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How Comic Books: Live from SXSW · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuckers Bryant, and I would say about a
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Speaker 1: hundred people here in Austin, Texas at south By Southwest say,
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Speaker 1: hey people, I think uh, we figured the solution was
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Speaker 1: we were in a bigger room across the way last year.
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Speaker 1: Smaller room seems fuller. Yes, I think there are probably
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Speaker 1: a few more people here, but just make the room smaller. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's the easiest way to go about things. So for
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Speaker 1: those of you who are just coming in on the recording,
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Speaker 1: we've already done the bantering, so we're gonna get to it,
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Speaker 1: I think, yes, Chuck, And we'll have questions at the end,
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Speaker 1: by the way, so yeah, we may replace the listener
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Speaker 1: mail with the questions if they're good questions. Right, Okay,
1:03
Speaker 1: we probably should have included that before we started recording.
1:06
Speaker 1: I don't have a listener mail, so we better have questions, Chuck.
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Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of an actor named Nicolas Cage? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: So do you have so, Nick Cage, um suffered some
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Speaker 1: misfortune in two thousand, the beginning of two thousand. It
1:25
Speaker 1: was a rough time for him. He suffered misfortune long
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Speaker 1: before that. No, this is this is I think the
1:30
Speaker 1: start of it. This is before. Um, I know what
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Speaker 1: you're gonna say. Okay, all right, Um, well, just indulgement. Um,
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Speaker 1: So Nick Cage On January twenty one, two thousand, followed
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Speaker 1: the police report because somebody broke into his house and
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Speaker 1: stole his Action Comics number one. That's not what I
1:48
Speaker 1: thought you were gonna say, What did you think of?
1:50
Speaker 1: I thought that was the release date of ghost Ghostwriter.
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Speaker 1: That's what I thought you were gonna say. It's funny
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Speaker 1: you bring that up, though, because he did Ghostwriter because
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Speaker 1: he's a big comic book guy, and he would probably
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Speaker 1: do any comic book movie that you asked him too,
2:02
Speaker 1: because he's big into it. He had an Action Comics
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Speaker 1: Number one, which is the debut of Superman. Right. It
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Speaker 1: was worth like one point one million dollars and it
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Speaker 1: just vanished. And ten years later there was a guy
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Speaker 1: on the case. There's a detective who's working the case
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Speaker 1: the whole time, and um, he got a tip finally
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Speaker 1: from a comic book stealer that this one issue of
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Speaker 1: Action Comics number one had turned up, and they were
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Speaker 1: pretty sure that it was the issue, like Nicholas Cage's
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Speaker 1: issue that had been stolen, and they they check all
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Speaker 1: the identifying marks, the scratches, you know, like them the
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Speaker 1: fold from like the mom who's like yelling at her
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Speaker 1: kid that she she's going to throw this out. Yeah, um,
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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Shoo's lipstick. So they identify it as Nicholas Cages
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Speaker 1: actually Comics number one. He gets it back. Um, they
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Speaker 1: found it in a guy who bought a trunk from
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Speaker 1: auction from one of those places that um that that
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Speaker 1: that sells stuff found in storage sheds, you know or
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Speaker 1: storage you store it places. So I guess the moral
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Speaker 1: of the story is just go to those auctions because
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Speaker 1: he bought one of the full bins and this comic
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Speaker 1: in it. So he's just feeling loaded and then all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden, Nicholas Cage comes along. It's like that
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Speaker 1: is mine, right, and he was very ecstatic to get
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Speaker 1: it back. This was apriloven. He turns around and sells
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Speaker 1: it for two point one million dollars. Makes a million
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Speaker 1: just sitting there after he already collected insurance money. Yes,
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Speaker 1: so it wasn't that special to him, No, and he
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Speaker 1: he pretended it was. But the point is that if
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Speaker 1: if this story fascinated you, as I hope it did,
3:45
Speaker 1: it's coming out as a movie. But from the guys
3:47
Speaker 1: who created Reno n One, who played a Danglar in Junior,
3:50
Speaker 1: you get familiar with three and nine one one. Uh,
3:52
Speaker 1: they're making a movie about this whole thing, of the
3:55
Speaker 1: whole incident. Yeah, with Nick Cage as a character and everything.
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Speaker 1: It's very like Sandberg and plan him. They don't know
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Speaker 1: who's going to play me. Yeah he does. I don't know.
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Speaker 1: If you've seen the SNL Sandberg it's pretty great, right, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: it's really good. So you know it'd be great, would
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Speaker 1: be to see Andy Sandberg doing Nick Cage doing Elvis, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: doing Tiny, Yeah, exactly tiny. So I say all that
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Speaker 1: to ask you, Chuck, if you've ever read a comic book. Wow,
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Speaker 1: that was a good one. You know I have because
4:27
Speaker 1: we have talked on the show. I can't remember which one.
4:29
Speaker 1: I was searching my brain when we were prepping for this.
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Speaker 1: We talked about our love or my love of Archie
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Speaker 1: comics growing up because I was a good little Baptist
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Speaker 1: boy and I wasn't into like, you know, all the
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Speaker 1: action heroes, although I guess there was really no conflict
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Speaker 1: there now to think about it. Um, but I had
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Speaker 1: well we'll talk about the spire Christian comics, and um,
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Speaker 1: I was into Archie and the Archie people were kind
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Speaker 1: enough to send us a bunch of swag after we
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Speaker 1: recorded that. I didn't get any of that. I did.
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Speaker 1: I kept because you said that Archie was like wossy stuff.
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Speaker 1: I remember, So I took my little Archie boxer shorts
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Speaker 1: and I went home. Yeah, but yeah, they did listen.
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Speaker 1: That was very cool to know that they're still out
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Speaker 1: there pumping amount. And I was into like Archie and
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Speaker 1: Ritchie Rich a little bit of superhero stuff. But this
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Speaker 1: is the big, big disclaimer. I know we're gonna get
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Speaker 1: murdered on this one because anytime we do a topic
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Speaker 1: that is like religion to people like comic books artists
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Speaker 1: on people, uh, we're gonna get killed for it because
5:28
Speaker 1: we are definitely not experts in comic books. That is
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Speaker 1: a live version of c o A. That is that's
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Speaker 1: very good stuff to cover our beat. So um, I'm
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Speaker 1: talking about comic books today. Uh, are you guys fans
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Speaker 1: any really? They somewhat? I like that with spots. That's
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Speaker 1: good because you're you'll you you'll be like that was okay.
5:48
Speaker 1: The people who clapped, I'm sorry. Are there any huge,
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Speaker 1: huge comic book fans like that really know a lot
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Speaker 1: about it? Because we'll probably ask you to come sort of? Okay,
5:58
Speaker 1: that's good. I was hoping for nobody. Let's get one
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Speaker 1: guy is fine? I want like Kevin Smith in the background.
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Speaker 1: I'm like, no, and I know I look like you,
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Speaker 1: but stay away. So we're gonna talk a little bit
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Speaker 1: about comic books, about the history, how they're made famous,
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Speaker 1: comic books, not Richie Richmond. That's it. That's the only
6:17
Speaker 1: mention of Ritchie rich Uh. I mean this is the
6:20
Speaker 1: time of like occupy. You realize you can't talk about
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Speaker 1: Richie rich without people tearing you to stray. You're right.
6:26
Speaker 1: I will say that we can probably skip most of
6:28
Speaker 1: the beginning because they in this article from how Stuffworks
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Speaker 1: dot com is very thorough. So they whoever who wrote this,
6:34
Speaker 1: you know a guy named Nathan Chandler who I've never
6:37
Speaker 1: met or heard of, but he did do a bang
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Speaker 1: up job. He did a bang up job. But he
6:40
Speaker 1: spends a full page talking about defining what a comic
6:43
Speaker 1: book is. And I can assume we all know what
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Speaker 1: a comic book is, but I will say that I
6:47
Speaker 1: did learn that the little uh, the gutters. I never
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Speaker 1: knew that the blank panels. They have blank panels to
6:53
Speaker 1: fill in spaces, and they're called gutters. And I also
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Speaker 1: always kind of took for granted the the the flow
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Speaker 1: of the comic book. Yeah, a lot goes into um,
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Speaker 1: the way your eye follows the comic book, you know.
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Speaker 1: And if you ever look at a comic book, you know,
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Speaker 1: sometimes the dialogues appear some of them's down here. Sometimes
7:12
Speaker 1: it's just action and the dialogues over here. But they
7:14
Speaker 1: put a lot of forethought into the layout of the
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Speaker 1: comic book. I thought was gonna cool. And um, that's
7:19
Speaker 1: why it's called sequential art. That's another name for a
7:21
Speaker 1: comic book. Um. And speaking of art, comic books are
7:25
Speaker 1: usually um lumped in together with jazz and the mystery
7:28
Speaker 1: novel as like a pure American art form. You oh yeah,
7:33
Speaker 1: I I kid you not. I believe it. Um. So
7:37
Speaker 1: I think that was a great explanation of the comic
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Speaker 1: book gutters, and I think I think it's a good assumption.
