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Transcript

Saga Book Club #3: Volume 3 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:03
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody! Welcome back to the Saga Book Club On.
• 0:08
  Tad Eggleston: 22 panels, where tonight we will discuss Volume 3. There's way too many people for me to introduce them all, so I'm gonna make them go around the room and introduce themselves, and we're gonna give them an icebreaker to figure it out. You need to go in alphabetical order by first name, so figure it out. Figure out who's going.
• 0:29
  Tad Eggleston: on you guys.
• 0:31
  belle price: Tad, you always do this to me.
• 0:34
  Tad Eggleston: You could have gone with I.
• 0:37
  belle price: But I think… I'm in here as Belle. I'm gonna go with Belle. I like.
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think that the eye would have still had you first.
• 0:46
  belle price: Jeez, Louise. Oh my gosh, yeah! Well…
• 0:50
  belle price: Hi! I'm Belle. I'm a college student. I'm really into Saga. I started reading it back in high school, and I'm revisiting it. This is my first time reading back through it.
• 1:03
  belle price: And I'm majoring in biochemistry, so I'm gonna be a scientist. And you recently got to play with the particle accelerator at Argonne.
• 1:11
  belle price: I did. I did. I went to Chicago and did some Zanes, some sulfur zanes.
• 1:16
  belle price: Using the… Advanced Photon Source. It was really cool.
• 1:24
  Josh Eiserike: Alright, I believe that I am next, everybody. I'm Josh Iserick. I'm very excited to be here chatting about Saga. I am a comic book writer. I'm gonna quickly plug my books.
• 1:36
  Tad Eggleston: Thanks, dude.
• 1:36
  Josh Eiserike: go by them?
• 1:37
  Josh Eiserike: The very final last girls, we are coming to the end of our print run.
• 1:41
  Josh Eiserike: about the Girls Who Survive Horror Movies, from Darby Pop Publishing. There will be more, but, because of, you know, tariffs, etc, we don't know how long it will be until there are more, so get your books now. And Charm City from Scout Comics, and Pale of Settlement, which right now is on Webtoon and Tapas.
• 2:00
  Josh Eiserike: What else am I supposed to say?
• 2:03
  Tad Eggleston: Are all issues of Charm City available yet?
• 2:08
  Josh Eiserike: We can talk offline.
• 2:10
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. So, so, yeah, if you, if you go by and show me a receipt of Charm City, and you're like, I desperately need to read more, email 22panels of…
• 2:21
  Tad Eggleston: podcast at gmail.com, and we'll see about hooking you up with Josh.
• 2:25
  Josh Eiserike: I would be more than happy to. I'm very proud of these books, and I…
• 2:30
  Josh Eiserike: Love Saga tremendously. I read them in floppies as they were coming out, as they are coming out, so I haven't revisited this arc in over 10 years, so it was super fun.
• 2:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 2:45
  Larry Woods: And now, I believe it's me. I'm in here as Larry, but I go by Lee, which I still think puts me next. Either way.
• 2:53
  Larry Woods: Either way, I'm, I'm one of the counselors, the clinicians, part of psychocomicology, so, where we look at all things comic books and pop culture related through a psychological lens, and yeah, after going through this, this volume.
• 3:09
  Tad Eggleston: You mean there's psychology in this book?
• 3:11
  Larry Woods: There's so much. There is a notorious saga hair, but don't worry.
• 3:20
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, I gotta, I gotta ask, like, when you, when you, because I know you do some trauma therapy. When you, when you're, when you're doing, like, PTSD therapy, have you ever told a patient that the opposite of war is fucking?
• 3:37
  Larry Woods: A piece.
• 3:39
  Larry Woods: I do it, and I'm much more subtle, and .
• 3:43
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 3:43
  Larry Woods: Where, it's… we all have our vices, and especially when it comes to trauma work, that we all work through it in our several ways. Yes, I'm saying.
• 3:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:55
  Larry Woods: people, whether that be big T trauma or Little T trauma.
• 3:59
  Tad Eggleston: I will say that that is one of my favorite lessons of Saga.
• 4:04
  Tad Eggleston: Because, you know, peace isn't the opposite of war, it's the cessation of war. That's a really, really good point.
• 4:12
  Tad Eggleston: You're looking for an opposite? Well, you're going from destroying life to possibly creating life, so, you know…
• 4:20
  Larry Woods: There's some truth who, make love, not war.
• 4:28
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, the M's… You gotta go 3 letters deep to figure out who's talking next.
• 4:35
  Matt: It's Marisol.
• 4:37
  Tad Eggleston: I know it.
• 4:37
  Marisol: That's me.
• 4:40
  Marisol: Had to fish my phone out of my pocket.
• 4:46
  Marisol: Well, I'm Marisol, now rereading the Saga series after Tad recommended it to me how many years ago now?
• 4:53
  Tad Eggleston: I think…
• 4:54
  Marisol: It's been a minute.
• 4:56
  Tad Eggleston: I think, like, Volume 5 or Volume 6 was what we were on when I recommended it.
• 5:02
  Marisol: Yeah.
• 5:03
  Tad Eggleston: already. I remember having to warn you when issue 54 came out. You came in to pick it up. Yes. So, maybe you should read that here, so we can talk about it.
• 5:17
  Marisol: And then proceed to spend the next 3 hours in the shop with you.
• 5:22
  Tad Eggleston: Trying.
• 5:23
  Marisol: maca.
• 5:23
  Tad Eggleston: Crying.
• 5:24
  Marisol: Yes.
• 5:25
  Marisol: having emotions.
• 5:27
  Tad Eggleston: but being.
• 5:28
  Marisol: personally victimized by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples.
• 5:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, we'll get into that in detail 6 months from now.
• 5:35
  Marisol: Yep.
• 5:39
  Marisol: But just loving the fact that now we have a podcast to talk to other people about Saga.
• 5:44
  Tad Eggleston: It is cool.
• 5:47
  Tad Eggleston: It's cool. I do feel like I've been talking…
• 5:49
  Tad Eggleston: even 700-some-odd episodes into the podcast, I… and… and with the relative
• 5:57
  Tad Eggleston: relative little saga that I've talked about on the podcast, I still feel like…
• 6:02
  Tad Eggleston: I've talked about Saga more than any other comic.
• 6:08
  Tad Eggleston: At least in terms of how much I've done.
• 6:09
  Marisol: Saying something.
• 6:10
  Tad Eggleston: life.
• 6:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know, even… we have, what, 70 episodes of the Love & Rockets Book Club?
• 6:17
  Tad Eggleston: But I think even you and I have probably talked more Saga than we've talked Love and Rockets.
• 6:24
  Marisol: Honestly, considering…
• 6:26
  Tad Eggleston: How much time I would spend…
• 6:27
  Marisol: Right. In the sh- in the shop.
• 6:29
  Matt: Trust me.
• 6:29
  Marisol: talking with you about comics. Right. You're probably right.
• 6:32
  Matt: Right.
• 6:34
  Marisol: I'm not kidding, it would be, like, 3, maybe bordering on 4 hours, where…
• 6:40
  Tad Eggleston: I think there was more than once where we spent more than two hours talking about a single issue, a saga.
• 6:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 6:49
  Tad Eggleston: Every time I walked into the shop, Taz got some kind of new recommendation, and then we sit there… Well, you stopped coming unless you could afford, what, 6 graphic novels?
• 6:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You wouldn't come unless you were ready to spend 90 bucks.
• 7:04
  Marisol: At least.
• 7:06
  Tad Eggleston: I know some days I walked out of there spending,
• 7:10
  Marisol: Upwards of $150, 200 bucks on comics.
• 7:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think he dropped 2 bills at least once.
• 7:17
  Marisol: Probably.
• 7:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:18
  Marisol: Financially smart move? Probably not. Did it make me happy? Yes.
• 7:22
  Tad Eggleston: That makes it financial.
• 7:23
  Marisol: You know what, at the end of the day, that's what matters.
• 7:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:28
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 7:31
  Tad Eggleston: Two of you left.
• 7:34
  Matt: Is it me?
• 7:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 7:36
  Matt: Alright, cool. My name is Matt, I'm a friend of Tad's for…
• 7:40
  Matt: quite a while now. Five years.
• 7:42
  Tad Eggleston: years.
• 7:42
  Matt: At least.
• 7:44
  Tad Eggleston: Something like that? It started during the pandemic, so…
• 7:47
  Matt: Yeah.
• 7:48
  Matt: I'm also Belle's father, and…
• 7:52
  Tad Eggleston: Which is just amazing to me, because I know you, and I know her, and the idea that she could have come from you just…
• 7:59
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't make sense. You know her mother too, Ted, so… Well, I do, and she's quite nice and whatnot, but I'm still wondering if she got left on your porch.
• 8:08
  Matt: I don't think so.
• 8:11
  Matt: Anyway, been reading Saga since Issue 1 in floppy form, off the shelf, and, you know, love this book, love Tad, love his podcasts, and just real happy to be here.
• 8:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, this is a perfect time to say that people who love the podcast are welcome to help us out.
• 8:31
  Matt: panels.
• 8:33
  Tad Eggleston: Or, patreon.com slash 22panels podcast. We'll happily take your money from you, and it can support my horrible comic habits.
• 8:43
  Tad Eggleston: I still spend Marisol-type money on comics on a… really regular basis.
• 8:51
  Marisol: Yeah.
• 8:52
  Phil: Okay, that makes sense.
• 8:52
  Marisol: I just found a new comic shop over here, where I moved to in, Westmont.
• 8:58
  Marisol: Went there one day during a lunch break with a coworker of mine, and I am definitely in the need to go back.
• 9:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, which one is that?
• 9:08
  Marisol: On, it's on Ogden.
• 9:11
  Marisol: I forget what it's called.
• 9:14
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, I feel like I know it, but I'm drawing a blank, too.
• 9:17
  Marisol: Yeah, I don't remember what it's called.
• 9:21
  Marisol: I was in there for all of maybe half an hour, and spent… Maybe $56 and change?
• 9:28
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 9:29
  Marisol: Which, Ted, you know me, that's nothing.
• 9:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it is. I mean, like, heaven forbid I start managing to get you to go to small press cons with me.
• 9:40
  Tad Eggleston: We have…
• 9:42
  Marisol: I don't know that my wallet.
• 9:43
  Tad Eggleston: Creator of the comic right in front of you?
• 9:46
  Tad Eggleston: And you're looking at it, and it's cool, and you can see how poor they are.
• 9:52
  Marisol: I don't know if my wallet could handle it.
• 9:56
  Tad Eggleston: I know mine doesn't, but that's the big concern. I love going in.
• 9:59
  Josh Eiserike: We need people like you at small press conventions.
• 10:06
  Marisol: I'll have to start sitting… squirreling away some funds to go.
• 10:09
  Tad Eggleston: I… seriously, I went… To, like, a super small press…
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: show up in Milwaukee, like, like, one of the, the nearly free to table, free to get in, like, in the hallway of…
• 10:22
  Tad Eggleston: Of a… of a food court.
• 10:25
  Tad Eggleston: And I told myself I had a $40 budget, and, like, I only spent…
• 10:35
  Tad Eggleston: 110, so I felt like it was a win.
• 10:40
  Marisol: Only, he says.
• 10:42
  Tad Eggleston: Hey!
• 10:44
  Phil: So here's… so here's a question.
• 10:45
  Tad Eggleston: 110 on a $40 budget is actually decent for me when I'm at a con.
• 10:50
  Marisol: That's true.
• 10:51
  Phil: What's the most you've spent on a single issue?
