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Milestone Book Club #43 - My Name is Holocaust · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Marcus: I'm… I'm all about focusing right now, so… Focus is…
• 0:04
  Tad Eggleston: Good! Focus is good, and we are recording, so we will focus on My Name is Holocaust here on the Milestone Book Club on 22 Panels. I'm joined by the brothers Anderson, no relation, and
• 0:17
  Tad Eggleston: I think the consensus among us right now is it's hot, which, if I… if I'm understanding
• 0:26
  Tad Eggleston: I'm understanding the… the…
• 0:28
  Tad Eggleston: the beginning of many of these episodes… or issues that say, this takes place before the long, hot summer. The hot is actually more appropriate for our next two months, but we'll start with Holocaust, who's pretty hot himself.
• 0:47
  Tad Eggleston: Anyway, so I guess we've got 3 hot months.
• 0:50
  Ted: Yeah, this is a story about a burning man, as we're told at the very beginning and the very end.
• 0:55
  Tad Eggleston: Not Burning Man.
• 0:56
  Ted: Not Burning Man, the festival, the event, no.
• 1:00
  Marcus: Also, also Black Facts, you know, Longhai Summer has historical precedent.
• 1:05
  Marcus: you know, just as an idea, and definitely dates back to some of the, you know, uprisings that have happened from continuous injustices. But also,
• 1:17
  Marcus: Famously, Chuck D of Public Enemy, you know…
• 1:22
  Marcus: said those words, too. So, yeah, so this is… so, it's no coincidence that that's the title of the upcoming… upcoming event.
• 1:29
  Ted: I had no idea. I did not…
• 1:32
  Ted: Damn, okay, yeah, I'm looking it up right now and realizing, oh, hell, yes, okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Good lord, yeah, 67, of course, there was all sorts of… Jesus, yeah. That's fascinating, I mean, yeah, wow, okay. That, I mean, it…
• 1:47
  Ted: Interesting, yeah.
• 1:50
  Ted: 65, yeah.
• 1:51
  Marcus: June.
• 1:51
  Ted: Watts was 65, okay, interesting.
• 1:53
  Marcus: Right.
• 1:54
  Ted: Damn, okay.
• 1:55
  Ted: Well, yeah, I mean, that's… I… having already… I mean, again, I think all of us have read ahead to some degree, or, well, we've already all read it, or… at least Marcus and I have, I guess? I don't know. But yeah, the long.
• 2:06
  Tad Eggleston: No, this is as far as I've gotten. I haven't, I haven't done… summer.
• 2:10
  Ted: But yeah, the Long Hot Summer is a major… it's… it's kind of the closing…
• 2:15
  Ted: of the Milestone universe? I mean, not… I mean, obviously not exactly, because there's been publications since, but… and it's not like it was intended to be the grand finale, but it kind of ended up being that, for better or for worse, so… it's… it was sort of their first…
• 2:32
  Ted: Actually, yeah, was it their first, like, actual event event? Because Worlds Collide was with DC.
• 2:38
  Marcus: was DC?
• 2:39
  Ted: Shadow, the Shadow Ward.
• 2:40
  Marcus: It's Shadow War. Shadow War.
• 2:42
  Ted: Shadow was the first real one, and then they did this. And this one is… yeah, Longhouse Summer will… will… will…
• 2:49
  Ted: I mean, we'll get there when we get there, but yeah, it's… it's… it kind of ends up being, unfortunately, for better or for worse, I guess, the grand finale of the whole Milestone universe, which…
• 2:59
  Marcus: Hmm.
• 2:59
  Ted: Yeah, I mean, there's positive.
• 3:02
  Tad Eggleston: Though, like, as we say that, I feel like I need to bring up something that I meant to bring up before we dove in, which is.
• 3:10
  Ted: Oh, yeah.
• 3:11
  Tad Eggleston: Which is static.
• 3:13
  Ted: The ongoing.
• 3:14
  Tad Eggleston: as an ongoing series coming up from Cody Zieglar.
• 3:18
  Ted: Yeah!
• 3:20
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 3:21
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 3:21
  Tad Eggleston: That was… that was cool news out…
• 3:24
  Marcus: Well, and also, I mean, always…
• 3:26
  Marcus: Yes, and shout out to Cody Ziegler, definitely. I always want to give…
• 3:31
  Marcus: Give props to the great Stephanie Williams, too, for her upcoming videos.
• 3:35
  Marcus: Cruz.
• 3:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yep, Vic, I was gonna get there.
• 3:38
  Marcus: Okay, no, I didn't mean to throw your thunder, but yeah.
• 3:40
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no! I share thunder. I like sharing thunder. I'm not Thor. I don't… I don't get… I don't get possessive of my thunder. I'm okay if Jane takes the hammer.
• 3:52
  Ted: Sometimes I wonder why I even share the thunder.
• 3:56
  Ted: Sorry, I had to… alright, never mind. I had no one alone.
• 4:00
  Ted: Anyway…
• 4:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, and was there a third?
• 4:04
  Marcus: Yes, Morgan Hampton is gonna be doing a Steel comic.
• 4:08
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, there we go. So, 3. We went from none to 3. Hopefully this,
• 4:19
  Tad Eggleston: Will not be a, a, a short.
• 4:22
  Marcus: Yeah, you gotta wait and see. I don't wanna be… I don't wanna be negative. I think… I think that the people made their voices heard, you know, and
• 4:32
  Marcus: And DC… DC heard. Now, you know, I…
• 4:37
  Marcus: I'm old enough to remember 2020, when a lot of promises were made, you know, and a lot of people realized that, hey, maybe Black people's lives do matter. And then a lot of organizations, were really dealing with it locally, who seem to be all about it. Mysteriously, not only
• 4:56
  Marcus: Walked back their commitments, but in some cases, just,
• 5:01
  Marcus: retreated into white supremacy, you know what I mean? So that being said, not to be negative. I hope that DC is like, wow, we need to, have a sustained
• 5:13
  Marcus: you know, commitment to diversifying our voices in multiple directions. I hope so. And that's my… that's my positive take on this. I hope DC
• 5:24
  Marcus: Is committing to take this beyond the news cycle.
• 5:28
  Tad Eggleston: That… that would be… Fantastic. I did… I did just jump up to the DC So White,
• 5:37
  Tad Eggleston: website, and
• 5:40
  Tad Eggleston: Right now, they're not saying anything, so I think they're taking the wait and see as well.
• 5:48
  Marcus: Got you.
• 5:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I don't disagree.
• 5:51
  Tad Eggleston: I don't disagree.
• 5:52
  Marcus: Here we go.
• 5:53
  Ted: It just happened. We gotta let it breathe for a sec.
• 5:56
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and…
• 5:57
  Marcus: Also, also, I feel like, you know.
• 6:01
  Marcus: It's like, it's not… it's not a big,
• 6:05
  Marcus: Stephanie Williams has just been, like, crushing it, like, kind of across the board. So, you know, I think that…
• 6:13
  Marcus: it's a no-brainer, you know, to get for a Vixen series, and I don't see something that she's wanted to do for a long time, you know what I mean? So I don't even know if I give DC as much credit. I have to wait to see if they go beyond somebody that's just knocking it out of the park consistently, and, you know, they…
• 6:33
  Marcus: We see other books and see them taking chances on things, you know, that they haven't previously.
• 6:40
  Ted: Yeah, it's… I mean, this is… this is a start. Let's see what happens. We'll evaluate and see…
• 6:46
  Ted: where we go from here, and how things shake out, but yeah, I… it's a promising start, so I am… yeah, I don't know. I'm reserving judgment, too, but I was.
• 6:56
  Tad Eggleston: It's good.
• 6:56
  Ted: Oh, hell yes, static, finally.
• 6:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's, it's something… Have they said?
• 6:59
  Ted: They said, like, how much it's… I mean, I'm assuming it's in the DC universe, but, like.
• 7:03
  Marcus: Yeah, I don't trust them. I don't… oh, oh, how much…
• 7:06
  Marcus: I thought you meant, like, how many issues.
• 7:07
  Ted: Oh, no, no, no, I just meant, like, I was curious if they'd said, like, is this gonna be about him, you know, joining the Titans or whatever?
• 7:13
  Marcus: Yeah, there's a few… that's a good point, because I feel like… because that is, to my understanding, is not the static…
• 7:20
  Marcus: of, you know, Milestone… the Milestone's Return universe.
• 7:24
  Ted: Yeah.
• 7:24
  Marcus: And I don't necessarily think that he's the static of the OG 90s Milestone universe either, because…
• 7:32
  Marcus: I don't know, like, you know, Dwayne McDuffie kind of put a bow on that universe, and we saw a static growing up.
• 7:40
  Marcus: Whoa.
• 7:41
  Ted: Yeah, and married, and with kids, and, like, I don't… I mean, I personally, this is a little bit more of a personal opinion than anything else, but I'm not a fan of, like, having to do a lot of shuffling of, like, oh, is he, you know, the static from our universe, who got brought… or from this universe, who got brought forward 20 years, or… I don't know. Like, I don't…
• 7:57
  Marcus: There's no uniquen!
• 7:58
  Ted: Yeah, make a regular, like, standard static, and just in the DC.
• 8:03
  Marcus: Well, yeah, because, I mean, you know, I mean, we know across media, right, whether you're talking about film, novels, comics, definitely, like, time travel alone.
• 8:16
  Marcus: Can get messy, but.
• 8:17
  Ted: Yeah, huh.
• 8:18
  Marcus: You know, multiple reality plotlines can really get messy, and they're…
• 8:24
  Ted: Yeah…
• 8:24
  Marcus: Look, I… I, for one, I was reserving judgment for my…
• 8:29
  Marcus: doomsday excitement. I did… I did get excited, you know, watching the trailer, and… but that being said, I also think about all the people I know who aren't as caught up
• 8:41
  Marcus: Oh, yeah. In the development of the MCU, and, like, there's so much… there is so much lore, just in that trailer alone, you know what I mean? Like, there's so much,
• 8:52
  Marcus: you, you know, well, this is the, you know, Professor X and Magneto of the Fox universe, which… and then… and not to be confused with the Professor X of, you know, that had his neck snapped.
• 9:04
  Marcus: Even though he still looks like Patrick Stewart. But my point is that, you know, this stuff does… it can… it can really…
• 9:13
  Marcus: It can be a bit much if you get too deep.
• 9:15
  Ted: Intimidating, yeah. I have not… yeah, I haven't been up on the Milestone… Milestone… I haven't been up on the Marvel The MCU since…
• 9:22
  Ted: jeez, I'm trying to remember the last movie I saw, I think it was…
• 9:25
  Ted: God, I haven't even watched since, like, I haven't even seen Guardians 3, like, I'm that… I'm way behind on everything, but also, like, there's a lot to catch up on, and I'm gonna do it eventually, but I… I just… it's…
• 9:36
  Marcus: Yeah, I mean, it'll be there.
• 9:37
  Ted: It'll be there. It'll be there. There's TV shows, there's everything, you know, I'll have… I do… I'm the kind of guy who I go to the wiki page that lists it all in chronological, like, release order, so I know that, like, oh, this thing comes before… I'm sorry, we're getting way off subject.
• 9:52
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do want to talk about this book.
• 9:55
  Ted: Yeah, it's… yeah, I have thoughts on it, but…
• 9:59
  Marcus: Yeah, I mean… I'm sorry.