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Speaker 1: Everybody knows what a comic book is, generally, right, Um,
7:45
Speaker 1: but I think that the history is kind of something.
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Speaker 1: This fascinated me, and like, man, I went to town
7:51
Speaker 1: doing like supplemental research on this. So just if I
7:54
Speaker 1: get a little off at any point to be like no, no, no,
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Speaker 1: I love it. Okay, So do you do you know
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Speaker 1: what the first one was? Well? I do. Um, it's
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Speaker 1: right here in front of me. Two um. Generally credited
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Speaker 1: as the first comic book is The Adventures of Obadiah
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Speaker 1: old Buck. Have you seen it? Did you look it up?
8:13
Speaker 1: I did? And the first thing I wondered, what is
8:16
Speaker 1: whether or not Obadiah? Wasn't it Obadiah staining from Iron
8:19
Speaker 1: Man Jeff Bridges in the movie answer him yes? Is
8:24
Speaker 1: that right? I just always I wondered if that was
8:27
Speaker 1: just a nod to that first comic Bookbaiah is not
8:30
Speaker 1: the most common name, so, um, but you did see it,
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Speaker 1: It's just like panel after panel of action and there's
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Speaker 1: like narration, like I don't think he actually talked in
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Speaker 1: any at any point that I saw, So it's kind
8:41
Speaker 1: of like a silent movie almost two. Um. And then
8:45
Speaker 1: it was just basically action if you can call like
8:47
Speaker 1: rowing down the river with your hat action. I mean
8:50
Speaker 1: like that was of like four panels, I think. Um.
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Speaker 1: But it was the first time anybody ever put like,
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Speaker 1: you know, sequential art and text together, and this was,
9:00
Speaker 1: you know, ostensibly the first comic book anyone's ever created. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and it was eighteen forty two. I know I said that,
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Speaker 1: but let that sink in a minute and think about
9:08
Speaker 1: eighteen forty two. What's going on? So it was a
9:10
Speaker 1: pretty modern thing for the time. I guess when you
9:13
Speaker 1: think it's pretty Swiss, well it was Swiss. He wrote
9:17
Speaker 1: Rodolpha top four. That's very nice. I was gonna say,
9:21
Speaker 1: Rudolph Tofer, I think that was nice too. Into that trouble. Yeah,
9:24
Speaker 1: he was a teacher and an artist in Switzerland. Uh
9:28
Speaker 1: was did he do this in Switzerland? I think so?
9:30
Speaker 1: Because he's were translated, I don't know. It says I
9:33
Speaker 1: made its first appearance in America. So and it's a
9:37
Speaker 1: truly American art form in my own fact against me. Um, okay,
9:44
Speaker 1: well then yes it was American in origin. It was. Um,
9:49
Speaker 1: so fast forward from tofer right, um to with the
9:55
Speaker 1: appearance of a kid with what I did you see
9:58
Speaker 1: this guy, the Yellow Kid some sort of developmental problem
10:03
Speaker 1: or something like. He was also the predecessor of the
10:06
Speaker 1: shirt tails, apparently because a lot of the action and
10:08
Speaker 1: narration appeared on his shirt and it would change from
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Speaker 1: time to time. But um, the Yellow Kid was, um
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Speaker 1: the first humorous comic strip, and UM, I use humorous
10:19
Speaker 1: like really really like liberally um because it wasn't funny
10:24
Speaker 1: at all. Comedy in eight was like if you weren't
10:27
Speaker 1: dying that day, then it was pretty funny. We don't
10:31
Speaker 1: have the play exactly. And so the Yellow Kid comes
10:35
Speaker 1: along and he's the first one where it's like, okay,
10:37
Speaker 1: you can pick up a newspaper and find something that
10:39
Speaker 1: I'll just take your mind off of everybody dying and
10:42
Speaker 1: give you something to laugh about for a second. And
10:44
Speaker 1: it happens sequentially too, and there's speech bubbles or else
10:48
Speaker 1: he says something on his shirt and speech balloons that
10:51
Speaker 1: was They had used them in political cartoons before, but
10:54
Speaker 1: this was like where the speech balloon really like took
10:56
Speaker 1: hold as a comic. Well, they remember, they just like
10:59
Speaker 1: wrote everywhere in political card too. Yeah. Yeah, um, I
11:02
Speaker 1: got a little nugget for you too. I don't know
11:04
Speaker 1: if Yellow the Yellow Kid, that the comic of the
11:06
Speaker 1: Yellow Kid was inspiration for the term yellow journalism evidently,
11:09
Speaker 1: is that right? Yeah, because it was first used by
11:12
Speaker 1: someone I think from the New York Times said this
11:14
Speaker 1: yellow Kid journalism, uh, because he was in a Hearst
11:17
Speaker 1: newspaper I think, and they were mocking Hearst, and that
11:20
Speaker 1: eventually came yellow journalism. Nice. Yeah, that's a good one,
11:23
Speaker 1: thank you. So the ill Kid runs around doing this
11:27
Speaker 1: thing for another maybe like thirty five forty years, and
11:30
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the boring part of this
11:33
Speaker 1: podcast is over. People start figuring out that they uh
11:39
Speaker 1: that the people think the Yellow Kids funny. They took
11:42
Speaker 1: about forty years to like test the water, right, and
11:44
Speaker 1: then find their like, people actually like this guy. So
11:47
Speaker 1: let's start making new characters, and all of a sudden
11:49
Speaker 1: you have like Dick Tracy, Popeye, um, who else was
11:53
Speaker 1: in the Little or Fanny And these are all like
11:56
Speaker 1: characters that are still resonating today obviously, right, And then
11:59
Speaker 1: right after that a little company named Eastern Color who um,
12:03
Speaker 1: eventually did you realize this Eastern Color became ec comics
12:08
Speaker 1: entertaining comics, which gave rise to Mad Magazine, which is
12:13
Speaker 1: like end of story right there. Ec Comics is the
12:15
Speaker 1: most important thing that's ever happened to humanity. Yeah, right,
12:20
Speaker 1: So Eastern Eastern Color UM starts printing like all these
12:24
Speaker 1: comics that are appearing in newspapers, puts them together. You know,
12:26
Speaker 1: what's the first comic book? And they're all reprints, and
12:29
Speaker 1: Procter and Gamble pays for this and starts giving them
12:32
Speaker 1: away with I guess like toothpaste or some sort of
12:34
Speaker 1: weird toilet trees from the thirties, you know what were
12:36
Speaker 1: they using back then? Um? And uh, that kind of
12:40
Speaker 1: gave rise to the idea that you don't just get
12:43
Speaker 1: your comics out of the newspaper. And you can kind
12:45
Speaker 1: of see like these things are like starting to these steps,
12:47
Speaker 1: these huge monumental steps are taking place, like closer and
12:50
Speaker 1: closer together. Because that was nine thirty three. I think
12:54
Speaker 1: it was five that somebody said, you know what, I'm
12:57
Speaker 1: tired of paying all these fees to reprint and all
13:00
Speaker 1: this stuff. I can just find some guys it's the
13:02
Speaker 1: depression and pay them like next to nothing. Maybe assigned
13:07
Speaker 1: some arm guards to make sure they worked twenty four
13:08
Speaker 1: hours a day and just published like all new material. Yeah,
13:12
Speaker 1: they the East Eastern had given these away through Procter
13:16
Speaker 1: and Gamble, and they actually sold a few after that
13:18
Speaker 1: because they thought, hey, these are really popular. And then
13:21
Speaker 1: that's when they started saying, you know what, these reprints
13:23
Speaker 1: are getting old, let's come up with original material. And
13:27
Speaker 1: uh in d C Comics, Uh, they were formed. Actually
13:32
Speaker 1: Detective Comics is what it stood for and stands for
13:35
Speaker 1: unless they changed that without my it's still And they
13:39
Speaker 1: were the first ones to put out something called New
13:42
Speaker 1: Fun Comics number one, and that was the it sounds
13:46
Speaker 1: like a Chinese restaurant or something, and um, should I
13:51
Speaker 1: not have said that? Is that? Okay, it's all right,
13:53
Speaker 1: this is live, but it's not going out. Um. And
13:57
Speaker 1: that was the first time that there was a full
13:59
Speaker 1: comic book of new stuff as part of a sequential
14:01
Speaker 1: series that people could follow. That was ostensibly the first
14:05
Speaker 1: real like comic book was born. And um, the sixth issue.
14:10
Speaker 1: This the sixth issue, I'm very determined, Um of that
14:16
Speaker 1: comic book. What was a New Fund Comics number one? Okay,
14:19
Speaker 1: so number six put together two guys named Jerry Siegel
14:23
Speaker 1: and uh, what was the other guy's first name? Joe
14:26
Speaker 1: Schuster and um. Within a couple of years, those guys
14:30
Speaker 1: put out the first superhero ever. His name is Superman.