• 10:54
  Tad Eggleston: Most I've spent on a single issue, or… or a single… Volume.
• 11:00
  Phil: Issue.
• 11:01
  Phil: floppy.
• 11:02
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 11:03
  Tad Eggleston: $32 for Saga number 2.
• 11:09
  Phil: Oh, okay, yeah.
• 11:10
  Phil: Yeah, I think, I think,
• 11:12
  Tad Eggleston: I don't play that game.
• 11:14
  Phil: No, no, no. I just mean, like, that's… that's… I've… I've been… I've done around that… that same amount, so yeah, that's probably my… my upper limit, too.
• 11:22
  Tad Eggleston: $30 for the Marvel team-up with Spider-Man and the not-ready-for-primetime players?
• 11:29
  Phil: Nice.
• 11:31
  Tad Eggleston: And $20 for all 8 issues of Electra Assassin.
• 11:36
  Phil: Oh, yeah, see, there you go.
• 11:38
  Tad Eggleston: more my speed.
• 11:39
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 11:40
  Phil: you know.
• 11:42
  Tad Eggleston: I do have a couple of comics that are worth more than that.
• 11:46
  Tad Eggleston: That somebody paid more than that for, but it wasn't me that paid more than that for them.
• 11:56
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 11:58
  Tad Eggleston: Josh, you looked like you were about to add something.
• 12:02
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, I mean, this is a subject near and dear to my heart,
• 12:05
  Josh Eiserike: I don't know what the single most expensive comic I… I bought was.
• 12:13
  Josh Eiserike: But I do know that there was a accounting error, at my first comic book store, and I got Uncanny266, which is the first appearance of Gambit for $5.
• 12:25
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 12:27
  Josh Eiserike: And the guy looked at it, he's like, I don't know if I can sell this to you. I was like, I was probably a teenager, I was like, but it says that's what it costs, and he was like, well, I guess it does.
• 12:37
  Josh Eiserike: And that was that. I've certainly spent probably 20, 30 for a single issue. Couldn't tell you which one it was.
• 12:47
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I've spent more than 20, so few… I mean, the only other comic that I spent 20 on was…
• 12:55
  Tad Eggleston: the death of Elektra.
• 12:58
  Josh Eiserike: I was very, very close to dropping $5,000 on a very beat-up copy of X-Men number 1 from 63.
• 13:08
  Phil: Oh my god.
• 13:09
  Tad Eggleston: And then I was like… I can feel that.
• 13:11
  Josh Eiserike: And then I was like, We could afford this, but my wife would fucking kill me.
• 13:16
  Tad Eggleston: See, and I… I would have been… I would have been… I would have been different. I would have been like…
• 13:21
  Tad Eggleston: If I can afford that, I could also afford… like…
• 13:30
  Tad Eggleston: A hundred.
• 13:32
  Tad Eggleston: $5 books.
• 13:35
  Phil: Your math's way off, but yeah.
• 13:40
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, it was, I was seriously considering it.
• 13:43
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I'd still have $4,500 left, Phil.
• 13:48
  Josh Eiserike: I did… I… I… I did… I ultimately did not buy it. I…
• 13:52
  Tad Eggleston: I don't.
• 13:53
  Josh Eiserike: regret it, but I know that it was the right move.
• 13:56
  Tad Eggleston: I could get a hundred… I could get 100 $5 books and 30 artist editions.
• 14:09
  Tad Eggleston: That's how my brain winds up working, the second there's even a zero added to, like, a single issue price.
• 14:18
  Tad Eggleston: Unless… I will happily drop $20 on, like, a single issue at an IndieCon, because I know… That, like…
• 14:27
  Tad Eggleston: They're having to pay all their own printing costs.
• 14:30
  Josh Eiserike: Yes. I would also add that this was during my TV writing days, when
• 14:35
  Josh Eiserike: Money was a lot, happier?
• 14:39
  Josh Eiserike: I did buy… I did buy a Nintendo Switch. That was… that was my big purchase.
• 14:44
  Tad Eggleston: There you go. There you go.
• 14:47
  Tad Eggleston: Phil, introduce yourself, and then we'll start talking saga.
• 14:49
  Phil: My name's Phil, I, co-host 22 panels with Tad. I also picked up Saga…
• 14:58
  Phil: from number one in floppies, but have not returned to the series since issue 54. So, I'm still not caught up, it's still… still in the dark, but I'm here to.
• 15:09
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know how… I was so happy that there was a midnight opening for issue 55.
• 15:15
  Phil: Huh.
• 15:16
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't want to wait a second longer than I had to.
• 15:20
  Tad Eggleston: And, like… I also went to a shop that I had their Wi-Fi code, and I had my…
• 15:27
  Tad Eggleston: iPad with me in case…
• 15:30
  Tad Eggleston: as often happened and did happen that night, the digital copy dropped at midnight East Coast time, so I actually
• 15:39
  Tad Eggleston: bought my digital copy in the car at 11 o'clock and had read it twice by the time I went in to pick up my physical copy.
• 15:52
  Phil: Dedication, right there.
• 15:55
  Tad Eggleston: I love Saga.
• 15:58
  Phil: It's a good book!
• 16:01
  Tad Eggleston: So, anybody with first thoughts on Volume 3? I have so many thoughts on Volume 3 that I want to let somebody else start.
• 16:15
  Tad Eggleston: And we have silence.
• 16:16
  Larry Woods: I will say… I'll jump in here, because I know I tend to be pretty… I jump the gun from time to time.
• 16:23
  Larry Woods: coming from the last podcast, where I was… really, like.
• 16:29
  Larry Woods: Fuck the will. I don't like this guy.
• 16:32
  Larry Woods: this was the issue, and I'm pulling it up now, where I'm like, oh…
• 16:40
  Larry Woods: Okay, I feel for the guy now. Like, I do legit feel for him now.
• 16:46
  Tad Eggleston: The Will is, like, the most difficult character for me in all of Saga, because I don't want to like him.
• 16:55
  Larry Woods: Yeah.
• 16:57
  Larry Woods: And for the longest time, I didn't. Until, that particular issue. And you know the issue I'm talking about, where it seems like there were…
• 17:06
  Larry Woods: So many things coming ahead. What's real? What's not? Yeah.
• 17:11
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and when he, when he insists on naming her.
• 17:16
  Tad Eggleston: Can't call her slave girl anymore, gotta give her her name, and, like, it's like, ugh.
• 17:21
  Tad Eggleston: I know you're all drugged up right now, but you're so sweet!
• 17:26
  Larry Woods: Yeah.
• 17:27
  Matt: Yeah, definitely. The Will is one character I never thought I would be, like, rooting for early on.
• 17:32
  Matt: Or liking, so I get it.
• 17:35
  Josh Eiserike: I… I have been Team Will since day one. I love this character, I know what happens.
• 17:41
  Tad Eggleston: Are you also Team Darth Vader?
• 17:44
  Josh Eiserike: We'll see. I'll put it like this, keeping on my X-Men theme for today, I very, very nearly bought this shirt that says Magneto was right.
• 17:54
  Matt: Okay.
• 17:55
  Tad Eggleston: See, now it's all making sense.
• 17:57
  Josh Eiserike: That tells you everything you need to know.
• 18:00
  Phil: And that's… that's, I think, part of, why…
• 18:05
  Phil: issue 54 was so hard for me, because it felt like a dual loss, because I had been a huge fan of The Will up until that point, too, and then it was like, oh, well, fuck, now I can't like this guy. So it's like, two of my favorite characters are dead to me.
• 18:19
  Phil: And, you know, that was honestly probably the biggest looming specter of reading this volume, was thinking about
• 18:27
  Phil: because I, you know, I didn't quite remember what happened. I thought for a second that Marco might heal well. I was like, oh, how, you know…
• 18:34
  Phil: The dramatic irony of healing someone, but instead it's… it's both him not healing the man who will eventually kill him, as well as, like.
• 18:45
  Phil: What's it? He, he seems almost suicidal at the moment when he's… he's walking up to Gwendolyn, saying, like, oh yeah, no, just lay into me, like, oh, okay, how… how long has this guy been this reckless?
• 19:03
  belle price: Yeah, I will also say, I just… I love a good anti-hero. Like, I love the Will, because he's a great anti-hero. Like, you don't want to root for this guy.
• 19:11
  Matt: But he makes you root for him.
• 19:13
  Matt: Right? Right.
• 19:14
  belle price: Like, he demands it, you know what I mean?
• 19:16
  Matt: It shows just enough humanity.
• 19:18
  belle price: make you want to. Exactly, he, he, he, yeah.
• 19:24
  Larry Woods: That's the word, humanity. Like, to me, he became…
• 19:28
  Larry Woods: Way more of a relatable person.
• 19:32
  Larry Woods: To where he's like.
• 19:35
  Larry Woods: I'll put it this way, as non-clinically as I can. He went through enough fucked up shit for me to be like, okay, yeah, I can understand why he would do what he did, or think the way he did.
• 19:46
  Larry Woods: Feel the way he feels.
• 19:49
  Larry Woods: 100%.
• 19:51
  Matt: The fact that somebody who kills people for a living has a moral compass, and is like, no, we don't fuck children.
• 19:58
  Matt: I, I respect that.
• 19:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I mean, that was the first moment where it's like, oh, wait a minute. Yup.
• 20:04
  Matt: I just smashed that guy's head just because… He made a suggestion.
• 20:09
  Tad Eggleston: Just because he was offered.
• 20:11
  Matt: Yep.
• 20:13
  Matt: Yep, exactly.
• 20:14
  Phil: Good line.
• 20:16
  Tad Eggleston: This page here, I have up, where we meet.
• 20:22
  Matt: The journalists?
• 20:23
  Tad Eggleston: Upshur and DOF.
• 20:25
  Tad Eggleston: This page, to me, represents… When…
• 20:33
  Tad Eggleston: The comic just took on a whole different level.
• 20:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it was already…
• 20:43
  Tad Eggleston: like, Star Wars with more depth, because we… we… we… we knew…
• 20:49
  Tad Eggleston: Our bounty hunters and our bad guys?
• 20:52
  Tad Eggleston: on a greater level, you know, they weren't the one-dimensional Boba Fett's and… and… But, like, to suddenly introduce…
• 21:00
  Tad Eggleston: Journalism, and not just journalism, but tabloid journalism.
• 21:05
  Tad Eggleston: to the universe of the Civil War, just, like… Made it our world on… Cosmic scale.
• 21:18
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like, oh, we're not… we're not just playing strategy games and… and good versus evil. There's…
• 21:29
  Tad Eggleston: It's really bad versus bad, and they're playing games with information as much as they're playing games with…
• 21:38
  Matt: Yup, and there's people in the background making chess moves, and…
• 21:42
  Tad Eggleston: And there are people who are just trying to live their lives. Yep.
• 21:47
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 21:49
  Marisol: Tons of the main conflicts.
• 21:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah…
• 21:55
  Phil: And now that you mentioned it, the, warping of information and the…
• 22:00
  Phil: clashing perspectives, felt like it started to come up more in this volume, and I 100% agree with you that the series, it's almost like…
• 22:10
  Phil: So in a weird way… you know, in that weird way that… that…
• 22:14
  Phil: you know, Matt Fraction's been saying that the first three issues are, like, the first issue. So in this, like, the first three trades are, like, the first… it's like, okay, now… now it's the…
• 22:25
  Phil: The book where it's at, and so from here, it mutates, as opposed to, like, it's almost finished its growth, and…
• 22:33
  Phil: I mean, it's also the volume that introduces the second best character in Saga.
• 22:41
  Tad Eggleston: Which one are we gonna say is that?
