Podcasts about arakko

Will Sinister succeed? History says no, probably not, but we're here for the ride! Wolverine gets a little older and maybe even wiser as he fights for his found family in the legacy 400 issue. Cable's twist hits in the feels as we learn the truth about Cicada. X-Factor splits into two teams with a sneaky mission. Plus some ominous details for Arakko in Power Man Timeless. And Emma guest stars in Astonishing as we all swoon 01:52 News | 07:06 Polls | 10:11 Personal News | 16:31 General Questions | 22:14 Astonishing X-Men 18 | 27:58 Power Man Timeless 3 | 32:23 Ultimate Wolverine 4 | 41:04 X-Factor 9 | 47:10 Wolverine 8 | 1:03:25 Cable 4 | 1:09:30 Exceptional X-Men 8 | From the Ashes! Rising up out of the end of Krakoa, a new slate of titles takes the mutants in a variety of directions. What will they discover? How will they play off each other? Join us as we find out! Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

The Arakko civil war reaches its conclusion and Storm continues to be the world's greatest badass. So let's just talk about that forever. For real though, I'm down. Will & Steve comics: Jean Grey vol 2 #1, Dark X-Men vol 2 #4-5, X-Men: Red vol 2 #14-18, X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #106-111, Uncanny Avengers vol 4 #2-4, X-Men vol 6 #27-29. Thank you to Reddit user Philander_Chase for the read order we've been using for Fall of X: https://www.reddit.com/r/xmen/comments/18w8qb6/comment/kgb7bq8/

To finish up my Pride Month coverage on the show I'm delighted to welcome back one of my favorite show veterans, the Fantastic Steve Foxe. Steve has been super busy, recent project drops include Dead X-Men, Dark X-Men, X-Men 97, and Spider-Woman and he's got a slate of more Marvel books coming out. Short term that includes the four issue X-Men: Heir of Apocalypse with artist Netho Diaz and the Psylocke: Blood Hunt one shot with artist Lynne Yoshii. Plus, he's got a new Editor gig with James Tynion's Tiny Onion production house. We get into all of that in today's episode and work in some time to talk about the legacy of the Krakoan Era, how big of an impact comics can have on queer representation, the big ol' slate of Spider books he's writing coming out later in 2024 (with maybe even a little slip on what's to come), why he hasn't had time to yet watch the new X-Men cartoon, and what his favorite film is this month (spoiler, The Crow) where I sadly butcher Bruce Lee's history. Make sure to sign up for Steve's newsletter to stay up to date with all the latest. From the publisher X-Men: Blood Hunt - Psylocke Ninja vs. vampires! After serving on the frontlines in the war against Orchis, Kwannon is enjoying some much-deserved downtime with her new lover Greycrow. But when darkness falls across Japan, Psylocke will wield her psionic blade against blood-sucking creatures of legend and faces a foe unlike any she's ever seen. An all-new villain emerges in the mayhem of BLOOD HUNT! From the publisher Heir of Apocalypse For centuries, Apocalypse tested the mutants of Earth to guarantee that only the strong would survive. Now, as he takes his throne on Arakko, another must rise in his place and ensure the mutants of Earth do not grow weak in his absence! Twelve mutants chosen from the X-Men's greatest heroes—and villains—will compete for the honor, but only one can become... the HEIR OF APOCALYPSE! Our episode sponsors: Transphoria Kickstarter Make sure to check out the Kickstarter campaign for Transphoria, a new new 90 page graphic novel that collects 19 new short storeis about trans and non-binary experiences of gender euphoria. Arkenforge Play TTRPG games? Make sure to check out our partner Arkenforge. They have everything you need to make your TTRPG more fun and immersive, allowing you to build, play, and export animated maps including in person fog of war capability that let's your players interact with maps as the adventure unfolds while you, the DM get the full picture. Use the discount code YETI5 to get $5 off your order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're brining out our August Patreon exclusive episode from the vault and we're talking Jonathan Hickman's X-Men omnibus with art from Lenil Yu and Russell Dauterman. How did Jake survive the worst natural disaster of his life? Was the California hurricane as bad as anticipated? How have the Maui wildfires effected us? Will they be able to listen to Comics and Chronic? What are the ridiculous right wing conspiracies about the wildfires? What is the creepy TikTok sound? Is Jake a flat-Earther? Did the X-Men barely survive high school? Is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters equivalent to getting a GED or the ROTC? What is an omnibussy? How does this comic and episode connect to House of X/Powers of X? What's been happening on Krakoa? How many dark secrets is Cody revealing this episode? What were our favorite arcs in this omnibus? Who is Nimrod? Do the X-Men always lose? What is ORCHIS? How do they use A.I. and monkey to fuck the mutants up? Is this omnibus inconsistent? How do we feel about the art? How did we feel about the one-shots in this omnibus? Did we love the silent issue? Why were the U.N. and Crucible issues our favorites? Does Wakanda Forever borrow from the U.N. issue? Does that issue have Jason Bourne vibes? Is Cyclops a badass in this run? Is Apocalypse a badass in a suit? What is The Crucible? How did anyone on Krakoa agree to it? Is Nightcrawler more religious in this run? Would we rather see a live-action or animated Krakoa adaptation? Should the MCU adapt this story? Can Cody stay awake to finish watching Secret Invasion? Does Storm have cancer? Who is Fantomex? Who are the Children of the Vault? Who is Synch? What is Arakko? What role does Magneto take on Krakoa? Why can't Mystique resurrect Destiny? Who is Betty Yayo 2069? What is Namor up to? What happens at the end of the first Hellfire Gala? And in this episode we draft the Comics and Chronic X-Men squad!! Check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ComicsandChronic Check out our website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.comicsandchronic.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ New episodes every THURSDAY Follow us on social media! Instagram // Twitter // TikTok : @comicsnchronic YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC45vP6pBHZk9rZi_2X3VkzQ E-mail: comicsnchronicpodcast@gmail.com Cody Twitter: @Cody_Cannon Instagram: @walaka_cannon TikTok: @codywalakacannon Jake Instagram: @jakefhaha Anthony Instagram // Twitter // TikTok : @mrtonynacho YouTube: youtube.com/nachocomedy

X-Men: Red & Phillip Kennedy Johnson's time on Action Comics both come to an end on a STACKED week with so many big release, we couldn't keep ourselves to just five! We review SEVEN books, talk about the state of DC Comics in light of the Beast War event, and Sean shows off his pulls for the week. 00:00 Stream Start 01:45 X-Men: Red #18 Review 23:34 Immortal Thor #5 Review 34:53 Luke Cage: Gang War #2 Review 45:51 Masterpiece #1 Review 1:01:40 Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees #2 Review 1:11:15 Action Comics #1060 Review (Listener Pick of the Week) 1:28:48 Titans: Beast World #2 Review 1:50:16 Sean Shows off His Stack! Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC18o1BfrxCMwks6-lTiJoSQ/join Subscribe to our channel: youtube.com/thecomicspals?sub_confirm... Watch us LIVE on YouTube every: Thursday at 6 PM EST for Pals Pulls Saturday at 10:15 AM EST for The Comics Pals Grab some merch here: https://streamlabs.com/thecomicspals/merch Support us on Patreon at patreon.com/thecomicspals The Comics Pals is a weekly comic book podcast where a group of comic book journalists and friends get together to talk comics.

X of Swords, a massive crossover event of the Krakoan era, is heating up! Cypher, The Braddock Twins, Gorgon and Apocalypse himself are the remaining Krakoan swordbearers. Arakko has their fighters and we have ourselves a tournament! Let's discuss the thrilling conclusion to X of Swords and more importantly, let's spend a little more time talking about how awesome Saturnyne is. Deal?

Apocalypse, the ultimate 90's villain, gets his own historic retcon with X of Swords, the giant X-Men crossover event that proceeded after House of X/Powers of X. His connection to Krakoa and the mysterious partner island, Arakko, gets fleshed out by Tini Howard and Jonathan Hickman in this massive crossover event that spans more than 25 issues. Which is why I have split this discussion into our first ever 2-parter. Come for the swords, stay for the hot Apocalypse lore. I promise you'll love this one.

It's a dark time for mutantkind. An extra helping of new teams are needed to stand up and fight for the X gene, pushing back toward the oppressors of their livelihood! We're in New York with a dark and gritty squad fighting for mutant freedom. We're on Arakko (read Mars for flatscans) with the instigated war of Genesis vs Storm, the battle over the planet's soul. We're in the sewers, at the camps and on the trail with Uncanny Avengers, avenging the mutants caught in Orchis' crosshairs. Plus the anti-mutant bigotry has spread across the boarder into Canada. A quadruple set of books that span Fall of X adjacent, time displaced anthology or vs stories with some universal displaced expansions. X-Men. We talk Dark X-Men #1, X-Men Red #14, Uncanny Avengers #1, Alpha Flight #1, Marvel Voices X-Men #1, Iron Man Annual #1, Ghost Rider #17, DOFP Doomsday #2 and X-Men Unlimited #100 18:06 X-Men Unlimited 21:49 DOFP Doomsday  27:59 Ghost Rider 33:14 Iron Man Annual 40:09 Marvel Voices X-Men 47:57 Alpha Flight 01:02:59 Uncanny Avengers 1:28:51 X-Men Red 1:46:33 Dark X-Men Thanks for listening to our fifth episode of Season 5! We're off into the Fall and damn it's not off to a great start for our merry mutants. Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

Genesis wants war, That's All! This Mama is being manipulated by the Invisible Touch of others, inspired to make Arakko a Land of Confusion. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight. Deadpool isn't a band name so let's just say Wade is working his way through the Atelier and we're here for it. Storm's going off the rails and the X-Men are worried. Plus gimmie that baby! Space folk coming in hot. We talk Heralds of Apocalypse #1, Deadpool #8, Storm #2 and X-Men Unlimited 1:04 News 9:49 Seeds of Orchis 14:19 X-Men Unlimited 18:28 Storm 31:51 Deadpool 40:18 Heralds of Apocalypse Thanks for listening to our sixty ninth (nice) episode of Season 4! We're building to the Fall and some might say we're already on the tipping point. The mutants better get ready for war! Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

This week, we talk about Reign of X vol. 16! The final volume of the Reign! Who is Feilong? Where is Lourdes Chantel? What of the Children of the Atom? When did Emma make deals with the Kingpin? And why do we love space lawyers? All this and more in Krakoan Exports 46! Note: This episode covers Children of the Atom #6, Marauders #22 and X-Men #1. Pat on twitter: @PatLoika Pat's website: patloika.com Kori on twitter: @zombilicious Kori's other podcast: Culture Cryptids Mike on twitter: @thecomicarchive  Mike's comic:  No Going Back Patrick's twitter: @wmorelkphoenix Patrick's other podcast: E for Evolution

The events of Judgment Day are escalating on Krakoa and Arakko. Anti-mutant sentiment is at an all time high. With the combined efforts of Ajak, Makkari, Mr. Sinister, and Iron Man they have a solution. Also, Marvel, why is Wolverine still being forced down our throats? Finally, we discuss X-Men '97 showrunner Beau DeMayo and his controversial thoughts on the current X-Men comics run.

The Legionnaires with the help of Zsen get closer to finding the missing god from Arakko and all is revealed to Nightcrawler. Exodus's past is revealed as he and the mutants of Krakoa battle the Eternals. The battle between Uranos and the Arakkii is revealed and a revelation begins. Finally, your favorite mutants and Beyoncé's Renaissance?

It’s Grant Morrison week as we kick off our Animal Man mini series on the top story. Also, is the Penguin lovable? What happened on Arakko during Judgement Day? Will we ever see the Mooncopter again? Tune in and find … Continue reading →

Judgment Day hits the X-Men and Shang-Chi renumbers (again!)! First off, join the X-Pack for Immortal X-Men to kick off the episode's weekly Marvel coverage, featuring an indepth character study on Exodus (0:00:00). From there, join the ravaged world of Arakko with X-Men Red #5, featuring powerful moments from the Arakkii and Magneto (0:40:00)! Then, join the team as they take a look at the relaunched Shang-Chi in Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings #1, a departure for the title but more of the same magic that made the previous runs amazing (1:15:30). All this and more, so strap in for an all new XI4P – we hope you survive the experience!

Originally recorded at the YouTube channel "ComicPop Returns" on August 8, 2022.

Be still my artificial heart, what a roller coaster of emotions! So much epic destruction and battle. Starting off with 92 of Swords, the barely classic crossover is re-imagined, boiling down to just one issue of sweet 90s goodness. Things are getting intense in the Legion as Nightcrawler and Zsen dive deep into their philosophies and Kurt's bed. Immortal X-Men continues our meditations of philosophy and religion in the Krakoan Era. Pope Exodus will see you now. Then, the hour of intensity that was teased, X-Men Red shows us just went down on Arakko with Uranos... woof. Also, Doug's a liar and X-Men Green are playing literally everyone. We talk X-Men '92 #4, Legion of X #4, Immortal X-Men #5, X-Men Red #5 and Infinity Comics Thanks for listening to our twenty third episode of Season 4! The Destiny of X has been interrupted! It's about to get super judgy in here. Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

The Knights of X, without a moment to mourn their fallen teammate, immediately rush into the land of Mercator and are followed by not only Arthur but Merlin himself. A.X.E. begins here with a siege and two pronged attack on Krakoa and Arakko with many casualties and specific targets. Finally, in our circuit party, we discuss the intricacies of the racial identity of Arakkii mutants.

We return to the Pit with Sabretooth and the gang. Third Eye reveals the true levels of his power and we find out how everyone arrived in the Pit. Wolverine and Domino take on Cerebrax but not before a member of X-Force is killed indefinitely. On Arakko, in the Seat of Loss, Magneto speaks for himself and Storm and agrees to follow Arakko's laws to the letter, while the voice of Sol in a galactic council makes some things very clear. Also, where do U.N. agreements and Krakoa stand?

It's an all new Modern Marvels -- and we're digging into the X-Men! Kick things off with X-Men Red, where the team journeys to Arakko for what is one of the most unforgettable Magneto moments of all time! From there, the issue dives deep into Arakkii mutants, grown up New Mutants, and more (0:00:00)! Then, take a look at Wolverine #22 by Ben Percy and Adam Kubert, which leads to a discussion about the bigger picture of Krakoan publishing -- can you jump on easily now? Which titles lift out to be read solo (0:39:30)? Finally, join the team as they look at the newest issue in Marvel's now long-running (by Marvel standards) Black, White, & Blood series, featuring Wolverine scribe Ben Percy and more (1:15:15). Strap in for an all new X Is For Podcast -- hope you survive the experience.

In this full issue we see X-Force on the tail, well tentacles of Cerebrex. Wolverine is finding out what brought Deadpool his way and it's more sinister than we imagined. Selene abandons Krakoa and Hope and Exodus save it in Immortal X-Men. Magik & friends with the Goblin Queen establish a new Sorcerer Supreme of Limbo, but not before S'ym intervenes. Also in X-Men: Red, we meet the Brotherhood of Arakko and Vulcan sets his sights on the Regent of Sol. Finally, our circuit party features our big three and is there beef with Storm?

It's an XI4P Modern Marvels not to be missed! Kick things off with a look at New Mutants from multiple angles as the groundbreaking title continues to revolutionize the X-Men well into it's fourth volume with challenging stories and art. Then, at 38:00, join the crew as they dive deep into the dark world of the Quiet Council as two powerful mutants vie for the same spot in Immortal X-Men #2, pitting Hope against Selene! Then, finish things out with a journey to Arakko in X-Men Red #2 as Storm continues to redefine what it means to be an X-Man. Strap in for an all new era of X Is For Podcast -- we hope you survive the experience.

Comics overload!! Featuring all the best in powerful female mutants as we dive into part one of this week's books. The long awaited return of New Mutants kicks off an arc that sees Illyana seeking change and Madelyne potentially ready to step up to the challenge. Off on Arakko we get a lot of development between our major players - Brand makes opening moves, but can she handle Arakko's Brotherhood? In the not so Quiet Council chambers our favorite female gun toting Summers takes center stage. Over on the Unlimited side, Maggot gets some much needed love along with a really interesting plot development. We talk New Mutants #25, X-Men: Red #2, Immortal X-Men #2 and X-Men Unlimited Thanks for listening to our ninth episode of Season 4! The Destiny of X is here and we're not sure which way things are going...  Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

Raise. Your. Swords. Join us as we talk about the first half of the epic X of Swords crossover event! We find out who Krakoa and Arakko's champions are, and stand in a circle as we wait for other people with swords to show up. Pat on twitter: @PatLoika Kori on twitter: @zombilicious Kori's other podcast: Culture Cryptids Mike on twitter: @thecomicarchive  Mike's comic:  No Going Back Patrick's twitter: @wmorelkphoenix Patrick's other podcast: E for Evolution

The Marauders are back and they have found their final member and some aren't happy about it, as they head off into the Shi'ar Empire. X-Force is experimented on and Omega Red is resurrected? Finally, in X-Men: Red, Arakko and Storm, what team is she building and why aren't they X-Men? Also, is the world really ready for the X-Men as things get darker?

Join the the X-Pack for an all new bonus X-Men Mutant Monday! First off, journey to Arakko with X-Men Red #1 (0:00:00)! Then, take a look at the dark side of superhero fame with The X-Cellent #2 (0:48:30)! All this and more on an all new XI4P!

The Marauders with some team departures adds new teammates and a villain from 2099 makes his debut. Moira is on the run after Inferno and we see where it takes her in X Deaths of Wolverine. The X-Men are shaken to the core from the death of Cyclops and who is Dr. Stasis? T'Challa also on the run takes refuge on Arakko and Gentle is there to greet him. Finally, what is Judgement Day and what does it mean for the X-Men, the Avengers and the Eternals?

We finally reach the end of Inferno and the official exit of Jonathan Hickman from the X titles. We find out what happens to Moira, Professor X and Magneto while a council member reveals themselves as the wildcard that no one saw coming. Also, we see the arrival of Captain Krakoa and Cyclops is none too happy, while Feilong makes a bold move for Arakko. Finally, man and machine, what does their bond mean after Inferno and what stakes does it hold for mutants?

In this issue we go over the second half of the Hellfire Gala from Jonathan Hickmans X-Men Facebook.com/mexmenpodcast Instagram.com/mexmenpodcast Twitter.com/mexmenpodcast https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_-wJ77slufsT0UTTBtPQ9Q Teespring https://mex-men-podcast.creator-spring.com Outro by Sophie Marlin. Full song at https://www.youtube.com   linktr.ee/Mexmenpodcast   The Saddest Little Fart Book https://www.amazon.com/Saddest-Little-Fart-Devon-Soriano/dp/B09FC9J2T3/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1JGEEU8ZPWO4I&dchild=1&keywords=the+saddest+little+fart&qid=1633478772&sprefix=saddest+little+%2Caps%2C177&sr=8-3

Ride the wave bubs! It's a new round of Krakoan comics to crush. Wolverine shreds the gnarliest waves Krakoa has to offer and is maybe a bit too gullible for his own good as Quentin Quire has a good then terrible day. SWORD! Following up on the cliffhanger of all cliffhangers from the last issue as we take a dive into the life and plans of Takeshi Matsuya. Over on Arakko, Storm and the team deal with the aftermath of Lethal Legion's attack... And it's our last issue of X-Men Green! Trials and judgments made. We talk X-Force #25, Hellions #10, and X-Men: Green Thanks for listening to our thirty-eighth episode of Season 3! Things are heating up all around the island of Krakoa!! Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

As Inferno burns in the Quiet Council chamber, there's plenty more happening throughout the X universe. Krakoan Karaoke lights up the Green Lagoon as everyone's listening in Wolverine... everyone. The Marauders are in desperate need of a ride IN SPAAACE!! In SWORD we've got special guests on Arakko, some invited, others not. And just a bit on the Green team's building conflict. We talk Wolverine #17, Marauders, #25, SWORD #9 and X-Men: Green Thanks for listening to our thirty-fifth episode of Season 3! Things are heating up all around the island of Krakoa!! Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

The tallest comics in the world! It's a new arc of X-Men: Unlimited as Nature Girl goes rogue, tackling threats to our environment. Wolverine "wraps up" his arc with Sevyr and Solem and the two Arakkii keep playing games with our favorite bub. And it's a huge expansion of Arakko and its government as Storm's leadership is tested. We talk about the X-Men Unlimited issues thus far, Wolverine #16 and Sword #8 Thanks for listening to our twenty-eighth episode of Season 3! The Hellfire Gala is long over and there seems to be something dangerous brewing on Krakoa!! Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

Around the outer reaches of space and back in time for a murder mystery tour! First, we head all the way to Shi'ar territory with a Wakandan rescue team as we round out our penultimate stop in The Last Annihilation. Back in Sol, there's some trouble brewing on Arakko with a mysterious traveler... is this Star Wars or what?? And then the Avengers stop by for some conversation and criminology. We talk about The Last Annihilation: Wakanda #1, Marauders #24, and X-Men: The Trial of Magneto #2 Thanks for listening to our twenty-fourth episode of Season 3! The Hellfire Gala has ended and we snuck back to the island of Krakoa, trying to keep up with all the new mutant stories!! Like, subscribe, follow, email, and @ us all over the internet at thexwifepodcast. If you enjoyed the episode, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends!

We review Wolverine #15 and Cable Reloaded #1

It's the most exclusive event of the year! No we're not talking about the Oscars, it's the Hellfire Gala! Brandon, Darren, Chris and Tanner give their thoughts about the crossover event and go over the major story points. We also talk Loki and it's greater roll in the MCU and what makes for an iconic costume/cosplay.

We're finally here: the final chapter in Dawn of X (which only means the beginning of the Reign of X era, but whatever). We've covered this whole rebrand from House of X up to this point and here we can finally decide if it was all worth it. 10 fighters from Krakoa, 10 fighters from Arakko in a tournament for the future... it is X of Swords, babyyyy So without giving away spoilers in the description, we leave you with one final question: Does it make a *dolphin sound* if no one is around to hear it? (Follow along with our previous Dawn of X coverage here: https://comicpatrol.podbean.com/p/our-dawn-of-x-series/ )  

Arrako and Krakoa reunite, council seats get offered, and we get news on the formation of Jean and Scott's new X-Men squad. Join me as I break it all down in this overview of Jonathan Hickman and Phil Noto's X-Men #16. Follow me on social media: Instagram = @cerebrosthe thecerebroscast@gmail.com https://twitter.com/TCerebros ((2) The Cerebros - Dawn of X Podcast (@TCerebros) / Twitter)

The X of Swords conclusion is drawn as Professor Dom Torres and Dylan Gray team up with Scott Summers and Jean Grey as the mutants fight for their last stand against the island of Arakko. The post Dom of X—Episode 19: X of Swords, Phase 6: Comfort appeared first on The Grand Geek Gathering.

The X of Swords conclusion is drawn as Professor Dom Torres and Dylan Gray team up with Scott Summers and Jean Grey as the mutants fight for their last stand against the island of Arakko. The post Dom of X—Episode 19: X of Swords, Phase 6: Comfort appeared first on The Grand Geek Gathering.