• 10:02
  Tad Eggleston: Back to Holocaust.
• 10:03
  Ted: Yes. What's that?
• 10:05
  Tad Eggleston: Then back to Holocaust.
• 10:06
  Ted: Exactly! Yeah, so this was… I looked this up, by the way, it was 95, so this was just after… this started around or just after the, the Death Wish miniseries.
• 10:17
  Ted: I don't remember exactly where it fits in in the timeline of Shadow Cabinet and everything else, but it's sort of following on from… there was an issue.
• 10:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the next issue that we will read is Shadow Cabinet number 14.
• 10:33
  Ted: Gotcha. And there was an issue in there, I think we read, that was, like.
• 10:37
  Ted: just sort of checking in on Holocaust and the fact that it's… he's hanging out with Bad Betty in Tarmac, and they're just kind of doing stuff.
• 10:46
  Ted: I guess. And so, not much has changed since then, I guess, for this particular, status quo.
• 10:54
  Marcus: Yeah, so…
• 10:55
  Marcus: I would say, do we want to get into, like, just overall thoughts before we get into the…
• 11:01
  Marcus: You know, like, like, recapping?
• 11:04
  Ted: Yeah, I… I would. I mean, do you have some… do you wanna… do you wanna… do you wanna kick it off?
• 11:08
  Marcus: Yeah, so for me, I… I thought this was… was… was fascinating. I really enjoyed it. I… going in, I was like… because obviously.
• 11:17
  Marcus: Holocaust is…
• 11:19
  Marcus: much like his name, is really a character that's very easy to hate. It's like, you know what I mean? He's literally designed to be, like, the…
• 11:27
  Ted: The most dislikable guy.
• 11:29
  Marcus: Yeah, it's the antagonist that you hate. But that… so I was… I was… it's… it's an intriguing, like, proposition to even…
• 11:37
  Marcus: you know, give him a book. And we've talked about, like, with Death Wish,
• 11:43
  Marcus: As a character, where it's kind of like, this guy's out of his mind, and like…
• 11:49
  Marcus: he, I guess, is right sometimes in a broken clock, twice a day style, but, like, it's like… I thought they did interesting,
• 11:58
  Marcus: I want to say the right name, Blaustein,
• 12:01
  Ted: Maddie, blessing.
• 12:02
  Marcus: Okay, Maddie Blastkin is…
• 12:04
  Ted: That's not how she was credited at the time, but yeah.
• 12:06
  Marcus: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. It did a great job with taking, you know, a villain, but also, you know, finding a balance
• 12:15
  Marcus: Through,
• 12:17
  Marcus: just through overall storytelling, and I think did a good job, you know? And I say this book ended up being the same thing for me. I mean, I'm a big fan of Ivan Velez's writing, but…
• 12:31
  Marcus: I thought it was interesting, because it's like, I can't… I really can't stay in Holocaust, and then it's kind of like…
• 12:35
  Marcus: But it… similar… this is nothing like the Death Wish book, necessarily, but, like, similarly to how, like, I know… I think we talked about the Death Wish, how…
• 12:47
  Marcus: in order to get around the problem of centering a story from a really messed up character's perspective, they built an interesting, you know, cast around there, and, you know, interesting dynamics and, elements. And so…
• 13:03
  Marcus: Yeah, overall, just my big… my big thoughts before we really get into the details, I… I did enjoy this. It gave us… it gave us, definitely, background on how
• 13:16
  Marcus: you know, Holocaust got to be…
• 13:19
  Marcus: who he is, and as unlikable as he is, in a way that is… is understandable from, like, real life… real life dynamics that happen to people, you know what I mean? And…
• 13:31
  Marcus: So, in that sense, like, you know, but he was careful not to be like, oh, move…
• 13:38
  Ted: Uses everything.
• 13:38
  Marcus: yeah, this excuses it, and now you're supposed to like him. It's kind of like, you know…
• 13:44
  Marcus: a reason, but not an excuse. Yeah. So, anyway, I mean, my overall thoughts are, I did enjoy it, like, I definitely want to, you know, get into more detail, but overall, I did like it.
• 13:55
  Ted: I…
• 13:56
  Ted: I honestly… I really hate to be the negative guy then, because I really… this was just kind of a big wah to nothing for me. Like, again, I like Ivan Bliss, I like Tommy Lee Edwards, it's just that this, like.
• 14:08
  Ted: barely anything happens, and what we get about Holocaust as, like, a character was… felt really thin. Like…
• 14:17
  Ted: you know, we'll get into the specifics of it, but it's like, oh, he was abused as a kid, oh, he had a terrible upbringing, oh, he wants to be a big man in the coalition, which I did like that element of, but, like…
• 14:28
  Ted: there just was kind of nothing besides that. Like, he ends up more or less accomplishing all his goals in a way that isn't… it didn't particularly…
• 14:39
  Ted: You know, move me, or make me interested in him, or…
• 14:42
  Ted: really care about it, not even in the sense of hating him, it's just, like, I didn't really care, because, like, everything kind of just happened…
• 14:51
  Ted: In a way that felt very…
• 14:53
  Ted: I just… like, uninteresting is the only word I can give to it, and I feel really bad about saying that after you kind of talking about it, but it…
• 15:00
  Marcus: That's all, I mean…
• 15:01
  Ted: I mean, going back to what you said, actually, about,
• 15:05
  Ted: about, Maddie Bonsaiene's The Death Wish miniseries. Like, the thing with the Death Wish miniseries is that what made that… what I really liked about that series, and what I think was crucial… I mean, you said it, the supporting cast, because as much as Death Wish's name is on the front, like, it's the story of… I am blanking on her name, but the character.
• 15:22
  Marcus: Thomasina,
• 15:25
  Ted: No, no, no, the, the cop in, in, in Death Wish.
• 15:30
  Marcus: Oh, oh, and Deathwood,
• 15:31
  Ted: Bathwish, yes.
• 15:33
  Marcus: Also, Maddie, right? Or was it?
• 15:35
  Ted: Is it, Maddie? God, it might be…
• 15:37
  Marcus: I feel like that cop shared a name with Matthew. I could be wrong, but let's.
• 15:42
  Ted: So…
• 15:42
  Marcus: How do you collect them?
• 15:44
  Ted: Yeah, but, but, like, that's… that… it's her story more than anything else, and Deathwish is kind of there for the ride, but it's not his… he's… he's, you know…
• 15:55
  Marcus: Well, he's a… he's like a demon entity that haunts the book, almost, and even haunts our protagonist.
• 16:03
  Ted: Yeah.
• 16:03
  Marcus: Whoa.
• 16:05
  Ted: But it is her story instead.
• 16:06
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, definitely, I'm agreeing, I'm just saying, yeah.
• 16:09
  Ted: Yeah. Marissa, Marisa.
• 16:11
  Marcus: Marissa, that's what…
• 16:12
  Ted: But, like, her…
• 16:14
  Ted: But the fact that she's, you know, more or less the main character, as much as Death Witch, like, the weird… not the weird… like, the demon character who's haunting her, like, there wasn't an equivalent to that for this. Like, I felt like it should have been, you know, Bad Betty's book, in that sense, if that was gonna be the case, or Thomasina's, but neither of them had enough, sort of, screen time.
• 16:34
  Ted: or I felt like impact on the plots. Like, Thomas Cena has… the mayor has a…
• 16:39
  Ted: Has a big sort of revelatory moment and a connection.
• 16:42
  Marcus: I have to tell you, yeah, I mean, well, I got… I don't know, I gotta tell you, I respectfully disagree on that, because I feel like one of the things I was interested in, because we've seen Thomasina throughout the Milestone books that we've read, but just very briefly, and almost, like, just functionally as, like, a…
• 17:00
  Marcus: part of how the city works, right? And, like,
• 17:04
  Marcus: you know, and if I'm not… and you know what's crazy is I know…
• 17:08
  Marcus: in one of the many books that we've read in the Milestone universe, they actually did… I feel like this wasn't the first revelation of her being
• 17:19
  Marcus: His mom, right?
• 17:20
  Marcus: This, yeah, this…
• 17:21
  Ted: This book was the first one where it was revealed that she's Holocaust's mother.
• 17:25
  Marcus: Well, wait, there was… what am I thinking of? I know… there's a bit…
• 17:29
  Ted: in Icon, where she reveals that she was, like, that she fully knew that… she fully knew about, the quantum ju… the.
• 17:38
  Marcus: Oh! Yeah, that's the thing. I think there was a big revelation, but maybe that's what I was thinking of.
• 17:44
  Ted: Yeah, this is, like, it's… it was… it was one of the issues I had as a kid, so, like, I remember that moment very well, where, like, he comes in as Augustus Freeman, hands over the documents, and is like, hey, they're gonna get you for this. She's like, man, you don't know what you're getting.
• 17:56
  Marcus: Right.
• 17:56
  Ted: way too big, and then he puts on the mask, and she's like, oh my god, you're icon.
• 18:00
  Marcus: kind of pivotal, right, that was a pivotal moment in showing that, like, you know, she's willing to, you know, bend rules and everything. So, I mean, I guess where I was going with this is…
• 18:10
  Marcus: Alright, so first of all, and maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of,
• 18:15
  Marcus: you know, criminal of Ed Brubaker. Not saying… not comparing this book to Criminal, but to me, this is, like, a straight-up crime comic, and it's doing…
• 18:26
  Marcus: I think it's primarily concerned with that, and like, yes, the main, you know, criminal on the come-up in this book, it happens to be a man who
• 18:35
  Marcus: this living fire, you know what I mean?
• 18:38
  Ted: Yeah.
• 18:38
  Marcus: I… I guess what I was looking for out of this
• 18:42
  Marcus: was something different, and it's like… and sure, it's like, it doesn't… but I even said in what… in saying, like, what I… what I did enjoy about, like, the bit of backstory we get about him
• 18:56
  Marcus: Doesn't, like, you know, excuse it or even make you feel warm towards him, but it just… it helps you understand.
• 19:03
  Ted: Yeah.
• 19:04
  Marcus: I also,
• 19:06
  Marcus: I forget. Wait, I think there was something you said that was just… well, it doesn't matter, I mean, like, yeah, I guess we look at it differently, but
• 19:13
  Ted: Yeah, it's having different expectations. I mean, the thing is, is the most recent… like, I did actually end up rewatching a chunk of, the Penguin miniseries, the HBO series, Colin Farrell's.
• 19:26
  Ted: And I liked it fair. It's not amazingly fantastic, but it's a fun story, and I think it's well handled, and everyone in it is pretty good. And the thing about a lot of, like, crime stories like that, the stories where it's, you know, the protagonist is very much an open criminal, he, you know, commits awful acts, he does this, he does that,
• 19:45
  Ted: it's not like it has to have a moral at the end, but I do want there to be a sense of, like.
• 19:50
  Ted: Yeah, he's having to do horrible… he's having to do things even he doesn't want to do in order to achieve these goals. I mean, I'm not gonna spoil anything for Penguin, but, like, you can kind of guess, it fits a lot of standard crime tropes, where he has to murder this person that he doesn't want to, he has to betray this person that he doesn't want to, and…
• 20:08
  Ted: Holocaust just, like, has none of that. Like, he kind of just gets…
• 20:12
  Ted: everything he wants, and literally the only thing he gives up in the end is his name, which…
• 20:18
  Marcus: That's actually…
• 20:19
  Ted: Like, that…
• 20:20
  Marcus: 4 cigars.
