Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / Fourth World Book Club #1

Transcript

Fourth World Book Club #1 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Tad Eggleston: Recording.
• 0:03
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to 22 panels and the debut episode of our newest book club. Right now. I'm just going to call it the 4th World Book Club. Unless one of you guys has a better
• 0:14
  Tad Eggleston: idea, it feels it feels it feels like one to just go direct on, kind of like our milestone Book Club. But if somebody has a cool title, let me know. But but yeah, 4th World book club, Sean Harker, world. Mark Pratt
• 0:29
  Tad Eggleston: from the Chicago Theater community
• 0:32
  Tad Eggleston: are joining me. Mark wrote a play recently about King Kirby, among others, and that other Guy Stan Stanley.
• 0:43
  Mark Pracht: Stanley Lieber.
• 0:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But of that, yeah, that other guy.
• 0:49
  Mark Pracht: A play that I will point out was just this week nominated for best new work at the Chicago Theater. Jeff Awards.
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: I did see that I you are plug away. You are
• 1:01
  Tad Eggleston: so good at promoting yourself right before I'm about to promote you. It's.
• 1:05
  Mark Pracht: You can't.
• 1:05
  Tad Eggleston: Talent, mark.
• 1:07
  Mark Pracht: Can't spell prompt without Pr. As our good friend Chad Wise pointed out, so.
• 1:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's mark.
• 1:14
  Sean Harklerode: I think that was the Sean Harkle Road original.
• 1:16
  Mark Pracht: Oh, yeah, okay, well, it's that's
• 1:20
  Mark Pracht: somehow that does not surprise me.
• 1:22
  Tad Eggleston: So Mark is the author of House of Ideas. The the Jeff nominated play as well as innocence of.
• 1:32
  Mark Pracht: Seduction.
• 1:33
  Tad Eggleston: Innocence of seduction. I always forget. If I'm I know I need to flip it, but I always forget what the original was. Innocence of seduction and the mark of Cain Sean played in all 3 of those plays, including a starring role in innocence of seduction. As Bill Gaines. Mark, you're the one that came up with the idea of let's read 4th World
• 1:59
  Tad Eggleston: in chronological order. So I mean, that's the thing to to point out to to the audience. We're not. Gonna we've set up a reading list where we're going to read them
• 2:08
  Tad Eggleston: the way they came out. So this week we're going to talk about Jimmy Olson's
• 2:12
  Tad Eggleston: or Superman's PAL, Jimmy Olsen. 133 to 135. But next next month it'll be forever. People number one.
• 2:19
  Tad Eggleston: new gods, number one, Mr. Miracle number one, and Superman's PAL, Jimmy Olsen, 1, 36, and it will kind of continue that way
• 2:28
  Tad Eggleston: the way it was as a monthly release.
• 2:32
  Mark Pracht: Right, because we didn't want to do just one issue of Jimmy Olsen. Right? That would seem like.
• 2:37
  Mark Pracht: right? Yeah, like enough
• 2:38
  Mark Pracht: but no, you know the conversation that Tad and I had about this. Basically, the last time I did this exercise was I was doing research for the play, and so I read
• 2:54
  Mark Pracht: You know I read the whole 4th World saga in order
• 3:01
  Mark Pracht: and I did it on an overnight flight from Chicago to London, and about halfway through 4 30 in the morning I began to think I was going insane, and you know and that's not me being critical. That's just.
• 3:18
  Mark Pracht: It is a flood of material. And I and I began to wonder
• 3:24
  Mark Pracht: if it might be more interesting and more fun and more
• 3:30
  Mark Pracht: cogent if you took it month by month, and actually gave yourself some time to
• 3:36
  Mark Pracht: to chew over the admittedly massive
• 3:43
  Mark Pracht: flood of ideas that are coming out of these books?
• 3:49
  Mark Pracht: you know, for those who don't know, because I mean, when we 1st started talking about this and part of the reason that we're doing. It is because Tad had never read these books. That's correct.
• 3:57
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't. I still haven't. I mean, I've read the 3 books that we needed to read for this month.
• 4:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, and for you know, just as a background thing. And and I guess since I wrote the play, I'll I'll talk about it. You know, these are. These are when Jack Kirby left
• 4:13
  Mark Pracht: Marvel in very early seventies
• 4:20
  Mark Pracht: he went to DC. Who offered him a contract that was marginally better than what he had at Marvel and
• 4:29
  Mark Pracht: Jack came in with this idea of wanting to do these 4th World books. These were his ideas.
• 4:36
  Mark Pracht: the Jimmy Olsen book which we're going to, you know, dive into today, is I? My feeling is that it came about because
• 4:46
  Mark Pracht: DC editorial wanted him to work on a flagship character.
• 4:50
  Mark Pracht: And so this was.
• 4:56
  Mark Pracht: there's there's number. There's a number of stories, but the one is that that Jimmy Olson was the one that didn't have a set creative team at the time, and Jack, not wanting to take work away from anybody, said he'd do that. So that's where we jump in. And
• 5:14
  Mark Pracht: clearly, as we'll probably talk about, he is setting the stage for this larger 4th World story that he wants to do
• 5:25
  Mark Pracht: successfully or not successfully. I'm not sure but that's what we're here to talk about. So
• 5:32
  Mark Pracht: this is, you know.
• 5:37
  Mark Pracht: the the sobricate of Ping Kirby really came to prominence during the marvel years, and this is the 1st time when I think Jack himself is trading upon that
• 5:50
  Mark Pracht: to to promote himself.
• 5:55
  Mark Pracht: Pr, just like myself.
• 5:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 5:59
  Mark Pracht: So here we are, Jimmy Olsen, number 1, 1533, 3, rd 30.
• 6:07
  Sean Harklerode: Before we.
• 6:08
  Tad Eggleston: Get into it.
• 6:09
  Sean Harklerode: So I thought it might be interesting since you you said he came, not wanting to take work from people. The story that people tell, and you might say that this is untrue, was that he? He said, give me your your worst selling book.
• 6:23
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 6:23
  Sean Harklerode: And I'll turn it around. Which
• 6:25
  Sean Harklerode: is a very Ben Grimm, Jack Kirby thing to say. But yeah.
• 6:30
  Mark Pracht: I think that's true, too, but I don't know. I I think there's so many.
• 6:35
  Mark Pracht: you know, with all of these things when you're talking about Jack. And when you're talking about Stan and you're talking about, there are so many stories, and there's so many things that they said and so many of the things don't make sense when you put them against each other, and they don't, and some it's some it's hearsay. It's it's Mark Evenier who, you know, was his assistant, and and I don't necessarily think that anybody's lying. I just think.
• 6:58
  Tad Eggleston: Memory is weird.
• 6:59
  Mark Pracht: Memory is weird.
• 7:01
  Tad Eggleston: Memory is weird. Memory changes over time. Memory is affected by emotion. Different perspectives remember different things.
• 7:08
  Tad Eggleston: You know. It's why Rashomon is such a good story, movie, comic.
• 7:13
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 7:13
  Tad Eggleston: That that's a round table for some time, because there is now a manga version of Rashomon. So
• 7:18
  Tad Eggleston: I would love to do, watch the movie. Read the short story.
• 7:24
  Tad Eggleston: but that's a different thing really quickly, before we jump into Jimmy Olsen Sean, what's your experience with 4th World? Have you
• 7:34
  Tad Eggleston: read it before, or or you know what what level of.
• 7:39
  Sean Harklerode: I have read most of it. My! My experience goes back 50 years.
• 7:45
  Sean Harklerode: maybe not quite 50 years.
• 7:48
  Sean Harklerode: I remember I had these books
• 7:52
  Sean Harklerode: and I loved particularly 1, 33, and 1 34. The covers, I just thought were amazing. Mr. Miracle number One. I also had
• 8:03
  Sean Harklerode: but I remember having these and I had seen them. My cousins had them, and I didn't know what Kirby was. It was like. Kirby is here, King Kirby, a Kirby size, and I was like, who is this.
• 8:17
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't it that robot in fantastic 4.
• 8:20
  Sean Harklerode: Right I was like, and so I.
• 8:24
  Mark Pracht: That's Herbie Kirby, the robot.
• 8:28
  Tad Eggleston: Oh!
• 8:30
  Sean Harklerode: So that's that's how I 1st remember these is is being perplexed as to who King Kirby was, and my cousin explaining it to me.
• 8:41
  Mark Pracht: I. You know I like I'm I'm a little bit younger than Sean, but I specifically, I remember when he came back to Marvel, there was a lot of Kirby Kirby, Kirby, and I was like, who the hell was this? And.
• 8:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 8:54
  Mark Pracht: And this is, you know, it's also.
• 8:57
  Mark Pracht: and this really odd artwork to me. And that's that's something that that you know, I think is worth talking about and worth talking about in.
• 9:07
  Mark Pracht: you know. Famously sorry I didn't mean to interrupt Sean, so.
• 9:11
  Sean Harklerode: No, no, no, I just.
• 9:13
  Sean Harklerode: you know. So that that was my 1st introduction, and then I reread A few years ago, when this giant
• 9:23
  Sean Harklerode: Kirby omnibus came out.
• 9:25
  Tad Eggleston: Omnibus came out.
• 9:26
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, you can work out with this thing.
• 9:29
  Mark Pracht: That's.
• 9:30
  Tad Eggleston: That's the that's the nature of the omnibus.
• 9:32
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 9:33
  Tad Eggleston: Well, whereas.
• 9:34
  Sean Harklerode: No omnibus is coming out. I don't know.
• 9:36
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 9:37
  Sean Harklerode: Solicit Ditko at DC.
• 9:40
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. Very cool.
• 9:42
  Sean Harklerode: But yeah, and I, you know, I I really like Mr. Miracle.
• 9:47
  Sean Harklerode: but yeah, this was this was really great reading them. I agree with Mark not reading the whole thing in one sitting or in a week or 2. I think it's gonna really flesh out the material.
• 10:02
  Sean Harklerode: because there are so many big ideas coming at you on on every page, and and just to spend the time to enjoy the artwork. Some of those machines and the the masks, I mean, who knew Victor von Doom was going to be showing up in the.
• 10:23
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah. And the the Redrawn Superman and Jimmy Olsen hit.
• 10:28
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 10:29
  Mark Pracht: Which is a whole nother thing to talk about. But.
• 10:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 10:33
  Tad Eggleston: well, really, quickly, before we jump into this story, I'll say that, like my background is, I know, a lot of the characters, but I know them from other people's like my. My deepest, deepest connection to Jimmy Olsen is through Matt fraction. And Steve Lieber and my was Matt fraction, wasn't it?
• 10:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Steve Lieber, did the art. Okay? My deepest connection to Mr. Miracle is through Tom King and Mitch Gerards. You know my deepest connection to dark side is the great darkness, saga. So I know
• 11:10
  Tad Eggleston: what's been done with the characters since then, but most of my knowledge of like 4th World comes from.
• 11:19
  Tad Eggleston: I have the 4th World expansion set to the DC. Deck building game.
• 11:27
  Mark Pracht: I think that that's I again. You know I don't want to. I don't want to, you know.
