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Absolute Martian Manhunter Book Club · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Tad Eggleston: Reporting it.
• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. I guess morning for Andrew Britt and Zuzu and evening for Elsa. Is that right for everybody? Do I have my time zones accurately?
• 0:14
  Elsa Charretier: Yep.
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, so I am joined today by, rejoined by Elsa Chartier. It's been, I think.
• 0:22
  Tad Eggleston: Couple of years since the last time you were on, so I'm very happy to have you back.
• 0:26
  Elsa Charretier: Yes, it.
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 0:27
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:28
  Tad Eggleston: It has been. Well, I mean, you've been busy. I've been busy. We've we've traded some emails, but you know.
• 0:36
  Tad Eggleston: Andrew and Zuzu just finished kick-starting Nerd Emergencies, so Andrew's been on, like, twice in the last month and a half, and Zuzu.
• 0:45
  andrewcoltrin: Yes.
• 0:45
  Tad Eggleston: I joined once there, and Britt's a regular, so… so…
• 0:49
  Tad Eggleston: I think, I think the listeners know everybody. Now you know each other. Today we're going to talk about a book. I know a book is great when
• 1:00
  Tad Eggleston: I desperately want to set up more conversations about it. And Britt and I talked about this on the Britt's Cabinet
• 1:07
  Tad Eggleston: book club when it was 6 issues in, and then I was part of the Bendis
• 1:13
  Tad Eggleston: Word Balloon Book Club.
• 1:16
  Tad Eggleston: around Absolute Martian Manhunter, and I went, I still want to talk about it more. There are angles of it that I haven't explored. Who can I put together that I think would make a good conversation? And this is the group that I put together, and hopefully I'm right.
• 1:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Absolute Martian Manhunter, Dennis, Dennis Camp and Javier.
• 1:40
  Tad Eggleston: Rodriguez, just wrapped up, such a good book,
• 1:46
  Tad Eggleston: Opening thoughts. I want to start with Elsa because I want an artist. And no offense to Andrew and Zuzu, you are absolutely artists too. But Elsa has more experience with the weird that I know about.
• 2:03
  andrewcoltrin: No offense taken. I'm, yeah.
• 2:05
  Tad Eggleston: In fact, in fact, Elsa, there were parts of this that made me think back to Infinity Loop in terms of, like, finding comic solutions to.
• 2:15
  Tad Eggleston: Express complex thoughts, so.
• 2:19
  Elsa Charretier: I wish. I appreciate the comparison, but I think, you know, we're, this book's light years.
• 2:30
  Elsa Charretier: away from what we try to do. But, you know, it was 10 years ago, so I'm being, you know, kind on myself. Yes.
• 2:40
  Tad Eggleston: It was ten years ago, and it was like you doing your first book, having just taught yourself to do comics. So, like, be very kind to yourself.
• 2:51
  Elsa Charretier: So this book, so first of all, bear with me.
• 2:57
  Elsa Charretier: It's like…
• 2:58
  Elsa Charretier: A cold opening for me, like I have to dig in and it's, it's complicated to talk about this book. So first of all, I mean, although, you know, the writing and art are.
• 3:12
  Elsa Charretier: Work together as well as comics allow creative teams to.
• 3:20
  Elsa Charretier: But I think the art for me is like the main attraction and no like I don't want to say the writings not not equally as good. It is excellent. It is brilliant. But I think I want to focus more on the on the art.
• 3:37
  Elsa Charretier: of this, series. So we have Javier, who does, pencils and colors, usually very good…
• 3:46
  Elsa Charretier: Indication for me that the, the art and storytelling has been.
• 3:51
  Elsa Charretier: Entirely thought through, like the process is complete, if you know what I mean. And I say that as an artist who doesn't color.
• 4:02
  Elsa Charretier: Her own work, I… I don't, because…
• 4:05
  Elsa Charretier: I'm missing that piece, and I'm not good enough, so, you know, I, I prefer working with people that aren't good at colors. But Javier's, you know, work is,
• 4:19
  Elsa Charretier: So…
• 4:26
  Elsa Charretier: Thought through is not really the word that I'm looking for, it's all-encompassing. So naturally, the colors go with the pencils and inks, if that makes sense.
• 4:36
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah. So, his art is very recognizable.
• 4:43
  Elsa Charretier: I love it hard.
• 4:45
  Elsa Charretier: But I think there are things about that book, the, the, the, the storytelling, the, the psychedelic aspects that are.
• 4:55
  Elsa Charretier: New facets of him that I hadn't seen in that way before. I absolutely adore how he differentiates.
• 5:08
  Elsa Charretier: States of consciousness of the character.
• 5:11
  Elsa Charretier: And how, you know, we go from what is perceived as reality to what he perceives as his reality.
• 5:22
  Elsa Charretier: Which is pretty amazing. And he finds a way to be inventive with that throughout the entire series. It's not always the same trick. There are variations of that. And I find that is something very complicated to do when you have a concept for a series.
• 5:42
  Elsa Charretier: you think, oh my god, I found this visual thing that is gonna be, you know, amazing and different and new. But then after issue 1, and, you know, having… having drawn that…
• 5:54
  Elsa Charretier: Maybe a dozen times.
• 5:57
  Elsa Charretier: You're like, alright, I still have 11 issues to go, how can I make this still interesting and not, you know, become boring, you know, past the surprise effect.
• 6:08
  Elsa Charretier: And he does that incredibly well. Obviously, the character evolves, the story evolves, so that helps.
• 6:16
  Elsa Charretier: But I think that's a feat in itself.
• 6:21
  Elsa Charretier: To having him having found ways.
• 6:25
  Elsa Charretier: Constantly… You know, rejuvenates that original idea that is, that is had.
• 6:33
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 6:35
  Elsa Charretier: Go ahead, sorry.
• 6:36
  Tad Eggleston: Was there anything in particular that really stood out to you?
• 6:42
  Elsa Charretier: I have the book with me because I, I haven't, you know.
• 6:46
  Elsa Charretier: don't have any… everything, you know, right in my head right now. No, I understand.
• 6:53
  Elsa Charretier: And.
• 6:55
  Elsa Charretier: I was very.
• 6:57
  Elsa Charretier: It is a small thing, but it surprised me on the… might have been the first or second issue, where he comes back home.
• 7:06
  Elsa Charretier: And there are, you know, these colors, but instead of being very, you know, flowy and smoky, how he describes them, suddenly the figures are very aggressive, very… I can't remember where it is.
• 7:20
  Elsa Charretier: But I was incredibly surprised by how suddenly it, it just broke the rhythm and it made that page stood out.
• 7:28
  Elsa Charretier: So that's a way that he did that is just be surprising with shapes.
• 7:35
  Elsa Charretier: The shapes that you use.
• 7:37
  Elsa Charretier: Right.
• 7:38
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, is it the one where he, it like kind of pans and shows all the like entities that the kids made sitting in the living room, that one?
• 7:47
  Elsa Charretier: I think so, yeah.
• 7:48
  ZuZu (they/she): It's coming home. Okay, okay. Yeah, that was very cool.
• 7:52
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, and obviously, you know, the spread pages are just…
• 7:55
  Elsa Charretier: Posters, you know, in themselves, they are just like work of art that you would pin on your walls.
• 8:03
  Elsa Charretier: Umm.
• 8:05
  Elsa Charretier: But yeah, I mean, there are so many things to say that it's hard to put it into words really, but I think the overall impression and what I love about it is how, you know, we have the graphic clarity of Darwin Cook's work, which is, you know, obviously for me is a big attraction.
• 8:24
  Elsa Charretier: Not to diminish, you know, not to diminish, Javier's, you know,
• 8:29
  Tad Eggleston: I still, and you know how much I love Darwin's work, but I still.
• 8:32
  Tad Eggleston: Say you're Darwin plus.
• 8:38
  Elsa Charretier: They're, you know, I'm getting some Mobius in terms of inspirations, you know, the psychedelic.
• 8:46
  Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah.
• 8:47
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, right, yeah.
• 8:49
  Tad Eggleston: Really?
• 8:51
  Elsa Charretier: Oh.
• 8:52
  Tad Eggleston: David is showing off the Darwin Cook Martian Manhunter to the audience. For those of you listening, since we don't record audio or we don't show audio.
• 9:02
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah,
• 9:04
  Tad Eggleston: Or video.
• 9:05
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I think it's just, as always, it's not about art being beautiful or, you know, exceptional, it's about art being a.
• 9:21
  Elsa Charretier: Part of storytelling and I think that you can't.
• 9:25
  Elsa Charretier: do better than what he's done on this series in terms of, you know, the art visual being part of the storytelling?
• 9:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 9:36
  Tad Eggleston: All right, Andrew and Zeus.
• 9:38
  Britton Payne: All right.
• 9:39
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, wait a minute. I just want.
• 9:40
  Britton Payne: Just tap into that. I happened to be in the room at Comic-Con, New York Comic-Con 2025, I think it was, when they announced all this stuff. And that was the first, I believe that was the first screen they showed of it. That could be the second. But all it was was the character designs. And I just remember being in that room.
• 9:57
  Britton Payne: And being blown away, feeling like I'd never seen anything like that before. And Elsa, to your point.
• 10:03
  Britton Payne: Even without the writing, all we had was these images, and Absolute Martian Manhunter.
• 10:08
  Britton Payne: I didn't really know anything about Dennis Camp at that point, and the images were just so beautiful and stunning in this sort of Mad Men surrealistic way that I was like, alright, I'm in for this book. I already like Martian Manhunter, but I'll buy anything
• 10:21
  Britton Payne: this beautiful interpretation of something is so creative and interesting and compelling, and particularly the colors, but all of it, the design, it just… even if it was badly written, it was just so beautiful looking. And then to add on top of it how fantastically written it was, it was… it was… it was startling to see that image in that room.
• 10:39
  Elsa Charretier: Oh.
• 10:39
  Britton Payne: at New York Comic Con in 2025.
• 10:43
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, I imagine.
• 10:46
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I bet. I, I was reading an interview with Camp, and he said that, like, Javier Rodriguez was always who he had pictured for the book, and I was like, yeah, I can see that, there's
• 10:56
  ZuZu (they/she): I can't really imagine this being this trippy.
• 10:59
  ZuZu (they/she): And still having like a really, like a more traditional style.
• 11:04
  ZuZu (they/she): I think it was, like, the early 2000s, where it's, like, very, like, you know, harsh blacks and, like, very, like, anatomically correct figures and whatnot. Yeah.
• 11:13
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, I think it's the kind of series that a writer, you know, creates or co-creates, but with a specific artist in mind. I don't think you can swap out artists.
• 11:25
  ZuZu (they/she): Yes.
• 11:26
  andrewcoltrin: No, not at all.
• 11:27
  ZuZu (they/she): Definitely.
• 11:31
  Tad Eggleston: So, Andrew or Zuzu?
• 11:35
  andrewcoltrin: Oh, I could talk. Yeah, this.
• 11:39
  andrewcoltrin: Okay, well, I'm just gonna confess that I've been sort of out of the superhero loop for a long time.
• 11:46
  andrewcoltrin: So… and I never was that strong on Martian Manhunter, I think the last I saw of him was, like, that cameo in one of the early issues of Sandman, so I'm like…
• 11:56
  andrewcoltrin: I don't even know who this guy is, so it was like, this was a good.
• 12:00
  andrewcoltrin: just throw you into the middle of. We're going to tell a Martian manhunter story, and you don't have to know anything going into it, because
• 12:08
  andrewcoltrin: The main character doesn't know what's going on, either. It' So… But, yeah, so… I really like this.
• 12:19
  andrewcoltrin: I liked… Like, the colors… Yeah, the colors are almost their own character in this book, and
• 12:28
  andrewcoltrin: it kind of resonates with me because I'm sort of scared of using color. I do like a lot of black and white because of…
• 12:37
  andrewcoltrin: Kinko's being my first, printing experience, so… Umm.
• 12:43
  andrewcoltrin: But, yeah… Colors are great. This… the whole… Him walking around, and just… Feeling… Everybody's thoughts and getting overwhelmed.
• 12:59
  andrewcoltrin: And that, like, really took me back to… Times when,
• 13:07
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, as, as an undiagnosed, young autistic person wandering around trying to figure everything out, and everything's too overwhelming, I'm like, oh, this is familiar.
• 13:17
  andrewcoltrin: I'm like, am I crazy? What's going on? Are these things real? Why do I notice different things about people than other people are noticing? Are those real?