• 22:42
  belle price: Yeah, and who might that be.
• 22:43
  Larry Woods: Who is that? Then go ahead.
• 22:44
  Phil: Goose! It's Goose, isn't he in this one?
• 22:46
  Tad Eggleston: I do love Goose. Yeah, we met Goose last season. Last month.
• 22:50
  Phil: What? Okay. Revealing I read Bin and.
• 22:53
  belle price: I was gonna say, it's interesting that we meet Alana's mom, too, stepmom. Stepmom. Like, that was a crazy world-building thing.
• 23:00
  Tad Eggleston: How much does that tell us about Alana?
• 23:04
  belle price: Right! Like, she's so over it.
• 23:08
  belle price: She's so over it.
• 23:09
  Tad Eggleston: She went from bratty high schooler to, I'm joining the military, when Dad married her peer.
• 23:18
  belle price: Yeah.
• 23:19
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 23:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's got, like, Bill and Ted vibes, you know? Hey, Missy, I mean, Mom.
• 23:28
  Matt: Yes, it does.
• 23:31
  Tad Eggleston: Ted, remember when you would… you asked Ma… your mom?
• 23:35
  Matt: Go to the prom. Yup.
• 23:41
  Tad Eggleston: That's hilarious. And, like, the house is right out of Leave It to Beaver.
• 23:45
  Matt: Yup.
• 23:47
  Tad Eggleston: Or, actually, more the Wonder Years, it's like 50s.
• 23:51
  belle price: And, like, it's not like you'd expect it out of Alana as a character, either. You'd expect her to have this, like, hardened, like, terrible upbringing.
• 23:57
  Tad Eggleston: She's, like, it's idyllic.
• 23:59
  belle price: I'm a kid.
• 24:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, she's a suburban goth girl.
• 24:03
  belle price: Yeah.
• 24:04
  Matt: Yep.
• 24:11
  Josh Eiserike: I want to talk about Alana for a moment, because I…
• 24:14
  Josh Eiserike: I was a little colder on this volume at first.
• 24:18
  Josh Eiserike: And I've been reading them from my library, just checking out the trades so I don't have to, like, dig through my long boxes.
• 24:25
  Josh Eiserike: And at first, I was like, wait, why are we with this writer again? What are we doing? They're just hanging out, what's happening? And then it finally clicked.
• 24:35
  Josh Eiserike: she's on maternity leave. That's what this whole trade was about to me… was about for me, is she's just like, oh, she's getting used to, this is my baby, this is my life, what am I gonna do after? What does my life look like now? Do I need a new career? I don't know. And once I locked into that, I was like.
• 24:53
  Josh Eiserike: Great. This works.
• 24:59
  Tad Eggleston: This is a great goose.
• 25:01
  belle price: Great way to describe it, actually, because it does feel like that with Alana in this issue.
• 25:05
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, and especially…
• 25:07
  Tad Eggleston: out.
• 25:09
  Josh Eiserike: With, like, her mother-in-law offering, like, all these opinions, and, like, kind of knowing, but also
• 25:16
  Josh Eiserike: it's… it's not your baby, it's your granddaughter, yeah, no, it was… and again, like, I… I think I've said this each time, like, reading this as a parent is a very, very different experience for me now.
• 25:28
  Matt: Yep.
• 25:30
  Phil: And then even, to me, what struck me was,
• 25:34
  Phil: You know, she does go on to join the circuit.
• 25:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 25:37
  Phil: You know, so it's just the…
• 25:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, they played her. I mean, that's one of the undertones here, is that they totally played her. They played them both. It's like, okay, we gotta get them off of here, we gotta get them somewhere, will they be safe and not constantly on the run, and it's gotta be their idea. Hmm…
• 26:02
  Phil: But it's just… because I hadn't… I hadn't re-read the series more than just this chunk, you know, from… from 1 to 18. So… so this is kind of my first time having re-read since anything past this point.
• 26:18
  Phil: And just the… the level of…
• 26:23
  Phil: Foreshadowing, and knowing where things go.
• 26:26
  Phil: It's just… it's… it's honestly, it's blowing me away.
• 26:30
  belle price: Yeah, that too.
• 26:31
  Tad Eggleston: Brian clearly plotted out A lot of the beats.
• 26:38
  Tad Eggleston: really early.
• 26:39
  belle price: You know, and I think that's interesting that you say that, because I noticed in this issue, this Volume 2, Alana works a lot sooner in the story than I ever thought she did.
• 26:50
  belle price: Like, she… like, you're on Volume 3, she's a new mother, like, he's the stay-at-home dad, she's out there making the money, like, she is on top of it, I'm gonna take care of this baby, I'm gonna provide for this baby. And, like, I really respect that.
• 27:02
  Tad Eggleston: Ew.
• 27:03
  belle price: Last time I… actually, funny story, last time I read this, I was in high school, so I didn't have a career yet, but, like, now that I have my career, like, I… I can kind of relate to this, like, I'm gonna go, you know.
• 27:13
  belle price: Do all of this to, like, better myself, my family, my people.
• 27:19
  Tad Eggleston: This panel down in the corner here.
• 27:22
  Phil: Yeah.
• 27:24
  Tad Eggleston: Page in general.
• 27:26
  Larry Woods: But this panel down in the corner here with Sophie and Lioncat.
• 27:30
  Tad Eggleston: Is one of the sweetest in all of comics.
• 27:34
  Larry Woods: Goddammit, Pat, you're not even gonna cry.
• 27:36
  Tad Eggleston: because I did bad things with LYING.
• 27:41
  Larry Woods: Yep.
• 27:43
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, but then it's the next panel, too, that just makes.
• 27:46
  Tad Eggleston: makes it work.
• 27:47
  Marisol: even more.
• 27:48
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 27:49
  Marisol: A cute little snuggle.
• 27:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 27:53
  Marisol: Oh, hey…
• 27:55
  Tad Eggleston: She's just…
• 28:01
  Tad Eggleston: It's just… Yeah.
• 28:03
  Marisol: And again, we have Brian K. Vaughn making me feel feelings in my own home, and honestly, that's disrespectful.
• 28:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:10
  Marisol: So here are you?
• 28:11
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, for that matter, and this is another Fiona thing, too, like…
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: How do you, even on the…
• 28:21
  Tad Eggleston: The next page, where it's now…
• 28:24
  Matt: Gwendolyn talking about…
• 28:27
  Tad Eggleston: Sophie to the will.
• 28:32
  Tad Eggleston: And Sophie and Lioncat are in the background, and smaller, and not quite as detailed, and yet still the center of everything. You cannot let
• 28:42
  Tad Eggleston: can't get your eyes off of them. You're just completely drawn to them.
• 28:47
  Phil: It's because the character's looking right at them, too, so… It is!
• 28:51
  Tad Eggleston: And the word balloons lead you to them.
• 28:55
  Phil: The panel cut points at it.
• 28:58
  Matt: such as,
• 28:59
  Tad Eggleston: so comfortable, so sweet, that you… you linger. You can't…
• 29:04
  belle price: I think the best way to describe it would be, like, cinematic. Like, it's just a cinematic panel.
• 29:09
  Marisol: Hmm.
• 29:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 29:11
  Tad Eggleston: It would be a lingering shock.
• 29:14
  belle price: Yeah.
• 29:16
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it'd be that shot that was, like, it stayed there for 2 or 3 beats longer than strictly necessary.
• 29:25
  Tad Eggleston: This is your… and then we've got another one of my fun throwaway things, your… your payphone.
• 29:32
  Tad Eggleston: at A.
• 29:32
  Larry Woods: I don't know.
• 29:33
  Tad Eggleston: gas station.
• 29:34
  Larry Woods: Nope.
• 29:35
  Tad Eggleston: In space, complete with graffiti!
• 29:46
  Tad Eggleston: I just, like…
• 29:51
  Tad Eggleston: How? How do you decide that this is the way you're gonna…
• 29:55
  Phil: It's the least convenient place for fuel tank, but, you know.
• 30:00
  Larry Woods: I'm also thinking, too, now looking back at this, I'm like.
• 30:03
  Larry Woods: Why is His Highness pumping his own gas?
• 30:07
  Larry Woods: I feel like they would have.
• 30:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, because he stole the ship, and he's not allowed to go home.
• 30:11
  Matt: You're grabbing it yourself, too.
• 30:13
  Larry Woods: Right.
• 30:14
  Larry Woods: Remember, he can't go home until he offs the happy couple.
• 30:18
  Phil: I don't think this takes place in Space Oregon, you know?
• 30:21
  Larry Woods: I think it's face jersey.
• 30:23
  Phil: Oh, Space Jersey, okay.
• 30:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, okay.
• 30:26
  Matt: Oh.
• 30:27
  Josh Eiserike: Last time I was in Jersey, you don't pump your own gas there, though.
• 30:31
  Tad Eggleston: That's what he was saying. It's in space… if it was in space jersey, he wouldn't be allowed to pump his own gas.
• 30:37
  Josh Eiserike: Yes, yes.
• 30:45
  Tad Eggleston: I love that there's even an ad in the window.
• 30:52
  Tad Eggleston: With a silly face on it.
• 30:57
  Tad Eggleston: I wonder if we zoom in… Weather, weather.
• 31:01
  Phil: I'm also gonna go out on a limb and say that, I think it was… it was after this, this arc that I started rooting for… for Prince Robot, too.
• 31:09
  Phil: You know?
• 31:09
  Tad Eggleston: I think I start liking Prince Robot a lot more in the fifth arc?
• 31:16
  Matt: Yep.
• 31:16
  Phil: Hmm.
• 31:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 31:18
  Matt: I couldn't.
• 31:19
  Tad Eggleston: be wrong.
• 31:22
  Tad Eggleston: I think it's Squire that makes me love Pence Prince.
• 31:26
  Phil: Yeah.
• 31:26
  belle price: Let's go back to that, that, that little splash for a minute before, for Chapter 15. Can we just appreciate that fantasy little pin-up of Marco and Alana for a second? Because that was, that's always so
• 31:36
  belle price: No, the cover.
• 31:37
  Tad Eggleston: The cover, yeah.
• 31:39
  belle price: I'm like, they're so great.
• 31:41
  Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
• 31:42
  belle price: It's just fairy tale.
• 31:44
  Tad Eggleston: It's them on a heist book.
• 31:46
  belle price: It's everything you want out of their relationship, and nothing that you get.
• 31:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 31:51
  Matt: Yeah, exactly.
• 31:54
  Larry Woods: alert! I'm like…
• 31:55
  belle price: Sorry, gang.
• 31:58
  Matt: Well…
• 32:00
  Marisol: Oh, now I'm sad.
• 32:03
  Larry Woods: Now is Belle making you feel feelings?
• 32:07
  Phil: I am on the offensive. Actually, that's a… that's a really great, great point to kind of consider, like.
• 32:12
  Phil: That, yeah, the idea of their relationship has always been more romantic than their actual relationship.
• 32:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:22
  belle price: The fans love them. The fans can't get enough of them. They know it.
• 32:26
  Matt: Your relationship is romanticized, even though it's not that romantic.
• 32:30
  Phil: Yeah, and anyone, it's like, fans of their relationship, or like, anyone who's seen Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the love droplets, like, those tiny little moments where they're good, and you're like, please let them work out, and it's like, no.
• 32:41
  Phil: Just disaster after disaster.
• 32:45
  Tad Eggleston: So, so here, here's my question.
• 32:49
  Tad Eggleston: Since that very much looks like something that we've seen Alana wear, Did Granddad make that?