• 11:37
  Mark Pracht: get too far ahead of ourselves. But I mean, I do think that those things, you know famously
• 11:44
  Mark Pracht: at least according to Mark Evenier, Kirby's idea and plan, was that he was going to create these ideas and then turn them over to other people, and he would edit the line, I mean, I think, in some ways he was hoping to put himself into sort of a Stan Lee kind of position.
• 12:03
  Mark Pracht: But I think you can make the argument that
• 12:09
  Mark Pracht: other people have fleshed out this material to
• 12:15
  Mark Pracht: better use than what Kirby does during these in this initial run. I think.
• 12:22
  Mark Pracht: And you know, as we go through it, I think
• 12:25
  Mark Pracht: there'll be ways we can talk about that. But
• 12:28
  Mark Pracht: I think you know, just to
• 12:32
  Mark Pracht: start us off and talk about these 3 issues of Jimmy Olsen.
• 12:37
  Mark Pracht: One thing that struck me on this reading is how
• 12:41
  Mark Pracht: how golden age these books feel like it's just
• 12:49
  Mark Pracht: there, like it's a it's ideas. It's not necessarily narrative cohesion, you know.
• 12:57
  Mark Pracht: It's like I was. I was sort of shocked at a time, you know where I was like, okay.
• 13:05
  Mark Pracht: yeah.
• 13:06
  Mark Pracht: You know, we've got the whiz wagon, which is probably one of the
• 13:13
  Mark Pracht: one of those great Kirby names, you know, and you're like, well, that's a big deal.
• 13:19
  Mark Pracht: And then I've forgotten that it 1st appears on the second page of the book, you know. It's just like boom. There it is, you know. There's no.
• 13:27
  Mark Pracht: there's no subtlety whatsoever in the storytelling, and
• 13:34
  Mark Pracht: that can be. That can be a a
• 13:40
  Mark Pracht: crit, you know, that can be a bad thing, or it can be a good thing. It's.
• 13:43
  Tad Eggleston: I think overall. That's that's 1 of the things I enjoyed
• 13:46
  Tad Eggleston: what I'm just looking at that page. It's a great example of the one part that got to me a little bit, particularly because Kirby is an artist, I would have thought wouldn't have wanted to cover so much of his art with word balloons is like every one of these word balloons. I'm like
• 14:06
  Tad Eggleston: you could like, cut out 2 thirds of the words here, and make it better.
• 14:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 14:13
  Mark Pracht: I mean.
• 14:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, that was the writing style of the time. I say that even more of Stan Lee than I'll say it of Jack Kirby, but but like your hope when you have the artist taking over writing duties, is that like.
• 14:26
  Mark Pracht: I'm gonna show those writers how it should be done.
• 14:29
  Mark Pracht: Well, but I mean, I also like, I think I think.
• 14:34
  Mark Pracht: that there was some effort. I think Jack was.
• 14:39
  Mark Pracht: I think Jack was pointedly trying to make a statement about what Stan contributed.
• 14:49
  Mark Pracht: You know, I think that he wouldn't look. I can put words together, too. And I
• 14:56
  Mark Pracht: he certainly can put words together.
• 15:00
  Mark Pracht: I'm gonna be flat out. I'm gonna be flat. He doesn't put words together as well as Stanley does.
• 15:04
  Tad Eggleston: I will say that in I think Kirby's best
• 15:11
  Tad Eggleston: isn't as good as stance best.
• 15:14
  Tad Eggleston: But this reminds me a lot
• 15:17
  Tad Eggleston: of like that average Stanley comic, the one that you read because you're actually reading a whole run of them rather.
• 15:23
  Tad Eggleston: And then people say, Oh, go read this issue.
• 15:26
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 15:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know where you're building out the the word book balloon by by adding
• 15:36
  Tad Eggleston: as many adjectives as you can come up with, and and better if they're 2 word adjectives than one word adjectives.
• 15:46
  Sean Harklerode: I I actually you know, for all you know, that we know comes later. I felt that the writing in this was really good. I really enjoyed the dialogue it fit, you know. It was counter culture. You know, there's even a reference to Vietnam in here.
• 16:03
  Sean Harklerode: I really, you know, felt that it it worked, and I was, you know, pleasantly surprised with it, a little loquacious. But you know. That's how comics were at that time.
• 16:18
  Mark Pracht: Oh, no, like
• 16:20
  Mark Pracht: it's it's it's really interesting. I like, I think, about this a lot, you know, because famously, these books did not do as well as everyone hoped they would.
• 16:33
  Mark Pracht: And when you think about this being on a newsstand with, say, a Denny O'neill, Neil Adams.
• 16:45
  Mark Pracht: Batman, or or Green Lantern Green Arrow Book, like right next to it, like.
• 16:50
  Mark Pracht: how odd this must have seemed, you know, like.
• 16:54
  Mark Pracht: I suppose, if you were a marvelite you'd be like, oh, it's Kirby. But like
• 16:59
  Mark Pracht: that's it. It's really odd, you know, I mean. And I think I think there's a lot of stuff to love here.
• 17:06
  Mark Pracht: I do get narrative whiplash sometimes when it's like.
• 17:11
  Mark Pracht: okay, these guys, you know, the Harrys
• 17:14
  Mark Pracht: live in a like, essentially a giant tree house and.
• 17:17
  Tad Eggleston: I loved the treehouse, though.
• 17:20
  Sean Harklerode: Meeting on a giant trunk.
• 17:21
  Tad Eggleston: He walks ahead of time.
• 17:24
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, I mean, like, it's awesome like, don't get me wrong. It is. It is adventurous, it is, it is exciting, it is
• 17:32
  Mark Pracht: inventive.
• 17:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean that is, I mean, when you asked about doing this, I kind of pushed it off, but then I'm like, Well, let me go read the 1st issue and see if it yanks me, and that's when I got back to you immediately and said, Well, I don't want to give up the pulp water. But I would like to do this, and it was in part because of
• 17:54
  Tad Eggleston: it was just Kirby, unleashed.
• 17:56
  Mark Pracht: Oh, sure!
• 17:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know and because because I think because it was in his head as he was drawing it.
• 18:08
  Tad Eggleston: I think actually he likely did. I'm looking at at page 5 here, and like there's a sequence where a guy is leaning over his desk, where there's no good reason for him to lean over his desk, except that he needs to because of the word balloons, so so.
• 18:28
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 18:29
  Tad Eggleston: I think that because of that the art gets. I mean, I actually just noticed a place where Clark's head is in front of a word balloon.
• 18:38
  Tad Eggleston: So even though he's not doing the lettering, he's clearly doing enough of the roughing out before.
• 18:47
  Tad Eggleston: Or did he do the lettering? Because again. Vince Coletta did the inks. He might have been doing the lettering well, I mean.
• 18:53
  Mark Pracht: We do know. We do know that. You know we know from the the original art that's been found, that Jack Wood put
• 18:59
  Mark Pracht: rough word balloons into his art.
• 19:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 19:03
  Mark Pracht: He I mean. He knew he was. He was spotting the word balloons definitely
• 19:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right, but but I'm seeing like little things that you didn't see as much in the time, you know, word balloons going behind characters, heads so that the balloon doesn't cut off the art if the words don't need to be there.
• 19:22
  Tad Eggleston: Art, that's kind of built around, you know. I mean, I think that he could have made the the speech from this.
• 19:29
  Tad Eggleston: Who is this guy? This is.
• 19:31
  Mark Pracht: It's Morgan, a.
• 19:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, see, I'd forgotten that there was a different editor of the Daily Planet, or didn't know it at all.
• 19:40
  Mark Pracht: Well.
• 19:41
  Tad Eggleston: For a while.
• 19:41
  Mark Pracht: I can't like. I was funny was when I was reading this. I was like was Morgan Edge, an existing character. When this came out because I
• 19:49
  Mark Pracht: I my memory would have been that Morgan Edge appeared earlier than this, but.
• 19:56
  Sean Harklerode: I think so.
• 19:57
  Mark Pracht: Right so. But and I found that interesting that Morgan Edge was always sort of this corporate guy. But you know Kirby Flat out makes him a villain, essentially, you know.
• 20:09
  Mark Pracht: And I thought that was that was
• 20:13
  Mark Pracht: audacious and interesting. But but yeah, no.
• 20:16
  Tad Eggleston: Due to the marvels of the Internet.
• 20:19
  Mark Pracht: Ha! Ha!
• 20:21
  Tad Eggleston: We can find out going to the DC. Family.
• 20:25
  Mark Pracht: When we could just talk about what we think. You know.
• 20:30
  Tad Eggleston: Because the last person to say that publicly I
• 20:37
  Tad Eggleston: don't want a quote right now.
• 20:41
  Sean Harklerode: I have found this.
• 20:44
  Sean Harklerode: His 1st appearance is Jimmy Olsen's superman's PAL, Jimmy Olsen, number 133.
• 20:52
  Tad Eggleston: Nice. So that's.
• 20:54
  Mark Pracht: Wow! Yes.
• 20:56
  Tad Eggleston: That that's fantastic.
• 20:58
  Sean Harklerode: So Jack Kirby is like, you know what.
• 21:01
  Tad Eggleston: I'll be.
• 21:02
  Tad Eggleston: We need a quote.
• 21:04
  Sean Harklerode: Not dealing with Gary White.
• 21:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right we need we? We need, we need more of a an evil corporate overlord.
• 21:13
  Tad Eggleston: Well, what made Gary White.
• 21:15
  Sean Harklerode: That one right? No, you can't.
• 21:17
  Mark Pracht: No, I I will say, it's As we get further into this we'll see the ultimate Stan Lee.
• 21:27
  Mark Pracht: character assassination happened. But there is elements of this where I was like, you know, every time I've seen Jack do, Stan, it comes off like this.
• 21:39
  Mark Pracht: I think I think there's some Stan Lee and Morgan Edge, so.
• 21:43
  Tad Eggleston: But but I'm getting a superman 241 as as the 1st
• 21:50
  Tad Eggleston: appearance, which was a Denny O'neill Kurt Swan Superman story.
• 21:56
  Sean Harklerode: I was on Wikipedia.
• 21:59
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm on the DC. Fandom Wiki.
• 22:03
  Tad Eggleston: So.
• 22:05
  Mark Pracht: Which Wiki.
• 22:05
  Tad Eggleston: Which one? Yeah, it's wicky, which Wiki is right.
• 22:09
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 22:10
  Mark Pracht: I'm gonna say, DC, fandom, I'd say, that's right.
• 22:13
  Tad Eggleston: Though it he, Jack Kirby, is listed as the Creator.
• 22:18
  Mark Pracht: Interesting.
• 22:19
  Tad Eggleston: On, the.
• 22:23
  Mark Pracht: So.
• 22:24
  Tad Eggleston: So we'll have to read more on that for next time. I'm not going to read all of the Wiki live on the show, I mean. I think I've done that before, but I'm looking through and seeing that it's longer than.
• 22:35
  Mark Pracht: I I you know. I think that also. You know, Morgan Edge is not
• 22:44
  Mark Pracht: I don't think we need to spend a ton of time figuring out where Morgan Edge is. But I do think, if Kirby did like, it would make total sense if Kirby created it, because a like, and also.
• 22:56
  Tad Eggleston: Turns out his real name is Morris Edelstein.
• 23:02
  Mark Pracht: His real name is Stanley Lieber.
• 23:07
  Tad Eggleston: Also had a clone.