• 13:27
  andrewcoltrin: So… It's just an interesting…
• 13:34
  andrewcoltrin: you know, take on that. I never did have a Martian talking in my head, but…
• 13:39
  andrewcoltrin: You know, that would have been, like, the final piece of the puzzle, but no, that probably would have sent me down a different diagnostic route, but
• 13:47
  andrewcoltrin: That's just… You know, I'm really a big,
• 13:55
  andrewcoltrin: Believer in the idea that comics is a medium that really helps express those unseen things that go on in people's heads all the time, and…
• 14:04
  andrewcoltrin: This book really shows it.
• 14:07
  andrewcoltrin: Umm.
• 14:10
  andrewcoltrin: Just, like, the smoke rings around their faces of some of the characters, I'm just… Like, that's just…
• 14:18
  andrewcoltrin: It's like, you can't make eye contact with
• 14:21
  andrewcoltrin: They have smoke in front of their eyes. I'm like, okay, that's… that's kind of a side Bye.
• 14:27
  andrewcoltrin: Nod towards the… The fact that…
• 14:31
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I don't always want to make eye contact. But, yeah.
• 14:38
  andrewcoltrin: Just…
• 14:39
  andrewcoltrin: And then, you know, these questions, like, when you get to, like, the second half of the story, you start wondering, well, what parts of the first half were actually real, like…
• 14:49
  andrewcoltrin: Was there really a pile of bodies in front of his house?
• 14:52
  andrewcoltrin: Is he?
• 14:54
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah. So it's, like, very dreamy, very surreal, and… It's almost like if,
• 15:01
  andrewcoltrin: David Lynch made a superhero comic book.
• 15:05
  andrewcoltrin: Like, that kind of operating on those levels, so… Yes.
• 15:13
  andrewcoltrin: That's what I got for now, but I'll probably think of more things.
• 15:18
  Tad Eggleston: That's a good start. I, I particularly relate to… The late diagnosis and and.
• 15:26
  Tad Eggleston: Like the parts that wound up striking me a lot were both.
• 15:32
  Tad Eggleston: you know…
• 15:33
  Tad Eggleston: With the late diagnosis, the figuring out all of these things that had been different for all of those years.
• 15:40
  Tad Eggleston: We're actually different, not…
• 15:42
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, so…
• 15:43
  Tad Eggleston: Broken, not whatever, but also like at the end when you realize that.
• 15:52
  Tad Eggleston: You know, heartbreakingly that like his failure of his son was because he was terrified because he was also going through similar things.
• 16:02
  andrewcoltrin: Mmh.
• 16:02
  Tad Eggleston: So he didn't know what to do…
• 16:05
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I don'.
• 16:05
  Tad Eggleston: to make it worse and and I saw so much of myself with my son so much of my father with me you know.
• 16:12
  andrewcoltrin: And it's like, yeah.
• 16:14
  andrewcoltrin: That's.
• 16:14
  Tad Eggleston: It's just so hard to navigate.
• 16:16
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, see, and that's like why, yeah, I definitely need a second read. We'll say, yeah.
• 16:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and also, I appreciate it, because, like.
• 16:26
  Tad Eggleston: Words aren't enough to express all of that, and I don't think.
• 16:30
  andrewcoltrin: Mmh.
• 16:30
  Tad Eggleston: are either. And for that matter, I think I think you need those color swirls on top of it all to really get the feel.
• 16:37
  andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
• 16:38
  Tad Eggleston: You're.
• 16:39
  andrewcoltrin: The audience cannot hear me nodding aggressively in agreement.
• 16:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, because, I mean, I think it managed to capture sometimes, like, sensory overload.
• 16:48
  Tad Eggleston: In a way.
• 16:48
  andrewcoltrin: Liter.
• 16:49
  Tad Eggleston: That, that is hard to express.
• 16:51
  andrewcoltrin: So.
• 16:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah, it really…
• 16:53
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, dude. Yeah.
• 16:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, before I accidentally dominate before I wanted to, we got to make certain Zuzu gets in.
• 16:59
  andrewcoltrin: Okay.
• 17:01
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah. Hey, everybody.
• 17:06
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I went into this… I had also, kind of, like Andrew, I'd been out of the comics game for maybe about… oh, wow, maybe about, like, 6 years, I think, at this point. So this is my first, kind of, like, diving back into a superhero comic, and, couldn't have chosen a better one.
• 17:22
  ZuZu (they/she): I was wondering if it was just, like, my lack of experience, like, recently, that I'm like, oh, this is, like, kind of like Tom King's Miracle Man in the way that it's, like, really inner dialogue heavy, but, like, I don't know, maybe I'm just kind of making shit up, right? And then it gets to.
• 17:37
  Tad Eggleston: Give up on this.
• 17:38
  ZuZu (they/she): Okay.
• 17:40
  ZuZu (they/she): But, yeah, I was, reading through, and I'm like, well, there's…
• 17:45
  ZuZu (they/she): I really like that this whole panel is, like, you know, Martian Manhunter with sort of, like, multiple different neurodivergent kind of spins, because
• 17:53
  ZuZu (they/she): you know, like, seeing the colored smoke coming out of people's heads, and, there's something where he… he literally describes, like, words as being, like, green-colored, and I'm like, oh, that's very, like, synesthesia. There's the… the bits where he sens
• 18:07
  ZuZu (they/she): I'm also late diagnosed and so for, you know, years and years, like, I couldn't really, I almost sort of wish that I was, like, a little more.
• 18:16
  ZuZu (they/she): like, woo-woo, or whatever, because I was, like, people would talk about seeing auras, and I'm like, well, it's not that, I don'
• 18:23
  ZuZu (they/she): I say something, and someone's, like, entire vibe just shifts.
• 18:27
  andrewcoltrin: Oh my god.
• 18:27
  ZuZu (they/she): I don't know what happened. I don't know what just…
• 18:31
  ZuZu (they/she): And so that getting diagnosed with the CPTSD and being like hyper hyper tuned into like just someone's like affect changing slightly, you know, even if it doesn't have anything to do with me, it's like, you know, they might be reading a text or something, but it is like, oh, you were in a good mood and now you're not, and I can tell and you haven't said anything, and if I ask you, you're like denying that, but I can tell that something's different.
• 18:55
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, that has been a lifelong thing. And so it's very fun then watching him, like if he sees his wife walk into the room and he can see the arguments that are brewing on top of her head and be like, yeah, that's what it feels like is that you know what's about to happen, even though nothing has been said between you yet.
• 19:17
  ZuZu (they/she): Actually, I really appreciate it. I just, I feel like it represents so many different kinds of neurodivergence through here,
• 19:25
  ZuZu (they/she): And to Britt's point, you know, I was really happy I got to read your presentation, because, like, I also remember how many of my customers in my comic shop liked Martian Manhunter, and for what reasons. And I didn't know I was neurodivergent at that point, and I think maybe only about half of them did.
• 19:41
  ZuZu (they/she): But yeah, but being able to draw some conclusions between, like, the stuff that had come out then and, and the people who were attracted to the character was like, oh yeah, I see where this… where this works, where this ties in.
• 19:53
  Britton Payne: Well, to follow up on Zuzu's point, Tad, if I could jump in, it reminds me
• 19:58
  Britton Payne: Scott McCloud and the smiley face, where the greater the level of abstraction within a comic book, which is somewhat unique to the comics medium, the greater level of identification, the greater, better ability a reader has to find themselves in a story.
• 20:11
  Britton Payne: And the more specific you get, and the more realistic, if I can use that term, you get, the harder, maybe, it is to put yourself into it. And so, I find that this book, because of the level of abstraction that it has, means that a lot of people
• 20:25
  Britton Payne: Can find their story.
• 20:28
  Britton Payne: In this… Fairly abstract, at least as far as superhero comics go, fairly abstract story.
• 20:35
  Britton Payne: And even I just found that myself, I experienced the first six issues almost completely differently as the second six, especially as I got to that last issue. Because I really thought of it as, like, a Twilight Zone thing with a super cool, interesting, different flavor of Alien.
• 20:49
  Britton Payne: And by the end, I'm like, oh, this whole thing was kind of a metaphor and kind of a way of this guy figuring himself out, which was not how I was looking at the first six, at least if I remember correctly. I thought of it as like, wow, not all aliens are, you know, corporeal in the same way that we think of them.
• 21:06
  Britton Payne: And I thought that was super cool. But ultimately, that means that if you are a parent of an autistic child, you can see one particular thing. And if you are an autistic child dealing with a distant father, you can see something else. If you're an autistic person trying to figure out your way in the world, you can see a different thing. I'm curious to know the gender.
• 21:24
  Tad Eggleston: Or if you're all three of them.
• 21:26
  Britton Payne: Or if you're all three, yeah. Or if you're not there at all and you just feel confused by the world for one reason or another. That there's really a lot in here. I particularly like the refrain which I have in my presentation, which is what happens in your head also happens. And I read that as a way of self-forgiveness.
• 21:43
  Britton Payne: But, but I also think that, you know, there, there's the, the world has a long, long history of gaslighting, you know, the less powerful members of.
• 21:52
  Britton Payne: the world. And that some people would say that it is that gaslighting that allowed us to survive in an evolutionary sense, but… but it is definitely very much a part of this, and, like, a little bit of healing from that as well.
• 22:04
  Britton Payne: But I am curious to know, from the women on the panel, to what extent your experience of this story was gendered, because I happen to perceive it as a very male story, but that, in part, is because I'm a guy.
• 22:19
  ZuZu (they/she): Well, I'll let Elsa go first there since I'm not technically a woman. And yeah, let me read. I'll look at my notes.
• 22:27
  Elsa Charretier: Well… That's a tough question.
• 22:31
  Elsa Charretier: Umm.
• 22:33
  Elsa Charretier: Well, first of all, let me.
• 22:35
  Elsa Charretier: just…
• 22:38
  Elsa Charretier: Say I'm not autistic, I don't think I'm neurodivergent, I do have a psychiatric condition, I'm, I'm borderline, but.
• 22:50
  Elsa Charretier: It doesn't, I didn't recognize myself and the way my brain works in this comic, which I think is interesting that you can have a brain that is.
• 23:02
  Elsa Charretier: A tiny bit different from someone else.
• 23:04
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, M.
• 23:05
  Elsa Charretier: Well, yeah.
• 23:05
  ZuZu (they/she): Stay out.
• 23:07
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, but it, it doesn't.
• 23:11
  Elsa Charretier: feel, to me, like my reality. You know, my issues of, you know, evolving in the world are…
• 23:19
  Elsa Charretier: Are not similar to… to his.
• 23:22
  Elsa Charretier: So.
• 23:23
  Elsa Charretier: In a way, for me, it was, quote unquote, just a comic.
• 23:28
  Elsa Charretier: So maybe in that way I don't see it as, you know, my, my perception of it is.
• 23:39
  Elsa Charretier: Not particularly male or female, it doesn't because I didn't recognize myself in it.
• 23:48
  Elsa Charretier: So I wouldn't say that I found any difference.
• 23:52
  Elsa Charretier: in terms of how it could be interpreted. But maybe that's just me.
• 24:00
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I,
• 24:03
  ZuZu (they/she): I think that they did a good job of, like, keeping to their lane, so to speak. Like, I can see where the… both creators are doing such a good job making this comic and pulling in as many perspectives as
• 24:16
  ZuZu (they/she): they can, while also, like, not being very prescriptive, you know, X type of people feel X way. So one of the things I really liked is I was looking for my notes on…
• 24:28
  ZuZu (they/she): I'm trying to see what issue this is. It is where the shelter for unhoused people gets set on fire. That is number three.
• 24:36
  Elsa Charretier: Ria.
• 24:37
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, thank you.
• 24:40
  ZuZu (they/she): So yeah, so there's a bit, maybe about, like, a third of the way through, where it, like, shows all the different types of people who are living here. And, the… 1, 2, 3… so the fourth person they show, who is also the first person, I think, who gets rescued.
• 24:57
  ZuZu (they/she): Is a trans woman and like, that's, you know, yeah, our communities are very, very, disproportionately affected by.
• 25:05
  ZuZu (they/she): housing troubles, and I really love that they, like, pulled this character out.
• 25:10
  ZuZu (they/she): And she's there, and they don't really, like, they're like, yeah, you know, Martian Manhunters, you know, we're all… this is all about the connectedness within humanity, so, like, they are nodding to her. I think the next character after that is a refugee. So they're nodding to all these different types of, like.
• 25:26
  ZuZu (they/she): trying to pretend like Jon Jones is something that he's not. You know, he's been a cis man, I think. I think. I don't know, feel free to challenge me on this as the person who is like, it's been a minute since I've been in comics. But I think he has always been a cis man. And so, like, yeah, you know, they do the job.
• 25:44
  Tad Eggleston: Britt's the only one here that would know.