On this week's Stack podcast: The Other History of the DC Universe #1 DC Comics Story by John Ridley Layouts by Giuseppe Camuncoli Finishes by Andrea Cucchi Monstress: Talk Stories #1 Image Comics Written by Marjorie Liu Illustrated by Sina Takeda Power Pack #1 Marvel Written by Ryan North Art by Nico Leon The Department of Truth #3 Image Comics Written by James Tynion IV Art by Martin Simmonds Dark Nights: Death Metal The Multiverse Who Laughs #1 DC Comics Written by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, Patton Oswalt, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, Saladin Ahmed, and Brandon Thomas Art by Juan Gedeon, Chad Hardin, Scot Eaton, and Thomas Mandrake Nailbiter Returns #7 Image Comics Written By Joshua Williamson Art by Mike Henderson Daredevil #24 Marvel Written by Chip Zdarsky Pencils by Mike Hawthorne Undiscovered Country #10 Image Comics Written by Scott Snyder & Charles Soule Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Leonardo Marcello Grassi An Unkindness of Ravens #3 BOOM! Studios Written by Dan Panosian Illustrated by Marianna Ignazzi The Last God #10 DC Comics Created and written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson Art by Riccardo Federici Chu #5 Image Comics Written by John Layman Art by Dan Boultwood X-Men #15 Marvel Written by Jonathan Hickman Art by Mahmud Asrar Excalibur #15 Marvel Written by Tini Howard Art by Mahmud Asrar and Stefano Caselli X of Swords: Destruction #1 Marvel Written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard Art by Pepe Larraz The Scumbag #2 Image Comics Written by Rick Remender Art by Andrew Robinson SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. This week's show is sponsored by the Just Been Revoked podcast. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 What is up, everybody? Welcome to The Stack. I'm Alex. Justin:              I'm Justin. Pete:                I'm Pete. Alex:                 And at The Staff we talk about a bunch of comics that came out this week, and we're going to kick it off with a big one, The Other History Of The DC Universe #1 from DC Comics. Story by John Ridley, layouts by Giuseppe Cammuncoli, finishes by Andrea Cucchi. You could probably figure it out by the title here as well as the cover, but this is obviously an alternate look at the DC Universe mostly through the eyes of Black Lightning, at least in this first issue. We'll see where it goes in subsequent issues. Alex:                 As he slowly works through his career, sees himself and other characters of color kind of pushed to the side of the DC Universe in favor of other characters like Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, learn something about himself, learn something about history. And mostly it's told through the images of course, but also told through prowess. Alex:                 I don't think there's really any dialogue whatsoever in this issue other than the what's told in the narration boxes. I thought this was pretty stunning, and almost across, this is probably too reductive, but across between a new frontier and the truth in a certain way. Justin:              Oh yeah. Alex:                 What did you guys think about this book? Pete:                I thought it was really touching, very powerful, moving, which was great. I really love the little Halloween thing, that was beautiful. Yeah, I was really happy to see this comic. I'm glad that this comic was made. It's a long time coming and I hope we get to see more of this. This is just great storytelling. Justin:              Yeah. I mean, just the format, the art is so nice. It feels like such a statement. It feels like such a … It sort of has this silver age vibe to it, which I think gives it this historical precedent. It just feels so like something that will be on the shelf and in the conversation for a long time. Justin:              And then like the otherness of it, like the way that Black Lightning story keeps getting told with the Justice League and the Glacier Heroes as a counterpoint, I think is really interesting. And like you said, Alex, the fact that he and just all the other black superheroes and black characters in this book get shoved to the side throughout, you really feel it throughout and feel that drive for what makes Black Lightning, Black Lightning. Alex:                 I cannot even imagine what it is like to read this book as a comic fan of color necessarily, obviously because I am white. But speaking as a white comic book reader, it is very hard to read from the perspective of Black Lightning looking at the other characters. And I don't know if you have this feeling, but I'm reading this and I'm like, “But Superman is not like that. That's not what Superman is like. That's not Batman.” I felt these walls kind of building in me of- Pete:                Whoa. Look at you, you felt attacked. Alex:                 … Well, not attacked. Attacked is absolutely the wrong word, but this feeling of trying to wrap your brain around how somebody else feels about these sort of things is hard to do, and that's I think part of the point of the book. Because by the end you do get Jefferson Pierce starting to understand a little bit more of the wider world, bring down some of those walls himself and accept these things while still understanding that his experience is ultimately going to be intrinsically different from a lot of other characters in this universe. Alex:                 So it really brings you in, in that way as well. And like you said, Pete, there are multiple times I got choked up, just almost hitched, like is the best word for it, when something just snuck up on you in the book, these moments of strong emotion throughout, which I was very surprised about. And then the other thing you were mentioning about the art, Justin, it feels almost Neal Adams-like to me without being exaggerated, which I thought was kind of neat. Justin:              Yeah, totally agree. It's a great book. And there I think there are what, four more issues? And this is coming up bimonthly, I want to say? Pete:                We can't wait. Alex:                 Yeah, I'm very curious. I haven't read ahead about it, but I'm very curious to see whether it follows Black Lightning story throughout, which would make sense. And it's essentially a Black Lightning book, or if it's going to switch perspectives in nature too. Justin:              I think it jumps around a little bit and touches on different characters. Another thing about this, the amount of continuity that is touched on here, and really owning it when it's like some of it is ridiculous, but really making it a part of this very real story I think is great. There's this Reagan pin with the Watchmen blood splatter on it, which I thought was very cool. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Great book. Definitely pick this one up. Next up, Monstress: Talk Stories #1 from Image Comics, written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda. I'd admit I have not read Monstress in a while, even though I really enjoy this book. The art is consistently gorgeous. Plus it takes place at in a fantasy world with some half personas, I guess I would call them. Pete:                Yeah, nice. Alex:                 Yeah, absolutely. Pete:                Great use of that word, that just came up. That was really organic and natural. Alex:                 Thank you so much, Pete. I really appreciate it. Justin:              Tip of the tongue. Alex:                 In this book, we find a backstory on one of the characters. It's sweet, it's sad, it's harry. The character designs are great. I like this book quite a bit. What did you guys think? Justin:              I agree, I like this a lot. There's some fun cooking. The cooking is really used as a great moment in this story. And this reminded me, I mean, it's such a … When I was a kid, first, the sort of furry ears on a human head was in Super Mario Brothers 3. That was the first time I encountered that. And to know that, that's such a thing, I was like, “What an interesting thing.” And to know that such a thing in Manga and everything was a revelation. Alex:                 And now here we are, three guys sitting in our own Tanooki Suits recording a podcast. Pete:                Wow. Justin:              100%. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              Metaphor. Pete:                Well, they bring up an interesting question. What's your favorite meal you've ever had? I mean, I think that's a great question to kind of put out there. And also I- Justin:              Yeah, I guess what garbage plate do you like the most? Pete:                … Also the art and the storytelling is really superb. It is very- Justin:              Art is great. Pete:                … complicated, kind of cool story that we're kind of thrown into here, and it's really cool. Alex:                 Let's move on and talk about Power Pack #1 from Marvel- Pete:                Okay, yeah. Very good. Alex:                 … written by Ryan North. Pete:                You can ignore my question, that's cool. Alex:                 Oh, you were asking about- Justin:              Favorite meal? Alex:                 … best meal we ever had? Pete:                Favorite meal you've ever had. Yeah. Alex:                 Favorite meal? Did you offer up your favorite meal or did Justin just say garbage plate and you're like, “Yeah, fuck you.”? Pete:                No, Justin just made a joke about garbage plates, but nobody's answered it yet. Alex:                 Oh, okay. Justin:              Do you want me to go? Alex:                 No, I can go. On my honeymoon, we went to- Justin:              Woohoo. Alex:                 … Yeah, on my honeymoon. We went to London and Paris. And particularly in Paris, we were like, “We're not going to look at any guidebooks, we're going to wing it. We're just going to like … We're not going to make any reservations, we're just going to wander around, we're going to find places.” And we consistently made the worst choices in terms of restaurants, just like absolutely … Just the tourist trap and just not good spots, and it was obvious- Pete:                The [inaudible 00:07:42] of Paris. Alex:                 … as soon as we sat there, we were like, “Oh, no, this is bad.” One of the last days- Justin:              I heard Paris TGI Friday's is actually one of the best ones. Alex:                 Yeah, they actually call it TGI Friday's. Justin:              Yeah, wow. Alex:                 I couldn't think of any other French words. Pete:                In other words, he wouldn't have done that. Alex:                 [inaudible 00:08:00] Friday's. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 Anyway, so yeah, we were having a great time, but eating not great food, which you would expect in Paris. And one of the last days, one of the things that we really liked to do was just get some lunch and sit down at the Lourve in the park outside, which is this beautiful park and just eat the lunch. And we stumbled across this place called Maison de la Truffe, which is a ridiculously expensive black truffle restaurant. Alex:                 And everything in there, insanely expensive. We could not afford to sit down and eat, but they had a to go thing outside. And the cheapest thing that they had was a baguette with some truffle butter and sausage on it, and then a tiny little thing of champagne, just like this big. Alex:                 And there was a sack of things which we called basically fancy combos, because they were essentially just little wafers with cheese inside. And we took those and sat at the Louvre, and had this meal, and it was the best meal I had in Paris hands down. But also one of the best meals I've ever had. Just everything was ridiculously delicious. There you go. Justin:              That's a great answer. I'm going to- Pete:                And you're still married to this day? Alex:                 No, we got divorced. That was my first wife. Pete:                Aw, my bad. Justin:              The French woman he married for lunch. Alex:                 Hey, people married for all sorts of reasons. Justin:              It's true. Alex:                 Lunch is- Justin:              Lunch is a good one. Alex:                 … Yeah. Justin:              Yeah. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach maritally. I'm going to give it up for my mom's taco dip. Very good. But just as- Alex:                 I'm also going to give it up for your mom's taco dip. Pete:                Oh my God, what just happened? Justin:              … Wow. Pete:                Oh my God. Justin:              But I'll go international as well as Alex. I was in Japan. I was traveling by myself, and I was hiking. I got off the Shinkansen bullet train right near Mount Fuji and just wandered around. It was January, it was very cold. I was not dressed appropriately. There was a guy who was selling some sort of soup at a stand, just like on this side road. Got that soup, ate it sitting on a rock, great meal. Alex:                 Nice. Pete:                Wow. Nice. Alex:                 Pete. Pete:                I'll share too a travel one, the regulation one. Justin:              Regulation. Pete:                There is this seafood place outside of Pawleys Island in South Carolina, and it's called Frank's. I don't think it's there any longer. And they named it Frank's because three chefs went in to create this restaurant, and one of the chefs name was Frank. And when it was time to sign the deal, this guy Frank completely disappeared and left them, but they started the restaurant anyway. Pete:                And they had this amazing blackened mahi mahi. And in the kind of bar area, where we were hanging out as a family, I played my dad for my dinner in this little ring game, it's like a giant ring attached to a fish line. And I won the game and I got to order anything I wanted off the menu. So it was pretty cool, and it was really delicious. I don't know if it was extra good because I won, but it was really quite good. Justin:              Yeah, I think the meal you had that day was victory. Pete:                Yes. But in Costa Rica, I had gone through a lot of crazy events where I was dating this person, or I wasn't dating, we were kind of there together on this trip. And then she got robbed, and then I went to go meet up with my other friends and we went on this kind of tour of the sanctuary, and these monkeys robbed this couple that I was with, and I had to … They were going to kind of pay for me for a little bit, because I was low on funds, I'd spent a lot of money early drinking. You know what that's like, Justin? Justin:              Yeah. Get the all inclusive. Pete:                Yeah. And so I was kind of just I had nothing to do, so I was just kind of walking around Costa Rica, and I stumbled across this place called the Sunset Hotel. And I walked around the corner, and there as the sun is setting is this Italian dude, and I was like … I walked around the corner and this guy goes, “Hey, how you doing?” and he made me a fresh pizza and it was phenomenal. Alex:                 Man, there were so many different places that story could have gone. I was not predicting the end of it. Justin:              Costa Rican pizza. Alex:                 There was a point where I thought maybe your thing was going to be you ate the monkeys for vengeance. Pete:                Oh, wow. Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                I'm not [crosstalk 00:12:53] Justin:              The meal you had that day was vengeance. Pete:                Yes. Alex:                 I think that reviews that comic book. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              Definitely. Alex:                 Next step, Power Pack #1 from Marvel, written by Ryan North, art by Nico Leon. This is how you get to the much bladed outlawed event where all the teen heroes in the Marvel Universe are not allowed to practice superheroism. But it's also bring back together Power Pack for the first time in a while, in their new iterations. Alex:                 I do think very smartly they age them down quite a bit in this book. They've been aged up to be like, “We're cool teens, and some of us are adults and it's a little unclear.” Bring them back to basics while not ignoring the continuity is very smart. And this Ryan North is very funny, it's fun, it feels like a old Power Pack. It's better and winky throughout. I enjoy this book quite a bit, but I'm also definitely in the tank for it. What was your guys' takes? Pete:                My favorite part is, “We interrupt this broadcast of jazz for middle-class dinner parties to bring you breaking news.” That was really funny. Justin:              Ryan North is a funny writer, it's great to see him on this book. I put him in the same bucket as Mark Russell. As like anytime you see them on the book, it's consistently funny, which is hard. Alex:                 Yeah. Yes. Justin:              Sorry I interrupted you, Pete. You can finish your view. Alex:                 No, that was the only positive thing Pete wanted to say. Justin, what did you think about this one? Justin:              No, I loved it. It was great, super fun. Power Pack kids are fun, especially with the comedic angle. The art is very good. I'm curious how this outline event is going to play out. It does feel super disjointed. And it's sort of the same thing over and over again where these teen heroes suddenly are arrested, so I feel like this will be a fun version of it. Alex:                 Yes, I agree. Next step, The Department of Truth #3 from Image Comics, written by James Tynion IV, art by Martin Simmonds. This issue we're continuing to follow our conspiracy fighters, is I guess what we can call them. Basically conspiracy theories aren't real, but if you believe hard enough, they will become real. In this one, they're tackling gun control and crisis actors, and false flags and things like that. And man, it's very well done, very hard to read at points. But just like the main characters find it themselves, there's a lot of conflicting emotions that go on here, I think. Justin:              I love this book so much. I agree with you completely, Alex. And this issue especially, there's so much reality in this comic. And the hard part is I don't know how many people who read this know about all these conspiracy theories, and the insanity that is spun around them. This one I happen to know a lot about, because I worked on a show called The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, which was about this … Justin:              Jordan was playing this conspiracy-driven host, and so we dealt a lot in this world. And Alex Jones who this book is, this issue is sort of like drawing upon, who's like a very bad grifter person. We had to do so much paying attention to him as he descended into this madness. So this was especially, I was like reliving all of the actual news stories that were happening back like three, four years ago. Pete:                Yeah, this is really cool. It's very interesting. Artistically, it's really, really impressive what they're doing here with the different art styles meshing. It is a little tough to kind of understand what is happening a little bit. But I didn't appreciate the kind of like, “Oh, I took improv classes, so I'm good at lying,” I thought that was a little heartbreaking, but- Alex:                 Just to clarify what's happening is, probably as far as we can tell in real life, this woman's son was killed in a school shooting. Then this organization, Black Hat, which we don't know why, but it's a tease that we're going to find out a lot more next issue, is trying to make conspiracy theories come to life. Alex:                 They drop off a film that whether it's a fabricated or it's real or whatever it is that seems to convince this woman that not only is her son alive, but she may actually be an actor who was an improv actor, so the entire thing was faked, and it starts to change the reality around her. She doesn't know what's real and she doesn't know what's fake. And what I think it does really nicely emotionally, particularly through the art, as you mentioned, is it plays on this idea of this fractured psyche that I imagine you're going through when you deal with unimaginable tragedy like the death of a child. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              Yeah. And the fact that the premise of the book that this group is able to manifest these conspiracy theories when she gets this flash drive with these facts, these alternative facts on them. This book is so smart, it's so current, it's just one of my favorites on the stands right now. Alex:                 What happens when a robotic overlord in prisons a rant god and a humble narcissist, you get this week sponsor of comic book club, The Just Been Revoked Podcast. Join Chris G., Tom legacy and Mr. Rhace, as they discuss the origins, the ends and everything in between of all things film. Episodes are released weekly on Apple, Spotify, and all other major podcast platforms. Alex:                 Looking for a film podcast that has fun and doesn't take things too seriously, then check them out at justbeenrevoked.com. Let's move on and talk about Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Multiverse Who Laughs #1 from DC Comics, written by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, Patton Oswalt, Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti, Saladin Ahmed and Brandon Thomas. Art by Juan Gedeon, Chad Hardin, Scott Eaton and Thomas Mandrake. Alex:                 This is anthology that Robin King is telling, basically saying, “Blah, blah, blah. You've heard all of these dark versions of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman before. How about a couple of other dark multiverses? What would you think about that?” So we get to see three of them in this book. What did you think about this comic? Pete:                Well, it's a collection of stories. Some of them are a little better than others, but it's fun. It's like The Coming King and all that kind of stuff. I thought that it's interesting enough. It's definitely turning it up, like the Dark Metal stuff has been doing, so Death Metal stuff has been doing. I thought this was kind of a cool a book to put out as far as like, “Hey, we're going to kind of let some other writers do some stuff on this,” and yeah. Justin:              Yeah, it's a good mix. I really liked the first bit, the Scott Snyder sort of just bucket of random worlds where bad things happen to our favorite heroes. And the Patton Oswalt story I thought was great. Fun sort of Mr. Zsasz, right, is he villain here? And what it's like for him trying to be the cool villain in Arkham, and the consequences of that was. It was cool. Alex:                 This is definitely in my mind one of the lesser books in this event, everything else feels so necessary and interconnected. I love the idea of having else worlds that follow not the big three, that follow just more side stories, and I'd love to see more of that. But overall, I thought this comic book was fine. I think to your point, I liked the Robin King stuff. I thought Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner of course put together a fun story. But just so you know- Pete:                They usually do. Alex:                 What? They usually do. Pete:                They usually do. Alex:                 But it does not feel like something you'd necessarily need to read to understand the main act. Justin:              It's a little bit of the lighter side. Pete:                Yeah, it's just a fun- Alex:                 Yes, exactly. Pete:                … Yeah, it's a fun collection of ideas and stories- Justin:              It's like a little Dave Barry novel. Alex:                 Great. That's what I'd say as well. Nailbiter Returns #7 from Image Comics, written by Joshua Williamson, art by Mike Henderson. Here were literally getting into the beat of the issue as they delve further into Buckaroo, into this game that's being played by the new Buckaroo Butchers. And we get a bunch of psychedelic stuff, a trip to the past, some revelations, some promise of future revelations. I'm really enjoying what they did with this series, and it feels entirely different from what they did with the previous one. Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                Yeah, I agree. I think it's really creative, the art's fantastic. They do such a good job of pulling you into this world and kind of like with their storytelling, and I just was really impressed with this. It does a good enough job or moving the story enough where you know a little bit about what's happening to kind of follow along and not feel like, “I don't get it.” It walks that kind of crazy line really well. But man, just the art and the characters are just insane in all the right ways. The use of blood rain and then that skull who's just like puking blood on the pyramid is just insane. Justin:              Yeah, I love the sort of dream sequence aspect of this book, it feels so deliberate to become right now, sort of seeding out a bunch of wild ideas that then they can call upon going forward. The art's so good. I've been a huge fan of Birthright also by Joshua Williamson, and this feels like if you read that and haven't read Nailbiter, it's definitely worth getting in on Nailbiter. Pete:                Ah man, that's what I should've said for that lock and key question. Alex:                 On the live show? Pete:                Birthright would have been great. Yeah. Alex:                 Messed up, man. Messed up. Next step, this is what I put on the stack to make Pete feel a little bit better. Daredevil #24 from Marvel, written by Chip Zdarsky, pencils by Mike Hawthorne. Pete, you're not in your head. No. Do you not feel better after this comic book? Pete:                Well, this is a rough issue, man. I was so excited that we got Daredevil in our stack, but then of course it's a sad issue and I was like, “Oh, well, this is why his album put this in.” Alex:                 No, 100% not. Pete:                Foggy is fighting and- Alex:                 Foggy is bad at his job. What's different about the usual? It feels like pretty status quo for our man, Mr … Pete:                No, this is not status quo. Also there's too many people look like Daredevil. I don't know what the fuck- Alex:                 It's only one other than his twin. Pete:                … is going on. Alex:                 Sure. Daredevil is on trial for murder, something that he is willingly doing. We also get, which I thought was interesting and I want to get your beat on, a Kingpin shower scene in this issue. How did you feel about that? That's something fans have been asking for, for a long time. Pete:                A long time. Justin:              You got to truly see the Kingpin here. Pete:                Oh boy. I mean, they always do that in the comics with the well-placed steam or fog- Justin:              It's a little fancy. Alex:                 I do that in my shower. Pete:                … or whatever. I don't see any of the- Justin:              Yeah, in my shower, Foggy Nelson is standing in front of my genitals all the time. Pete:                That's smart. Alex:                 I thought this was really good and I loved where this ended up. Justin? Justin:              I agree. Chip Zdarsky is really bringing all of the Daredevil characters that sort of have the most emotional stakes here together. You've got your Typhoid Mary, your Kingpin. We don't see many other of Daredevil's love interests, but only because they're dead. But his current love interest, we see Elektra here, Foggy his, I guess, friend, frenemy in a lot of ways. Pete:                Fuck you. That's his friend [inaudible 00:24:52] Alex:                 I'm excited to see where this goes going forward, because it has the potential to really redefine the Marvel Universe. Justin:              How do you feel about Daredevil wearing a suit and his costume? Alex:                 That's pretty weird, right? Pete:                Yeah, that was weird, right? Alex:                 Just like when Nightwing wears a mask over his mask, and I'm like, “Choose one, buddy. It's fine.” Justin:              Unnecessary for both. The suit over the suit feels, in a very serious issue, it feels goofy. Pete:                Mm-hmm (affirmative). It does. Alex:                 Also, how much is he sweating? He's got to stink real bad. Pete:                Wow. Justin:              Yes. Pete:                Yeah. Well, I wonder if it's like a fake turtleneck situation where he doesn't have the full suit underneath. Justin:              Keep the suit, just that top part. Alex:                 I thought that, I thought he was just wearing the mask, but he's wearing the gloves as well. Pete:                Oh, wow. Alex:                 It's the full suit, man. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              It's the full suit. Alex:                 Yeah, double suit. Pete:                Double suit is a lot. Justin:              Slow down on the suits. Alex:                 Undiscovered Country- Pete:                No double suit. Alex:                 … #10 from Image Comics, written by Scott Snyder and Charles Soule, art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Leonardo Marcello Grassi. In this issue, we find out a whole lot more about UNITY, the second zone of America, as well as what happened to the past as things rapidly start to fall apart there. It was a pretty horrific reveal at the end of the issue. It makes a lot of sense. This is great. And I think we've been saying this a lot about this arc, but I finally feel kind of like I understand what's going out of this book and that makes me feel a lot better. Justin:              And it's interesting because I don't quite know … The story is just as complex. There's even more happening because our characters have split up a little bit. But what I think makes more sense is this arc is using more of like a metaphor in describing America. So I feel like that gives us a baseline to really understand how the different aspects are coming together. Alex:                 No, I mean, you're absolutely right. I didn't really think about it until you said it like that, but thinking about it was like, “What does Destiny, the first zone mean to me?” Well, join other men, ride on sharks. Versus here, the idea that everybody is joining together, finding unity through the shared belief in science. Yes, that works a lot better. It's a lot easier to hook into even if it's- Pete:                Yeah, but there's also giant whale sharks in here too. Alex:                 There's still giant whale sharks. Justin:              Yeah. That's what I'm saying, there's just as many crazy specifics- Alex:                 And also- Justin:              … but it's all under this one narrative line I feel like, it's a little cleaner. Pete:                Yeah, under one nation. I love the man-at-arms shout-out, a little He-Man love in there. That was just great. It was fun to see. Yeah, I do. With each issue, I become a little less confused, which is great. The art and the character designs are just phenomenal, great kind of like last page reveal. This continues to be a very interesting, very well done book. I'm just happy now that we're kind of getting a little bit more of a grasp on what's actually happening. Alex:                 I don't want to call you out, Pete, but I feel like you've been confused about every issue that we've talked about in The Stack this week. Was there any we talked about that you were not confused about? Pete:                Huh. Justin:              We should say you got hit on the head with an anvil right before you read The Stack, right? Alex:                 Right. Pete:                Oh, that's true. You think that affects? Justin:              You think that affects? Pete:                I wasn't affected by Chew. I was confused by Chew. Alex:                 Oh, okay. All right. Well, we'll get to that one in a moment then, that's good. An Unkindness of Ravens #3 from Boom! Studios, written by Dan Panosian and illustrated by Marianna Ignazzi. This is another one we're getting to kind of the meat of everything that's going on. We have a new kid- Pete:                You're really hungry. Alex:                 What? Pete:                You're really hungry. You keep talking about meat. Alex:                 Sweet, delicious, savory meat. Yeah. No, we're getting to the heart of the issue. How about that? Is that better? Justin:              I love eating hearts. Alex:                 There we go. Where we're finding out more [crosstalk 00:28:44] about this town that our main character has moved to, the warring factions, what's going on behind the scenes. I continue to really like this book. Justin:              I agree. I said this on the live show this week, but this feels like such a … If you're a fan of the Sabrina TV series on Netflix, which is not coming back for a little bit and you want something to fill the gap, this book is great. It also feels like a good, if you're a fan of Lock and Key, which we talk about a lot, this feels like a nice spiritual successor to that book. Justin:              It's just the characters are really fun, the art is great. There's this sense of dread hovering over everything. And I don't really know … It's hard to predict where their story's going. It's witchy in the right ways and sort of arty in the right ways as well. Pete:                Yeah. Art's great. It's really fun. It's kind of nice that we're getting into this world and what's going on. I think in a cool way that doesn't make me frustrated or confused about what's happening. But I think it's very cool with hinting at what happens and then the kind of reveal. The whole part where we're seeing these crows and then one is shot, and then we kind of get to see that. Really impressed with that. I think this is a very cool story. I'm excited to see how this is going to unfold, and whether or not it's going to be like a really great comic that will hold up, stands the test of time. Alex:                 Well see. Next up, Last God #10 from DC Comics, written and created, written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, art by Ricardo Federici. This issue, we find out some big revelations about what happened back in the day at the Black Stair. We find out more about what's happening in the present. And it looks like the bad things are coming for our heroes or maybe are already there. What did you think? Pete:                Yeah. I mean, this really starts off amazing. We got some great actions, some cool ass dragon shit. Justin:              Cool ass dragon shit. Pete:                And then there's a lot of talking, and then feelings and then stuff. But it starts off really good. I'm excited to see where this goes. I think this is a very creative cool book. Justin:              I like this book a lot. The art is so lush and just beautifully done. It feels like a classic fantasy story. You'd get like one little drawing on the cover or something. This feels like it's that full art and that same style for the whole story, which is great. And what I love about it it was really placed with the tropes of legacy and fantasy books where it's like the great heroes from the past, and now it's this generation's turn to fight. And this says, oh, maybe what if the first generation wasn't great, how does that influence everything? And it's just a smart take and a beautiful book. Alex:                 I agree. Next step, the books that did not confuse Pete. Chew #5 from Image Comics, written by John Layman and art by Dan Boultwood. This is the end of the first arc here as the two Chews are facing down, all of Saffron's crimes have been revealed. And things do not go necessarily how you might expect. Yes, Pete. Pete:                What's great is they picked up right where they left off last issue. This is not the worst than when you kind of build up to the standoff and then you cut away from it to have backstory or some shit. So this was really great- Alex:                 Was that you, Pete? Are the continuity police coming for you? Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Oh, shit. Book it. Justin:              Get out of [inaudible 00:32:20]. They're going to have a good questions that I think he might be confused about answering. Let me be honest. Alex:                 Oh, boy. Pete:                Yeah, I like this. This is great kind of standoff, brother, sister stuff. This is really cool. Art is fantastic. And it's nice because it still feels like in the two world- Alex:                 The Chew-universe. Pete:                … and it also feels a little different. Justin:              The Chew-universe. Good. Pete:                Yeah, the Chew-universe. Also, did you guys see the … It looked like a country monkey riding a smoking lizard walking by when she got out of jail? Alex:                 No, I missed that. Justin:              I think that was actually in your apartment beyond the edge of the comic book. Pete:                No, it's there. I had to double-check it. And also it looks like Sonic the Hedgehog was just shot outside the prison. It's really cool if you look at the background stuff. Justin:              RIP. Alex:                 Huh. Wow. Justin:              I like this book a lot. I was not a Chew reader of the original series, and this is … I'm not a Chewer. Pete:                Yeah, you weren't a Chew head. Justin:              I really like this though. It makes me want to go back and maybe read Chew, because this is very good, very fun. And I really like the character Saffron. The way that this story sort of positions the next move going forward, I think is great. Alex:                 I agree. Next up, we're going to get into it here. We're going to talk about our final X of Swords block as this big event. 22 part event is wrapped up here with three issues. Pete:                Can we … Alex:                 What Pete? Pete:                Can we just finish off this stack before we get into this giant argument here? Alex:                 Sure, we can jump ahead. I put the scumbag up last to space out the image comics, but let's talk about the Scumbag #2 by Image Comics, written by Rick Remender- Pete:                Okay, my bad. Alex:                 … art by Andrew Robinson. This is about the worst man of the world. He's the only one who could save the world. We find out more about him and his powers. He injected himself with some stuff so he can save the world here. This is very much positioning that there is no right way to go as we have a terrible guy, who needs to stop some potentially more terrible guys from doing some terrible stuff. It's just a fun book stuff. Just a fun book. Doing some light political commentary here. Justin:              Yes. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              So good. Rick Remender- Pete:                Oh, go ahead. Justin:              … writes people who fuck up better than anybody. This feels like a great successor to Fear Agent, one of Rick's first books that we loved way back in the day. And the art by Andrew Robinson is so good, it's so sort of 1970s animated, influenced, it feels like to me. And I think it's just a fun book that has some real, like a lot of Remender's book, has some real commentary underneath, a bunch of jokes and characters just screwing up. Pete:                Yeah. It's a lot of fun. The art is like gross, but also light. It's really interesting the way they kind of walk this line of like you hate this guy, but you're also rooting for him. Yeah, I think it's very well done, very creative. Rick Remender does a fun balance of tripped out, but also not too tripped out, where you kind of feel like that's all it's doing. I'm just really impressed with … There's a lot going on in this comic. There's a lot being kind of dealt with, and it does it seamlessly in a way that's fun and moving the story forward, and it doesn't feel rushed. Yeah, I mean, I'm impressed with this book. I'm excited to see how Rick Remender is going to break our hearts with some of these characters, because he always does. And yeah, it will be fun to talk to him about this next week. Justin:              Yes. Alex:                 Yeah, there you go. All right. For real now, we're going to wrap up with our X of Swords block. X-Men #15 from Marvel, written by Jonathan Hickman and art by Mahmud Asrar. Excalibur #15 written by Tini Howard, art by Mahmud Asrar and Stefano Caselli. And finally, X of Swords or 10 of swords: Destruction #10, written by Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard, art by Pepe Larraz. Alex:                 Now, before we talk about this, we should really talk about how hard everybody worked and how we never want to put down the amount of work that people put into it. They drew this, they wrote this, there were editors who we really like who worked on this, assistant editors, people who printed it, the staples were very nice in the book and somebody had to put them in there. Pete:                Yeah, this came together fast, and they got it all done on time. There wasn't any delays. It's pretty impressive what they put together. Alex:                 There you go. And that's our review of X of Swords. I like this event. I thought it was fun and good, and I love where it turned up. We talked about this before, but a lot of this was Saturnyne in the background, manipulating the situation to get into a place where she got almost everything that she wanted as we find out about the end. Alex:                 And the one thing that hitches me up a little bit is I don't care about Otherworld that much, just as comics continuity and comic book fan. So having everything pivot on that, brought it down emotionally for me a little bit versus having a pivot on the X-Men themselves. Alex:                 But I do like the moves they made here. I like where Apocalypse ended up. I thought the big battles were good. The art was phenomenal, just like huge, big battle scenes, enormous monsters. The scale of it was great, and just individual characterizations. Both Tini Howard and Jonathan Hickman write a great Ariana. I don't know who specifically was scripting her dialogue, but just super fun throughout this entire event. Just a really good event for her. And it's good stuff. Alex:                 I know Pete's going to disagree with this, but really good Cyclops stuff towards the end here. And I love the idea of holding Cyclops and Marvel Girl in reserve until the end and then be like, “No, fuck you. We're getting there. We're going to solve this problem.” And it really positions them in the place they should be at the lead of the X-Men. I enjoy this quite a bit. I don't think it was a perfect event by any means, but I had a lot of fun. I had a blast reading it. Justin, what did you think about it? Pete, we can get your haterade later in a second. Let's get adjusted first, a little more positive. Justin:              The hater goes later is what we've always said. I agree, I do like this event. Art across the board is great. But yeah, I mean, it's a weird event. It's so weird as the first big event to have it be so fantastical, have it be so sort of like goofy at points. I agree with you, the Cyclops and Jean Grey stuff, it really felt like their ascension at the end of this event is what's important here. Justin:              And to see them sort of outside of just the bureaucracy of the Quiet Council and maybe they can actually make some moves is exciting. Really establishing them as a family with Young Cable I think is very cool. Ariana also stepped up a lot. The Apocalypse fight, I don't know. I thought it was going to be a little bit more about Apocalypse and it felt like just a fight. Alex:                 Yeah, it was like, “What was that?” Justin:              I mean, we talked about this, we sort of predicted this, that, excuse me, Arakko would be coming through to Krakoa. And with it hundreds of mutans, I believe, from around- Alex:                 Millions, I think. Justin:              Millions? Alex:                 Millions. Justin:              Oh, wow. Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              That's a lot of people hanging out on earth, which I think I'm curious how that will affect the continuity. It feels like a lot to add. A continuity that's already pretty wild. Alex:                 Well, I think the thing that, that adds, and maybe I'm wrong because who knows what is going on with the X-Men stuff? They can set up that Arakko is coming through and then not deal with it for 30 issues or something. But to me it feels like suddenly millions of mutants show up, you suddenly have a destabilized world situation that is already on the edge because of Krakoa. Alex:                 When you bring the mutant population up to potentially pre-Genosha levels, what does that do? What nations does that put on alert? And that puts the mutant state in a really, really bad place. As for Apocalypse, the thing that I did like is it ultimately got to this place, even though I feel like we didn't get enough fleshed out about the annihilation helmet, the idea that ultimately Apocalypse; A, is fundamentally changed by Krakoa enough that he can surrender, but also that it is Apocalypse's will that manages to win the day felt like a smart decision. Even if it wasn't maybe an action-wise satisfying decision. Pete, I know you're a champion of the bid here. Go ahead. Pete:                Okay. Yeah, please. All right. Explain this to me, okay? They had, “You got to get your sword, you got to get to the fight.” Okay? So then we learned that none of that matters because it's about this helmet that speaks to you and makes you annihilate everything. But once Apocalypse puts on the helmet, he realizes that he's not going to let a helmet control him, so he'll take a knee and then that solves everything. And then, oh, Apocalypse you won, and okay, I'm going to banish a whole Island of people. Great. Pete:                And then Scott Summers and Marvel Girl, who started this kind of whole thing with a bunch of weird meetings through time, decided this whole island that they helped create doesn't matter and fuck all you all because I got to go save my son, which I understand, that's cool, but they had like a whole Quiet Council meeting and it didn't matter. So it was kind of like this- Justin:              But- Pete:                … whole thing that we're trying to do, they threw it all- Justin:              If- Pete:                … out the window. Hey, I'm trying to finish here. Justin:              If Wolverine did that you would have loved, and just because it's Scott, you don't like it. Pete:                That's a bullshit thing to thing. Justin:              It's 100% true. Pete:                No, it's not. Justin:              Wolverine does that every time. Pete:                I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole detour of the X-Men world that we just took and why we did it, and the only thing I can come up with is giant alligators and dragons are cool, and fighting with swords would have been cool, but it didn't happen. We got drinking games and playing softball. And people will say that they will get married at the drop of a hat in the X-Men world. Alex:                 The Cyclops thing I do think a lot of this is about … A lot of this story so far has been about the X-Men … And we're not supposed to call them the X-Men, the mutants. They specifically state that in the book. They're like, “The mutants-“ Justin:              There's a whole big paragraph. Alex:                 There's several of that. I know. Pete:                Yeah, I don't read the paragraphs. Alex:                 You should read the paragraphs, they're kind of important. The mutants have made this big move to become one mutant state. And from the writing perspective, I think what they've done is how much stress can we put on that? How many things can we do to fracture that? And Saturnyne says by the end, “Two people have left the Quiet Council. They're going to have to replace it, it's going to be the non-ideal picks.” Alex:                 And now, not just Scott Summers is leaving with a small team to go save everybody, but everybody comes with him, which means, yes, it's the mutants united, but it also means as it states in those paragraphs, which I do think are really important. They've tried to ditch the X-Men name because it's something that's pre-Krakoa. It's an idea of like, it's a moniker taken by Charles Xavier. It's not an example of- Pete:                The Lollipop Man. Alex:                 Yes, Lollipop Man. It's not an example of the United Krarkoa State, but the fact that Scott Summers is reclaiming this and then everybody's like, “Yes, we're X-Men. Let's go. It's go time,” creates this friction there that's only going to get bigger. Once you suddenly have billions of mutants who have been slaves up to this point, who we've never met before suddenly showing up, so it means bad things for the outside world. It also means bad things for Krakoa and Arakko. And dramatically, that's a really good place to be putting everybody. Justin:              Yeah, I agree with that. This crossover feels a lot like Chris Claremont-esque. Like mid-Chris- Alex:                 I mean- Justin:              … Claremont run, where it's like epic stuff that involves things that are sort of far flung from actual X-Men and mutant world stuff. Like getting with Lilandra and all that stuff, where it's like continuity heavy, where it's like, “Wait, what was that about that?” I feel like this will hold a similar place to a lot of that Claremont stuff, especially the other worldness of it, which I agree with you, I don't love all that. Justin:              And this whole like captain … I know Excalibur was the second to last issue so that they'll have an outsize effect on it. But the Captain Britain Corp and all that, I was like, “I don't … ” This feels like such a side quest that so much of this event landing on that felt like, “Oh, I don't know about that.” Pete:                It was just a lot just so Cyclops could have a Jerry Maguire moment of like, “Who's coming with me? Who's coming with me?” Alex:                 What did you think about the part where Cyclops said, “Show me the money,” though? That was pretty cool. Pete:                Yeah, that was touching. It was sort of touching. Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              And what about Wolverine played by Jonathan Lipnicki? I know. Pete:                Too tall. Justin:              He's too tall? He's very short. Pete:                I don't know about Jonathan Lipnicki so- Justin:              He's tiny. Alex:                 You just referenced Jerry Maguire. Justin:              He's the kid. Alex:                 He's the little kid that said, “Did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?” Pete:                Oh, he's the kids with the spiked hair? Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                Oh, that's great. Yeah, he's a great [inaudible 00:46:41] Alex:                 Okay. What would you think about Renee Zellweger playing Jonathan Lipnicki, is what it was? Justin:              Renee playing Jonathan Lipnicki? Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              Oh, interesting. Alex:                 Playing Wolverine. Justin:              Oh, wow. That's great. Alex:                 With the little lemon face. Justin:              Ooh yeah, just a pursed lip. Alex:                 She got the little lip. Suck on a lemon. Justin:              I'm the best there is at what I do, and what I do is this little face. She's a good actress. Yeah. Pete:                I don't know what you guys are doing. Alex:                 All right, that is it for The Stack. If you'd like to support the show and other shows we do at patreon.coms- Pete:                Wait. Alex:                 … What? Pete:                Do you guys think this whole thing was worth it for that ending? You guys didn't feel let down at all by the fact of like this fight wasn't a fight, it was just a, “Can we make Apocalypse kneel? And then having Cyclops just ditch everyone because he wanted to go somewhere else.”? Justin:              I liked it. Alex:                 Yeah, I liked it too. I think there were enough big moments particularly in these last couple of issues that I really just enjoyed from an artistic, from a big action perspective, literally using the S.W.O.R.D. Space Station as a sword to pierce a wormhole and attack these evil armies. Just the huge armies attacking everybody, the X-Men jumping through directly at the screen, the fairy soldiers or whatever it was jumping through. Justin:              The screen? Alex:                 Good stuff. Just a lot of people coming from the sky and heading straight towards camera was a lot of fun. Justin:              Yes, and it's surprising. A lot of Hickman big storytelling, you can't predict it. It's sometimes a little weird and wooly, but it's like in the end, it's really well thought out and smart, and very difficult to predict, which I like in storytelling in general, especially comic book storytelling. Alex:                 It's also something that relatively speaking felt like a complete story, which I don't think we've gotten in a really long time with events. It's usually by the latter half, it's all about setting up what's next. And certainly we get a fair amount of setup, but this started with the story of Otherworld, ended with the story of Otherworld, and that's what it was in between. It went on a bunch of side trips, but ultimately it all came together that way, and that is pleasing to me from a story perspective. Justin:              It was pleasing, we say. Alex:                 It was pleasing to be … If you'd like to support the show at patreon.com/comicbookclub. We also do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM. Podcast ahead on YouTube. We would love to talk to you about X of Swords, that's going to be our big topic of conversation. Over the next I would say- Pete:                It's 10 of swords, but there's going to be no fighting. Oh, you're going to love it. It's going to be smart. Alex:                 … There is a bunch of fighting. Pete:                There's going to be a lady who- Alex:                 Wolverine cutting a man's arm off. Really? Pete:                … you get confused with the ice queen the whole time. But then it's not her, even though it looks exactly like her, but ah, it's going to be great. Alex:                 Oh, I'm sorry. Are you being racist towards white, blonde women, Pete? Pete:                Yes, Karen. I am. Justin:              This took an odd turn at the end, just like the X of Swords. Alex:                 There you go. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show. @comicbooklive on Twitter, comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, checkout my mom's taco dip. The post The Stack: The Other History Of The DC Universe And More appeared first on Comic Book Club. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's comic book review podcast, we're chatting: Punchline #1 DC Comics Written by James Tynion IV and Sam Johns Art by Mirka Andolfo Taskmaster #1 Marvel Comics Written by Jed MacKay Art by Alessandro Vitti Kick-Ass vs. Hit-Girl #1 Image Comics Written by Steve Niles Art by Marcelo Frusin Resident Alien: Your Ride's Here #1 Dark Horse Comics Written by Peter Hogan Art by Steve Parkhouse American Vampire 1976 #2 DC Comics Written by Scott Snyder Art by Rafael Albuquerque The Amazing Spider-Man #52 Marvel Comics Written by Nick Spencer Art by Patrick Gleason Scarenthood #1 IDW By Nick Roche & Chris O'Halloran G.I. Joe #10 IDW Written by Paul Allor Art by Chris Evenhuis Dark Nights: Death Metal Infinite Hour Exxxtreme! #1 DC Comics Written by Frank Tieri, Becky Cloonan, Sam Humphries Art by Tyler Kirkham, Rags Morales, Denys Cowan Marvel Zombies Resurrection #4 Marvel Comics Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson Art by Leonard Kirk The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem #2 Dark Horse Comics Story by Gerard Way & Shaun Simon Art by Leonardo Romero Goosebumps: Secrets of the Swamp #2 IDW Written by Marieke Nijikamp Art by Yasmin Florez Montanez Getting It Together #2 Image Comics Co-creators and Co-Writers Sina Grace & Omar Spahi Art by Jenny D. Fine Marauders #15 Marvel Comics Written by Gerry Duggan and Benjamin Percy Art by Stefano Caselli Excalibur #14 Marvel Comics Written by Tini Howard Art by Phil Noto Wolverine #7 Marvel Comics Written by Benjamin Percy and Gerry Duggan Art by Joshua Cassara SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 What is up everybody, welcome to The Stack. I'm Alex. Justin:              I'm Justin. Pete:                I'm Pete, and I'm not looking forward to talking about the Marvel stuff today. Alex:                 Oh, wow. Really? Justin:              Wow. What a way to plant a flag, Pete. Alex:                 Interesting. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Well, that's okay, because we're going to kick it off with a DC comic first, Punchline, number one, written by James Tynion IV and Sam Jones, no relation I think. Art by Mirka Andolfo. This is, as you could probably guess from the title, focusing on Punchline, new girlfriend to the Joker who is brought to the forefront during the Joker war, finally getting her own one-shot. Should we get your own series? I think starting next year at some point. Justin:              It certainly feels that way, yes. Alex:                 Yeah, but this is picking up. She is in prison. And in this issue, we get one of James Tynion's pet projects. Harper Row shows up again with her brother tracking down Punchline, is clearly setting her up as an adversary to her. We find out a lot more about her origin. I'll tell you what, I personally have been feeling very much like Punchline is the Pucci of the Batman side of the universe. Pete:                Oh, what? What the- Alex:                 Hold on, let me finish. But this issue went a long way to selling me on understanding what their take on her is personally. Pete, you're all in on Punchline, that is clear. Pete:                Yes. I think this is a interesting kind of way to come at this character. What I don't like is she's like, “Oh man, don't trust people of a podcast, they turn out to be psychos,” which, that's fair. Justin:              Truth. Pete:                That's fair. But I do think that this is an interesting villain. It's one of those things where like, she was kind of forced in the situation, almost helped “the Joker” and then kind of Batman interrupted them and then felt like, oh man, I was so close to being a part of something bigger, and this is kind of her pursuit of that. It's interesting. I feel like as a first issue, they do a good job of being like, okay, here's this character, here's a little bit of her backstory and what she's about. And I think it does a good job of getting you intrigued for more to see how this is all going to unfold and to see if she does claim her kind of like all the bad stuff that she does or tries to hide. Justin:              Yeah. First off, the art on this was great by Mirka Andolfo, really good stuff, and sort of had some flavor to it as opposed to just sort of getting it done which I thought was nice. But I think this issue made crystal clear what the whole idea here is, jumping off what you said, Alex. The whole thing with Harley Quinn was it always felt a little wild that Harley Quinn was the Joker's psychiatrist. And then suddenly she became his partner or his just fully onboard. And in this issue we get to see- Pete:                Wait, can I? Justin:              Yes, sure. Pete:                I just wanted to ask you, have you ever just really hated your day job before? Justin:              No, I've never. What is work? Because when you love your job, it's like you never work a day in your life. Pete:                Wow. Justin:              So don't know what you're talking about. Alex:                 If you teach a man to fish, you never work a day in your life. That's what I always say. Justin:              That's right. I'd rather be fishing says the seat of my jeans. What I like about this though, is it's sort of, we see the progression and it very much mirrors how many people go from being a regular person on the internet to being radicalized in our modern world, through social media. And I think this does a really good job of using that very real issue in our country slash world. And putting it into the comic book world and bringing us a character that we believe, I believe the way this story is told and having Punchline land where she does, I'm on board. I think this is a really good issue for getting us to like the character. Pete:                Yeah. I hope those punches do land, because it'll be interesting to see how this unfolds. Alex:                 Yeah. Like you said, very smart, very well done. Particularly if you've been on the fence about the character like I have, I recommend reading this issue. Let's move to another one that I know Pete is excited about, even though it's a Marvel comic, Taskmaster number one written by Jed Mackay. Pete:                I should have been more specific and said the X-Men stuff. Alex:                 God. Art by Alessandro Vitti. This is a new take on Taskmaster. He is just chilling out on a golf course, in one the [crosstalk 00:05:05]. Pete:                Yeah, just like everybody else. Alex:                 Ends up getting framed for a murder. I won't spoil who gets murdered, but ends up on the run for that murder as usual. Particularly given that we revisited Fred [Valenti's 00:05:18] excellent Taskmaster series just a few months ago here on this very show. What'd you think about this one? What'd you think about this new take here? Pete:                I thought this was a lot of fun, having bulls-eyeing him in this kind of celebrity golf tournaments, I just didn't expect this. I was really impressed with, just from reading comics and knowing this character like, okay, I know how this is going to go. But I was pleasantly surprised by the start of this and how different it felt from what I expected. And I think it was kind of a very cool story and also very interesting team up. I think this did a really great job of setting up this kind of new take on Taskmaster a little bit, and then kind of this arc of where this is going, and kind of laid out all the characters that are going to be involved. I think this did a great job of getting me wanting more and excited for this world. Justin:              Taskmaster has this weird spot in the Marvel universe where sometimes it's a little bit Deadpoolesque. But sometimes he's meant to be a scary villain who is very hard to beat. And in this he's sort of goofy dude who was fucking around. And that's why I feel like Fred Valenti's take we love so much because it really found the middle ground between those two. He's someone with a tragic backstory where he can't retain his long-term memory and because his brain is full of these fighting techniques that have overtaken his short-term memory. It's a little … I don't quite know where this book is going. Because I like the story and I like sort of the task that I hope he masters by the end of it. But the golf stuff felt a little, I was like, “Wait, what?” Pete:                No, but that was fun. Justin:              And I will say I loved that it was Black Widow. My guess was that it was Black Widow who was hunting [inaudible 00:07:24] and I love that it actually was by the end of the issue. Alex:                 Yeah. I mean, this seems like a pretty clear tee up for the Black Widow movie, right. I don't know when this was originally supposed to come out, but given that Taskmaster is going to show out there, Black Widow is going to show up there obviously. It seems like this is tying into that in a certain way, or at least going to be one of those things where, hey, now there's a trade on the stands. The other thing, I'll get into spoilers here. Alex:                 I don't love the idea of being ahead of a book, but I sincerely hope this is where this twist is heading. Because, again, spoilers, the thing is that Taskmaster is framed from the death of Maria Hill. And it feels like killing Maria Hill off screen is a very bad, very weird move. But what I think is going on here is Nick Fury Jr. recruits him to find the real killer of Maria Hill so he can get Black Widow off his back. It seems to be that it's probably Nick Fury Jr. is not who he says he is. It is in fact somebody else, has lied to Taskmaster the entire time. And that's the twist coming down the road. This is something that I felt very uncomfortable and sort of hated when they brought out, oh, Maria Hill is dead. When they get to that twist, say four issues down the road, I think I'm going to feel a lot better about this book. But as it is, Alessandro Vitti's art is really solid and fun and there's some funny bits in here. Jed Mackay, I think wrote the Black Cat book- Justin:              I love that book. Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:09:01] coming out, which is super fun. So he does comedy, so it's good stuff. If you're looking for a fun, silly one, this might be one to check out. Pete:                Yeah. I just wanted to go back and touch on something Justin said, yes, Fred Valenti definitely did an amazing job. But I think other people should be allowed to do their takes, just because Fred did something that was so iconic. Justin:              No, one take and one take only I say, leave me. Pete:                I think there's room for other kind of take some people. But I think- Justin:              Pete, when you're making a movie, you only do one take, they just turn the camera on and everything rolls. That's how it works. Pete:                Justin, you know better than that, come on. Justin:              Then they just move the camera to different locations. The camera's rolling, the whole time it's traveling from Atlanta- Pete:                Every film is filmed live, right? Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                Great. Justin:              It's why it's really hard, actors really have to run very quickly to different places. Alex:                 Kick-Ass versus Hit-Girl number one from Image Comics written by Steve Niles, art by Marcelo Frusin. This is following the new Kick-Ass who is in with some drug dealers and gangs. By the end of the book Hit-Girl is maybe coming for her. I got to tell you, I like Steve Niles. Though this art was very good, the violence was brutal. We were talking about this other live show a little bit, the idea that some number one issues don't leave it off on the table that they sort of just like get to it at the end. Frankly, this is the issue that I was thinking of when we were talking about it, because not enough happens here in this first issue necessarily to make it work for me. But I'm curious to hear what you guys think. Pete:                Well, I'm kind of like, you see it in movies and comics all the time, the person who killed somebody then goes to the funeral and that's just so insane to me that you would go to somebody's funeral that you murdered. Alex:                 Pete, you're going to come to my funeral, right though? Pete:                Sure, I am buddy. Alex:                 Okay. Pete:                Yeah. Can't wait to piss on your grave, it's going to be great. I just think that- Justin:              You don't have to piss on the grave at the funeral, the graves' going to be there, give it a day, come back. Alex:                 The [inaudible 00:11:17] says that, right. If I'd [inaudible 00:11:19] I would like to piss on the grave. Pete:                That's right. Justin:              Speak now or forever hold it in your bladder, hold it. You don't want to be caught holding it. Pete:                Well, yeah, I mean because we know these characters so well, so I feel like this isn't a … new telling is just kind of like, these are where these characters are and pretty soon they're going to clash. But it's always tough when it's Kick-Ass versus Hit-Girl issue one, but they don't ever meet in the comic yet, so that's a little like, meh. Justin:              I have a feeling they will down the line. Pete:                Oh, okay. So that's it's just setting it up. I do think the art here is great. Marcelo Frusin really takes on the Jr. vibe, but gives it its own sort of flavor in a nice way. That was cool. A lot of heads being cut off in perfect hot dog sections, which I was like, “Okay.” Justin:              Well, if you've got a really sharp sword like that, it's going to cut right through it. Pete:                So easy to cut through the spine. Alex:                 Well, that's actually how they make hot dogs. Justin:              Yep, a 100%. And I won't tell you what body parts of what animals are doing that. But otherwise it was a real quick read. Alex:                 Yes, I agree. Resident Alien Your Ride's Here, number one from Dark Horse Comics written by Peter Hogan- Pete:                Oh, my rides here. Alex:                 … and art by Steve Parkhouse. I have not been a religious Resident Alien reader, but as far as I can gather from this issue, it's about an alley that just kind of hangs out with people and I love- Justin:              He's a resident. Alex:                 Yeah. I kind of [crosstalk 00:13:05] casual it is. I thought there would be more alien stuff in this book, there's not. He's just going to hang it out. Justin:              It's very chill. No one even talks about how he's an alien. Pete:                No, guys, we've read this before. This is a thing where he doesn't look like that to other people. He kind of wears the disguise, but he revealed himself to that girl that's getting the haircut in the book. This had previous arcs before, and this is a really kind of cool thing. Justin:              Yeah, I know. Pete:                Okay. All right. Justin:              This reminded me, and I think this is perhaps why you like it, Pete, remind me a little bit of Concrete. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              The old series back in the day. And it is fun. It is almost too like Slice of Life for the first two thirds of it. I like the vision quest stuff at the end. And I would be curious sort of where this opens up to, but man, this issue ends with sort of like, oh, that's just it. Alex:                 It is funny though. I mean, even if you're not totally familiar with the series, and like Pete said, we've read a couple of issues here and there, but just kind of picking this up and not necessarily having a media reader call of what we talked about before. There's still good solid jokes characterization here that make this very engaging. I enjoyed it even if most of the time I felt like, I don't know what they're talking about. Pete:                Yeah. I'm very into this comic. I really am invested in this relationship. And yeah, I'm excited for more. This is kind of an interesting new arc. I'm hoping that the alien and this lady can work it out. Justin:              How invested in the relationship are you, Pete? Pete:                I'm very, very invested. Justin:              Heavy? Alex:                 10K, he put 10K on it. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              I like those odds. Alex:                 American Vampire 1976 number two from DC Comics written by Scott Snyder, art by Raphael Albuquerque. As you could probably figure out from the title, this is picking up on the first issue set in 1976 as Skinner Sweet and his gang were trying to take over a train that holds all of the relics of America, feels almost like a little bit of a leftover from Scott Snyder's undiscovered country's ideas in a certain way. But Skinner Sweet is forced to team up with his brother who he thought was dead. We get a little bit of flashback that explains that here. Man, it is so good to have this book back. I am loving every issue of it so far. Pete:                I really like the start of it. The fun recap of like, gather round kids, uncle Skinner's going to catch you up. I thought that was great. I really appreciated kind of the walkthrough, their history there. I mean, you can't really say enough about the art, it's really unbelievable. And I love the Butch Cassidy and Sundance reference. Justin:              See, Skinner Sweet is such a great character. It's just great to be able to read new stories where we can follow him around. I like these series as a culmination point of a lot of the American Vampire dangling threads and the tongue is gross and the tongues that we see in this book are gross and it's great. It's a truly daunting villain for a title that's been able to maintain such quality over the years. Alex:                 Great stuff, definitely pick it up. Next up, The Amazing Spider-Man number 52 from Marvel Comics written by Nick Spencer and art by Patrick Gleason. Finally Spider-Man is facing down Kindred, the villain who has been taunting him pretty much all of Nick Spencer's run. We have gotten the reveal of who Kindred is, or at least who we think Kindred is. Personally I have some doubts there that the reveal is actually what we think it is. But in this issue, Spider-Man gives up, surrenders to Kindred to save all of his friends, all the men and the rest of the spider family. And it ends in a moment that I felt like such a sucker because I know this is not going to be permitted, but I legitimately gasped out loud at the end of this issue. I thought this was great. Pete is nodding his head. Yes, yes, yes, I can see him. [crosstalk 00:17:31]. Justin:              Yes, give me more. Alex:                 He loves it. Give me more. Justin, let's go to you first. What did you think about this? Justin:              We have never been closer to finding out how Kindred is than we are with this issue. And yeah, you could have said that for many issues in this run of 52. I really want to know now. Alex:                 Well, they've revealed that Kindred is Harry Osborn. That's been the thing that they've come out and said. Justin:              Yes. And was that the last issue or? Yeah, it was. Alex:                 There was two issues back, yeah. Justin:              And that feels, it feels weird to me. Alex:                 It feels wrong. It feels like a fate. Justin:              And I think you had the theory that it's Peter Parker from the future, like a dead Peter Parker or something who is very bitter about his life perhaps. And I think this issue I was thinking about theory a lot because it feels that Kindred is sort of like, you've wasted your life fighting for these people. And that's sort of the point. And I think that's a nice counterpoint for Peter, our present day Peter, to fight back and say, “It is worth it. You just took the wrong path or whatever.” My theory was that it was the robber who kills uncle Ben, the thief. That would be cool too, but I sort of like your theory a little bit better at this point, feels more on track with what the story they're telling. Because I don't know what Harry Osborn, while he is a big part of Spider-Man [inaudible 00:19:00], Norman overshadows him so much. And I don't know what the point of having Harry there does. Alex:                 I'll tell you also on that note, there's a big scene in here that is very reminiscent of what Scott Snyder did in death, not death in the family, Death of the Family. Justin:              Death of the Family. Alex:                 Joker, Hulk, where he gathered the Joker, gathered everybody around the dinner table. In this instance, what Kindred does is he digs up the skeletons of everybody who Spider-Man has let die and gathers some around. And the moment, it's so well paced and so horrifying because it goes around and it's like, here's captain Gwen Stacy, here's Jean DeWolff. Here's, what is it? Marla Jameson. Then he gets to Gwen- Justin:              Flash. Alex:                 … and Spider-Man and he's like, “Oh no, Gwen.” And then Flash, the last one was uncle Ben. And it's so upsetting to see that happen. Very well done in exactly the way that it should feel. I thought, Pete, again, nodding his head, yes, yes, yes, could not agree more it seems like. And Pete- Justin:              Before we go to Pete, who's opinion will no doubt really crown this review of the book. I want to give a shout-out to Patrick Gleason's art, it's so perfect for this run. To your point, we're seeing how horrifying this dinner scene is, Patrick Gleason's art is the perfect companion to this story. Pete:                I just can't wait for Nick Spencer to get the fuck off this book. It's just, he writes these fucked up twisted things and really fucks with you as a fan, who's loved something for many years and then makes you question that. I mean, to dig up these people and have their corpses sitting at a table, fuck you. And then have Spider-Man be like, “Fucking, I give up, kill me.” Fuck you, I'm sick of this shit. This just over the top fucking just bullshit to … It's grotesque. Justin:              I hear you Pete. Pete:                It's all ridiculous. Give me a fucking Spider-Man story, man. This is bullshit. Justin:              I want to see Spider-Man do something important, like catch a pulse snatcher. Has he done that? Has he stopped a purse snatching at any point? Alex:                 I think this is good. I'll also mention I know we did include this in The Stack. Pete:                You were like, when that moment happened, I yelled boo, and I closed my laptop and I was just like, I had to walk away for a little bit. Justin:              Boo. Good day. Alex:                 They're also releasing these 52.LR books, which I know I didn't send over for The Stack. But they're kind of taking place between the stories and focusing on the characters that are on Spider-Man. Also really good, really dark, this one focuses on Norman Osborn teaming up with Mary Jane, which is wild, and she hates it. Pete, don't worry, she does not want to work with him at all. But really good stuff. It just a very dark, it definitely feels like- Pete:                Spider-Man shouldn't be this dark. Alex:                 What is almost unequivocally the best Spider-Man story of all time, Pete? Pete:                I don't know. Alex:                 Kraven's Last Hunt. I think- Pete:                That's your opinion. I don't think- Alex:                 No. Justin:              What's your? Alex:                 I think if you ask almost anybody, if you asked what is the best- Pete:                I like a couple of Rhino stories, that are great. Alex:                 Sure. There's great Spider-Man stories, but the best one of all time is probably, obviously arguably Kraven's Last Hunt. Spider-Man dies, he's buried in that, Kraven takes over. He's covered in spiders, it's dark. And I think that's what Nick Spencer is going for here, and I think he's [crosstalk 00:22:49]. Pete:                Nick Spencer is just doing shock value shit. Justin:              I don't think so. And also like Spider-Man's origin is dark. His uncle dies and he lets him go. It's like guilt. Pete:                He doesn't know that at the time though. Justin:              Yeah, I know. Alex:                 Sorry. Justin, are you familiar with Spider-Man's origin story? Justin:              Yeah, he was there as a thief and he was like, “Should I stop this guy?” And then the guy was like, I'm going to go kill your uncle. And he's like, “Go ahead.” Pete:                Go ahead. Justin:              Get out of here you scum. Alex:                 As long as Caterpillar man finds my uncles corpse later, I'm good with it. [crosstalk 00:23:28]. Justin:              I'm just saying there's been a darkness to Spider-Man from the jump. I think this is well within the range to tell this. Pete:                No. Alex:                 Let's move on then to something that is perfectly purposely dark, Scarenthood number one from IDW by Nick Roche and Chris O'Halloran. We had Nick Roche on our live show this week. Let's be honest here. Let's be true to ourselves. What do we really think about Scarenthood? I'll come out and I've got to say it, this is the truth. I like this book. Justin:              Nice, bold. I mean, I raved about the book on the live show. But to boil it down, I really like how this book feels very like Slice of Life. It's about a father in Ireland, and I don't know what town it is, but in Ireland, he struggles with just the stress of being a dad, tries to connect with the parents. It's really funny. And then there's … we slowly get peppered in a couple of details about how the school is maybe a little haunted and it builds and builds and builds to a legit scary moment that combines the fear of the supernatural with the regular fears of being a parent in a way that I thought was a real great step forward. I'm very excited for more of this. Pete:                Yeah. I mean, this is more in you guys' sweet spot a little bit, because I was like, “I get it. You're a real dad in real life.” Okay. All right. Justin:              But Pete you're a cat dad. Think about it if it's a cat. Alex:                 Yeah. Your Twitter bio says cat daddy, right? Pete:                Yeah. That's exactly what it says. Justin:              I believe it's catty daddy if I remember correctly. Pete:                Oh my God. Anyways, I'm really- Justin:              The original catty daddy. Pete:                All that aside, I really liked the kind of horror ghost story elements. I thought it was really cool. I very much enjoyed this book, even though I'm not a parent and don't know the struggles that you guys deal with. But I thought it was really well done and interesting. And I'm very excited to read more. I think this is kind of like a cool team on this book. I think it's rich enough that I really want to kind of delve into it more. Justin:              Pete, being a parent is like your life, but with fewer cheesesteaks and fewer romantic comedies. Pete:                Boo, that doesn't sound fun. Alex:                 I really like this as well. The pitch that I didn't give on the show. Justin:              Wow. Pete:                Oh my goodness. I thought that was part of the pitch. Justin:              Oh, okay. You seem to be allergic to the pitch. Alex:                 Yeah. That was not part of the pitch. I just sneezed. This is like single parents meet stranger things is the way that I'd put it. Pete:                Oh, wow. Alex:                 We talked about this live show a little bit, but I was really impressed, particularly given we read a lot of first issues with how packed this was with details, and the fact that things slowly build to the supernatural, but it isn't the last page reveal. It's about halfway two thirds of the way through the issue that we get some weird supernatural stuff. We get even weirder supernatural stuff as it goes. And the character signs are really terrifying in the right way. This is a great debut. I was very happy to read this and I was glad that we got to chat with Nick for so long about it. Pete:                I agree. Alex:                 Let's move on to another title that we've been enjoying quite a bit. GI Joe number 10 from IDW written Paul Allor, art by Chris Evenhuis. Pete- Pete:                Yo Joe. Alex:                 … you got to like this one, because there's a bareness appearance in this one. But for the most part, this is about a secret lab that is trying to create half human half robot cyborg bats for a cobra- Pete:                Classic. Alex:                 … and how they end up taking it down. After being- Pete:                Classic Dr. Mindbender stuff, I mean- Alex:                 Classic Dr. Mindbender stuff. Justin:              Dr. Mindbender. Alex:                 After not being so crazy about the last issue, I was glad to personally just see this return to form for this issue. What'd you guys think about this one? Pete:                Yeah. I'm enjoying this. I'm having a lot of fun. Also kind of a crazy reveal because I'm used to … I'm sure you guys are the same. Lady Jaye, she used to roll with Flint or Snake Eyes. Alex:                 You don't need to tell us. Justin:              Yeah, we're right there. [crosstalk 00:27:56]. She used to roll [inaudible 00:27:58] with Flint or even Snake Eyes. Pete:                Yeah. Right. But then to see her with this new guy, and I know he's new because I was like, I'm not wrong in this. I went to the Hasbro website to look this up. Alex:                 We all did, you don't need to tell us. We all headed to the Hasbro website. Justin:              It's where I get my news. Pete:                Because I was like, wait a second, I wasn't … I don't remember [inaudible 00:28:19]. Alex:                 First stop, OAN. Second stop, [inaudible 00:28:22]. Third stop, Hasbro website. That's where I get my news. Justin:              Exactly. Especially if I'm like, what's my brother doing? I'm like Hasbro. Pete:                But yeah, I continue to have a lot of fun with this book. Some interesting stuff. Great art. I think they do a good job of sometimes doing fun stuff with names, sometimes holding it back a little bit more. Justin:              Yeah. I mean, I think I've said in the past, I was never a G.I. Joe kid. Pete:                Yeah. You weren't allowed to watch as a kid, and we feel bad for you. Justin:              We're not allowed to watch because they used guns, yes. But these stories I like, I like the way they're sort of one-offs story of the weeks with different tones. This one sort of has more of the action figure animated show feel, I think. But they treat the characters in a realistic way and I appreciate it. Alex:                 It also feels like with this issue that this is starting to build towards something, even though we've been focusing in on these individual characters, maybe I'm wrong, but issue- Justin:              Castle fall. Alex:                 What? Justin:              I think there's something called castle fall coming up. Alex:                 Yeah, that's coming up. And that certainly seems to be a tease that we're just going to start getting all these individual plot points mixing together in some way. And that's exciting. I mean, if they're really doing, focusing in on one, two characters every issue and that it's building something bigger, that's very cool storytelling. I'm excited to see where it goes. Next up, another one that I'm sure was in Pete's wheelhouse, Dark Nights: Death Metal Infinite Hour Exxxtreme, with so many Xs, number one from DC Comics, written by thank Frank Tieri, Becky Cloonan, Sam Humphries, and of course, Lobo. Art by Tyler Kirkham, Rags Morales, Denys Cowan, and again, Lobo. As you can guess, this is what Lobo's been doing during Dark Nights, Death Metal, what's been going on with him. It kicks off with a very Frank Tieri story. Pete:                Yeah, Frank, come on. I mean, this is the guy- Justin:              Perhaps the most Frank Tieri stuff. Pete:                Yeah. I mean, this is the guy you want on this book. You want this kind of goon squad guy to tell a story about one of the biggest goons there is, Lobo. And let's not forget we should make a Lobo Batman. And yeah, I think this was- Alex:                 The Batman man. Pete:                Yeah. The bat, who frags. Yeah, I think this continues to just be a ton of over the top fun, just taking the DC Universe and being like, let's throw a bunch of Xs on it, say it's extreme, death metal, yeah, turn it up to 11. And the whole headbutt joke was hysterical, it was just great. Bat Grundy, I mean, what more do you want? Justin:              Let me just say it was probably a lot to read three back-to-back Lobo stories. It's like getting just a bowl of a hot fudge sundae after the hot fudge sundae served in a bowl that's also made out of hot fudge sundae. And so it's not as … I didn't need that much Lobo. Pete:                Come on man. Justin:              I will say I liked the back-end of the second story. The other heroes being Lobofied. Pete:                Superman Lobo or are you talking about Wonder Woman Lobo or? Justin:              All of them. I thought those were funny. Pete:                Okay. Alex:                 Lobo gets his hands on some death metal and remakes the universe to reimagine everybody's origin stories as all being Lobo. I think that was the Sam Humphreys, Dennis Cowan section, I could be wrong. Justin:              It's hard to tell, it's the one that's called, it says it's by Lobo. I can't tell if it's the second story or the beginning of the third story, sort of flows. And then I'm curious, it does feel like Lobo is going to play a large part in the resolution of Death Metal, which I find- Pete:                Well, he has been popping up. [crosstalk 00:32:24]. Alex:                 Go ahead, Pete. Pete:                No, no. Alex:                 All I was going to say is he's been popping up almost every issue of Dark Nights Death Metal doing something in the background. And this is to explain what he has been doing. Pete:                And also if you're going to do a Death Metal book and not talk about Lobo, I mean, you're not really talking about Death Metal then. Justin:              If you're going to have a Wolverine who just has a longer cigar and shorter claws, then yeah, have him be in this space I guess. Pete:                This is not Wolverine. Alex:                 Okay. Justin:              No? Pete:                No. Justin:              What are some of the big differences? Pete:                All right. First off- Justin:              The healing factor? Pete:                … Wolverine doesn't talk this much. And Wolverine isn't as in love with himself as Lobo is. Justin:              Wolverine doesn't talk as much, got it. Pete:                You're just a [inaudible 00:33:09]. Alex:                 Let's move on and talk about Marvel Zombies: Resurrection number four from Marvel Comics written by Philip Kennedy Johnson, art by Leonard Kirk. This book has been, I say surprisingly great. Except Philip Kennedy Johnson has been consistently delivering excellent stuff across the board. Here, the