• 20:20
  Ted: But that's…
• 20:21
  Marcus: More significant than… Then, that actually is a really significant thing. Like, I thought that was… writing choice.
• 20:30
  Ted: I, I, like, it doesn't… like, no one ever sort of calls him out on having the name Holocaust, and it's not like it's a personal… it's not like it meant something deep to him as a child, it just sort of is like, yeah, Holocaust, it's literally.
• 20:42
  Marcus: No, but I mean his name… I mean his name in the sense of, like…
• 20:47
  Ted: Well…
• 20:48
  Marcus: And, you know, making a name, literally making a name for himself, and the idea of, you know, your name ringing out, like, in that sense.
• 20:58
  Ted: That's fair, but.
• 20:58
  Marcus: But that's actually what… that's… they're not even… like, it's interesting because you could see where, like, I'd say from a, probably, company and writing perspective.
• 21:08
  Ted: Yes.
• 21:09
  Marcus: that…
• 21:09
  Ted: That's… but…
• 21:10
  Marcus: They're… they're doing two things.
• 21:12
  Ted: Right.
• 21:12
  Marcus: They're like, yeah, they're like, yo, this name is kind of messed up.
• 21:16
  Ted: Let's not call them Holocaust anymore.
• 21:18
  Marcus: Yeah, comparison.
• 21:19
  Ted: to not do that.
• 21:21
  Marcus: But at the same time, like, in-world… so that's the out-of-world reason, but in-world, like, it's very much in the text of them
• 21:31
  Marcus: posing that as a choice to him, you know, that,
• 21:37
  Marcus: And it's interesting, because they do it… they give him, like, a dual… dual suggestions of the sacrifice he can make at the end, and one is to give up Juniper.
• 21:48
  Marcus: Which that would have been the obvious, like, he's a bad guy, he doesn't care about people, he doesn't care about women, so the obvious choice would have been… the easy choice, as… from a writing perspective, would be, like, oh, I don't care about her, you can have her, you know what I mean? But, like.
• 22:05
  Ted: Yeah.
• 22:05
  Marcus: it's like, him giving up the name is a bigger thing. And so, like, to me, this is the classic case… it's not the exact same as the Penguin show, but in the Penguin Show, like, he won, right? He won, and he got what he…
• 22:19
  Ted: He wanted to get what he wants, but…
• 22:21
  Marcus: But how does he go out… how does he go out at the end of the show? Having a mother-boy dance with,
• 22:28
  Ted: Joe's mother in the room, and, like, his best friend dead, and yeah.
• 22:31
  Marcus: But that's the thing, like, Holocaust…
• 22:33
  Ted: didn't lose anything. Like, he… that's…
• 22:35
  Marcus: I… I actually… I differ. I think… I think that he has…
• 22:40
  Marcus: he's… the whole… the thing he lost is that he's as miserable, if not more, you know, at the end, than… than he had been. So it's the idea that, like, you could… you could be the big dog, you could,
• 22:55
  Marcus: you know, get onto the coalition, but, like, you are who you were when you got there, you know? So, I mean, to me, that's what it is, it's like… and at the end.
• 23:05
  Marcus: He does know that the mayor is his mom, you know?
• 23:09
  Ted: It does, but that also doesn't change very much. Like, that's the thing, is I don't feel as though… like, he still is just a dude who has bad dreams about his crappy childhood, and, like, it doesn't…
• 23:20
  Ted: the Holocaust at the end is, for me, not really fundamentally any different than the Holocaust at the end… did I say the end or the beginning? You know what I mean? Like, I don't feel like there's a whole lot of change to him in a way that would make it interesting. Like, even his relationship with Juniper, like, you know.
• 23:38
  Ted: there's a couple different routes I could see them taking. It's like, oh, maybe he ends up actually, sort of.
• 23:44
  Ted: forming a real relationship with Juniper. Maybe he realizes that she does have, you know, something in common with him, and he doesn't want to kill her for that reason. Maybe he ends up…
• 23:51
  Marcus: is, if… if he…
• 23:54
  Marcus: I don't… I don't think it would have been… with the character that they've established, I believe in humanity's ability to do better in most.
• 24:01
  Ted: Yeah.
• 24:02
  Marcus: The character that they've established I…
• 24:06
  Marcus: as I'm reading this, I was like, yeah, I don't…
• 24:09
  Marcus: I… not only did I not think that there would be any plausible ending where he comes out a better person, but I also realized as I read it, I didn't want that, because I don't think that would ring true.
• 24:22
  Ted: No, and I don't even think that's the best outcome. It's just, it's also, like, I wish… it feels like there should be something more.
• 24:29
  Marcus: Is some type of price?
• 24:31
  Ted: It's some type of real price that actually, like, yeah, something that really genuinely caused him to…
• 24:39
  Ted: you know, regret? Like, there's nothing…
• 24:42
  Ted: like, by the end of this, he's lost almost enough… like, from what I've read, from what I see, I don't see him losing much of anything except, oh, he has to be called a different name now, which… so? Like, I don't…
• 24:55
  Marcus: Okay.
• 24:56
  Ted: I don't get why that's a… it doesn't… it doesn't feel as though there's much of an actual loss to any of this in a way that.
• 25:02
  Marcus: Let me ask you this. Outside of maybe money and power, what did he have to lose?
• 25:11
  Ted: I mean, not respect, but fear. Like, that's… you know, the whole thing of it is that he's a guy who just wants people to be fear… to fear him, and he doesn't… and also, like.
• 25:20
  Ted: self. I mean, he, you know, he has these nightmares, he has this deeper trauma.
• 25:25
  Ted: But that doesn't really get addressed. No one, you know, helps him through it, he doesn't understand anything more about himself. He meets his real mother, his biological mother, but that…
• 25:36
  Marcus: And she has zero fear of him. She has zero fear.
• 25:39
  Ted: of him.
• 25:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm…
• 25:40
  Ted: have much of an actual relationship, like, that's…
• 25:42
  Tad Eggleston: Huh, I'm… I'm gonna jump in here.
• 25:45
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:46
  Ted: Yeah, yeah, please.
• 25:46
  Tad Eggleston: Because… I mostly agree with Marcus, but I'm gonna take a slightly different bent.
• 25:59
  Tad Eggleston: And this is where, Ted, maybe you know that this stuff didn't pan out, and that would obviously change. I don't look at this series as if it's supposed to be self-contained. This feels like…
• 26:13
  Marcus: Universal.
• 26:15
  Ted: Yeah.
• 26:16
  Tad Eggleston: It feels like a preamble to a new level.
• 26:19
  Tad Eggleston: Or, or a new… whatnot.
• 26:23
  Tad Eggleston: Holocaust, up until this point, is made out to be exclusively bad, and I feel like all through this, we see…
• 26:33
  Tad Eggleston: Nixon that armor.
• 26:36
  Marcus: Oh, really?
• 26:38
  Tad Eggleston: I do, like, like… I mean… He keeps telling…
• 26:47
  Marcus: Juniper?
• 26:48
  Tad Eggleston: Juniper to leave, but he doesn't make her. He doesn't actually hurt her.
• 26:54
  Tad Eggleston: There are flashbacks to what seems like a very tender time between them.
• 26:59
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 27:00
  Tad Eggleston: Like, it wasn't, like, it wasn't just a, oh, I banged your daughter the way he made it out in that opening scene, like, they had a relationship.
• 27:12
  Tad Eggleston: I think in giving up his name, he is giving up that fear.
• 27:20
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think that's why, like, like, when you've built up a name.
• 27:26
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 27:27
  Tad Eggleston: To be feared, to give it up, is… is to… to, like, you have to start over in terms of having… like, people aren't gonna…
• 27:37
  Tad Eggleston: like…
• 27:41
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 27:43
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to think of, like… you know, when Prince became the artist
• 27:50
  Tad Eggleston: Formerly known as, like, there was a period
• 27:55
  Tad Eggleston: Where he was more of a joke than a genius.
• 27:58
  Tad Eggleston: at least.
• 27:59
  Marcus: I guess it depends on which community you're from.
• 28:02
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, but I mean… I mean, to the people who… who weren't all… I mean, like, Holocaust is gonna continue having respect, and maybe even have greater respect among the people who are…
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: his backers.
• 28:18
  Tad Eggleston: So to speak.
• 28:20
  Marcus: Right.
• 28:21
  Marcus: No, but…
• 28:23
  Tad Eggleston: Pyre doesn't mean anything.
• 28:26
  Marcus: Right.
• 28:27
  Marcus: Well, then…
• 28:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, how many people know that Yousef Islam is out there performing Cat Stevens music?
• 28:38
  Tad Eggleston: You know, a name…
• 28:41
  Tad Eggleston: can be… and I wish I could come up with an example where it was more crime or power rather than music, but I don't… I don't know enough. The two athletes that came to mind, well, nobody's really afraid of… of Lue El Cinder or Cassius Clay. They made their names after they changed their names.
• 29:01
  Ted: I mean, these are all examples that are kind of interesting, but at the same time, I don't feel like we see…
• 29:06
  Ted: I don't know, I mean…
• 29:07
  Tad Eggleston: We certainly haven't yet. He gave up the name in… in the final…
• 29:12
  Ted: pages of the book, and it's like, but it's also like, we don't get in this book very much indication that the name is what people are afraid of.
• 29:20
  Marcus: No, alright, so, no, this is what I'm saying.
• 29:23
  Tad Eggleston: Name and reputation play together.
• 29:25
  Marcus: Yeah, also, also, for what it's worth, We, amongst ourselves, are…
• 29:32
  Marcus: Comic creators and podcasters are fans of comics.
• 29:36
  Marcus: This… we're not… We're not, like, hardcore criminals, we're not… not people whose…
• 29:46
  Marcus: you know, whose cultural cachet is built off of fear and rep and everything in that sense, right? So this is… so even in the examples we're giving.
• 29:57
  Marcus: even all those examples, they don't quite equate to the situation for Holocaust. And then on top of that, you know, if you really look at this final page where they're talking.
• 30:10
  Marcus: you know, he busts into Thomas Senior's… the mayor's, you know, office, and, he specifically tells her
• 30:21
  Marcus: that she owes him a name. Now, you think about, like, to me, like, there's a lot to that in the sense that, like.
• 30:29
  Marcus: alright, like, this is… he's a person where, like, abandonments and…
• 30:35
  Tad Eggleston: You abandoned me rather than naming me.
• 30:37
  Marcus: I had to give up a name.
• 30:38
  Tad Eggleston: to play by your rules.
• 30:40
  Marcus: So, the idea, like, he's… he's… his hands are on fire, he's… he's in an aggressive stance, but he's… if you… that's… that's to me, like…
• 30:51
  Marcus: somewhat submissive… submissive to her, in the sense… Yeah.
• 30:55
  Marcus: you know, while he's saying it in a demanding way, he's basically coming to her and requesting his new name, you know, like, which he wasn't given, you know, when he was born, at least not from her. And so, to me, it's like, this is…
• 31:13
  Marcus: what he's lost. Like, losing his name is, yes, there's a price in the streets that he paid for losing his name, but in addition to that, he's also…
• 31:23
  Marcus: It could be seen as he's crawling back to the mother that didn't want him.