14:33
Speaker 1: Let's get around with a plus exact. Superman changed everything.
14:40
Speaker 1: He was the first superhero, he was the first costumed one.
14:44
Speaker 1: So he said it's all right to wear tights if
14:46
Speaker 1: you can throw a car, right, um, and uh, he
14:50
Speaker 1: gave rise to basically comic books as we know today.
14:54
Speaker 1: You know everything you think about with with comic books
14:57
Speaker 1: and superheroes and um being able to take a bullet
14:59
Speaker 1: in the chest and have it just ricochet, which, by
15:02
Speaker 1: the way, are you familiar with the George what was
15:05
Speaker 1: the guy who played Superman? George Reeves and then Christopher Reeves?
15:11
Speaker 1: It was plural. No, you have it right if you
15:14
Speaker 1: ever heard the story when a kid came to one
15:16
Speaker 1: of his appearances, because George Reefs played Superman on TV
15:20
Speaker 1: in the fifties and some kids showed up with his
15:23
Speaker 1: dad's gun to shoot Superman. Right, because in the opening
15:27
Speaker 1: credits of Superman, um, he like, some bad guys are
15:31
Speaker 1: shooting him and he's just standing there with his chest
15:33
Speaker 1: out in bullets of rickey. Then one of him throws
15:35
Speaker 1: his gun and he ducks. But but a kids showed
15:41
Speaker 1: up after seeing all these, you know, many episodes of
15:44
Speaker 1: this and uh to like some publicity appearance, and um
15:47
Speaker 1: uh it was going to shoot George Reeves, and George
15:50
Speaker 1: Reeves or George Reeves said, um, kid, it would work
15:54
Speaker 1: if you shot me, but that bulletard ricochet off and
15:57
Speaker 1: hit somebody in the crowd and you kill him, and
15:58
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that. So the kid like
16:00
Speaker 1: the gun and then he went exactly yeah. Yeah, So
16:07
Speaker 1: that that was a Superman aside. But Ben Affleck played
16:10
Speaker 1: him in a movie. Uh, George Reeve, h right, yeah,
16:14
Speaker 1: Hollywood Land. There you go. He was a pretty messed
16:17
Speaker 1: up guy. You no, you're thinking of a Bob Crane
16:19
Speaker 1: and auto focus. No, No, you really are. No, No,
16:23
Speaker 1: they were. They were messed up in two entirely different ways. Uh.
16:28
Speaker 1: So d C also gave rise to uh one Superman
16:30
Speaker 1: came out or Soup as we like to call him. Uh.
16:33
Speaker 1: They also gave birth to Batman and the whole Detective
16:36
Speaker 1: comic series. In the Detective series is still going today
16:40
Speaker 1: eight hundred issues. Well by the time this was written,
16:43
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's way more than that. A hundred plus
16:46
Speaker 1: eight plus issues still going strong today, longest running comic
16:49
Speaker 1: title ever the d C series. Right, so there was
16:54
Speaker 1: nine that Batman came out. Um was a big year too,
16:58
Speaker 1: Wonder Woman came out and All Star Comics number eight,
17:02
Speaker 1: And anybody who listened to the Lie Detector podcast will
17:05
Speaker 1: know that the guy who invented the lie Detector a
17:09
Speaker 1: psychologist was William Marston. I believe that sounds right. He
17:15
Speaker 1: also created Wonder Woman and really yes he did you
17:19
Speaker 1: know this? You know this? Um? And he uh he
17:23
Speaker 1: was a psychologist who lived with two wives and the
17:27
Speaker 1: children he had with all of them under the same roof,
17:30
Speaker 1: supposedly happily. But he was huge into women's live and
17:33
Speaker 1: truth telling, which is why one woman has that lass
17:36
Speaker 1: of truth. He created a lie of detects. Yes, you know,
17:40
Speaker 1: I don't think I remember that, Okay, I was like
17:42
Speaker 1: zoning out on Linda Carter at time. I'm sure. Uh So,
17:46
Speaker 1: World War two came along, as we all know, unfortunately,
17:49
Speaker 1: and uh that was when superhero comics were really big.
17:54
Speaker 1: And not only that, but Walt Disney comics were really
17:56
Speaker 1: huge and they mentioned, um, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse obviously,
18:01
Speaker 1: but the most popular of the Disney comics, and actually
18:04
Speaker 1: the most popular comics during the most popular period of
18:08
Speaker 1: comic books, was Uncle Scrooge McDuck. Yeah, he was like
18:12
Speaker 1: the biggest. Yeah, but I remember I had a few
18:15
Speaker 1: of those as a kid. Yeah, I'd like the duck tails.
18:17
Speaker 1: That was a good show. Yeah, equally figured big into
18:21
Speaker 1: that one. It was. It was great. Um. But World
18:23
Speaker 1: War two, speaking of that was huge for comics because
18:27
Speaker 1: even before the US entered into the war, UM, comic
18:31
Speaker 1: book characters were beating the tar out of Adolph Hitler
18:35
Speaker 1: like on a monthly basis. Like Captain America he debuted
18:39
Speaker 1: his number one edition comic book had him like Sack
18:43
Speaker 1: and Hitler in the face. It's a pretty awesome picture
18:46
Speaker 1: if you ever want to check it out, especially if
18:48
Speaker 1: you hate Hitler, you know. Um. But it's so that
18:52
Speaker 1: was that was par for the course for comics at
18:56
Speaker 1: the time. Like they just beat up on Hitler and
18:57
Speaker 1: the Germans or the Japanese every month or um. So
19:01
Speaker 1: that was kind of a big deal. Um. And speaking
19:04
Speaker 1: of Nazis and comics, do you want to mention HANSI, Yeah,
19:09
Speaker 1: did anyone grow up here in the seventies and read
19:11
Speaker 1: any of the Spire Christian comics at all? You did? Alright?
19:15
Speaker 1: One other person? That's how popular they were. Uh. My
19:18
Speaker 1: grandmother god rest her soul. Grandmother Mills worked at a
19:21
Speaker 1: Baptist bookstore in Tennessee, and whenever I would go to
19:24
Speaker 1: this bookstore, she would tell me to pick out some
19:27
Speaker 1: comic books, which I thought was really cool, like free comics. However,
19:30
Speaker 1: being compapted this bookstore, the only thing they had was
19:33
Speaker 1: Spire Christian comics and they didn't have any superheroes or
19:36
Speaker 1: anything like that. They didn't even have Archie at the
19:38
Speaker 1: Baptist bookstore, and Spire was really big at the time.
19:42
Speaker 1: Man named Al Hartley, he was a cartoonist converted to
19:45
Speaker 1: Christianity in the late sixties and converted like twenty five
19:48
Speaker 1: family members, right did he really? Yeah, Like he just
19:51
Speaker 1: went to town, he went to a prayer meeting, came home.
19:53
Speaker 1: I was like, that's it, We're all Christian. I don't
19:56
Speaker 1: care what you have to say. You're Christian now. And
19:58
Speaker 1: uh he uh worked for Archie Comics and try to
20:01
Speaker 1: work in some of the Christian storylines through Archie, and
20:04
Speaker 1: then the publishers were like, you know, Archie's as clean
20:07
Speaker 1: as it can be, but we really need to tone
20:09
Speaker 1: this down on the religion thing. So like, wait, that's
20:12
Speaker 1: simmer In the publishers of the Archie Comics told this
20:15
Speaker 1: guy to tone it down. Yeah, that is significant. It
20:19
Speaker 1: was pretty significant, and uh Lucky for him, a publisher
20:23
Speaker 1: called Fleming H. Revel came along and said, you know what,
20:26
Speaker 1: I want to start a full line of Christian comics.
20:29
Speaker 1: I will call it Inspire Christian Comics. And you can
20:31
Speaker 1: go to town, dude, as much as you want on
20:33
Speaker 1: whatever you want. And he did. He with Hans, who
20:37
Speaker 1: I will show this little picture that I wish we
20:39
Speaker 1: had that up on the h That's okay, this this
20:42
Speaker 1: is low fi. That is Hans the Girl who Loved
20:45
Speaker 1: the Swastika. That's the subtitle. Yes, from ninety three, and
20:49
Speaker 1: I actually did not have this one, but I did
20:51
Speaker 1: have no but I had the Johnny Cash Christian comic,
20:55
Speaker 1: the Tom Landry Christian comic, and the very awesome story
20:59
Speaker 1: The Cross and the switch Blade, in which a thug
21:03
Speaker 1: mugger is uh turned you know by the guy he
21:06
Speaker 1: mug He mugs a pastor, and the pastors like, come, come,
21:09
Speaker 1: come with me. Let me tell you a few things
21:12
Speaker 1: that happens a lot. Yeah, but Hans was huge. She
21:16
Speaker 1: was a young girl in Uh Sue Sue dead in
21:18
Speaker 1: Land and the Germans invaded, and she was very glad
21:22
Speaker 1: the Germans invaded because they brought books for her to read.