• 25:46
  Britton Payne: There was one issue where they were going to, you know, Paradise Island or whatever. So they all had to be women. So he turned himself into a woman. That was, as far as I know, that's.
• 25:57
  Britton Payne: He's the only one, but, and he has traditionally been presented as having been married to a female Martian on his planet Mars, and when he had a relationship with a Saturnian, it was a woman also. So he has sort of always been presented as, like, gendered as male.
• 26:14
  Britton Payne: Other than that.
• 26:14
  ZuZu (they/she): when it'.
• 26:15
  Britton Payne: And he was like, what? What's the big deal?
• 26:18
  ZuZu (they/she): Oh, I love that. Yeah, I love comics. It's, I've been in comics long enough that I'm like, as far as I know, which probably means there's some alternate universe that I've not read. But yeah, I think they did a good job. Yeah. Like I said, nodding to everyone's different experiences without being too prescriptive. So I did enjoy that.
• 26:34
  andrewcoltrin: Yes.
• 26:36
  andrewcoltrin: I mean, now I'm, I'm…
• 26:39
  andrewcoltrin: Just making me think of, like, the relationship between John and Bridget, you know, that sort of dynamic of…
• 26:48
  andrewcoltrin: I don't know, it just sort of reminds me of,
• 26:54
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, troubles I've had with maybe not necessarily partnership relationships, but also an example of that, just sort of that.
• 27:02
  andrewcoltrin: Fear of… of communicating, and… No, actually, it's…
• 27:10
  andrewcoltrin: actually did resonate, where, like, he comes clean, and he's like, look, I've got this Martian voice in my head.
• 27:17
  andrewcoltrin: And she's like, get the fuck out. Excuse me for the F-bomb, but
• 27:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that.
• 27:22
  Elsa Charretier: Okay.
• 27:23
  andrewcoltrin: Okay, cool.
• 27:24
  ZuZu (they/she): And.
• 27:24
  andrewcoltrin: But and I was like oh I had that moment in in my diagnosis journey where my partner like I was like no I think this is really what the mystery is with me and like say like
• 27:36
  andrewcoltrin: You know?
• 27:37
  andrewcoltrin: Read a book I suggested, and then she got so pissed.
• 27:42
  andrewcoltrin: just angry that I'd been misrepresenting myself, and I'm like, I was doing all I knew how to do.
• 27:49
  andrewcoltrin: And so, yeah, that dynamic in their relationship of, like, how… how do they figure that out?
• 27:55
  andrewcoltrin: And you know, they don't…
• 27:58
  andrewcoltrin: You know, that's just in the background of this story, really, because He's, like, figuring himself out.
• 28:04
  andrewcoltrin: Which you have to do before you can figure out your relationship to other people. But, yeah.
• 28:10
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I really, oh, sorry.
• 28:13
  andrewcoltrin: I'm just saying that that that was a big resonance for me. So yeah.
• 28:17
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I really liked that detail, because they don't force you to watch them have that argument, you just, you know it has happened, they show the outcome, so they're not, like, really traumatizing their audience, but they represent it really well. Yeah, no, the, I've had similar conversations where it has taken just a lot of trust.
• 28:35
  ZuZu (they/she): To ask my wife, like, a really basic question, like, hey, do you also think like this? And she's like, no, and that explains a lot. Or like, yeah, I call it, it's this thing, you know.
• 28:44
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
• 28:45
  ZuZu (they/she): My experience, yeah. But yeah, the amount of trust I've had to have with her is so wildly different from any other relationship I've been in. And you can feel the difference.
• 28:58
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
• 28:59
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, so it… Now I'm out of words.
• 29:04
  Tad Eggleston: Another thing that really resonated with me, and I'm curious as to how Elsa.
• 29:12
  Tad Eggleston: or whether Elsa saw this, because… because she didn't relate
• 29:16
  Tad Eggleston: the same with the characters, so I'm curious as to whether it's purely a res… resonance with me, or whether it's something that was… that was displayed in a way that… that was more obvious.
• 29:29
  Tad Eggleston: Like, for me, I script a lot of things.
• 29:34
  Tad Eggleston: you know, people don't always realize it, because I have, like, a billion scripts, but…
• 29:40
  Tad Eggleston: But I script a lot of things, so when the world changes dramatically.
• 29:45
  Tad Eggleston: Like, my head breaks while I build new scripts.
• 29:50
  Tad Eggleston: I have a lot of trouble while I'm, while I'm figuring out how to talk about the world around me again. And, and I feel like a lot of what we're seeing.
• 30:01
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly in the middle part of this book is, is.
• 30:06
  Tad Eggleston: John's head just breaking.
• 30:09
  Tad Eggleston: As the world goes through all of this stuff.
• 30:12
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I didn't even… this is, like, my fourth read, and this was the first time I… I realized that he got… he got shipped out of Washington because his… his partner on the terrorism tax… task force was corrupt.
• 30:25
  Tad Eggleston: And he got looped into it, you know, which has got to mess with you. You know, you're, you're, you're, you're doing this job where you, you think that you're doing good and you find out that, that your partner's taking bribes and.
• 30:39
  Tad Eggleston: And not necessarily doing national security and whatnot, but then, you know, I think that the green versus the white was really a.
• 30:48
  Tad Eggleston: Dichotomy for for or an analogy for for the the way so much of society has has divided itself and into us versus them even if there are.
• 31:02
  Tad Eggleston: A thousand usses, and… Really just won them, because them is everybody else, but…
• 31:10
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, the more I read it, the more I'm like, oh.
• 31:16
  Tad Eggleston: He's trying to figure out.
• 31:20
  Tad Eggleston: who he is again, what this world he lives in is, so that he can talk to anybody about it.
• 31:30
  Tad Eggleston: And he's so broken that he's scared to even talk to Bridget, the person who he trusts the most, because he doesn't know how it's going to come out. He doesn't know his own thoughts well enough. I mean, I think that's one of the hardest parts as you're discovering various things about
• 31:46
  Tad Eggleston: any mental health, because long before I was diagnosed autistic, I was diagnosed bipolar, I was diagnosed with PTSD, you know.
• 31:54
  Tad Eggleston: Until you start having language, it's, it's so hard to.
• 32:00
  Tad Eggleston: Talk about it to begin with, and even the language we have.
• 32:03
  Tad Eggleston: can be so limited, which I think, like, that's where the colors and the radical empathy that he's having at some points really comes in, is that, like, even when you start to think that you've got the language, finding the right language
• 32:22
  Tad Eggleston: is… so I just… I wondered how much that came out in the art to you, Elsa.
• 32:29
  Elsa Charretier: Oh, a lot, a lot. I, I, you know, I hadn't seen it through the lens that you're seeing it through. Right. More as him losing.
• 32:43
  Elsa Charretier: Grip with reality and and and has he as he.
• 32:52
  Elsa Charretier: You know, it comes to not come not come to terms because he doesn't for for for a long time, but.
• 33:03
  Elsa Charretier: Maybe that, like, his, the Martian in him, like, quote unquote, takes more and more place, like, the art loses its structure.
• 33:14
  Elsa Charretier: You know, purposefully.
• 33:17
  Elsa Charretier: And I think that I saw it, you know, through that lens, but I imagine that it can probably does mean exactly what you felt.
• 33:31
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 33:31
  Elsa Charretier: That the colors,
• 33:34
  Elsa Charretier: If you, if you compare, like, even through the, you know, the first trade, you look at the, the first pages where, you know, the, the, the, the colors start to erupt and take more and more place, and space in his life, and then you compare it to the end of the first trade.
• 33:52
  Elsa Charretier: It's like, okay, it's taken over Right. Entirely.
• 33:56
  Elsa Charretier: And it follows John's storyline.
• 34:00
  Elsa Charretier: So, absolutely, I felt that, that shift.
• 34:04
  Elsa Charretier: Of the colors being more and more abstract because they are.
• 34:11
  Elsa Charretier: The shapes are abstract in the first few issues, but the colors still, in a way, are…
• 34:19
  Elsa Charretier: Outside of this smoky effect, the colors are.
• 34:23
  Elsa Charretier: You know.
• 34:25
  Elsa Charretier: normal colors, or as you would expect, you know, color… real life, city life, all of that. But, as we move through the series, the colors just bleed.
• 34:36
  Elsa Charretier: Into the world.
• 34:38
  Elsa Charretier: And it's less and less normal, less and less as you would, you know, expect a city to look like and.
• 34:46
  Elsa Charretier: The art does that as well, but I think it's, the major shift is in, you know, through colors and I imagine that is also how.
• 34:57
  Elsa Charretier: Maybe the closest thing to understanding autism.
• 35:03
  Elsa Charretier: Is having that colors… that feel wrong.
• 35:08
  Elsa Charretier: If that makes sense, you know, they're…
• 35:11
  Elsa Charretier: it shouldn't look like that, or it shouldn't feel like that, and I think for us, that are non-autistic, is maybe an easy way, easier way, to translate that feeling.
• 35:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 35:24
  Elsa Charretier: I'm just guessing, but it's.
• 35:25
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, that, that, I, I, I, I like that guess. I think it's.
• 35:31
  Tad Eggleston: It's on the money,
• 35:34
  Britton Payne: It's a pretty common theme in — so I do another presentation that's autism in comic books.
• 35:40
  Britton Payne: Excuse me, and one of the common themes is that those books will often try to find the metaphor for what's it like to feel autistic in the world, and explain that to a neurotypical reader. And so they will say, oh, it's like a million blinking lights all at once, or imagine a world where you walk into a party and you
• 35:58
  Britton Payne: you feel out of place, and everybody else knows what to do, and you don't, and sometimes it's a visual representation, like in Invisible Differences, where you'll see a lot of red ink and a lot of loopy swirls, whereas when she goes home, her world is bluer and has larger shapes. So finding that metaphor for what is it like
• 36:17
  Britton Payne: How do you explain to a neurotypical person what it's like to be autistic? And that is definitely something this book feels like it's reaching for, especially by issue 12.
• 36:28
  Elsa Charretier: And is it accurate?
• 36:30
  Elsa Charretier: As it, you know, according to your experience.
• 36:35
  Tad Eggleston: like.
• 36:37
  Tad Eggleston: For me, I mean, it's not dead-on accurate, because I don't see pictures in my head. I'm completely… I hear words. I can't make an image in my head to save my life.
• 36:50
  Britton Payne: Which is the opposite of the sun. If you look in issue 12, they sort of explain, you get to see the timeline of his diagn.
• 36:56
  Tad Eggleston: But, but.
• 36:56
  Britton Payne: They say he only sees pictures.
• 36:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right. One of the things that actually attracted me to this book is one of the major, major communication breakthroughs that my wife and I had is that she works.
• 37:10
  Tad Eggleston: She thinks in pictures. In fact, she doesn't even really think completely in pictures. She thinks in swirls of color that sometimes become pictures.
• 37:18
  andrewcoltrin: Okay.
• 37:19
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, reading this first book, I'm like, oh, this is what Kelly's talking about.
• 37:25
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 37:26
  Tad Eggleston: But but where it for me and and like every every autism experience is different. That's one of the the crazy things about autism is like brain scans. You know, they can tell we're autistic because we we we don't look like anybody else's brain, including other autistic people's.
• 37:45
  andrewcoltrin: It's not the Tylenol, it'.
• 37:50
  Tad Eggleston: But, what, what it really captured, like, was…
• 37:58
  Tad Eggleston: What overstimulation can feel like and how overstimulation can sometimes come from places that that don't.
• 38:06
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if you really break down some of these images and take away the color and whatnot, it's like, oh, this isn't that busy of a scene.
• 38:13
  Elsa Charretier: Oh.
• 38:14
  Tad Eggleston: But, but when you add it all, it's like, oh my God, for him, it's like you just dropped him in the middle of, of Times Square.
• 38:22
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, the layering. Yeah.
• 38:25
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so I felt like it really captured.
• 38:30
  Tad Eggleston: that… that…
• 38:32
  Tad Eggleston: Sensory experience as well as a comic can, particularly because, like, the comic or the the colors weren't limited to the color. There would often be.
• 38:43
  Tad Eggleston: words woven into the smoke. There would often be, you know, and different types of words. Sometimes it would just… sometimes it would actually be a font in the smoke, sometimes the smoke
• 38:53
  Tad Eggleston: Would be the font, you know, all sorts of like the way that it conveyed messages in as many different ways as possible.
• 39:03
  Tad Eggleston: Really…
• 39:05
  Tad Eggleston: tripped, like, how my brain sometimes is, particularly when things are hardest for me. It's like, oh my god, I just need to…
• 39:12
  Tad Eggleston: To shut up my brain for a few minutes.