• 32:58
  Tad Eggleston: For Hazel, or is Alana bad at laundry?
• 33:06
  Marisol: Good question!
• 33:07
  Tad Eggleston: Because it, it looks…
• 33:09
  belle price: That is her being bad at laundry.
• 33:11
  belle price: It looks just like the one Mommy used to, and she trails off. No, yeah, she's bad at laundry.
• 33:21
  belle price: She's a career woman.
• 33:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:25
  Tad Eggleston: I love this nonjun.
• 33:28
  Matt: And whose name, yeah, just…
• 33:32
  Tad Eggleston: Such a cool game. The drawing level, the… the… Harsh truths.
• 33:41
  belle price: Don't we get that lioncat scene in this?
• 33:44
  belle price: in this, volume, where Lioncat gets, like, that,
• 33:50
  belle price: You get, like, Lion Cat backstory from Isabelle when she morphs, because she, like, senses things about the cat.
• 33:56
  Matt: Yes.
• 33:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah…
• 33:58
  Matt: Yes, we do.
• 33:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 34:00
  belle price: Because that's, like, such a cool spread of pages, like, those two, like, just being open to that, like, it's so…
• 34:07
  belle price: like, you don't really see Isabelle go out on the offensive very much, but Isabelle really tells Lioncat to, like…
• 34:12
  belle price: Knock it off.
• 34:13
  Tad Eggleston: I do also love this, this here. What are they getting up to now? Is Alana praying?
• 34:20
  Tad Eggleston: No, she more certainly is not.
• 34:26
  Marisol: Oh!
• 34:26
  Larry Woods: No.
• 34:27
  Larry Woods: Oh, okay.
• 34:42
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, this is just… Feels so sad.
• 34:47
  belle price: Oh my gosh!
• 34:49
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the fact that she's… you've got, like, blood around her lips already?
• 34:53
  Larry Woods: Yeah.
• 34:55
  Larry Woods: It's unexplained.
• 34:58
  Tad Eggleston: It's just like, oh… Sophie, Sophie, no…
• 35:02
  Phil: And that's the same place where Prince Robot got stabbed?
• 35:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 35:08
  belle price: Oh my gosh, we haven't even gotten to chapter After 18 years.
• 35:11
  Josh Eiserike: I have, I have a question there.
• 35:14
  Josh Eiserike: In the… in the previous hallucination sequence, it's her mom, Sophie's mom talking to her. How would she know the stalk?
• 35:23
  Phil: So, so if you look, it's half stock, half her mom, implying that it's, like, the same entity that they're both hallucinating, is… is saying different things to each of them.
• 35:33
  Tad Eggleston: Because it's really the parasite.
• 35:36
  Josh Eiserike: No, I got… I got that, but wouldn't the parasite present to Sophie as somebody she knew?
• 35:41
  Phil: Well, yeah, it is her mom, so if you look, the, the, right, right.
• 35:44
  Josh Eiserike: It's also the stock.
• 35:46
  Phil: Yeah, I think that's… that's meant to, like.
• 35:48
  Phil: For us, more so than her.
• 35:51
  Tad Eggleston: I think that's letting us know, and or letting us know what the will was seeing.
• 35:57
  Phil: Yeah.
• 35:58
  Josh Eiserike: I see.
• 36:01
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because I kind of get the impression that, like, Sophie can see one thing while the Will sees something else.
• 36:08
  Josh Eiserike: That tracks.
• 36:17
  Tad Eggleston: This is a great cover, too.
• 36:19
  Tad Eggleston: Please do not kill.
• 36:24
  Tad Eggleston: But he's carrying it, because he doesn't want to mess up his hair.
• 36:29
  Matt: Yeah, exactly.
• 36:31
  Matt: I get a real Anderson Cooper vibe off him, I don't know if I'm supposed to.
• 36:35
  Tad Eggleston: I think you are.
• 36:36
  Matt: Yeah, I think you are too. That's why I brought it up.
• 36:40
  belle price: I love it. We have Space Anderson Cooper, and he's blue.
• 36:45
  belle price: That tracks.
• 36:47
  Phil: I don't know why the photographer looks kind of like, Robert Pattinson to me now. Like, just a weird little guy, just staring off into space.
• 37:03
  Tad Eggleston: And I love the kid's book.
• 37:07
  Phil: Oh yeah, I am continually being struck by how…
• 37:11
  Phil: it feels like, Fiona can shift between styles.
• 37:15
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 37:16
  Phil: And I mean, she does it almost on every page between foreground and background, which is, I think, something so unique about this book.
• 37:28
  Matt: Yeah, Fiona's… Outstanding.
• 37:32
  Tad Eggleston: I love how Gwen is the one that knows how to figure out that, oh, something's wrong here.
• 37:39
  Marisol: Hmm.
• 37:41
  Phil: That's also, like.
• 37:42
  Tad Eggleston: Probably able to use the lying cat to go, oh!
• 37:46
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm hallucinating. Let me vomit now.
• 37:49
  Matt: Nope.
• 37:49
  Phil: Right, but also the fastest, like, hallucination onset, and then stop that, you know… Right.
• 37:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right, no, she's the one that's smart enough to go, no, this isn't right.
• 38:03
  Tad Eggleston: Will just falls into it. Sophie, I'm gonna give a pass, because she's only 6.
• 38:09
  belle price: But I think that speaks to the Will's mental health. Like, we see him spiral down into this depression after the stock dies, and it's just also nice, we got the ass on the.
• 38:19
  Matt: screen.
• 38:20
  Tad Eggleston: But… I'm saying, like, it's… I didn't see your dad saying that.
• 38:25
  belle price: No! Okay, we are related. I did not get dropped off on anybody's doorstep.
• 38:30
  Matt: Right?
• 38:30
  Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
• 38:33
  Larry Woods: But I think it's interesting that we get that, you know? Would you know…
• 38:37
  belle price: Like, the glimpse into his mental state, like, we really get to kind of hone in on that and see how mentally ill he is, because we eventually figure out that it's kind of a hallucination, because we're like, why is he seeing the stock?
• 38:47
  Matt: Water.
• 38:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 38:48
  Josh Eiserike: I also love that when Lion Cat reacts to Gwendolyn, there's a question mark.
• 38:52
  Josh Eiserike: Like, that one little punctuation does a lot of heavy lifting in that moment.
• 38:59
  Tad Eggleston: God, it's like, it's like, it's like, my special power is saying that you're lying, but I see something, too.
• 39:09
  Josh Eiserike: Well, but he also knows that she's being truthful and lying at the same time. Sum's up.
• 39:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 39:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he just has such a great… Actually, I forget.
• 39:19
  Matt: Is it here?
• 39:20
  Phil: She.
• 39:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's a she.
• 39:23
  Phil: And.
• 39:23
  Tad Eggleston: This is such a great expression.
• 39:25
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 39:25
  Phil: She sounds like, Brian's wife.
• 39:32
  Tad Eggleston: Phil's the one that reads all the interviews. I decide that if I want to talk to somebody, I'll go talk to them.
• 39:38
  Phil: I think he might have… it might have been mentioned in one of the letters columns from way back.
• 39:43
  Tad Eggleston: That's possible. That's possible. I do read all the letters column.
• 39:46
  Phil: I like, I like… I also don't…
• 39:48
  Tad Eggleston: Have your didactic memory.
• 39:50
  Phil: I, you know, I, I swear, I was, trained, by Pokemon, you know?
• 39:57
  Phil: My generation.
• 40:03
  Tad Eggleston: And again, we just have this, like, cute bedroom.
• 40:06
  Tad Eggleston: in space.
• 40:08
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's not in space now, but, like…
• 40:13
  Phil: Also.
• 40:14
  Tad Eggleston: It's just so weird to me when you have, like, antique furniture on this… Far distant planet?
• 40:22
  Phil: It's… it's one of those things that Ford…
• 40:24
  Tad Eggleston: Lighthouse in the middle of a desert of mud.
• 40:29
  Phil: But even, like, for a page that's just 5 panels, 2 people talking to each other, there is so much…
• 40:36
  Phil: Life, motion, and expression packed into this page.
• 40:42
  belle price: God, I love Fiona Staples.
• 40:45
  Marisol: Yes.
• 40:46
  belle price: Like, that's all her, man. Like, she is just making this so…
• 40:50
  belle price: She's breathing life into this story.
• 40:53
  Phil: That other people would totally thrown it in.
• 40:56
  belle price: Exactly.
• 40:57
  belle price: Every time, every time. That's why I love this Lioncat spread, when, Isabelle and Lioncat have that interaction, because I can't wait for us to get to it. Because you see this fire behind Isabelle that you don't normally get to see, and you also see Lioncat kind of cower, and Lioncat's kind of known as a badass for a lot of this story. Lioncat's not scared of anything.
• 41:16
  Tad Eggleston: Just looking at… at… Gwendolyn protecting Sophie from Lion Cat.
• 41:23
  Tad Eggleston: Look at, like, the camera choices.
• 41:29
  Marisol: The perspective of everything.
• 41:31
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 41:31
  Matt: Amen.
• 41:32
  belle price: I like the slanty panels, too.
• 41:35
  belle price: Well, it's… Not even straight lines.
• 41:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's a violent page. Every… every violent page has slam.
• 41:42
  Matt: anti-pants.
• 41:42
  Phil: Until… until one at the end of this volume.
• 41:48
  Phil: There's a violent page without slanty panels.
• 41:50
  belle price: Where?
• 41:51
  Tad Eggleston: Look at that character.
• 41:51
  belle price: Oh, yeah, the line?
• 41:52
  Phil: No, no, no, it's a different one, but yeah, we'll, it's like a moment that's too real to be…
• 41:59
  Tad Eggleston: It's not, like.
• 42:01
  Phil: Why?
• 42:02
  Phil: It's because it's sad violence, that's why.
• 42:04
  Matt: Man, hu.
• 42:05
  Phil: That was cool violence.
• 42:06
  belle price: I'm looking… I'm looking.
• 42:09
  Phil: Also, I gotta say right here at the brand, I had completely forgotten the brand, and they're so fantastic.
• 42:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:16
  Phil: It's such a little treat.
• 42:19
  Matt: Oh, yup.
• 42:20
  belle price: And the dog. Good boy.
• 42:22
  Tad Eggleston: Sleep, boy.
• 42:23
  Phil: Yeah, I… again, I love the…
• 42:24
  belle price: away.
• 42:25
  Phil: Sister with a dog, brother with a cat, like, just the It's wonderful.
• 42:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'm dying, let me tell you about taxes.
• 42:35
  Tad Eggleston: You need to know, you can spread your payments over 2 years.
• 42:50
  Tad Eggleston: I love this library.
• 42:51
  Phil: I think Fiona does the best rugs in comics that I can… at least I can remember.
• 42:56
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, we got back-to-back fantastic rugs here.
• 42:59
  Matt: And they barely tied the room together.
• 43:01
  Phil: They do! And that's the other one I was thinking of, too.
• 43:04
  belle price: It'd be a shame if someone peed on it.
• 43:08
  Marisol: I feel like that's.
• 43:10
  Phil: The only horrible thing that didn't happen now. Well, I mean…
• 43:13
  Matt: Exactly!
• 43:13
  Tad Eggleston: There's nobody peeing on it, but what about bleeding on it?
• 43:18
  Phil: This is where, when you die, you also void your bowels, so…
• 43:23
  belle price: Maybe the dude would approve.
• 43:25
  Matt: Yeah.
• 43:28
  Phil: This is… this is it.
• 43:29
  Tad Eggleston: This is Paige. This is Paige.
• 43:30
  Phil: This is the page.