21:25
Speaker 1: They took her to a Russian prison camp, and Uh
21:29
Speaker 1: they raped all of the women except Hans because she
21:31
Speaker 1: was too skinny, which I don't even know what to
21:35
Speaker 1: say about that. I don't know, but she was very
21:38
Speaker 1: fortunate to get out of that obviously. Eventually she finds
21:41
Speaker 1: her way to an American camp. She's very pleased because
21:44
Speaker 1: the soldiers there treat her well, and uh moves back
21:47
Speaker 1: to America, finds a husband who introduces her to the Bible, right,
21:51
Speaker 1: and then it was all over. After that, she opens
21:53
Speaker 1: up halfway houses in California and doesn't age over the
21:57
Speaker 1: period of like sixty years. Now, that was the critics
22:00
Speaker 1: big problem with this one was that she doesn't ever age.
22:03
Speaker 1: That was the problem with this comboy. But time still
22:06
Speaker 1: went on, so like sixty years later in the book,
22:08
Speaker 1: she's talking to people about where she started out and
22:11
Speaker 1: she's still teenage, Hauncy. So do you want to drop
22:13
Speaker 1: the bomb on the Uh? I'm not sure what you mean.
22:16
Speaker 1: It is based on a real story, Yeah, is it
22:19
Speaker 1: the bomb? I thought it would have a much bigger
22:22
Speaker 1: impact than that. That's why I called it the bomb.
22:24
Speaker 1: I would have been like, do you want to mention
22:25
Speaker 1: that last thing to him? Yeah? Thank you? Yeah. What
22:29
Speaker 1: was her name? I can't find it? Oh yeah, Maria
22:33
Speaker 1: Anne Hirshman, like Hansi Moore. Yeah, hunt it's a very
22:37
Speaker 1: remarkable name. So world War two it was big for comics,
22:41
Speaker 1: whether you were beating up Hitler or publishing Christian comics
22:45
Speaker 1: about girls who loves swasticas it was, it was huge. Yeah,
22:48
Speaker 1: there were There were also some propaganda comics in the
22:50
Speaker 1: in the forties about communism. Um is this tomorrow America
22:54
Speaker 1: under Communism? In which the Speaker of the House was
22:58
Speaker 1: subverted before assassinated, being the president and the vice president
23:02
Speaker 1: and smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary. So that's
23:06
Speaker 1: some serious propaganda going. I've got one for you, speaking
23:08
Speaker 1: of propagandas so um. Jerry Siegel, one of the guys
23:11
Speaker 1: who created Superman, um, because Superman beat up Hitler on
23:15
Speaker 1: such a regular basis. Joseph Gebbels himself called Jerry Siegel
23:22
Speaker 1: uh circumcised physically and intellectually a beatle. So, man, if
23:26
Speaker 1: you take off Joseph Gebbels enough to say something publicly
23:30
Speaker 1: about you, you're doing something right. And I think they were.
23:33
Speaker 1: But so, the big thing besides beating up Hitler and
23:37
Speaker 1: coming up with HANSI that World War Two um did
23:40
Speaker 1: the comics was that it created like a whole new
23:42
Speaker 1: readership in g I's like the American government actually sent
23:46
Speaker 1: comic books out to the front, so you had a
23:49
Speaker 1: whole new group of grown up guys who are like,
23:51
Speaker 1: this is pretty cool. I like beating up Hitler, but
23:54
Speaker 1: I'm also into like questerns and science fiction and horror
23:56
Speaker 1: and crime and just like more adult theme stuff. And
23:59
Speaker 1: I'll I want to see like some more nakedness that
24:02
Speaker 1: I'm seeing in comics, and like, I want to see
24:04
Speaker 1: the F word, not just like some you know, the
24:06
Speaker 1: dollar sign and an asterisk or something like that. So, um,
24:10
Speaker 1: it changed the readership of comics. So when everybody gets
24:14
Speaker 1: back from the war, uh, comics themselves changed to from
24:17
Speaker 1: that demand. So you have horror comics you have Western comics,
24:21
Speaker 1: you have crime comics, and comics get like way more hardcore,
24:24
Speaker 1: way cooler than they were before. Right, agreed, But they
24:27
Speaker 1: actually step over the over this line supposedly. Yeah, because
24:31
Speaker 1: a man named Frederick Wortham, a psychiatrist in UM, wrote
24:36
Speaker 1: a book called The Seduction of the Innocent, and he
24:39
Speaker 1: kind of threw it out there that these comic books
24:41
Speaker 1: are what are leading our kids down this awful path
24:43
Speaker 1: of destruction, and parents, of course bought into it big time. Yeah. Well,
24:47
Speaker 1: basically he was saying, like this is comic books are
24:49
Speaker 1: going to turn are all of our kids into serial
24:52
Speaker 1: killers like they're were, They're all doom, some are probably
24:54
Speaker 1: already killing, and you don't know what in your parents,
24:56
Speaker 1: So just pay attention to your kids and get rid
24:58
Speaker 1: of the comic books and actually bring him in New
25:00
Speaker 1: York had had a comic book burning based because of
25:04
Speaker 1: this book. I got a friend from there. He never
25:05
Speaker 1: told me about that. It's a dirty secret among the
25:08
Speaker 1: hounds folk. Uh So the comic book um industry decided,
25:13
Speaker 1: you know what, we're gonna take a big financial hit
25:14
Speaker 1: here if we don't do something, so maybe we should
25:17
Speaker 1: self censor. Uh because censorship is illegal, right, and that
25:21
Speaker 1: what they say, And so they came up with what
25:23
Speaker 1: they called the UH, the Code Comic Code Authority, the
25:28
Speaker 1: c c A, and it was all self imposed, and
25:31
Speaker 1: up until I think last year, d C comics still
25:34
Speaker 1: subscribe to this. Right, it's crazy Marvel stopped in like
25:37
Speaker 1: the seventies, I think. So this is way too long,
25:40
Speaker 1: but I'm just gonna red a few highlights. UM General
25:43
Speaker 1: standards Part A. The big thing was to not um
25:45
Speaker 1: endorse crime or to uh to make crimes seem like
25:48
Speaker 1: something kids would want to do. So you couldn't explicitly
25:52
Speaker 1: present unique details or methods of a crime. You didn't
25:55
Speaker 1: want copycatting going on. You could never show kidnapping whatsoever.
25:59
Speaker 1: The actual word crime could not be any larger and
26:01
Speaker 1: font than any other word. UM General standards be no
26:07
Speaker 1: walking dead, no torture vampires. I don't even know what
26:11
Speaker 1: that is because they also include regular vampire is M
26:15
Speaker 1: so I guess torture vampires ismo are the worse kind
26:17
Speaker 1: of vampis. Those are not twilight, no ghoules, no cannibalism,
26:21
Speaker 1: no werewolf is um obviously not even a word yes
26:27
Speaker 1: under dialogue, no profanity, smut, no vulgarity, um precautions to
26:32
Speaker 1: avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities. Didn't want to
26:36
Speaker 1: make anyone feel bad about themselves. Can Yeah, wherever possible
26:40
Speaker 1: good grammar shall be employed. Is that in there? Yeah?
26:45
Speaker 1: And did you see that religion? There's only one rule.
26:48
Speaker 1: Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is
26:50
Speaker 1: never permissible. Nudity is prohibited. And this one is what
26:55
Speaker 1: I think personally inspired ar Crum to take up a pen.
26:59
Speaker 1: Females shall be drawn realistically, without exaggeration of any physical qualities.
27:05
Speaker 1: So our chrome was like what oh really? Yeah, and
27:10
Speaker 1: we mentioned that because uh, joking aside, this is what
27:15
Speaker 1: actually gave rise to underground comics, because comics from that
27:19
Speaker 1: point on sucked yea And actually, um, I think sales
27:25
Speaker 1: dropped between nineteen fifty four and ninety six. Yeah, And
27:29
Speaker 1: this is the comic book publishers doing it themselves. They
27:32
Speaker 1: came up with this code, they established this authority, and
27:34
Speaker 1: anytime you finish a comic book you had to send
27:36
Speaker 1: it in. The CCA would be like change this, change that,
27:38
Speaker 1: and then we'll approve it. Um. So then yeah, it
27:41
Speaker 1: drove everything undergund because it's like uh, sordidness can neither
27:44
Speaker 1: be created nor destroyed. So I have to go somewhere.