• 31:29
  Tad Eggleston: for…
• 31:30
  Marcus: Or a name.
• 31:31
  Ted: Well, I mean, that's all… this… yeah, this all kind of squares as, like, stuff they could have done, but I just don't feel like we see any of that. Like, yeah, there's a potential sort.
• 31:38
  Tad Eggleston: And I… I… It's just…
• 31:41
  Ted: is one page, like, it's more just like…
• 31:44
  Ted: I feel like, genuinely, I feel like this is sort of a… just… it's about the execution for me, because, like, do a thing… have Thomas Cena reveal that at the beginning of the miniseries, or even, like, the middle. Like, have that be something that genuinely sort of torments him.
• 31:58
  Ted: for a good part of the series, rather than having it drop in the final issue pages before the end. Like, it's not revealed until that final issue, I think, that she's…
• 32:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, but it's revealed that his mom is still alive and not who he thought she was.
• 32:14
  Ted: there's the.
• 32:14
  Tad Eggleston: And he pretends that it doesn't matter.
• 32:16
  Ted: Yeah.
• 32:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's the thing, so much of this…
• 32:23
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna push back on that, because, I mean, one of the reasons that I love comics…
• 32:28
  Tad Eggleston: One of the reasons that I think that this works…
• 32:32
  Tad Eggleston: Is you have to read in to the gutters.
• 32:36
  Tad Eggleston: You have to look between.
• 32:39
  Tad Eggleston: You know, he's putting up a front, but we're also seeing flashbacks to a different person. We're seeing actions that don't quite match his words.
• 32:52
  Ted: Yeah.
• 32:52
  Tad Eggleston: You know, he doesn't… I mean, he talks about he could kill his mom right there, but he doesn't.
• 32:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right. He talks about… talks a huge game with… and I keep forgetting her name.
• 33:06
  Tad Eggleston: I'm terrible with names. What's…
• 33:08
  Marcus: Juniper?
• 33:10
  Tad Eggleston: Juniper. He talks about all sorts of horrible stuff with Juniper. He doesn't follow through on any of it.
• 33:17
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, this is not a guy who's known for not following through.
• 33:23
  Tad Eggleston: If anything, like, he takes everything to the nth degree.
• 33:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know, oh, you looked at me funny, let me burn you to death!
• 33:35
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like throughout this entire thing, he's, soul-searching, but in a way that…
• 33:43
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't supposed to be easy to see, because he would never in a million years admit that that's what he's doing.
• 33:53
  Ted: Yes, I just…
• 33:54
  Tad Eggleston: And for me, I think, I think that the… is it Thomasina? Thing actually…
• 34:01
  Tad Eggleston: What? Oh, not the mayor,
• 34:03
  Ted: Juniper.
• 34:04
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, who's the one that's the… Betty.
• 34:09
  Tad Eggleston: Thing also plays into this, because all she sees is this monster, and she just wants to take him out.
• 34:16
  Marcus: Right.
• 34:16
  Tad Eggleston: But… but the shadow cap…
• 34:18
  Marcus: We're wrong in a lot of ways.
• 34:20
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not saying that she is, but the shadow cabinet that is run by the guy who can, like, see possibilities, blah blah blah…
• 34:28
  Tad Eggleston: won't let her. They see something
• 34:34
  Tad Eggleston: They see a purpose that needs to be filled.
• 34:37
  Tad Eggleston: Now, I don't know if that has anything to do with the struggle that we see inside the Holocaust, but you can't completely discount it. Now, this is a thing that I could totally see, you know, if
• 34:48
  Tad Eggleston: Various parts of it don't play into the rest of the Milestone universe. Looking back on it and saying, oh, well, that was a whole lot of build-up to nothing.
• 34:57
  Ted: Meh.
• 34:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I don't want to say that it's all in these 5 issues.
• 35:03
  Tad Eggleston: But these 5 issues are the most interesting portrayal of Holocaust I've seen yet.
• 35:12
  Ted: Maybe, but it just… it still doesn't give me, like… I don't feel like there's enough actual… Ugh.
• 35:19
  Ted: I don't know, there's… I feel like there's very little actual development over the course of the book, is the thing. Like, I don't…
• 35:25
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't think they're supposed to be.
• 35:27
  Tad Eggleston: I, I…
• 35:27
  Marcus: Cheers.
• 35:28
  Tad Eggleston: Like, because again, like.
• 35:31
  Tad Eggleston: If you ask him if he's changing, or even considering changing, or going through any of this stuff, he…
• 35:38
  Tad Eggleston: He's, like, 6 months before the intervention.
• 35:43
  Tad Eggleston: Never, never mind, you know…
• 35:46
  Tad Eggleston: into the process of changing. Like, this is… this is the, the, like, if you confront him with it, he'll deny it and dig in hard.
• 35:56
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why it's kind of interesting that, like.
• 36:00
  Tad Eggleston: And Juniper, I think, is playing it perfectly. She's not confronting him with it.
• 36:06
  Marcus: Well, and she's… I did think that that was interesting with her.
• 36:09
  Tad Eggleston: She could totally be pushing him away, or bringing him in, but she's not willing to bring this version of him in.
• 36:18
  Marcus: I thought…
• 36:18
  Tad Eggleston: He's not willing to go away.
• 36:20
  Marcus: I thought there was some interesting character work with her. I'm just, you know, slightly… because I feel like we're kind of going in circles. We feel differently about the book, and that's okay.
• 36:28
  Ted: Yeah.
• 36:28
  Marcus: Okay, but I guess, you know, one of the things… I did think, you know, Juniper ended up being interesting because
• 36:36
  Marcus: Initially, obviously, it's pretty horrifying, because, like, his… you know, it's not an exaggeration to say that,
• 36:45
  Marcus: While, you know, a rape does not happen, it's… it's a concern that it's very…
• 36:53
  Marcus: possible, and… It's… There's a lot of…
• 36:56
  Ted: Yeah, there's a lot of, like, situations where that's… it's… it not… whether or not it's happened, there's… there's that threat of the…
• 37:02
  Marcus: I don't actually think that it has happened, because, you know, even when he references having had her in the past, it was… that was very consensual and almost… and maybe even tender to, you know, with what we…
• 37:14
  Marcus: We kind of spoke about before, but the idea of him now, and who he's become, and the idea of that, like, she's a possession to him.
• 37:24
  Marcus: And somebody he could do whatever he wants with. Like, that's, like, truly horrifying. And,
• 37:31
  Marcus: And so, it's interesting, like, her internal… because we don't get too many of her thoughts
• 37:40
  Marcus: In the first couple issues, but we do see the results. We see her…
• 37:44
  Ted: She tries to commit suicide.
• 37:46
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 37:47
  Ted: Thinks very clearly about killing him, but doesn't.
• 37:49
  Marcus: Yeah, and then… and that's where the moment after she decides not to… that's really interesting, because then we kind of get insights into her and ways in which she relates to him, you know.
• 38:04
  Marcus: and… and so… not… not like… in some ways, that's… that's a very, you know, tricky, needle to thread, right? In the sense that, like, Holocaust just… he really ain't shit. And so, you kind of don't want to see necessarily a storyline where the girl's like, oh, but he's…
• 38:21
  Ted: You don't want to see her fall in love with him.
• 38:23
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:24
  Ted: There's… But there's…
• 38:25
  Marcus: That's really not what it is. They're two very lonely people, and then even…
• 38:30
  Marcus: later… and, you know, I mean, Tad, you had… you had, you know, kind of spoken about this, about… maybe not in these exact words, but you kind of spoken about the fact that there are…
• 38:41
  Marcus: there are shifts, or there's, like, things that you just ordinarily would have expected him to do, and then he… he… he zigs instead of zags, you know? Like, even…
• 38:54
  Tad Eggleston: Let me ask a quick question, too. I mean, we just said we didn't want to see her fall in love with him, but my question is, is she already in love with Leonard Smith?
• 39:01
  Marcus: No, I don't think she is at all. I think… I think with what they've established with her, it's not that she's in love with them, I think it's that, she realizes they're both broken, they're broken in a similar way. I think that between the… the horrors that are alluded to from her family.
• 39:19
  Tad Eggleston: But again, I'm emphasizing with who he was before Powers.
• 39:25
  Marcus: Oh, before…
• 39:26
  Ted: I feel like we didn't know.
• 39:27
  Tad Eggleston: Is she in love with Leonard Smalls?
• 39:30
  Ted: We don't really even know what he was like before he was helicopter.
• 39:34
  Tad Eggleston: We don't entirely. We really only know from these flashbacks.
• 39:38
  Marcus: I think that that was a chapter in her life, and they definitely, allude to the idea that she… her father had, you know, abused her. They allude to, just…
• 39:54
  Marcus: All the ways in which
• 39:56
  Marcus: you know, her family have failed her, she's even failed on multiple levels, and she feels like a kind of, like, broken person, and feels, like, as bad as he is, which I would say, pound for pound.
• 40:09
  Marcus: probably not as bad, but she can relate. But she can relate, right? And she has regrets and things like that, and I think that's what it's about. That's why it's like the moment when they do become intimate, it's not a…
• 40:24
  Marcus: it's… it's unsatisfying for everybody, probably them included. But for us, as readers, and it's not intended to be, I think it's intended to be these two people who are…
• 40:39
  Marcus: Just, like… don't like themselves, you know what I mean? And it's almost like a business,
• 40:47
  Marcus: transaction, and even with the idea of him telling her multiple times, like, I thought I told you to get out of here, she's not staying because she's in love, she's staying because…
• 40:58
  Marcus: I… she legitimately is like, well, what would I even do? What would I go to?
• 41:04
  Ted: There's that bit with the butler, the… sorry, the butler character, where he says something like, you know, try to get on his good side. He does have one. Yeah. Which, yeah, it's a… it's a…
• 41:12
  Ted: Sorry. Well, it's a… I mean, it's a… it's a, it's a, it's a strategic thing. It's a… it's a… yeah, so… Now, I… I…
• 41:21
  Ted: Yeah, I mean, I get everything this book is trying for, I just, I feel like it didn't…
• 41:26
  Ted: get there, is sort of how I feel about it. Like, I get what it's trying to be, and I get the kind of story it's trying to do, but it just doesn't…
• 41:36
  Ted: it doesn't do it for me. Like, it doesn't give me enough to go on for any of these characters to be like…
• 41:43
  Ted: yeah, this is a real struggle for Holocaust. Like, it doesn't seem like it is, he has nightmares, but also, when he's actually going out and murdering people, he seems to do it pretty effectively. It's not like it's a… it doesn't seem…
• 41:54
  Marcus: They're also terrible people. He's not… he's not murdering, like, you know.
• 41:59
  Ted: Yeah, but even just in the sense of, like, he's… he's, you know, tired, or he's having difficult… I don't know, I… it just… it doesn't… I don't feel the weight that this story is reaching for. I don't… I don't…
• 42:11
  Marcus: Well, wait.
• 42:11
  Ted: Whoa.
• 42:12
  Marcus: I hear you, and I'm not even trying to, like, sell you on this, but I do have to say…
• 42:16
  Ted: I don't want to…
• 42:17
  Marcus: You said, you actually do see…
• 42:20
  Marcus: A certain toll of his constant,
• 42:25
  Marcus: you know… The use of his powers.