• 43:31
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 43:31
  Phil: It's Prince Robot shooting Carla, Oswald compromising his values, and shooting Prince Robot, screaming Carla's name, and Prince Robot going to… Clara, my bad, and Prince Robot going down in a hail of gunfire.
• 43:46
  Phil: No slanty panels, because this is dramatic sad action, not…
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 43:51
  Phil: Not, a non-traditional cool action.
• 43:54
  belle price: Yeah, it was terrible, actually. It was… it was sad.
• 43:58
  Josh Eiserike: So, also here…
• 44:00
  Tad Eggleston: I've slated.
• 44:00
  Josh Eiserike: They're deer.
• 44:00
  Tad Eggleston: either.
• 44:01
  belle price: We don't have it either when… when Alana goes to shoot Gwendolyn either. Like, there's not slanty nails either.
• 44:08
  Phil: Another interesting thing about the page where Oswald dies is that there's no panel with a cut corner, which, like, the way I interpret the cut corners is that it keeps the page from feeling too static and too blocky.
• 44:22
  Phil: And so when it's that moment of, like, stark, cruel… Here it is. Yes, that's such a good one, too. Stark, cruel deaths, and it's just… there's no… there's no room for…
• 44:32
  Phil: For, misshapeness. Wabi-sabi.
• 44:35
  belle price: I like the one green cat, I have to mention it, I'm so sorry.
• 44:38
  Phil: Sorry.
• 44:38
  belle price: I needed to talk about it. The one green cat that balances it out! Like, Fiona is so good at this worldbuilding stuff, she goes to, like, like, it's down to the color theory, man. Like, she is balancing that giant red cat out with another green cat.
• 44:50
  Matt: Yup.
• 44:51
  Phil: I love how Isabelle's powers expand to, color balance, in addition to shapeshifting.
• 44:57
  belle price: Yes! Yes!
• 45:01
  Larry Woods: I love it. I love Isabelle.
• 45:05
  Larry Woods: Oh, good.
• 45:07
  Josh Eiserike: I love these two pages here.
• 45:10
  Josh Eiserike: Because when it… it's… let me find it in the trade. It's very, like…
• 45:15
  Phil: Claustrophobic.
• 45:16
  Josh Eiserike: Kristini?
• 45:18
  Phil: Oh.
• 45:19
  Josh Eiserike: Cause you, I mean, it's… it's not a congruous moment,
• 45:23
  Josh Eiserike: But the way that, on the opposite sides of the page, you get the… sort of the full spread of the lighthouse. There it is.
• 45:31
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's not quite an actual two-page spread, but…
• 45:38
  Josh Eiserike: No, but it's… I think… I think the way she…
• 45:41
  Tad Eggleston: She uses the borderless panel.
• 45:44
  Phil: Yeah. It goes into the gutters on the first of the two pages.
• 45:48
  Tad Eggleston: Really kind of draws the whole thing.
• 45:52
  Phil: And especially…
• 45:53
  belle price: What a gorgeous thing.
• 45:55
  Phil: With the composition, it… it's almost like the…
• 46:00
  Phil: the choice of backgrounds and, placement of… in the bottom with Gwendolyn in the center keeps the, like, visual tower structure going, so that those two panels, where we do get the sort of whole
• 46:14
  Phil: circular around, it makes it feel like the whole lighthouse is there behind the page while the scene is happening.
• 46:21
  Tad Eggleston: Well, because it just so happens that Gwendolyn borrowed the Will's cloak, which is the same colors as the lighthouse.
• 46:30
  Phil: It's almost like somebody planted or something.
• 46:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean?
• 46:39
  belle price: And I don't know if anyone mentioned it yet, but there's also, if you go back, you have two Marco at the top and two… two Gwendolyn at the bottom, which also.
• 46:47
  Tad Eggleston: I'll balance something.
• 46:47
  belle price: page really nicely, compositionally. This is a beautiful spread, and it was totally on purpose that the lighthouse…
• 46:52
  Matt: did that. I had never noticed.
• 46:54
  belle price: Yeah.
• 46:55
  belle price: Well, I mean, even…
• 46:57
  Tad Eggleston: even on the middle of the page, you've got Marco facing Alana…
• 47:04
  Tad Eggleston: The mirroring market.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: and Gwendolyn.
• 47:06
  Phil: And the two inner panels have the lighthouse background, and the two outer panels have the air.
• 47:12
  Matt: This is… this is…
• 47:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 47:13
  Matt: so Dave Gibbons, Watchmen issue, what, 10 or 11?
• 47:18
  Phil: Let's go.
• 47:20
  Matt: I'm trying.
• 47:21
  Phil: I'm trying to remember which one, but, yeah, it's basically, I love shit like this, where this is, to me, the biggest thing that sets comics out from cinema, and why I try not to use the word cinematic to describe comics, because.
• 47:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and…
• 47:38
  Phil: Go ahead. No, no, oh, okay, I was just gonna say, it's because it's… it's about the interplay between all of the images, and having them as a whole page unit, as opposed to, like.
• 47:50
  Phil: camera… it's… it's… they're doing completely different things. That… that doing great comics relies on thinking about the whole page, not just each panel.
• 48:03
  Tad Eggleston: Notice how everything but the characters is also muted.
• 48:07
  Phil: Yeah!
• 48:09
  Tad Eggleston: And a little bit blurred.
• 48:13
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the details are there, but they're kind of, like, muted and blurred out to really make the characters pop on these pages.
• 48:21
  Phil: Yeah, it's… Similar to, stuff that…
• 48:27
  Phil: It happens in animation, where, you know, the animated pieces will be, you know, sort of in a less detailed style than the,
• 48:38
  Phil: than the backgrounds, but this kind of inverts it, where the backgrounds are less detailed and more impressionistic, and the characters are, like you said, they pop more, because they're…
• 48:46
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like…
• 48:48
  Tad Eggleston: I think a lot of times when people do that, they, like, do it across the book, whereas a couple pages later, you've got the detailed.
• 48:56
  Phil: Mmm.
• 48:56
  Tad Eggleston: house that, like, like, so she picks and chooses.
• 49:01
  Phil: Yeah…
• 49:02
  Tad Eggleston: do it.
• 49:03
  belle price: I also wanted to mention on those two pages, sorry, we're still on this, there's also, it's also kind of Marco confronting Alana, and then separately Marco confronting Gwendolyn.
• 49:14
  Marisol: Yep.
• 49:16
  belle price: Like, you kind of get him confused.
• 49:17
  Tad Eggleston: Confronting both. Him confronting himself.
• 49:20
  belle price: Yeah.
• 49:23
  Phil: It's a real, Three's company situation.
• 49:25
  Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, on one level, it is entirely just him confronting himself.
• 49:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 49:38
  belle price: Yeah, it's fun to point that out, because this is kind of a big moment for Marco.
• 49:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 49:43
  belle price: For his character growth and stuff.
• 49:47
  Tad Eggleston: Like, what will I do? I love how, Isabelle tricks the rebooting robot.
• 49:52
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, this is your friend, Carrier Out of the Fire, yeah, the theater of Fire.
• 49:59
  Phil: I think Isabelle might be one of my, like, favorite ghosts.
• 50:02
  Larry Woods: I love Isabel.
• 50:03
  Phil: Across media, just because of how clever she is.
• 50:06
  Tad Eggleston: I love her face after… after Prince Robot has.
• 50:10
  Phil: Yeah.
• 50:11
  Tad Eggleston: Or on his monitor. Okay, why don't you just go ahead and go? I changed my mind.
• 50:19
  Marisol: We never actually get any confirmation of how old Isabelle is, right?
• 50:25
  Tad Eggleston: I think we…
• 50:27
  Phil: Well…
• 50:27
  Tad Eggleston: A little more here and there.
• 50:29
  Marisol: Excellent.
• 50:30
  Tad Eggleston: Not young.
• 50:32
  Phil: Yeah, so I think she died young, but she's been a ghost for a while.
• 50:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think.
• 50:37
  Marisol: Yeah.
• 50:38
  Tad Eggleston: have been a ghost for more… I mean, I think at some point they talk about
• 50:43
  Tad Eggleston: where her t-shirt… the concert her t-shirt was bought at, and everybody.
• 50:47
  Phil: It's like.
• 50:48
  Tad Eggleston: wait a minute, what? You were at…
• 50:50
  Matt: That was X number of years ago.
• 50:59
  Phil: Mmm.
• 51:00
  Phil: Love this Marco here, too, the…
• 51:03
  Phil: I was gonna say that, Marco's so eerie to me.
• 51:07
  Phil: the lightning.
• 51:08
  Matt: What? Trust my wife can do anything? Is it obvious?
• 51:14
  Matt: Awesome.
• 51:19
  belle price: I also think Isabelle being so old, kind of breathes life into how old the war is, and how she's a landfall native as well.
• 51:25
  Phil: Yeah.
• 51:26
  belle price: It just brings to light the amount of genocide that's actually occurred on landfall, which is super… Oh, Cleave, excuse me.
• 51:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so she's not even a landfall native. It had already moved off planet before she got killed.
• 51:43
  belle price: Like, it just, it shows how old this war is.
• 51:50
  Larry Woods: Dogue.
• 51:52
  Tad Eggleston: Hospitals so… mash.
• 51:58
  belle price: Jenny is really adding to this podcast. As the dog.
• 52:03
  belle price: She's got words.
• 52:04
  Phil: I'm so glad we got a name to the dog.
• 52:07
  Matt: I'm ready to kill her.
• 52:08
  belle price: Yeah, they're my family's dogs. We have Jenny is the little tan one, and then Milo's black and white, and then… yeah, we have a miniature schnauzer named Tupac.
• 52:17
  Tad Eggleston: Aye. Yay.
• 52:20
  belle price: We inherited him.
• 52:21
  Matt: Yep, he was, he was.
• 52:22
  belle price: We rescued him.
• 52:25
  Tad Eggleston: I love this final page turn.
• 52:30
  Tad Eggleston: Get the little foot coming out of the…
• 52:36
  Larry Woods: I love the solution before, where it's, like, the bottom right with, brand.
• 52:42
  Marisol: We see where… The will got Sophie's name.
• 52:47
  Phil: Hmm.
• 52:49
  Larry Woods: I thought that was a…
• 52:50
  Marisol: Normal.
• 52:52
  Larry Woods: Can we just acknowledge that… that last little… that panel, Tad, where, the little one's stepping out, and…
• 52:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 52:59
  Larry Woods: Is that, like, a nod to Firefly with the hat?
• 53:03
  Tad Eggleston: Probably. Possibly.
• 53:05
  Larry Woods: Jane? Jane in his hat.
• 53:07
  Tad Eggleston: Huh?
• 53:09
  Matt: Which? Oh, this one?
• 53:11
  Larry Woods: You're from Firefly?
• 53:13
  Matt: Yeah, I see it.
• 53:16
  Larry Woods: Mama made the hat.
• 53:20
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, it's amazing how, like, one page can, can, like… .
• 53:32
  Phil: Make it a happy ending?
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, make it a happy book. I think of this as one of the happy books because of this page. Like, we just went through it, and I felt my heart break 6 times over as we talked about it, just like I felt my heart break 6 times over while I was reading it earlier today, but this page.
• 53:54
  Tad Eggleston: with Alana saying, that a girl, and the toddler waddling Hazel…
• 54:01
  Tad Eggleston: Getting ready to walk out of the ship.
• 54:04
  Tad Eggleston: Coming right after the kind of cathartic, everybody's alive, well, everybody except Heist, but like…
• 54:10
  Larry Woods: You kinda knew you were meeting him to die.