27:47
Speaker 1: And it went, like you said, like into our chrome, right,
27:50
Speaker 1: it went into underground comics and comics is spelled with
27:53
Speaker 1: an X just to kind of separate it from other comics,
27:57
Speaker 1: and you know, because they're X rated, which they were
28:00
Speaker 1: proud of. Uh. This was the nineteen sixties, um, and
28:02
Speaker 1: so all of a sudden they were tackling with underground comics,
28:05
Speaker 1: the really good stuff, sex, drugs, politics with cats though yeah,
28:10
Speaker 1: well Fritz Catt was one of the big ones. Um.
28:12
Speaker 1: But along with all these sordid tales, UM comic books
28:16
Speaker 1: that also grew in respectability because they started, you know,
28:21
Speaker 1: like real literary works. All of a sudden, we're being created.
28:24
Speaker 1: Like the arc got better them, the storylines got a
28:28
Speaker 1: lot better, yeah, the writing got better. Yeah, because it
28:30
Speaker 1: was like, hey, we were back from World War two,
28:32
Speaker 1: we want mature comics, and here they are another band.
28:35
Speaker 1: So it's people wanted that and if there's demand with anything, like,
28:39
Speaker 1: you're gonna get it. So. Um. The other thing that
28:42
Speaker 1: underground comics created besides um our crumb stuff, Harvey P.
28:47
Speaker 1: Carr was another big one that was a great movie,
28:50
Speaker 1: wasn't that? Um? Was? It kind of proved that you
28:56
Speaker 1: can take something like in comic book form and add
28:59
Speaker 1: like real literature to a real art to it, and
29:02
Speaker 1: that eventually gave rise to the graphic novel thanks to
29:05
Speaker 1: a guy named Will Eisner. A Contract with God is
29:09
Speaker 1: generally considered even though they had used words like graphic before,
29:13
Speaker 1: which they don't like. By the way, they don't like
29:15
Speaker 1: graphic novel because it sounds a dirty you know what
29:18
Speaker 1: I'm who doesn't like that. The comic book people apparently
29:20
Speaker 1: never liked the term graphically. Yeah, that's what I hear.
29:23
Speaker 1: Um and a novel like a drawn novel had been used,
29:27
Speaker 1: but Will Eisner actually printed on the front cover a
29:30
Speaker 1: graphic novel by Will Eisner, and he thought he coined
29:33
Speaker 1: the term, but apparently it was some fan who had
29:35
Speaker 1: like years before. Yeah, but everyone says Will Eisner, we'll
29:38
Speaker 1: go with that, so that that gives rise to um
29:43
Speaker 1: this whole idea that like you can create something that's
29:46
Speaker 1: longer than twenty to thirty pages and it has like
29:48
Speaker 1: real meaning to it, where like the characters are just
29:51
Speaker 1: messed up, including these people who are supposed to be heroes,
29:54
Speaker 1: because that's something that's been simultaneously evolving to Will Eisner
29:59
Speaker 1: was the first person to create a superhero, the Spirit, Yes,
30:04
Speaker 1: who was just deeply flawed, like he didn't always he
30:07
Speaker 1: wasn't always successful at fighting crime, like he failed, he
30:10
Speaker 1: had problems. Um, So him coming back and creating the
30:14
Speaker 1: graphic novel is not really surprising. It was almost like
30:16
Speaker 1: he was sending a precedent for years later. But it
30:19
Speaker 1: gave rise to like Art Spiegelman's Mouse, um, the Alan
30:24
Speaker 1: Moore's Watchman, which is the only graphic novel I've read.
30:27
Speaker 1: Is it good? Is awesome? I've not read it. Yeah,
30:29
Speaker 1: it's way awesome. Uh did something just gasp? It is
30:34
Speaker 1: gasp worthy? I think. Uh. And then Frank Miller, I
30:37
Speaker 1: have not read any of his stuff, but I have
30:39
Speaker 1: seen Since City. Yeah. I enjoyed that, and he did
30:42
Speaker 1: he did three hundred two right, Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah.
30:47
Speaker 1: And then in that movie Man he did he did
30:53
Speaker 1: the Uh for those of you who aren't here, Chuck
30:55
Speaker 1: just waved the sweat off. He did the Dark Knight
30:58
Speaker 1: returns to which gave to like all the Batman movies
31:01
Speaker 1: that we know and love now because Batman also originally
31:04
Speaker 1: kind of started out flawed after the Spirit and then
31:08
Speaker 1: he turned into like just this, um well, he turned
31:10
Speaker 1: into the sixties TV show Batman, which was awesome in
31:13
Speaker 1: its own right. But if you were in the comic
31:16
Speaker 1: book industry and you're trying to prove that comics are
31:18
Speaker 1: legitimate art forms and Adam West is doing his thing
31:22
Speaker 1: on TV every week, like, it's really kind of undermining
31:24
Speaker 1: your case, right, So there were no as you know,
31:28
Speaker 1: it was flab Oh and speaking of so we talked
31:33
Speaker 1: about the guy who wrote The Seduction of the Innocent.
31:36
Speaker 1: One of his big problems with comics was that UM
31:39
Speaker 1: Robin and Batman were clearly homosexual. Robin was drawn often
31:44
Speaker 1: with bare legs, frequently spread apart while he was standing,
31:48
Speaker 1: and he was I think clearly only attached to Batman
31:52
Speaker 1: or something like that. That was one of his big problems. Well,
31:53
Speaker 1: I think they were the inspiration for the Smigels. Yeah, yeah,
32:00
Speaker 1: and he started It's one of my favorite things ever.
32:03
Speaker 1: He talks about it all the time. Um stan Lee
32:06
Speaker 1: was actually one of the one of the first people
32:08
Speaker 1: UM to start having flawed superheroes as well, but they
32:13
Speaker 1: weren't like completely messed up like uh in The Watchman now.
32:17
Speaker 1: But he was stan Lee, who was like one of
32:19
Speaker 1: the founding guys at Marvel, as everyone knows, I'm sure, um,
32:22
Speaker 1: he was working within the structure. Like the underground comics guys,
32:26
Speaker 1: they didn't have anybody to answer to. They could do
32:28
Speaker 1: or say whatever they wanted to. But stan Lee, you know,
32:30
Speaker 1: he was working for Marvel. It was a major publisher,
32:32
Speaker 1: and he had confines to work with him. But he
32:35
Speaker 1: was trying to kind of push the boundaries here there,
32:37
Speaker 1: and he was doing it with Flood like um, Spider Man,
32:40
Speaker 1: like he's he's just a total screw up. Well, he
32:43
Speaker 1: was the first guy to kind of um introduce characters
32:47
Speaker 1: that uh, their their powers were a curse and not
32:49
Speaker 1: so much a blessing like he had the Fantastic Four,
32:52
Speaker 1: who three of them, it was a big blessing. But
32:54
Speaker 1: of course the thing I always want to be human. Um,
32:57
Speaker 1: But you know, Tony Stark was a big jerk, as
32:59
Speaker 1: everyone's scene in the Iron Man movie if you're not
33:01
Speaker 1: a fan of the comic book, and he was forced
33:04
Speaker 1: to become Iron Man to live, you know, to keep
33:06
Speaker 1: living with that punishment. That thing, I don't know what's
33:08
Speaker 1: called the Yeah, the flex capacitor and his chest and uh,
33:15
Speaker 1: of course Spider Man. He didn't choose that. And he
33:17
Speaker 1: was a little nerdy kid who got beat up and
33:18
Speaker 1: got bit by a Spider The Hulk very tortured character.
33:21
Speaker 1: He didn't want to be the Hulk. He hated be
33:23
Speaker 1: in the Hulk. He hated being lu Fregno, yeah, he
33:26
Speaker 1: certainly did. But it's it's pretty cool that stan Lieber
33:30
Speaker 1: actually was his original name and Stanley was his what
33:33
Speaker 1: he became. But um, he kind of took it to
33:35
Speaker 1: a different level, even further than Eisner, I think from
33:37
Speaker 1: what I interested. He Um, he also helped create the
33:41
Speaker 1: like the shared universe, like all Marvel characters live in
33:44
Speaker 1: the same universe that cross over a lot, and that
33:46
Speaker 1: was like groundbreaking when he came out with that, Like
33:49
Speaker 1: everybody takes it for granted now, Um, but does a
33:52
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah, and it's the guy. I can't remember
33:54
Speaker 1: the article that I read, but um, the guy um
33:57
Speaker 1: that I read talked about, uh, the sharing of character,
34:00
Speaker 1: and he said other people had had people appear as
34:02
Speaker 1: guests and other comics, but um, they were the first
34:05
Speaker 1: people to really build this universe and have this carefully
34:08
Speaker 1: constructed forethought to where you felt like, at any given moment,
34:13
Speaker 1: a different person could show up and it wouldn't be like,
34:15
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute, there's whole call of a sudden,
34:17
Speaker 1: it would like make sense exactly. So I thought it
34:20
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. Um, and I think it was Comic
34:22
Speaker 1: Cube that you got that one from. Yes, so Marvel
34:26
Speaker 1: household name obviously, so DC comics they account for eight
34:29
Speaker 1: out of every ten uh yeah, yeah yeah, which uh total,
34:35
Speaker 1: that whole ten accounts accounted for four and seventeen million
34:39
Speaker 1: dollars in sales in two thousand and eleven, which is
34:42
Speaker 1: substantial if you ask me, Um, that ain't nothing on manga, manga, manga,
34:49
Speaker 1: mangame whatever. These are comics in Japan, and we're covering
34:54
Speaker 1: the United States pretty much exclusively, but they are huge
34:58
Speaker 1: in Japan, and uh in two thousand seven, they total
35:02
Speaker 1: sales were three point six billion dollars in Japan alone,
35:07
Speaker 1: you know, and that same year a hundred and seventy
35:09
Speaker 1: five million of Japanese comics in US and Canada. So
35:13
Speaker 1: they're popular over here as well. Yeah, you mean, I
35:15
Speaker 1: went to Japan and everywhere you go where there's manga
35:19
Speaker 1: being sold. There are eighteen kids just standing there reading.