• 23:09
  Sean Harklerode: So I will say that the cover date of.
• 23:14
  Tad Eggleston: Superman's PAL, Jimmy Olsen, number 133 is October, 1970. The cover date.
• 23:20
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it's 1971 is November 71. So so, yeah, no.
• 23:25
  Tad Eggleston: The DC Wiki definitely has has a mistake. There.
• 23:32
  Mark Pracht: I mean, you know, it's funny, but it is funny, because, like I remember Morgan Edge
• 23:38
  Mark Pracht: well into the eighties, I believe I mean? Because like that was.
• 23:43
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean it says his last appearance was Superman 419. In 1986, though again they got the 1st appearance mixed up so.
• 23:52
  Mark Pracht: I mean it. It could. I mean whatever it is. But I mean like, I know that
• 23:58
  Mark Pracht: it seems like in this. There's still a newspaper, but I mean eventually, you know, it became W.
• 24:03
  Sean Harklerode: Vs.
• 24:03
  Mark Pracht: Wgbs and Superman was like a an Anchorman.
• 24:09
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 24:10
  Mark Pracht: I was like, how do you? How do you fly off and do things when you have to be on the air at 6 pm. Every night, but whatever
• 24:16
  Tad Eggleston: I was. I was just reading it in terms of thinking of like our current media environment.
• 24:27
  Tad Eggleston: And like, of course, if you've got a main character that works in
• 24:33
  Tad Eggleston: in the media. You a great sideline, and I know that they've done it with Luther owning the planet. But Luther's such a
• 24:43
  Tad Eggleston: everything catch-all villain is to have, like
• 24:51
  Tad Eggleston: the plot of trying to be a good truth, telling journalist versus
• 24:55
  Tad Eggleston: the corporate guy that's thinking of different things.
• 25:00
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, and the you know
• 25:04
  Mark Pracht: cause like my, it's funny, because before I like, I
• 25:08
  Mark Pracht: when I was starting to research, I had read. I had not read these books
• 25:14
  Mark Pracht: until I started doing research for the show and
• 25:18
  Mark Pracht: So my memories of Morgan Edge were that he was this
• 25:22
  Mark Pracht: corporate media guy, but I mean like this, he's like fully in bed with like Intergang and and his intergang
• 25:29
  Mark Pracht: spoilers. Intergang is a dark side adjacent organization. But
• 25:37
  Mark Pracht: you know, I was sort of shocked that, like Morgan Edge, who
• 25:42
  Mark Pracht: was always sort of a nebulous character, but not like a villain
• 25:47
  Mark Pracht: started out like this. It's like it's interesting.
• 25:52
  Sean Harklerode: Trying to take Bob Clark Kent in the 1st issue.
• 25:54
  Mark Pracht: Yeah,
• 25:58
  Mark Pracht: But you know, and it's like
• 26:00
  Mark Pracht: there's a lot made of Kirby's
• 26:05
  Mark Pracht: prescience about things. And you know, and I think sometimes it's it's
• 26:12
  Mark Pracht: exaggerated, and sometimes it isn't. But I do think that
• 26:17
  Mark Pracht: this also goes to show us that you know all of these things that we're dealing with right now are not exactly new, you know.
• 26:26
  Tad Eggleston: So.
• 26:29
  Mark Pracht: No go ahead!
• 26:29
  Tad Eggleston: I was going to say one of the things that's always struck me about curvy prescience, and and I wish that I could immediately come up with other examples of it. But I'm not.
• 26:39
  Tad Eggleston: Is that it always feels like on one side. He's
• 26:44
  Tad Eggleston: like way way ahead of the curve, but then also, rather than being willing to
• 26:51
  Tad Eggleston: assign simple localized reasons to it. He then wants to, as you're saying with this, tie it into some grander good versus evil
• 27:01
  Tad Eggleston: rather than just greedy. Guy owns newspaper.
• 27:08
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, you know, and like, I think that like reading these.
• 27:13
  Mark Pracht: it's really it's real obvious what
• 27:17
  Mark Pracht: he's he's setting the stage for something that means a hell of a lot more to him than this book, right? I mean, I think.
• 27:28
  Mark Pracht: whether whether it was this was the book that didn't have a set
• 27:32
  Mark Pracht: creative team, or he was like, Give me your lowest selling book. It was DC. Saying, we hired you. We want you to work on something big.
• 27:43
  Tad Eggleston: Or I mean, from a storytelling standpoint, I would, you know, from the telling of the story. The 2 versions that you've said are
• 27:53
  Tad Eggleston: are dead on the best way to tell it. Either. You know I'm the good guy I don't want to take anything away from, or I'm going to hero. Give me your worst selling book, but from a storytelling standpoint it also feels like the the best compromise. Look, I care about this. You want me to work on a book that has a main. Give me the book that you can let me shoehorn into this
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: right
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: because he couldn't have taken Superman and shoehorned it into 4th World. He couldn't have taken Batman or Wonder Woman and shoehorned it into 4th World.
• 28:25
  Tad Eggleston: Jimmy Olson.
• 28:28
  Tad Eggleston: There's a lot of room to play there.
• 28:29
  Sean Harklerode: He's a teenager.
• 28:31
  Mark Pracht: Although really, if you think about it.
• 28:36
  Mark Pracht: wonder woman might have been the way to do that.
• 28:39
  Tad Eggleston: Awesome.
• 28:39
  Mark Pracht: Gods, old gods wait! And this was right in the time when when Wonder woman was like.
• 28:44
  Mark Pracht: wasn't this in a little bit depowered sense? It seemed.
• 28:48
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely. But as a DC. Editorial, are you willing to take that risk with wonder, woman.
• 28:54
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean.
• 28:55
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I could see I could see Kirby being more interested in Wonder woman. But DC. Editorial, not knowing how new gods is going to go over. Do you want to get? Let Wonder Woman get sucked into that.
• 29:09
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean.
• 29:10
  Tad Eggleston: Play it safe with Jimmy. Also.
• 29:11
  Mark Pracht: They're I mean, really, yeah, Jimmy Olsen is the playing safe move, right? But you know, it's just like they also had shown.
• 29:20
  Mark Pracht: you know, because
• 29:22
  Mark Pracht: we had Denny O'neill, you know, depowering her and and turning her into an em appeal clone and and
• 29:30
  Mark Pracht: I that's that's just playing what.
• 29:33
  Tad Eggleston: Still need to read those.
• 29:35
  Mark Pracht: There!
• 29:36
  Mark Pracht: They're not great.
• 29:39
  Tad Eggleston: See, I love Denny O'neill, though.
• 29:41
  Mark Pracht: I think Danny O'neill is one of the 3 best comic book writers of all time.
• 29:48
  Tad Eggleston: Curious as to who your other 2 are.
• 29:49
  Mark Pracht: We won't talk about that
• 29:55
  Mark Pracht: But I mean like Denny O'neill is is, I mean like, and I shouldn't say best favorite favorite, I mean, like, I think.
• 30:02
  Tad Eggleston: Well, then, you should really be willing to talk about it, because they're only your favorites. You're not saying they're better than other people.
• 30:07
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, but I mean they're my favorites, so they are better than other people.
• 30:14
  Sean Harklerode: Well, Denny was one of the 1st writers that I ever followed.
• 30:17
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 30:18
  Sean Harklerode: But I saw Denny O'neill driving this I, or or even editing this, and I'm gonna read it.
• 30:23
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 30:24
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, cause in the eighties he was running the batman titles where he was running all of.
• 30:29
  Sean Harklerode: There it is!
• 30:29
  Mark Pracht: Non super powered superhero titles. I mean that.
• 30:33
  Tad Eggleston: It's a yeah, the the.
• 30:35
  Mark Pracht: At least to DC.
• 30:37
  Tad Eggleston: The unpopular opinion that I sometimes share
• 30:41
  Tad Eggleston: is that my favorite daredevil books aren't the Frank Miller?
• 30:46
  Tad Eggleston: Aren't the Frank Miller, David Masticelli? They're the Denny O'neill, David Masticelli in between the Frank Miller and the Frank Miller date, and like as overall storylines.
• 30:58
  Tad Eggleston: sure, I'll give the Elector Saga and and born again higher. But but the way Denny
• 31:04
  Tad Eggleston: was really good. Most of them were one or 2 issue stories without, like a lot of, and he'd let Mazzicelli. Just go to town. I love those daredevil books.
• 31:14
  Mark Pracht: You know. Well the thing, and
• 31:18
  Mark Pracht: funny enough, I believe the 1st
• 31:22
  Mark Pracht: knew God's revival was written by Denny.
• 31:26
  Tad Eggleston: Was it?
• 31:27
  Tad Eggleston: I thought it was burn.
• 31:28
  Mark Pracht: I'm no no, there was one like cause when
• 31:34
  Mark Pracht: When a Jeanette Khan came in she sort of she was like this is this is this stuff is too good. We need to revive it.
• 31:41
  Mark Pracht: And or it's exploitable.
• 31:47
  Mark Pracht: And I believe I believe Denny did it.
• 31:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean. I totally believe it, because I could see Denny doing great stuff.
• 31:56
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like what Denny was so good at, I mean, and really is, is that he could take this rip from the headlines thing.
• 32:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:03
  Mark Pracht: And sometimes it was overwritten. But he would also take these incredible superhero concepts and slam them together and make it cohesive
• 32:14
  Mark Pracht: in like like I
• 32:20
  Mark Pracht: to come back to Jimmy Olsen like, that's certainly some of the things that are happening here.
• 32:25
  Mark Pracht: It's not smooth.
• 32:30
  Mark Pracht: It's like, Okay, hippie world straight guy world. Boom, bam together, giant Tree House. Hey? Look over here, you know it's like
• 32:42
  Mark Pracht: and and I certainly love it.
• 32:46
  Mark Pracht: Not to pivot, but that does actually make me think of.
• 32:51
  Mark Pracht: One of my favorite things to talk about with Jack Kirby is his revisiting of concepts
• 33:00
  Mark Pracht: over and over again, and lo and behold, here we have a boy gang!
• 33:06
  Mark Pracht: Yep, and not only a boy gang, it's the sons of the boy gang he created in the forties.
• 33:16
  Tad Eggleston: Spoilers. I'm blown and.
• 33:20
  Tad Eggleston: So things, just.
• 33:22
  Mark Pracht: And come on
• 33:25
  Mark Pracht: I I didn't this time, but when I 1st read this, the when the name Flip a dippok.
• 33:32
  Sean Harklerode: Send me out!
• 33:34
  Mark Pracht: I mean, Jack, maybe we should have work workshop that in Buffalo for a few days, but you know
• 33:45
  Mark Pracht: it's but that's that's sort of part of this whole, like
• 33:51
  Mark Pracht: Jack, is so much of the Golden Age
• 33:56
  Mark Pracht: vintage like, and that is a total golden age of comics.
• 33:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 34:00
  Mark Pracht: Concept. It's a told golden age of concept name, you know, it's just like, you know.
• 34:08
  Mark Pracht: And actually, it was funny, because, as we were reading these 3. I had forgotten that the you know, 35 ends with the revival of the Golden Guardian. Again, from the 4, you know, from the Golden Age. And I was like, well, it actually is a really good place to to pause, you know.
• 34:28
  Mark Pracht: So anyway, I've talked too much. Somebody else say something.