• 54:14
  Phil: He had very Obi-Wan energy.
• 54:16
  Marisol: Yeah.
• 54:18
  belle price: I want to say this page is… I have a Saga iOS on my iPhone that I did when I was in high school and reading this, and I have never had time to redo it, so it's still Saga, and I still love Saga, so it's perfect. This is one of the widgets I have, so I stare at this all the time.
• 54:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 54:32
  Phil: It's a.
• 54:32
  belle price: Really good one. It's like a classic.
• 54:34
  Phil: I… I also gotta say that this page, more than any other… well, okay, so this page, plus the… the Eerie Marco with the lightning, is, like.
• 54:46
  Phil: in hindsight, Should've seen he was doomed.
• 54:50
  Phil: should have seemed he was super, super doomed, at this point. You know, this is like…
• 54:57
  Phil: Just the fact that, hey, this is our first major turning point of growth in the book, and it's for Alana and Hazel, not Marco.
• 55:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, he… Here, here, here's, did, did anybody… Catch any of the… The New York Comic Con…
• 55:19
  Tad Eggleston: New… News from, from Brian and Nico Henrikin's panel.
• 55:27
  Phil: No, I, don't think so.
• 55:31
  Tad Eggleston: I think he just… he said just, if I recall correctly, and I'm seeing if I can find… find it really quick…
• 55:37
  Tad Eggleston: He said just enough to, like, freak everybody the fuck out.
• 55:43
  Marisol: Oh, boy.
• 55:44
  Phil: About Saga, or about something else? Yeah. Oh.
• 55:48
  Tad Eggleston: So just enough about Saga to freak everybody the fuck out.
• 55:52
  Phil: I mean, I think… okay, so I didn't…
• 55:54
  Phil: I did read a couple comments of basically him saying, like, 108 is still the planned end.
• 55:59
  Tad Eggleston: 108 is still the planned end. This next arc is pretty wild.
• 56:05
  Tad Eggleston: A single audience member shouted, oh no.
• 56:12
  Tad Eggleston: It'll be the most life-changing adventure yet for Hazel. At that point, the entire room groaned.
• 56:22
  Tad Eggleston: This is… this is the reporting from friends… friend of the podcast, Zach Quaintance. Nice. At the beat.
• 56:30
  Tad Eggleston: Haha.
• 56:31
  belle price: I'm hoping Hazel has a good time in this arc.
• 56:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm hoping it's, like, it's the most life-changing because she loses her virginity, not because, like, she loses her mom. That's what I want.
• 56:46
  Josh Eiserike: I'm a few issues behind, but I'm…
• 56:50
  Josh Eiserike: I don't think Alana makes it out of the series alive.
• 56:52
  Tad Eggleston: I actually don't at this point, either.
• 56:57
  Tad Eggleston: Now, the one thing that I have said since the beginning, for that matter.
• 57:02
  belle price: Please don't say Alana dies.
• 57:05
  Tad Eggleston: be, before… before…
• 57:09
  Tad Eggleston: Kirkman somehow pulled a rabbit out of the hat and actually had a relatively happy ending to Walking Dead.
• 57:20
  Tad Eggleston: What I would say is they're both…
• 57:24
  Tad Eggleston: Like, absolute stories of the human condition and survival in spite of the worst
• 57:35
  Tad Eggleston: But the reason that I like Saga more is if for no other reason
• 57:40
  Tad Eggleston: than the fact that Hazel is the narrator, you know it will have a relatively happy ending.
• 57:48
  Matt: I agree with that.
• 57:50
  Josh Eiserike: I agree as well. Here's… here's my question.
• 57:53
  Josh Eiserike: Brian K. Vaughan's one of my favorite writers, and I'm, like, mentally going through his body of work, Has…
• 58:00
  Josh Eiserike: Any of his stuff had a happy ending?
• 58:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess the word is relative…
• 58:09
  Phil: haters!
• 58:10
  Matt: It's not gonna always be…
• 58:11
  Josh Eiserike: Matt Taters had a happy ending.
• 58:13
  Phil: Yeah, it was happy for me.
• 58:15
  Tad Eggleston: I had a relatively happy ending.
• 58:18
  Tad Eggleston: Why the last man didn't have a terror?
• 58:23
  Josh Eiserike: That was not happening.
• 58:26
  Phil: So…
• 58:27
  Josh Eiserike: What is that? The escapists.
• 58:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the escape is definitely…
• 58:32
  Josh Eiserike: That one had a happy ending.
• 58:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Ex Machina was a satisfying and.
• 58:40
  Josh Eiserike: Oh, that was dark.
• 58:41
  Phil: Yep.
• 58:42
  Tad Eggleston: What, what not?
• 58:44
  Phil: No, I get what you mean. It was optimistic.
• 58:47
  Phil: Yeah, there was… It was upbeat.
• 58:51
  Tad Eggleston: There was, like…
• 58:55
  Tad Eggleston: it wasn't, like, good, the bad, and the ugly, everybody… it wasn't a Quentin Taylor… it wasn't the Reservoir Dogs ending.
• 59:01
  Matt: No.
• 59:02
  Josh Eiserike: It was… I think Dex Machina was one of his darkest endings.
• 59:07
  Tad Eggleston: I could see that, too.
• 59:10
  belle price: I just really hope he doesn't kill off Alana. That sounds right, and it makes me sad.
• 59:14
  Josh Eiserike: He was.
• 59:15
  belle price: That sounds right, and I'm not ready to cry like that. Guys, I'm not ready for this.
• 59:21
  Marisol: I don't think any of us are, but it does feel like…
• 59:24
  Tad Eggleston: Lana's odds at 50-50?
• 59:27
  belle price: Oh, that's terrible!
• 59:28
  Josh Eiserike: That's very generous, Ted.
• 59:30
  Tad Eggleston: Ironically, I think Goose has better odds than Alana.
• 59:34
  Phil: goose dies, I don't know what I would do with myself.
• 59:37
  Larry Woods: I think a goose dies.
• 59:41
  Tad Eggleston: Fiona would…
• 59:43
  Phil: You can't kill your plushies!
• 59:45
  Tad Eggleston: Would… would commission his chopper from a… from a,
• 59:50
  Tad Eggleston: Weapon Master somewhere and go hunting Brian.
• 59:55
  Phil: It's just bad.
• 59:55
  Marisol: That's.
• 59:56
  Phil: bad, this is bad marketing. You don't kill your plushies!
• 59:59
  Larry Woods: So now, can I ask the writers of the room? Because this… this is intriguing to me, because the way I'm looking at this is that I… I…
• 1:00:08
  Larry Woods: I don't get the idea that Alona is gonna die.
• 1:00:13
  Larry Woods: I… maybe this is me being willfully ignorant, or…
• 1:00:19
  Larry Woods: maybe I missed foreshadowing, but I see… I see her… I actually think Goose is more likely to die, because especially with…
• 1:00:28
  Larry Woods: I think one of the stories, and me and Tad have talked about this, but I'll save it for the podcast when we get to it, where there's a stretch, a series of pages where, it's just black ink, it's just dark.
• 1:00:41
  Larry Woods: Right? So it's very clear that the plushies do die.
• 1:00:46
  Larry Woods: So.
• 1:00:47
  Phil: of natural causes.
• 1:00:48
  Larry Woods: Sure.
• 1:00:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, was that a national… is a time suck a natural cause?
• 1:00:55
  Larry Woods: I think so. Relatively, I guess, because time is relative.
• 1:01:01
  Marisol: But my question for the riders, is there some things that y'all see, or.
• 1:01:06
  Larry Woods: think.
• 1:01:07
  Larry Woods: or especially those of you that are more familiar with Brian K. Vaughan's work.
• 1:01:11
  Larry Woods: Is that where, like, he naturally wants to go, is taking out Alana?
• 1:01:15
  Josh Eiserike: I, I would say… Three things to that. It's a great question, I never thought of that.
• 1:01:22
  Josh Eiserike: for me, and I'm curious what y'all think, it's, one.
• 1:01:26
  Josh Eiserike: you know, Tad puts it at 50-50, I'd say more 60-40, and that's just gut.
• 1:01:32
  Josh Eiserike: And I think the reason being is, having read a lot of Brian Kavon's work, he's very good at getting you to fall in love with a character, and killing that character off in a way.
• 1:01:45
  Matt: It doesn't hurt you.
• 1:01:48
  Josh Eiserike: In a way that's meaningful?
• 1:01:49
  Tad Eggleston: hurt you. I mean, that's what's really infuriating. You can never argue with him. You can never say that wasn't necessary to the story.
• 1:01:59
  Josh Eiserike: But, you know, as I was gonna say, in a way that moves the story forward.
• 1:02:05
  Josh Eiserike: And…
• 1:02:06
  Josh Eiserike: I… I mean, I'm thinking of Runaways, specifically. I mean, that… that… that death, more than anything he wrote, that one gutted me when I was that age. But the other reason, and it's a great question.
• 1:02:18
  Josh Eiserike: is This is a… to me, re-reading it, this is a story about a family.
• 1:02:24
  Josh Eiserike: So what's the natural ending? And I don't know how he's gonna end the story, I have no idea, but thinking of it now, it's like, oh no, Hazel's gonna start her own family. That's my prediction. I'm probably dead wrong.
• 1:02:36
  Matt: No, no.
• 1:02:37
  Tad Eggleston: Million dollar question.
• 1:02:39
  Tad Eggleston: like… I could go 60-40 that she dies, rather than…
• 1:02:47
  Tad Eggleston: lives, but I think that I then have it 50-50 whether she dies violently or of natural causes.
• 1:02:54
  Matt: And that's… that's where I'm going. So, mathematically, Margot dies midpoint, spoiler alert.
• 1:03:00
  Matt: At the end of the story, we don't know how far in the future that's gonna be.
• 1:03:03
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:03:05
  Marisol: Hmm.
• 1:03:05
  Matt: He could go decades.
• 1:03:08
  Matt: To end the story. So, Alana will die, it's just a matter of how, and how that.
• 1:03:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:03:14
  Matt: It's the story.
• 1:03:15
  Marisol: And to your point, too, like, we've skipped forward a bit in time through the series. A few times.
• 1:03:22
  Marisol: volume.
• 1:03:23
  Tad Eggleston: represents, like, at least 8 months.
• 1:03:27
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 1:03:27
  Matt: Bye.
• 1:03:28
  Phil: So I wonder if… I wonder if the… the book might end with Lana's death if, you know, the midpoint was Marco's death.
• 1:03:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:03:36
  Phil: I could see that happening. And hopefully it's, you know, that, like.
• 1:03:41
  Phil: of old age, looking at Hazel's family, you know, stuff like that.
• 1:03:45
  Matt: Even for your grandchildren.
• 1:03:47
  Matt: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:49
  Josh Eiserike: I think, and again, I have… this is just my gut, I think the book ends with Hazel giving birth.
• 1:03:54
  Tad Eggleston: I see that.
• 1:03:55
  Josh Eiserike: It started with her birth, I think it's gonna end with somebody else.
• 1:03:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:04:00
  Phil: Yeah, that's interesting.
• 1:04:00
  Larry Woods: I can see that.
• 1:04:02
  Matt: Because she died during childhood?
• 1:04:02
  Tad Eggleston: mirror panel.
• 1:04:04
  Josh Eiserike: I don't think so.
• 1:04:06
  Marisol: You know what I noticed?
• 1:04:07
  Josh Eiserike: To Tad's point, I think Hazel's safe.
• 1:04:10
  Matt: Hope so.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: I think Hazel has to be safe. She's been the narrator.