35:23
Speaker 1: I'm like, totally cigarettes. No, no, they're all wearing like school. Now,
35:26
Speaker 1: this is like a whole country of good kids. They
35:28
Speaker 1: don't smoke cigarettes yet, um, Like they wait till adults
35:32
Speaker 1: and then everybody smoked. Um. But you know they're all
35:35
Speaker 1: wearing like their little shorts and their blazers and everything,
35:38
Speaker 1: reading manga like this crazy stuff. Yeah, and those are
35:40
Speaker 1: generally black and white, is that right? Yeah? Okay, yeah,
35:43
Speaker 1: I'm not the manga expert. I've just been to Japan once,
35:45
Speaker 1: so that's more than me. My friends. Um so, uh,
35:50
Speaker 1: we've talked about the history of comics, we've talked about manga.
35:54
Speaker 1: What else is there to cover. Let's talk about some
35:56
Speaker 1: of these uh, some of the top artists in and
36:00
Speaker 1: because the part on how they're done is really not
36:02
Speaker 1: super interesting, No, no, I think I think it bears
36:05
Speaker 1: mentioning that it's not one person isn't creating a comic.
36:08
Speaker 1: There's um, there's the writer, there's the the penciler Joe's
36:13
Speaker 1: Russ sketches, the anchor who comes in behind and like
36:16
Speaker 1: substantializes everything, the person who does shading, the the well,
36:21
Speaker 1: there's a colorist yes, uh and then the letter yeah,
36:25
Speaker 1: and the letterer. I thought that was kind of cool. Actually, yeah,
36:28
Speaker 1: you know think about the font that much if it
36:30
Speaker 1: really matters if it's bold or something. You know, they
36:33
Speaker 1: make these decisions of these choices, but really it's like,
36:35
Speaker 1: is it bold, not bold? Or squiggly? It's kind of
36:38
Speaker 1: what the That's what the letter is coming up. Squiggly
36:41
Speaker 1: means fear, right pretty much, or or intrepidation. Trepidation, Yeah,
36:47
Speaker 1: I think it's the word. Uh. Yeah, so we did.
36:51
Speaker 1: We searched a comic cube and um, I'm not sure
36:55
Speaker 1: what this other one was, but because I didn't know
36:58
Speaker 1: who people generally considered the top artist and writers of
37:00
Speaker 1: comic books. But this dude has stan Lee in the
37:04
Speaker 1: Marvel Gang, including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, the people
37:07
Speaker 1: who created Spider Man, Fantastic four, Hulk for Iron Man
37:12
Speaker 1: Silver Surfer number five. Yeah. Yeah, this guy's I don't
37:17
Speaker 1: know much, but I thought, come on, dude, he was
37:19
Speaker 1: clearly drunk when he made this list. Well he has
37:23
Speaker 1: Harvey Kurtzman is number one, and Kurtzman was famous for
37:27
Speaker 1: for his military comics, and they were not very pro
37:31
Speaker 1: military at all. They were very much that showed the
37:34
Speaker 1: downside of war and showed the ugly brutality of war.
37:37
Speaker 1: But he is the man who went on to later
37:39
Speaker 1: create Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad, which became Mad Magazine,
37:44
Speaker 1: which Josh and I had were, you know, huge fans of.
37:48
Speaker 1: He also oversaw Tales from the Crypt because that really
37:51
Speaker 1: that was East that was Eastern color. I thought I
37:54
Speaker 1: heard a gasp about Tales was that you gasps and
37:58
Speaker 1: one podcast that is uh gas than we used. It's
38:04
Speaker 1: actually uh goodead. You know, I don't know where you
38:08
Speaker 1: were going. Well. I thought i'd covered some of the
38:10
Speaker 1: artists too, because the writers get a lot of do
38:13
Speaker 1: but you never hear a lot about the artist. And
38:15
Speaker 1: um Lou Fine one of the first big stars in
38:19
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. They got him at number ten, not bad.
38:23
Speaker 1: And Frank Frazetta, who I didn't think I knew until
38:26
Speaker 1: I looked him up. He was a comic book artist
38:29
Speaker 1: for a very short time and then was one of
38:31
Speaker 1: the few guys to go onto mainstream art. And I
38:34
Speaker 1: was like, I still haven't heard of this guy until
38:35
Speaker 1: I clicked on Google images, and then I went, oh,
38:38
Speaker 1: the guy who did the Molly Hatchett album covers and
38:41
Speaker 1: he did all those awesome fantasy uh fantasy paintings. It
38:45
Speaker 1: was really cool stuff. I'm a fan of Yes and
38:47
Speaker 1: Ages album covers and Iron Maidens. I think Iron Maiden
38:51
Speaker 1: has the best album covers. Who did those? I don't know.
38:53
Speaker 1: There was a sol okay a small clapp for Iron Maiden.
38:56
Speaker 1: Uh Neil Adams they have listed at number three. He
39:01
Speaker 1: was the guy who brought along um modern techniques, like
39:06
Speaker 1: from the commercial art world, and he applied it and
39:08
Speaker 1: he's sort of revolutionized. And people generally say that as
39:11
Speaker 1: far as arts concerned, you have the Kirby Area era
39:14
Speaker 1: and then you have the Adams era. So he was.
39:16
Speaker 1: He was that important. And Kirby is number one Captain America,
39:20
Speaker 1: X Men, Hulk, Fantastic four, forget about it. What about
39:24
Speaker 1: Steve Bilko? Who Steve Bilko? That's be confused, Steve Ko, Dicko.
39:30
Speaker 1: You're thinking Sergeant Billko the Steve Martin movie. No, I
39:33
Speaker 1: was thinking of Steve Ko, Steve Dio, Yeah, Dicko, he
39:36
Speaker 1: could be confused. I think he he co created Spider
39:40
Speaker 1: Man and I think was the first guy to draw
39:42
Speaker 1: Spider Man. Yeah, like the comics we drew we grew
39:44
Speaker 1: up with. It was um Steve Dickko and Jack Kirby. Yeah, like,
39:49
Speaker 1: I'm sorry the comics I grew up with where Jack
39:52
Speaker 1: Kirby and Steve dick everyone else in this movie said
39:58
Speaker 1: to you, Uh, you got anything else? We should talk
40:03
Speaker 1: about mouse maybe for a second. Yeah, that was a
40:05
Speaker 1: big deal. That was Art Spiegelman, and he was He
40:08
Speaker 1: won a special pullitzerprise for his comic book Mouse m
40:12
Speaker 1: A U S. And it told the story of he
40:15
Speaker 1: and his father in uh Nazi occupied Germany. And he
40:19
Speaker 1: used a very tried and true technique of uh using
40:23
Speaker 1: animals as people. So the Jews were mice, Germans were cats,
40:27
Speaker 1: of course, and uh poles poles were pigs. And I
40:31
Speaker 1: did I thought, what was that? Tried and true? And
40:33
Speaker 1: I thought, oh no, every Disney movie you I've ever
40:36
Speaker 1: seen has animals not as people. And again shirt tails, Yeah,
40:41
Speaker 1: duck tails, short tales? That was it. I don't know
40:44
Speaker 1: short tails, you don't remember short tales? No, we got
40:47
Speaker 1: three gasts. What was shirt tails? Oh? Was a like
40:51
Speaker 1: some crime fighting um menagerie of like a panda and
40:56
Speaker 1: like a fox and like moose. All they all they
41:00
Speaker 1: lived in this tree and then they all jump into
41:02
Speaker 1: like a like something akin to the Great Space Coaster,
41:05
Speaker 1: fly off to like handle the problem, solve the mystery.
41:08
Speaker 1: But they would like whatever emotion they were feeling with
41:10
Speaker 1: like flash on their shirts. That was their game. And
41:13
Speaker 1: this is a cartoon. Yeah, it was a great cartoon.