• 39:16
  Tad Eggleston: Zero in on one flow of information.
• 39:21
  ZuZu (they/she): The words in the smoke, like, force you to sift through all of that input for meaning, and sometimes the meaning comes from different places. That is very accurate.
• 39:31
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I was just thinking about, you know, this, this, this idea of, like, are these colors sort of…
• 39:38
  andrewcoltrin: An expression of, of like an autistic viewpoint and like, you're like, yeah, there's, there's lots of different.
• 39:45
  andrewcoltrin: Autistic viewpoints, they're, they're all different, but, but, you know, like how I mentioned how it sort of felt like a
• 39:52
  andrewcoltrin: If…
• 39:53
  andrewcoltrin: David Lynch was doing a superhero comic, and I was just thinking about it, like, oh yeah, David Lynch does a lot of things…
• 40:00
  andrewcoltrin: With the soundscape… of…
• 40:04
  andrewcoltrin: you know, the films and shows they would make, that really, like, would… I would… once I figured out
• 40:11
  andrewcoltrin: you know, me, I was like, oh yeah, this weird industrial noise in the background, this is the kind of thing that just…
• 40:19
  andrewcoltrin: I experience in my life. I'm like, what is that sound? Where is it coming from? Why is that so overwhelming? And you know, it's like, I'm not saying David Lynch was autistic.
• 40:29
  andrewcoltrin: But I'm not saying he wasn't, I don't know that information, and he had his own.
• 40:34
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and he's definitely from a generation that likely wouldn't have been diagnosed.
• 40:39
  andrewcoltrin: No, it wouldn't have been diagnosed. And also, like, he had a career and, you know, got to do his work.
• 40:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, just, just, and, and either one of you can, can, can disagree with me, but I feel like the thing that Andrew Zuzu and I have in common is like, we didn't get diagnosed when we were kids because that was the DSM-3 and we could talk, so we weren't autistic. And we didn't get diagnosed as teenagers because that, that was the DSM-4 and we were smart, so that didn't mean.
• 41:08
  andrewcoltrin: And then.
• 41:09
  Tad Eggleston: That meant we couldn't be autistic. And it wasn't until the DSM-5 where there were autism.
• 41:14
  andrewcoltrin: Autistic.
• 41:15
  Tad Eggleston: People involved in putting the criteria together and they tried to make it so masking skills didn't.
• 41:20
  Tad Eggleston: Didn't prevent you…
• 41:22
  andrewcoltrin: I'm getting.
• 41:22
  Tad Eggleston: diagnosis that we were finally considered autistic, but we were all in our 30s by then, and everybody knows that only kids are autistic.
• 41:31
  andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
• 41:31
  andrewcoltrin: It's…
• 41:32
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I am still not diagnosed. I am, and I'm not pursuing it.
• 41:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean…
• 41:37
  ZuZu (they/she): PTSD and the ADHD first. So I'm like, you know, one thing.
• 41:41
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah. Those are… those are probably things that you'll get more specific tools, so yeah.
• 41:47
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 41:47
  andrewcoltrin: In the d.
• 41:49
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, exactly.
• 41:50
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, autism, you get a pamphlet and say, they say, well, good luck, and.
• 41:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 41:54
  andrewcoltrin: Try to make friends.
• 41:55
  Tad Eggleston: The autism diagnosis as an adult is only useful when you need to start asking for accommodations for it.
• 42:02
  ZuZu (they/she): That's what I've heard. Yeah.
• 42:04
  Tad Eggleston: Or when you need to explain something to somebody in an emergency room that wants to treat you like a horse, even though you're going, no, no, I'm a zebra. Seriously, no, I'm a zebra.
• 42:14
  andrewcoltrin: They'll give you the sunflower lanyard at the airport. All you have to do is ask. They don't check your paperwork.
• 42:26
  Britton Payne: That, that kind of gets to something that I think is interesting about this book is putting a name to these things. This book in particular does never, it never, as my recollection, doesn't use the word autistic.
• 42:36
  andrewcoltrin: Jas.
• 42:37
  ZuZu (they/she): No, it.
• 42:37
  Britton Payne: specifically does not do that for Tyler. So, a lot of what I do involves kids, right? And the reason I particularly care about representation, explicitly representing autism in kids' pop culture, is because I feel like that's how to better adjust the neurotypical kids in classrooms like my son's.
• 42:54
  Britton Payne: So that they can better understand how to deal with their autistic peers. So to me, and it's just my thesis, I'm not saying I'm right, but it is what
• 43:01
  Britton Payne: Is that it's important to say the word and I believe it's important specifically with autism but I believe it's important with all of them but that is not what this book does and but this book is not aimed at kids either so and I believe this book is.
• 43:13
  Britton Payne: as close to perfect as any book wants to get, for my money. So I'm not inclined to criticize not explicitly calling out Tyler as autistic. I felt like they danced right up to the edge. It matches all the language of what an autism diagnosis would look like in 2025.
• 43:28
  Britton Payne: But it doesn't say the word. And, to bring up the panel that Zuzu was talking about, where the person who gets rescued is…
• 43:37
  Britton Payne: Presumptively trans, but not explicitly. Yeah, they don't.
• 43:41
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:43
  Britton Payne: They've all got a reason. They're all different. And then the bad entity says, why can't you — recounting what the father would have said to the child, why can't you just be normal? Why can't you just be my son?
• 43:54
  Britton Payne: So…
• 43:55
  Britton Payne: all right, as an adult reader, you understand what they mean, but they were not explicit. And I'm just… it sounds to me like you guys are already… at least Andrew and Zuzu, you don't… you
• 44:04
  Britton Payne: great, good, don't be explicit. And I am… I am torn, because I… I, on the one hand, think that if you aren't explicit about it, then you can broaden the message to sort of… to sort of capture more different types of identification, but also, you are…
• 44:19
  Britton Payne: Allowing an actual diagnosis to be co-opted by other.
• 44:26
  Britton Payne: Groups almost like a like a like a cultural.
• 44:30
  Britton Payne: Like, culturally adopting something that's not yours. So, and I don't have an answer. I, I, I wouldn't change this book, but I am curious about the impact, how other people feel it.
• 44:38
  andrewcoltrin: That… that's a good… I love that that's part of the questions about it, and like, what are we gonna… and it's like… I mean, that's exactly why we made the anthology that we just crowdfunded, so…
• 44:50
  andrewcoltrin: I'll be excited to send you a copy.
• 44:52
  ZuZu (they/she): I'm topical.
• 44:54
  andrewcoltrin: I'm like, oh yeah, because that was like, no, let's talk about the…
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: Did I send you the PDF of that? Have you had a chance to look at.
• 45:02
  Britton Payne: I think you… I'm not positive. I'm not positive. I've been studying for the bar lately.
• 45:06
  andrewcoltrin: But anyway, it's.
• 45:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, wow.
• 45:08
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, well, this is like.
• 45:11
  Tad Eggleston: Constitution, you're ready.
• 45:12
  andrewcoltrin: You're ready, but no, no, no. Anyway.
• 45:17
  andrewcoltrin: What I'm saying is, like, like… Yeah, a superhero comic… Might… not be the…
• 45:25
  andrewcoltrin: I don't know, just having, like, representation that people can recognize, like, reading between the lines is…
• 45:32
  andrewcoltrin: That's really important, and
• 45:35
  andrewcoltrin: But also, it is important to have the stuff that is right up front with it, so…
• 45:41
  Britton Payne: Well, to destigmatize, you know.
• 45:43
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that's definitely, yeah.
• 45:45
  Britton Payne: There are times in cultural history where if, you know, I talk about this a lot, but representation of gay characters on television, Paul Lind and, you know, people who, and Liberace and whatnot.
• 45:56
  andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
• 45:57
  Britton Payne: If you were gay, and you could see yourselves in them, and they were being accepted, then it's like, okay, maybe there's a place for me, let's just not call it out, because that's dangerous for us. And then 30 years later, to not call it out feels
• 46:08
  Britton Payne: jerky. It feels like, why aren't we acknowledging that this is not a word that is deserving of derision or deserving of outsider status? It is just as normal as any other word.
• 46:18
  andrewcoltrin: Oh yeah.
• 46:18
  Britton Payne: Just like the people are just as normal as anybody else, let's use the word to sort of…
• 46:23
  Britton Payne: demonstrate normalization.
• 46:25
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, and you're, you're absolutely right, in that, that, that desire, and like, I, like my own, like, path, like, I was very.
• 46:34
  andrewcoltrin: Literally in the closet about being autistic until, like, COVID happened, and then I was like.
• 46:42
  andrewcoltrin: I need to just, nope, I need to, you know, and that's when I started doing more, more writing, more advocacy. Like, before that, I would just, like.
• 46:49
  andrewcoltrin: So I had to do everything under my partly robot synonym, or pseudonym, and then I'm like, n Let's…
• 46:57
  andrewcoltrin: You know, and I was in a better…
• 46:59
  andrewcoltrin: in a lot of different ways, like, I had the privilege of knowing I had support at home, and knowing that I had people behind me, and I'd already established myself enough at work that
• 47:12
  andrewcoltrin: You know, I could do that, but
• 47:15
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah. No, it is a scary thing, and, like, that whole…
• 47:19
  andrewcoltrin: You know, about being, you know, gay in the 70s versus being gay in the 90s or gay now.
• 47:24
  andrewcoltrin: And, like, I mean, LGBTQIA+, all of the… everything, it's like…
• 47:30
  andrewcoltrin: There's definitely this social cost to to… Crossing that.
• 47:38
  andrewcoltrin: doorway from the closet. And, and, like.
• 47:42
  andrewcoltrin: As somebody that's presenting white male, middle-aged guy.
• 47:46
  andrewcoltrin: I have so much less to lose by coming out of that closet than some people, and so I'm like, oh, I need to…
• 47:54
  andrewcoltrin: I need to step it up then, because I can be the example for other people.
• 48:00
  andrewcoltrin: And… and advocate, but, not everybody…
• 48:05
  andrewcoltrin: not everybody can as well, you know? They need to have those masks, especially You're not a…
• 48:11
  andrewcoltrin: Middle-aged white guy. You need as many masks as you can get sometimes.
• 48:16
  Britton Payne: I fully agree with you and from the same place, And.
• 48:18
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
• 48:19
  ZuZu (they/she): Piggybacking on, like, I think it was a couple thought hops ago, but we were talking about kind of, like, modern art and the way that representation has evolved over the years. So one of the things I really like about our current cultural landscape
• 48:32
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, as much as some people can say, I do kind of think we're oversaturated in some areas. There's probably a running list of 60 shows I have to keep up with.
• 48:42
  andrewcoltrin: Sit down.
• 48:43
  ZuZu (they/she): The nice thing about that variety is that you get a bunch of different ways to represent a bunch of different identities, so, I know adults that, you know, do know their own,
• 48:57
  ZuZu (they/she): makeup and have not told, you know, their spouses, their partners in their careers, etc. I do know people who have and are much more happy, you know, kind of same going all the way around. Oh, sorry, sorry, that's where…
• 49:09
  ZuZu (they/she): Let me trace that thought hop back.
• 49:14
  ZuZu (they/she): So there are people who, whether they know that they
• 49:18
  ZuZu (they/she): could be diagnosed or not, are not going to be super receptive to a label, right, or to, you know, that kind of representation and normalization. And they should be, and they're not, and most of them are traumatized, and, you know, that sucks. But so to give them some, like.
• 49:35
  ZuZu (they/she): Hey, hey, that thing that you struggle with or that thing that you can't understand about your kid that you're recognizing in this comic book, oh yeah, did you have a little spark of inspiration?
• 49:47
  ZuZu (they/she): Do you maybe want to Google it?
• 49:49
  ZuZu (they/she): Hey, it's this incredibly soft launch, right? And some people need that. They need the.
• 49:57
  andrewcoltrin: Mmh.
• 49:57
  ZuZu (they/she): the little breadcrumbs that are laid out for them, like a timid forest creature. That's great, that's really great. Yeah, it will eventually lead to some sort of understanding of themself or, you know, the people around them. And for… and that's good, that's a good angle that is covered.
• 50:15
  ZuZu (they/she): And not everyone should have to do that.
• 50:18
  ZuZu (they/she): with, like, that labor, or that work, or have to be traumatized that much for that long, so also the work that you're doing, Britt, with, like, hey, let's, like, teach kids early on, this is the word for it, it's fine, you have friends that are like this.
• 50:31
  ZuZu (they/she): You know, we don't need to other them, and this is the word for it, much like a peanut allergy, right? Like, you know, this is… this is fine.