• 1:04:14
  Phil: Unless… What's a question.
• 1:04:15
  Matt: You know, and killing her off, that's something he.
• 1:04:18
  Marisol: Here's that?
• 1:04:20
  Tad Eggleston: It doesn't actually… it doesn't feel like a Vaughn thing to have this being told by a ghost rather than…
• 1:04:27
  Phil: Well, I think…
• 1:04:28
  Tad Eggleston: Writing their memoirs.
• 1:04:29
  Phil: So yeah, and that's where I think that if, you know, if Hazel does die at the end, it would be, you know, as an old woman, having lived a full life.
• 1:04:38
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 1:04:38
  Phil: You know, and recounting the story of her entire life, having.
• 1:04:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I suppose, yeah, it could end with, like, her daughter reading the memoir.
• 1:04:47
  Phil: Yeah.
• 1:04:48
  Matt: Yup.
• 1:04:49
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 1:04:50
  Matt: And that's what I'm saying, you don't know how far it's gonna go out to the end. Right. So…
• 1:04:55
  Marisol: What's up?
• 1:04:55
  Phil: And if we can beat them to market, we could get their share.
• 1:04:58
  Tad Eggleston: Here's a bigger question.
• 1:05:00
  belle price: the world.
• 1:05:01
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah. I was just thinking that.
• 1:05:03
  belle price: Is the war over, though? Is the war over when the story ends? I think it might be. I think… I… I… I have hope for this universe, I love this universe.
• 1:05:14
  belle price: I don't know.
• 1:05:16
  Marisol: Or something could be, like, One of those bittersweet endings, where maybe…
• 1:05:23
  Marisol: The bigger conflict is resolved, but it's more… the…
• 1:05:28
  Marisol: Smaller issues, the more personal things, like, Alana's death, potentially. Goose's death.
• 1:05:36
  Marisol: what happens to Squire later on when we meet him?
• 1:05:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:05:45
  Tad Eggleston: I love some of these… these.
• 1:05:50
  Larry Woods: God.
• 1:05:50
  Marisol: At least I just… that Hazel is… with the narration.
• 1:05:56
  Marisol: the narration is her writing a book, because they made a huge point with Heist and his books.
• 1:06:02
  Josh Eiserike: Mmm.
• 1:06:04
  Marisol: Cool.
• 1:06:05
  Marisol: Like, that has been a huge…
• 1:06:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and then… and then the question becomes…
• 1:06:10
  Tad Eggleston: If it winds up being Hazel writing a book, Is it nonfiction?
• 1:06:19
  Josh Eiserike: To me, that feels kind of like a cheap ending.
• 1:06:22
  Josh Eiserike: Like, if, like, the book you've been reading.
• 1:06:24
  Tad Eggleston: Laurel, I agree with you.
• 1:06:27
  Marisol: Like, if Hazel's an unreliable narrator?
• 1:06:29
  Josh Eiserike: No, but if it's, if it's like, what Stephen King did in 112263, or, what's, what's that turned into a Broadway musical,
• 1:06:40
  Josh Eiserike: be more chill, where the whole end of the book is, oh, and this is the book I've been writing the whole time that you've been reading.
• 1:06:47
  Josh Eiserike: I don't… I don't think he's gonna do that. That… that feels kind of cheap.
• 1:06:50
  Phil: Goodbye.
• 1:06:52
  Tad Eggleston: How about this fard convention sketch?
• 1:06:55
  Josh Eiserike: That's wonderful.
• 1:06:56
  Tad Eggleston: The… with the heart boxers.
• 1:06:58
  Matt: Hilarious.
• 1:06:59
  Tad Eggleston: And the testicles.
• 1:07:01
  Phil: Only he had that the first time around.
• 1:07:04
  Matt: Right?
• 1:07:09
  Phil: And that's the thing, I know there's at least one other haunting image coming ahead, and you know…
• 1:07:16
  Tad Eggleston: There's so many haunting.
• 1:07:17
  Phil: There's probably more I've forgotten, that's for sure.
• 1:07:20
  Tad Eggleston: I also… this is one of my favorite artist pictures ever.
• 1:07:27
  Tad Eggleston: with… with… with Fiona over her tablet, and Brian at his manual typewriter, and… A rumper doll…
• 1:07:38
  Tad Eggleston: So that looks like a Rumford doll, and a Prince Robot doll, and Hamburger with the mail.
• 1:07:52
  Tad Eggleston: That's the only shame of the fact that we're doing this,
• 1:07:56
  Tad Eggleston: Volume by volume, is that Saga has such a great letters page.
• 1:08:03
  Tad Eggleston: Such a great letters page.
• 1:08:06
  Tad Eggleston: For the couple of you that have been reading,
• 1:08:12
  Tad Eggleston: single issues from the beginning, and really anybody that reads single issues. Like, do you read the letters page every time?
• 1:08:17
  Matt: More often than not.
• 1:08:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Saga's…
• 1:08:21
  Tad Eggleston: Saga's definitely one of the handful of books where I am not done until I have read the letters page.
• 1:08:26
  Phil: Yeah, it was probably the first Best Letters page of a series I'd read.
• 1:08:31
  Josh Eiserike: My favorite letters page was… I don't know if any of y'all used to read Powers. Oh, God.
• 1:08:38
  Matt: Oh, yeah.
• 1:08:38
  Josh Eiserike: There was a time, there was a time… Not the issue.
• 1:08:41
  Josh Eiserike: There was a time…
• 1:08:43
  Tad Eggleston: the new powers. I need to read it, I'm ready yet. It was like an old friend that you hadn't seen in a decade, and you didn't even realize how much you missed them until you were back together.
• 1:08:55
  Josh Eiserike: That's cool. I love powers, but I was for sure, for me, the comic was the bonus content, and I was buying it for the letters page.
• 1:09:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:09:03
  Matt: I can feel that.
• 1:09:04
  Phil: That was, Sex Criminals.
• 1:09:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Sex Grimmers. Sex Grimmers is the only comic ever where they release the best of their letters, basically.
• 1:09:12
  Phil: Just kidding?
• 1:09:13
  Tad Eggleston: Two volumes! Two volumes!
• 1:09:15
  Phil: Wait, they did two volumes of that?
• 1:09:16
  Matt: Yes!
• 1:09:17
  Phil: Holy, okay.
• 1:09:18
  Tad Eggleston: Two volumes.
• 1:09:19
  Phil: It's one of those. Yeah, that's funny.
• 1:09:21
  Josh Eiserike: That's wonderful.
• 1:09:23
  Larry Woods: I think I… I did read the letters page after a few of those, but I think I ended up stopping after…
• 1:09:32
  Larry Woods: Oh my goodness, I think I went through, like, the first 6 or 7, volumes of the trade paperbacks, and then I was actually caught up, and I started getting the singles, and had been faithfully reading ever since then. And then it was around that midway point, and you know the ones I'm thinking about, is after that, I just…
• 1:09:51
  Larry Woods: I think I just had a tad moment where I read it.
• 1:09:54
  Larry Woods: And I put it down, and I… I read no further. I didn't get to the letters page. It was like… that was the…
• 1:10:02
  Tad Eggleston: The letter page on that one was essentially him apologizing for what he'd just done to us, and then apologizing…
• 1:10:10
  Tad Eggleston: more is… He told us that they were about to take a year off.
• 1:10:15
  Tad Eggleston: An indefinite.
• 1:10:16
  Phil: Yeah, a year plus off, yeah, I do remember reading that one then, yeah.
• 1:10:22
  Larry Woods: P.
• 1:10:23
  Tad Eggleston: At least a year old.
• 1:10:25
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, I'm really, really sorry, and I'm even more sorry for the next thing I'm gonna say.
• 1:10:32
  Tad Eggleston: Oh…
• 1:10:37
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I don't know…
• 1:10:39
  belle price: Do we know why they took a year off of Saga, or multiple years off of Saga? I don't think I ever knew why.
• 1:10:44
  Tad Eggleston: Do not know…
• 1:10:45
  Phil: a break.
• 1:10:45
  Tad Eggleston: Officially?
• 1:10:48
  Tad Eggleston: Fiona did have at least one of her kids during that time.
• 1:10:52
  Phil: Amazing.
• 1:10:53
  Tad Eggleston: I think the other… she… either she had both of her kids during that time, or one of them was born just before that time started.
• 1:11:00
  Tad Eggleston: So it was definitely small children time. I still like to imagine, though, that it was… she drew those last three issues…
• 1:11:09
  Tad Eggleston: And picked up the phone, and called Brian, and said, fuck you.
• 1:11:13
  Tad Eggleston: Fuck you!
• 1:11:15
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you.
• 1:11:16
  Marisol: Absolutely.
• 1:11:17
  Tad Eggleston: I'm taking some time off.
• 1:11:19
  Tad Eggleston: And just hung up on it.
• 1:11:22
  Tad Eggleston: Had refused to answer his calls back for an extended period of time.
• 1:11:29
  Tad Eggleston: Because I know how that's… that's how I would have felt if I'd been forced to draw those three issues.
• 1:11:35
  Matt: Yep.
• 1:11:36
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, as we were just saying, like, what makes it so hard is, like, he'll kill this character that, like…
• 1:11:45
  Tad Eggleston: You don't want to see die.
• 1:11:48
  Tad Eggleston: You desperately don't want to see them die, and at the same time, you're going…
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: But they had to die.
• 1:11:56
  Tad Eggleston: it wouldn't…
• 1:11:57
  Marisol: You guys had? But… But I love them! They're dead, this issue, sorry.
• 1:12:03
  Tad Eggleston: wasn't another way.
• 1:12:06
  Tad Eggleston: Has anybody ever seen, stranger Than fiction?
• 1:12:12
  Josh Eiserike: Yes. The Will Ferrell movie? Yes. That's almost what it feels like, the whole Dustin Hot, it's her masterpiece.
• 1:12:20
  Tad Eggleston: But… but he has to die at the end.
• 1:12:26
  Tad Eggleston: It's almost what it feels like every time, it's like…
• 1:12:32
  Tad Eggleston: Do I need this to be a masterpiece? Would I be okay with it being the 10th best comic of all time, but these people lived?
• 1:12:44
  Tad Eggleston: Is it possible that, like, Could it just be my favorite comic, rather than a critical masterpiece?
• 1:12:54
  Phil: So this is, this is where, this is where, I would say the sad…
• 1:12:58
  Phil: truth of Lioncat is that she's proof that, no, they don't have to die. And if anything, Lioncat gets her best page after Fiona refused to kill her.
• 1:13:08
  Tad Eggleston: That's true.
• 1:13:12
  Phil: So, no, Brian's a monster, and we should all, we should all, you know…
• 1:13:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's why spectators work so well. Like, all the real killing that happened in the first
• 1:13:24
  Tad Eggleston: couple of pages. And the killing after that was essentially imaginary, because the characters that you were watching and caring about were already dead.
• 1:13:34
  Phil: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:35
  Phil: It, further abstracted the violence, and the reason why I say it's a, you know, a happy ending is… is because, you know, again, it ends in a moment of love and curiosity, you know? It has a sad beginning and a happy ending. It's an inside-out, backwards kind of book like that.
• 1:13:58
  Tad Eggleston: He's… fuckin' brilliant.
• 1:14:01
  Tad Eggleston: And… breaks my heart.
• 1:14:03
  Tad Eggleston: On a regular basis.
• 1:14:06
  Tad Eggleston: And Fiona makes it so goddamn beautiful.
• 1:14:10
  Marisol: Yep.