41:15
Speaker 1: I don't know how I missed this. I was in
41:18
Speaker 1: the Baptist bookstore. I think I think your your grandmother
41:22
Speaker 1: would have been okay with shirt tails. You never know,
41:24
Speaker 1: it was not where the shirt tails tucked or untucked.
41:28
Speaker 1: They weren't even wearing pants. Now they forget about it.
41:32
Speaker 1: Maybe not. It's all over. Yeah, I got nothing else. Actually, Watchman,
41:37
Speaker 1: uh you keep you keep saying that, and then following Dome,
41:40
Speaker 1: there's but we should say. Watch Me was so great.
41:42
Speaker 1: It was named one of the one hundred best English
41:45
Speaker 1: Language novels in Time magazine in two thousand FIBs. I
41:49
Speaker 1: should say it all, even though the movie I liked
41:51
Speaker 1: because I like the book so much, wasn't so great.
41:55
Speaker 1: Did you watch it the movie? The Watchman movie? No, No,
41:59
Speaker 1: it was good. It was faithful. Well, I just remember
42:02
Speaker 1: like just a big sense of depression just kind of
42:07
Speaker 1: settled over America for like two weeks after that movie came.
42:10
Speaker 1: So I'm definitely not an uplifting story. But no, no,
42:13
Speaker 1: I meant because it like wasn't as good as everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
42:17
Speaker 1: I think you're right. Uh So let's see if you
42:20
Speaker 1: guys want to learn anything more about comic books, we
42:23
Speaker 1: actually have a bunch of comic books stuff on the site.
42:25
Speaker 1: You can type in comic books C O, M, I
42:29
Speaker 1: C space bookay s in the handy search bar how
42:34
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, and that will bring up this article.
42:36
Speaker 1: And I said handy search bar. I didn't even just
42:39
Speaker 1: say search bar, said handy search bar, which means it's
42:42
Speaker 1: time for Q and ah. Yeah, unless no one has
42:46
Speaker 1: any questions, thank you learning it? So does anyone have
42:56
Speaker 1: any questions that have nothing to do with comic books?
43:00
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. Okay, Hi, what's your name? Oh wait,
43:05
Speaker 1: we got a mike. Yeah, we can hear you. Well,
43:08
Speaker 1: now we're recording for the recording. Also, by standing up,
43:13
Speaker 1: you releases from any kind of liabilities for using your voice.
43:16
Speaker 1: What if it's too late now, pal Um, what type
43:21
Speaker 1: of screen process did uh you Josh go through when
43:25
Speaker 1: you were kind of picking out your co host because
43:27
Speaker 1: before you had podcast for five minutes long, you had
43:30
Speaker 1: different few people that went to house uf works dot com.
43:33
Speaker 1: I mean, Chuck just start working here and like, hey,
43:36
Speaker 1: let's do a podcast or I need somebody to do
43:38
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of podcasting with me. How that work? So
43:42
Speaker 1: we For those of you who don't know, Chuck and
43:44
Speaker 1: I haven't always been together. Um there was a there.
43:48
Speaker 1: I know there's a dark time pre Chuck. It's just
43:51
Speaker 1: it's crazy. I want to forget about it. But um,
43:55
Speaker 1: but no, so uh it very much came about the
43:59
Speaker 1: way that the podcast came about, where I have a
44:01
Speaker 1: boss who came along and said, hey, why don't you
44:04
Speaker 1: get together with Jerry and um make a podcast. It
44:07
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that you don't know what a podcast, which
44:09
Speaker 1: is that you've never heard one, just good to it.
44:11
Speaker 1: So we did. We tried a few people, Um they
44:15
Speaker 1: were editors at the time, that's how they were picked.
44:17
Speaker 1: And then um, all of a sudden, Uh, I think
44:21
Speaker 1: you went to Connal, didn't you, And you're like, dude,
44:23
Speaker 1: I want to know. Well then just out of the blue,
44:26
Speaker 1: Connor was like, hey, let's do this with Chuck, and
44:28
Speaker 1: we tried it with Chuck, and man, it was like
44:32
Speaker 1: the first moment he sat down, I was like, this
44:34
Speaker 1: guy smells good. Like things just seem like different now
44:40
Speaker 1: that this recording is like, I'm not sad, Like everything
44:43
Speaker 1: seems cool. And then he opened his mouth and it
44:47
Speaker 1: was like, why it works, dude, I can I don't
44:53
Speaker 1: even know how to interpret that. That's how it started. Yeah,
44:59
Speaker 1: that's pretty much it. I mean we were we were
45:02
Speaker 1: buddies at work and had similar sensibilities and it just
45:05
Speaker 1: sort of made sense. I'm frankly a little shocked that
45:08
Speaker 1: they didn't pick me to begin with, to be I
45:10
Speaker 1: am as well. I mean we're buddies already at work.
45:13
Speaker 1: We knew each other to work, and we like piled
45:15
Speaker 1: around and everything. But um, yeah, it was I think
45:18
Speaker 1: it was just kind of like a baptism by fire
45:20
Speaker 1: and then they're like, it's Chuck time. Uh we got
45:24
Speaker 1: number two? Yes, Hi? Hello. Um So I'm curious what
45:30
Speaker 1: a topic is that. Maybe you guys keep saying, oh,
45:32
Speaker 1: we need to do this, we should do this, we
45:33
Speaker 1: should do this, and you just never get around doing
45:35
Speaker 1: It's something that you'll probably say the same thing I
45:38
Speaker 1: would say is scientology. Sorry, was that what you're gonna say,
45:43
Speaker 1: I mean that scientology is one that we have been
45:46
Speaker 1: asked to do many many times that we want to do. Um,
45:49
Speaker 1: but they are very litigious group, and um, we don't
45:53
Speaker 1: have that much money. Yeah, I think we're scared to
45:56
Speaker 1: do one. Yeah I am. I mean John Travolta is
45:59
Speaker 1: in George right now shooting a movie, so they could
46:02
Speaker 1: just send him over to our house. Yeah. So yeah,
46:06
Speaker 1: I mean there was a there was a moment where
46:08
Speaker 1: it was like, may maybe we will do scientology because
46:10
Speaker 1: the FBI was investigating him. There's all this stuff on
46:12
Speaker 1: public record, which is the big the big problem is
46:15
Speaker 1: like every every source that we would come across would
46:18
Speaker 1: be um, just about hearsay from disgrunt old people, ex members, whatever,
46:24
Speaker 1: and it's very very one sided. Um. So, all of
46:27
Speaker 1: a sudden, like there was a possibility that we were
46:29
Speaker 1: gonna have all these sources from like FBI investigations, and
46:32
Speaker 1: then it just stopped and we're like, well, if the
46:34
Speaker 1: FBI is not doing it, we're certainly not gonna do
46:36
Speaker 1: it either. They have guns. Yes, over there in the glasses.
46:43
Speaker 1: I think actually, if yeah, this person over here is
46:46
Speaker 1: your next started ten minutes Greg Hi UM, my name
46:52
Speaker 1: is his Car and I live in Guatemala with my
46:54
Speaker 1: husband and we're big fans of your country. We've been
46:56
Speaker 1: we loved your podcast. Those two pods cash you did
47:00
Speaker 1: in Guatemala were awesome. For those of you don't know,
47:03
Speaker 1: we went to Guatemala with Jerry Um. We were invited
47:05
Speaker 1: by a group called co ed Uh. It's a nonprofit
47:08
Speaker 1: you does great work down there, and they paid for
47:10
Speaker 1: us to go down there and it changed our lives
47:12
Speaker 1: in some a lot of ways. And you know, I
47:14
Speaker 1: want to compliment you on it because you you did
47:17
Speaker 1: the history section really well, which most people don't do UM.
47:21
Speaker 1: And one thing that I want and actually Brad was like, man,
47:24
Speaker 1: I wish I'd gotten this before I went to Guanamala,
47:26
Speaker 1: you know, because it really served as kind of like
47:28
Speaker 1: a like a dummies on Guingamala. It was really great. Well,
47:34
Speaker 1: you know, one thing that I wanted to ask you,
47:36
Speaker 1: UM is you know if were there some stories or
47:40
Speaker 1: some other things that you left out, like how you
47:42
Speaker 1: went about I mean, you know you talked a lot
47:45
Speaker 1: of them your second Guatemala podcast about how there was
47:47
Speaker 1: all this material that you didn't include UM or things
47:51
Speaker 1: that you could have included, but you didn't. And I
47:53
Speaker 1: guess I'm wondering, like, was there like one thing in
47:55
Speaker 1: particular you didn't include that podcast, like maybe you could
47:57
Speaker 1: talk about probably had to do with Ronza Copa Rama,
48:01
Speaker 1: probably the Nectar of Guatemala. It's good stuff. Um. I
48:08
Speaker 1: think there was just so much that went on. There
48:10
Speaker 1: wasn't anything in particular. But when you're there for how
48:13
Speaker 1: long were you there? Like four or five days? I
48:15
Speaker 1: think five days? Five? Yeah, it's five days and six nights.