• 50:40
  ZuZu (they/she): That is also important work to be doing. It's very much one of those, like, attack from all angles kind of things, I feel like.
• 50:47
  Britton Payne: Yeah, absolutely.
• 50:48
  ZuZu (they/she): Math.
• 50:49
  Britton Payne: I heard Henry Rollins… I saw an old interview of Henry Rollins, of all things, from the 90s, getting interviewed on MTV, and the interviewer was this young woman who was sort of trying to get him… trying to bait him to say that Green Day was a sellout. Green Day was a sort of pop-punk band that started as a sort of a punk tribute band, almost.
• 51:07
  Britton Payne: And Henry Rollins was sort of, at the time, perceived as, like, the real thing, a punk band, and also very smart and articulate, and so she was trying to bait him into saying that Green Day had been a sellout, or whatever.
• 51:18
  Britton Payne: And he went and said, you know, they're nice guys. I've met them. They are playing the music they want to play. It's not their fault they suddenly got popular and they went from playing bars to arenas in three months. And, you know, I think that there's room for everybody. And then he goes, there's room for Kenny G, there's room for Celine Dion, there's room for Green Day, and there's room for Henry Rollins.
• 51:38
  Britton Payne: And the MTV VJ, like.
• 51:41
  Britton Payne: Duked in her mouth a little bit when he said there's room.
• 51:44
  ZuZu (they/she): She wanted.
• 51:44
  Britton Payne: Room for.
• 51:44
  ZuZu (they/she): Okay.
• 51:45
  Britton Payne: there's room for Kenny G. And I remember thinking how almost brave it was for him, in that era, to stand up and say, there's room for people who like Kenny G, that's okay. And I think having people who are in a position of privilege
• 52:00
  Britton Payne: make those kinds of gestures is important for, the people who are not in those places of privilege to be able to understand themselves, including fans of Kenny G. And I don't mean to compare the autistic community to fans of Kenny G, I don't know that that's…
• 52:14
  Tad Eggleston: No, I hope we're the wrong.
• 52:15
  Britton Payne: However…
• 52:15
  Tad Eggleston: Bam.
• 52:16
  Britton Payne: It's.
• 52:16
  ZuZu (they/she): Oh yeah, that's the bit that we're flipping. That's.
• 52:19
  Tad Eggleston: That's fun.
• 52:20
  andrewcoltrin: I have a text thread. I know.
• 52:23
  Britton Payne: The point there is that I think we need to make room for everybody, and that that is a lot of what the Absolute Martian Manhunter
• 52:30
  Britton Payne: Kind of looks at, you know, both in the way it tells its story with, like, who he chooses to have in the, in the foster home or whatever, that, that home where that's burning down and trying to rescue people and in giving people the room to figure themselves out and, being able to have a personal relationship with somebody, accept them for who they are, whether it's a husband with a wife or a parent with a child.
• 52:53
  Britton Payne: That…
• 52:54
  Britton Payne: that letting everybody have the… there's enough room for everybody to be okay, and that for them to ask for the help that they need. And I think that's… and to be able to go to the things that make your world sing, which is kind of what The Martian is doing. So…
• 53:07
  Britton Payne: I just, you know, I was glad to be able to weave that little story in to what I think is the overall impact of the book. I just think it's such a beautiful work.
• 53:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, as I've known you longer, Britt, I've become more nuanced in my thoughts about
• 53:27
  Tad Eggleston: how the representation should be done. I think it… I think it needs to be really story-driven. I agree with you, this book is perfect. I don't think this book is improved by using the word autism. I don't think this word is improved by using
• 53:44
  Tad Eggleston: PTSD, or any of the other things that we see in this book. I think labeling them specifically actually takes away from the book, because the book is about stripping away the labels and just
• 53:58
  Tad Eggleston: Accepting our humanity.
• 54:00
  Tad Eggleston: On the flip side. Sometimes the road to accepting humanity is those labels. So, I mean.
• 54:09
  Tad Eggleston: I gave… Raina Telgemeier and… and Scott McCloud's… Cartoonist Club.
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: to… to… The son of a friend of mine for his birthday last year.
• 54:26
  Tad Eggleston: Come.
• 54:27
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I don't even know if I'm supposed to call him his son anymore, because he's come out as non-binary. So what do you call the child of a friend of mine?
• 54:38
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah. Good.
• 54:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right, yeah.
• 54:39
  Britton Payne: That's a good way.
• 54:41
  Tad Eggleston: So, so… I was just giving it to them because I knew it was a great book.
• 54:47
  Tad Eggleston: And I thought they'd like it, and I thought, you know, I know that, you know, their dad writes comics, so, you know…
• 54:54
  Tad Eggleston: I thought they might find that aspect interesting too, that sort of thing. And I got a text from my friend, like, 2 or 3 days after the book came through, about how much
• 55:04
  Tad Eggleston: Their child loved it.
• 55:06
  Tad Eggleston: Because there was a non-binary character I'd completely forgotten there was a non-binary character because there was no big deal made out of.
• 55:13
  Tad Eggleston: The non-binary character. It was important only in that once.
• 55:20
  Tad Eggleston: they laid out their pronouns to the rest of the group without me, you know. So, like, to me, the way the diagnosis fits best in the books are…
• 55:33
  Tad Eggleston: obviously, if you're gonna do a story about getting your diagnosis or whatever, you're gonna wind up having the diagnosis. But if it's a story where the diagnosis isn't the thing.
• 55:43
  Tad Eggleston: The way for it to come up is if it needs to.
• 55:47
  Elsa Charretier: Hmmm.
• 55:48
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and then it shouldn't be a big deal as much as it should be a thing.
• 55:54
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm sorry, I'm autistic. Let me slow down and take you through this in a
• 56:00
  Tad Eggleston: in a different way, because I know that my thought process just got really confusing to you.
• 56:07
  Tad Eggleston: which I know is something that I have to say a lot.
• 56:12
  Tad Eggleston: Mmhm.
• 56:13
  Britton Payne: I have a question for the artists on the panel. So I… it sounds like, of the group, I'm the most, comic book-y, superhero-y, and Martian Manhunter-y reader over decades, right? And, traditionally, Martian Manhunter, to the extent that they've shown him as
• 56:29
  Britton Payne: As a character, as opposed to just like a superhero Superman analog, he has been associated with.
• 56:36
  Britton Payne: A gumshoe detective, television, pop culture-y things.
• 56:40
  Britton Payne: from the black and white television era. That's largely what he's been associated with, Sam Spade and those sorts of detective characters of that particular era, not the '70s, you know, but the 1950s and early '60s, which is roughly when the character was created. And that has persisted. Darwin Cook really drove that home in "New Frontier" as his presentation.
• 57:00
  Britton Payne: Martian Manhunter. So with that as the background and the inspiration for why did the Martian Manhunter come to Earth and decide to become that kind of hardscrabble
• 57:09
  Britton Payne: Detect, you know, very, very sort of macho, 1950s version of macho detective, this art style is.
• 57:18
  Britton Payne: To me, is so radical, but also fits in
• 57:22
  Britton Payne: go perfectly with that. So I'm wondering, and I'm not an art historian by any stretch, but for those of you who are artists, does this echo, like, a particular art movement, or a style, or a design aesthetic that is associated with the 1950s? Like, I can sort of imagine that
• 57:39
  Britton Payne: Maybe this is what was going on in Surrealism in the 1950s, or it's got, like, a mod Mad Men-type
• 57:46
  Britton Payne: vibe to it or something, but I don't really know. I just know that it feels totally appropriate, that if there was going to be a psychotic or, you know, some kind of a mental break caused by a Martian invading your brain, that this is what it would have looked like on the Twilight Zone or on a black and white
• 58:02
  Britton Payne: television show, but I don't quite know why I feel that. I'm curious if any of the artists, especially.
• 58:08
  Britton Payne: Has like a sense of that.
• 58:10
  andrewcoltrin: Well, you know, there's There's a thing…
• 58:13
  ZuZu (they/she): Sorry, Andrew, I'm gonna interrupt you real quick. Should we let Elsa go first? 'Cause I know she only had an hour.
• 58:20
  Elsa Charretier: Oh, thank you. I was actually hoping for a few minutes to think about my answer because it's a tough question.
• 58:27
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I.
• 58:28
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, I think that it is and feels very different from what, you know, prior to the new frontier.
• 58:38
  Elsa Charretier: I had, and haven't since, until this book, read any Martian Manhunter book, so my two, you know, references of this character are New Frontier and this one.
• 58:53
  Elsa Charretier: So they are very different and I.
• 58:56
  Elsa Charretier: They.
• 58:58
  Elsa Charretier: You're right in the sense that you know the psychedelic and.
• 59:05
  Elsa Charretier: It feels a lot more sixties and fifties to me. Like the, the, he's very like mod.
• 59:13
  Elsa Charretier: And the character.
• 59:17
  Elsa Charretier: let me think… it's really a tough question, so… off the top of my head, it's hard to answer like that. But it doesn't… it doesn't feel like Darwin Cook's Martian Manhunter at all.
• 59:29
  Elsa Charretier: First of all, the, the, the, the character, the, the design and the way Javier Rodriguez like draws it.
• 59:39
  Elsa Charretier: Doesn't feel like 50s at all. It, it, it, he doesn't have that.
• 59:45
  Elsa Charretier: I guess he has a more modern, moody kind of vibe.
• 59:49
  Elsa Charretier: Versus the more traditional kind of.
• 59:52
  Elsa Charretier: Gloomy detective.
• 59:55
  Elsa Charretier: I don't get that at all from, from this specific book, but it's hard to say why. I think it, it probably goes down to.
• 1:00:05
  Elsa Charretier: The style of the artist.
• 1:00:08
  Elsa Charretier: The way he draws character, the way he have, he has the moves.
• 1:00:13
  Elsa Charretier: Feels very 60s and I think most of.
• 1:00:16
  Elsa Charretier: His books feel 50, feel very 60s, actually.
• 1:00:23
  Britton Payne: I just, like, I hadn't thought of this question even until I had the opportunity to talk to a couple of artists, but I just did a search for Surrealism 1960 on Google Image. I recommend you do that. Three or four of the images
• 1:00:35
  Britton Payne: Look like they could have fallen out of this book.
• 1:00:38
  Elsa Charretier: Mmm.
• 1:00:39
  andrewcoltrin: Mmm.
• 1:00:40
  Britton Payne: Now, I don't know that you guys get the same results that I do, but the shape of the face and the sort of mask quality of it, you know, the African mask quality of it, the color pattern.
• 1:00:50
  Britton Payne: Like the color palette and the swirliness are just coincidentally three of the.
• 1:00:55
  Elsa Charretier: I think…
• 1:00:56
  Britton Payne: Or another.
• 1:00:57
  Elsa Charretier: So, LSD?
• 1:00:59
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I'm.
• 1:01:00
  Elsa Charretier: Chips.
• 1:01:00
  Britton Payne: Early, early LSD. Yeah.
• 1:01:02
  andrewcoltrin: It's partly that… another thing, just… just that mid-60s… There was,
• 1:01:11
  andrewcoltrin: The 1966, 1967 TV series was the or season was the 1st season that the 3 major networks were all in color.
• 1:01:21
  Elsa Charretier: Okay.
• 1:01:22
  andrewcoltrin: They were trying to drive television sales, color television sales.
• 1:01:27
  andrewcoltrin: And so, so many shows are super saturated with these kinds of colors.
• 1:01:31
  andrewcoltrin: At that time, so, like, you know, the old Adam West, Batman TV show. So that was very much part of the pop culture, like, having this kind of saturated color. It's, like, partly…
• 1:01:44
  andrewcoltrin: Early psychedelia, but it was actually, like, marketing color TVs.
• 1:01:48
  Elsa Charretier: So.
• 1:01:50
  andrewcoltrin: So, like, the language of commerce and the language of art were, like, speaking to each other.
• 1:01:57
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
• 1:02:01
  andrewcoltrin: But yeah, it's
• 1:02:02
  andrewcoltrin: Exactly, yeah, those kind of colors. And I was also thinking, like, the Martian Manhunters, like, the Martian's face in here reminded me of, like, some, like, Picasso sculpture… sculptures from that time. Yeah
• 1:02:14
  andrewcoltrin: But yeah.
• 1:02:14
  Elsa Charretier: Absolutely, yeah.
• 1:02:15
  andrewcoltrin: But I'm like, yep, there's some, there
• 1:02:18
  andrewcoltrin: Art references here, somebody knows what they're doing.
• 1:02:21
  Elsa Charretier: And then, yeah.
• 1:02:24
  andrewcoltrin: That's, and all those saturated colors, yeah, for like.