• 42:27
  Ted: Yeah, he kind of out a little bit.
• 42:29
  Marcus: Yeah, and it's like, it's at a point, and it did, like, literally put him in mortal danger. You know, essentially.
• 42:37
  Marcus: juniper chose to let him live in that situation, but his… his exhaustion… exhaustive use of his powers
• 42:47
  Marcus: you know, put him in that vulnerable state. And I think that… I do see… alright, this is where I have to say, based on…
• 42:54
  Marcus: you know, the character up to this point. I do think this series is doing interesting things to not…
• 43:00
  Marcus: I don't know if you would say growth, but I would say we have insights on him that we just have never had. And, like, some of those insights…
• 43:09
  Marcus: are… are just… even the idea that, like, on a mechanical level of how his powers function, because we always have seen him as somebody who can just burn everything. He is this…
• 43:22
  Marcus: unstoppable danger, and on top of that, his…
• 43:27
  Marcus: Almost lack of… complete lack of a code just takes the… the,
• 43:33
  Marcus: you know, danger that he presents in a physical and nature sense, and it just makes it infinitely more. So it's almost like the idea of, like, Superman being overpowered. It's like, at a certain point, you know, you do have to find a way
• 43:48
  Marcus: to balance out your overpowered character. So I do think that even introducing, like, physical limits to his use of his power was, like, really interesting.
• 43:58
  Marcus: The nightmares, while, yes, in and of themselves, it's not, you know… everything. We've literally…
• 44:08
  Marcus: never seen past the wall of his machismo in all of the stories that we've seen him in. We've seen him exerting his will
• 44:16
  Marcus: and influence and power over people. But, we haven't really seen what lays behind that. So, this series really does introduce vulnerability. And yes, that vulnerability doesn't necessarily play out
• 44:31
  Marcus: And… All of the ways that we maybe think of a vulnerability.
• 44:36
  Ted: Yeah, that's…
• 44:37
  Marcus: It's present in a way that we've never seen for this character, and to me, I do think that
• 44:43
  Marcus: you do… for myself, I can only speak for myself, I feel like I came away…
• 44:49
  Marcus: Not liking him, you know what I mean? But also…
• 44:54
  Marcus: being like, okay, he's… he is, like, a more complicated character. And to be honest.
• 45:01
  Marcus: there's real guys like this. They can't necessarily, like, make fire with their hands or their mind, you know what I mean? But there are real people who have been failed by the system, by community, disinvestment, by, you know.
• 45:18
  Marcus: by a whole host of… by redlining, by, you know, Urban Renewal, take your pick. And… and they are people who…
• 45:28
  Marcus: had the warmth kind of, like, squeezed out of them, like, you know, over time. So…
• 45:35
  Marcus: I think in reading… I was reading it from that lens, like, you know, that this is not…
• 45:44
  Marcus: This is not that far… he's not that far-fetched from a character, other than the powers, like, you know what I mean, that he has.
• 45:50
  Marcus: So, I guess these are the things that, like, I took away from it, and I think…
• 45:54
  Ted: That's.
• 45:55
  Marcus: I hear what you're saying in the sense of…
• 45:58
  Marcus: if you're coming to the story, and you, you know, you're looking for these things, then yeah, maybe it didn't hit that note for you, but to me, I just…
• 46:07
  Marcus: Saw the story as trying to do something different than, you know, the things that… that you didn't see in it.
• 46:14
  Ted: I guess, I don't know, I just… it…
• 46:17
  Ted: it… I kind of was going through it in my head and being like, okay, what actually sort of changes
• 46:22
  Ted: in Holocaust to the status quo, what… what is different at the end of this?
• 46:28
  Ted: comic that is, you know, in the Milestone universe, oriented characters, or whatever.
• 46:32
  Ted: From what it was beforehand, and, like, very little…
• 46:36
  Ted: Sort of, of consequence, feel like it's changed by the end.
• 46:40
  Ted: In a way that feels… I mean, and again, I mean, I'd change it in sort of a very broad sense, like, it could be a character being a very different type of character at the end, or… or… or, you know, maybe the status quo, the entire status quo of the Marvel… of the Milestone universe is about to change, but, like, it just…
• 46:58
  Ted: He kind of just ends up getting everything he wanted and doesn't have to change.
• 47:01
  Marcus: inches below.
• 47:02
  Ted: Botus operandi all that much.
• 47:03
  Marcus: But it's not even just the last page. To that point, right? It's like, yes, the last page is where he confronts his mom.
• 47:10
  Marcus: And they speak about his name, but even the page… pages leading up to that, it's supposed to be the celebration, right? Where they're like, you know, you did it, you finally made it, and he's… he's miserable. Like, you know, on page 124, he's sitting on his, like, you know, proverbial throne, and
• 47:30
  Marcus: Tarmac is, like, going through the new…
• 47:33
  Marcus: cool firepower-based names he could possibly.
• 47:37
  Ted: Yeah.
• 47:37
  Marcus: from, you know, obviously Bad Daddy is, like, this MF over here, you know, Juniper's not happy, but, like, this is supposed to be a celebration, and all he could think about… he literally thinks, like, you know, why isn't it enough for me?
• 47:53
  Marcus: And he's thinking about what you said, like, how he has everything, but it's like, those are… those are things, you know what I mean?
• 48:03
  Ted: Yeah, he's got the money, he's got the power, he's got the.
• 48:05
  Marcus: Yeah, and that's the allure of… of the streets, and power in that sense, and it's… but even…
• 48:13
  Marcus: But those… that allure is, like, really… usually is very tempting to people
• 48:20
  Marcus: That have just gone without, and on multiple levels, not even just financially.
• 48:26
  Marcus: Like, going without… when it comes to, like, a sense of security. I mean, we talked about it… I talked about it a lot when we talked about Blood Syndicate, the fact that, you know, gangs, essentially, they… they grew out of a sense of the people wanting
• 48:43
  Marcus: safety and family, even if they have to create that structure in a way that's, you know, not necessarily safe. And then on top of that, like, you know, you have, historically.
• 48:55
  Marcus: Some situations where things that were termed as gangs were really… weren't even…
• 49:00
  Marcus: Based around crime and violence specifically, you know, and that may have came in, but, you know, in many cases, they also…
• 49:07
  Marcus: Had a sense of, like… community, regulation, whatever you want to say.
• 49:14
  Ted: Yeah, they provide a, yeah, an organization, or a family, or a structure or something that…
• 49:18
  Marcus: Yeah. So I just, I would say, like, I look at these last two pages as a…
• 49:24
  Marcus: As a piece, you know, it's not just the last page.
• 49:28
  Marcus: Where they're talking about the name. It's kind of just the fact that
• 49:32
  Marcus: Yeah, getting what he wants, and if you… and also, if you look at the character, from the moment… because that tower guy, you know, who's kind of like a super cop, a tormented, like, super cop, who seems to, like, have almost legendary status.
• 49:49
  Marcus: in the city, in their history, when… when Holocaust… because he's… initially, it seems like he's got Holocaust on the ropes, but then, like, Holocaust really just… just deals with him and kills him, right? And…
• 50:01
  Marcus: to me, that is a turning point in this, because you're just like, alright, there's literally nothing stopping him. He is…
• 50:08
  Marcus: he's on a path, and he is unstoppable. So it's kind of inevitable that he's going to get his spot
• 50:16
  Marcus: he's going to achieve his goal of getting a spot on the commission.
• 50:20
  Marcus: Or, is that what they're called? Whatever.
• 50:22
  Ted: the call.
• 50:22
  Marcus: On the coalition, yeah, yeah, yeah, on the coalition, and it's inevitable, because it's like that tower character, he is the best bet of stopping him, you know, and he just deals with him.
• 50:36
  Marcus: And so, like, you know that he's going to, achieve his goals. So it's all leading up to this point of him getting the goals… achieving his goal, and realizing that he's still empty inside, because the things…
• 50:49
  Marcus: you can never really fill your cup with, like, power, money, you know, sex, all these things without being whole yourself. And, like, that is…
• 51:01
  Marcus: what he's lost. And maybe it's something he never had, but I think that's… that is the loss in there. That's how I read it.
• 51:09
  Ted: Okay. That's… yeah, I mean, that's fair, I just, I feel…
• 51:13
  Ted: Yeah, this is just… it didn't hit me the same way, maybe, or I didn't feel like it did enough of what it was hoping or trying to do, I guess, because it just never…
• 51:23
  Ted: It never clicked for me? I don't know. For whatever reason, it just did not… it didn't hit me in a way that felt… yeah.
• 51:33
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 51:34
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know, I mean, we never… we never actually went through the plot points of it, but I think we covered it all pretty well. The Tower stuff, I thought was… it was sort of an interesting digression, and I, you know, having looked ahead, I know Tower comes back, sort of, and I'm… I'm curious what happens with that, so that's… yeah,
• 51:54
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know, it just, it never, it never quite, it never quite clicked for me.
• 51:59
  Marcus: Yeah, I'm gonna try to do, like, a super condensed recap.
• 52:04
  Ted: Yeah, I mean, I don't even know if we need to, but yeah, go ahead.
• 52:07
  Marcus: Okay, alright. Broad strokes, the broad strokes without, like, really, like, going through beat by beat, is essentially, you know, we enter the story.
• 52:17
  Marcus: with Holocaust, who has already been established as somebody who…
• 52:21
  Marcus: Basically in the first issue of Blood Syndicate was, like, two…
• 52:27
  Marcus: too much and too much of a wild card for them, like, you know what I mean? And he just was established as, like, pretty much the most dangerous person in Dakota.
• 52:38
  Marcus: And… and so, like, we enter the story, as we mentioned, Bad Bet Betty, who is a shadow cabinet member who we've met previously, is basically doing undercover work. And I do think… actually think that the…
• 52:49
  Marcus: you know, the stress of, there's a little tension that's built with, the idea of her being with this, like, super dangerous dude, and just being like, yo, he's gotta go.
• 53:02
  Marcus: And I was wondering throughout, like, is he gonna…
• 53:06
  Marcus: Is he gonna bust her, and she's just gonna, you know, die?
• 53:11
  Ted: I immediately…
• 53:12
  Marcus: It didn't… it didn't seem like that was implausible, you know what I mean? But she does… spoiler, she does make it to the end.
• 53:18
  Marcus: Oh, boy.
• 53:19
  Ted: Well, sort of.
• 53:20
  Ted: Because the thing that I actually… I feel like it was… it should have been a bigger deal than it was, is that it turns out, I mean, this whole time she's been reporting to Dharma, and then eventually Dharma's like, look, you're getting obsessed with the idea of killing him, I can't have that, and he just, like, turns her off, and it turns out she's basically been a robot the whole time, or at the very least that her, like.
• 53:38
  Ted: cybernetic implants make her mechanical enough that he just, like, says a phrase to her and shuts her off.
• 53:44
  Marcus: Right, right. And it's like…
• 53:46
  Ted: That was… that was, like, real… it was wild to me that that was a thing, and it kind of didn't really get…
• 53:53
  Ted: not mentioned. I mean, it just… it… it almost happened out of no… not… I don't want to say nowhere, but, like…
• 54:00
  Marcus: There wasn't a lot of focus on it.
