, I knew that he'd left Twitter, but I didn't know… Never got into the details.
• 1:34:08
  Mark Pracht: Apparently, apparently he wrote some, he wrote some one-off or two-issue, magic, you know, Illumiana…
• 1:34:17
  Mark Pracht: Rasputin, right.
• 1:34:19
  Mark Pracht: story, and had something, you know, like, had her go back into hell and be subjected, you know, and people started, like, saying, it's alright, we're gonna kill you, blah blah blah blah, you know, and I'm like.
• 1:34:32
  Mark Pracht: And,
• 1:34:34
  Mark Pracht: you know, it was just, I was sitting there, and I was talking to somebody online, and I was just like, you know, I understand…
• 1:34:41
  Mark Pracht: I understand having a conversation about a storyline.
• 1:34:46
  Mark Pracht: I understand not liking a storyline, I understand having a character you feel connection to, and that you don't like the choices that a story… a character made, but it feels like there is this…
• 1:34:59
  Mark Pracht: terminally online Thing that is just rampant now.
• 1:35:07
  Mark Pracht: Where people can't seem to understand that it's just a fucking story, right?
• 1:35:12
  Mark Pracht: Right. And it's like… And I know that that's always been there, But now…
• 1:35:21
  Tad Eggleston: I think… I think there's also an element where… Certainly during my lifetime,
• 1:35:33
  Tad Eggleston: We've become a lot more accepting of a lot of violence that…
• 1:35:39
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, I think, but I think…
• 1:35:40
  Tad Eggleston: Understand.
• 1:35:41
  Sean Harklerode: The hero of misery.
• 1:35:46
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know how… how we just accept it.
• 1:35:49
  Sean Harklerode: Well…
• 1:35:50
  Mark Pracht: Well, look, and it's… but it's… but it's that… it's…
• 1:35:54
  Mark Pracht: It really is, like, I was listening to something, and they were talking about
• 1:36:00
  Mark Pracht: Not to get… not to… to open a can of worms, but they were talking about a lot of this, shooters and stuff, and that they're almost… like, that they come from all political factions, but they're all terminally online.
• 1:36:16
  Sean Harklerode: Right. That they're all living in a world.
• 1:36:18
  Mark Pracht: where…
• 1:36:20
  Mark Pracht: You can throw around things and threats and, you know, say shit to people that you would never say to them in person.
• 1:36:30
  Mark Pracht: And that that… that…
• 1:36:32
  Tad Eggleston: They're also… they also tend to be gun people long before they do things with guns.
• 1:36:40
  Tad Eggleston: If that makes sense. There are very few of them that go out and buy guns to go…
• 1:36:48
  Tad Eggleston: take their actions. They already have them.
• 1:36:51
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 1:36:52
  Tad Eggleston: So it's already on the table for them.
• 1:36:55
  Mark Pracht: But… but there's also… there's also…
• 1:36:58
  Mark Pracht: very few people who have guns who go out and just start randomly shooting people. No, I understand that, but…
• 1:37:05
  Mark Pracht: What I'm saying is that there's… that these things… these things happen in cycles, and these things, like, that's… that to me is like… like, obviously gun control is an issue that we need to address, but it's also that there's these worlds, and that, like, we get into this… we get into the world of the internet, right?
• 1:37:24
  Mark Pracht: where you can find your group, and you can find support, and you can find… and all of that is wonderful, right? But it also starts to…
• 1:37:35
  Mark Pracht: warp into this thing that warps sensibly online. This researcher was talking about that, and he kept using that phrase, so that's why I'm using it.
• 1:37:45
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I understand.
• 1:37:46
  Mark Pracht: I pretend… pretend that… that, like, you become…
• 1:37:50
  Mark Pracht: Inundated with something that is fundamentally not real, right?
• 1:37:57
  Mark Pracht: And that that… and that, that is…
• 1:38:04
  Mark Pracht: Warping the sensibilities of people who… who are susceptible to it, right?
• 1:38:11
  Mark Pracht: I mean…
• 1:38:11
  Tad Eggleston: I can pull this to Jonah Hex, because, I mean, one of the last times…
• 1:38:17
  Mark Pracht: she's due.
• 1:38:18
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, no. One of the last times we saw this sort of…
• 1:38:24
  Tad Eggleston: And obviously on a smaller scale, in large part because we were a much smaller nation.
• 1:38:29
  Tad Eggleston: Was the Old West, because the level of… Propaganda in…
• 1:38:41
  Tad Eggleston: particularly Southern newspapers, but also most northern democratic newspapers.