• 34:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I.
• 34:36
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I would say, to make a Beatles reference.
• 34:41
  Sean Harklerode: These these 3 issues feel to me like George Harrison's. All things must pass album.
• 34:49
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 34:50
  Sean Harklerode: In which you have someone who is so creative, but somewhat stifled.
• 34:55
  Mark Pracht: And now they have some freedom.
• 34:58
  Sean Harklerode: And they just throw everything at it right?
• 35:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 35:04
  Sean Harklerode: Beep if you haven't heard that album. It's fantastic.
• 35:07
  Tad Eggleston: It's a great album. But but part of the reason it's Harrison's best is because it's like 10 years of stuff that he couldn't get onto Beatles album, or the best of 10 years worth of stuff that he couldn't.
• 35:18
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 35:19
  Tad Eggleston: The Beatles albums, you know.
• 35:22
  Sean Harklerode: And so that's what I kept thinking when, like you said on the second page is the the spread of the the whiz wagon. You've got dark side you've got, you know, mockery. And Simeon. And yeah, you know
• 35:35
  Sean Harklerode: the the machine, what the the mountain of justice.
• 35:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 35:41
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 35:42
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 35:43
  Sean Harklerode: You know all of this. It just seems like everything's coming at us.
• 35:47
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and and he
• 35:50
  Tad Eggleston: he! He does what I still don't. I still can't think of any other artists that do like the photo collage thing that he did a little bit in Fantastic 4.
• 36:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 36:03
  Tad Eggleston: And but like the 1st page of it here in in the second issue, we read, where you've got like
• 36:10
  Tad Eggleston: the sports car, and what kind of looks like tracks above and below. And yeah, kaleidoscope like is
• 36:20
  Tad Eggleston: what he'd been allowed to do at marvel. Just ratcheted up to 11.
• 36:26
  Mark Pracht: Although, although I would, the one thing I would say about that at Marvel, when they did this it got colored.
• 36:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 36:34
  Mark Pracht: And I did think it was strange that it was not colored.
• 36:38
  Tad Eggleston: I kind of like it, not colored.
• 36:40
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, I felt like.
• 36:41
  Sean Harklerode: yeah, I mean, that's a good choice. When you're saying that everything is so wild and.
• 36:46
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 36:47
  Sean Harklerode: Phantasmagorical. That's a word that. Now it goes to black and white because we can't perceive.
• 36:55
  Tad Eggleston: Mean I?
• 36:56
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 36:56
  Tad Eggleston: that the only way it works in color is, if you make, if you like, are very deliberate about the colors to not have them be the colors from the photograph. So you essentially.
• 37:07
  Mark Pracht: Oh, sure!
• 37:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but also in a way that I don't know that they
• 37:16
  Tad Eggleston: were set up with 4 color printing to. I mean, I mean, I know it could be done at the time, because, like Mobius, could have colored it, and it could have been put in
• 37:24
  Tad Eggleston: in heavy or metal, or lot, or even heavy metal. This, and you know, would have looked right.
• 37:33
  Tad Eggleston: though heavy metal in the States had some issues with Corbyn's colors, so so definitely metal Erlant could have done it at the time.
• 37:41
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean they did it like it's
• 37:47
  Mark Pracht: they did it in the Ff. I mean they he did a collage not quite as extreme as this. I. And I think the other thing that that kind of has to be addressed is that I do think.
• 38:00
  Mark Pracht: And it became really obvious as I was.
• 38:03
  Mark Pracht: you know, and I think we'll talk about it as we go through that as he started to work.
• 38:12
  Mark Pracht: I think so. You can see him being like I can do this quicker and get.
• 38:20
  Mark Pracht: Done faster than if I tried to draw all of this right.
• 38:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean the name of my podcast is 22 panels. I'm not necessarily opposed to that.
• 38:32
  Mark Pracht: Right. I mean, I don't, I mean and I'm not. I'm not that like I think that I think that there, I think that there is a artistic sensibility in doing it, but it's also like it's also why, like as you, when you get further and further into the 4th world, the panels get bigger
• 38:50
  Mark Pracht: like. There's a lot more splash pages. There's a you know, and it's like cause I can draw that faster than 6 or 10 panels, you know, and
• 39:00
  Tad Eggleston: But but I mean I also.
• 39:02
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 39:03
  Tad Eggleston: I go back to our conversation with Matt Madden.
• 39:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You know. Part of the constraint
• 39:13
  Tad Eggleston: of monthly comics is that it's 22 pages you have to get done, and in Kirby's case it was essentially a weekly comic of 22 pages, because
• 39:22
  Tad Eggleston: start putting out for a month. So that's part of the constraint. But but then you almost have to build yourself other constraints, so that you're thinking in a way that you're still doing the best storytelling you can do in a way that you can actually get done.
• 39:40
  Mark Pracht: I mean like, believe you me, I would not trade any of those splash pages.
• 39:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 39:45
  Mark Pracht: For anything. They're amazing. They are amazing pieces of artwork. They're incredible. I think that these collage pages are incredible.
• 39:55
  Mark Pracht: Dot.
• 39:56
  Mark Pracht: For myself. Personally, I would rather see a Kirby drawing than a collage, but that's just me but.
• 40:04
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 40:05
  Mark Pracht: Like.
• 40:06
  Tad Eggleston: I agree with you most of the time, but his collages are really fucking cool.
• 40:09
  Mark Pracht: Yeah. Oh, okay.
• 40:12
  Tad Eggleston: Least to me particularly, because almost every, at least the times I've seen them so far I also feel like they actually tell the story as they're going so to be able to do that cool thing and not have it break the storytelling.
• 40:25
  Tad Eggleston: It's just really cool to me.
• 40:28
  Mark Pracht: It's super cool, I mean, I'm not saying I'm not. I'm just saying that
• 40:32
  Mark Pracht: I would write. The the magic of Kirby, putting
• 40:36
  Mark Pracht: pencil and ink on a paper is even with Vince Coletta inking Vince Colletta.
• 40:49
  Mark Pracht: Is that that's magic to me. And and I think that's I'm always going to want like.
• 40:57
  Mark Pracht: If if somebody offered me the original artwork of, say, page 15 of of 34 here, I would be like, sure I'll do that, but I would much rather even have page
• 41:12
  Mark Pracht: you know. 14 where it's it's this terribly redrawn superman face up in the upper right hand corner. I it's.
• 41:21
  Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about that cause, cause I hadn't heard heard about Redrawn superman.
• 41:25
  Sean Harklerode: Well, let's see.
• 41:27
  Mark Pracht: I mean. And Sean knows about this as well. When.
• 41:31
  Mark Pracht: Okay. So DC, hires Kirby, they bring in Kirby. They say we want you to work on a flagship title. All right, he says. I'll do Jimmy Olsen. He turns in his pages and immediately
• 41:44
  Mark Pracht: carmine infantino says these characters need to be on model.
• 41:50
  Mark Pracht: So basically on model for DC at the time was Kurt Swan for the Superman characters, anyway.
• 41:58
  Mark Pracht: And so they basically went in and redrew most of the Superman and Jimmy Olsen faces.
• 42:09
  Mark Pracht: and you can find you can find original artwork where it's the the Kirby style Superman face, and it.
• 42:16
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I had already been noticing that, particularly in the 1st issue, there appear to be like 2 different styles of Superman Face going
• 42:26
  Sean Harklerode: I think it's Dino. I think.
• 42:29
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I think Al Clastino did it? Yes.
• 42:30
  Sean Harklerode: How aping Kurt Swan.
• 42:34
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 42:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right, but but, like the the early pages, have a very, very familiar Clark Kent. Look.
• 42:43
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:44
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 42:45
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and it's it's it's so odd, because you know, the the Jack Kirby body language is so
• 42:53
  Mark Pracht: distinctive. And then you have this, you know very
• 43:00
  Mark Pracht: kind of your dad's superman face on it, and it it is disconcerting, and it is weird, and it is.
• 43:10
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah, this is almost like a Wayne boring face.
• 43:13
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 43:14
  Mark Pracht: I mean, and the thing is is like, sometimes I look at it, and it seems like they redid the whole figure.
• 43:21
  Mark Pracht: There was this? Where was this page?
• 43:24
  Tad Eggleston: See, I'm looking at
• 43:26
  Tad Eggleston: the one in 133 that doesn't feel Redrawn is page 19. And I wonder if it's because he did so much expression in the face that there was no way to redraw around it without losing the expression. Also looks like he does a lot of pictures where you see the back of Superman's head or the side of Superman's Head, where there's not much to redraw.
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's almost like
• 43:53
  Tad Eggleston: you're the issue. He found out they were, you know. Maybe he was turning in pages as he went, and when they found out they were doing that he changed his drawing style to make it harder to do that.
• 44:04
  Sean Harklerode: Well,
• 44:07
  Mark Pracht: God God bless me for what I'm about to say! I don't know.
• 44:11
  Mark Pracht: I don't know that Jack Kirby could change his drawing style. I think Jack Kirby is Jack Kirby. Well, I if you're talking about that panel in the lower, right on page 19, yeah.
• 44:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 44:23
  Mark Pracht: I I'm going to tell you. That is a redrawn face.
• 44:27
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 44:28
  Mark Pracht: That is somebody drawing over Kirby's Kirby's original art.
• 44:35
  Mark Pracht: My thing, one thing in the.
• 44:36
  Sean Harklerode: Bruce Banner is, is right behind him.
• 44:41
  Tad Eggleston: You you mean Peter Parker.
• 44:45
  Sean Harklerode: Steve Rogers is in here, too. He's in the.
• 44:48
  Mark Pracht: But I'm also like that paneled right next to it
• 44:53
  Mark Pracht: is like that body does not look like a curvy body.
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 44:59
  Mark Pracht: It like it would be re, I mean, like, and there are people who have cataloged all of this stuff, and I'm sure Mark.
• 45:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 45:06
  Mark Pracht: Could tell you. You know every instance where they they redid Jack's work, and you know I
• 45:16
  Mark Pracht: I I kind of see it both ways I mean, like
• 45:22
  Mark Pracht: I do find it super interesting that
• 45:26
  Mark Pracht: we have Jack Kirby, one of the greatest comic book cover Artists of all time, and on these books
• 45:35
  Mark Pracht: they have Neil Adams. Do the covers.
• 45:40
  Tad Eggleston: On, the the.
• 45:41
  Mark Pracht: The Jimmy.
• 45:42
  Tad Eggleston: Jimmy Olsen, Books.
• 45:45
  Mark Pracht: And I think that's I think that's interesting.
• 45:48
  Mark Pracht: I think that that is, I I don't. I don't know.
• 45:53
  Mark Pracht: It's it's very clear that infantino
• 46:00
  Mark Pracht: who was the essentially the editor in chief at that time editorial director.
• 46:05
  Sean Harklerode: Editorial director.
• 46:07
  Mark Pracht: You know. I think it's pretty clear that infantino had
• 46:14
  Mark Pracht: personal fondness and warmth for Jack, but I think that
• 46:19
  Mark Pracht: I think I think Carmine thought he had a responsibility to the company, and and I think that
• 46:28
  Mark Pracht: it was a different time. It wasn't, you know, like, now we can have a character look like 4 different ways in 5 different comics, and everybody's like, oh, that's just the style of that artist.