• 1:02:30
  Tad Eggleston: I wanted to bring up.
• 1:02:32
  Tad Eggleston: One more story point type thing before we start wrapping. And Elsa, if you have to run, let me know.
• 1:02:41
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, I do. I'm sorry. No, no problem.
• 1:02:43
  Tad Eggleston: We're going to say goodbye to Elsa Chartier. Elsa is always so wonderful.
• 1:02:48
  Elsa Charretier: Oh yeah.
• 1:02:49
  Tad Eggleston: They have.
• 1:02:49
  Elsa Charretier: Yeah, I don't.
• 1:02:50
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah.
• 1:02:51
  Elsa Charretier: I actually contributed to the conversation. You did. Oh, you did.
• 1:02:54
  Tad Eggleston: Lovely.
• 1:02:55
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:55
  Elsa Charretier: link to all of.
• 1:02:56
  andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:57
  Elsa Charretier: Point of views.
• 1:02:58
  ZuZu (they/she): Mmhm.
• 1:02:59
  Tad Eggleston: And, and hopefully we'll, we'll talk again soon. I can't wait to hear what you're working on next. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:03:04
  Elsa Charretier: Absolutely. Thank you all. Thank you so much.
• 1:03:06
  andrewcoltrin: Bye.
• 1:03:06
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, thanks.
• 1:03:07
  Elsa Charretier: Bye!
• 1:03:08
  Tad Eggleston: See you later, Els.
• 1:03:09
  Elsa Charretier: Bye.
• 1:03:11
  Tad Eggleston: how did we feel about Despair the Hero? Or Despair the Zero?
• 1:03:19
  ZuZu (they/she): Ahhh… I'.
• 1:03:21
  Tad Eggleston: I'm in New Park.
• 1:03:22
  Britton Payne: Well.
• 1:03:24
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, it.
• 1:03:24
  Tad Eggleston: Love. I don't know if love is quite the right word.
• 1:03:27
  andrewcoltrin: Hey, hey.
• 1:03:28
  Britton Payne: Oh, it's so wonderful. Well, there's a history to it, so, I'm happy to tell the history, but maybe it makes more sense to get the first impressions before I throw them out.
• 1:03:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, let's get impressions and then history.
• 1:03:38
  andrewcoltrin: The personification of imposter syndrome.
• 1:03:46
  Tad Eggleston: Also, like… for me, at least, like, the more I start Figuring this or that out.
• 1:03:56
  Tad Eggleston: the more likely I am to… I I definitely go through.
• 1:04:02
  Tad Eggleston: a period of… Okay.
• 1:04:09
  Tad Eggleston: Doomism.
• 1:04:10
  andrewcoltrin: A bit.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like, oh, I figured this out, we're fucked.
• 1:04:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yo!
• 1:04:17
  ZuZu (they/she): Absolutely had that.
• 1:04:19
  Tad Eggleston: You know, before I start getting to the, okay, okay, I just need to realign various things, and I can still be positive, like, it's… no.
• 1:04:32
  Tad Eggleston: We're fucked. You start telling me why we're not fucked, and I'll tell you all the reasons why you're wrong, and lay them out in very explicit detail.
• 1:04:44
  ZuZu (they/she): And to highlight what you said about the, like, you know, I've done this, you know, a long time to the point where it's like before I can start to accept and be positive, I, so my wife doesn't read comics at all and I just sent her the picture of despair's like defeat when they keep realizing it's a transitory state and moving past it. And like, I was tearing up a little bit because, but I'd already, I'd been reading the graphic novel this whole time. So I just sent her a picture of that page.
• 1:05:09
  ZuZu (they/she): She writes back, she's Wow, that like, that got to me.
• 1:05:13
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, just that one page is so frickin' powerful, and they do such a good job showing, like, it can be all-consuming, and, you know, there is another side to this, and you can move through it. And…
• 1:05:27
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I think that's the other thing, it's really depicting, like, he is moving THROUGH despair, not past, he's not fighting him, he's not shoving him down.
• 1:05:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:05:42
  Britton Payne: So…
• 1:05:43
  Tad Eggleston: Are you frozen? Oh, no.
• 1:05:45
  andrewcoltrin: Oh, no, no. Stink it.
• 1:05:49
  Britton Payne: Well, I missed out on a lot of that because I was so excited to see Despero.
• 1:05:56
  Britton Payne: Despero, just as a quick background, was the cover villain of Justice League of America number one back in 1960, where he was playing chess against the Justice League.
• 1:06:08
  andrewcoltrin: Oh.
• 1:06:09
  Britton Payne: And he has, like, a Napoleon kind of fish-scaly,
• 1:06:15
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, that'.
• 1:06:15
  Britton Payne: It's wild. It's his head, but it looks like a headdress, and he's got a third eye in the middle of his forehead, right? And he's playing chess against the Flash, and he is largely treated as, like.
• 1:06:25
  Britton Payne: a silly villain from that era, because that's, you know, at some level what he was, and he stayed that way for about 20… 20 years-ish, I would say, where he was just another, you know, alien in a suit who would kind of show up and… and… and be, you know, one… the villain of the week type of thing.
• 1:06:43
  andrewcoltrin: Mmm.
• 1:06:43
  Britton Payne: Then they brought him back in about 1985. And they, being 1985, they switched the orientation of the fin on his head to more of a mohawk.
• 1:06:54
  Britton Payne: All right, and they need more of a.
• 1:06:55
  ZuZu (they/she): Evil. He's a bug.
• 1:06:57
  andrewcoltrin: So.
• 1:06:58
  Britton Payne: And they made him… he's a punk. And so they made him more of a tough guy, rather than, like, a brainy… he's not playing chess here in this picture that I'm showing, he's got… he's got the Justice League in his hand, and he's crushing their satellite and stuff like that, and he's… he's essentially, like, a super b
• 1:07:13
  Britton Payne: And so that becomes the nature of his villainy. And then I believe he comes back one more time a couple of years later, and he's taken the UN flag as his cape, and he's beating up the whole world, and then he ends up defeating the world.
• 1:07:29
  Britton Payne: And then you realize that Martian Manhunter, who had, by this point, kind of become his nemesis, like, those guys are like Batman and Joker, kind of, whereas that's not originally how he started out, he…
• 1:07:41
  Britton Payne: is given by John Jones, who's a Martian manager, who's got this, like, mental… he's got mental abilities. He's a Martian. He's got, like, mind… mind, you know, telepathy technologies. And he… he has a… as a Martian, has a one-time…
• 1:07:54
  Britton Payne: power called Maivana, where he can make somebody live out their ultimate fantasy, which puts their mind completely at rest and ease, but essentially also is a trap, as you can imagine, kind of like in the F. Graydon, the famous Al Mor story with the Flower of Mercy, or whatever it's called.
• 1:08:11
  Britton Payne: And so he gives that to Despero, that's his one time he gives the gift to his greatest enemy to, like, mellow him out, but also eliminate him as a threat. It's unfortunate they've, of course, undone that, you know, in subsequent years, but that's sort of the story arc of Despero, and it's a real, to me, a really wonderful
• 1:08:28
  Britton Payne: a reinterpretation of a goofy Silver Age villain, but keeping it essentially what it was, and trying to sort of evolve it while staying true to the nature of what it was. I don't know, that's my perception of Despero. And so this is, like, just like with Martian Manhunter, is the next step of evolution, or at least a new way of interpreting this same concept from the past.
• 1:08:46
  Britton Payne: The same thing with Despera. So I was very excited to see Despera reintroduced.
• 1:08:50
  Britton Payne: as the Martian Manhunter's sort of nemesis.
• 1:08:53
  Britton Payne: in this brand new interpretation, a way of completely going into something new and innovative, while still retaining the lore that makes it a Martian Manhunter story, and not just a new character who we're calling Martian Manhunter, because that's what Scott Snyder thought would be a neat idea. It managed to blend both. It managed to address
• 1:09:11
  Britton Payne: the, sort of.
• 1:09:12
  Britton Payne: Concerns about shapeshifting and paranoia that were present in the 1950s embody that into somebody who's trying to be a hero, who's rooting out that sort of a thing. The Red Scare, as it existed in the '80s, when he sort of was trying to help make the world a little bit more international as part of the Justice League International, the outsider status that he felt in the Justice League animated cartoon.
• 1:09:35
  Britton Payne: where he wanted to fit in, but he didn't quite feel like he could fit in, and now this modern interpretation of all of that, which have always been present in the Martian Manhunter.
• 1:09:44
  Britton Payne: Despero ends up being the sort of flip side of that, and I think that this Despero, I guess, is what, what they sort of restyle him as in Absolute Marshmallow, is that right? But he still basically looks like.
• 1:09:56
  Tad Eggleston: Despair.
• 1:09:57
  Britton Payne: For us.
• 1:09:58
  Tad Eggleston: Zero.
• 1:09:59
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, yeah, thank you.
• 1:10:05
  Britton Payne: Yeah, and so the way that he ends up defeating him is comparable to how.
• 1:10:09
  Britton Payne: Despero gets defeated through Maivana back in the 80s.
• 1:10:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 1:10:22
  Britton Payne: I didn't mean to do that.
• 1:10:23
  Tad Eggleston: Were we all autoflux? No, no.
• 1:10:25
  Britton Payne: I have one last question.
• 1:10:26
  Tad Eggleston: thing.
• 1:10:27
  Britton Payne: Or I have a question. So, so there's so much interesting color in this book.
• 1:10:32
  Britton Payne: obviously, it's what grabbed me in the first place, it's one of the things that really stands out. It stands out in the absolute line, generally, especially with the top four books, really, but especially in this book, and
• 1:10:44
  Britton Payne: I wonder if the book works as well with printing techniques of a generation ago, or if it really had to wait until you could have these properly saturated colors and modern printing techniques, which usually I don't care for.
• 1:10:56
  Britton Payne: usually I like older coloring techniques, but boy, it seems to work really well here. And then, I think on the issue 12, they maybe introduce a new color?
• 1:11:06
  Britton Payne: But I don't know enough about modern coloring techniques, and Andrew, I guess you were saying that you are anti-color sometimes.
• 1:11:12
  andrewcoltrin: No, I'm not anti-IS.
• 1:11:14
  Britton Payne: Anti-you-do.
• 1:11:15
  ZuZu (they/she): It's so much worse.
• 1:11:16
  andrewcoltrin: Not an expert.
• 1:11:18
  Britton Payne: Yeah, same. On issue 12, the logo font is an orange that reminds me. I remember when Underworld Unleashed came out as a comic book series from the 1980s.
• 1:11:28
  Britton Payne: 90s, where they were super excited that they were gonna add a fifth color, you know, four-color comics, plus this goopy glow-in-the-dark green that was Satan's color, or whatever, in the DC Comics.
• 1:11:38
  ZuZu (they/she): Fun.
• 1:11:39
  Britton Payne: thing called Unleashed. Well, this, to me, appears to be a type of orange, like almost an electric sherbet.
• 1:11:45
  Britton Payne: the Absolute Marsh Manager on the A cover, for those of you… oh, this was 11, not 12.
• 1:11:50
  Britton Payne: Issue 11, that appears to me to be a distinct ink color. So, I don't know if any of that stood out for you guys as artists, whether, like, the… that there were new
• 1:12:02
  Britton Payne: Nicole… techniques for trying to make a comic book.
• 1:12:07
  Britton Payne: We know that it's not past Rodriguez, or maybe Camp, whoever's idea it was, because Mmm.
• 1:12:14
  Britton Payne: Pages of the print book, where if you hold them up to the light, the image flows through to give you sort of a ghost image.
• 1:12:21
  ZuZu (they/she): Which is fun.
• 1:12:22
  Britton Payne: It's so fun, so fun to play with the form that way.
• 1:12:24
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, okay.
• 1:12:26
  Britton Payne: But I don't know enough about ink to know whether that's a fifth color ink or the modern inking techniques don't really make that special anymore.
• 1:12:35
  andrewcoltrin: I bet for a cover, they could do spot ink of just like, oh, we want this specific Pantone on this. I mean, I don't have the physical issue, so I can't give a good…
• 1:12:49
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, that's definitely one of those, like, I.
• 1:12:51
  Britton Payne: I'm gonna.
• 1:12:52
  ZuZu (they/she): on that. I do know that that, like, neon sherbet looks a lot like the orange you can use on risograph, and there's been a lot of advances in recent years trying to get digital color to look more like risograph, so I would believe that that is just, like.
• 1:13:09
  ZuZu (they/she): an advanced digital printer, because my… the printer that I go to, I… I love Ready Comics, they don't make me convert to CMYK, I can just give them my shitty RGB, and they'll make it work.