• 54:02
  Ted: There wasn't a lot of focus on it, and it was sort of… it seemed like it should be much more consequential than it was, I guess? So, yeah, I don't quite know how I feel about that, but
• 54:11
  Ted: But yeah, I feel like… well, it also… I don't… I do not remember when we first saw Bad Betty, I forget how long she's been, like, at Holocaust side, because, like we said, there was that one issue of,
• 54:23
  Ted: shadow cabinet that focused on her, sort of. And it was… I just… I do not remember, like, what she's been aside from Dharma's deep cover agent with… with Holocaust. So, I don't know.
• 54:35
  Marcus: Right, yeah. Well, yeah, just with the recapping, though, so… so basically they… they initially… Holocaust is just making its way through the coalition, who we find out is a… just, like, basically they're running all of the crime in, you know.
• 54:52
  Ted: Yeah.
• 54:52
  Marcus: Island and Dakota City, and they're, like, the people behind the people that just run it.
• 54:58
  Ted: Yeah, I do love that, like, literally they are the Dakota Coalition for Better Business and Urban Renewal.
• 55:03
  Marcus: Right.
• 55:04
  Ted: They have a letterhead and everything, but it's also just, oh no, we're actually just, like, all the crime bosses.
• 55:10
  Marcus: Which, which I… I love that commentary.
• 55:13
  Ted: It's so good, yeah.
• 55:15
  Marcus: Because I remember, one of my… this is a quick side tangent, but I remember one of my, students, who I had a very good rapport with, but, you know, they were definitely, like, they were… they were, like, wealthier, and, and privileged.
• 55:32
  Marcus: And I just remember her one time talking about coming back from a trip to a particular part of Brooklyn. She was like, oh, it was so nice, it was so beautiful, and gentrified, and I was like, oh, wow, that's the first time…
• 55:42
  Marcus: I've heard the G word, like, at least in my circle, mentioned as, like, oh, it's a great thing, you know what I mean? And it just shows, like, the twisted Funhouse mirror of America and American politics and history, and its… and its connection
• 55:59
  Marcus: With its inextricable connection with, business interests, and the way that those align with destruction, crime, and racism, you know, in the sense that,
• 56:10
  Marcus: You know, like, urban renewal, to me, is…
• 56:14
  Marcus: It's just… it's like, death is parallel to death, you know?
• 56:18
  Ted: It's urban destruction, yeah.
• 56:19
  Marcus: Yeah, I mean, we honestly don't have time for me in this episode for me to break down.
• 56:23
  Marcus: my thoughts on that, but, it's evil. But, like, you know, this group, it's kind of like, they're just openly like, yeah, we're the… they got, like, a fun…
• 56:33
  Ted: Washington for Better Business Bureau.
• 56:34
  Marcus: Yeah, but they're obviously just criminals. They're fancy criminals, you know what I mean? And, like, so I just love that commentary.
• 56:41
  Ted: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I forget if we've ever talked about it, but the fact that, like, the big organization that runs everything in the Milestone universe is literally just the system is so good.
• 56:51
  Marcus: That is an acronym.
• 56:52
  Ted: that probably doesn't stand for anything, and it's like, that's such a, like, that's so simple, and so perfect, and so pure, I love it. It's… yeah, no, they couldn't have done anything better. Anyway, sorry, I interrupted you.
• 57:02
  Marcus: Yeah, so sorry, I'm just gonna speed through it. So the first… basically the big… the big, inciting, igniting incident is that, you know, Holocaust and Bad Betty and Tarmac, the… the… this kind of, like, Suicide Squad-esque team.
• 57:19
  Marcus: They come in and they quickly dispatch of Elijah, who's a member
• 57:25
  Marcus: of the coalition, and, you know, powerful, and, you know, in doing this, they… they threaten to his family and everything, and you quickly find out his daughter is Juniper, who we later in the series find out that, like, Holocaust at a certain point.
• 57:42
  Marcus: in his tragic backstory, had… had had, like, what seemed to be, like, a genuine, maybe tender relationship, but it also was something that just wasn't meant to be.
• 57:55
  Marcus: it's for multiple reasons, you know what I mean? And anyway, he… he ends up killing, Elijah.
• 58:03
  Marcus: And then he says, ominously, like, take Juniper, like, she's… and he says, like, pretty much outright that she's his possession, which is super messed up, obviously. Then we get some insight into the coalition.
• 58:18
  Marcus: We see them going back and forth. Holocaust makes demands to them to let him on the coalition.
• 58:24
  Marcus: Whitaker is out of the coalition members throughout. We kind of see him the most, because he's the one who's trying to exert his influence on the mayor, Thomasina, Jefferson, to…
• 58:39
  Marcus: to basically get her to, like, do whatever she has to do to kill the Holocaust, you know? Oh, also, as we… we mentioned it before, but, like, Elijah, before he dies.
• 58:51
  Marcus: I think because he's trying to save his life, he insinuates that, like, I could… he could tell…
• 58:57
  Marcus: Holocaust to his real mom is.
• 58:59
  Ted: Yeah.
• 59:00
  Marcus: So, and, you know, as we're reading, even before Tomacina reveals it, it's kind of clear that storylines are converging.
• 59:09
  Marcus: To the point where that's… that is who his mom is.
• 59:14
  Marcus: And… and so, like, basically, Holocaust, he keeps going through… going up the ladder of, you know, going after coalition members until they give him a spot. There is,
• 59:26
  Marcus: We did mention before that, you know, Juniper is…
• 59:31
  Marcus: Not, obviously, super hyped about being a possession.
• 59:37
  Marcus: close.
• 59:38
  Marcus: So, you know, she takes the drastic and tragic messed up step of, like, you know, trying to cut her wrists. And then in…
• 59:47
  Marcus: only Holocaust could make saving her life cruel.
• 59:52
  Marcus: But he does, he basically is like, you're not getting off that easy, you know, and that she'll die when he says. So, like, even saving her, he manages to be cruel about it.
• 1:00:06
  Marcus: Then, you know, we see… we see him having dreams, and these dreams, like, do give us insights into his past, his, you know, history of abuse with his family, and the tragic…
• 1:00:19
  Marcus: Death of the woman who we understood to be his mom, even though that's not his birth mom.
• 1:00:24
  Marcus: He keeps killing up the ladder as he's going after them. This whole time, Bad Bet Betty is, you know, she is not subtle in her interior thoughts about the fact that she… how disgusted she is about him.
• 1:00:39
  Marcus: how much she really doesn't want… you know, she's tired of this undercover mission, and she's also increasingly
• 1:00:48
  Marcus: questioning Dharmas, Hmm…
• 1:00:51
  Marcus: you know, decision-making, his honesty, which we've already seen that, you know, in Shadow Cavity. And, you know, but she… that's her struggle she's carrying. So Whitaker decides to pull out the big guns and tells Thomasina, like, yo, you gotta get Tower up in here.
• 1:01:07
  Marcus: I… I don't think… to me, this was the first time I'd seen Tower, I don't really remember him.
• 1:01:12
  Ted: Yeah, this is… I looked it up, this is the first time he appears. He gets… he… he comes back and has a bigger role. Okay. Well, it's later on, but yeah, this is the first time he appears. Or is mentioned, as far as I can tell.
• 1:01:24
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:25
  Marcus: Okay, so yeah, so there's that. Oh, and then also, and it's interesting, the first two issues, I think, or maybe issues two and three, they both end with…
• 1:01:36
  Marcus: Juniper, like, you know, taking…
• 1:01:40
  Marcus: drastic measures. And actually, the more I look back at this, I think whichever one of you guys said that, mentioned the butler later on.
• 1:01:49
  Marcus: Saying, like, he has a good side. Yeah, maybe she really was being strategic. I do think she genuinely has an internal struggle, because… sorry, sorry, what I was saying is that… so this other… this next issue ends with him having, like, really exhausted himself.
• 1:02:06
  Marcus: From just burning everything in sight, and he's… he's overdone it with his powers, and he basically passes out
• 1:02:12
  Marcus: in front of Juniper, and he smashed a mirror before he did it. So she grabs a shard of glass and is really contemplating just killing him to solve her problem with him. But then she doesn't, and this is where we get some insight into her thoughts.
• 1:02:27
  Marcus: And, that's where she's, you know, you're kind of seeing that she… Does weirdly relate to him.
• 1:02:35
  Marcus: you know, how much she hated her father and her life, because, you know, you got the sense that, honestly, you mentioned Penguin. It's not unlike, in a lot of ways, what's her name in Penguin,
• 1:02:47
  Ted: Oh, the hangman,
• 1:02:49
  Marcus: Sophia, right?
• 1:02:49
  Ted: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:51
  Marcus: Yeah, because she also had been raised by this family, and not really had a choice about having a full life and being a whole person. And so, you know, that's kind of is… we kind of get a little insight to the fact that that's Juniper's situation as well.
• 1:03:06
  Marcus: You know, so she ends up, like, deciding to stay.
• 1:03:11
  Marcus: So then, you know, we meet Tower. Tower is, again, this kind of tormented ex-super cop guy, who seems unstoppable initially, and when he goes after Holocaust, like I said, he kind of seems to have him on the ropes, like the…
• 1:03:30
  Marcus: Fire is initially not really working on him, and he's really, you know, he's given the business a little bit. But then Holocaust basically has had enough, and he does manage to torch him to death.
• 1:03:45
  Ted: If he dies, he does… well, sorry, you were probably gonna say it.
• 1:03:47
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say again?
• 1:03:49
  Ted: Well, as he dies, he just, he, he says, I forgive you.
• 1:03:53
  Marcus: Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think, you know, again, not to always be pleading the case for this story.
• 1:04:00
  Marcus: I do think that that is some of the consistent work that they're building on, is the idea. Because he also, throughout the course of their back-and-forth banter… I mean, first of all, he is being kind of patron. He's kind of a… you know, but he does say, like, you think you're shit, blah, blah, blah, and like…
• 1:04:20
  Marcus: That ties into this refrain of his father having told him that he ain't shit, and over and over, and, you know, some of these other kids that were bullying him, and…
• 1:04:32
  Marcus: So, it's like, literally… and life is like that, too. Sometimes you're out there, just… you just think you're talking trash to somebody, or maybe you don't even think you're talking trash, and you're just, like, jamming a finger into a wound you didn't even know that they had.
• 1:04:46
  Marcus: You know what I mean? And then… and then that's when people are liable to explode.
• 1:04:51
  Marcus: So, anyway, he ends up dealing… he ends up killing, Tower.
• 1:04:56
  Marcus: And then he goes after Whitaker. And, you know, Whitaker obviously is really angry at this point, because he's been essentially holding over the mayor, like, that he knows where all her bodies are buried, proverbially, and that, like, it could be very bad for her if he doesn't help… help,
• 1:05:14
  Marcus: her with this. So… Holocaust ends up going and, and killing him, you know, killing Whitaker.
• 1:05:24
  Marcus: And…
• 1:05:25
  Ted: Well, actually, I mean, sorry, not.
• 1:05:27
  Marcus: Oh, no, you're right, no, you're right, he doesn't kill him. Yeah, he doesn't kill him.
• 1:05:29
  Ted: kill them.
• 1:05:30
  Ted: Whitaker killed… well, he's about to kill him, then Whitaker kills himself.
• 1:05:33
  Marcus: Right, right. No, that's a great point. And also, I should say, before Whitaker dies, he… he either phones or… yeah, yeah, he does, he phones,
• 1:05:45
  Marcus: the Demon Fox, the head of Demon Fox.