• 46:38
  Mark Pracht: and I think that in the seventies it was just different. I think that everything had to look a certain way.
• 46:44
  Sean Harklerode: Well, I mean this.
• 46:47
  Sean Harklerode: Now everything is batman right? What? DC. Has 20 batman books month, or however many.
• 46:54
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 46:55
  Sean Harklerode: But you you can't underestimate the percentage of sales that superman represented for DC.
• 47:03
  Mark Pracht: Sure.
• 47:03
  Sean Harklerode: Up until the eighties.
• 47:06
  Sean Harklerode: So yeah, you're you're you're protecting the.
• 47:10
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, yeah, even the triangle years.
• 47:15
  Tad Eggleston: So so I mean, that was, that was the that was also the the era of
• 47:22
  Tad Eggleston: No Man's Land, and, like it, was debatable, which was the the overall moneymaker between the 2
• 47:30
  Tad Eggleston: had, when we time.
• 47:31
  Sean Harklerode: When we start the triangle years, podcast I'm awful about it.
• 47:37
  Sean Harklerode: Well, then, maybe that's what we'll go from here to.
• 47:40
  Mark Pracht: I mean, we've we've got what.
• 47:42
  Tad Eggleston: Read a lot of the triangles as they were coming out.
• 47:44
  Sean Harklerode: That was a soap opera, I mean, that was.
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: And what.
• 47:47
  Sean Harklerode: Weekly. Those were my stories.
• 47:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:51
  Mark Pracht: Stories.
• 47:52
  Sean Harklerode: My stories. I gotta pick up my stories from the comic shop on Wednesday.
• 47:57
  Mark Pracht: You know what I I was only tangenically like. If, like, here we are, we're in the first.st We're in the 1st episode of 4th world at at least. What 15 months of this. And we're like.
• 48:11
  Tad Eggleston: I think so.
• 48:12
  Mark Pracht: This, next, yeah.
• 48:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, we're we're, we're we're we're. We're booked through April of 2026. If we don't have to skip any months right?
• 48:22
  Tad Eggleston: We're already talking about what to do next, you know, and you know we might want to do some other like 4th World stuff before that. But Kirby.
• 48:30
  Sean Harklerode: Is exploding our minds.
• 48:32
  Mark Pracht: Exactly. Well, it's gonna it's gonna electrocute you in the mind.
• 48:39
  Sean Harklerode: That electrify Jack, electrify.
• 48:42
  Tad Eggleston: That that is the one thing that I will never, ever, ever deny about Kirby. Kirby
• 48:51
  Tad Eggleston: changed the way people looked at and thought about superhero comics and what you could do with them.
• 48:58
  Mark Pracht: 100%.
• 49:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No.
• 49:02
  Mark Pracht: And and there is, there is visual tropes and visual stylistic choices that he makes
• 49:11
  Mark Pracht: all the way back to the forties and the thirties.
• 49:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:14
  Mark Pracht: That.
• 49:14
  Tad Eggleston: Bye.
• 49:15
  Mark Pracht: To this day people use and.
• 49:17
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 49:18
  Mark Pracht: And you've never seen a more dynamic figure than a Kirby drawing. I mean, that's.
• 49:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:27
  Mark Pracht: It like, even when you were talking about that picture, the image of Morgan Edge leaning over his desk to clear to clear the the word balloon. Yeah, it does that. But it's also
• 49:39
  Mark Pracht: just visually more interesting than it.
• 49:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean.
• 49:43
  Mark Pracht: Down, or.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: What I really caught was that the panel before it? He's standing up in front of his desk, and then he's leaning over his desk, and then he's sitting down for the next panel, and I'm sitting there going.
• 49:55
  Tad Eggleston: What came first? st Him deciding.
• 49:57
  Mark Pracht: Tab.
• 49:57
  Tad Eggleston: Sit down, or him deciding that they're they need. He needed a way to fit the word balloon.
• 50:03
  Tad Eggleston: If you're going to worry about stuff like that. We might as well just not go on.
• 50:08
  Tad Eggleston: My brain works. It's just how my, it's my autistic brain wondering what happened. What came 1st trying to.
• 50:18
  Tad Eggleston: you know, but
• 50:19
  Tad Eggleston: that's part of what makes it fascinating to me because he solved the problem. What problem it was I don't know. But he clearly
• 50:27
  Tad Eggleston: there was clearly something that he decided that this is the sequence that we need to go to. That solves a problem. I think the problem might have been. This word. Balloon's too big. I need to get the action down.
• 50:36
  Mark Pracht: Right.
• 50:38
  Mark Pracht: Well, no, I think I think I think you know famously
• 50:48
  Mark Pracht: both both with this this run when he went to DC. And then, when he went back to Marvel.
• 50:54
  Mark Pracht: he very specifically did not want to be involved with the mainline continuity of those those universes. And
• 51:04
  Mark Pracht: you know, there's an artistic freedom in that.
• 51:08
  Mark Pracht: There's also just a lot less stuff you have to keep track of, and I think that there is, you know famously.
• 51:15
  Mark Pracht: People have said
• 51:17
  Mark Pracht: and again everything is hearsay. So if you're if you're a Kirby fan or a Kirby eyed, who's listening to me? Say this, and you get really angry.
• 51:27
  Mark Pracht: I understand. But.
• 51:29
  Tad Eggleston: And I'll say one knows, angry. This is not the podcast, for you.
• 51:34
  Tad Eggleston: We like to celebrate comics.
• 51:36
  Mark Pracht: Oh, just wait, Tad, I've got things to say when we get to.
• 51:41
  Tad Eggleston: And I have the mute, and I have the mute button.
• 51:47
  Mark Pracht: But you know, famously.
• 51:53
  Mark Pracht: Jack was unconcerned with continuity. He was unconcerned with the way the marvel universe fit into each other, you know, like that was all.
• 52:03
  Mark Pracht: Stan, you know. Yeah, who thought that it would be fun to have everything function together. And you know.
• 52:16
  Mark Pracht: don't
• 52:17
  Mark Pracht: some people love both. Some people love it one way, other people love the other personally. Me. I have been famously speaking on social media for the last several months that I am so sick of Canon. It it I just don't care anymore. Just tell me your story, and that's great.
• 52:37
  Mark Pracht: But.
• 52:39
  Tad Eggleston: I'm somewhere in between. I appreciate the existence of Canon.
• 52:43
  Tad Eggleston: but I care about good stories, and and there's nothing that upsets me more than somebody who allows
• 52:50
  Tad Eggleston: a change in canon to
• 52:55
  Tad Eggleston: like affect how they look at the. You know I have a friend who has trouble enjoying Star Wars anymore, because
• 53:03
  Tad Eggleston: the legends are legends now rather than canon. And I'm like. But the stories are still there, and legends mean that there are kernels of truth. Just enjoy the parts that you like rather than getting so hanged.
• 53:16
  Mark Pracht: True.
• 53:17
  Mark Pracht: Anybody.
• 53:18
  Mark Pracht: Anybody who feels that way
• 53:21
  Mark Pracht: should have been a Star Trek fan in like the early eighties, when all those novels were coming out.
• 53:27
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 53:28
  Mark Pracht: Because, like you just read them. And you're like, Oh, okay, that's a Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock. Adventure! Great like it means nothing. It's never. Gonna it's never gonna reflect in anything.
• 53:38
  Mark Pracht: I mean, granted Star Trek was already sort of an episodic. I've heard
• 53:42
  Mark Pracht: there are some great ones I need to find them.
• 53:45
  Tad Eggleston: They are, because I don't.
• 53:46
  Tad Eggleston: Finally getting into Star Trek.
• 53:48
  Mark Pracht: And there are.
• 53:48
  Mark Pracht: Thank you, Mr. Cantwell. Yesterday yesterday.
• 53:52
  Mark Pracht: Sun. Yes, yesterday's son is an amazing book, but
• 53:56
  Mark Pracht: it's also there's also utter garbage, you know, it's just like.
• 54:00
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the more the more you you get in a shared universe, the more that becomes inevitable.
• 54:07
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, well, you know, and I will always invite anybody to read Gene Roddenberry's adaptation of Star Trek the motion picture, or, as I like to call it the gene Roddenberry Kink show.
• 54:18
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, my God! I remember reading that like 12 years old.
• 54:26
  Mark Pracht: There, you.
• 54:28
  Mark Pracht: you know it's kind of on Brand for the character, but when Kirk's like well, if somebody has sex with the probe.
• 54:37
  Sean Harklerode: And and being offended that people think he and Spock are in a relationship.
• 54:43
  Mark Pracht: Yes.
• 54:44
  Sean Harklerode: Not offended that they think he's homosexual, but offended that they think he could only have sex once every 7 years.
• 54:54
  Mark Pracht: Which, of course, you know, this is way off topic. But like, yeah, who cares? But you know it's like
• 55:01
  Mark Pracht: it's great is what it is.
• 55:04
  Mark Pracht: I remember, you know, the pervasiveness of the slash fiction in like the early eighties, was like.
• 55:10
  Mark Pracht: I remember, going to Star Trek conventions in the early eighties. I was like, I don't know, you know.
• 55:15
  Mark Pracht: 15 or whatever, and and it was just paid piles of it, you know, and like.
• 55:22
  Mark Pracht: anyway. But I mean, and that's I have. No, I'm not offended by it. I don't. I don't have any problem with it, but it's also like.
• 55:29
  Mark Pracht: Wow, there's a lot of people who really wanna wanna see
• 55:35
  Mark Pracht: Kirk and Spock chained up in a dungeon naked, you know. It's like I've been and.
• 55:42
  Sean Harklerode: Real season. 3 crap right there.
• 55:47
  Mark Pracht: I was. I was actually very sean, as we record. Sean had a social media post last night about being in a bar watching Star Trek, and I was like, why am I not there.
• 55:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, which spot?
• 56:00
  Mark Pracht: Is this, I was watching. I was doing his play. Yes.
• 56:04
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 56:06
  Mark Pracht: Today?
• 56:06
  Mark Pracht: Bar. What bar were you at.
• 56:08
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, I was at the the bar in the back of the liquor store over on Western Avenue.
• 56:14
  Sean Harklerode: and they had a hockey game on, and he was like you, interested in this. I was like, no, not really. They turned it on Star Trek. So I watched Star Trek.
• 56:23
  Mark Pracht: I'm sean Witt. I'm coming here every Saturday night, anyway.
• 56:31
  Sean Harklerode: Back, you know.
• 56:33
  Sean Harklerode: Oh, go ahead!
• 56:34
  Mark Pracht: No go ahead!
• 56:36
  Sean Harklerode: I was just gonna say, you know, we talked about Vince Coletta. And it's
• 56:43
  Sean Harklerode: there are some really fine work in here. There's a couple of pages that I'm like.
• 56:48
  Sean Harklerode: you know, are not great, but for the most part, I this is some of the better work
• 56:54
  Sean Harklerode: I've seen from Vince Coletta, you know.
• 56:57
  Mark Pracht: That's true.
• 56:58
  Sean Harklerode: When I look at you know his Thor work, you know some of that man must have been just.
• 57:03
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 57:03
  Sean Harklerode: Under a deadline. No, no offense to to Mr. Colette, but
• 57:09
  Mark Pracht: Oh, no! I have a.