• 1:38:49
  Tad Eggleston: in the pre and immediately post-Civil War era was ridiculous.
• 1:38:56
  Tad Eggleston: The idea of, of truth on,
• 1:39:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it was the… it was…
• 1:39:03
  Tad Eggleston: really, the last time in U.S. history where truth was as flexible as it is today.
• 1:39:10
  Tad Eggleston: And the West actually became significantly less civilized before it became more civilized, because it became
• 1:39:19
  Tad Eggleston: This place for the people who wanted to live like that, who believed that civilization had fallen apart, and it was every man for themselves and whatnot to go to.
• 1:39:31
  Tad Eggleston: And, like… Yeah.
• 1:39:37
  Tad Eggleston: you know, it's always a mixture of things. Like, the broken-down information is a big deal, but you also wind up needing to have…
• 1:39:51
  Tad Eggleston: things to feel strongly about. You need to have feelings of… Isolation or, or.
• 1:40:04
  Mark Pracht: Sean just left.
• 1:40:08
  Tad Eggleston: We pissed off Sean.
• 1:40:11
  Sean Harklerode: No, no, no.
• 1:40:14
  Mark Pracht: That's weird.
• 1:40:16
  Mark Pracht: I think that, there is this… like, I don't… I don't wanna… I think that…
• 1:40:22
  Mark Pracht: There is a cyclical nature to society that people…
• 1:40:26
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 1:40:27
  Mark Pracht: Who are in it never can see.
• 1:40:29
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 1:40:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, cause it seems to be about every 80 years or so, which is… A lifespan.
• 1:40:36
  Mark Pracht: I think it's… mmm, 60s, yes, you know, like,
• 1:40:42
  Mark Pracht: like, things… things happen all the time, and that I think that… and things that… I think that…
• 1:40:49
  Mark Pracht: As a society, we're always looking for very simple answers to
• 1:40:55
  Mark Pracht: to every question, right? And answers that…
• 1:40:59
  Mark Pracht: shore up our own point of view, right? Right. And that's… that's human. That is part of the human condition, that,
• 1:41:08
  Mark Pracht: And that, I think.
• 1:41:11
  Mark Pracht: that the reality of everything is usually far more complicated than we really want to grapple with. And, because then, if we grapple with the reality.
• 1:41:22
  Tad Eggleston: Unless we love comic books, we're all about complicated things and comics.
• 1:41:25
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, to tie this back into Jonah Hex, I think that
• 1:41:30
  Mark Pracht: what… what this book… I think what this book does is it often presents really complicated things.
• 1:41:37
  Mark Pracht: like.
• 1:41:39
  Tad Eggleston: I wasn't being facetious.
• 1:41:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah, no, no. I think that, well, I mean, you know, but also that novels do the same thing, and, and, you know, art does that. Good art. Absolutely.
• 1:41:51
  Tad Eggleston: easily.
• 1:41:52
  Mark Pracht: And I think that, you know, and I do think that there is pressure in certain ways to make,
• 1:42:00
  Mark Pracht: art feel streamlined to what your point of view is, rather than try to embrace complications. But, I mean, I think trying to tie this back into Jonah Hex is, I think, like, I think, too, there, there was that… there was the one story where there was the girl
• 1:42:19
  Mark Pracht: who's…
• 1:42:23
  Mark Pracht: Family was murdered, and then she wanted to kill the whole town.
• 1:42:28
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:42:30
  Mark Pracht: And then Jonah was like.
• 1:42:32
  Tad Eggleston: No, that wasn't the boy… it wasn't the girl, it was the boy.
• 1:42:36
  Tad Eggleston: And then he did, and then Jonah…
• 1:42:40
  Mark Pracht: came after him.
• 1:42:41
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:42:43
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and it's like, that's… that's the, you know, like, I think that that is… because, like.
• 1:42:51
  Mark Pracht: what was… what was great about that story is, like, all the way up, we understood his pain, we understood his anger, Jonah understood his pain, Jonah understood his anger, and then he just went too far. And it's like.
• 1:43:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:43:04
  Mark Pracht: I think that…
• 1:43:07
  Mark Pracht: there's, like, more storytelling like that is good for our society. And that's what I'm gonna say, because I have to get off now.
• 1:43:17
  Mark Pracht: Jonah Hex is good for our society.
• 1:43:21
  Tad Eggleston: Sounds good.
• 1:43:22
  Sean Harklerode: Yay!
• 1:43:24
  Tad Eggleston: For Mark Proff, for Sean Harkle Road, this has been the Pope Plotter on 22 Panels. We will see you after the next page.