• 1:05:48
  Ted: Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:49
  Marcus: Yeah, and she's just basically like, hey, man, that's tough, tough breaks, you know.
• 1:05:54
  Ted: Just so you know, we're going with Holocaust.
• 1:05:57
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, and… How are you?
• 1:05:59
  Marcus: And, and so she sends a letter to,
• 1:06:04
  Marcus: She sends a letter to,
• 1:06:08
  Marcus: to, to Holocaust, like, basically saying that, like, he's on the commission, congrats, you got the job.
• 1:06:15
  Ted: This is the thing where it has the letterhead, which I love.
• 1:06:17
  Marcus: Yeah, pretty good.
• 1:06:17
  Ted: Letterhead exactly, but yeah.
• 1:06:19
  Marcus: Yeah, exactly, yeah. So, so then, basically, I mean, this is… we're kind of getting to what it culminates in. From there.
• 1:06:27
  Marcus: you know, and throughout, you kind of get insights into the mayor, which… I don't know if I said this before, but I actually found that interesting, because, like, prior to this, she's kind of just been a figure in the city, who's kind of, like, figured into some of these storylines, mostly an icon.
• 1:06:41
  Marcus: And, but, like, this is where, like, you kind of see her as a person. And a complicated, maybe not totally likable person, but a person.
• 1:06:51
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:06:52
  Marcus: you know… You find out there's a lot behind her, and, like, what she's doing, and…
• 1:06:59
  Ted: She's had to make a lot of compromises and make a lot of hard choices. Like, that's… her story about how exactly she…
• 1:07:06
  Ted: Because the way that she decides not to take care of the baby that would grow up to be Holocaust is heartbreaking and great and wonderful, because, like.
• 1:07:16
  Ted: it first, like, she first of all tells someone, I think it's, like, her assistant or something, that, like, yeah, Holocaust is my son, but he doesn't know it. And then later on, we find out that, like, she's having a conversation with Tower, and Tower has, like, perfect memory, so he says, like, oh yeah, I remember you lost your baby in a fire, and she's like.
• 1:07:34
  Marcus: Right.
• 1:07:35
  Ted: That's what happened. And then finally, much after… a while after that, or maybe I'm conflating the two, whatever. But eventually, she reveals that actually what happened was, there was a fire in the hospital, like, in the maternity ward. She got out with her baby.
• 1:07:49
  Ted: But, like, well, she was originally gonna leave without the baby, but she, like, had to go back and get him, but then on her way out, she's like.
• 1:07:56
  Ted: I can't do this. She goes up to him and is like, hey, I couldn't save my baby, but this is yours, and just gives her the baby and walks. And I thought that was, like, that's great. I mean, not, you know, you know what I mean? Not great, but, like, that's a really heart-wrenching way to do it.
• 1:08:11
  Marcus: Fuck that.
• 1:08:11
  Ted: That was fascinating, so…
• 1:08:13
  Marcus: And it's… yeah, no, and everything you said, and in addition, I found the… the fact that it was a fire, and not because, like, Holocaust had firepowers as a baby, but just because it was just a…
• 1:08:26
  Marcus: Freak thing, but also an odd universal foreshadowing.
• 1:08:31
  Ted: Yeah.
• 1:08:31
  Marcus: You know what I mean? His path.
• 1:08:33
  Ted: Morning, man, yeah.
• 1:08:34
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:35
  Ted: There is… there is something interesting to that, too, yeah. I… yeah, like, her… I kind of wish that that was the relationship that had been put at the forefront. Like, make her and Holocaust meet up more frequently from the start, somehow. Like…
• 1:08:48
  Ted: Because their relationship ends up being some of the most interesting stuff, because he doesn't… he says very clearly, I don't need to care about… I don't want to hear about my mom. Like, at the beginning, Elijah says, like, hey, I know who your mother is, and he's like, yeah, I don't care, and he shoots him in the face, and like, that's… and he's very clearly, like, putting on a show about it.
• 1:09:06
  Marcus: Yeah, he absolutely is, because he does pause, and it's very much in line with his bravado.
• 1:09:13
  Marcus: Because he does care, but he's willing himself to not…
• 1:09:17
  Ted: not care, yeah. So, it's… I wish that there had been more conversations between Tomasina and Holocaust, because, like, they're…
• 1:09:26
  Ted: their conflict is the most interesting, I think, part of that, and I just… it didn't… they didn't even interact until, like, the fifth… the fifth issue, and even then, they have, like, two conversations, and that's about it. And it just… I…
• 1:09:40
  Ted: Yeah, I know I'm going… I know I'm just gonna say the same thing, but yeah, it just didn't hit me as much as I wanted that, like, their…
• 1:09:47
  Ted: whole relationship. I'm sorry, you didn't even finish the… you didn't even finish.
• 1:09:50
  Marcus: Oh, yeah, I mean, we're…
• 1:09:52
  Ted: We're at the end, basically, yeah, like, he…
• 1:09:53
  Marcus: Thank you.
• 1:09:54
  Ted: He ends up getting the invitation and taking it. He doesn't… he…
• 1:09:58
  Ted: he doesn't, you know, bother going in and burning down the place, he just, like, walks up… well… well, you tell it, man, you were… you were telling it, I'm sorry.
• 1:10:06
  Marcus: Yeah, no, I mean, it's pretty much… pretty much that, yeah, like, he, there's, there's this interesting… and this is where, like, I think power dynamics are so interesting, like, like, The Wire famously does this really well.
• 1:10:21
  Ted: Are you.
• 1:10:22
  Marcus: enter…
• 1:10:23
  Marcus: the story in Season 1, like, you know, seeing, like, the drug trade in Baltimore, seen through this… mostly through this one family, and… but then each subsequent season, it's almost like they're pulling out the lens on the power structure, because, like, Season 2, they get into, like, the… the…
• 1:10:42
  Marcus: crime of the ports and, like, what is allowed in and imported into the city. So then you're just kind of like, alright, well, the kids on the corner that are, you know, selling drugs are, like.
• 1:10:56
  Marcus: coins, like, comparatively, right? And… And even, like, the people…
• 1:11:01
  Marcus: with, you know, who are their bosses are compared to, like, maybe people who have the power to bring the drugs in, and then… and then you pull out even further in subsequent seasons, and you see the political maneuverings of the city, and then the education. So, like, I think that I bring all that up because,
• 1:11:21
  Marcus: it's interesting, because as much as, like, Holocaust is just a force of nature, and so feared, and this unstoppable danger, it's like, when he's face-to-face with the Commission, or the coalition, you really… you see him…
• 1:11:37
  Marcus: being almost uncharacteristically measured, and that's because even he understands there is a hierarchy. And then…
• 1:11:46
  Marcus: Tomasina, like, really underlines that later when she shows up at the door, which we'll get to. But I do find that interesting, because he does say to the coalition, when they're basically… when they're, you know, discussing terms with him and discussing the sacrifices that he needs to make.
• 1:12:04
  Marcus: to join, he basically is like, what if I just burned you all? And, like, you know, I could do that, like…
• 1:12:11
  Marcus: And they basically tell him, like, sure, you could absolutely do that, but they basically spell out to him how he would be setting himself back, and be dealing with endless struggle, and then all of his toil to get to this point would be wasted.
• 1:12:27
  Marcus: And so, he doesn't. He doesn't… as a matter of fact, I would say the last…
• 1:12:33
  Marcus: Violence he really commits is when he's on his way to kill,
• 1:12:40
  Marcus: Whitaker. And then it's like, after that, like, he doesn't really, right? Like, he threatens a bunch of people and has very intense…
• 1:12:47
  Marcus: conversation and lights his hands up, but he really doesn't. So you kind of see… I guess the reason why I brought up that wire parallel is just that you see that, he's feared, and he's dangerous and big on one level, but they…
• 1:13:02
  Marcus: they represent a power that, like, you know, transcends his… his power, so there's always basically somebody above
• 1:13:10
  Marcus: In these messed up hierarchies. And that issue ends with the mayor showing up at his door, you know? And then, you know, she goes on.
• 1:13:21
  Marcus: To basically lay down the law with him about how things are, and it's very interesting, because she is
• 1:13:28
  Marcus: Speaking to him like a mother that's had it with a badass kid.
• 1:13:31
  Ted: But…
• 1:13:32
  Marcus: You know, and and again, he's threatening her throughout, he's lighting up his hands, he's doing all of that, but she's…
• 1:13:39
  Marcus: really… She never breaks, like, once.
• 1:13:43
  Ted: Yeah, she has no fear of him.
• 1:13:45
  Marcus: Kind of like milk, yeah.
• 1:13:47
  Marcus: And I think in a lot of ways, she probably feels she has nothing to lose. I think she's also… you can only imagine with… you know, we talked about how, like, she revealed how… giving him up, you can only imagine how many
• 1:14:00
  Marcus: feelings and thoughts are colliding in her. She also definitely seems to be a person that, where maybe her pursuit of, like, political power,
• 1:14:10
  Marcus: she's… well, we do know she's… she's sacrificed, she's sacrificed a lot, so, now being confronted with
• 1:14:19
  Marcus: I don't know, the human realities of family and loss and things like that, you know, these are things that she's…
• 1:14:26
  Marcus: stuff down for years, but then the child that she gave up has essentially just become this perpetual thorn in her side that she can't get away from. So I think all of that is spilling out, and that's where her…
• 1:14:39
  Marcus: Almost reckless, like… you know… going off on him comes from, you know? And so…
• 1:14:46
  Marcus: I want to say… this is not to… this is not to rehash our debate, but I do want to say…
• 1:14:51
  Marcus: The fact that, like, pretty much after, again, that point when
• 1:14:55
  Marcus: He gets the letter, you know, he's not…
• 1:15:00
  Marcus: he's not doing, like, all the violent, like, Holocaust stuff that we're accustomed to, and I think that…
• 1:15:07
  Marcus: As… he's as humbled as he…
• 1:15:11
  Marcus: is gonna get, you know what I mean? And,
• 1:15:14
  Tad Eggleston: I think he's also thinking more.
• 1:15:16
  Marcus: He is, he's thinking more, definitely, yeah.
• 1:15:18
  Tad Eggleston: But before… before that, he was very, very reactive.
• 1:15:22
  Marcus: Right.
• 1:15:23
  Tad Eggleston: And I think that he's… Less reactive and more…
• 1:15:33
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think we can go quite thoughtful yet.
• 1:15:37
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 1:15:39
  Ted: He has…
• 1:15:40
  Tad Eggleston: measured.
• 1:15:41
  Ted: Yeah, he realizes there are a few other things to work towards.
• 1:15:44
  Marcus: Yeah, and you know, I mean, to be clear, I don't think Holocaust is, like… and you didn't say this, so I'm not saying you said this, but I don't think he is…
• 1:15:52
  Marcus: I don't think he's unintelligent. I think that he is a person who's haunted by his… by all the things that have, you know, made him this way, and he's acting off of that. But I think that's a good point, that he is…
• 1:16:07
  Marcus: I think being measured and thoughtful, in a way. And then we get the scene where, like, after all of the…
• 1:16:16
  Marcus: you know, intimations that, like, he could have juniper anytime he wants. You know, she comes to the room, and I think you guys have pointed out that the butler said, I'm not sure if it's before this or after, that, like, he can be reasonable if you're…
• 1:16:32
  Ted: That was early on, but yeah.