• 57:10
  Sean Harklerode: Some of this is, is really good work.
• 57:14
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no, I have a. I have a actually a book about the Coletta.
• 57:21
  Mark Pracht: I think it's called a thin black line, I mean, and it it was.
• 57:26
  Sean Harklerode: Then.
• 57:27
  Mark Pracht: It was.
• 57:29
  Mark Pracht: you know he was the guy that they would be like. I need 6 pages done in 24 h, and he'd get it done, and he'd get it done by erasing
• 57:38
  Mark Pracht: anything he thought was unimportant, which.
• 57:43
  Sean Harklerode: True. Now I I you know I could. I could take a look at the Kirby originals and and see where yeah.
• 57:49
  Sean Harklerode: Vinnie had had undone something. But.
• 57:52
  Mark Pracht: But I mean I I feel like that was always about deadline, and
• 57:58
  Mark Pracht: you know I don't know. I like.
• 58:00
  Sean Harklerode: Jack was.
• 58:02
  Mark Pracht: I don't know, I think, but I I utterly agree with you. I think that this these these books represent much
• 58:11
  Mark Pracht: some of Vince's best work. Obviously, once we get into the 4th or the 4th World proper, and we start getting Mike Royer in there. That's when some real magic starts happening.
• 58:23
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 58:24
  Mark Pracht: But it's also like
• 58:28
  Mark Pracht: it is interesting, because when when Kirby came over, like almost immediately, there were people like this is this, art is crap. This is, you know, and the funny thing is looking at these books.
• 58:43
  Mark Pracht: The most egregiously bad stuff is the redrawn heads, and some strange inking choices like, I think that
• 58:55
  Mark Pracht: if if Mike Royer had ink this
• 58:59
  Mark Pracht: and they hadn't demanded that the faces be changed.
• 59:02
  Mark Pracht: this book would look a lot better even than it does, and it looks good now.
• 59:10
  Mark Pracht: So I don't know. I think
• 59:18
  Mark Pracht: I think that it is. It is.
• 59:24
  Mark Pracht: Kirby deserves every accolade that he gets.
• 59:28
  Mark Pracht: But there's also times when I'm just like I don't.
• 59:34
  Mark Pracht: I don't know what what you're trying to do, I mean. And
• 59:43
  Mark Pracht: I like, but that's that's near, like everybody has those moments. But
• 59:48
  Mark Pracht: sometimes I just think he's going so fast and he's going, you know, famously.
• 59:55
  Mark Pracht: He never even laid out pages.
• 59:58
  Mark Pracht: he just would start in the upper left hand corner and draw it, and that's astounding
• 1:00:05
  Mark Pracht: to be able to do that.
• 1:00:09
  Mark Pracht: But it also is like to put it in acting perspective. It's like improv right?
• 1:00:16
  Mark Pracht: Like.
• 1:00:17
  Mark Pracht: if you keep going. Yes, and you're going to get to the end. You're going to get to the end of the page.
• 1:00:24
  Mark Pracht: But that doesn't mean that it's all gonna work, you know.
• 1:00:29
  Mark Pracht: But
• 1:00:31
  Tad Eggleston: This is kind of how we've been feeling about airtight garage on the heavy Metal Book Club.
• 1:00:40
  Tad Eggleston: Which actually, Mobius has said was very much ad lib. He didn't know where it was going.
• 1:00:48
  Tad Eggleston: You know, made it up as he went, published as he went.
• 1:00:54
  Tad Eggleston: So I take that.
• 1:00:55
  Tad Eggleston: That sounds cool to me.
• 1:00:57
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I don't know.
• 1:01:00
  Mark Pracht: I I also that. Actually, the 1 35 story with all these clones
• 1:01:09
  Mark Pracht: and like everybody, has kryptonite gas.
• 1:01:12
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:01:14
  Tad Eggleston: Think it was all an excuse to have hulk fight superman.
• 1:01:19
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, it's possible.
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:01:23
  Sean Harklerode: I do love. I love the way he's drawing those energy plasma weapons.
• 1:01:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:01:32
  Sean Harklerode: I love the the rays.
• 1:01:35
  Sean Harklerode: I they're just amazing superman's heat vision.
• 1:01:39
  Sean Harklerode: I just love how that's rendered, and I don't know that I've ever seen it rendered in.
• 1:01:44
  Tad Eggleston: So, as I pointed out to Mark when I 1st read it, I did not know that Superman could use his heat vision to track vehicles.
• 1:01:55
  Sean Harklerode: Well, sometimes there's our creep right.
• 1:02:01
  Mark Pracht: Well.
• 1:02:01
  Tad Eggleston: Was trying to figure out exactly how that would work, and.
• 1:02:04
  Mark Pracht: I? You know I didn't i i didn't know that Superman could pull his ass off of his chest and turn it into a giant cellophane trapping thing. But I still like Superman too.
• 1:02:16
  Tad Eggleston: That's true. That's true.
• 1:02:18
  Sean Harklerode: Plus, you know Clark Kent's, you know. Voicemail.
• 1:02:26
  Sean Harklerode: His answering machine prefigures, you know Ferris Bueller's day off right.
• 1:02:32
  Mark Pracht: Kirby created everything.
• 1:02:34
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:02:37
  Tad Eggleston: Least inspired, possibly inspired, definitely.
• 1:02:40
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:02:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's something I wonder about. All the time is when I see something that will remind me of a work that came later, and particularly when it reminds me of a work that came later from a creator that I like.
• 1:02:53
  Tad Eggleston: Either. No was into what I was reading.
• 1:02:56
  Tad Eggleston: or or there's a reasonable like like it came up on the Love and Rockets Book Club yesterday that Gilbert did a
• 1:03:05
  Tad Eggleston: la Llorona, retelling Michael Chabon did a La Llorona, retelling as part of Summerland, which is one of my favorite novels of his that uses a lot of different folklore from all around the world, etc. But
• 1:03:24
  Tad Eggleston: but I thought to myself.
• 1:03:26
  Tad Eggleston: you got to choose which stories to use. I don't know how. Fame, you know. Is it the Mexican folk tale? Is it their? Is it their Paul Bunyan, or
• 1:03:37
  Tad Eggleston: or
• 1:03:38
  Tad Eggleston: Michael Chamon, is pretty famously a comics. Guy had he discovered it in in love and rockets, and it's stuck in the back of his head. And and suddenly it it came out, maybe not even with him, realizing that that's where it came from, as much as he knew this thing.
• 1:03:53
  Mark Pracht: Well, I mean, even even even that like
• 1:04:00
  Mark Pracht: no, nothing is created in a vacuum right.
• 1:04:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:04:04
  Mark Pracht: Like. And it's something that we can talk about once we're into 4th World proper. But there's a lot of people who are like certain very famous media properties stole everything from the 4th World. And I. And I'm like, Yeah, but I mean, it's also Joseph Campbell. And it's it's right. It's all of these other things, and it's it's you know.
• 1:04:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, in some ways Kirby is to superhero comics.
• 1:04:33
  Tad Eggleston: What
• 1:04:36
  Tad Eggleston: the beatles are to rock and roll. Everything that came after was either inspired by it or inspired by something that was inspired by it.
• 1:04:44
  Mark Pracht: But they themselves were also inspired by things.
• 1:04:47
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely none. None of them were new.
• 1:04:50
  Sean Harklerode: For Elvis there was nothing.
• 1:04:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh!
• 1:04:54
  Mark Pracht: And then there was Bruce Springsteen. No, I'm kidding.
• 1:04:56
  Tad Eggleston: What what about chuck, berry, lead, belly.
• 1:05:01
  Mark Pracht: You know it's funny, because
• 1:05:05
  Mark Pracht: I was. I was on some forum, and we were talking about commandee, which I've had that conversation with with Tad. I actually think Commande is
• 1:05:15
  Mark Pracht: Kirby's best solo work.
• 1:05:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:05:18
  Mark Pracht: That's my opinion.
• 1:05:20
  Tad Eggleston: And I haven't read all of. I haven't read all of his commandee, but I did enjoy it, and commandee challenge is one of my favorite.
• 1:05:27
  Mark Pracht: Commanded challenge was so much fun.
• 1:05:29
  Sean Harklerode: So, right, yeah.
• 1:05:31
  Tad Eggleston: And another example of Tom King just walking in and dropping the mic.
• 1:05:37
  Mark Pracht: But.
• 1:05:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know. I don't know why people let him do group things.
• 1:05:42
  Mark Pracht: But that's what it was. It was.
• 1:05:44
  Sean Harklerode: Neil Adams! Oh, my God!
• 1:05:47
  Sean Harklerode: The gorilla.
• 1:05:51
  Mark Pracht: I haven't. I haven't read that since it came out I should read it again. But but you know, it was like we were on this forum. And there was all these people who were desperately trying to prove that
• 1:06:03
  Mark Pracht: Commande was not inspired by planet the apes. Or it wasn't. It was this brand new idea. No one had ever thought of anything like this. And like we were going, there was a bunch of us going back, and it's like, Look, we know
• 1:06:16
  Mark Pracht: that
• 1:06:17
  Mark Pracht: DC. Had gotten the rights to planet of the apes, or they were trying to get the rights to planet apes. And they, they said, Can you do something with this? Kirby, of course, didn't want to just do an adaptation, so he figured out this idea. Then they couldn't get the rights. So then he changes it into something else. And they were like, Well, yeah. But you know, who had talking human like dogs. And then somebody was like, Look, here's this Kirby story from the fifties where he has talking human, like dogs and cats and stuff. And it's like
• 1:06:45
  Mark Pracht: all yeah, I think there is a desperation
• 1:06:49
  Mark Pracht: among fan circles, and it's everywhere. It's not just the Kirby stuff, but there's a desperation to prove that somehow this person had not been like. He came up with this completely, and that everyone should just bow down to him or her because they invented all of this. And it's like. That's not the way.
• 1:07:09
  Tad Eggleston: You might.
• 1:07:09
  Mark Pracht: Stuff works, you know.
• 1:07:11
  Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite things to say is, if you wanted to be completely original, you're about a billion years too late. Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:20
  Mark Pracht: Like that. That line. That there's only 6 stories is not incorrect.
• 1:07:25
  Tad Eggleston: No, there's different ways to tell each story. But I mean, it's it's also like they're different
• 1:07:29
  Tad Eggleston: ways to cross the stories, you know. I mean, there's a reason. Joseph Campbell is a thing, and Joseph Campbell, it should be said.
• 1:07:36
  Tad Eggleston: didn't create the archetypes. He looked at the history of literature and mythology, and said, This is what we've been doing for thousands of years.
• 1:07:47
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, like, yeah. Well, yeah. And that's the other thing is like, people are like, Oh, Joseph Campbell, everybody does what Joseph Campbell says. And I'm like he didn't say anything he did a research project.
• 1:07:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:07:56
  Mark Pracht: Put it, you know. It's like.
• 1:07:57
  Tad Eggleston: Was an anthropologist.
• 1:07:58
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, that's right. But you know, like.
• 1:08:05
  Mark Pracht: I don't even want to touch it. But you know, like
• 1:08:08
  Mark Pracht: a certain high, level comic writer who was revealed to be kind of awful recently. And now there's like Oh, he stole this from this, and he stole this from that, and he stole from that. And it's like, Okay.