48:18
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, it's hard to encapsulate that in two hours.
48:20
Speaker 1: There was definitely nothing we were covering up. No beautiful
48:26
Speaker 1: country though, do you know? Do you know I went,
48:32
Speaker 1: I gave a sacrifice to mashamon Um with a cigarette
48:37
Speaker 1: and some some cane liquor, and um, I quit smoking
48:41
Speaker 1: like two years this may so that's fine, but definitely
48:47
Speaker 1: how so it works? I guess that's to answer your question. Yeah,
48:56
Speaker 1: over there, I think she had a question and she's like, no,
48:59
Speaker 1: not anymore. She's She's like, it was about Guatemala. Yeah, so,
49:09
Speaker 1: um my question is related to research. So, um, we
49:13
Speaker 1: pretty much live in a world now where most people,
49:16
Speaker 1: including like if you're in school will do research, I
49:20
Speaker 1: guess on the internet. So I was wondering for each topic,
49:23
Speaker 1: like a, if you're doing research online, how do you
49:26
Speaker 1: try to validate a particular fact? And then also do
49:29
Speaker 1: you ever go outside of the internet for I don't know,
49:32
Speaker 1: validation or more research, and if so, what are your sources?
49:39
Speaker 1: It's almost all internet research, which is kind of the
49:44
Speaker 1: way it is these days. It is. Um. I've written
49:48
Speaker 1: one article where I went to the library, and I've
49:51
Speaker 1: written a few hundred articles for House of Works, and
49:53
Speaker 1: I actually had to go to this rare books library
49:56
Speaker 1: to find the one book in print as I was
49:58
Speaker 1: writing about Liz with bath rooms, this Hungarian countess's like
50:02
Speaker 1: the world's most prolific serial killer. Um, And it was
50:06
Speaker 1: it was really hard to find like any good stuff,
50:08
Speaker 1: like decent sources on her. But I knew that there's
50:10
Speaker 1: this one book either. So I've been to library one
50:12
Speaker 1: time and I'm like, not right exactly. I was like,
50:17
Speaker 1: what is this all these weird books? Um? And it
50:21
Speaker 1: smells there's pencils, um. But that was pretty much the
50:26
Speaker 1: extent of it. Um. There's so much good stuff online.
50:30
Speaker 1: I think it's five, six, seven years ago. You could
50:35
Speaker 1: really put somebody down and said that they just do
50:38
Speaker 1: their research on online. There's so much good stuff, especially
50:41
Speaker 1: if you know what you're looking for, what you're looking at.
50:44
Speaker 1: If the fact you're kind of looking up appears in
50:49
Speaker 1: almost the same wording and source after source stuff your source,
50:51
Speaker 1: well then you need to go find something else. And yeah,
50:53
Speaker 1: that's actually it's always very good to just find a
50:57
Speaker 1: couple of sources for a fact, especially something that's just
51:00
Speaker 1: kind of outlandish. It's a lot of common sense and
51:03
Speaker 1: then it's a lot of like knowing who you're who
51:05
Speaker 1: you're getting your sources from. UM, we have since virtually
51:10
Speaker 1: stopped writing UM since we've been working on the TV
51:13
Speaker 1: pilot and since we've been UM podcasting so much lately.
51:16
Speaker 1: UM that we rely on how Stuff Works articles and
51:22
Speaker 1: UM that so well, like all of our articles are
51:26
Speaker 1: based on just the house Stuffs article and then we
51:28
Speaker 1: do supplementary research and UM, I guess all that's all
51:33
Speaker 1: we need, like is the house Stuff Works basis because
51:36
Speaker 1: we know that there's the same amount of attention and
51:40
Speaker 1: dedication has kind of gone into the research to write
51:43
Speaker 1: that article. That very rarely do we run across one
51:46
Speaker 1: where we're like this is just flagrantly wrong party. And
51:51
Speaker 1: when we do check out the dinner party, when we
51:53
Speaker 1: tear that poor kid apart, I remember, But when we do,
51:56
Speaker 1: we call them out like because it's bad research, and
51:58
Speaker 1: we hate bad research because it makes us look like
52:00
Speaker 1: jackasses and we hate looking like jackasses. So um, but
52:04
Speaker 1: it's almost all online. Thanks were more perfect. Man, this
52:11
Speaker 1: is petering out nicely. I love your podcast. I listen
52:16
Speaker 1: to it all the time. Um, I was just wondering
52:17
Speaker 1: what a day in the life Josh and Chuck looks
52:20
Speaker 1: like you said, you don't write as much anymore, but um,
52:23
Speaker 1: how many podcasts you do per week? Um? You know,
52:26
Speaker 1: what's the pilot gonna be like on your schedule? And
52:28
Speaker 1: what's funny you should ask? This is not a plant,
52:30
Speaker 1: by the way, great question than uh we I mean
52:38
Speaker 1: yeah we Um. We record uh between two and four
52:42
Speaker 1: a week, and we released two a week. So we
52:44
Speaker 1: tried to build up what we call a kitty like
52:46
Speaker 1: Jerry likes to call it. So like when we go
52:48
Speaker 1: out of town or when we're shooting TV stuff, you know,
52:51
Speaker 1: we can still release on a regular basis. Because if
52:53
Speaker 1: anyone wants to start a podcast, everyone always asked for advice.
52:56
Speaker 1: You always have to release it very regularly. The biggest
53:00
Speaker 1: mistake podcast make starting out as they'll release one and
53:04
Speaker 1: they'll wait a few weeks and release another one. But
53:06
Speaker 1: that Tuesday, Thursday, man, people count on it coming out.
53:09
Speaker 1: And um, so we record two to four we do.
53:12
Speaker 1: We have a little video podcast now, Uh this kind
53:15
Speaker 1: of fun and we record twelve of those a month,
53:18
Speaker 1: um that we alternate every other week. So generally a
53:21
Speaker 1: day in the life is us uh you know, researching
53:25
Speaker 1: and uh studying. We call it studying. It's it's a
53:28
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of reading and Josh memorizes way
53:31
Speaker 1: more than I do. But um, we take a nap
53:34
Speaker 1: on carpet scores a two pm show two pm every day,
53:37
Speaker 1: butter cookies and juice the martini time after that. But
53:41
Speaker 1: since you did mention the TV thing, we would like
53:43
Speaker 1: to invite everyone here tomorrow to uh fidox Irish Pub
53:48
Speaker 1: on Fourth Street and we are having a variety show
53:51
Speaker 1: slash premiere party for the TV pilot that Science Channel
53:55
Speaker 1: has gone out on them and been really awesome to
53:58
Speaker 1: let us do. And uh it is at five o'clock.
54:01
Speaker 1: It starts goes till nine and um we have John
54:06
Speaker 1: Hodgment will be there, our old Budden and uh I
54:10
Speaker 1: guess for John or just a clus Okay, John will
54:13
Speaker 1: be there, and comedy from a Eugene Merman who's very
54:16
Speaker 1: hysterical stand up and our buddies, the Henry Clay people
54:20
Speaker 1: will be playing music and local band Crooks will be
54:23
Speaker 1: playing music. And Lucy waynewright Roach who plays Jerry on
54:26
Speaker 1: the show, will be playing music because she is also
54:29
Speaker 1: a very talented singer, songwriter, guitar player, and uh, it's
54:33
Speaker 1: gonna be fun. First hundred people get a free drink,
54:35
Speaker 1: which is always nice and out right and gotten lighted.
54:40
Speaker 1: But oh so yeah, it's gonna be a good party.
54:42
Speaker 1: And we thank Science Channel because they are super awesome
54:45
Speaker 1: and have really stuck their necks out to give us
54:47
Speaker 1: a shot at a TV pilot, which hopefully we'll see
54:50
Speaker 1: later on this year. And uh, it's good at that,
54:54
Speaker 1: thanks man, getting better at it? Yeah, anything else, I'm good?
54:57
Speaker 1: Did anybody else have any questions? We have one minute? Man,
55:01
Speaker 1: this was perfect. As a matter of fact, everybody, give
55:03
Speaker 1: yourself around. Thank you for coming, very much for coming.
55:10
Speaker 1: Uh let's see if you want to contact us, you
55:14
Speaker 1: can reach us on Twitter at s y s K podcast.
55:17
Speaker 1: If you don't follow us, it is a jam uh
55:20
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. Also quite
55:23
Speaker 1: the party. They could have gone and seen William Defoe
55:25
Speaker 1: right now, by the way. Thank you, everybody, Thank you.
55:29
Speaker 1: I wish you had a five dollar bill to give
55:31
Speaker 1: to everybody. Um or you can email us at Stuff
55:34
Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out
55:49
Speaker 1: our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how
55:52
Speaker 1: Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and
55:55
Speaker 1: perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the re
56:01
Speaker 1: invented two thousand twelve Camri. It's ready, are you