• 1:14:12
  Phil: That's… that's the thing, I… this would not be anywhere near the same book without her. No, he's…
• 1:14:17
  Tad Eggleston: I've worked with a lot of great artists, and he's written a lot of great stories, and this is his masterpiece because it's her masterpiece.
• 1:14:29
  Tad Eggleston: I would agree with that. Like, that's nothing against Pie Aguero, that's nothing against Cliff Chang, that's nothing against…
• 1:14:40
  Tad Eggleston: who did Ex Machina, somebody.
• 1:14:42
  Phil: Tony Harris.
• 1:14:43
  Josh Eiserike: Tony Harris.
• 1:14:45
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, he's worked with a lot of phenomenal artists, but like… I almost hope…
• 1:14:53
  Tad Eggleston: I almost can't wait for Saga to be done to see what Fiona does next.
• 1:14:59
  Phil: Hmm.
• 1:14:59
  Matt: Yes.
• 1:15:03
  Tad Eggleston: You know, there's so little of her work that's not Saga, and you can see, and it's all her young… Yeah, well, that's the one thing that she's done during the Saga run, and she does a phenomenal job, I thought, with kind of mediocre wagecripts.
• 1:15:19
  Phil: Huh.
• 1:15:20
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 1:15:20
  Josh Eiserike: It was, but it was… it was, it was also, like, Riverdale was going on, and you, like…
• 1:15:27
  Josh Eiserike: writing Archie in the shadow of that, I imagine, is very hard.
• 1:15:32
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I thought Riverdale started after that.
• 1:15:38
  Josh Eiserike: Maybe? I don't know. I have to check. Maybe. Yeah.
• 1:15:41
  Tad Eggleston: Like, there's been a lot of good Archie in this era.
• 1:15:44
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 1:15:45
  Tad Eggleston: Like, a lot of the crossover works, Archie and the Ramones was great, you know, Apache vs. Predator is so much better than it has any right to be.
• 1:15:54
  Tad Eggleston: Which can't be… is… Alex DeCampi is probably the most underrated writer in all of comics.
• 1:16:06
  Tad Eggleston: I need to go read her My Little Pony books, just based on the things that she's done other places. I am certain that her My Little Pony books also stand head and tails above…
• 1:16:17
  Phil: other people, and Ted…
• 1:16:19
  Tad Eggleston: If you're listening, I promise if I get around to reading her My Little Pony books, I'll get around to reading yours, too.
• 1:16:27
  belle price: Chad, if there's a My Little Pony podcast eventually, put me on that.
• 1:16:33
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, I mean, if you want to start reading My Little Pony with me, I will do it, just because, like.
• 1:16:40
  Tad Eggleston: I… I have so many friends and acquaintances that have worked on My Little Pony stuff.
• 1:16:47
  Tad Eggleston: and enjoyed it, and they love PonyCons, or BronyCon, whatever the hell cons there are.
• 1:16:53
  belle price: I used to read My Little Pony as a kid, like, yeah, let's do that.
• 1:16:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I apparently also need to read Sonic the Hedgehog comics. Apparently there are a lot of really good Sonic the Hedgehog comics.
• 1:17:06
  belle price: And, like.
• 1:17:07
  Tad Eggleston: since I now know that there are way more good Archie comics than I thought was possible, like, I have stopped assuming that there is anything that people can't make good comics out of.
• 1:17:19
  Tad Eggleston: I need to go read the Plants vs. Zombie comics, because all of the Plants vs. Zombie comics are Paul Tobin, and, like, I love all of his other stuff.
• 1:17:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I just haven't managed to convince myself to do Plants vs. Zombie yet, even though I have kids at school that love the Plants vs. Zombie stuff. It's like…
• 1:17:40
  Josh Eiserike: So, Tad, I looked it up, you were right, Riverdale came out the beginning of 2017, and the Mark Waid Fiona Staples comic came out mid-2015, however…
• 1:17:55
  Josh Eiserike: I, on a personal note, I had interviewed to be on Riverdale. I did not get the gig, but I… so I did read that pilot way earlier, so in my mind, they were very…
• 1:18:06
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, I'm certain that Riverdale had been announced. I think Mark Waid got hired in the run-up to Riverdale, because they were trying to kind of reboot Archie.
• 1:18:19
  Josh Eiserike: Yes.
• 1:18:20
  Tad Eggleston: To, to, to, to… in anticipation of Riverdale. So, yes, that was totally going on.
• 1:18:28
  Tad Eggleston: But, I think that's also one of the reasons they chased Fiona, is it's like, let's have this big splash. And, like, I just laugh, because, you know, they were decent, but, like…
• 1:18:41
  Tad Eggleston: the Chip Zdarsky, Erica Henderson, Jughead?
• 1:18:45
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah. It's a masterpiece.
• 1:18:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. That came out.
• 1:18:48
  Tad Eggleston: Roughly the same time.
• 1:18:50
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:18:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the one that was the highest touted wound up being…
• 1:18:55
  Tad Eggleston: It's okay. Fiona's art's amazing, and Mark did an okay job.
• 1:19:01
  Tad Eggleston: And then you got Afterlife with Archie? Absolutely. I was like, what the fuck?
• 1:19:04
  Josh Eiserike: And that may have even came first, I think. I'd have to look that up.
• 1:19:09
  Tad Eggleston: It was right around that time.
• 1:19:10
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, that was certainly one of the things.
• 1:19:12
  Tad Eggleston: that got Archie back on people's radar.
• 1:19:14
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah, and that was Roberto, who went on to do… like, that got him Riverdale and then Sabrina, and by the way, I don't… I mean, this is my world, but now they're doing an Afterlife with Archie TV show.
• 1:19:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I heard that they were finally doing that. Now.
• 1:19:28
  Josh Eiserike: I'm looking.
• 1:19:28
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, ironically, they haven't actually finished the comic yet, so…
• 1:19:32
  Josh Eiserike: Yeah.
• 1:19:33
  Tad Eggleston: I really hope it doesn't become a Game of Thrones.
• 1:19:35
  Josh Eiserike: Game of Thrones.
• 1:19:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I have to read more Archie. I need to… there are too many good comics, Josh, have you noticed that?
• 1:19:49
  Tad Eggleston: Have you noticed that there are so many good comics? Is that why we're here or something?
• 1:19:55
  Josh Eiserike: It's a… it's a terrible problem to have.
• 1:19:57
  Tad Eggleston: It is. I have a teacher's salary.
• 1:20:02
  Josh Eiserike: I hate to knock down.
• 1:20:03
  Tad Eggleston: 22 panels.
• 1:20:07
  Tad Eggleston: Pay for some of my comments!
• 1:20:09
  Marisol: You know, comics.
• 1:20:13
  Tad Eggleston: Any…
• 1:20:14
  Josh Eiserike: Today, I was…
• 1:20:15
  Tad Eggleston: are… Go ahead, Josh.
• 1:20:17
  Josh Eiserike: I was just gonna go off on a little tangent. I was at LA Comic Con.
• 1:20:20
  Josh Eiserike: Two weeks ago, I did… I did well, but any… any money I made, man, I just spent right back on the floor.
• 1:20:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:20:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 1:20:30
  Josh Eiserike: Cool stuff!
• 1:20:32
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Chris Condon and I said, like, 2 or 3 years ago that we're in the platinum age of comics.
• 1:20:39
  Josh Eiserike: I would agree with that.
• 1:20:40
  Tad Eggleston: It's totally impossible for any sane human being to have any chance of reading all of the things worth reading coming out, particularly if there's anything that's not brand new that they still would like to read.
• 1:21:01
  Matt: I mean…
• 1:21:02
  Tad Eggleston: I could have gone 9 deep in great graphic novels that came out last week.
• 1:21:10
  Tad Eggleston: You know, we generally do, like, a top 3 comics of the week. I could have gone 9 deep in graphic novels.
• 1:21:17
  Tad Eggleston: came out. Not even collections. There were a bunch of good collections that came out last week. Original graphic novels.
• 1:21:25
  Tad Eggleston: Memoirs, sci-fi, you name it.
• 1:21:29
  Tad Eggleston: Sure.
• 1:21:32
  Tad Eggleston: Any other final thoughts from anybody?
• 1:21:36
  Matt: If anyone was wondering, it was Watchmen Issue 5.
• 1:21:40
  Matt: That's the symmetrical issue.
• 1:21:44
  Matt: Which makes sense, because it's in the middle.
• 1:21:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:21:47
  Matt: Not quite, but…
• 1:21:49
  Tad Eggleston: Close.
• 1:21:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, everybody knows it was originally supposed to be 9, and they made it 12. Nobody knows that, but I just.
• 1:21:56
  Phil: Excited to say that.
• 1:21:56
  Tad Eggleston: that, to put.
• 1:21:57
  Phil: Oh, there you go. There you go.
• 1:22:01
  Matt: At the time, it made sense.
• 1:22:03
  Phil: It's…
• 1:22:03
  Tad Eggleston: somebody to get Alan Moore to go on the record refuting me, and then to come on the show to explain to me while I'm wrong.
• 1:22:10
  Matt: Exactly.
• 1:22:11
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no. Chad.
• 1:22:12
  Matt: Dad, you're gonna get the podcast cursed, please. Please.
• 1:22:16
  Phil: not taunt the Warlock, okay?
• 1:22:20
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, I didn't call him a warlock.
• 1:22:23
  Phil: He called himself a warlock. It is a term of endearment and respect.
• 1:22:28
  Tad Eggleston: Is it something that he called himself and your… like, because I sometimes call myself an asshole, but I, like, would prefer that you not.
• 1:22:38
  Matt: That's because you watch baseballs.
• 1:22:43
  Matt: And then space balls, you're surrounded by…
• 1:22:45
  Tad Eggleston: Here we go. Okay, took a second there, took a second there. I got that.
• 1:22:48
  Phil: I thought you said, that's why you watch baseballs.
• 1:22:51
  Matt: No, space walls!
• 1:22:52
  Phil: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:54
  Tad Eggleston: Spaceballs 2, coming to a theater next.
• 1:22:56
  Matt: Can't wait!
• 1:22:57
  Marisol: Kids love yogurt.
• 1:22:59
  Matt: Even with strawberries, ugh!
• 1:23:02
  Tad Eggleston: I love strawberry yogurt. Don't bash the strawberry rumor.
• 1:23:07
  Matt: A little bit.
• 1:23:08
  Tad Eggleston: Lone Star.
• 1:23:14
  Tad Eggleston: Any other parting thoughts? Belle's got a big smile on her face.
• 1:23:18
  belle price: Maybe we should comb the desert.
• 1:23:31
  belle price: I've been pretty good on movies, though. I did that big Lebowski thing earlier, I was proud of that, too.
• 1:23:36
  Larry Woods: Yeah, yeah. That was good.
• 1:23:38
  belle price: I was proud of that.
• 1:23:42
  belle price: I riffed on my dad so hard, that was so good. Giving myself props.
• 1:23:46
  Phil: Riffed so hard, he turned his camera off.
• 1:23:48
  Marisol: I know.
• 1:23:49
  belle price: Yeah, no.
• 1:23:49
  Tad Eggleston: fell out entirely. I had to sign back in.
• 1:23:53
  Tad Eggleston: Now he's here twice.
• 1:23:56
  matt.price: I don't know how that happened.
• 1:23:57
  Tad Eggleston: I don't either.
• 1:23:58
  Marisol: Check your wizard.
• 1:24:01
  Tad Eggleston: Alrighty.
• 1:24:02
  Tad Eggleston: I think we're set, Matt, you wanna take us out?
• 1:24:05
  matt.price: We'll continue after the next page.