• 1:08:21
  Mark Pracht: like everybody steals from everybody.
• 1:08:23
  Sean Harklerode: Be, to be.
• 1:08:24
  Tad Eggleston: Fair. There have been people who've said that about him forever, and and and also those of us who love his work
• 1:08:32
  Tad Eggleston: acknowledge that forever. What we loved wasn't that he did something completely original? It was that
• 1:08:39
  Tad Eggleston: he took these things and made them something else.
• 1:08:43
  Mark Pracht: He did them in his way, and that's the thing. It's like you can say all of this stuff, and like you know what I can go to that. That work you're citing, and I can probably go back 10 years, or I can go back to the thirties to some pulp magazine that's going to have that exact same story, or that exact same sort of style of story. And that's like that's.
• 1:09:01
  Tad Eggleston: It's 1 of.
• 1:09:02
  Mark Pracht: Works.
• 1:09:03
  Tad Eggleston: It's 1 of the reasons I've loved doing so many book clubs on this podcast. And doing them in so many different like
• 1:09:10
  Tad Eggleston: directions. You know, Sean and I will be doing comic strips later this afternoon.
• 1:09:16
  Tad Eggleston: because you get to see how the creators know. I mean, it's like it's like the musician's musician, you know. Nobody knows who I mean. Now people know who Leonard Cohen is, but for the longest time people didn't know who Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits were. But if you were a musician you did. You were a songwriter, you did.
• 1:09:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know there? There were no musicians that didn't know who Warren Zevon was.
• 1:09:39
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 1:09:41
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, no.
• 1:09:41
  Tad Eggleston: Plenty in the general public.
• 1:09:43
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I mean, and it's just like, I think that
• 1:09:48
  Mark Pracht: and I think it takes nothing away from Jack Kirby to say.
• 1:09:51
  Tad Eggleston: No, if you, if you love a craft.
• 1:09:56
  Tad Eggleston: if you love an art form, you're going to throw yourself into it, not just in terms of making it, but in terms of
• 1:10:04
  Tad Eggleston: studying it and learning about it and knowing about. I mean
• 1:10:09
  Tad Eggleston: Neil Adams was a great artist, and in some ways, his his greatest contributions to comics, even though he may have overstated how much he did. Are things like getting Siegel and Schuster credit
• 1:10:21
  Tad Eggleston: getting artwork back for people, because he understood enough of
• 1:10:28
  Tad Eggleston: the foundations of what he was standing on, that he cared about it.
• 1:10:32
  Mark Pracht: Sure. Well, yeah, I mean, and like.
• 1:10:36
  Mark Pracht: well, that goes in. That goes into a whole thing where you know at a certain point
• 1:10:42
  Mark Pracht: it was also coming to an understanding that
• 1:10:45
  Mark Pracht: things like original artwork had value right to certain fans right.
• 1:10:52
  Mark Pracht: That in the 19 thirties, in the 19 forties and the 19 fifties.
• 1:10:58
  Mark Pracht: when everybody thought it was junk junk culture that was just getting thrown away.
• 1:11:05
  Mark Pracht: Like all of those artists you read these interviews, and they're like, did you get your artwork back? And it's like, Why would I want it.
• 1:11:11
  Mark Pracht: you know, and it's like.
• 1:11:13
  Tad Eggleston: You didn't, you know, and this goes even further back, like the saddest thing I've ever seen, and it also I
• 1:11:21
  Tad Eggleston: both the saddest thing, and like the coolest thing, because somebody managed to put them back together is
• 1:11:28
  Tad Eggleston: The Billy Ireland has a number of Winsor Mckay pages, but if you look carefully.
• 1:11:35
  Tad Eggleston: They have.
• 1:11:36
  Tad Eggleston: None of them
• 1:11:38
  Tad Eggleston: are intact because the family cut them up panel by panel, and sold them off. They had to be
• 1:11:47
  Tad Eggleston: re collected
• 1:11:50
  Tad Eggleston: to put together a page, because the family only saw them as like, oh, we could get $5 for the page, or we could get $5 for each panel.
• 1:12:01
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 1:12:03
  Mark Pracht: Well, yeah, I like, there's there's a lot of famous stories of like
• 1:12:13
  Mark Pracht: DC. Editors. Would they get a good letter?
• 1:12:17
  Mark Pracht: And they would take a page, and they would slice off a line of panels, and they would mail that to the person who wrote the letter. It's like a little. Thank you.
• 1:12:24
  Mark Pracht: And you know nobody thought twice about it, and and
• 1:12:30
  Tad Eggleston: And that's 1 of those things that I feel for the author or the page guy that should have gotten paid better, but also is like the coolest thing ever that a kid could have gotten a line of panels just for said, you know. So it's like, I wish that DC. Had appropriately paid for the original art to be able to do that.
• 1:12:49
  Mark Pracht: Right?
• 1:12:50
  Mark Pracht: 1 100%.
• 1:12:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah.
• 1:12:53
  Mark Pracht: What I'm talking about does not absolve anybody of anything. It's just that. That was the like
• 1:13:00
  Mark Pracht: you turned in your work, and it was you were done. You got paid for the the work you did, and you turned it in, and they they owned it. They owned it right.
• 1:13:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:13:09
  Mark Pracht: I'm doing. Finger quotes. I'm.
• 1:13:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, I think people heard the air, quotes I I heard it in your voice.
• 1:13:14
  Mark Pracht: Oh dear!
• 1:13:15
  Sean Harklerode: They run any past the microphone.
• 1:13:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes your acting skill just comes out that much. You don't even know you're acting.
• 1:13:26
  Mark Pracht: But but you know, I think
• 1:13:29
  Mark Pracht: certainly it was about this time that you know we have.
• 1:13:36
  Mark Pracht: There's a number of things that happened in Kirby's life right at the beginning, in the 19 seventies that, I think, changed a lot of things about the way he looked at the industry and the way that the industry looked at him. Right? So he moves to California.
• 1:13:50
  Mark Pracht: He is now not
• 1:13:54
  Mark Pracht: within the the tight knit New York community that is generally the the comic book publishing industry.
• 1:14:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:14:03
  Mark Pracht: He's got a house where he is welcoming fans into his home on a fairly regular basis.
• 1:14:11
  Mark Pracht: So he is hearing.
• 1:14:14
  Mark Pracht: he's not. He's not talking to Stan or his editors back in New York as much as he's talking to these kids that are coming in and telling him that he is the king, he's the greatest. He's God. Blah! Blah! Blah! Then on top of that the San Diego comic con starts in 71, and Jack is there for the 1st convention, and famously went to.
• 1:14:37
  Mark Pracht: I may be wrong about this, but he went to every San Diego comic con until he died.
• 1:14:43
  Mark Pracht: I believe so.
• 1:14:45
  Mark Pracht: And again.
• 1:14:47
  Mark Pracht: he's also encountering these fans who are like Oh, I would love to own a page of your original art so suddenly something that didn't seem to be a sellable commodity
• 1:14:57
  Mark Pracht: now is a sellable commodity, and it changes the way
• 1:15:03
  Mark Pracht: the the thought of what the value of those things are
• 1:15:07
  Mark Pracht: that is, not trying to say that they had no value before that, or that they weren't. They didn't deserve to get it back before that. But it does change. Why people would want it right?
• 1:15:18
  Mark Pracht: Because it's not about. I have to store these things. It's that I could sell these things, you know.
• 1:15:25
  Mark Pracht: and I think that that is all very interesting.
• 1:15:31
  Mark Pracht: and it's it is interesting. There is a there is another Jack Kirby play that was written called King Kirby.
• 1:15:38
  Mark Pracht: by Fred Van Ananti and crystal skillman.
• 1:15:41
  Mark Pracht: who, I've spoken to a couple of times and their play is is.
• 1:15:46
  Mark Pracht: Fred was around for the baseball Podcast this year.
• 1:15:49
  Tad Eggleston: Nice yeah.
• 1:15:51
  Tad Eggleston: Mets big mets fan him and Heidi Mcdonald.
• 1:15:54
  Mark Pracht: When you, when you see him again, tell him that Mark Pratt says Hi!
• 1:15:58
  Mark Pracht: I will, and that I am working on my panel proposal.
• 1:16:01
  Tad Eggleston: Cool, cool.
• 1:16:03
  Mark Pracht: But you know, they had scenes where they were talking about how
• 1:16:10
  Mark Pracht: there was this artwork that had somehow gotten out to fans
• 1:16:14
  Mark Pracht: that was now going on sale at like Sotheby's, and stuff for thousands of dollars, and Jack was seeing none of it. And
• 1:16:23
  Mark Pracht: One of the things I really loved about that play
• 1:16:27
  Mark Pracht: was that it did actually grapple with that idea that Jack was not only getting screwed by the company, but there was all of these fans who had this material that was not
• 1:16:36
  Mark Pracht: that he was not getting compensated for either, that it's somehow gotten to them. So
• 1:16:41
  Mark Pracht: I think that. And that's that's a real simplification of what's in that play.
• 1:16:46
  Mark Pracht: Forgive me, Crystal and, Fred, if you're listening because I am making it very simple, but I just love that element of it. I love that element that that's really right. In the period where this material is coming out.
• 1:17:00
  Mark Pracht: Fandom is changing into something far more organized and far more lucrative, and far more affluent
• 1:17:12
  Mark Pracht: like. There is the money to do these things, and there is the money to amass large collections of golden age books and stuff like that?
• 1:17:24
  Mark Pracht: If if
• 1:17:28
  Mark Pracht: If neither of you have watched it yet, it's on, it's on. It's you can buy it on
• 1:17:34
  Mark Pracht: prime video or rented selling Superman. It's a four-part documentary show. It's about the
• 1:17:43
  Mark Pracht: I forget what the name of the the collection is, but it was the guy. He was a hoarder, and he had.
• 1:17:50
  Mark Pracht: like thousands of comic.
• 1:17:52
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:17:53
  Mark Pracht: In his house.
• 1:17:53
  Tad Eggleston: Think I remember.
• 1:17:55
  Mark Pracht: They were, and multiple copies like at 1 point they show he has like
• 1:18:00
  Mark Pracht: 25 copies of Star Wars number one.
• 1:18:04
  Mark Pracht: and and so, and he passes away, and his son has to
• 1:18:09
  Mark Pracht: take over the administration of this. And it's all about getting them slabbed, and and you know, and they have a the second, highest graded superman number one ever discovered. So it's a fascinating thing. But it also I thought about.
• 1:18:25
  Mark Pracht: I thought about that when this, when we were reading this is that it's like this is right at the time when all of the when somebody is like, Oh, I should buy all of this, I should buy these things, and that getting a getting a superman number one at that time would have been
• 1:18:41
  Mark Pracht: what a few $100 maybe.
• 1:18:44
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:18:45
  Mark Pracht: A 1,000 at most, and now.
• 1:18:47
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 1:18:47
  Mark Pracht: 2 point.
• 1:18:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 1:18:48
  Mark Pracht: 1 million, or whatever.
• 1:18:49
  Tad Eggleston: My friend Andy loves to talk about. The comic shop he
• 1:18:55
  Tad Eggleston: grew up with was Ides in Pittsburgh and
• 1:19:03
  Tad Eggleston: They sold the amazing fantasy
• 1:19:08
  Tad Eggleston: number 15 that either they'd got. I can't remember if they were old enough, that they just kind of hung on to a couple of them when it came out.