• 1:16:34
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, so it's probably… I think it's a coma… her coming to him is a combination of probably that conversation and maneuvering, but I think she genuinely is, like…
• 1:16:46
  Marcus: I don't have anything else, and almost like I almost deserve…
• 1:16:50
  Marcus: to be… I think she feels bad about herself, and she feels she deserves to be with somebody.
• 1:16:56
  Marcus: Bad, in a sense. And, you know.
• 1:16:58
  Marcus: He rejects her in a messed up way, because she's got scars on her back, which is…
• 1:17:04
  Marcus: Super messed up for multiple levels. And then… mmm…
• 1:17:09
  Marcus: And then she says, that…
• 1:17:14
  Marcus: oh, that there's no hope for them, and that they should just die, and that is the thing that makes him grab her, and I guess, like, kind of be…
• 1:17:25
  Marcus: be intimate with her, and maybe, like, a bit… a bit tender, and it's that shared, like, basically, like, we ain't shit type thing, is how I read it, you know?
• 1:17:37
  Marcus: And then he has a dream that flashes back to when they were younger, and they were together.
• 1:17:41
  Marcus: And it didn't end well.
• 1:17:44
  Marcus: And then, yeah. And then, I mean, from there, it's like, we see him go to the coalition.
• 1:17:48
  Marcus: They ask him…
• 1:17:49
  Marcus: You find out that they all had to give up something when entering the coalition, and they can't tell him what he has to give up, but they can give him suggestions. So the two suggestions are giving them Juniper, because basically she's really good with numbers, and she'd be an asset to them.
• 1:18:08
  Marcus: And… again…
• 1:18:10
  Ted: I'll give you up his name, yeah.
• 1:18:12
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, another option was to give up his name, and he did show… choose his name. It is interesting, because I am thinking about what…
• 1:18:19
  Marcus: Tad, what you were saying about… I don't know…
• 1:18:23
  Marcus: the subtlety of his growth, and compassion even, if you want to go there, because he does say, like, well, giving up Juniper really is not a big deal, because, you know, she's not shit to him, but…
• 1:18:40
  Marcus: I… looking back at it, I do think that you actually was doing that to… protect her, you know…
• 1:18:49
  Ted: it's bluster.
• 1:18:50
  Marcus: Yeah, yeah, exactly, like, he's trying to look tough, but I do think he…
• 1:18:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's…
• 1:18:56
  Marcus: That's my point.
• 1:18:57
  Tad Eggleston: point is that, that, like, He… isn't as… as… set…
• 1:19:07
  Tad Eggleston: As he makes out to be on…
• 1:19:10
  Tad Eggleston: The fact that she doesn't mean anything to him.
• 1:19:13
  Marcus: Right, right. Yeah, so…
• 1:19:16
  Marcus: I mean, it's like, you know, and then again, he's, like, I don't know, multiple times he's…
• 1:19:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, because the other thing is, particularly because, like, they're pointing out how she could be good for the whole group, I feel like…
• 1:19:30
  Tad Eggleston: If…
• 1:19:32
  Tad Eggleston: he really meant what he said in terms of, she's meaningless to me. That's not really a sacrifice. He… he…
• 1:19:43
  Tad Eggleston: He'd do both.
• 1:19:46
  Marcus: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 1:19:48
  Tad Eggleston: ditto.
• 1:19:50
  Tad Eggleston: I, I think, I think, I think he, he made that statement as a deflection,
• 1:19:57
  Tad Eggleston: And then gave up his name, even though it was a big deal.
• 1:20:01
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 1:20:03
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 1:20:04
  Tad Eggleston: Because… like…
• 1:20:08
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, my picture of Holocaust so far, and it's one of those places where I wish… I wish that there were 100 issues of Holocaust, because I think with good reason, the character development has been
• 1:20:24
  Tad Eggleston: Slow.
• 1:20:27
  Tad Eggleston: And we… we didn't really get any of the… the… the development About where he came from.
• 1:20:39
  Tad Eggleston: before this. So, so, like… We've only known him as… the… the… The not-so-good guy.
• 1:20:49
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 1:20:50
  Tad Eggleston: It's just a…
• 1:20:51
  Marcus: The force of nature, there's just, like.
• 1:20:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:20:54
  Marcus: That's the source of damage.
• 1:20:55
  Tad Eggleston: So what we're… what we're now getting… is that… Long before… he… was…
• 1:21:16
  Tad Eggleston: what's the word I'm looking for? Long before he was this force of nature, he was broken, and…
• 1:21:23
  Tad Eggleston: and didn't… Didn't know his place, didn't know his…
• 1:21:36
  Tad Eggleston: value. Worth.
• 1:21:40
  Tad Eggleston: Thought poorly of himself.
• 1:21:43
  Tad Eggleston: You know, all, all of the things.
• 1:21:48
  Tad Eggleston: And now, suddenly, he has all of this power.
• 1:21:51
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 1:21:57
  Tad Eggleston: And… When you do that, like, understandably, he goes… Way overboard.
• 1:22:12
  Tad Eggleston: And now we're starting to see… Some kind of correction.
• 1:22:20
  Marcus: Yeah, it remains to be seen, you're right, but.
• 1:22:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know, who knows whether it's a real correction, but… but, like…
• 1:22:30
  Tad Eggleston: Again, what we're now seeing is… Maybe… there's… There's more here.
• 1:22:43
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 1:22:44
  Marcus: Yeah, and I do think it's cool that, you know, Ivan Vales was the one to tell this story, you know, along with,
• 1:22:50
  Marcus: I wasn't familiar… I wasn't super familiar with, tommy Lee Edwards before this.
• 1:22:57
  Tad Eggleston: I think this is early art of his.
• 1:22:59
  Ted: I want to say, didn't he do art for something else for Milestone that we've read, though? Or am I…
• 1:23:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:23:03
  Marcus: Maybe, maybe. But, like, but you might not have been, like, a regular. You're right, you probably should put an issue.
• 1:23:09
  Marcus: But, I don't know, it's really cool, like, to me…
• 1:23:13
  Marcus: His art almost seems like somewhere between Jean-Paul Leon and… Dennis Cowan.
• 1:23:20
  Marcus: Who also, this past weekend, got a,
• 1:23:23
  Marcus: Inducted into the Eisenhall of Fame.
• 1:23:25
  Tad Eggleston: It did.
• 1:23:26
  Marcus: Yeah.
• 1:23:27
  Marcus: But anyway, yeah, it's cool, but I do like, like, Ivan Velez being able to tell the story, because I feel like he… he introduced us to this character, again, as this kind of specter, almost.
• 1:23:39
  Marcus: you know, but he's, you know, he's the one who gets to kind of give us a little bit more detail about it. But anyway, that's just the recap. Yeah.
• 1:23:48
  Ted: Yeah, we've… it's… it's getting late also, but, like.
• 1:23:51
  Ted: I've covered it pretty thoroughly. It is… I still don't feel like I've been turned around on it, but I do feel like I see what it's trying to do, and I am still wishing it was…
• 1:24:03
  Ted: better? More effective, I don't know, that it hit something different, I don't know. But I get the… I get the… yeah. I get it. I get it, but it… it doesn't… it still doesn't quite hit for me, but…
• 1:24:15
  Ted: I'm glad we talked about it, for sure.
• 1:24:17
  Ted: Yeah, I don't know. So, next week, like, according to the, to the, to the compendium, we have exactly one issue of Shadow Cabinet, I think?
• 1:24:26
  Tad Eggleston: No, I think… I think we're moving into…
• 1:24:30
  Tad Eggleston: the, the, the summer, so I think, I think we can't go by… so, the way I'm looking at it is…
• 1:24:37
  Ted: Oh, I see.
• 1:24:38
  Tad Eggleston: Next month, we should do… The next 6 issues…
• 1:24:44
  Tad Eggleston: in the thing. So, Shadow Cabinet 14, Blood Syndicate 28, Hardware 29, Long Hot Summer number 1, Icon 28, and Long Hot Summer number 2.
• 1:24:56
  Tad Eggleston: And then the month after that should be Static 26, Hardware 30, Hardware 31, Blood Syndicate 29, Blood Syndicate 30, Static 27. Okay. And then there's a zombie…
• 1:25:09
  Tad Eggleston: 5-issue thing.
• 1:25:11
  Tad Eggleston: And then it'll be back into…
• 1:25:17
  Tad Eggleston: the… the summer…
• 1:25:19
  Ted: Yeah, I see what you mean. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh yeah, because Long Hot Summer… for some reason, I thought Long Hot Summer was only, like, 2 issues, okay.
• 1:25:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it was a three-issue miniseries.
• 1:25:28
  Ted: Three issues, yeah.
• 1:25:29
  Tad Eggleston: cross over with… crossed over with everything. Right. And I'm assuming they put the stuff in here in a particular order.
• 1:25:36
  Ted: Yes, the…
• 1:25:37
  Tad Eggleston: Because it's not actually in the order that I'm seeing on the web, even.
• 1:25:42
  Ted: Yeah, I… it's… I do not remember exactly how it all comes together, but it's… I know that they do a lot of… it's one of those things where you get multiple perspectives at the same event, so I'm very curious.
• 1:25:52
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:25:53
  Ted: It reads like this.
• 1:25:55
  Ted: Okay.
• 1:25:56
  Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, I mean, it looks like it'll be…
• 1:26:00
  Tad Eggleston: After the zombie, it'll be… there's 1, 2, 3, 4… 5, 6, 7, 8, 9… N? Er, no, 9.
• 1:26:13
  Tad Eggleston: So there's 9 more before we get to our next…
• 1:26:16
  Tad Eggleston: block a zombie, so… so it might be that we do 6-6…
• 1:26:22
  Tad Eggleston: Zombie, and then either push for 9, or split it up over 2 months, and do 5 and 4.
• 1:26:30
  Ted: Yeah, well, we can… we got 3 months to think about it, I'm…
• 1:26:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
• 1:26:34
  Ted: No.
• 1:26:35
  Tad Eggleston: Because I'm always hesitant to go more than 6. Yeah.
• 1:26:40
  Ted: Excuse me, I'll be on it.
• 1:26:42
  Ted: But…
• 1:26:43
  Tad Eggleston: But, I, I feel… I feel like we, we should go… 6 and 6 here.
• 1:26:52
  Ted: That sounds good, yeah.
• 1:26:54
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:26:55
  Ted: I'm good on that.
• 1:26:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:26:58
  Ted: Alright, well, cool. Yeah, this was… this was, again, not… I was not totally into it, but I'm glad we had the discussion about it, absolutely, and
• 1:27:05
  Ted: Yeah, I'm looking forward to finally getting into the long, hot summer stuff, because I feel like that was a really…
• 1:27:10
  Ted: It was their biggest attempt at a big mega crossover, and it has some interesting points to discuss. So, yeah, looking forward to it.
• 1:27:21
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:27:22
  Ted: Cool.
• 1:27:24
  Ted: Well, in the midst of our long, hot summer, let's all stay cool until next time.
• 1:27:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, let's do our best.
• 1:27:31
  Ted: Whee! Yeah, it's gonna be fun.
• 1:27:35
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty, everybody have a fantastic month. For the Brothers Anderson No Relation. This has been the Milestone Book Club on 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.