• 1:13:22
  andrewcoltrin: Shout out to R.
• 1:13:23
  ZuZu (they/she): comics but like I I have like yeah it's my comics are digital and so everything on there it's it's inspired by like vaporwave art so there's a lot of neon a lot of like dark saturation and I just give it to them and it's their problem it makes and it and they give it back to me it looks pretty good so I do know that like at least modern techniques can do that kind of automatic conversion and make it very close but
• 1:13:48
  ZuZu (they/she): more than that.
• 1:13:49
  andrewcoltrin: No, I would say it's Yeah, I'm not sure who DC is, you know.
• 1:13:54
  andrewcoltrin: What process they're using, but… Yeah, then the… Yep.
• 1:14:00
  andrewcoltrin: So.
• 1:14:01
  andrewcoltrin: Could be, though. But yeah, they are getting better at trying to mimic the…
• 1:14:06
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, the kind of colors, like, Rizograph, like…
• 1:14:11
  andrewcoltrin: For each… each pass through the printer, you get one color of ink, and so… and it's not even like the old… it's…
• 1:14:19
  andrewcoltrin: It's a whole… it's its own art.
• 1:14:21
  ZuZu (they/she): Rhizograph is a science. Oh my God. Yeah.
• 1:14:24
  andrewcoltrin: And it's funny, because, like, oh, this is what the, you know…
• 1:14:28
  andrewcoltrin: The plumber used to use to send out their mailers back.
• 1:14:32
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, you have to do so much like calculations of how those colors are gonna end.
• 1:14:37
  andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
• 1:14:38
  ZuZu (they/she): There's a… there's a printer in my area called Paper Jam, and they will do, like, lessons, on how to learn risograph, and it is,
• 1:14:47
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
• 1:14:48
  ZuZu (they/she): It's a little wild.
• 1:14:50
  Britton Payne: Yeah, to look up Rizz.
• 1:14:51
  andrewcoltrin: Oh yeah, it's.
• 1:14:52
  ZuZu (they/she): Oh, it's very fun. You probably, well, I don't know. I don't know your life, but I would imagine you have encountered those prints before.
• 1:15:00
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
• 1:15:00
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, it's a kind of.
• 1:15:03
  andrewcoltrin: Thank you.
• 1:15:03
  ZuZu (they/she): see them, you're like, oh, these things. Yeah.
• 1:15:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:15:06
  andrewcoltrin: Low, low print run things, yeah.
• 1:15:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they're particularly big in the indie comic scene right now. I know lots of indie comic people who have been
• 1:15:16
  Tad Eggleston: playing with Rizograph for their books.
• 1:15:19
  andrewcoltrin: Or, like…
• 1:15:20
  ZuZu (they/she): We have.
• 1:15:21
  andrewcoltrin: Quimby's, in Chicago, they'll take more of your books on consignment if you print them Rizograph.
• 1:15:28
  andrewcoltrin: I believe that. Yeah.
• 1:15:30
  ZuZu (they/she): Mmhm.
• 1:15:33
  Britton Payne: I remember having the experience of seeing color as the artist sees it, as opposed to the way it's ultimately printed, and be really interesting. There was a, Kirby exhibit out here in Los Angeles at the… at a museum, and I got to see a couple of, like, original Kirby paintings of, whatever, Mr. Miracle, or, you know, stuff that he would have done in the 70.
• 1:15:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:15:50
  Britton Payne: Characters and early 70s characters.
• 1:15:52
  Britton Payne: And just the way the colors jumped off the page was… you really felt you were looking into that guy's brain at the way he was choosing these colors, and then next to it, you could see the printed version of the cover of New Gods No. 1 or whatever, which was very interesting in and of itself, but… and I'm not a huge Kirby fan, but boy, I admire the guy.
• 1:16:09
  Britton Payne: And, his work doesn't really speak to me necessarily, but boy, as an artist, like, to see the things that he was trying to do and the innovations that he, it was tremendous.
• 1:16:20
  Britton Payne: And,
• 1:16:22
  Britton Payne: Seeing those original colors that he chose as his superhero colors, of colors that I knew, I knew what colors they were in the real world in my head, you know, in my head canon.
• 1:16:31
  andrewcoltrin: Okay.
• 1:16:32
  Britton Payne: and how he chose to represent the light interacting with the real colors. It was just beautiful. And, you know, I got some of those feelings looking at Martian Manhunters.
• 1:16:43
  Britton Payne: the book for Martian Manhunter, which I usually read digitally, so it's also even more vibrant there than it is.
• 1:16:48
  ZuZu (they/she): Yes.
• 1:16:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I actually had a quick question about the cover you showed, because I know the digital one doesn't have that orange. Is that the first printing, or did they change the color?
• 1:17:01
  Tad Eggleston: Because I know, I know it's not an uncommon thing for, like, second, third printings to have Different color…
• 1:17:11
  Tad Eggleston: Trade dress is the way to, you know, sometimes when they like the cover and they don't want to do an alternate cover for the second printing.
• 1:17:21
  Britton Payne: I will check, let's see.
• 1:17:24
  Britton Payne: The indicia is sometimes hidden on modern comic books.
• 1:17:27
  Tad Eggleston: If you look at the.
• 1:17:28
  Britton Payne: Okay.
• 1:17:28
  Tad Eggleston: Barcode.
• 1:17:30
  Tad Eggleston: on the back, The last digits…
• 1:17:36
  Britton Payne: This one says second printing.
• 1:17:37
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
• 1:17:38
  Britton Payne: In Indonesia.
• 1:17:40
  Britton Payne: Yeah. And on the barcode, it does say… It should be.
• 1:17:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it should be able.
• 1:17:44
  Britton Payne: Oh, and it's a second printing cover.
• 1:17:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:17:47
  Britton Payne: Awesome.
• 1:17:48
  Tad Eggleston: I bet you that orange is the second printing.
• 1:17:51
  Britton Payne: Mmm.
• 1:17:52
  Britton Payne: Well, well, well, lucky me.
• 1:17:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 1:17:55
  Tad Eggleston: Any other thoughts or are we all hitting our sensory social limits?
• 1:18:02
  Britton Payne: I do have one more question because I don't know if you guys.
• 1:18:08
  Tad Eggleston: It has more sensory social limits than we do.
• 1:18:12
  ZuZu (they/she): Sounds like.
• 1:18:12
  Britton Payne: like.
• 1:18:13
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I'm doing good. The… the couple of notes I wanted to hit there were, the… the shelter, inhabitants, and then the last page with despair. So, like, I've talked about the two things that I really came away, like, excited about.
• 1:18:27
  Tad Eggleston: There we go.
• 1:18:28
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, so yeah, so yeah, please answer, or please ask your question, Britt, I will.
• 1:18:32
  Britton Payne: Sure.
• 1:18:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and if you could answer it too.
• 1:18:34
  ZuZu (they/she): That'd be.
• 1:18:35
  Tad Eggleston: I might give an answer.
• 1:18:36
  Britton Payne: I might be able to answer it. Tad, I think you are fully up to speed on probably the entire Absolute universe right now at DC Comics. Oh, okay. So I'm just curious.
• 1:18:47
  Tad Eggleston: Right on this and absolute Wonder Woman.
• 1:18:51
  Britton Payne: Okay, so I'm up to speed on essentially all of them.
• 1:18:55
  Britton Payne: But, this is still such an odd book, it's so different, and the book itself, I don't remember it mentioning Superman, Wonder Woman, any other heroes. It might have, I just don't.
• 1:19:05
  Tad Eggleston: Only in the last issue.
• 1:19:07
  Britton Payne: In the last issue, does it call out like that?
• 1:19:10
  Tad Eggleston: One can…
• 1:19:11
  Britton Payne: or something.
• 1:19:12
  Tad Eggleston: There's one panel apiece.
• 1:19:15
  Britton Payne: Oh, okay.
• 1:19:15
  Tad Eggleston: the the there's the engineer in Gotham. There's the engineer.
• 1:19:22
  Britton Payne: Okay.
• 1:19:22
  Tad Eggleston: down and and I forget exactly how it but there's one panel apiece for all of them in the the last issue.
• 1:19:31
  andrewcoltrin: Got.
• 1:19:31
  Britton Payne: Okay, well this may just be a tad question, but how do you feel this book fits in with the rest of the absolute universe?
• 1:19:38
  Tad Eggleston: I hadn't even thought about it yet. I've heard rumor that the first big event is going to be dark side related and that this was kind of the, the.
• 1:19:49
  Tad Eggleston: launch into that, but I… I don't pay enough attention to… to continuity-type news, and…
• 1:19:58
  Tad Eggleston: Like I said, I've read, I think, the 1st Batman arc, I've read the 1st Superman issue.
• 1:20:03
  Tad Eggleston: And I've read all Absolute Wonder Woman, and so far.
• 1:20:07
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know that I feel like it crosses over with Absolute Wonder Woman at all, except that I don't feel like it couldn't be in the same universe, you know? But I know…
• 1:20:21
  Tad Eggleston: for the… for a lot of the beginning of the Absolute Universe, that was kind of their intention, was… was to go ahead and let the books
• 1:20:31
  Tad Eggleston: Stand on their own and not.
• 1:20:34
  Tad Eggleston: Make it… make it so they… they… they didn't…
• 1:20:39
  Tad Eggleston: Have to be in different universes, like, make it so that they could be in the same universe, but not explicitly.
• 1:20:47
  Tad Eggleston: cross the… I mean, I think the first explicit crossover at all was… what?
• 1:20:52
  Britton Payne: May I Wonder W.
• 1:20:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, Batman and Wonder Woman in, like.
• 1:20:58
  Tad Eggleston: Issue… 16 or 17 of Wonder Woman?
• 1:21:02
  Britton Payne: Yeah, so more than a year in. They crossed over in, the characters appeared together in DCKO, which was meant to be the event that was going to wrap up the Absolute Universe. But because Absolute Universe was so successful, as Tad sort of has explained to me in more detail, they expanded all of the books, including Martian Manhunt, which was, I think, supposed to only be six issues, right? Oh, really?
• 1:21:22
  Britton Payne: Yeah, I mean, I.
• 1:21:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the way it reads, I'm pretty certain Dennis had 12.
• 1:21:28
  Tad Eggleston: But, but as is so often the case, he probably wasn't guaranteed 12.
• 1:21:33
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, like… because it does feel like…
• 1:21:38
  Tad Eggleston: at least to me, it felt like the beginning was written in such a way that if he wasn't going to be able to tell the whole story, it could have wrapped at 6, and it would have been a very different story. More of the one that you saw, where it's like, oh, a different take on aliens, and less of the allegory.
• 1:21:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:21:57
  andrewcoltrin: Oh.
• 1:21:58
  Tad Eggleston: But if he was gonna get to go to 12, we were gonna expand it beyond…
• 1:22:03
  Tad Eggleston: Just different take on aliens and, and start looking at.
• 1:22:07
  Tad Eggleston: People in the world and and whatnot.
• 1:22:10
  Britton Payne: Well, a friend of mine who works at DC
• 1:22:13
  Britton Payne: told me, almost in whispers, like, after issue 2 or 3 came out, that they were like, they could not believe
• 1:22:19
  Britton Payne: Well, it was selling. Weirdo book like this, like, the superheroes and stuff, we're DC Comics, like, we… this was, like, a flyer, you know, and, like, all of a.
• 1:22:28
  ZuZu (they/she): Excellent.
• 1:22:28
  Britton Payne: It's huge, like, what are we gonna do? Like, nothing else we have is like this, you know?
• 1:22:33
  Tad Eggleston: Fire.
• 1:22:34
  Britton Payne: So that.
• 1:22:34
  Tad Eggleston: Flyers often do well, and…
• 1:22:36
  Britton Payne: As it turns out.
• 1:22:37
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, like, I have a feeling that, like.
• 1:22:44
  Tad Eggleston: Even if they'd canceled, or if they'd initially intended to cancel it, the first trade paperback sales would have had them scrambling to uncancel it.
• 1:22:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, cause, cause in, in some ways, like not, not strictly story wise, but like Squirrel Girl was on the shelf for a long time and essentially got to end when Ryan North wanted it to end. And there were so many comic shops that were sitting there going, what is this doing on the, you know, none of my people like it, but two things.
• 1:23:11
  ZuZu (they/she): I suppose.
• 1:23:12
  Tad Eggleston: It has…
• 1:23:12
  ZuZu (they/she): I would say…
• 1:23:14
  Tad Eggleston: It had a rabbit single.
• 1:23:15
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah.
• 1:23:16
  Tad Eggleston: It had a rabid single issue audience.
• 1:23:19
  Tad Eggleston: But second, it sold so well in trade that it didn't matter if it had a rabid single issue audience.