• 1:19:16
  Tad Eggleston: or if they'd just gotten it relatively cheap. But at 1 point
• 1:19:20
  Tad Eggleston: later on, when they were looking to expand or looking to solidify something like that. They. They sold the one copy of Amazing Fantasy 15, and bought themselves a 3 story building.
• 1:19:36
  Mark Pracht: I mean like, and that's like there was fandom. There was fandom before the seventies, obviously, but I think that that kind of that kind of money in it. I just don't think it existed.
• 1:19:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right
• 1:19:52
  Mark Pracht: You know, you have people like Michael Luslin, you know, with his collection.
• 1:19:58
  Mark Pracht: But you know
• 1:20:00
  Mark Pracht: other people, Roy Thomas, all those guys clearly were collecting, and they had a bunch of stuff. But
• 1:20:07
  Mark Pracht: it just what I mean like, it's that's when the big business of fan culture started. In. In my opinion from what I've read. So yeah,
• 1:20:17
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and at some point it became an investor thing right? And and now the people that are paying that kind of money are actually.
• 1:20:27
  Tad Eggleston: it's hard to even call them fans. Some of them might be, but some of them it's just the way they diversify their.
• 1:20:34
  Mark Pracht: 1 1 of my favorite things in that selling superman thing is, there's a guy who works with the sun helping catalog this collection and everything, and he is like
• 1:20:46
  Mark Pracht: fucking hate, slab comics.
• 1:20:48
  Sean Harklerode: I hate them!
• 1:20:50
  Mark Pracht: And there's a scene where they have him with a book. They don't show what it is, so I'm sure it's not. But he's literally jumping up and down on a slab book to break it out.
• 1:21:00
  Mark Pracht: And I'm like.
• 1:21:02
  Sean Harklerode: Wow! All right.
• 1:21:03
  Mark Pracht: I mean, like, you know, and and I I love the fact that that point of view was presented by one of the major guys we're following in that story, you know.
• 1:21:16
  Mark Pracht: anyway, totally. That's my I totally
• 1:21:20
  Mark Pracht: recommend it. It's a fascinating thing, and it's kind of disturbing and kind of wonderful, all at the same time.
• 1:21:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No.
• 1:21:29
  Mark Pracht: Last thing as I. We are running out of time where I've got to get off. But
• 1:21:34
  Mark Pracht: I did want to say the final page
• 1:21:39
  Mark Pracht: of Jimmy Olsen, Superman's PAL, Number 1, 50, or 135, with the the emergence of the Golden Guardian, is one of my favorite Kirby pages, ever.
• 1:21:50
  Tad Eggleston: It. It is fantastic.
• 1:21:52
  Sean Harklerode: Yeah.
• 1:21:53
  Mark Pracht: And.
• 1:21:53
  Tad Eggleston: Next up the DNA aliens.
• 1:21:59
  Mark Pracht: And don't look at the cover for the next issue, because it'll tell you who the DNA engines are.
• 1:22:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So that that was that was fun. And I think a good
• 1:22:13
  Mark Pracht: I am, I am.
• 1:22:14
  Tad Eggleston: Introduction to 4th World, and Kirby.
• 1:22:16
  Mark Pracht: I am very excited to to jump into the 4th world proper, I think. Yeah, the.
• 1:22:23
  Tad Eggleston: Well for next month it'll be forever. People number one. New gods, number one. Mr. Miracle number one, and Superman's PAL, Jimmy Olsen, number 136.
• 1:22:32
  Sean Harklerode: We'll find out about the Dn aliens.
• 1:22:37
  Mark Pracht: The decision.
• 1:22:38
  Sean Harklerode: I said, this has just been prologue.
• 1:22:43
  Mark Pracht: Past is prologue so hopefully, hopefully, the 4 or 5 people who are listening.
• 1:22:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean. I think we have as many as 10 regular listeners, though I will say, Hi, mom, hi, Britt, hi, Adam! Hi! John!
• 1:23:02
  Mark Pracht: Come on and read along with us on the this. This you know.
• 1:23:05
  Tad Eggleston: I kind of suspect that there are some people who do wind up kind of reading along with the book clubs, because they seem to have.
• 1:23:12
  Tad Eggleston: you know, different.
• 1:23:15
  Mark Pracht: Do you ever listen to the blank check podcast?
• 1:23:19
  Tad Eggleston: I have not.
• 1:23:20
  Mark Pracht: It's a, it's a movie, podcast. It's Griffin, Newman and David Sims. And they do series on directors.
• 1:23:30
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:23:30
  Mark Pracht: And right now they're doing early, Spielberg.
• 1:23:34
  Mark Pracht: and the one that dropped today is raiders of the Lost Ark
• 1:23:38
  Mark Pracht: with, and they always have a guest and their guest for raiders of lost ark is Brian Macalbendis.
• 1:23:45
  Mark Pracht: So I'm kind of excited.
• 1:23:46
  Tad Eggleston: Well is that Griffin Sheridan.
• 1:23:48
  Mark Pracht: No Griffin Newman.
• 1:23:50
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:23:51
  Tad Eggleston: because I was about to say, because I was looking at the the picture here. And I'm like it looks a little bit like Griff Sheridan. Griff Sheridan runs Bendis's
• 1:24:04
  Mark Pracht: No, Griffin. Newman is an actor
• 1:24:07
  Tad Eggleston: Gotcha.
• 1:24:08
  Mark Pracht: He's been famously campaigning to be the voice of Herbie Herbie, the robot.
• 1:24:12
  Tad Eggleston: Herbie, Herbie, the robot.
• 1:24:16
  Mark Pracht: But yeah.
• 1:24:19
  Tad Eggleston: Bendis, for for this is this fortune and Glory came up on another book club
• 1:24:30
  Tad Eggleston: recording that I've done.
• 1:24:31
  Mark Pracht: I love that book.
• 1:24:32
  Tad Eggleston: I do, too. It's amazing. If if we read it for one, I'll let you know
• 1:24:37
  Tad Eggleston: famously, famously. The very 1st graphic novel I ever got my wife to read.
• 1:24:42
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, nice.
• 1:24:42
  Sean Harklerode: No.
• 1:24:43
  Tad Eggleston: Nice. Have you read the new one, the the spider-man? I've started reading it.
• 1:24:50
  Mark Pracht: The spider-man, musical.
• 1:24:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:24:52
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, I I wanna read it. I I haven't found the time. So.
• 1:24:56
  Tad Eggleston: No, I get it. But what I learned in fortunate, I think it was in fortunate glory, because there was also the total sellout that came out at roughly the same time, at least in collective form, was that Bendis's 1st foray into comics
• 1:25:10
  Tad Eggleston: personally was the shot by shot
• 1:25:16
  Tad Eggleston: adaptation of raiders of the Lost Ark.
• 1:25:21
  Tad Eggleston: When he was like.
• 1:25:22
  Sean Harklerode: 12, yeah.
• 1:25:26
  Tad Eggleston: He made like a 400 page adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• 1:25:32
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's probably why they asked him to do it.
• 1:25:34
  Tad Eggleston: That's my guess. That's my guess. So I'm gonna wanna go listen to it.
• 1:25:37
  Mark Pracht: You know, but.
• 1:25:38
  Tad Eggleston: Like we'll put it in show notes.
• 1:25:40
  Mark Pracht: This, this, this series this, the Spielberg series? They do. They just finished David Lynch. Actually so which.
• 1:25:48
  Mark Pracht: timing wise, they couldn't have been.
• 1:25:50
  Sean Harklerode: Right.
• 1:25:51
  Mark Pracht: But the Spielberg one has been really interesting listening to the 1941
• 1:25:59
  Mark Pracht: they, you know.
• 1:26:01
  Mark Pracht: sorry this is way off topic. But you know, the 1941 like, I've always said, there's nothing wrong with 1941 that, like 4 or 5 musical numbers, wouldn't fix, and they apparently like Spielberg, said that and and
• 1:26:15
  Mark Pracht: that they all talk about the Jitterbug dance. Sequence is like the best scene in the whole movie, and
• 1:26:23
  Mark Pracht: if there was 4 or 5 of those that movie would be amazing, you know, and it's like, but.
• 1:26:30
  Tad Eggleston: That sounds cool.
• 1:26:31
  Mark Pracht: John Wayne. They're like John Wayne said no to the playing General Stillwell, because the movie was he was like, Steven. Don't make this movie. I will think less of you if you make this movie. It's UN-american. And they're like, you know.
• 1:26:44
  Mark Pracht: John Wayne might have had a point.
• 1:26:47
  Tad Eggleston: Your main.
• 1:26:49
  Mark Pracht: Making fun of world war 2.
• 1:26:52
  Mark Pracht: An awful thing that happened.
• 1:26:56
  Mark Pracht: So it it's a bizarre. It's a great, podcast I love listening to them every once in a while. I'm like I mean, come on.
• 1:27:03
  Tad Eggleston: I'm definitely going to go. Have to listen to the the raiders episode.
• 1:27:08
  Mark Pracht: It looks like.
• 1:27:09
  Tad Eggleston: They went. It does look like they went through the the
• 1:27:13
  Tad Eggleston: the jelly trilogy they call it the 3 films with Joe Vitarelli.
• 1:27:18
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:18
  Tad Eggleston: And somehow managed to do 5 5 months of that.
• 1:27:21
  Mark Pracht: There are 5. Yeah, they do that. They have analyzed this Mickey blue eyes analyze that, and then
• 1:27:28
  Mark Pracht: they have. They have their.
• 1:27:30
  Tad Eggleston: And combo.
• 1:27:31
  Mark Pracht: Yeah, they have their main feed, that is, is their main thing. And then they do. They have a Patreon feed. That's their more esoteric stuff like.
• 1:27:39
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:27:40
  Mark Pracht: When they were doing the lynch thing
• 1:27:43
  Mark Pracht: on the main feed they were doing the movies and then on the patron feed they went through. I think they went through Twin Peaks.
• 1:27:50
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay. Okay.
• 1:27:52
  Mark Pracht: Anyway, that's my recommendation. I love that. It's that is my Monday morning while I'm at work. I just put it on, and I. I work
• 1:28:00
  Mark Pracht: and listen to them, Riff on the movies so
• 1:28:05
  Mark Pracht: They don't. They didn't. They didn't love close encounters as much as I do so, but I don't know the name.
• 1:28:10
  Sean Harklerode: You do.
• 1:28:12
  Mark Pracht: What?
• 1:28:15
  Sean Harklerode: I'm just saying you love close encounter.
• 1:28:17
  Mark Pracht: I love close encounters best well ever.
• 1:28:21
  Sean Harklerode: I did just get jewel on 4 K.
• 1:28:25
  Mark Pracht: I just got the Sugar Land express on 4 K. Just because they did it on that show. And I was like I should watch this. I've never watched it.
• 1:28:33
  Mark Pracht: Interesting movie, anyway.
• 1:28:36
  Mark Pracht: I'm sorry.
• 1:28:37
  Tad Eggleston: For Mark Pratt and Sean Harkle wrote, this has been the 4th World Book Club on 22 panels. We will see you after the next page.