• 1:23:28
  Tad Eggleston: Like the single issues were, were literally just.
• 1:23:32
  Tad Eggleston: To get to the trade.
• 1:23:34
  ZuZu (they/she): Yes. Yeah, my comic shop was on the outskirts of a college campus, so it was a lot of millennials that liked webcomics, that liked cute things, but how does a webcomic work? You forget about it for 6 months, and then you go back and you catch up all at once, so none of them wanted boxes, none of them need, like.
• 1:23:51
  ZuZu (they/she): could subscribe, you know, financially or on a schedulistic basis. And then as soon as the first trade came out, we got swept up. Like, yeah, that's 100% that audience.
• 1:24:02
  Britton Payne: Well, so the origins of this particular universe, at least again in universe, is that somehow a universe split off and the heart of the universe was Darkseid, right? And I think this is how Scott Snyder pitched it, and you may be able to do a better job of describing it, Ted, if you want.
• 1:24:19
  Tad Eggleston: No, I know none of this stuff.
• 1:24:20
  Britton Payne: Oh, okay. So, so basically.
• 1:24:22
  ZuZu (they/she): I know fragments.
• 1:24:24
  Britton Payne: Okay, so at the heart, and the absolute universe consists currently of, I don't know, seven, eight different titles. There's Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. That's what they started with. And then they did Martian Manhunter, and Flash, and Green Lantern, so that was the sort of second wave of books.
• 1:24:42
  Britton Payne: Because the first wave had done gangbusters, right? And then they've expanded a little bit more to other absolute universes, but they're all set.
• 1:24:49
  Tad Eggleston: There's a Green Arrow and a.
• 1:24:50
  Britton Payne: And now there's a.
• 1:24:51
  Tad Eggleston: Down.
• 1:24:52
  Britton Payne: Yep.
• 1:24:53
  Tad Eggleston: And there have been a handful of one-shots.
• 1:24:55
  Britton Payne: A couple one-shots, yeah, yeah, yeah, with the, like, Legion of Doom type thing. And, but the point is, it's all on a universe… in a planet, in a universe that has Darkseid at its heart, as opposed to the main DC universe, which conceptually has Superman at its heart. And so, how do good people react
• 1:25:12
  Britton Payne: In a world that is rotten.
• 1:25:15
  Britton Payne: Like, that's the… that's the principle of these books, right? And so, when they mention Darkseid, and Darkseid is, or whatever they specifically said in Martian Manhunter, I don't remember off the top of my head, that was sort of a nod to that, and, all of these books are… have that at their heart, is that, like, in a bad world.
• 1:25:33
  Britton Payne: what happens to our heroes? Do they go bad? Do they take a different path? Do they turn out differently? So that's meant to be the heart of this absolute line. And I think that gets reflected very well in Martian Manhunter.
• 1:25:48
  Britton Payne: It is not a hopeful universe.
• 1:25:50
  andrewcoltrin: Okay.
• 1:25:51
  Britton Payne: You know, nor is it in any of the other books either. But you still have hopeful behaviors within that universe. I think that's really… I think that's really cool. I don't know whether it crosses over in the way that we think of crossovers particularly well. We did see Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman crossover
• 1:26:07
  Britton Payne: together in this DCKO book, which was a… it was a very fun, like, almost pro-wrest… Superheroes was pro-wrestling, almost.
• 1:26:13
  Britton Payne: I think that's…
• 1:26:14
  Tad Eggleston: That was pitched.
• 1:26:16
  Britton Payne: Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
• 1:26:17
  Tad Eggleston: That's funny.
• 1:26:18
  Britton Payne: That's how it played out, and I'm not a pro wrestling guy.
• 1:26:21
  Britton Payne: But, but, I don't know…
• 1:26:25
  Britton Payne: Martian Manhunter wasn't in that. I don't know that he would have fit into that particular iteration of the crossover. I don't know if Martian Manhunter's supposed to be in the Justice League book that they seem to be heading.
• 1:26:36
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I'm wondering.
• 1:26:37
  Tad Eggleston: Like, here's, here's a question.
• 1:26:41
  Tad Eggleston: because I don't know that I think it's 100% clear
• 1:26:52
  Tad Eggleston: how much… Martian Manhunter is like a superhero versus a man with
• 1:27:00
  Tad Eggleston: Possibly an alien, and possibly just his brain… Working out the world.
• 1:27:09
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I don't know how you would put this John Johns.
• 1:27:14
  Tad Eggleston: In the Justice League.
• 1:27:17
  Britton Payne: No?
• 1:27:18
  Tad Eggleston: You know, Gotham Central, maybe.
• 1:27:22
  Britton Payne: I kind of, I kind of feel star man about this book. I kind of feel like.
• 1:27:26
  Britton Payne: I love this 12.
• 1:27:28
  Britton Payne: And unless he's got… E. Dennis Camp has got something
• 1:27:34
  Britton Payne: big, that it should maybe just live as 12, and he's not part of it anymore. But I don't know, I'm open to it.
• 1:27:44
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I feel like open is where I'm at, because, like, he's… you could justify it. You could, like, you lay the foundation for, like, you know, he's a cop, he leaves to be a private detective, he's got that line of, like, I want to protect people, and I want justice.
• 1:28:02
  ZuZu (they/she): So you could justify, you know, his relationship with the Martian getting better and them going full superhero mode, but it would be a…
• 1:28:11
  Tad Eggleston: different story.
• 1:28:11
  ZuZu (they/she): Okay.
• 1:28:12
  Tad Eggleston: I think where it would break for me, though, is if it became, like, a powered superhero beyond, like, this empathy.
• 1:28:19
  andrewcoltrin: The… I mean… I'm sort of thinking, like, in this book, like, he's actually, like, an FBI agent.
• 1:28:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:28:29
  andrewcoltrin: So, I could see, like, oh, maybe he.
• 1:28:31
  ZuZu (they/she): I forgot.
• 1:28:31
  andrewcoltrin: FBI adjunct that's assigned to the Justice League. So.
• 1:28:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, I could see there being roles, but I think, I think if he was suddenly able to fly or, or.
• 1:28:43
  andrewcoltrin: No.
• 1:28:44
  Tad Eggleston: Shapeshift or any of the other things that Martian Manhunter has sometimes been able to do through the years that would start.
• 1:28:53
  Tad Eggleston: not… Feeling like this character to me anymore.
• 1:28:56
  andrewcoltrin: No, no, I'd be doing something different, yeah.
• 1:28:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I feel, I feel like he has a very invisible power set that is more observational than
• 1:29:09
  Tad Eggleston: Influential, I mean, I guess he kind of has the ability to, to also share that with others but, but that, that, that is like his superpower is being able to share empathy, not
• 1:29:22
  Tad Eggleston: Not being able to… Do the Jedi mind trick.
• 1:29:27
  ZuZu (they/she): He can teleport too, right? There's the Martian nose ways that are closer than point A to point B, something like that.
• 1:29:35
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe.
• 1:29:37
  ZuZu (they/she): I think, I think it'.
• 1:29:38
  Tad Eggleston: I remember that at least once, yeah.
• 1:29:40
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I think he might do it twice, but there's one time they make a bigger deal about it. But yeah, I could…
• 1:29:49
  ZuZu (they/she): The thing is, like, I could see a take on it. I just, like, it's a little more Sundance film than it is, you know, blockbuster Marvel, right? Like, you know, I could see a place…
• 1:30:00
  andrewcoltrin: I'm.
• 1:30:00
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, I could see a place where, you know, he learns radical empathy to the point that he can, you know, actually change his shape. And like, 'cause there's even like a bit with a, oh, I had to avert my eyes during the part where the chicken wing is talking about like what a terrible life it's had. Like I literally like had to stop reading those word bubbles 'cause I was feeling myself going, but. But no. So like I could see something, like I said, very Sundance.
• 1:30:25
  andrewcoltrin: Boom.
• 1:30:25
  ZuZu (they/she): He develops radical enough empathy that he can change his form, and then the Justice League is like, we're all too out of touch, and you're actually the one who can, you know, triangulate whatever, where Darkseid is, or figure out, like, people's motivation, because you have such empathy. It's something.
• 1:30:40
  Britton Payne: Zozo, I would.
• 1:30:41
  ZuZu (they/she): that, but…
• 1:30:42
  Britton Payne: Sorry. Do you know anybody in PC Thomas from Page 13?
• 1:30:45
  ZuZu (they/she): I don't, I don't, you're.
• 1:30:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you're the one that would know somebody at DC Comics for her to pitch that to, Britt.
• 1:30:52
  Britton Payne: As a fan of superheroes and a fan of Martian Manhunter, my impulse is that this thing was so perfect, let's just let it be done. If there's another big initiative in the absolute universe, let's keep Martian Manhunter out of it. Maybe obliquely make a reference to him, but let's not try and explain how it works or whatever. I'm open to it.
• 1:31:11
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I do.
• 1:31:12
  Britton Payne: paths, but let's not push it, however.
• 1:31:15
  Tad Eggleston: I do completely agree with, let's not explain how it works.
• 1:31:18
  andrewcoltrin: Okay.
• 1:31:18
  Britton Payne: Right. Maybe, you know, I don't think we need that now. I trust.
• 1:31:22
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if D.
• 1:31:22
  Britton Payne: He can't put his name on the next book.
• 1:31:25
  Tad Eggleston: That's a whole different.
• 1:31:25
  Britton Payne: would be great, right? But I don't think we need it.
• 1:31:28
  Tad Eggleston: I fear the midichlorian effect.
• 1:31:30
  Britton Payne: But Martian Man has been around since whatever.
• 1:31:31
  Tad Eggleston: 2:55.
• 1:31:32
  Britton Payne: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:31:33
  andrewcoltrin: Right.
• 1:31:34
  Britton Payne: Vision Manor's been around since 1955, has had several, maybe half a dozen different, like meaningfully different iterations of the character that all have the same thing in its heart, but have been different, including this one.
• 1:31:44
  Britton Payne: I think it would be neat if the next iteration of Martian Manhunter borrowed some things from this run. Traditionally, Martian Manhunter has been just a dude who got zapped to Earth by accident and got here and was like, well, I'm stuck here, so let me see if I can fit in and adopts the identity of a detective. Initially, he just was like, let me just turn myself into a detective. And then he was like, let me turn myself into a detective that I see on TV.
• 1:32:08
  Britton Payne: And then he said, oh, this detective that I knew died. Let me turn myself into this dead detective so I have a ready-made identity. So you can even imagine like what era does that become important because the shifting line of suspension of disbelief. Well, now we could say there is a, now we have almost a firestorm situation. Now we have two.
• 1:32:29
  Britton Payne: entities existing in one brain. That's roughly how we're perceiving this Martian Manhunter. So I would like to see whatever the next iteration of Martian Manhunter, even if it's just ten years from now, that they take to heart that this this does a really good job expressing the core of the character and maybe adopting some of the things that we see here into the next iteration of Martian Manhunter, so that he's not just a Superman knockoff the way he often has been in the past.
• 1:32:52
  Britton Payne: And that he isn't even necessarily, like, the heart of the league, which is what he has been for a couple of decades, but that he is this kind of new version of expressing what happens when an outsider
• 1:33:06
  Britton Payne: Tries to find their way in modern society.
• 1:33:12
  ZuZu (they/she): Liter.
• 1:33:13
  Tad Eggleston: I'd be on board with that.
• 1:33:15
  ZuZu (they/she): Yeah, yeah, I saw it breaching the log line. Yeah, yeah. It's like, yep, yep. Yeah, you can see it play out.
• 1:33:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I am going to wrap us up, if only because the only thing that I have on my mind right now is a proposal, but it's the type of proposal that I don't want to make on the air.
• 1:33:37
  andrewcoltrin: Oh no.
• 1:33:37
  Tad Eggleston: I don't want to put anybody on the spot. So the only way you're on the spot is I'm putting on the air that I'm about to propose something to this trio of people.
• 1:33:45
  andrewcoltrin: Yes.
• 1:33:46
  Tad Eggleston: And it may or may not turn into something.
• 1:33:48
  andrewcoltrin: Yeah, maybe.
• 1:33:48
  Britton Payne: Totally meta for this book.
• 1:33:50
  andrewcoltrin: Exactly. We're all in different cities, so it can't be that creepy, but.
• 1:33:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I get it.
• 1:33:57
  ZuZu (they/she): Right.
• 1:33:58
  andrewcoltrin: Right.
• 1:33:59
  Tad Eggleston: For Elsa Chartier, Andrew Coltrane, Zuzu, Britt Payne, this has been the Absolute Martian Manhunter Book Club on 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.