main thing that I've talked up to multiple people who are like, “Ah, I don't want to read a Marvel Zombies book,” was the twist last issue, or at least the plot reveal last issue, that the excuse, the reasoning for the zombies is that it's a bunch of brood who have infested Galactus. So you get the reason they're infesting superheroes is they're the brood. The reason they have a cosmic hugger is because of Galactus. And here our heroes led by Spider-Man with the two Richard children and a bunch of other random folks are attacking the Galactus hive in limbo. It all ends here or does it? I really like this resolution quite a bit. What'd you guys think? Pete:                Yeah. This was just really unbelievable. Continually impressed with the twists and turns that this is taking. I didn't see any of this coming the way it is. Just action galore, some great story, a really impressive balance of story and action. And the art is just phenomenal. This book is one of those ones that I look forward to when I see it's on our kind of pool list, and it continues to impress. Justin:              Yeah. I mean, I agree. There's a lot of smart choices in this story, like smart, creative uses of different Marvel characters. And Pete, you must have loved how this is a fun Spider-Man. Pete:                Yeah. I mean, well, he gets emotional and it's nice. But also love the magic stuff and the Wolverine blade stuff. I don't want to spoil stuff for people. Man, just really cool. Justin:              I was being sarcastic because Spider-Man is just so sad the entire time, he's not having any fun. [crosstalk 00:35:23]. But I love the end as well. Alex:                 And I really enjoy the fact that we're getting both DCs from Tom Taylor and Marvel Zombies: Resurrection from Phillip Kennedy Johnson. They're both smart reinventions of zombie mythos. We're not just getting the zombies in the Marvel Universe, zombies in the DC Universe. They're coming up with canonical reasons for why they exist based on what the specific universes could bring to the table. And that's great, they're both very different stories as well. They're not just zombie stories. And I look forward to hopefully more to come. I was surprised, it seemed like it was tying into whatever that Thanos story that Donny Cates had been teasing is. But I guess we'll see down the road. Alex:                 Next up, The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem number two from Dark Horse comics, story by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, art by Leonardo Romero. This is picking up obviously on the first issue. But as everybody is slowly regaining their mojo and fighting against the live type characters who are infesting the world specifically through the lens of cops who have been taken over by whatever is going out in this world. What'd you think about this one? I think we're really complimentary of the first issue. How'd you feel about the second? Justin:              I love the art on this book. It has such a good tone and vibe for the whole thing. And I mean, it's a little, like with a lot of Gerard Way stuff, you're not a 100% sure with what's happening. But it has a very musical vibe. This feels like a music montage from The Umbrella Academy TV show or something like that, very much like the action feels like there's a lot happening underneath it. Pete:                Yeah. I think the art is the real hero here. It's very stylized and kind of switches back and forth, which is really impressive and still feels about the same story. But yeah, this is … we don't know exactly, but we've got enough to kind of follow. It's interesting, action packed. You can kind of understand why the people are doing what they're doing. Yeah, I've been really impressed with this and I'm going to continue to keep reading it. I think it's great. Alex:                 Particularly with this issue, it feels like it's sort of thing that if you have acab in your Twitter bio, this is the comic for you. Let's move on and talk about Goosebumps: Secrets of the Swamp number two from IDW, written by Marieke Nijkamp, art by Yasmin Florez Montanez. You two in particular were particularly complimentary of this. This is a werewolf tale for the Goosebumps universe, I guess. You liked the first issue quite a bit as two girls teamed up to try to track down some werewolves. What'd you think about the second one? Pete:                Yeah, I was really impressed with the way this relationship kind of moved, because what I was worried about in the first issue is you have two characters who kind of force into this crazy scenario. And I was worried they were going to just fight the whole time and not be able to kind of move throughout the story and kind of take care of business. And I think they handled that in such a good way. I've been really impressed with the Goosebumps. This is a fun story. Art is unbelievable. I liked these depiction of werewolves and I thought it was endurable how that one werewolf just kind of curled up. I think this is very cool and interesting story. I'm excited to read more. Justin:              I have a feeling these werewolves are going to be people eventually. Pete:                What? Justin:              Not a ton habits in this issue as far as driving the story forward. It's mostly like we're scared in the swamp. But yeah, I'm curious to see, it feels like another shoe will drop next issue. Alex:                 Yeah. I still feel like it's not quite bringing all the elements together. The essential idea of two girls who are super into fantasy role-play games, tracking down real werewolves in the woods is a really smart idea, but it's not necessarily paying off with that premise. I hope we see more of that the next issue. Though, I do like the art. I think the characters designs are very nice. And I'm enjoying reading it. It's a nice light read. Next step, Getting it Together number two from Image Comics, co-creators and co-writers Sina Grace and Omar Spahi, art by Jenny D. Fine. We had Sina Grace and Omar Spahi on the live show a couple of weeks back talk about the first issue, which we like quite a bit. This is like Friends, but set in San Francisco and real. This second issue is picking up on that. As things only get more complicated for everybody's relationships. What'd you think? How did it pick up from the well-received premier issue of the title? Pete:                Yeah, I like this. I think being in a band is hard, there's a lot of moving pieces. I like how they're kind of diving into that a little bit, but mainly focusing on the relationships. The art's fantastic. You care enough about the characters to care about this story. It's relatable. I think it's very cool. I liked how they kind of handle it, going back and forth between the different people and their kind of sizes and stuff. I also thought it was very cool the way the art kind of pulls out and pulls in. Sometimes you see wider shots and other things going on and sometimes it's very close up. I think that's very cool storytelling. I also really liked the drinking that was going on there. I can relate to that as well. Justin:              I agree. I think this is a great second issue. First off, just reading this comic from a pandemic point of view, it is like reading science fiction. I'm so jealous of these characters. Pete:                Yeah. Oh my God. Imagine being able to go into a bar and just get a drink. Justin:              Oh, I know. That scene at the bar was like, yes, please, tell me more. How was it? What was it like? What did the bar smell like? Pete:                I even drove by like [inaudible 00:41:55] I was like, “Oh my God. I want to go in.” Justin:              I've never fallen that far. But outside of that, the relationships are really well done in this. And I want to say there are so many great standalone panels where you really see like a perfect encapsulation of a real human action in the moment. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 I like this titles willingness to make the main characters unlikable, which is not an easy thing- Justin:              I like that about us as well. Pete:                Shut up. Alex:                 No, I think that's really good. I mean, you have this main relationship that's broken apart. And the fact that you read both of these characters as they're talking about the relationship, they try to be friends. It just doesn't work. They're both really not very good at it. And there's always this temptation to make those sorts of characters come to some sort of resolution or one character to be better than the other, but it feels like a real relationship right at the middle of this where nobody's right, they just broke up. They are both assholes to each other. They shouldn't have been together. Things went horribly wrong and they continue to go horribly wrong. It feels very realistic in terms of the characterization. And I think that's very nice to see. Let's get to- Pete:                Also fun little story in the back as well. Alex:                 Absolutely. Last bit to talk about, let's get to our extra storage, [inaudible 00:43:27], which I know Pete has been eagerly awaiting. We're just talking about three issues this week. Marauders number 15 from Marvel Comics, written by Gerry Duggan and Benjamin Percy, art by Stefano Caselli. Excalibur number 14 written by Tini Howard and art by Phil Noto. Wolverine number seven written by Benjamin Percy and Gerry Duggan and art by Joshua Cassara. In the first issue, we get a resolution of what happened with the Wolverline after she stabbed. Let me just run through the plot here then you could complain to [inaudible 00:43:56]. Hold on. Alex:                 We get a resolution of the cliffhanger last week was that Wolverine decided to shut down the conflict between Arakko and Krakoa with other worlds stuck in the middle, by stabbing Saturnyne to death, we get [inaudible 00:44:11] to that, turns out she knows what was going on. She shuts it down. We could see the rest of the dinner party as everybody kind of feels each other out and figures out what the straights are. Excalibur 14, we finally get the first of the fights, and spoilers here, I'll go through these, but just to give you the rundown of the fights, the first one, Betsy Braddock, Captain Britain gets beaten up immediately. Pete has taken off his headphones, he is done, he is out of here. Betsy Braddock gets beaten immediately, then I believe the second fight is Doug Ramsey, which he is terrified about. Turns out the fight is to get married at [inaudible 00:44:51]. Justin:              The ultimate fight. Alex:                 The ultimate fight. The third one is a wrestling match between [inaudible 00:44:58] I believe, she loses that, which totally makes sense. At the beginning, drinking contest between Storm and Wolverine. That's a little bit of a tie over there. But then Wolverine gets sucked into a fight, a three-way fight. Pete, put on of your headphones, put on your headphones, Pete, you can hear what we're saying. Come on. Pete:                Can I rant now? Can I please? Justin:              Listen to what we're saying. Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:45:21]. Why are avoiding spoilers? You got to at least hear what I'm saying. Pete:                I can't relive this bullshit again, that you're telling me and not react to it. It's so fucking painful the state here, and you recount the shitty fucking story. Justin:              You love sword fights. Alex:                 Here's what I think is phenomenal about this. I was going into this. Pete is taking off his headphones again. What I think is great about this, that I was not blown away by is probably too strong, but really impressed by, is I was going into this expecting, okay, then we're going to go through 10 sword fights, right? They start off with a sword fight that ends almost immediately. I was like, what the fuck is happening here? Why are we not getting a sword fight? This is, honestly, Pete put back the headphones. Put back on the headphones, Pete. I want you to hear this part. Pete:                Can I rant now please? Alex:                 No, I want you to hear this part that I'm talking about because my feeling when I was reading this, when Betsy Braddock immediately loses it like two pages, I was furious. I was like, “What is happening here?” And then when the second fight was marriage, it was like, where are the sword fights? I was promised sword fights. But by the time they get to the third fight and the fourth fight, I was starting to get really impressed by the structure of the storytelling here. Pete:                Oh, fuck you. Alex:                 Hold on. I was impressed by the structure of the storytelling here, because it's a total swerve. They're going for like, what are your expectations? It's going to be this gauntlet of Ted fights. Instead, we're coming up with different ways of hitting this, definitely getting into spoilers here, but it becomes clear through the storytelling what Saturnyne is doing. But our whole plan is not to have Krakoa beat Arakko, but to have Arakko realize, wait, we are the same as Krakoa and we need to join together. And we're not quite there yet, but that's such a fascinating, interesting, different swerve for the storytelling. I am very excited for where this is going, going forward. Pete, go ahead. Pete:                All right. Well, first off to address what you're saying. If you're going to do that, fucking do a fun issue where they're playing fucking volleyball or whatever, or having a barbecue and they can fucking get along or whatever. But you set up for fucking 14 issues, there's going to be this epic fucking battle. And the first epic battle is shit. The second battle is a marriage. What the fuck are you talking about? The third, fourth, fifth, they're not even fights, they're bullshit fucking side things that don't make any sense. People who won don't get points. Other people are getting random points. What the fuck is going on? You've teed this up for fucking, there's going to be 22 issues of this bullshit, and you've done nothing but rob us of good story with this bullshit where there's actual story that could be happening, but you're not addressing, not just sitting across from each other going, “Oh, you're doing well raising our children.” Fuck you. Pete:                If you're going to get into it, get into it, don't just fucking give us one piece of something to walk away. I'm so frustrated on so many levels with this fucking story. I've had it up to here. I was so pissed. Captain Britain, that whole thing … It's very upsetting when you build us something and then don't come close to even delivering it. You fucking piss in my face when it comes to the delivery and then walk away and go, “Yeah, this shit doesn't even matter.” Justin:              Pete, spoiler, the next issue is the two X men each other's faces for the- Pete:                Yeah, might as well. Justin:              That's the X. Alex:                 Pissing contest. Justin:              Oh, Pete, I feel like you might need to catch your breath for a second. Pete:                The art is very enjoyable. Justin:              Oh, nice. That's great. Pete:                Took a lot for me to say that. Justin:              I agree with Alex. This was such a surprise, but reading these three issues in particular, it really felt like, oh, they're doing like … even though it's not explicitly this, it feels like the fairy realm where nothing is what you expect. And so of course the battle is not going to be just a bunch of random sword fights. Everyone is being tricked. But I think what's smart about that is the Arakko. Pete:                We the reader are being tricked. Justin:              But in the same way that the best stories surprise you. Pete:                Out of our money. Justin:              You're not being tricked out of money. But let me say- Alex:                 Can I pull that [crosstalk 00:50:14] for a second. Justin:              The handful- Alex:                 You're getting these issues for free. Pete:                Yeah. I'm just saying, I'm talking about for the people who pay money for comic books, don't fucking shell out money for this book. You're going to be fucking pissed because- Alex:                 Hold on. Because this is … Obviously I have not read the issues beyond this week, but this is a build, right. And what we're building up to and I could be wrong is we're going to get a actually epic sword fight between apocalypse and annihilation, his wife. But if there were nine issues of sword fights before that, it wouldn't hit as hard when you finally get to that. Pete:                Well, then give me story and then just give me that last fight. Don't fucking promise me great battles along the way, and then fucking be like, no, two people are randomly going to get married for no fucking reason. And all of a sudden, a guy who all he does is talk to things can't talk. And that's the reason he falls in love with her. Are you fucking kidding me? Justin:              Here's what I was trying to say before. Pete:                Sorry Justin. Justin:              It is much more interesting to feel, to have these stories be surprising and interesting, especially at the beginning when like … especially Doug Ramsey, he goes in, either he's going to be straight up murdered or he's going to win randomly. Instead, it's something completely unexpected and I appreciate that. And it also like, as we've met the Arakko warriors, they're so intense, there's so much more, they've been raised in, they fought their entire lives for millennium. One of them has legit never lost a thing. The odds are stacked against the X-Men. And I think the X-Men, they're in one of these issues, they talk about this. They have had a happier world, a happier life. I think they can sort of figure out these games and win this without it being just a brute battle between different people that we've seen a hundred times in a hundred different comics. I think this is actually makes for some better storytelling. The fact that Wolverine issue, where he wins and also loses is fun. It's funny. Wolverine is outplayed twice in these issues. Alex:                 I love the Storm Wolverine drinking battle. That's great. Justin:              Did you see Storm leans in for a kiss? Alex:                 She does. There's so much … who did the art for that one? That was Joshua Cassara. The way that is laid out in that issue and it slowly builds until Wolverine disappears as they're about to kiss because they're completely wasted and they're going to hook up. That's great. I love the tension and inherited that scene. And the fact that Wolverine ends up in this three-way battle where he's just plastered the entire time is so much fun. It's good. Pete, you're upset. Pete:                Yes. I'm very upset because who the fuck … I don't understand why Wolverine is not acting like Wolverine. Wolverine, you know you can't just drink in the middle of a sword battle. You know you're going to have to fight. And also why are you trying to cheat beforehand? I have [crosstalk 00:53:34]. Justin:              They say that it's a drinking game is the battle, so he does it. Pete:                Listen, yeah, you know you can't smell, you're going to get fucked on that. I saw that coming a mile away. Justin:              I've never been fucked during a drinking game or I guess afterwards. Pete:                I don't know. Anyways, I just think that, hey, if you want to tell stories, great, but don't promise me one thing and then deliver another thing. I like a swerve, I like interesting stories. Yes, the marriage is surprising, whatever, great, great for you guys. But when you put me through these fucking origin stories of getting a sword and, oh, man, I got the baddest sword I can get. And now I'm going to go into a battle, the fight for my fuck island. Oh my God, and then you don't do that. You don't even come close to a battle. We haven't gotten one good one yet. And the scoring is all wrong. Justin:              You're really concerned with the score. Alex:                 Yeah, this is- Pete:                If you're fighting to the death and that- Alex:                 The title of the event is called X of arm wrestling. I don't understand what the problem is. Pete:                Fucking arm wrestling. Justin:              It's called ten of marriage. Alex:                 Well, clearly we have a disagreement here, and I think that's a great- Justin:              Two to one, we win. Later. Alex:                 There you go, Arakko wins. That's it for The Stack. [crosstalk 00:55:04]. Arakko, sorry, Justin. That's it for The Stack podcast. If you really like to support us, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. I choose Android and Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show at comic book live on Twitter, comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, keep getting married everybody. Justin:              Get out there, the ultimate sword fight. The post The Stack: Punchline, Taskmaster And More appeared first on Comic Book Club. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's comic book review podcast: Crossover #1 Image Comics Story by Donny Cates Art by Geoff Shaw Sweet Tooth: The Return #1 DC Comics Creator, writer, artist Jeff Lemire Wolverine: Black, White & Blood #1 Marvel Comics Written by Gerry Duggan, Matthew Rosenberg and Declan Shalvey Art by Adam Kubert, Joshua Cassara and Declan Shalvey Origins #1 BOOM! Studios Created by Arash Amel, Lee Krieger and Joseph Oxford Script by Clay McLeod Chapman Art by Jakub Rebelka Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons #1 Dark Horse Comics/IDW Written by Jody Houser & Jim Zub Line art by Diego Galindo Backtrack #8 Oni Press Written by Brian Jones Art by Jake Elphick U.S.Agent #1 Marvel Comics Written by Priest Art by Georges Jeanty That Texas Blood #5 Image Comics By Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips Mighty Morphin' #1 BOOM! Studios Written by Ryan Parrott Illustrated by Marco Renna Spy Island #3 Dark Horse Comics Written bye Chelsea Cain Art by Lea Mitternique Web of Venom: Empyre's End #1 Marvel Comics Written by Clay McLeod Chapman Art by Guiu Villanova Batman #102 DC Comics Written by James Tynion IV Art by Carlo Pagulayan Dryad #6 Oni Press Written by Kurtis Wiebe Illustrated by Justin Barcelo The Goddamned: The Virgin Brides #4 Image Comics Written by Jason Aaron Art by r.m. Guéra Thor #9 Marvel Comics Written by Donny Cates Art by Nic Klein Wicked Things #6 BOOM! Box Created and written by John Allison Art by Max Sarin DCeased: Dead Planet #5 DC Comics Written by Tom Taylor Art by Trevor Hairsine Inkblot #3 Image Comics Written by Emma Kubert Art by Rusty Gladd X-Men #14 Marvel Comics Written by Jonathan Hickman Art by Mahmud Asrar and Leinil Yu Marauders #14 Marvel Comics Written by Gerry Duggan Art by Stefano Caselli SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 What's up, everybody? Welcome to The Stack. I'm Alex. Justin:              I'm Justin. Pete:                I'm Pete. Alex:                 And on The Stack, we talk about a bunch of comic books that have come out this week. Pete:                We sure do. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 This is the main thing people are concerned about right now is new comics. That's what we're all talking about on this Wednesday morning. So let's get into it. Let's talk about new comics. Let's just chill out and have a good time and not stress about absolutely anything else going on in the world. Kick it off with Crossover #1 from Image Comics, story by Donny Cates, art by Jeff Shaw. This is a highly anticipated comic. And I got to say, I feel like it was worth the wait. If you didn't pick it up, mild spoilers here. But the idea of the book is it takes place in a world where a comic book crossover suddenly pops up in the real world, in Colorado, essentially changing the entire world. And a bunch of things reverberate off of there years later, as we meet various characters who have been affected by this comic book crossover. What did guys think about this book? Pete:                Well, from the cover, I really wanted to get blasted in the face with a rainbow. And I'm glad that they took the time to make sure that happened in the comic, so- Justin:              So you felt like you got blasted in the face? Pete:                Yeah, yeah. I felt like they did a good job of getting that across. Justin:              I like this book a lot as well. It's one of those like, bang bang premise books where it's just like, this is it. And then it's like you slowly then start to meet the characters. And I do think in this book specifically, you don't really get too much of a sense of the characters by the end of the first issue. But the premise is such a sort of satisfying idea that I think it sells it on that alone. Pete:                Can I just be the guy who says the thing we're all thinking? That little girl in the comic, shitty artist, she's probably not going to be able to get any work. Justin:              Wow. Because she's got dots. Alex:                 No, no she draws- Pete:                No, because of her artist skills. Alex:                 Yeah, she draws a not so great drawing by the end of the book. Justin:              I see, I see, I got you. Oh at the end, yes. Alex:                 What I really appreciate about this, like you're saying Justin is, there's so many things that are nicely set up in this book beyond the central concept of the book. It's such, as usual, smart writings from Donny Cates. It also really stretches Jeff Shaw, in terms of multiple comic book styles. The promise here is that Donnie and Jeff have gotten characters that we know. This isn't just them, creating a world whole cloth. This is also them bringing in characters from Image from other comic book companies, that this is legitimately a actual comic book crossover. And we haven't quite gotten there yet. Because most of it, we're spending outside of Colorado and the ground zero zone where it all goes down. Alex:                 But the promise is, we're going to get there soon. And I would be shocked if we don't get things like Rick Grimes walking in front of a comic book store, Savage Dragon popping through. At least all of these Image Comics characters, and potentially some DC and Marvel characters through as well. As long as it stays grounded in those characters, the main characters of the book, I think it's going to be a wild ride to take. Justin:              Yeah, and the revelation at the end of the first issue was like, “Oh, shit, can they do this?” And I think that's a great feeling to have at the end of an issue. Like, can they pull this off? And feeling like, “Well, this issue is good.” So yeah, they probably can. Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                It'll be interesting. I think it does a good job of being like, “Here is something that… We all know what a crossover means. Like, here's the title that's going to grab you and then kind of try to put a twist on it.” And it is that will they be able to pull this off? And that's very exciting for a first issue. Alex:                 Let's talk about another book that probably shouldn't work. But I think of course totally does. Sweet Tooth: The Return #1 from DC Comics creator, writer and artist, Jeff Lemire. As you can figure out from the title, this is Jeff Lemire, returning to a almost perfect comic book series, Sweet Tooth years later, that was about a young animal boy that pairs up with an old man journeys through a post apocalyptic world try to find Safe harbor. They eventually kind of found it. And this picks up as happens in the first panel of the first issue, 300 years later, except things are happening again. As they say in old Twin Peaks, it is happening again. And that's definitely a lot of the vibe that I think we get here. Man, I loved this book and the audacity of it and the fact that I have no idea where it's going to go. Particularly by the end, how'd you guys feel? Justin:              I agree with you like the idea of setting the premise like, oh, the story is starting over and we're hitting very similar beats, but in a totally different world, means they're going to just like totally throw that out of whack. Like very quickly, I think. And I love Sweet Tooth. It's such a distinct book, and to be able to see it back on the shelves in a limited series though. Right. So that's a totally different thing. Alex:                 Yes. Pete What do you think about this one? You're a big Sweet Tooth fan. Pete:                Yeah, this was- Justin:              You got a real sweet tooth. Pete:                Yeah, it just… Don't get me started, I eat so much fucking candy. Alex:                 Hey Pete you got the sweetest teeth I've ever seen. Justin:              Hey it's Sweet Pete. Who's here? It's Sweetie Petey. Looking for his little sugar lick. Alex:                 Sweet Pete you want one of your meat treats? Pete:                When you guys are done. Alex:                 Never. Justin:              Never done. Pete:                So Black Label's putting this, which is interesting. It means they can kind of get a little crazier. So it'll be interesting to see how much they push on that side. But I thought like the art was great. It really felt like Sweet Tooth. I thought it was very kind of weird world that he kind of woke up in. This inside, but kind of outside world. So I think they did a good job being like, “Hey, remember everything you love still here? New-ish kind of scenario. Come along for this ride.” And I think yeah, it does a great job of getting you excited for another story, with this team with this kind of gang that we know and love. So I think they did a great job of kind of returning to the well on this. Alex:                 Yeah, I agree. Let's move on to another one that I'm sure you like Pete. Wolverine Black, White and Blood #1 from Marvel Comics written by Gerry Duggan, Matthew Rosenberg, Declan Shalvey, art by Adam Kubert, Joshua Cassara and Declan Shalvey. As you could probably figure out from the title, I think this is an anthology all about Wolverine that uses black, white, and blood and that's pretty much it. So- Justin:              Actual blood. Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              Human blood is what it's printed in this book. Pete:                So, this is just the story that I need right now. With all the insane shit going on I just want a Wolverine story. Okay, I don't want to have to think about Fuck Island or how many swords, whatever, who's got and read a bunch of fucking menus or articles or whatever the fuck in between panels. Just give me a fucking comic book about Wolverine. Thank you. Yes, this is my favorite pick from the week. I loved it. Great use of red, and then the black and white coloring. This is just a lot of fun and good times. Justin:              Exactly. Pete, you're right. It's so simple. The first story is just a simple story about a man from the 19th century who is born a mutant, has a healing factor he falls in love with the red haired woman. Later he is absorbed into a Weapon X program which is run by a secret government organization. He's experimented on, adamantium is added to his claws for some reason, in his skeletal system. He is then trained to fight using magnets, fight other monsters, that are built in this thing, and that people eventually feel pity for him because he does have some sort of conscience. It's a simple story. Pete:                Yeah it's simple. Just give me a Wolverine story. All right. Alex:                 Classic. It's like Dick and Jane, basically. Justin:              Yes. Exactly, you're talking about of course, the Jim Carrey movie. Alex:                 As usual with this sort of thing I think. Gerry Dugan and Matthew Rosenberg, Declan Shalvey, all good storytellers. Pete:                The Dugs. Alex:                 The Dugs. So they're all solid stories. For my money, the Declan Shalvey- Pete:                Rosenberg's great. Alex:                 … The third story is easily the best one. And I think part of that is that Declan Shalvey, as both the writer and the artist understands the challenge here and creates a story that plays to the strengths of the panels. It's simpler, it's more straightforward. It plays to those splashes, the small splashes both of blood but also the splash of the paddles. And I like that one quite a bit. Personally. Justin:              Interesting. I really like the Weapon X story from Gerry Dugan. Pete:                I loved the Rosenberg story the most. The Wolverine and a baby, I don't need to see that. But [Zaubs 00:09:40] you do you. But what's nice is three stories. If you pick this book up, probably like one of them. I thought this was great. You what you're getting and it delivers. Justin:              One of my favorite movies was Three Claws and a Little Baby. So I get it. Pete:                I thought you were going to say and a little lady, but you didn't. Justin:              No, I preferred baby. Alex:                 That's the sequel. Justin:              The sequel, yeah. Alex:                 Origins- Justin:              One claw's played by Steve Gutenberg, one claw's played by Ted Danson… Pete:                Come on, The Gute- Alex:                 What do you prefer? Do you prefer Three Claws and a Baby or Claws Academy? Justin:              That's though, or the Santa Claws? We're getting to that season. Alex:                 Origins #1 from Boom Studios created by Arash Amel, Lee Krieger and Joseph Oxford, script by Clay McLeod Chapman and art by Jacob Rebelka . I got to tell you I probably should have done some research here because I was very confused about the credits. Is this a video game or was this a previous property Why are there so many creators and a different script writer? What's going on? But as it is the hero here I think is Jacob Rebelka's art which is weird, set in a post-apocalyptic world, there's a bunch of people wandering through. It seems very close to the Museum of Natural History but clearly isn't. They pick up those strawberries but the strawberries are very bad for you. I needed more information personally in this first issue, but I still like the art quite a bit. Justin:              The strawberries are just filled with worms. It's not like they're… Alex:                 Oh, okay. Gotcha. So normal strawberries. Justin:              A normal strawberry. Alex:                 Yes. Justin:              I agree with you, the art in this book is amazing. I'm very intrigued by the story. I don't know exactly what's happening. It feels like there's a some sort of clone baby, but they talk about the baby, who is then later somewhat more of an adult, is named David. But they make it seem like he's famous somehow. Is there a David that you think it is, like David Beckham? Alex:                 Copperfield? Justin:              Oh, yes. When I was five, David Copperfield made me disappear. Pete:                Yeah, you've told us that story. Alex:                 Yeah, we know. Justin:              Have I told you that story? Yeah, well, just letting me know, it's available- Alex:                 Not to interrupt but when I was five, David Beckham made me disappear. Pete:                Wow. Justin:              He bent you out of reality. Alex:                 Pete, what do you think about this one? Pete:                I think the art's are unbelievable. I love the kind of like, seeing the subway entrance in the middle of the grass was kind of really cool. Justin:              It's lush. Pete:                Yeah, it's very creative. It's a cool story. I'm excited to see where this goes. But as of now, it's like, there's this baby named David. And so it's like, is this… Justin:              Oh, David Schwimmer. Pete:                Oh, it's a friend's reference. Because David Schwimmer did have that scene where he got it on in the museum. Justin:              Yes, he worked in a museum and it's in New York. Pete:                Yeah. So that's it, right there. Justin:              And if you're going to need to clone a human to restart the population. You're going to want a Schwimmer. You're going to want to get a Schwimmer. Pete:                Yeah, you're going to want a Schwimmer. Alex:                 You got to yell “Get me the pall bearer.” Justin:              Yes, definitely. Iconic film. Alex:                 Stranger Things Dungeons and Dragons #1 from Dark Horse Comics and [crosstalk 00:13:16]- Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Written by Jody Houser and Jim Zub. Line art by Diego Galindo. This is something that Jim Zub plugged on our live show many, many weeks ago at this point. I still kind of didn't know what to expect going in this. But I was surprised how much I enjoyed this. There are less of the Stranger Things and more as an homage, a loving tribute to the history of Dungeons and Dragons is what kind of comes through here. And that's kind of nice. Pete:                Yeah, that's what the Zub-hub was talking about. Like he was really talking about how this really is a love letter to D&D, and kind of really gets into it. And I thought that was a cool kind of way to come at it. You can tell from this, the passion kind of just comes through in the pages. At first when he was telling us on the show, I was like, “Okay.” But this really works in this comic, I thought this was a lot of fun. And I love the kind of little pages at the end where you can kind of start your own. I thought this was great. I thought this was a lot of fun. Justin:              It felt like regular things. It felt like, just things. They were just going about their business as kids. That's not a criticism per se it's just I think this is a hard prequel to the TV show Stranger Things. Bringing in how they got into D&D, which is very cool. And I like this book a lot better than the other Stranger Things book that we read, I think last week, because it feels a little more true to the characters and it feels like in line with the story of the TV show. Pete:                It's going to get strange. All right, they're just kind of starting things out first. Alex:                 Yeah, they've started with Dungeons and Dragons. They're going to move to Advanced Dungeons and Dragon and that's when things are going to get real fucked up. Pete:                Real strange. Justin:              That's crazy. Alex:                 Let's move on to Backtrack #8 from Oni Press written by Brian Joines and are by Jake Elphick. This is, as we've plugged in many, many times, about a Cannonball Run style race but through time. Here mysteries are slowly starting to unfold about the racers who are all tied to the race in different ways. They also end back in pirate times, which is a fun era to put them in. I, as usual, had quite a blast reading this issue. How'd you guys feel about this one? Justin:              It's fun. We're getting into a lot of like, specific character, small moves. And I feel like we're building up towards sort of some big revelations here pretty soon. And yeah, I like them being in pirate times. It's a fun, iconic place for them to be. Pete:                Yeah, it's interesting, because it's like this crazy race throughout time. So you're like, “Oh, Fast and Furious meets Back to the Future.” But like, what's great is we're getting as we're in this insane race, we're getting little kind of windows into people's backstory, why they're here, why they are the way that they are. And it's nicely layered, like some comics issues are more focused on the race. This one's a little bit more focused on the kind of story, which is good. This comic continues to be really great, the art is fantastic. And it really adjusts to what time period it's in such a great way. Alex:                 I also like that we've finally gotten to a point with this book where it feels like Well, you can't eliminate any of these characters. But of course, they're going to and that's going to make it hurt that much more. We're not quite there yet, but in the next couple of issues, it feels like that's coming. And that's a good emotional place for the book to be in. Still a blast to read. If you haven't read it, definitely pick it up. Alex:                 Next up US Agent #1 from Marvel Comics written by Priest, art by George Jeanty. I was very excited personally to see George Jeanty on this book. I've really liked his art a lot since he was on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other things. He's good stuff. Of course priest, always reliable. And this is a bonkers book about the asshole Captain America going through the heartland, fighting who even knows why. But I really really enjoyed this quite a bit just for how best up it was. How'd you guys feel about it? Justin:              Yeah, if you're looking for sort of a Hawkeye style comic. I feel like this has some strong like Hawkeye vibes back when he was living in Brooklyn with the Russian tracksuit dudes. That whole thing feels very much in line with what this book is. Except he's a little bit more of a shit head. Sort of in the Scott Lane Ant Man style and constantly being mistaken for Captain America which that's going to burn. Pete:                Yeah, I was really happy when that one pizza delivery guy kicked the shit out of them. That was great. Justin:              It is a weird… Like the story, like USA Agent. There's a pizza delivery man who becomes his sort of sidekick. He's keeping all these other pizza delivery people in the basement. Like I don't quite know what the whole thing, the whole deal is here. But it's fun. And it's super unique, I feel like. Alex:                 Yeah, that feels like typical Priest stuff to be where it's just these details thrown in. Where you're like, “What I can't quite get a handle on this, but it's still fascinating at the same time.” Let's move into a very dark turn for a book that we've been enjoying quite a bit. That Texas Blood #5, from Image Comics by Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips. Again, when we had Chris Condon on the show a couple of weeks back, he promised that things were going to get real bad real soon, and oh, boy, they got real bad as our main character is losing his mind down in Texas doing some very dark stuff. In the name of his brother being killed. This is definitely the most brutal issue of this yet. I would say. Justin:              Yeah, I like this book a lot. I feel like the art in this issue specifically is so good. Some hard boiled crime I'm sure this book gets compared to Criminal a ton. And if you're a fan of that, like this is right in line. I do think it's strange that they use the same interior monologue lettering as a Criminal. And Jacob Philips is Sean Phillips' son. I would move away from that because I think this book really stands alone on its own right. It doesn't need to feel like it's drafting off of Criminal's success. Alex:                 How do you feel about Pete? Pete:                Yeah, I think the art's unbelievable. This is some real great storytelling, very intense. This book moves at a very interesting pace. It's sometimes very fast, sometimes it seems like slow. But this is a really kind of great storytelling. Great character stuff. I'm very much enjoying myself. Alex:                 Let's move on then and talk about Mighty Morphin #1 from Boom Studios, written by Ryan Parrott, illustrated by Marco Renna like that Texas blood This is a brutal issue for the Power Rangers. Just devastating, it's a lot of blood. Justin:              Devastating. Oh, Power Rangers. That makes sense, now. They must have left the other two words off the title. Alex:                 Yeah, well, that's how you know they're being serious. Unlike the other actually very dark Power Rangers books that we've been reading recently. This is a return to form. This is like classic Power Rangers. The Green Ranger is evil is he not? We don't even know who he is. Doesn't matter. You got all the villains here. You got all the Power Rangers. But with a slightly more modern style. How did you people feel about this one, particularly given that we've been quite enjoying the other Power Rangers books that have been coming out from Boom. Justin:              This book felt like when you're at a party, when we used to go to parties, and you end up talking to someone you don't really know. And they tell you a very long story and you're like, “I don't know you. Why are you telling me this crazy involved story about your life? Like where are we going with this?” It felt like, “Oh yeah, I guess I see how that relates. Oh, the mighty Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Yeah. Oh, I see like we're dealing with Zed and all this stuff.” But I will say I enjoyed reading. Despite the fact that it's definitely feels like not my wheelhouse. Pete, how did you feel? Got to shoot your Bulk and Skull? Pete:                Yeah, I mean, this is great. This is just fun. This, to me was like a animated version of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers kind of like the new update of Voltron. I very much had a lot of fun. We got some great fighting, some badass panda stuff. It was fun to see them talk about making the villains and that kind of stuff. Yeah, I thought the reveal at the end was great. I think this was just fun, Mighty Morphin comic stuff. Justin:              It checks out. That's the title and he said stuff at the end. So that's what it is. Alex:                 I did like the reveal at the end. I think what I have been responding to and the other Mighty Morphin books that have been set in this post apocalyptic world where the Power Rangers mostly lost in the villains that are trying to just kind of hold on to what they have, is this idea of playing with the continuity. Which the shows could never do because they're mostly working off of what the Japanese versions, right? Of Power Rangers then remixing them. So they're all very kiddy and very silly and badly dubbed on purpose and all of these things. That just I never liked, this splits the difference between those two things. So to your point Justin, I also actually had a fun time reading this even if it is not quite my thing. But definitely more of my thing is those other books I would personally lean towards those. Justin:              I agree and obviously I've always been a Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. But it's especially funny the way that… I was surprised by how all their animals, the animal machines they ride are like saber toothed tiger and all that. I was like, “They all look exactly the same, but they're all different.” The mythology of the Power Rangers is so weird and convoluted. Alex:                 Yeah, I just can't get a handle on it. Pete:                Yeah, if that stuff made sense to you won't be pulled out of the story like that I think. Alex:                 I'll tell you, not to pull back the curtain too much but at my day job I got offered this exclusive clip for I want to say Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Dino Thunder or something like that. Pete:                Oh, wow. Alex:                 Yeah, I know. And they sent it to me. And it was the casts from like four different Power Rangers shows all getting together. So clearly we've done enough stuff that I could watch it I was like, “Okay, this is like Avengers: Endgame for Power Rangers.” But it was such a deep dive to understand what they were talking about at any point in that clip. Normally a clip I'm like, all right, I could write this up and half an hour tops. That's it. But this one I was like opening up wikis and looking at casts, and debut dates and everything. I was like “What is happening here? This is weird.” But there you go. Deep dives. Alex:                 Let's move on to another one. Which is a one of my favorite books that is coming out right now, Spy Island #3 from Dark Horse Comics written by Chelsea Kane art by Lia Miternique. So this is set on an island in the Bermuda Triangle that is filled with spies of different types. In this issue our mean spy is starting to figure out that her father, who is also on the island hiding out as a mime may have a bigger plan at work. We also find out more about what happened to the first two issues in terms of what she laid down. This book is fantastic. In my mind, it is like a perfect mix between Mind Management and Superior Foes of Spiderman with a flavor of his own. And I am loving every single issue of it. How are you guys feeling? Justin:              Pete? Pete:                Well, I was waiting for you to go. This is really kind of crazy, but it's also a lot of fun. I also like the kind of art. The way the art changes throughout the book. The whole like a series where she's dating different dudes and the kind of like the way the father sees the dudes, very interesting. Yeah, I think this is a very creative, cool book and the art matches it perfectly in such a cool way. Yeah, I'm not always understanding what's happening, but it's very interesting and very creative. So yeah, I think this is a great book. Justin:              Yeah, I agree. It's really funny. It reminds me a bit of Mark Russell's Flintstones, I guess all of Mark Russell's stuff. If you're a fan of that, like this book is like legitimately funny, it has sort of an irreverent tone. The way they do full page sort of jokes, visual jokes is really awesome. But it's still has like some… I'm very interested in the story as well. Like, these characters are fun. Like I don't quite know what's happening with the mystery itself. But it's just a smart world and universe this book creates in every issue. Alex:                 Yeah. I just wanted to reiterate what you said Pete about Lia Miternique's art which collages in so many different styles throughout the book, it's so impressive. Pete:                Very impressive. They're straight flexing. It's unbelievable in this. Alex:                 It's great. Yes, straight flexing is actually a really good way to put it. It's definitely a book to be like, “Here's what we could do. Here's what we can show off.” It's awesome. Definitely pick it up. Next up Web of Venom: Empyres End #1 for Marvel Comics, written by Clay McCloud Chapman, art by Guiu Villanova. This is as you can probably tell from the title, following up on the End of Empyre as a bunch of the Skrull and Cree leave Earth at run directly into the King in Black, the next event, and have literally like a crossover, while one of them is heading one way the other is heading the other. And ends up like aliens on a Skrull ship. I like this, I was a little hesitant, just because it wasn't Donny Cates ready to get and he's been such a mastermind behind this event. But I thought this was a very good, scary book. Justin:              That's such a funny way to put it, Alex. Because it really does feel like it's we're backstage at Marvel and one event is like, “Hey, we finished our performance. Thank you so much.” And another event is like, “Oh, we're up next. We're going to… Sorry. Oh, did we sorry, we bumped into you and made a big mess with all of our symbiont juice. So sorry.” Because it is like, when I saw this I was like, “Empyre. No way.” But it is actually a great story and it does have that sort of Aliens. Like it's game over man for everybody in this issue. And the King in Black is terrifying. Like I'm excited to see this event the more I see of sort of the insanity. Reminds me of the insane Adam Warlock from back in Infinity Gauntlet days, as the villain here. And it's a good read even though it feels unessential from the title. It's worth picking up. Pete:                Yeah, I mean, they got some space vampire bats in here. This is just some crazy, fun stuff that's going on. Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of like alright, space aliens. Cool. There's not too much more going on but it's definitely a cool comic and worth checking out. Alex:                 Next up Batman 102 from DC Comics written by James Tynion IV in art by Carlo Pagulayan. This is the intro of Ghost-Maker who of course, is the guy who builds ghosts. We all know that in the DC Universe. Justin:              Yes. Pete:                No, no, because when he makes ghost by killing you and then you're a ghost. That's how that's… Justin:              Oh no, I think he makes the ghost in the original Pac Man game. He made Inky, Blinky, Dot. Pete:                And also just in case you're wondering he doesn't like crochet little ghosts either makes them. No. Okay, he kills people turning them into ghosts. Justin:              I guess we have different takes. Alex:                 So this introduces that character. And Ghost-Maker, well, he got introduced before, but this is his official introduction. He is going directly for Clownhunter. So we got two new additions to the Batman mythos, going head to head with Batman, of course stuck in the middle. As it turns out, though, Ghost-Maker has a deep tie to Batman's origin. Pete you got to like this right? There was a lot of fighting. Pete:                Yeah, this was a great issue. I love the action. Also fun reveal. Well, all right, let me back up the truck a little bit. Love the Batman like punch entrance. Nice when you can like make your entrance and punch someone in the face. I mean, that's like- Justin:              Yes. I've seen you walk into a lot of weddings. Pete:                Yeah, anyways. But I think this was a ton of action, which is great. But also the way they kind of knew each other, the way it was like, “Ghost-Maker.” “Batman.” And like right into it. It was really cool. Also very interesting how Clownhunter is still hanging on like still a thing. I thought Clownhunter would have kind of like faded away after Batman gave him his talking to. But not the case. And now we're also dealing with Grinners which is interesting. Talking to Oracle on the old earpiece there “Okay, that's cool.” But I think that they also had some funny moments like when Knife Guy was like, “I hate teenagers.” That was hilarious. Justin:              Because you hate teenagers? Pete:                No, no, I just think that it was like a funny line, where he's like, “Teenagers.” But yeah, I think there's some interesting stuff happening in this. And instead of kind of like a cool down from such a big event that we just had. The fact that they kind of ramped it right back up into that it's very kind of interesting. And also cool name, Ghost Stories part one. Justin:              I feel like James Tynion got sort of his first big story out of the way. And now he can really settle in and create his bat universe. And I think Clownhunter, Ghost-Maker are a big part of that. Really leaving his mark on Batman as a character and the whole world there. And I like that. I'm excited that we're sort of in that point in his arc here. Pete:                And it's also interesting to have a villain that's like, “Yo, Batman, do your fucking job. Gotham is a shit show. It's constantly on fire. Like What's your deal?” That's an interesting way to come at it. Alex:                 A lot of the discussion in this book is about what Gotham is now that the Joker War is done and what it's going to become next. I'm excited for what's going to become next. And I trust James Tynion enough to bring it there. But to your point, Justin, he thought he was only going to be on until Issue 100 and he's continuing from there. So in my mind definitely feels like “Oh, okay, I'm going to keep going. Alright, I'm going to set up the next 15, 20, 30 issues, however long I'm on for.” Versus what I was doing before, which was my definitive Batman story. Alex:                 So I'm curious to see what this sets up and where it goes. Because again, I trust James Tynion's storytelling, he has certainly proved himself more than capable. Let's move on to Dryad #6 from Oni Press written by Kurtis Wiebe, and illustrated by Justin [Barcello 00:33:49]. This issue our main family is still hanging out in cyberpunk Tech City, trying to figure out what's going on. Trying to figure out if they should help the kids who are currently in a coma. Turns out they don't need help, they do wake up by the end. We find out another huge revelation about our family. I got to tell you, I was not totally into the cyberpunk stuff in this issue. But I definitely turned around by the end. Love the twist there. I thought that was so great for the series going forward. What was your guys take on it? Justin:              I agree. I love the way the story is unfolding. I think the way they're able to capitalize on this two pronged like fantasy side of the story and the technological side of the story. In a way that it's a tough trick to pull off. And I think it is working on both fronts. I like the sort of Blade Runner vibe to the front end of the book. And then when we shift generations to the kids for the back end, I like all these characters. I'm curious to hear… It feels like this is sort of like a mission went bad a long time ago and we're dealing with the fallout is what this series is actually about. So I want to know What that is. I feel like that was a reveal in this issue that we didn't really know from before. Pete:                This book continues to be very, very creative. Each issue kind of comes at things a little differently. It's fun to see what you're going to get with every issue. Yeah, and we keep getting deeper into the story. They're doing a good job of kind of piecemealing information while still giving us a lot of action. Fun reveal at the end. I think this is very interesting. And also it's cool the way they kind of swap around styles. So I continued to be impressed by this book. Alex:                 Cool. Next up The Goddamned: the Virgin Brides from Image Comics written by Jason Aaron and art by R.M. Guera. Pete, I know what you're going to say it's creepy. So Justin, what did you think about this button? Justin:              This is a book you want to leave out for your grandparents, they're going to love the fighting, they're going to love the very short tops that expose all of your breasts. It's a good stuff for the older generation. But I like this book a lot. The R.M. Guera art is unbelievable. It's so detailed. It feels like it's in the style of Prince Valiant, but with a exciting, much more irreverent story. And the twists and turns, it's also written from the point of view where like, I don't know… We have our protagonists who are on the run. They're virgin brides who are supposed to mate with this like monster basically, that is the god here. And they escaped, we're on the run. And then things aren't going well, basically. And I feel like this book could be very harsh with its character, so I really don't know what's going to happen next. Alex:                 Yeah, I agree. That's one of the biggest things about the book is it's very dark, and it's a super gritty, I hesitate to say realistic but that probably gives the best sense of it take on the Bible and biblical mythology. But if you look at the Bible, lots of people dying all the time, or almost dying or horrible things happening to them almost constantly. So it's actually very- Justin:              Not a fun read. Not a fun read. Alex:                 Yeah. Not a beach… I don't usually take the Bible to the beach, to be honest, like to read it, to just chill out. But like you said, R.M. Guera's art is fantastic. This is very dark. I don't know what's going to happen in the next issue at all. But there's a crazy cliffhanger that happens that was awesome. Good stuff. Let's move on to talk about Thor #9. Pete:                I just wanted to say. Alex:                 Yeah, yeah. Pete:                I agree with you. The ending was really kind of amazing. Justin:              You do like it, you love it. Pete:                No, it's creeptastic in all the wrong ways. Justin:              But do you like the art Pete? Because this is R.M. Guera, same artist on Scalped? Which you like. Pete:                Yeah, amazing artist. Alex:                 Would you say it's worth it for the art alone? Pete:                Nope. Justin:              Wow. Alex:                 You're very wrong. Justin:              Can't get past it. Alex:                 Yeah. Thor #9 from Marvel Comics written by Donny Cates art by Nick Klein. So this is kicking off a new crazy story arc. Donny Cates doing his Donny Cates Marvel thing as he goes back to an old part of Marvel continuity, lifts it up again and makes it as fucked up as possible. In this case, we're exploring what happens to Donald Blake when Thor comes out. Something that we haven't touched out in years. Where does he go? And it ends up being pretty messed up. But I love where the storyline is going. And Nick Klein's art of this book is phenomenal. So good. What did you guys think? Justin:              Totally agree. Like I love… This is my favorite book of the week, the way that finding this little bit of Thor mythology that has been just legitimately ignored. Dr. Blake was the character that was Thor's human form and he would tap his walking stick and become Thor. And Thor just hasn't transformed out of him. It's like Bruce Banner has been the Hulk for so long that like what's Bruce Banner up to? And we get to explore that side of that here. And it is fucked up. And it's super smart the way we get there and to have Donald Blake become this new aspect of the Thor mythology I think is super exciting. Pete:                I don't know man. Like this is to me, it's like, it's okay if we're out of ideas, guys, we can just maybe… Justin:              Jesus. Alex:                 Wow. Justin:              Harsh take. Pete:                What it's like, “Hey, remember how I turn into this guy? Well, when I turn into him, he just kind of walks the earth. What if he got angry about that?” And it's like “Wait, what is happening? What are we doing right now?” Alex:                 That's what's happening, you just described what's happening. Pete:                Yeah, I know, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Justin:              It's fun though. It's like when Wolverine when he died he had to fight a sword dude. Like that was cool. Pete:                Okay. Alex:                 Was it? Pete:                Yeah, I don't know if it was. Justin:              I liked the fighting this sword dude. I didn't like the fact that he came back from just a little speck of blood Lobo-style. Alex:                 I do love… I don't know, just I love the visual of what happens when Donald Blake finally comes out of his reverie, the way that Nick Klein draws him. I don't know if Nick Klein specifically designed him Pete:                The art's unbelievable. Alex:                 What? Pete:                The art's unbelievable. Alex:                 Yeah, it's great. It's worth it for the art alone, I would say. Pete:                Wow. Justin:              Wow. Alex:                 The that Nick Klein designs the new Dr. Donald Blake is great. Justin:              What a cool turn of phrase. Alex:                 It's a great new villain for the Marvel Universe. Spoiler, obviously, but I think in the same way that Donny introduced Cosmic Ghost Rider. And it immediately became like, “Oh, it's this thing. Like that exists. That's fun. That is a fun thing to look at.” Yeah, it's the same thing with whatever Dr. Donald Blake has become. It's a fun clear visual and I love it. And I'm excited to see what this means, it ties into the overall mythology that he's building for Thor, with what's happening with Mjolnir. It just feels very smart across the board. Justin:              100%. Alex:                 Next up, Wicked Things #6 from Boombox created written by John Allison and art by Max Sarin. We've been very complimentary of this book, which follows a teen detective who is framed, probably for murder, as she ends up teaming up with the police department in I believe London. Not 100% sure, but I'm going to say yes. And she is pretty much smarter than him. This is a weird ending for this book I got to say. It feels like there were supposed to be more issues. And then it got cut short, personally, which is disappointing, even though I enjoyed this issue as well. Justin:              Well, that may be true. It does feel… It could also just be a cliffhanger that they're really pushing. I think the last page makes it feel like there was truly like a page ripped out of the back of the book. And I was like, “Wait, what?” I wanted to know how this conversation ends. But in general, it's fun. This main character is such a fun… I love her energy. I like the world this is in which is like this detective, 14 to 16 years old, the best detective in the world. And there's a moment where she's being held hostage and you expect her to like elbow the guy and get away. But it doesn't happen because she's just a regular teen detective. And I think that's fun that they're really keeping within the storyline. Pete:                Just a regular teen detective? Justin:              Yeah, like a… Pete:                Like a normal teen detective. Justin:              Because like, surely you were a teen… You solved some crimes in your small town, right Pete? Pete:                Oh definitely. Definitely did. Yeah, I agree. This is a ton of fun. Alex:                 Sorry, Pete, what did they call you? They called you Thesaurus LePage? Pete:                No they didn't. Justin:              He was really good with saying other words that were like words. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              He didn't solve a lot of mysteries but he was like, “Oh, I think you mean sweaty.” Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                Yeah, I think it did feel a little rushed. Every issue up until this issue didn't feel that way. But man, this is still a great story. Really creative, fun, main character. I could definitely see a lot more with her. I hope they keep going in some iteration or whatever. But yeah, this has been a lot of fun and I hope this doesn't end. Alex:                 I agree with definitely worth picking up in trade whenever it's collected and hopefully we'll get a second series of it. Moving on to DCeased: Dead Planet #5 from DC Comics, written by Tom Taylor and art by Trevor Hairsine. In this issue John Constantine is launching a desperate mission to fight back against the anti life plague. And it's predictably dark but with moments of real humanity and humor, everything that we've come to expect from this series I think so far. Justin:              This book has really migrated to the top of my stack like I love reading a book. It's a good book. The characters are fun. The Damian Wayne Batman is great. Constantine still a dick. Just a straight up dick. Pete:                Oh man. Justin:              There's some fun jokes here. Pete:                Constantine is great in this book, this book continues to impress. And I think this was a really great Constantine, hilariously messing with Dr. Fate and Swamp Thing even getting in on the joke. Batman doing father jokes, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that. But Batman getting a punch in at the end, liked that. That was good. But yeah, this continues to be a very creative, very funny, well done comic that does like a lot of cool things. The Shazaam moment in this is so badass. That was so cool. Yeah, I thought this was a great, great issue. Justin:              And there's a lot of dread here still where like any character could die and everything could go wrong at any moment. And I believe on the last page at the bottom they say things get worse. Alex:                 There we go. Next up Inkblot #3 from Image Comics written by Emma Kubert, art by Rusty Gladd. I got to tell you I keep throwing this book in the stack because I can't wait to figure it out. Like what's going on here. There's a little bit more of a hint in terms of this is a cat that can jump through universes? Pete:                That's the thing. Alex:                 I guess that's the idea of the book that they establish at the beginning here. Pete, you've been enjoying this book. What did you think about this issue? Pete:                Yeah, I don't know what it is. It's just the two eyes are so adorable. It gets me. Justin:              You're a cat guy. Pete:                I'm a cat guy now. So like I get it, cats are very mysterious. They have a lot of things going on that they don't share with us. And yeah, I think that this makes sense of how the Loch Ness Monster came into fruition. I think this is just a crazy kind of creative book. And the art is phenomenal, some adorable storytelling. This is just fun. Alex:                 I just wanted to mention Justin before you get into your comments if you are a cat who would like to share something with us. Please email us at ComicBookClublive@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you. Justin over to you. Justin:              Yes. I always pick up after the cat call out. Pete:                After the cat plug. Justin:              Cat plug. We're looking to meet some single cats. There's something about this book. The art is really cool. And I think changing gears a little bit with this issue, for the few issues it was like what's the big story here? But I think reading this issue it was like, oh maybe it's just like fun little romps with this cat. Alex:                 Yeah, yeah I think so too. I felt a lot better about this one that I did for the first two because I was trying to figure it out. But I had the same sense as you did Justin. I reserve the right to be robbed with issue #4. But the art is so good and it is a fun little pirate adventure with a cat and the Loch Ness Monster, enjoyable stuff. Justin:              I reserve the right to be wrong. Alex:                 Last thing here we're going to end with our X of Swords, X of Swords block, talking about two issues that came out from Marvel. We got X-men #14, written by Jonathan Hickman art by Mahmud Asrar and Leinil Yu. Marauders #14 written by Gerry Dugan and art by Stefano Caselli, two very different issues. So I do think actually, if anything, we kind of need to talk about them differently. But so far, the champions of Arakko and the champions of Krakoa and they gathered in Otherworld for a dinner. In the first issue and X-men we find out about Apocalypse and his wife, what went on there we find out about her secret history. Pete's got to love that one because there was a lot of text and confusing things that happened. Alex:                 And then in Marauders everybody gets together for dinner and things go predictably badly. Would you think about these chapters of X of Sword? And Pete I know you're upset they're not fighting with swords yet. That aside, how'd you feel about these books? Pete:                Alright, so first off you know what's better than having a huge battle that we've been building to taking the time out to have a dinner first. Alex:                 Agreed, agreed. Pete:                And let's just talk at the dinner table. Justin:              When you're hungry. Pete:                And really just kind of talk things out and have a walk? “Hey, Apocalypse, why don't we hold hands and talk about the past and not fight. And get into a giant action sequence like maybe some people would enjoy?” Justin:              Well, let me give you a quick breakdown of the way the story. They teleport to this strange dimension. Dinner, dinner, sleep, midnight snack, brunch, coffee, sword sharpening and shining. Alex:                 You're forgetting something in the middle there Justin, there's several times when they get handed cards. Pete:                What's not to love. Justin:              That's right. Let's not forget about the… Pete:                [crosstalk 00:49:38]. Justin:              So I feel like there's some like magic happening, some light table magic. I think someone's going to eventually have a yo-yo and other like juggling tricks. It's just a fun day out. Anyway, where was I? Okay, then it's going to be lunch. And then they're going to have like a baseball game. Pete:                Don't forget to show the menu. They're going to show the menu a couple times. Alex:                 The menu was fun. It was a fun menu. Justin:              The menu was very fun. Well, let me say so Pete's criticisms aside, and let's put them far, far aside. I love this. I think that the X-Men issue by Jonathan Hickman is a full take down of Apocalypse. It's like a subtle takedown of Apocalypse. Apocalypse went to earth and he like had these like piddling battles with the X-Men, claiming that he was like survival of the fittest. We need to all be better. The mutants must rise. Justin:              Meanwhile, the world he left behind had everyone literally fighting for their lives, constantly. They became the fittest and he has to come back hat in hand, sword in hand with this woman that he left behind that he maybe still loves and be like, “Oh, you've been literally becoming the best fighters in the universe while I have been shitting the bed on Earth. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Let's go have a little day off.” And then the Marauders issue I feel like is a little bit more focused on the Wolverine side of it, but I do think this series- Pete:                Had time for a nice dance. Did you like the dance? Justin:              Some dancing. Wolverine likes to get fucked up. And I think he feels like he really gets to drink in this issue, which he never really… He's always like, I drink. But then the healing factor eradicates everything. Pete:                Yeah, Wolverine gets real fucked up in this issue. Justin:              Yeah. But I do think a lot of this arc, this whole storyline is about repositioning Apocalypse and I'm curious what the landing point of that is. And I do feel like the Marauders issue definitely had that sense of dread. Like an Agatha Christie story where you're like, “Fuck, some of these people are going to die.” Alex:                 Yeah, it really does feel like… And this is something that was a big point of conversation when the X-men introduced resurrection. It feels like these people are a danger. It feels like all of these characters are not actually going to make it out of this or at least in the same way at the end of the day. And that's great that they went in what has it been, a year, something like that. From everybody being like the exploiter just come back to life whenever, to positioning them into a place where they are in actual danger. And bad things may happen to them maybe for the first time at a really long time. That's super smart. Alex:                 And the Marauders issue in particular plays with that with Storm dancing with the literal personification of death, and mentioning “Hey, you've never actually died. You're one of the few X-men that has not died and come back. So let's talk about that. Isn't that interesting?” I thought there was such smart character work in the Marauders thing, the X-men issue as well. Both with Apocalypse and Annihilation I love as usual the insane world building. I do know where he pulls it out from with Jonathan Hickman there. Alex:                 I do think there are touches of East of West going on with the apocalypse, Annihilation stuff. Particularly in the relationship that's popping up there. But that's fine. That's a great book. So I'm okay to skim some of those ideas a little bit. And of course, the art. Mahmud Asrar, Leinil Yu, Stefano Caselli. Awesome. I know I said this the last time. But this is one of, not just with Marvel, but one of the best crossovers I've read in years. At this point. Pete:                Oh shut up. That's just… Shut up. Alex:                 Years. Pete:                Awful, just awful. Alex:                 Years. Decades. Pete:                First off- Alex:                 Millennia. Justin:              Lifetimes. Pete:                … X of Swords, are we even going to get 10 individual issues, like we got to see how they fought… If we don't get to see like 10 issues of fighting after all this fucking lead up. Oh, if we get no… I'm worried, we're getting close. We're past halfway, we still don't have any fighting yet. Justin:              Would you be disappointed Pete if we only got this fighting from the source perspective? Like it was just like metal banging another metal. Pete:                Just clang clang? Justin:              Clang, clang. Alex:                 And you don't actually get to see it. It's just the interior monologue of the swords. “Wow this hurts.” Pete:                I got to say in the Marauders ep, seeing magic like sizing everybody up. That was pretty cool. Justin:              She's a badass. Alex:                 Super fun. Justin:              You mentioned it before, but the menu at the top of the Marauders issue was super fun. Like I love that, the detail there was great. Pete:                Waste of a page. Justin:              I'd eat that shit. Alex:                 Pogg Ur-Pogg, very fun character. I'm just- Justin:              Marinated in urine. I'm here for it. Alex:                 Yeah, all of the Arakko characters also, I think are great and super fun. They're just… I don't know, I don't know if it's Jonathan Hickman in conversation with other people. I don't know if he's necessarily driving the rest of the X-Men team to this but it's just he comes in just and he's like, “Here's these new additions to Marvel continuity. They totally make sense. You love them know.” They are just these perfect things that absolutely work. And the greater part about all of these new additions from Arokko is only one or two of them are completely black and white, which I think is very cool. And a way of Jonathan Hickman really stretching himself as a creator. Justin:              Yeah. Wow, what a blistering takedown. That's the harshest I've ever heard you speak, Alex. Alex:                 These issues are great at that same for The Stack. If you'd like to support us, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also we do the live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out. We would love to chat with you about comics at Comic Book Live on Twitter, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show. Also leave us comments on iTunes. Those help out quite a bit. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast more. Until next time, we'll see you at the virtual comic book shop. Justin:              And remember the door is always open for any stray cat looking to wander in. The post The Stack: Crossover, Sweet Tooth And More appeared first on Comic Book Club. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's comic book review podcast: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #1 IDW Story by Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird & Tom Waltz Script by Tom Waltz & Kevin Eastman Layouts by Kevin Eastman Pencils/Inks by Esua & Isaac Escorza X of Swords: Stasis #1 Marvel Written by Tini Howard and Jonathan Hickman Art by Pepe Larraz and Mahmud Asrar Wynd #5 BOOM! Studios Written by James Tynion IV Art by Michael Dialynas Dark Nights: Death Metal – Rise of the New God #1 DC Comics Written by James Tynion IV, Bryan Hill Art by Jesus Merino, Nik Virella Sex Criminals #69 Image Comics By Matt Fraction & Chip Zdarsky Stranger Things: Science Camp #2 Dark Horse Comics Written by Jody Houser Pencils by Edgar Salazar The Immortal Hulk #39 Marvel Written by Al Ewing Art by Joe Bennett The Last God: Songs of Lost Children #1 DC Comics Created by Phillip Kennedy Johnson Written by Dan Watters Art by Steve Beach The Department of Truth #2 Image Comics Written by James Tynion IV Art by Martin Simmonds G.I. Joe #9 IDW Written by Paul Allor Art by Ryan Kelly Colonel Weird: Cosmagog #1 Dark Horse Comics Written by Jeff Lemire Art by Tyler Crook Chu #4 Image Comics Written by John Layman Art by Dan Boultwood Batman: Three Jokers #3 DC Comics Written by Geoff Johns Art by Jason Fabok Ascender #14 Image Comics Written by Jeff Lemire Art by Dustin Nguyen Shang-Chi #2 Marvel Written by Gene Luen Yang Art by Dike Ruan Undiscovered Country #9 Image Comics Written by Scott Snyder & Charles Soule Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Leonardo Marcello Grassi Batgirl #50 DC Comics Written by Cecil Castellucci Art by Emanuela Lupacchino, Marguerite Sauvage, Aneke Bliss #4 Image Comics Written by Sean Lewis Art by Caitlin Yarsky An Unkindness of Ravens #2 BOOM! Studios Written by Dan Panosian Art by Marianna Ignazzi A Man Among Ye #3 Image Comics Written by Stephanie Phillips Art by Craig Cermak SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. This episode is sponsored by Helstrom, now on Hulu. This episode is also sponsored by Alitu. Check out their guide on how to start a podcast, right now: https://www.ThePodcastHost.com/start Full Transcript: Alex:                 What is up you all? Welcome to the stack. I'm Alex. Justin:              I'm Justin. Pete:                I'm Pete. Alex:                 And on the stack we talk about a ton of comics that came out this week. So many comics, so many big comics, but I want to kick it off with this one Pete. Pete, this goes out to you. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Once upon a time, there was a little boy who grew up in Rochester, loving four turtles. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Those four turtles lived in the sewer, they loved pizza and they were ninjas. They were the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and this is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin #1 dedicated to Pete LePage. Pete:                From IDW comics story about Kevin Eastman, Peter Laird and Tom Waltz script by Tom Waltz and Kevin Eastman. Layouts by Kevin Eastman, Pencils and Inks by Esau and Isaac Escorza. Now the whole thing behind this is, this is reportedly [crosstalk 00:02:18] Alex:                 Wait, wait. Allow me to just take it over. Allow me to just take it from here. Pete:                Oh you want to take it over? Okay take it from here. Justin:              It seems like a risk. Alex:                 Basically Eastman and Laird back in the day had this story and they just put it on the shelf because they stopped doing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for a while. And so they had this story planned a long time ago and just as a fan it's very exciting that they got the chance to do this. And the fact that just to see the names Eastman and Laird next to each other again, what a magical time, but I'm sorry [inaudible 00:02:55]. Go ahead. Justin:              No, I have a question. Because they famously started getting along, right Pete? Pete:                I don't know if it who… They split ways. They went their separate ways. I don't know why or whatever happened? I didn't really dig into that but. Justin:              So is this them getting back together a little bit? Pete:                Well, this is them at least dusting off something and being [crosstalk 00:03:21]. No it's Eastman dusting it off and working with IDW to move forward with a story probably without Laird or I mean, I don't know him but I assume him being like, “Whatever, do whatever you want.” Justin:              You don't know Laird? Pete:                I don't know Laird. Justin:              Let me ask you, do you think they are going to do any alternate covers or anything for this book? Pete:                I tell you what's funny about that is, because there's 60 of them. Alex:                 71 alternate covers. Pete:                But I just want to say, I was paging through them and I was like, “Wait a second, Last Ronin. Oh my God. The other turtles are dead.” And it took me to the 45th cover before I really put it together. I was like, “Oh no, this is going to be sad as fuck.” I'm not ready for this. Alex:                 That's the genius about it is it really does take you until the 45th cover to really get the plot of the book. Justin:              Yeah, honestly when I was it's a little bit behind the curtain we get to review these, we get them as PDFs and I was already through it. I was, “Wait a second. Is this the comic? Am I just not putting this together?” And I was like, “No, these are covers.” After another 30 I was like, “Oh no, this has to be the comic, am I missing the story or maybe they link up.” And then finally I was, “No, I guess this is just covers.” And then one last time I was, “This is just a series of pinups or something.” Pete:                It's an emotional roller coaster to page through for sure? Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                But then it's actually a story. It's basically Dark Knight Returns but with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that's pretty much it or old man [crosstalk 00:05:06] Teenage Mutant chip in the story. Alex:                 Hold on. Pete don't jump on me yet because I thought this was great. I'm saying, this as a reference point, it is very much one of the turtles heads back to the city to take down the descendant of Shredder, he's the only one left, he's old man turtle now and that's what it is. You know what the setup is but it really does feel there's old Eastman and Laird comic books down to the art, down to the piecing and everything and I thought it was awesome. I was very excited about reading this comic, even though I understood the comic, even though the concept, even though we've walked through this thing multiple times before it's fun to see the turtles in it or turtle. Pete:                Or turtle. Justin:              It's super sad. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              It definitely has that very much like I dwell in darkness vibe throughout and that's why the reveal at the end is like the whoa moment. Alex:                 Yeah. That was really heartbreaking and I was not ready for. Justin:              Let me say, there's a moment where our Last Ronin turtle falls out of a skyscraper and falls. He's like, “Oh no, I'm going to die.” And then he lands and he doesn't land on his shell. And I feel if he landed on his shell he would have been all right. Alex:                 Right [crosstalk 00:06:32]. Justin:              I guess that's what [crosstalk 00:06:38] trouble. Pete:                I think later the last couple of panels, explain why do you, if you put that together, but you know, okay. Justin:              Wait, why does they explain why? Pete:                Because of what happens later? Justin:              No, it doesn't explain why he didn't land on the shell. Alex:                 No, that doesn't explain. Pete:                I will say, one of the things that I also thought was great about this is one of the Hills I'll die on is I never liked the animated series of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It made me actively angry. And one of the reason it made me angry is, I read the Eastman and Laird comics first and those are bloody, those are intense, they're emotional at times and then they turn them into these [inaudible 00:07:17] dude eating pizza guys and it was very frustrating for me that this was why everybody loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles versus the comics. That was definitely my first gatekeeping experience, I think. And getting back to these comics, it feels like getting back to reminding people, no, these comics were actually kind of hardcore. Alex:                 These turtles are miserable. They're not having fun with [inaudible 00:07:44], they're mad and sad. Though I will say you get your Baxter Stockman references here, you get your [inaudible 00:07:52] references here. And were those in the original comics or is that? Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              I all the time, and we've talked about this in the show before, but I all the time think about as a teen reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and being like, “Okay, they're going to beat Shredder in this first arc.” And they don't and Shredder destroys them and they run away and they spend an entire arc hiding at a farm and healing because they got beaten up so badly by Shredder and that needs such an impact on me. So same sort of thing here happening to our Last Ronin, I think it is very reminiscent of that. Starting it off at a place where they just don't win, they lose. It almost works against the idea of them being Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at a certain way, where it is very serious and it is very bloody, but an intense action, but it's very good. Alex:                 They're teenagers, when you're a teen- Pete:                You're going to lose. Alex:                 Yeah. You couldn't lose. Justin:              You're going to lose. Speaking of people that are going to lose, let's move on and talk about- Pete:                Wait, wait, wait, not moving on yet. Alex:                 Just wanted to say a couple of things here. First off, I was really hoping this was all going to be black and white. I was a little disappointed it was color. The original ones were black and white and really well done but the coloring is cool I guess. And I was really kind of heartbroken by this issue. This is very sad and depressing and I was really looking forward for this to pick me up and when it didn't and it made me sadder it was rough. I was really looking forward to this issue and the fact that I liked how dark and gritty it was, but the way it ended really hurt. But I do hope that Eastman and Laird can set aside whatever they have, because I would love for them to give me a little bit more TMNT. Justin:              I don't think that's going to happen, but let's move on to another team. X Of Swords: Stasis #1 or 10 Of Swords: Stasis #1 from Marvel written by Tini Howard and Jonathan Hickman, art by Pepe Larraz and a Mahmud Asrar. This is the mid point exactly I think. I think it's chapter- Alex:                 Of 22. Justin:              Yeah of 22 of 10 Of Swords and we finally get the thing that you've been begging for Pete, that you've been asking for, we transition from everybody getting their swords to getting ready for the tournament. That's what happens in this issue. We finally have our sword bears. We meet the other side, we meet the villains and then they all get together in other worlds. Get ready for the final battle. This is great. Pete:                So good. Justin:              I loved the building of the villains. I love these villains. They're so smart and they're so interesting. And even if the reveal at the end is pretty obvious, I feel like you could have seen it going for the building beginning, it's still very emotionally satisfying. Pete:                Yeah. I'm happy we got the fast forward button because I would have really been upset if we had to go through another 10 issues of everybody getting their swords on the villain side. So I was glad it was one issue and get it all done. I wish we could have had that with the other side but great. It's all out of the fucking way now, the next issue's got to have action. It's got to have a sword fighting, right? Alex:                 I actually don't think there's any sword fighting I think now that they have their swords all together they'll put them away and [crosstalk 00:11:35]. Pete:                Wolverine [crosstalk 00:11:37], right? Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                That they're like metaphorical swords. Alex:                 Exactly. And he's also like, “You know what? Claws are just tiny sores. I don't need these either. I'll give these up as well.” Justin:              He hands them to a poor [inaudible 00:11:50] kid on the street. He's like, “Here you go. Here's my claws.” Pete:                [crosstalk 00:11:54] day is it sir? Christmas morning. Have my claws. Alex:                 I got to say though, this is an Epic cover. It's a really glorious cover to this book. Justin:              I love all of this. I feel like with this issue, everything's cranky on all cylinders. The Arakko stuff is really starting to come together and the different corners of it, the different sort of monsters and mutants from their side coming together. We get the interstitial panels where we get to see all their swords. Very cool. Saturnine is setting up both a villain and sort of the unlike the person who's just not able to control the situation that she's created and then the tarot card bit at the end I thought was awesome. Alex:                 Yeah, this is all so good. The art by Pepe Larraz and Mahmud Asrar is seamless. Normally I'm not a fan of taking two artists and sticking them together though both of the artists are great but fantastic. There was no stoppage in the pace of the issue between their different pages. I think Tini Howard and Jonathan Hickman are working on musically together. You can tell where Tini Howard is leading into jokes at Jonathan Hickman is leading into, “Here's some insane mythology.” But it still blends very seamlessly. Fantastic stuff. This is one of my favorite crossovers that has happened in a very, very long time. Alex:                 Let's move to a ending, at least for now with WYND #5 from BOOM! Studios written by James Tynion IV and wrote by Michael Dialynas, I got to get that right at some point. So this is as mentioned the end of the arc, they're going to be coming back next year at some point with this issue with this title. This [inaudible 00:13:45] fantasy world that hates weird things. We get some big revelations this issue about the villains, as well as our heroes, as well as the promise of more to come. There's a big show down. I thought this was a really good arc and I'd highly recommend if you didn't pick it up in individual issues, definitely pick this up and trade. Pete:                Yeah. I think this really ended such a great place. It did such an amazing job of weaving the venture tail and such a cool way. And man, what a fantastic last issue that makes me very sad that it's ending. I want more, they really did a great job of setting up this world and I hope they get to play in it more because I would be excited to read it. Art's fantastic, writing's unbelievable. This is a great, great package. And speaking of great packages, Justin, what are your thoughts? Justin:              Thanks Pete. I am a great package using your words as a description of me. I like this a lot too. I feel like it really is a small step into a huge world that I feel like James Tynion IV is ready to really walk us into. It's a world where everything is pretty contained and controlled but it's also like… Basically any fantastical thing can exist in this world. It's just been so restrained that it needs to be released perhaps by our hero. And that's just a nice spot to start this whole series or however long they run it for. Alex:                 Yeah. And just to mention off of what Pete was saying, it is coming back for WYND #6 next year. This is just the end of the first arc. There's just going to be a gap. I believe it's coming back in May. Pete:                Sweet. Alex:                 So there you go. Moving on to another James Tynion IV book, Dark Nights: Death Metal Rise of The New God #1 from DC Comics written by James Tynion IV and Bryan Hill, art by Jesus Merino and Nik Virella. This is picking up on the Dark Nights Death Metal event and showing us, this is kind of a big revelation, not just for this event but also for the mythology that Scott Snyder and company have built up. They have been promising that Perpetua, the mother of the multi-verse has been preparing the multi-verse for someone or something else. And we finally get a little taste of what that something or something else is here in a more dick watcher who shows up essentially to [inaudible 00:16:16] what's going on in DC Universe. Pete:                [crosstalk 00:16:19], you were like more of the dick watcher. I was like, what? Like a watcher with more penises. Justin:              I was like, man, if you want more dick, check out this new watcher. Pete:                That is a note we get a lot is like, I love the watcher, but more dick. Alex:                 Yeah, but we meet new character called the Chronicler who is of course chronically the DC Universe. Things go interestingly from there as he resurrects a character who was recently killed. I'd like this issue though, this was not what I expected for the title and it's a key piece of the mythology and I'm happy that they're finally getting there. Pete:                Yeah. This is just continues to be over the top fun. I enjoy it. The Chronicler is a cool new kind of like reveal. Also this Metron guy really misses his chair and I get it, man. If you're standing for a long time, especially out in space, that's got to be rough when you- Justin:              It's actually very easy to stand in space. Pete:                Well, he's complaining a lot for a guy who misses his space chair. Alex:                 Have you ever seen the movie Gravity? Sandra Bullock has a lot of lines about, “Wow, this is easy. I'm standing. This is so easy” Justin:              And that big ending is where she's like, “It's even easier than I thought it was.” I like this issue a lot. This Chronicle, it's very [inaudible 00:17:51] this whole issue. Now at a point in the book, the Chronicle is showing off his his little book, his codex of the DC Universe to brainiac five and he reads it and barfs. Now what do you think would have to be in a book to make you instantly barf? Is there a comic book you've ever read where you got very close to barfing? Alex:                 I don't think so but if somebody had to be the next Game of Thrones book, I'd probably throw up excitement. Justin:              Like a positive. Pete:                Oh, a positive barf, I don't know. I was going to say, if they were graphically describing something that was grotesque and was very queasy I might throw up. If it was talking about maggots writhing in some kind of vomit or garbage. Alex:                 Like if you saw a picture of someone vomiting in a book, you'll be like, “Oh, here I go.” Pete:                I'll be like, oh. Alex:                 Maybe that's what it was. Pete:                I did. When I saw Brainiac 5 throw up that book I vomited too. Alex:                 Yeah. It's visceral. Pete:                Sympathy vomit. Alex:                 Yeah. But good stuff. Moving on to Sex Criminals #69, you get it. Image comics by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky. This is the last issue of Sex Criminals ever. They're done with the story. We kind of thought they were done with the story last issue but we zoom forward a bunch of years to catch up with the characters. Justin:              I got to ask you a personal question here yourselves, you got to be really disappointed because dedicated to there's an Alex W not an Alex Z that is dedicated to, that had to really chop your buns. Alex:                 Yeah, I definitely read that, saw that and had a emotional reaction to that so thanks for catching that. Justin:              I'm sorry man. Pete famously known for reading every dedication page in a comic book and giving us his take. I think this series finished really strong, a series that I thought wavered a bit at a point, and by their own admission, Matt Fraction was sort of like, “Yeah, we wandered for a little bit in there.” But I think really the last issue I thought was great and this issue had all the… It felt like those moments when you see someone that you used to date or used to be in love with or something and all of that, it just played so well in this from top to bottom. And then all of the sort of the sex stuff is treated as just a little side thing, which I think is a little bit the point of the series whereas it was always about the characters and their sex crimes, the Sex Criminals stuff was just the fun bit that got everyone [inaudible 00:20:53]. Pete:                I love this. I wish the whole series was like this. I thought it was really focused on the love. Alex:                 Sure. You would prefer love criminals? Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Oh, interesting. Pete:                Or just sex relationshipers. Alex:                 Even if it wrapped up very nicely in the last issue with the main plot, this is a nice little coda, a nice little finishing bit on there. Yeah. I can make a lot of jokes but for Pete's sake, I will refrain from making all of them. Alex:                 Stranger Things: Science Camp #2 from Dark Horse Comics written by Jodie Houser, pencils by Edgar Salazar. This is a interesting comic that takes place between seasons two and three of Stranger Things as Dustin is at science camp meeting Susie, the girl of his dreams that we find out about it in season three. And it turns out there's maybe a stalker killer at the camp. And the weird thing to me, I like this book just fine but the weird thing to me about Stranger Things comic books is almost nothing strange should ideally happen in any books outside of the big continuity or stranger things, right? Pete:                What? They can't have some side fun? Alex:                 No. Justin:              I sort of felt the opposite. I felt like I wanted something to happen. This was very less strange. Pete:                What are you talking about? The guy is killing kids. Alex:                 Is he though? Justin:              This just feels like a totally unrelated book so I'm like, yeah, it's vaguely one of the stranger things kids here but it feels unrelated to the main series and so it's hard to get in on it. Pete:                Focusing it on the star of the show. I love it. It's great. Alex:                 So you like this one? Pete:                Yeah. I thought it was fun. I like the setup of this relationship. And I like the kind of, okay, some things are happening and I'm sure our hero we'll get to the bottom of it and save the day. Alex:                 Yeah. I guess we'll see what happens. I do think Jodie Houser does a good job with the writing, captures Dustin, Edgar Salazar's art is good as well. Yeah, it's just tough to wrap your mind around this book a little bit, at least from my perspective. Next step, here's an easy book to understand, one that you could just sink right into. The Immortal Hulk #39 from Marvel Comics written by Al Ewing and art by Joe Bennett. Oh my God. This issue was insane. As the leader continues to enact his plan working for the one below who controls this whole gamma hell, whatever is going on there and tried to take over the Hulk, we thought the leader was doubted out last issue, it turns out he was very much not, as usual he has a plan to get one over on all the Hulks and everybody as we slowly moved towards the end game of the series. This is as wild and gross as any issue of this title. Pete:                Yes. This one, I felt like really brought a lot of this stuff to a head. The grossness, the viscera of the Hulk throat mouth coming out and eating Hulk's dad in the middle of this book and just like, I love it though. It's so good. The idea that the only way to defeat the Hulk is to get inside his brain, open the green door, inside his own mental state. And we see Hulk at his weakest tier where he's like, “I just want my dad to say I love you.” And he messes up, he fucks up because he it's his vulnerability and we'll have to watch it happen ending on this just horrifying image. Justin:              Yeah. It keeps getting worse and worse for the Hulk and it gets creepier and more disgusting looking and, man this is a crazy fucking tale. I'm really interested to see how this all ends up. But amazing ride and this has been an amazing new take on the Hulk and it continues to crank forward in such a cool way. For someone who's read the Hawk for most of his life, this is unbelievable. Alex:                 Well to that end, and this is something I was thinking about reading this issue in particular, is the one below somebody we know, or is this a new character? Because it feels like Al Ewing has been mining so many different aspects of Hulk continuity throughout this run, from Bruce Banner's father to Bruce Banner, to all the Hulk's different personalities, to everything throughout his history, it feels like this should be some sort of new villain who's the ultimate villain who's controlling things, but is it somebody we know already? Is that possible? Pete:                What could the possible options be? Thunderbolt Ross or Bruce Banner himself. Alex:                 Right. Pete:                Right? Alex:                 I think that's it. Pete:                What are the other possible the truly Epic Hulk villains? Alex:                 I don't know, Abomination? Pete:                Yeah. Maybe, but I feel like, didn't we fight him already in the early part of [inaudible 00:27:39]? Alex:                 Well, and to your point, leader is the step up there, right? Leader is the big Hulk villain. And once you've gotten past Bruce Banner's father, the only place you can really go is Bruce Banner himself. So if there is some sort of the one below was Bruce Banner when he was separated by the gamma bomb or something like that, I could see that as a possibility, but I don't know. It was just something that occurred to me while I was reading this. Let's move on and talk about The Last God: Songs of Lost Children #1 from DC Comics created by Phillip Kennedy Johnson written by Dan Watters and art by Steve Beach. This is an interesting one because we've been loving reading The Last God, but this is not written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson, this is somebody else, somebody else is playing in his world here which is pretty fascinating. How do you think it holds up and how do you think it works as a comic all on its own? Pete:                This is a fucking freaky ass story. I think it's a nice kind of like it fits in this world, but kind of it's its own thing. I think it's a cool kind of like Halloween tale in the middle of this thing. It's just kind of like a fun, scary ass fucking creepy story with the kid that, oh my God, I'm a very scary monster. That freaked me the fuck out. That was really intense and very scary. This is a very cool book if you like horror books or Halloween kind of things, this is definitely a must pick up. Justin:              I love that this is becoming a little corner of the universe. The Last God is such a fun, well thought out universe and story and the fact that we get sort of just another version of that, that is equally horrifying. Talk about body dysmorphia in the Hulk, we get a bunch of that here as well, which is gross and scary. I hope there's more, I hope this becomes a real thing. Alex:                 Yeah, I agree. Just a great one-shot. Even if you haven't been reading the main series, if you want to read a horror fantasy one shot, this is a real good. Steve Beach's art is great and horrifying. Dan Watters definitely captures the tone of the [inaudible 00:29:57] series. Just a very good book overall. Let's move to one that I know Justin was very excited about, The Department of Truth #2 from the Image Comics written once again by James Tynion IV, Martin Simmons. The set of this book is, what if every conspiracy theory is true? Or rather if you believes conspiracy theories are true, they become true in the real world and there's a governmental agency that is trying to take them down. We see all of this through a new recruit of the agency and in this issue, we find a big twist about his past the ties into the satanic panic of the 80s. What did you think about this one? Did it hold up to the lofty heights of the first issue? Justin:              I love this series because it takes a real world issue and concept and doesn't play it for the politics of it or anything that is in the public eye, it plays it pretty straight. It is dangerous in our current world that so many people believe false things, believe conspiracy theories and it's causing problems in our culture. And so the fact that those people believe that is making it harder for us all to live normal lives. And this takes that one very small step further in that the amount of people that believe in a conspiracy theory make it actual reality. Justin:              And if enough people believe in something, it will manifest. If enough people typically we hit a tipping point where more people believe that the earth is flat than not, the earth becomes flat and everything changes. It's such a smart real threading the needle premise. And to play that through the first issue and then the second issue, which is about the satanic panic and how it was something that wasn't believed and then the more and more people believed it meant it started to become real which is literally what happened in America. Pete:                Satanic panic. Yeah, this is very creepy shit. It's really well done. The art is perfectly creepy in all the right waves and right ways. Yeah, I think it's just really cool, really well done. I'm completely all in, and I love the kind of reveal that we get in this issue about the main characters past and why he is where he is. So I'm very excited to see how this all unfolds. I've been really impressed with each issue. Alex:                 Martin Simmons art is great, James Tynion's writing is great as well. I am very nervous about this arc speaking as a Jewish person just because the character, the demon character, just a spoiler here, that is menacing our main character, which they referenced this way in the book is a anti-Semitic stereotype. Just to describe him, he is a guy who has a upside down pentagram on his face, he eats babies. This isn't exactly the thing. It's like one step removed, but there is an anti-Semitic stereotype, I don't know, not meme is the only word that I'm thinking of, but that Jews eat Christian babies. Justin:              It's like a century's old conspiracy. Conspiracy theory stereotype, whatever you want to say like racist belief. Alex:                 Yes. So I think James Tynion is aware of this given that he references it in the book. Justin:              Yeah, I think it's meant… But I also think that, it's good, you finish your point. Alex:                 No, no, no, all I was going to say is, it definitely makes my chest feel a little tight when I'm reading it because it gets be concerned about how all of this is going to turn out. I'm not too worried about it. He's a responsible writer, but it's something that puts me on edge when I'm reading it. Justin:              Do you mean how reality is going to turn out? Alex:                 Yeah reality, that's what I'm talking about. Justin:              I agree. I was like, whoa, that's a thing to put down is your villain here. But I also think he's manifesting something that is one of the longest held conspiracy theories in our world. So I feel like he's sort of, what I like about this book is it really looks hard at real shit and leans into the paranoia and anxiety through the main character here about what it means to believe in something no matter what it is. It's scary and good. Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              It feels like a vertigo book despite the fact that it's from Image Comics. The art feels very Dave McKean. It's really nice. Alex:                 Yeah. It feels like in a certain way, the air of [inaudible 00:34:46] which I know is a big thing the second issue is something, but it could to get there. G.I. Joe #9 from IDW written by Paul Allor and art by Ryan Kelly. We have been loving this book that is completely reinvented G.I. Joe for a modern context. In this issue we're focusing on Tunnel Rat I want to say who [crosstalk 00:35:09] in tunnels with rats and he's fighting some bats which are Cobra, robot soldiers and these tunnels and that's what's going on. Pete:                It's funny because all I can think about when I read this now is you because when they're saying everybody's code name, you have no reference for that so you're just seeing a silly name and then it's like somebody died. But because- Justin:              A lot of these are made. Pete:                No they're actual G.I. Joe's so real people. Yeah. Justin:              There's a guy whose name was [crosstalk 00:35:47]. Pete:                Yeah, it was my favorite, well one of my favorite Joes is Shipwreck. Justin:              But that's [crosstalk 00:35:53]. Yeah, Shipwreck Jones. But Pete that'd be like, if he was a good sailor, he wouldn't be named Shipwreck. Pete:                Yeah, but he's a scrappy guy. It's a fun name. Justin:              That'd be if one of us is named bad podcaster. Alex:                 My favorite G.I. Joe is fuck up. Jinx. There's a jinx. She was in G.I. Joe. She was great or is great. Justin:              Great. Does she always like saying the same stuff at the same time? Alex:                 I didn't love this issue. This is after a run of fantastic issues. This was a little bit of a step down for me. I still think the art by Ryan Kelly was good but the story didn't feel quite as sharp as the last couple which were granted high water marks and excellence so I think that's an unfair judging point. But this is a good story of war. I like the whole overall arc of Cobra has one, G.I. Joe has to fight back. That's a smart place to put them. But I do think the last couple of issues were bad. Also it's kind of crazy to see G.I. Joe's use real guns because in the show it was always lasers, no one got hit. So it was crazy to see turn around and actually shoot someone and see blood. I was like, “Damn.” But yeah. Justin:              Well and I think that's what this issue. I take your point Alex, the other ones really dealt, the previous issues dealt with really intense themes and this feels more like it's taking an episode of the G.I. Joe animated series and giving an actual stakes where a bunch of Joes died and Tunnel Rat is scraping by, getting away with this, by the skin of his teeth and escaping from this horrible situation. Alex:                 Spoiler. Justin:              So in that way, it felt like giving, giving stakes to the goofy plots of so many of those G.I. Joe episodes, I wasn't allowed to watch it because they had guns is I think, cool. I like this issue. Alex:                 Agreed, and it's also kind of like naming Joes and then being like they died. So it's kind of sad. And if you don't really connect with it, I can understand what you're saying [inaudible 00:38:14]. Justin:              Yeah. I can't believe [inaudible 00:38:18], my favorite child died in this. Alex:                 RIP. That is a sour note to end on. Colonel Weird: Cosmagog #1 from Dark Horse Comics written by Jeff Lemire and art by Tyler Crook. This is spinning off of the Black Hammer series following the, I guess he's best described as the Adam Strange of the Black Hammer universe who has gotten unstuck in time our Slaughterhouse-Five. This is following him as he was trying to piece together his history. As usual just great comics, great plotting, Tyler Crook's art is great. This is great. The end. Pete:                It felt to me like a pitch for Adam Strange and I was like, “Oh, someone's already doing that. Okay, well I'll just put it over here.” And it's really great. Like you said, I felt the same way of the comparisons. Adam strange and Slaughterhouse-Five, two things I love. So with the fantastic art here is a great book to read. Justin:              It's not the worst than when you go to grab a sodie pop and then you're stuck in time. It's just rough. But yeah, this is classic tripped out Jeff Lemire shit and I'm excited to see where this goes. The art is unbelievable in this kind of setup in this world. Yeah, I thought it was a solid first issue. Does a great job of getting you excited for more. I can't wait. Alex:                 Let's move on and talk about Chu #4 from Image Comics written by John Layman, art by Dan Boultwood. We're finally getting into it here as Chu and his sister are coming to head by the end of the issue. This series is really hitting its stride I think in terms of a heir to Chew C-H-E-W versus C-H-U. It took an issue or two to get there, but John Layman has hit his groove again in terms of the series. There's fun stuff, there's ridiculous stuff, there's dark stuff that's happening. I'm having a lot of fun reading this series. Justin:              Me too and I'm not a Chu fan. I'm not a Chu head. I'm not a chow hound but I like this issue a lot. I like this series a lot. I don't know if it means I should go back and reread the original Chus. Take another, go back because I feel like I ate it and then I spit it out and I'll just eat it again. Okay. Pete:                I'm a Chu head so I was going to like this, but yeah, I'm really impressed with this now, especially it feels like it's really got its rhythm and this is very exciting, fantastic ending. I'm excited to see what happened and who got shot. Alex:                 I think two fans are called chronic masticators. Is that true? Justin:              Wow. Pete:                I'm glad you Googled it. Justin:              I think so. Alex:                 Didn't Google it, my brain did. My brain did right out. Justin:              The original Google. Alex:                 Let's move on to one that I am concerned and nervous and interested to talk to you guys about, Batman: Three Jokers #3 from DC Comics written by Geoff Johns and art by Jason Fabook. Now I think we've been pretty complimentary of the first two issues. Jason Fabook's art has been great, Geoff Johns plotting as Batman and Red Hood and Batgirl have been tracking down the three jokers and trying to figure out. The mystery has been I think interesting and really driveling into the characters. I believe what I said with the last issue is this felt like what Geoff Johns was trying to do with Doomsday Clock but is actually now doing his Alan Moore riff on killing joke instead. I got to tell you though, I was real disappointed of this issue personally. I didn't love how it turned out, still like Jason Fabook's art, but I was unhappy with the turns for Red Hood, for Batgirl, for Batman, for Joker. Just none of it really sat with me the right way even though I respect the craft that was put into it. Pete:                There was one. I thought the way they had that Joe chill interview run throughout the issue was cool. While different things were happening you got little clips of it. I thought that was very creative and cool and you kind of really felt that. Yeah, the reveal of what the deal is is the big thing on this and you're either like, “Oh cool.” Or you're like, “What?” And I was a little scratching my head. And it was also weird. There was a lot of infighting which I don't like. Batman losing it on Robin and a lot of fighting with Robin and Barbara. And it was just a lot of misconnects there. I wasn't excited. I think it was an interesting choice and the art is definitely worth checking it out. I did kind of like there was a Batman moment where he saved somebody and I thought that was powerful and cool, but yeah, I don't know, the reveal was a little kind of. Justin:              For me, it's like, because I agree. I really like the art and I think that really shines through a lot of it. I haven't seen a comic really laid out this way with a sort of classic conflict paneling but very close up. You're very close up to a lot of the characters. But I think it's a little bit impenetrable as a read because you got “three jokers”, and then you've got these three characters in the bat family who are the most affected victims of Joker. It feels a little too directed or it's a little too on the nose in the way that the story unfolds. And then it feels like too much of threading together different continuity things. It feels like it's doing so much editorial work that I don't need it all to make sense. I feel like we've reconciled for the fact. Justin:              We talk about this a lot that, yeah, the Joker's a sort of genius biochemist and a crazed psychopath who just shoots random people all the time. And it's like, well, that's just what people have chosen to take the character in different iterations of the character. To try to thread all that together is difficult and also a little bit unnecessary and I think it's difficult. I think this issue proves it's really hard. Pete:                I also really liked how Alfred was alive in this and it was nice to see Batman talking to Alfred again. Alex:                 Sure. One of my problems with this is I think Scott Snyder already put in the work to explain this in his run, where he went through very meticulously and explained how the Joker reinvents himself all the time for various reasons but one of them to be to respond to Batman, to be the different antagonist that Batman needs because he loves Batman and he needs Batman and he wants to make a better Batman or whatever he wants to do at the current time. And Geoff Johns coming up with these three jokers, the ultimate conclusion here seems to reiterate that in a different way that already feels like it's been covered. Beyond that the two things that really kind of, this sounds too strong, but stuck in my craw, I didn't love how he characterized Barbara. I think she was too much like, “Oh boys, what are you doing?” Alex:                 There's a lot of conflicted looks from her and not a lot of action and she's a fantastic character who should have agency of her own that has nothing to do with the Red Hood's arc or Batman's arc. Well then the other thing, the big thing, and this is getting into the big spoiler for the issue so if you don't want to know, definitely turn away, but he pretty definitively chooses one of the three jokers from killing Joke to say, this is who the Joker is, this is his origin and I hate that. I hate that because he tries to have it both ways by saying it doesn't matter who the Joker is. It's not important. Also here's who he is and here's this origin and here's his family and why I don't say what his name is. And that to me is a very frustrating have your cake and eat it too type moment that I did not love at all. Justin:              And it's also like what's the point of doing that in this non continuity book? It's just literally Geoff Johns putting his stamp on something but it doesn't really mean much for the larger world. And I think this book and so many books are like, I'm going to research so much of the continuity and carve out a tiny little thing that feels like there's an opening there. And I think as a comic book reader, I'm ready to move on from that as a philosophy of storytelling which I think we've done a lot in the last five, 10 years. Pete:                I would like to say that I think sometimes when get an idea for maybe a character or something and you want to try it, I think, yeah, go for it, definitely. Well, I want to see Geoff Johns take on this three jokers idea. I was into it. I was like, yeah, let's do this. This could be crazy. This will be fun. Geoff Johns is amazing writer. Sometimes you're like, I tried something, great. I don't think he should not try it because maybe somebody else did something similar or whatever, he should be allowed to do it. He definitely tried and hey, sometimes it's like, “Oh my God, that's crazy.” And sometimes it's like, “What are you going to do?” Alex:                 I think he just needs to stop correcting for Alan Moore. Geoff Johns is his own writer. He's a fantastic writer. He's written some of the best DC Comic stories of all time. Doomsday Clock was his way of correcting the course from Watchman. This is clearly his way of correcting the chorus from killing Joke. He doesn't need to respond to him anymore. He's done it. I want to see him move on. I want to see him do his own stories, create his own stories, create his own continuity because the things that he's done have been so wonderful and he has so much craft and so much heart to his things and we need more of that. I don't know what that character is. Obviously he's doing Stargirl and I love that show that it's wonderful and there is so much heart put into that. But when and if he comes back to comics, I want to see more on that side than just saying no Alan Moore sent the DC Universe the wrong direction for 20 years, let's [crosstalk 00:49:32]. Pete:                But maybe that's how we get Stargirl with so much heart because he's got to write something that's darker and more fucked up. Alex:                 Maybe. I'm not necessarily saying about that, I'm saying specifically about relating to Alan Moore, which is fine, those exist. Let's move on. Speaking of which let's move on to Ascender for #14 from Image Comics written by Jeff Lemire and art by Dustin Nguyen. This I think is my favorite book in the stack everyone. I think this is the bit that I [inaudible 00:50:07] about the things that happened to the book, and in this issue we continue to get so many characters coming together. Spoiler, three, two, one, but Tim 21 from Descender finally comes back of this issue and it is such a thrill. And this is the Epic space opera that we've been missing while saga has been gone and it is wonderful to read every month, month after month. Pete:                Just every character really pops in this book in every issue and there's so many great moments like, the team on this book has just done the work to establish so much stuff in Descender. And the fact that they were able to from a writing with Jeff Lemire and the artist standpoint with Dustin Nguyen continue to just deliver these excellent stories, where we see driller in this and he's just being himself. He has one scene, but it's just great. And a great battle here near the end and then reveal of Tim 21 like Alex said is just so sweet it makes you cheer and it's so hard to do that. And the fact that they can do that with almost every issue in this series is amazing. Alex:                 Yeah. It's really impressive. There's one kind of character who's kind of like the reader a little bit who's like, “What? Oh, shit, look who it is.” And you're kind of like, “Oh.” It's just it's so well done and so impressive. And I can't stress this enough. The art is like a watercolor painting. It's so beautiful and so cool with what they're doing and I love the characters and this just continues to kick freaking ass every single issue and I can't wait for this to be collected Ascender, Descender because I want to go back and read it all again. Justin:              Do you think they're going to do a third series like just Sender, return to sender? Alex:                 Come on, don't ruin it man. Pete:                Return to sender. Alex:                 Don't ruin it. Justin:              It will be, it's Descender and then Ascender and then just sitting there cold chilling. Alex:                 Next up. Shang-Chi #2 Shang cheek, number two from Marvel Comics written by Gene Luen Yang and art by Dike Ruan. We really enjoyed, I think the first issue of this book was found Shang-Chi returning to his roots, going up against his sister. Here, we meet his sister very briefly and a conflict arises as well as more of mythology. I really liked this issue. I just needed more of it. That's my one criticism. It was surprisingly short it felt like. Justin:              Yeah, I feel that way in that a lot of the stuff that happens I'm like, I see this makes sense, everything total sense. And then later in the issue, we get some fun reveals and some great art transitions. Shang-Chi has a sort of vision at one point and that's where the issue really touched off for me and it was great. Pete:                Yeah. I've been really impressed with this, also just the classic story. It sucks when your sibling gets split off from you to be raised in some kind of killer martial arts and you don't get to see them till later in life because you miss those golden years. But I think this is- Justin:              Yeah Pete, how is Sam? Pete:                Ah, man, he's good. He's on torture Island, still doing great, doing what he loves. But I think that this is just- Justin:              Being tortured? Pete:                No, he does the torturing. He's moved his way up in the island, worked from the bottom now he's [crosstalk 00:53:57]. Justin:              We should have him on the podcast. Pete:                I don't think that's a good idea. Justin:              He actually has a much more controlled temper than you. Pete:                Yeah, well it's all the training. Alex:                 I just think this is a great book. I hope people give it a chance and I'm excited to see where this goes. The art continues to be amazing. Next up, Undiscovered Country #9 from Image Comics written by Scott Snyder and Charles Soule, art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Leonardo Marcello Grassi. In this issue our heroes? Are in the second wrong of America as they continue to go deeper and deeper towards the middle. I find a lot more about the backstory of American, what happened after the closing of the walls around America? Also some very, very bad things happen to unity, courtesy of the destiny man. Just a really good every issue I enjoy. I'm really enjoying this arc in particular. It feels far more accessible than the previous arc. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              Yes. I feel like with this issue specifically, I'm like I finally come to grips with not the stuff I don't know and the stuff I do know they're in balance in a way where I'm like, yes, now I can move through this story. Because I agree with you. I really like it. The arts were great. It's like peer discovery every issue and every panel that you're reading of this comic and now it feels like we know what the characters know and we can all move forward together. Pete:                Yeah. I think it's really because it's us as the reader and this comic really line up because there a moment where a wall is gone and they start driving and it's like, “All right, here we go. Now we're rolling.” And I feel like there's so much craziness and us trying to figure out what's going on. And now we've gotten to a place where it's like, “All right, I kind of understand some things enough to really start enjoying the story.” And it's really taking off in a great way so I'm excited to see how this unfolds, but it's really rolling now and I'm very excited. Alex:                 Yeah. Great stuff. Move it on to an ending, Batgirl #50 from DC Comics written by Cecil Castellucci, art by Emanuela Lupacchino, Marguerite Sauvage and Aneke, and this is the last issue of Batgirl for now. Also kind of a big deal because it introduces Ryan Wilder aka, the new Batwoman on TV into DC Comics continuity, albeit very briefly. I got to tell you, I have not read Batgirl that much recently but I like this issue quite a bit versus my commentary on three jokers. I think Cecil Castellucci perfectly captures what Barbara is about. I like her status quo here working for a Congress candidate I want to say. And just the balance she finds throughout these three stories with both Batgirl and Barbara Gordon I thought it was very nice across the board. Justin:              Yeah. I thought this was a lot of fun. The game night story was great. Bright fun stories. It was wasn't as dark and gritty. I like Batgirl and it's sad to see her go. Pete:                I thought the art throughout this whole issue is just so good. It's so clean. I feel like Barbara just really pops the whole time. And yeah, to your point, Batgirl in this book really exists in her own pocket of the Bat family and the Gotham universe. And I think that's the way it should be. I too haven't read too much of this arc, but I love the Batgirl character and I love how each different writer gets to come in and really find a different avenue to explore with Batgirl. I'm going to go back and reread some of the earlier stuff. Alex:                 I think so too because I like this quite a bit and I like the status quo as well. I hadn't really read it since the Batgirl and [inaudible 00:58:10] stuff but this is a nice place to put Barbara. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Next up Bliss #4 for Image Comics written by Sean Lewis and art by Caitlin Yarsky. It was set in a world where people suck on a what? Pete:                Cheese steak? I want to say cheese steak. Alex:                 Ballistic. Justin:              Don't force it guys. Don't force it. Alex:                 There are beings who sell misery and suck out people's misery. There's a guy who works for them. He is going after his wife. We both catch up to that moment and catch up to the present here and finally move beyond it in this issue. There's just some epic action and emotional stuff here, and this title continues to be. Pete:                Yeah, this is one of my favorite picks for the week. I was really impressed. It kind of builds to this moment in such a great way. This comic does a great job of like, okay, this is what it's about, but it all culminates in this issue, and a classic husband and wife showdown and then- Justin:              Classic gunfight. We're all going to be there in a gunfight with our significant other,. Pete:                And you got to be careful for crows because they can fly through people if they want to. So fun fact. Justin:              Smart birds. Pete:                But yeah, I thought this was a fantastic bad-ass issue. The father-son hug was such a cool moment that they lingered on a little bit, which I really liked. I had just been really impressed with where this comic started to where it is now. The art is unbelievable, but man what a cool story. Justin:              Yeah, I agree. This to me feels like Dune meets Twin Peaks in a cool way. Later when we see the older version of one of our main characters, Bob from Twin Peaks which I think was very cool. Yeah, so I liked that blend. The art is fantastic. I agree. It's good. Alex:                 Next up, An Unkindness of Ravens #2 from BOOM! Studios written by Dan Panosian and art by Marianna Ignazzi. If you haven't listened to our live podcast with Dan Panosian you can go back just a week or so and listen to that in the comic book club feed. But the first issue was kind of like the craft meets Sabrina and meets a couple of other things as a girl moves to a new town, finds out she looks exactly like somebody who's missing and it gets pulled between the popular kids and the goth kids who turn out to be the witch kids. We find out a little bit more about this this issue. How do you think this held up from issue number one? Pete:                I think it's great. It pushes both stories sort of down the line. When we talked to Dan, I said, I really love the transition of the first little bit at the top that sets the dark tone into the more Archie style art I think is so nice. It really lets the horrifying tone from the first couple of pages bleed over into the situation and you feel more paranoid reading it and it really puts you in the same mindset as the main character. I like [crosstalk 01:01:21]. Justin:              I do too. I'm really impressed from where it started to where it goes. It's really, the more we kind of find out, the better the story gets. This is really interesting. The art's unbelievable and they're doing a great job with the art leading the story in such a way, like they really change panels in such a cool, magical way that really fits things. And yeah, you got to be careful when someone wants to write on your hand, you can't just be okay with that. You know what I mean? You got to be really wary when someone's like, “Hey, give me your hand.” That's not cool. Pete:                Hey, you don't want to join the PEN15 club. Alex:                 I know what you're talking about. Last but not least, A Man Among Ye #3 for Image Comics written by Stephanie Phillips and art by Craig Cermak. We talked about the first two issues of this one as well. This is a female focused pirate tale. The place that they left off at the last issue felt like finally getting the crew together and I felt like that's where we pick up this issue. This is the one that I've enjoyed the most so far because I feel like we finally have the right mix of characters in this crew, even if they're not technically a crew yet. But lots of fun, and Craig Cermax's art is still great. Pete:                Yeah, I agree. I felt like this is really picking up steam and all the right ways. It's very excited now that we kind of got the people all in the same place, how this is going to unfold. But yeah, just classic bad-ass pirate lady. I love it. This is really cool. I love the last page reveal. I think this is great and the art is fantastic. Justin:              Yeah. It's all right. It reminds me of Captain Valiant, the Sunday comic. Pete:                Hey, fuck you man. Justin:              Where I was like, I'll read this at the end of the comic. Pete:                Fuck you, man. Justin:              Okay. Pete:                This comic's better than that. Alex:                 Hey, I'll tell you what, I'm glad we ended with this one. If you like support our podcast patrion.com/comic book club, also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. Come hang out. We would love to chat with you about comics, iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show at comic book live on Twitter, comicbookclub.com, this podcast and many more. Until next time, what's up [inaudible 01:03:54]. Pete:                Yeah, it's all right. Justin:              What? I had a slightly non bang review and you're like, man. Pete:                I think it's better than you're giving it. You're not giving it a chance. Justin:              Okay, I can read it. Alex:                 Not to interrupt you guys, but the show is over. Pete:                Okay. Justin:              No, it's not over yet. Bye. I just have to take this call with the Marvel Comics action figure line for watcher with more dick and I think it's going really well. The post The Stack: The Last Ronin, X Of Swords And More appeared first on Comic Book Club. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this week's comic book review podcast: Rorschach #1 DC Comics Written by Tom King Art by Jorge Fornés Commanders in Crisis #1 Image Comics Written by Steve Orlando Art by Davids Tinto The Immortal Hulk #38 Marvel Written by Al Ewing Art by Joe Bennett The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys: National Anthem #1 Dark Horse Comics Story by Gerard Way & Shaun Simon Art by Leonardo Romero Dark Nights: Death Metal #4 DC Comics Written by Scott Snyder Art by Greg Capullo Stealth #6 Image Comics Written by Mike Costa Art by Nate Bellegarde The Vain #1 Oni Press Written by Eliot Rahal Illustrated by Emily Pearson The Avengers #37 Marvel Written by Jason Aaron Art by Javier Garrón Once & Future #12 BOOM! Studios Written by Kieron Gillen Art by Dan Mora DC The Doomed and the Damned #1 DC Comics Written by John Arcudi, Saladin Ahmed, Kenny Porter, Amanda Deibert, Marc Wolfman, Amedeo Turturro, Alyssa Wong, Brandon Thomas, Travis Moore and Garth Ennis Art by Mike Perkins, Leonardo Manco, Riley Rossmo, Daniel Sampere, Tom Mandrake, Max Fiumara, Dominike “Domo” Stanton, Baldemar Rivas, Travis Moore and PJ Holden Redneck #28 Image Comics Written by Donny Cates Art by Lisandro Estherren Amazing Spider-Man #50 Marvel Written by Nick Spencer Art by Patrick Gleason Strange Adventures #6 DC Comics Written by Tom King Art by Mitch Gerards and Evan “Doc” Shaner Marvel Zombies: Resurrection #3 Marvel Written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson Art by Leonard Kirk Seven Secrets #3 BOOM! Studios Written by Tom Taylor Illustrated by Daniele Di Nicuolo Hellions #5 Marvel Written by Zeb Wells Art by Carmen Carnero New Mutants #13 Marvel Written by Ed Brisson Art by Rod Reis Cable #5 Marvel Written by Gerry Duggan Art by Phil Noto SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Episode Transcript: Alex:                 What's up, everybody? Welcome to The Stack. I'm Alex. Pete:                What's up? I'm Pete. Alex:                 And we are talking about comics. What? What? Pete:                It just sounds like you're barely making it, man, you're like “What's up everybody, this is the fucking Stack?” Alex:                 “Oh, God, week 52 of our comic book review.” We actually have a ton of titles queued up for you today, kicking it off with a big one from DC Comics. Rorschach #1 written by Tom King and art by Jorge Fornes. This is a highly anticipated slash, highly dreaded, I think, comic book because it is- Pete:                Highly dreaded? Alex:                 Highly dreaded, it's following up on Watchmen which is always a dicey proposition. Pete:                Okay, I see what you're saying now. Alex:                 In this book we get introduced to a very Manchurian Candidate type scenario. As a Rorschach, I don't want to say the Rorschach, but a Rorschach and somebody else try to assassinate a presidential candidate, maybe. There's an investigator who's looking into it. And by the end, spoiler, three, two, one, but it seems like this assassin may be none other than Walter Kovacs, AKA Rorschach himself. That out of the way, what do you think about this book, Pete? What was your takeaway? What were your thoughts? Pete:                Well, I think it did a great job of grabbing the reader. It starts off with Rorschach kind of getting murdered, which is interesting jumping on point. And then you kind of… It's the classic kind of Tom King storytelling where you're getting little pieces of information as you go along. But he does it so well. And yeah, I mean, I think it's… It's weird to say I'm a fan of Rorschach. But there are aspects of Rorschach that I like, and I love the “Where's your gun moment?” I thought that was really awesome. I mean, it's great art, interesting story. I think it's just kind of the election balloons and the stuff with everything that's happening right now. I think it's a very well timed book. And I'm on board. But I was going to be on board when you had a Rorschach #1, so I'm not upset about it. I'm very much enjoying it. I'm looking forward to more. Alex:                 Jorge Fornes's art, and I believe it's Steve Stewart's colors are great throughout the book. Just very, very good across the board. Clearly delineate what's happening in the past versus what happens in the present. There are a couple of things that I think are kind of fascinating about this book. The biggest one is that Tom King has so clearly been influenced by Watchmen and Alan Moore, down to his panel grids. The way that he lays them out. But he purposefully avoids the nine panel grid here in this book, to the point where there's one page that I think is like a 12 panel grid, or maybe a 15 panel grid or something like that. Alex:                 But he never goes into that basic Watchmen breakdown of the page at any point, which almost seems like a no brainer for somebody who has built a lot of their career on building his work off of what Alan Moore did. So that's curious to me, the other thing that's curious to me, is the choice of setting. Because it very purposely feels like The Manchurian Candidate meets All the Presidents bad down to the feathered hair that everybody has, and the fashion they're wearing. It seems like it said in the 70s. But Watchmen itself was set in the 1980s. So, when is it set is my question. This is supposed to be now, but have fashions come around to the 70s? Again, what's going on? Are they only doing it because it's supposed to feel like a 70s conspiracy thriller? There's something about that and the lack of clarity there in the world, though I'm sure King, because he's meticulous writer, has thought through it. And we'll find out eventually. I'm just not quite sure with this first issue, there's a wall there for me in terms of where it's at. Pete:                Okay, well, it's a weird thing to get hung up on, but I understand what you're saying. But it's just weird to me, because Tom King is kind of famous for, “You're going to have to keep reading to figure out the story.” Alex:                 Sure. But I think that's important because we're dealing with Watchmen and we're dealing with an ongoing world and we know this is continuing. There are things that are teased here and thrown into the background, whether it's through billboards or advertisements or other things that let us know, “Okay, this is kind of where the world got to from 1985 to here.” And interestingly, some of the things whether it's quite sensitive Not dovetail with Watchmen the TV series. Alex:                 So that only raises further questions in my mind of is this in continuity with the comic book? Is it going to continue with the TV show? Is it in continuity with the both? Is it's own continuity? And I know that's not the only thing I should be thinking about, I know I should be concentrating on the story which taken on its own, totally divorced from Watchmen is a good conspiracy thriller story. But those are the sort of things that I do think are important to understand, in some sense, when you're saying here, “This is a continuation of Watchmen.” Pete:                Yeah, just you kind of sound like me when we were talking about Tom King's Vision. I was hung up on one little thing, and you guys were like, “Hey, get over it.” Alex:                 I think this is a big thing, though. I think this is a big important thing. It is a big thing. Pete:                That will be explained. Sure, but it will be explained. Tom King is piecemealing- Alex:                 It's a gorgeous comic book, like the best of Before Watchmen, which was a dicey project to begin with, but still had some good comics come out of it. Yeah, this is a dicey project that still seems like a good comic. So I'm happy to follow it along. But I have questions. Pete:                My question is, do you know if this is monthly or weekly? Because the election's coming up? And I need to know. Alex:                 I assume it's monthly. Pete:                Oh man, we're in trouble. Alex:                 All right, let's move on then to the second comic, we're going to talk about, Commanders in Crisis #1 from Image Comics written by Steve Orlando. Art by David Tinto. We talked to Steve about this on the live show a couple of weeks back. And it is basically him doing a Crisis comic book, but with totally original characters. What do you think? Did it pay off on the premise that he sold us on, on the pitch, Pete? Pete:                I think it did. I think, I'm in. This is very interesting. This is a cool team. It's fun to kind of see his take on a big crossover event like this. It's fantastic art. I like the team that is kind of in this thing. And there's like a cool kind of like superhero moment where we had the kiss. That was great. Yeah, I'm on board. I think these characters are interesting enough that even if I don't… It's not like a Avengers crossover event where I know every single person, I got enough here to go by. And yeah, I'm excited to see where this goes, it seems like he did a good job of selling it and I'm in. Alex:                 What's really fascinating about this, to me, is that it avoids any of the archetypes. I expected going in with it, we'd get a Superman, a Wonder Woman, a Batman etc. We don't get any of that these are completely as far as I can tell original characters. There's no analogues from any particular universe. And that only makes Steve Orlando's job harder going into this. But it does make it more interesting to read because their powers are so weird and so interesting. And the hook of it, which he talked about on the show, this is the reveal at the end of the issue. So if you don't want to know turned away, but I still think it's fair to talk about because he mentioned to us is the death of Empathy, which is going to be an interesting thing to see going forward. The other detail that is so weird, but such an interesting specific thing is all the members of the team in the book are from different parallel universes where they were all presidents. Pete:                President. Alex:                 Which is very weird. Pete:                Commander in Crisis. Yeah. Alex:                 Commanders in crisis, they are commanders. They were all like the first Latinx president, the first woman president, the first, etc. resident. But it's a bunch of presidents with superpowers fighting a crisis, which is such a bizarre detail, but it makes so much sense for the title. And yeah, I'm definitely on board. I think like he's set up a weird, interesting, very different world here. Pete:                Yeah. And it's even like when you get the kind of splash page introduction of the superheroes it's like “Prizefighter, as strong as the crowd hopes he is.” I was like, “What?” And then it's like “Sawbones, Action Surgeon.” I've never seen those two words next to each other, action surgeon. What is that? Yeah so it's very interesting. Alex:                 It's intriguing. Pete:                Yeah, it really does a good job of like, kind of sucking you in. And then there's the fun kind of like, oh these minions aren't very smart. They have their brains in a backpack. Okay, this is crazy. It's doing a great job. And I think this really ought to be interesting to see how this unfolds. Alex:                 I agree. Let's move on. Talking about the Immortal Hulk # 38 from Marvel written by Al Ewing art by Joey Bennett. In this issue, the Leader is dominating the Hulk and all of his allies. He is in the Hulk's mind-scape and controlling things from outside when a rogue element comes in and turns around the balance of power. Pete, I know you've been down on this book, but this issue by the end like in the right way, personally, I was like, “What the fuck is happening here?” Oh my God. Pete:                Yeah, this is great. This is really great. You got a lot of the kind of horror aspects that's been happening, but this like really gets into kind of the story and action. I'm very happy with this issue. It's really impressive. Very cool. It's got a lot of twists and reveals but man, it's glorious. It really is a great issue of comic book. Alex:                 Yeah, it's still horrifying, everything that's going on and the visuals that Joe Bennett draws. But everything that Al Ewing has been building up over the past 38 issues is really finally coming to crest here. It feels like the Leader is probably the sub-villain that we need to deal with in this run. But it's still such a good Leader story. And it's such a good Hulk family story that it feels dangerous in the right way. Just great. Gross. Pete:                It's really impressive how this book has grown and changed and done so many different things. It's really… I can't imagine the pitch meeting for this fucking thing. Alex:                 “Okay, so get this. Rick is very long.” Pete:                It's a horror hulk. Alex:                 Yeah, Rick is long, and he kind of bends in a weird way. And that's the pitch. Pete:                Has the grossest neck you've ever seen. Alex:                 Just it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. Yeah, a great book. Moving on to the True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, National Anthem #1, from Dark Horse comic, story by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, art by Leonardo Romero. If you've never read this book, this is basically about a bunch of folks. It's sort of like an extrapolation of, what was the movie? Them. The Kurt Russell movie where he puts on this… No, Rowdy Roddy Piper, puts on the sun glasses, and could see the truth about the world. It's essentially that, but in comic book form, and here, they've beaten the bad guys, they have one as far as they know. And then things start to go horribly wrong from there. Really good book. I like this, it's esoteric and strange, as most of Gerard Way stuff is. If you read Doom Patrol, if you read Umbrella Academy, but it still feels very prescient and timely in terms of the storytelling, which I like quite a bit. Pete:                Yeah, it's really impressive. The art and the storytelling is gorgeous and fantastic, and really moves the story very… It moves through this kind of crazy world. And you're kind of really piecing it together. But it's very unique. And just when you think you've got a handle on it just kind of surprises you again. And I love all the different groups that they kind of break down in the middle of it. Yeah, I think this is a great issue that really kind of gets you excited for more in this world, it really sets things up and gets you wanting more. I think it's a great first issue. Alex:                 And I think you could understand it even if you haven't read the first series, you could jump right in here and go ahead with it. Obviously you're going to have a richer experience, but it's good stuff regardless. Next up, this is what we talked about in the live show a little bit, Dark Knights Death Metal #4 from DC Comics. Written by Scott Snyder art by Greg Capullo, wild stuff happening in this issue. This is bringing together a bunch of the one shots and miniseries that have been running along. We find out what's been going out with the Flash Team, we find out what's been going on with Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman as they sink deeper into the Crisis Dark multi verses, and things- Pete:                And- Alex:                 Yeah, Pete. Pete:                It still starts with Uncle Rock in this one. But, you know. Alex:                 Sergeant Rock. Pete:                Sarge Rock. Alex:                 You call him Uncle Rock. Pete:                [crosstalk 00:14:48]. Yeah, I call him uncle Rock. That's what he calls himself in this, which is a funny moment. Alex:                 He married your aunt. Pete:                Yeah that's how that technically works. You're right. But yeah, I mean, this is just amazing art, over the top fun. Darkseid in that chair is unbelievable. It's like Green Lantern's ring chair. So that means the Green Lantern has to sit there and keep thinking about the size and weight of that chair. That's a very intense little thing that doesn't get much attention. It's just they're killing this. This is just so much fun. Each one of these books is really fun to see what mashups of characters they're going to use, and how crazy it's going to look, and it hasn't disappointed yet. Alex:                 This entire book feels like the dialogue break in a metal song. When somebody's like, “And then Superman is sunk into a pit of fire as Darkseid watched.” The whole thing. Just it's absolutely, really ludicrous. The whole thing is crazy. We talked about it on the show, but it ends with the Darkest Knight aka Batman who laughs winning, turning the universe into the Last 52, a bunch of dark multiverses, it's only going to go from there. Who knows how they're going to win. But it's funny for the insanely highest stakes, that is, honestly just fun the entire time. Pete:                It really is. Alex:                 Let's move on to something that's a little bit grimmer but in the right way, Stealth #6 from Image Comics, written by Mike Costa and art by Nate Bellegarde. We've been loving this series on the show. Pete:                It's too bad Justin didn't want to talk about this book. Alex:                 He got out of here, was like “No thanks. Don't want to talk about Stealth.” Pete:                Yeah, he was like, “Listen, guys, I love Stealth. I said it was my pick. But I'd rather watch a football game right now. So fuck all, y'all.” Alex:                 I don't think that's what's happening. But the other Stealth, if you haven't been reading the book, it's about a guy who's in sort of a all powerful armor [inaudible 00:17:01], who also may or may not have dementia. He's been fighting against a guy called the Dead Hand who can kill people by touching them with his hand. Everything is revealed in this issue. They loop everything back. We finish it up. This is the end of the miniseries. What did you think about the conclusion, Pete? Pete:                I was really impressed with this. Like this kind of started and it was like, “Wait, what's happening?” I love the story. I love the action, the art's unbelievable. But I was kind of like, “But man, does this all come together in such an amazing way.” It's one of those books where you read it. And at the end, you're like “God, I want to go back and read it all over again.” It's really great. Really impressive. And I can't compliment the art enough. Alex:                 In a surprising way too, it's nothing that I think you could have predicted from the first five issues, but it makes total sense at the same time when it's explained, which is a difficult feat to go through. Pass off, whatever the word is. Pete:                Yeah, especially us, we've read so many comics, it's hard to surprise us. And this really did a great job of that. Alex:                 This is a great miniseries, definitely pick it up when it's in trade or individual issues. Next up The Vain, #1 from Oni Press, written by Eliot Rahal, illustrated by Emily Pearson. This is about a bunch of vampires around the turn of World War II who are robbing blood banks. Get it? Pete:                You see what they're doing? Alex:                 And when war breaks out with the Nazis, and then everything changes. I was very surprised and impressed by this book. I thought this is a really fun concept. The characters were good. I liked how the world was laid out. And there's a good nice twist at the end. How'd you feel Pete? Pete:                Yeah, I really liked it. I thought it was very cool. Kind of like bank heist, but they're robbing a blood bank. And also like, fun kind of like, the way the vampires kind of handled the crowd and fuck with them a little bit, very enjoyable. And what's also nice is even the undead are like “You know what's really fucked up? Nazis, man. Racism is awful. I'm a fucking undead vampire. But I know this is wrong. So let's go end this.” That was great. Alex:                 It's a little shaggy in terms of that because it feels like okay, the concept is bank robbing vampires. I get it. And then next issue it's going to be like, okay, it's vampires fighting Nazis, I get it. So I'm wondering if it's going to change every single issue and that's going to be the rhythm of the book. Or if it is something else. Whatever it is, I'm definitely onboard. I had a fun time reading this. I think it's a fun take on vampires. Like I said the characters are good. So definitely willing to follow it. And Emily Pearson's character designs are very good as well. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Next up the Avengers #37 from Marvel written by Jason Aaron, art by Javier Garron. This is kicking off the end of the Age of Khonshu. Pete:                Yes, the Age of Khonshu. And this is the finale. Alex:                 This is the finale. So Khonshu, who is the God of Moon Knight has taken the powers of the rest of the Avengers. This issue they're fighting back as well as Moon Knight who now the Phoenix Power is fighting back. This is playing with toys in the best sense of the phrase. Pete:                Well yeah, and that's a great way to put it. Because you do have like a super baby here who is like, “Yo, give me back my toys.” So that was kind of well put there. But yeah, this is a fantastic art. And it kind of reminds me of Snyder's just over the top fun, where a lot of different characters are getting to play with different powers and stuff like that. And I think this is a great kind of finale. And it's cool to kind of see somebody get powered up like this, and then kind of like spoiler, but de-powered, and where those powers go. So it's, again, a writer and artist, having a lot of fun with the different kind of powers and different perspectives. So yeah, I really enjoyed this. I thought it wasn't a huge kind of event. It was just kind of big enough. And I thought it was great. Alex:                 Yeah, it's playground rules. It feels like every page, and I say this in the best sense, because it's fun to read. But it's the sort of thing where somebody is like, “Oh you're going to attack my pyramid. Well, my wolf men and my mummies are going to attack you.” And they're like, “Fine. Well, now I have the Iron Fist…” That's great. Like, there's not enough of that in comics, where it just feels like people playing and having fun. It all has to mean something. It all has to lead to the next thing. This is the sort of thing where it's like, and I'm probably mis-remembering this, where She Hulk can very briefly get the Iron Fist, and it has no bearing on anything whatsoever, other than a fun splash page that they draw. And that's fine. It's refreshing to read something like that. Alex:                 Here's another thing that is almost the opposite, where it's fun, but everything means something. Once and Future #12 from Boom Studios by Kieron Gillen, art by Dan Mora. Pete I know you love this series. This is wrapping up the Beowulf arc. Listen, I think textually pretty big revelations for the mythology of the book, as teased to us by Kieron Gillen when we chatted with him a couple of weeks back. How'd you feel about this one? Pete:                This just continues to be one of my favorite things on the stands. Art is unbelievable. You have these unbelievable monsters these great kind of stories and fables intertwined here, and then you just got one badass grandma who's not going to take shit from nobody. And this is just such a glorious comic book that is worth your time and money. And it's entertaining, it's smart, it's touching. It's stories that you've kind of know, that kind of are told in this new kind of messed up way and it's very, very enjoyable. Alex:                 Yeah, Dan Mora's art and character designs and monster designs in particular are so good across the board. But this issue is Kieron Gillen doing his Kieron Gillen thing and wrapping stories together, figuring out how they fit together, figuring out how the mythology of England as an entity fits together. And it's fascinating to read, but it's nowhere near as dense as say Die, for example, but just good, good stuff and so much fun to read. Alex:                 Let's move on to an anthology DC the Doomed and the Damned #1 from DC Comics, written by John Arcudi, Saladin Ahmed, Kenny Porter, Amanda Deibert, Marv Wolfman, Amedeo Turturro, Alyssa Wong, Brandon Thomas, Travis Moore and Garth Ennis. Art by Mike Perkins, Leonardo Manco, Riley Rossmo, Daniel Sampere, Tom Mandrake, Max Fiumara, Dominike “Domo” Stanton, Baldemar Rivas, Travis Moore and PJ Holden. As you can probably guess, from how I introduced it, as well as the lineup this is a series of short stories teaming up DC Comics characters in spooky situations. As usual, how'd you feel about this one, Pete? And were there any stories that jumped out to you? Pete:                Yeah, this was a really nice collection. I had a lot of fun with this. I mean, the Batman versus the kind of monster in the mirrors is great. This is what I want Halloween comics to be like. I want to see heroes taking on the kind of monsters. And this is the classic like if you say a name in the mirror three times, so it was cool to see that. The Raven Wonder Woman story was great. I'm a sucker for a Grundy story. I love the look of Superman in that one store. I thought like he really looked fantastic with the Swamp Thing. It was just super fun. I think there was a lot of cool stuff and even the Green Lantern team up I enjoyed. Alex:                 Yeah, I like this as well. I mean, if you can't tell from the title this is riff on Brave and the Bold but Doom and [inaudible 00:25:31] instead. So it's a team up book- Pete:                Oh, I just put it together. Alex:                 Which it gives it a very different flavor from other anthologies. I think it gives it more focus, particularly because you usually get a non-supernatural character teaming up with a supernatural character. The best one for me, which you mentioned, is Saladin Ahmed's story, which I just… I love Batman dealing with the supernatural because he does it all the time. But he never believes it. He's always like, “Scientific explanation for this. I got to figure this one out.” And it's great here. He deals with essentially like a Candyman, Beetlejuice type figure, except in Gotham City. And it's a lot of fun. But this is a good collection if you want to pick it up. Next up Redneck #28 from Image Comics written by Donny Cates, art by Lisandro Estherren. This is a title we have not checked out that much, I think, right, Pete? Pete:                Well, so this is weird because I saw Redneck and I thought it was Jason Aaron's book called Redneck and it's not. This is a different kind of redneck, not what you think because it's about vampires. Alex:                 No, Jason Aaron wrote another book. I don't remember what it's called. But it's not Redneck. Pete:                Okay. Alex:                 No, he's, what is it? Southern Bastards. That's what he wrote. Pete:                Oh. Right, right, right. Yeah. I thought… But anyways, so this is a very kind of… The art is really fantastic. I love the way they kind of draw the action. And a very interesting, kind of like tale throughout time here that we're dealing with. And I love the way it kind of ended on this cliffhanger for more. I think this is very interesting book, very kind of unique and creative. And I didn't know what I was getting into. And I was pleasantly surprised. Alex:                 So Donny talks about this in the end matter a little bit, but it is wild reading the first couple of issues of this books, which I think I read the first couple and I just got away from it for no particular reason. But it was what the title said, it was about a bunch of swamp folks dealing with vampires. I was like, “Okay, I get it. Rednecks cool. I'm on it, I get the concepts of this book.” To here where we're like Dracula war, which is a very different sort of thing. Alex:                 But Lisandro's art in particular is epic throughout the book. As you mentioned, it spans through different time periods. I enjoyed this quite a bit. And it's certainly the sort of thing that makes me want to be like, “Okay, I read the first collection, I read this issue. Now I actually need to read what happened in between, because clearly, I missed a lot.” Alex:                 Next up Amazing Spider-Man #50 from Marvel, written by Nick Spencer, art by Patrick Gleason. This is picking up right on the last issue, but kicking off a new storyline, where we finally learn the identity of Kindred as well as why he has it out for Spider-Man. Why he has it out for Norman Osborn, what happens to the Sin Eater? Big things happened in this issue. Spider Man is a very dire straits. We're definitely going to get into spoilers here. So Pete, as you feel about this reveal, what do you think about this? Pete:                Cool. I mean, when I saw the tombstone reveal, I was like, “All right.” Alex:                 But so let's walk through this and this is spoiler time. But Kindred pulls up the tombstone, you're supposed to think as a reader, “Oh, okay is he Captain Stacy?” Gwen Stacy's dad. But he's not. Instead, what Kindred has done is he's pulled up the corpses of Captain Stacy and Gwen Stacy, and put them at a dinner table for Spider-Man, classic villain behavior. But it turns out the Kindred is none other than Harry Osborn. Pete:                Yeah, at the end there's another twist, where you think, “Okay, we don't know, here's the reveal of the tombstone. That's who he is.” But then at the end, it's like, “He's my son.” And then you're like twist again. Alex:                 I don't love that. I feel like we're going to have to do a lot of explanation to get why Harry Osborn is this. Pete:                Especially when Spider-Man sits down to that dinner and he sees the two dead people. And then he's like, “Wait, but what's this got to do with Harry Osborn?” You know what I mean? Alex:                 Yeah, I mean, first of all, indoor dining very dangerous right now. Second of all, if you ever get in that situation, just be like, “Check, please.” Pete:                Yeah, also, you got to put masks on those corpses, you know what I mean? You can't just [crosstalk 00:30:16]. Alex:                 I mean come on. Absolutely. They could spread disease. Pete:                They're inside. Alex:                 Yes. Think of the servers. Pete:                Yeah, exactly. Alex:                 This is a good issue. Nick Spencer is doing an intriguing job of the storyline. But like I said, I think though this fills in a lot of holes in what's been going on I need to get to how this happened, which I assume is going to happen soon. This seems to be a big storyline. But why is Harry Osborn Kindred? What does that mean? How did he become Kindred? Are all big open questions here but we're just at the beginning of this storyline right now. Alex:                 Next up, another Tom King book Strange Adventures #6 from DC Comics written by surprise Tom King art by Mitch Garads and Evan ‘Doc' Shaner. In this issue, as usual, we're jumping back and forth between the planet Ron and what's happening on Earth, as Mr. Terrific investigates the death of Adam Strange and Alanna's daughter. In this issue Mr. Terrific Alanna kind of go on a date a little bit, and parry and check each other out and sort of probe each other's weaknesses. Ends in a very different, very interesting place. I like this issue quite a bit, particularly, because it made me doubt Alanna being the bad guy of this series. How'd you feel about it Pete? Pete:                Yeah, yeah. Also, we had a little Seth Meyers sighting. Little talk show clip here. And as we all know, Seth Meyers came on Comic Book Club, big fan of the show. So it's nice to see that. Alex:                 It was nice to see it finally pay off for him. Pete:                Yeah, yeah. Really nice to see Seth Meyers get his due, poor guy, he works really hard. But yeah, I mean, this is just waiting, each Tom King book, you get a little bit more information, a little bit more information. You're trying to piece together this whole story. So it's unbelievable, Tom King, kills it as a writer. And I'm excited to see how this unfolds, and we get a little bit more. And I love the Terrific stuff in this. So yeah, I can't wait until the final kind of domino falls, I can kind of look back and see what we've done here. Alex:                 I agree. This is definitely a mystery book. It's going to make you reevaluate everything when we finally get to the end there. But every issue just gorgeous to read and gut wrenching and heartbreaking across the board. Another one, very sad Marvel Zombies Resurrection #3 from Marvel written by Phillip Kennedy Johnson art by Leonard Kirk. Spider-Man is taking Franklin and Valeria to the Galactus hive to try to find a cure for the zombie virus that has afflicted the Marvel Universe. Things go predictably, very, very wrong, including a favorite of Pete's, who gets caught in the struggle. I love the twist that Philip gives to the whole Marvel Zombies thing here. It's so smart. So well done. I'm a little hesitant to spoil it. But every issue of this is so dangerous, so harrowing. And it's amazing that he has found a totally different twist on the zombie mythology in the Marvel Universe. How'd you feel Pete? Pete:                Yeah, this was really crazy and intense to kind of like, have these kind of reveals of kind of like how this all unfolded. Love the Galactus stuff. Magic stuff is really cool. The character that we're not talking about I was like… All right, but- Alex:                 We can talk about him. We can spoil it. Pete:                I think it's- Alex:                 We spoiled so much this podcast. Pete:                This continues to be a really fun book and if you would have said- Alex:                 It's Wolverine. Pete:                Wolverines. Wolverine. But yeah, I mean, you would think like okay, Marvel Zombies all right, how long we doing this, but this really is a fresh take on it. And it's very enjoyable. Alex:                 I agree. I'm very nervous, concerned about what will happen at the last issue when we get to that. Moving on to Seven Secrets #3 from Boom Studios written by Tom Taylor illustrated by Daniela De Nicolo. This issue we're following who we still think is our main character but we're not 100% sure, as they go on a mission to become the new secret keeper for this organization. Still don't know what the secrets are, still don't know what's going on. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 We just know somebody evil is gunning straight for them. Another great issue of this book as Tom and company continued to build out the mythology. How'd you feel Pete? Pete:                Yeah, I liked this. Again, we kind of don't know. I mean, if I'm risking my life over a briefcase, I might take a peek. But I think that this is very creative in the way that it kind of tells his story as it unfolds and the touching like 15 gifts from the father for the 15 years he wasn't there. That got me, that got me a little bit. That was pretty awesome. I've been really impressed with the characters in the book and their story and kind of how this is all moving forward. A lot of great action. Yeah, this continues to impress. Alex:                 Yeah, great book and Daniela De Nicolo's art is also real good, it's very anime… Excuse me, manga inspired. Yeah, but it feels like the halfway point way point. Pete:                The mustache guy reminds me of the guy from Voltron. The new Voltron [crosstalk 00:36:07]- Alex:                 Interesting. I don't know what you're talking about, but I appreciate it regardless. Before we wrap up here, let's do it. Let's get into the X/10 of Swords block. Three issues out this week. Hellions #5, written by Zeb wells and art by Carmen Carnero. New Mutants #13 written by Ed Price and art by Rob Price. Cable #5 written by Jerry Duggan and art by Phil Noto. Versus last week, where we got a little more of an overarching story each one of these is very much its own thing. Alex:                 In Hellions we get that team heading off into other world to basically cheat the whole sword contest that's going on by stealing Arakko's swords. In New Mutant's we find out how Cypher is dealing with fact that he's supposed to be a sword bearer. Answer is not very well. And in cable, he is dealing with a sword of his own. When the last we left him, he was with Cyclops and Jean Grey on Sword, the actual space station the people, we find out what happened to them, and what happens next. This is great. I was a little worried that this crossover was going to be just one thing after another just following up on it. But I love that each one of these individual interweaving stories, and I thought each of these issues was a ton of fun all on its own. Pete I know you liked last week's issues. How'd you feel about this one? Pete:                I did. I really liked the break from the stacking insane idea on top of insane idea and like here we're just going to have like a showdown you bring your best, we'll bring our best, bring a sword, let's settle this. But this gets a little derailed by the Lollipop Guild where they sit around a table and makes insane decisions like “Hey, we're going to do this big battle to the death, but why don't we cheat? Right? Because we're on our own island by playing by the rules so fuck it let's just cheat, and just throw a wrench in the whole fucking thing.” Alex:                 So this is in Hellions by the way just to clarify what's going on here. I love this issue. Zeb Wells writes the crap out of these characters. His Empath is such a horrible asshole in a hilarious way. Mr. Sinister is great. Pete:                The cape bit is just glorious. It's really fun. Alex:                 Oh my god. So funny. Just, it's a funny book. And I appreciate that in the middle of this like… Particularly coming off of, I think, the last issue was Storm being like, “I need to potentially destroy a relationship with my husband because it's the head of the world and I need to invade Wakanda.” And then this issue, Mr. Sinister's like wrestling with a horse most of the issue is great. That you could have these different tones of this world is so much fun. Pete:                Yeah, it's all right. Alex:                 And then of course, there's New Mutants, which is I think one of the greatest issues of all time that really just really digs in on Cypher as a character. One of the greatest characters of all time. Gives him his due in the sun, shows up what was going on with Warlock, trains with Krakoa, plays on his insecurities, but in the right way, and fleshes out his relationship with Krakoa, just a great issue across the board. And I know I'm using a sarcastic voice, but I also actually think that. Pete:                The art in this book is glorious. The Krakoa, trying to stop him and talk to them but like “If something happens to you I won't be able to…” I thought that was great. But at this point, I'm like, “Okay, guys, a lot of build up to the sword fight. Can we get to this goddamn sword fight.” Like, do I got to sit there and see everybody's origin story to how they got their sword. Alex:                 There's 10 swords. They're not even halfway through. They'll get halfway through, they'll have all the swords and then they'll have a bunch of fights. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Come on. Pete:                Now hopefully I make a [crosstalk 00:40:12]- Alex:                 And Cable, also fun with like some terrifying weird alien enemies, that was super fun as well. Just a fun month across the board. Right Pete? Pete:                Sure. Yeah. What a month. What a year. Everybody's having a blast. Good times. Alex:                 Yeah, I just ordered a shirt online, actually, they said “2020 having a blast.” Pete:                Oh, man. Yeah, I mean, I'll look forward to hopefully getting to the fight. Just, I don't know, I think the last month with the three titles or last week, whatever it was, I thought was better, getting me hyped for this thing, but after this week, I'm kind of like, “All right, get me there already.” But hey, people like reading stuff in between their comic books pages, apparently, because man, they're doubling the fuck down on that. Alex:                 Oh my gosh. Pete:                And at this point I'm just to do it. Alex:                 Well, I liked these quite a bit. I had a fun time this week. And I'm glad to read all three of them. Pete:                Did you like reading about the sword instead of seeing it? Just reading about how much it weighs and that kind of stuff? Alex:                 You know what they say, do you bring an essay to a sword fight? Pete:                Ah right, right. Alex:                 If you'd like to support this podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM. Pete:                We sure do. Alex:                 We do Crowdcast and YouTube, come hang out and check it out. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen to the show. At Comic Book live for this pod. You can, I don't know, socially or whatever. ComicBookClublive.com for this podcast and many more. Until next time, we'll see you at the virtual comic book shop. The post The Stack: Rorschach, Commanders In Crisis And More appeared first on Comic Book Club. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's packed comic book review podcast: X Of Swords: Creation #1, Dark Nights: Death Metal – Speed Metal #1, An Unkindness of Ravens #1, Spider-Man #4, The Last God #9, Voyage to the Stars #2, Wynd #4, Wicked Things #5, Low #25, Canto II: The Hollow Men #2, The Immortal She-Hulk #1, Undiscovered Country #8, MegaMan: Fully Charged #2, Juggernaut #1, Black Magick #14, Power Rangers: Drakkon – New Dawn #2, Maestro #2, The Goddamned: The Virgin Brides #3, Judge Dredd: False Witness #3, and Bliss #3. SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Transcript: Alex:                 What is up, everybody? Welcome to The Stack. I'm Alex. Pete:                I'm Pete. Alex:                 On The Stack, we talk about a bunch of books that have come out today. Oh boy, we have a packed stack for you today. This is a- Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Too many. Too many books, Pete. Pete:                Yeah. What's the deal here, buddy? Alex:                 Why did you do this, Pete? Pete:                Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alex:                 Why did you do this? Pete:                Yeah. Yeah. Alex:                 This is your fault. No, I really didn't mean to do this. I feel like I looked through what was coming out. Every email was like, “Oh, here's three or four from IDW. Here's five from Image. Oh, no.” I didn't realize what a snowball it'd become until the end when we were finally getting ready for it. I'm sorry, Pete. We read a lot of books, but we got to get into it. Pete:                We do. Alex:                 This is important. People come to us as a resource. Pete:                I don't know about that, but- Alex:                 Let's kick it off. Pete:                … we'll do what we can. Alex:                 This is a biggie. From Marvel Comics, X of Swords: Creation #1 from Marvel. Written by- Pete:                X of Swords for $7. Alex:                 For $7. By Jonathan Hickman and Tini Howard. That's $350 each if you don't give any money to the arts by Pepe Larraz, which would be rude. I wish you would give it to somebody. Pete:                That's very rude, but it's a part of either- Alex:                 This is a monster, one of 22 right on the cover. One of 22, 68 pages long, huge story. Pete:                First, I just want to say, if we weren't doing this show and this was life before COVID, I would walk into a comic book shop, say, “Fuck you” and walk out, because $7 part one of 22, what the fuck are you doing? Alex:                 Think about it. When you buy a book, right? Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 You know it's a certain amount of chapters. You're paying about $7 per chapter, usually, for a book, if you think about it. Pete:                No. No, it's like four bucks bro. Alex:                 No, man. No, absolutely not. Yeah, it's- Pete:                22 pages. Alex:                 It's $154 per book for a 22-chapter book. That's how much I pay. Pete:                Wow. You're getting ripped off and maybe. It's a lot, man. It's a fucking lot. Alex:                 It is a lot. Here- Pete:                I was hoping like, “Okay, if we're going to pay this much money, hopefully, this will settle down. We'll be able to deal with all the madness it has been having with X-Men.” No, it just takes it to an even crazier place because Hickman doesn't like to deal with things. He just keeps building towards the sky. Alex:                 Yeah. That is a fair way of poking it. I don't disagree with you, but what I was so surprised about with this particular book, and I think we can get into spoilers here, so if you don't want to hear them, obviously, turn away, is that for most of the beginning, it was definitely that a Hickman dense this, talking about Otherworld and Arakko and the original Four Horsemen and them tacking Otherworld, and laying out all this like, “Here's the different level of Otherworld. Here's a map of what the Citadel looks like,” and all these things. Wild terror readings and everything, but once it had all of the setup out of the way, I was stunned about how relatively straightforward and fun it was. That the plot of this crossover is, basically, Apocalypses' even more evil children and grandchild are like, “Fuck you for joining the X-Men. We're going to kill you. We're going to destroy your island. We're going to destroy the X-Men. Here we come.” Alex:                 The only thing that is stopping them is the leader of Other world saying, “Hey, instead of doing that, why don't you go find X of Swords and then beat the shit out of them?” If that's the plot of the thing, that's great. I felt such a weight lift off of me by the end of this issue that it was just like a good old fashion brawl to the death story. Obviously, there's a couple more insane Hickmmanian flourishes on it, but that's awesome. I went from being cautiously interested to the book to totally onboard by the end. Pete:                No. Alex:                 No? I tell you what, I was happy that it did kind of be like, “Okay, this event is about this kind of showdown of who's more evil with the evil people of the evil worlds,” but it, also, was this kind of like weird like, “Hey guys, this whole portal thing, I've got a bunch of people invading. They're going to probably kill some people.” I think I sit around and it's a meeting. It's like, “Well, why don't we just shut the portal?” Well, you can't do that. Well, why can't you?” You know what I mean? That part grinded to a halt of like, “I don't want my comic books to turn into my work where I got to explain to some asshole in marketing while there's a fucking attack coming through a portal. You know what I mean? Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Like, “Where do you work?” Pete:                I work in a startup, okay? It's not- Alex:                 No, I'm just saying that like attacks are coming through portals all the time. That's not a normal thing, Pete. Pete:                Yeah. Well, you know- Alex:                 Nobody can relate to that. Pete:                When you have an online job, things get weird. Alex:                 Got it. Pete:                I just think that like, that part was a little kind of like, “All right,” but I did really like the island stance. I was happy that they were kind of like listening to the island, but I felt like Magneto the whole time where he's bored out of his fucking skull just staring on this cool helmet being like, “When do we get to fucking fight?” Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                I do like this match up coming of like, “Hey.” It's a little weird though when she was like, “Yeah, in three days, we'll fight you.” I'm like, “Oh, something is going to happen before three days, but all right.” Alex:                 No, that's to give them time to find the sword. It's just wild to me, at least, in terms of the setup. I was this good old fashion split into teams, find these secret things, come back together, fight some bad guys in a fight to the death. There's going to be twist. Pete:                It's just Apocalypse's kids, so why does everybody have to fight his family's bullshit? That will be weird if you called me like, “Hey, listen, my son wants to kill me. Do you mind like helping” … Alex:                 Well, but also on a textual level because I know you've talked about this a lot, Pete. I appreciated the fact that they're dealing with the fact that Apocalypse is there on Krakoa. That, to me, is the thrust of this crossover, at least, now. This idea that his children being like, “Yo, you're not Apocalypse. You're just hanging out with the X-Men. What are you doing?” That the X-Men are like, “Apocalypse, what are you doing?” It's almost this fan conversation in a way that is bleeding through into the comic books. It feels so smart to me. It's not just Apocalypse is on the team. It's, why is he on the team? Why is he here? Why is he doing this? What does it mean that he's here? Do we defend that he's here? How do the X-Men, who have taken the stance of mutant stumper want always forever, deal with the idea of, “Do we defend the guy that is trying to kill us multiple times and take over the world, to destroy the world? How do we do that?” Again, that is a thrust for a big crossover idea. It seems so smart to me. Pete:                All right. Well, I'm glad you're having fun, man. Alex:                 I'm having a good time. Pepe Larraz's art, just great superhero art, really fun, really clear stuff. Just good time. The horrible moments throughout big moments, Rockslide getting chopped in half, oh my God. Pete:                What a great panel, but man, that is heartbreaking. I did not like seeing that, but it was really well done. Alex:                 Just to mention, the last page of the issue. Such a dumb, obvious, but smart move to have Cyclops, Jean Grey and Cable go off and be like, “Okay, the key to solving this and saving everybody is, we got to activate this thing. What's this thing?” They go in. They activate the thing. They're like, “Oh, good. We turned on the sword.” Of course, its sword, the organization, and they've turned on the gigantic space station that they used to operate in and it's exactly the sort of thing like, “Oh, of course, you're going to work in sword.” That's so smart. Pete:                X of Swords. I get it. Alex:                 X of Swords. There you go. Great stuff. I enjoyed it a lot. I just thought it was so much more fun than I thought it was going to be. I had a good time. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Let's move to another one, another big event, Dark Nights: Death Metal-Speed Metal #1 from DC Comics written by Joshua Williamson, art by Eddy Barrows. We talked about this one a little bit on live show. Pete, you're usually down on the Flash, but you seem super into this one. Pete:                Well, slow your fucking roles elves. Alex:                 Right. Pete:                First of- Alex:                 This is your favorite comic of the week is what I'm hearing. Pete:                No. No. First of, great title, Speed Metal. Hilarious. Love it. I love this idea of over the top Death Metal kind of fun things. Just amazing art, over the top characters. It's fun to go back to this. Well, to see what they're doing. What hurts about this issue a little bit is, you get all this amazing art, this cool concept to new characters and then this is a bunch of fucking Flash is talking about their life and their fucking trials and who gives a shit. That part really dragged into a slow stop for me, but overall, the art is amazing. I love the concept. I'm excited for more. Alex:                 Yeah. I had a good time reading this book as well. I think there were some diggy things that happened as you mentioned. There was a lot of like, “Okay, there's a whole army outside. Let's just hang around and walk through the Flash Museum,” which Joshua Williams was going for. As usual, he is just very nostalgic about the Flash. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I think, doesn't is probably too strong, but having them walk around the Flash Museum was like, “Okay, I get it. I get what you're going for.” Pete:                There were some funny bits. Alex:                 On the other hand of such a sucker, seeing Wally West run and get himself back into the red costume, I lost it. I loved it. Pete:                Wow. Really? Alex:                 He's getting his whole history back and seeing his whole family. I love Wally West. Pete:                You do. Alex:                 I love his family and I love that arrow, The Flash. That really got me emotionally when that happened. I think it really does come down to, what are you into? What are you excited about with the Flash because he just … Josh, again, just digs into that nostalgia factor. Then there's that great moment where he's sitting on the Mobius Chair and sees the darkest night coming towards him and just gives him the finger, great. Pete:                That was unbelievable. Alex:                 I laughed out loud. Pete:                “Yeah, black label. Here we go. Yes, let's do it.” Alex:                 Yeah. Yeah, good stuff. It's surprising and weird that everybody is looking for chairs in this series of our … because that's also happening over in Justice League, but good, solid issue. I'm excited to see how to entice it. Pete:                If you're going to have a black label, that's what I want to see. I want to see super real straw on the bird around like, really having some fun. Alex:                 Well, let's talk about birds then and talk about what are the biggest surprises of the week for me. Unkindness of Ravens #1 from Boom Studios, written by Dan Panosian and illustrated by Marianna Ignazzi. This is about a girl who moves to small town, finds out that there is a girl missing who looks exactly like her, except with glasses. Pete:                Oh, man. That's so creepy. Alex:                 Finds out even weirder stuff is going out in the town. If you are a fan of the craft, very specifically, you are going to love this book. Pete:                Yeah. I also think it's more than that. This, I was really impressed with this book. The art is unbelievable. I love the storytelling. We kind of, “Okay, here's the story of this girl and did whatever, whatever. Okay, go to new town and start a new high school,” but just like they give us little magic, they give us little teen drama, the karate moment was badass. I'm very excited for this book moving forward. Love the last page. I think this is going to be a really good book and I'm very excited about it. Boom Studios put together a great- Alex:                 Yeah. This feels like exactly … If you're a fan of the modern Sabrina books, in particular, I think this fits right into that niche as well, but this feels like one of those ones that just got to bubble below the surface and maybe explode, because it really is that good. It feels like it had such a mythology setup to it. Also, Marianna Ignazzi's art is great in this book. The characters are so good. The designs are so good. It's something, and this is necessarily the only thing she's been before, but if I was a Netflix executive, I would be snapping this up in a second for a TV show. Pete:                Yeah. Yeah. Alex:                 Great stuff. Let's move on to a belated comic book, Spider-Man #4 from Marvel. Surprising, it's only had four comic books so far given that it's such a popular character, but it happens. Written by J.J. Abrams and Henry Abrams, art by Sara Pichelli. This is continuing the Abrams father and son story of the young, new Spider-Man fighting a guy named, Cadaverous in the future. After Peter Parker, Spider-Man, has been broken. I will tell you, I continue to really like Sara Pichelli's art because Sara Pichelli is amazing at art. Pete:                Unbelievable. Alex:                 This is, maybe, suffering from the slow release time, which isn't entirely their fault. By the time I read this, it felt like just such a small snippet of the story. I needed more. What do you think, Pete? Pete:                Yeah. The art is the real hero in this book. It's really fantastic and worth it just for the sprawling pages alone and the creepy spiders, but especially like the first couple of opening panels, holy shit. Anyways, yeah, I think this is interesting Spider-Man story. I'm excited to see where this goes. The problem is, so long in between, like you said, I just got back into it and now it's over. It's a little tough, but I'm excited to see what this father and son is going to do with such a legendary character like Spider-Man. I'm trying not to judge it yet until we kind of get more into it. Alex:                 Yeah. It doesn't really feel like they've got into their mission statement yet. Pete:                Yeah. Yeah. Alex:                 Like the thing they want to say about Spider-Man. Pete:                They're just moving pieces and getting things setup. Alex:                 Exactly. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 It does feel like it's getting to that and we're towards the end here. We'll see what happens. Next up, The Last God #9 from DC Comics. Written by Philip Kennedy Johnson and art by Riccardo Federici. Man, every issue of this book is good. The end. It just really is. In this issue, again, they're heading through their, I guess, Helm's Deep. I don't know. I'm forgetting my Lord of the Rings references, but they're heading through the underworlds in the past and present, different things are happening. There's a big cliffhanger at the end, but as usual, even with a smaller character driven issue like this, it's still a very, very good book. Pete:                The art is really worth picking it up alone, all right? I tell you- Alex:                 I just drank. I just drank, Pete. Pete:                Good. Speaking of cliffhangers and that kind of stuff, there is a fun, really kind of cliff moment that says a lot about the characters. I just think that the storytelling and the art is so at a next level in this book. It's very interesting what they're doing and yeah, I can't wait for more. Alex:                 Yeah. Great stuff. Next up, Voyage to the Stars #2 from IDW. Story by Ryan Copple and James Asmus, art by Connie Daidone. Now, we talk about the first issue of this book, which is based on the podcast, I believe, with the same name. That is fun, enjoyed it. I figured we check in on the second issue and see how it's doing. Pete, what's your take? Pete:                Yeah. This is the old weekend to burn this issue. This is cool. It's very creative characters, fun, a lot of nice bits and comedy stuff in here with the classic proponent dead guy up trying to get away with some stuff, but yeah, I think this is an interesting book. The characters' voices push this thing through. Yeah, I'm enjoying this. I think it's definitely worth picking up. They seem to be having a lot of fun with it and that comes through in the comic. Alex:                 Yeah, I agree. As we mentioned the last time, James Asmus knew how to do bits. They're just well-paced out here, whether it's him or the artist or collaboration of the booth. It's just fun. It's dumb, fun, stupid, purposely stupid space jokes. It just works out really well. I like this issue much more than the first one even. I felt like I want to follow this. Maybe I'll listen to the podcast. Who knows. Pete:                Whoo. Alex:                 Yeah, I know. That's the next step in a relationship. First step is the comic book step and then when you get really serious, you'll listen to their podcast. Pete:                Yeah, it's serious stuff. Alex:                 Then third step, you move into a house with them in Philly. Pete:                Yeah, the source. Alex:                 Next up, WYND #4 from Image Comics. Written by James Tynion IV, art by Michael Dialynas. Dialynas. Dialynas? Dialynas? I don't know. I'm sorry. Pete:                Dialynas. I don't know. Alex:                 Dialynas. Maybe. There we go. Well, regardless, this book is very good. Another fantasy book. This is a mildly all ages book. A kid who think he is weird. He's traveling out of town with the prince he has always had a crush on. Some bad things happened to this issue, but also, some wonderful things. I love the fact that, finally, it feels like widening open the world of this book, finding out more about the outside world, about what's really going on. Great stuff. This is the issue that I have been waiting for. Pete:                Yeah. This book keeps getting better with every single issue; the art, the storytelling. It's next level. This world that they created really feels like its own very unique kind of thing. It's just great. There's a lot of heartfelt stuff. It's action. It's adventure. There's just so much stuff kind of all wrapped up. They're really killing it. This book, really, is one of those ones that stays with me and then when we kind of look at it the next time around, it keeps getting more and more built up and more and more exciting. Camera come out and it's enough. This is a lot of fun. Alex:                 Next up, let's talk about one of my favorite books currently running. Wicked Things #5 from Boom Box. Created and written by John Allison, art by Max Sarin. I got to tell you, I was super bub to find out the next issue is the last issue of the book. Pete:                What? Because I know. It should be concluded at the end. Alex:                 No. I know, man. It's such a blast with it. This is about a teen detective, frame for murder, ends up teaming up with the police department after she is arrested. It is- Pete:                They have so much more they can do. Alex:                 Just so much fun. Every issue. Max Sarin's art is so great. Everybody is so charming. This is a compliment. It's almost the opposite of Voyage to the Stars where it's like, it's not even bits. It's more character situations that are causing the comedy throughout. It's great. It's just, I enjoy. I want to read these adventures forever. I want to just read an odd-going detective series with these characters. Pete:                Yeah. It's such a fun character. I feel like I'm just, now, really getting into it and understanding the voice and cadence of everything. It's really clicking for me and I'm sorry to see that it's going to be wrapping up because I feel like there's so many different places we can go. I love this world so much. I feel like we can kind of put this on a lot of different situations, but man, yeah, they're really killing it right now or hitting the stride, that's next level. It's just fun. It's coming from such an earnest kind of cool place. The main character is kind of starry-eyed, but still, there's a lot of greatness to her. I really enjoy it. Alex:                 The mysteries are fun too. This issue, there's a bunch of casino robberies happening throughout London. She ultimately figures it out in absolutely ridiculous way, but in a way that proves that she is the smartest one in the room, anyway. It's fun. Pickup this book. Definitely check it out. Great, great stuff. Next up, another penultimate issue, Low #25, from Image Comics. Pete:                Oh, man, too bad Justin is not here. Alex:                 Written by Rick Remender, art by Greg Tocchini. Yeah, I must have put this in here because I want to talk to Justin about it because I know how into this book he is. This is the second to the last issues of the book. Huge battle issue as everybody is fighting for the future of the human race. The phenomenal thing about the pace of this book is the entire issue. People are just being blasted apart by this helm suit. We don't see it the entire time until the very last paddle. It's the pacing of that, just is this jaws pacing almost where the monster is off screen the entire time until the very end is great. This issue is one of my favorite issues of Low in a very long time. Pete:                Yeah. I can't agree with you more. It's such a unique, weird, creative book. It's so intense. The reveal is so insane. Remender is just killing it. Justin knew it early and called it, but yeah, I didn't really figure it out until the last couple of issues, so how crazy good this was. Really impressive. Makes me want to go back and start over again. Alex:                 It's good stuff. Next up, Canto II- Pete:                The art. Come on. Alex:                 The art. Pick it up for the art alone. Canto II: The Hollow Men #2 from IDW. Story by David M. Booher, art by Drew Zucker. It was continuing the adventures of little Clockwork Man as he tries to save the entire world. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 I like this issue quite a bit. I think this is a very engaging character. It's a weird, pretty dark world, but good stuff. Pete, what do you think about this one? Pete:                Yeah. I really like the art and the storytelling in this. It's very imaginative. These like little, fun creatures that were following around. It's interesting the way they battle and the way they go about things. It's definitely unique and stuff like that, whole town of scarecrows was so crazy. They do a great job of not only storytelling through action, but also giving you a lot of the creativity behind different character designs and ideas. It's a nonstop thrill ride with a little bit of heart and fun because they're so small and cute. Alex:                 Yeah. That's a nice way of putting it. Let's turn to something I'm sure we're going to definitely agree on. The Immortal She-Hulk #1 from Marvel Comics. Written by Al Ewing and art by John Davis-Hunt. Man, this issue is so good. I love this issue so much. Pete, I'm sure you agree with me, but this is showing what has been going on in the She-Hulk side of things as she, like the He-Hulk I believe it is called, has come back to life and discovered that he is immortal with the whole thing with the green door and he who lives below and all of these horror elements. What happens with She-Hulk? She's come back to life a couple of times as well. That's when this one shot deals with and it's as creepy and as alarming and as upsetting as anything Al Ewing has been doing in the main title, except with her fave Jen Walters. I love that this comes off of Empyre, where she died, yet, again. I love the pacing of the story. Alex:                 Particularly, if you've been reading Immortal Hulk, you'd be wondering what's going on there. This really pulls the veil back quite a bit and shows you a lot more information about what's going on. I thought it was great. Pete, of course, you agree, but I'll turn to you anyway and take a big sip of this beer that I'm drinking for when you agree. Here we go. Pete:                Yeah. This is completely insane and then falls down of a whole of insanity through a green door. Then we get a very- Alex:                 What? Pete:                … unlikely conversation with Wolverine, which I didn't appreciate. Later, we get Thor stuff, which I felt like it was a little bit better character voice-wise, but the reveal at the end, again, is hitting home. The leader is really fucking shit up as he is an immortal hulk right now. It was really cool to see that tie in, but man, alive, this is just so crazy and creepy. Like, “Oh yeah, you think hell is easy. We're below that.” I don't want to know that. I don't want to know what gets worse than hell. Alex:                 Yeah, there's a hell below hell. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 It's all good. Pete:                Great. Alex:                 I think it's- Pete:                Wait. What are you going to say? Alex:                 I think this is insane and a little too scary for me, and I'm looking forward to, maybe, trying to get things back to normal. Pete:                Like a happier Hulk but- Alex:                 Yeah. Like just someone gives me a little hope Hulk. Pete:                The happy Hulk? Alex:                 The happiest Hulk. Yeah, we'll see that pretty soon. Undiscovered Country #8 from Image Comics. Written by Scott Snyder and Charles Soule, art by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Leonardo Marcello Grassi. I don't even want to say heroes of this book, but characters in this book have made it to the second ring of the walled-off America, called it Unity. They have discovered in this issue that it is a tech wonderland, seemingly, but of course, not everything is how it seems. I love how much this new arc has changed things up. It's great. It's exciting. It feels weird and nerve-racking. We had Scott Snyder on our live show a couple of weeks ago. He talked pretty heavily, not just about this book, but about how they're adapting it for the movies, which I think revealed a lot of information about how this book is going to go. It's fascinating to read this book through that lens. Pete:                Yeah. I also think that, now, this book is really cooking in a way that I can follow or before, I was very much confused to how this all works, but now, it's like, we've got more of a sense of this world and where they are in it and how they're trying to navigate. Yeah, I really like that whole coin bit. I really liked the introduction in some of the newer characters in this arc. I think this is very, very interesting. It's been a while since I've been excited about a writer's take on an idea, and this take of America and what it is and what it is in this very interesting, especially in this post Apocalyptic world. Alex:                 I also can't believe that we're eight issues in and they're still coming up with new America jokes. Pete:                Yeah. It's very impressive. Alex:                 Very impressive. Yeah. Next up, Mega Man: Fully Charged #2, from Boom Studios. Story by A.J. Marchisello and Marcus Rinehart. Written by Marcus Rinehart. Illustrated by Stefano Simeone. I think you like this issue a bit more than I did, the first issue of the series, Pete. I figured, again, let's check in with issue #2 here. This is a darker, more modern take on Mega Man that gives it more of serial overtone. What do you think about this issue? Pete:                Yeah, I very much liked it. It's like this idea of, okay, Mega Man, how do we deal with this in technology? What's too much? Who has control? That kind of thing. I feel like it's dealt with, in this issue, in a cool, unique way or really inside Mega Man's head as Justin likes to get inside character's heads. We get a lot of what they're thinking about, why they're doing what we're doing. We're meeting all the players as we move forward in an interesting way. I think it's cool. I'm very much enjoying this great, kind of like last page hype up for next issue. This is just fun. To me, Boom is just taking something that's cool and spitting it out in a way that's fun. Alex:                 I like this as well. I like this a little bit more than the first issue, but I still, as somebody who is not totally into Mega Man, I'm a little lost in some of the continuity stuff. The things that I liked or the things where Mega Man is out of costume and himself, it made me feel like not to backseat write it, but it made me feel like I would love to see a Mega Man ultimate Spider-Man type of reorigin of him. Pete:                Whoo. Alex:                 That feels like they're skirting up against, but they're also leading into what fans know. That's the part where it confuses me a little bit. I like the parts when he's out of costume and he's finding out more about this world. That's very interesting. The other parts are a little too deep divy for me, personally. Pete:                All right. Alex:                 Still, the art, very good in here. I enjoyed that quite a bit. Let's move on to one of the big surprises for me in The Stack. Juggernaut #1 from Marvel Comics, written by Fabian Nicieza and art by Ron Garney. I thought this was great. I was completely surprised. This is Juggernaut working for damage control. Some stuff has happened to him in the past where he lost his powers. He's regained them again. We're slowly getting information about that. He is mixing it up with who he thinks is a new mutant named D-Cell. This is just so good. I should've known, but like Ron Garney, of course, amazing on art. Fabian Nicieza knows his way around the story, but this character with the issue of Juggernaut is so interesting to me. I was fascinated in the entire issue. Pete:                Okay. Nonstop action, like the cover looks insane. All right, let's do this, and then it gets into this touching story about Juggernaut and what he goes through and what he has to deal with. It's very interesting. Also, the introduction of D-Cell, very cool. I like this. I'm very impressed by this #1. I also just got to say, the red on Juggernaut's- Alex:                 Yeah, I agree. Pete:                … uniform is tops and Garney is killing it with this black and white with the splashing of red. Alex:                 Right? Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 It's a very good redesign- Pete:                Yeah. It's like a little Sin City. Alex:                 … for the coloring on this book. I should've- Pete:                Having a black and white and then popping with colors, but man, it really works great. Alex:                 Yeah. Again, I was very surprised about this book. There's something about reading a scene of the Juggernaut in a hospital and a nurse being like, “Okay, Juggernaut, you could go now.” I was like, “What? What am I reading? What's happening here?” It totally fits. It makes sense for the character and the way that Fabian sets him up. This is a very good issue and the cliffhanger at the end is super fun. It's a good setup. I'm excited about this book. I just sort or randomly threw it on here because it was #1, but I'm real glad we did because I loved reading it. Alex:                 Next up, I know this is one of your top picks, Pete. Black Magic #14 from Image Comics. Written by Greg Rucka and art by Nicola Scott. Picking up out of that cliffhanger for the last issue where one of our main witches is driving through a creepy little girl while the other main witch is sleeping with a girl in her house and thinks a little bit- Pete:                Okay. Well, all right. Well, first of- Alex:                 What do you think, Pete? Pete:                Don't put extra creep on things, all right? Yeah. Sleeping with a aged person, it's not a little girl that she's sleeping with as well. It's not some kind of weird- Alex:                 A woman. It was two beautiful responsible women. Pete:                Okay. All right. You just sound so creepy. All right. First of, yeah, we got the car driving- Alex:                 Some lovely ladies. Pete:                Why? Why are you so creepy? Alex:                 Lovely ladies. Pete:                Stop being creepy. Yeah. We have … the art is the real hero of this book. These ghost kind of Ghoul, creepy kid things are unbelievable. Just the way it's like they're drawing the ghost and the shading, it's just next level art in such a cool way. I was so scared of this girl in the car accident even though it's a comic book. When she twisted doll's leg and then the lady's leg twist like that, oh, that is so creepy. Alex:                 Yeah. This book is very good. Like you were saying, Nicola Scott's art and the way things are drawn throughout this book are the real hero. Greg Rucka, always good, but Nicola Scott's just designs of everything, a very creepy and exactly the right way. Pete:                That cover is so creepy in all the right ways too. Yeah. I also really love a black cat in this book. Really cool. I like that it's a character. I'm really hoping it stays a character in the book. Every once in a while, we get a little bit more from that. It's a nice little side thing that keeps happening. Alex:                 Next up, Power Rangers: Drakkon New Dawn #2, from Boom Studios. Written by Anthony Burch, illustrated by Simone Ragazzoni. We have talked about the last couple of Power Rangers books, which takes places in this apocalyptic future where everything has been destroyed and the Power Ranger's last hope to save everybody. I've been pretty open. I have been hiding the fact that I don't care about Power Rangers at all, whereas, I didn't love two issues back the one shot. I did like the first issue of New Dawn. I was curious to check out the second issue. I liked it even more. This is good. This is a good, dark, adult's reinvention of the Power Rangers. I really enjoyed it. I'm onboard and I'm very surprised. Pete:                I'm also very surprised because I liked Power Rangers and this is not like Power Rangers … I haven't really read a lot of the comics, but the TV show. I'm very impressed that how much I'm onboard with the story and what's going on. The writing is doing such an amazing job of sucking you into this world and giving you these characters in such a great way that's such a compelling kind of thing that gets you very excited for this kind of big fight that's coming up. Yeah, I'm very impressed with this book. Alex:                 It's basically like stripping all the things from them that make them Power Rangers and finding out what make them tick as heroes, right? I feel like, most of the time, you watch a Power Rangers episode and the deal is, should we use our swords? Yeah. All right. Let's use our swords. We did it. We won. That's the main conflict of Power Rangers versus this, they're dealing with actual real human issues, there are actual conflicts, there are actual problems they need to deal with and big overwhelming things, but they're not losing the sense of humor at the same time. It's just so much more fun to read. This is great. I'm very excited about this even if it's … I'm actually going to get back to the status quo. I think this is very good and I'm very surprised that I'm saying so. Alex:                 On the other hand, I do want to talk about an issue that I'm a little disappointed in for very specific, very stupid reasons. Maestro #2 from Marvel. Written by Peter David and art by German Peralta. This is the origin of the Maestro, the Dark Hulk by Peter David. Love the first issue of this book. Pete:                Yeah. You're going nuts. Alex:                 I thought it was great. Yeah, this issue- Pete:                Really? Alex:                 … I had some problems with, honestly. Pete:                I love this. Alex:                 Yeah. Here's my problem, and I'm going to spoil some of the plot stuff, but Peter David's writing, good as always. German Peralta's art, great. The idea and- Pete:                You got problems with colors? Alex:                 Here's what happens. Pete:                What are you … what's your- Alex:                 Last issue, Hulk wakes up, finds the world has been destroyed. It's like, “You know what, I've given up on humanity.” They're like, “Ooh, this is good. We're going to go on a slow progression to finding out how it became the Maestro.” What happened her? How did he build up a civilization? What is going to happen? Then in this issue, he finds the civilization and Hercules is the Maestro and it's already happened. Pete:                Dude, that's a fucking last page reveal you just did. Alex:                 No, I know. I said I was going to talk about spoilers, but my point is that it's like I waitlisted to the fact that he became the Maestro because somebody else was the Maestro and he took over that stuff versus the Hulk going in his descent to the darkness. I'm still going to read this. I like the art. I like the Maestro. I like Peter David, but it was a real bummer of an issue. Pete:                Your problem was, you have a better idea than what the comic did. That's what your problem is. Alex:                 No, I don't have a better idea. It just felt like it was going in a different direction after the first issue than what happened in the second issue. It felt like we skipped all of the work. Pete:                I think you got to wait for it, man. I think you're judging it too fast. Alex:                 What do you think then, Pete? Pete:                I think I should like it. Alex:                 Do you like it? Pete:                I like the idea of sad Hulk in the wastelands talking about humanity. He took some fair shots, man. You know what I mean? He's not lying. Poor animals. Alex:                 I like all of that stuff. I think that's good. Pete:                It's like, “Okay, he stumbles across people” and now, it's like, “Okay, what's going to happen? Can he go see this Maestro.” Okay and then Maestro isn't who you think it is. Great reveal. Classic comic. Boom. I don't know why you're mad. I think it's interesting to see how this is going. I think this is a solid second issue of ramping up the story. I'm sorry, you had a better idea. I would like to just quickly, while we're talking about our Marvel book, the rest and power, Chadwick Boseman kind of things at the top of the comics. I think we're really classy and well-done. I'm happy that they did that because it's fucking really nice. Alex:                 Yeah. Me too. I agree. Man, it is very hard to read Marvel books with Black Panther right now, which I know is such a weird thing and I keep checking myself of the emotional reaction there because it's not like he wasn't actually Black Panther. The Black Panther in comics is a different thing than Black Panther in the movies, but whenever Black Panther comes into a comic book panel into a comic book story, it's crushing because it feels like it's Chadwick Boseman coming into the scene. I know it's not. Intellectually, I know it's not, but emotionally, it feels that way. I agree with you. It is nice to have that acknowledgement on the front cover. It's so sad. Let's very diligently transition into talking about The Goddamned: The Virgin Brides #3 from Image Comics. Written by Jason Aaron and art by R.M. Guera. This is continuing the story line of two versions we're trying to escape from. Not where angels have their way with him. It's horrifying. Alex:                 Pete loves this book. Cannot stop talking about it. We get off camera and off the podcast and Pete is like, “Let's talk about The Goddamned” in an open voice. It's very impressive, but another great issue of this book, R.M. Guera draws the crap out of it as our girls continue to escape for the mountain and find out things are not quite as they seem, of course, but it's so dark and it's so sad. It just brings you further and further down every issue. Pete:                Yeah. This is really impressive. What's nice is, and this issue we're not really dealing with the angels raping. We can move past that a little bit, which is good. We've got these two heroines fighting for their lives as they're trying to make it out of this mountain range, but the reveal at the end is a little crushing. Man, it can say enough about the art. Just the whole part where you thought, maybe, she was going to die and they later rest and then like, it's the action, the storytelling. This is really a great story even though a lot of the story makes me uncomfortable. I'm still very much impressed with the product that they're putting out. Alex:                 Yeah. That's Jason Aaron writing about faith, writing about religion and making it dark, making it realistic but not throwing it away entirely. He's not like, “Fuck you. You're stupid for believing this stuff.” It's more about what do we believe in if the things we believe in are evil. That's a great thing to drill into right now and he's doing such a good job with it. All right. Let's move on then. Judge Dredd False Witness #3 from IDW. Story by Brandon Easton, art by Kei Zama. Oh my gosh, I really mess this one up, but we finally get what we've been asking for with this series. We got a meeting between our two main characters between a guy on the run for a murder he didn't commit and Judge Dredd who is tracking him down. This title continues to over perform in my mind. It's a good Judge Dredd story. There are some really good, interesting class and race stuff that's played with right here. It's very smart and well done while, still, being a good action thriller. Pete:                Yeah. It's just hard. I don't want a Judge Dredd Comic right now. I don't want a story about cops fucking all powerful cops that are judged, jury and executioner right now. I didn't really feel it as much with the other issues, but right now, I was just like, “Fuck this, man.” Alex:                 I see what you're saying. Not to interject and to cut you out, but I do think … I guess, we'll see where it goes, but it does feel like the story is doing the opposite thing. The story is presenting Judge Dredd with a case that is not cotton dry. I could be wrong with the coloring, but we get a case of a black dude getting plastic surgery to look like a white dude and become basically like a proponent of the rich. There's that thing going on. He gets murdered. His former friend is framed for it. Judge Dredd is tracking him down. I think we're getting a story here where Judge Dredd having to confront the idea that things are not cotton dry, that I cannot be judged jury and executioner right now. If that is the way the story is going, that's an incredibly timely thing to happen. Pete:                Yeah. I hear you. It's just a little painful to just see … Just the panels where they're so imposing over people, the judges. When they walk by and there's all these people lined up in attention and it's very, very intimidating. It's heading me in a different way right now that, normally, it can be like, “Okay, this is comic book. This is fun. Judge Dredd is great. I love Judge Dredd,” but it's just like, right now, it's just a little bit … I agree with you that it is trying to do that. It's hard to see the uniform and not flinch a little bit. Alex:                 All right. Last one we're going to talk about is Bliss #3 from Image Comics. Written by Sean Lewis and art by Caitlin Yarsky. We love every issue of this title, but this is pulling off some big things, some very big things. Specifically picking up the cliffhanger where a kid has been telling the whole history of his dad. We find out that his dad is not as clean and doing much worse things than we thought he was. Also, welcome to Justin who popped in the last time of the podcast. Pete:                Hey. Justin:              You got to choose your angles. I think, just really, Bliss is the comic that I really wanted to weigh in on. Because I've actually been here the whole time. Really great reviews. Alex:                 Oh, wow. Justin:              I didn't want to chime in because you guys, I think, really covered the basis, especially the X and sword stuff. Pete:                Oh. Well, thanks yeah. Alex:                 I'll tell you what, actually. We talked about a lot of books on The Stack today. I think, it would be worth before we finish up talking about Bliss. Why don't you just give a thumbs up or thumbs down, like a yay or nay to all the titles. I'll read through all the titles, okay? Justin:              Great. Yeah. Alex:                 Here we go. X of swords: Creation #1. Justin:              Perfect. No notes. Pete:                Wow. Alex:                 Dark Night: Speed Metal #1. Justin:              Fast as I wanted it to be. Alex:                 Wow, and Unkindness of Ravens, number one. Justin:              More ravens. Alex:                 Spider-Man #4. Justin:              You know how I feel about this. This guy should be making more quips. Alex:                 The Last God #9. Justin:              Good fight. Alex:                 Voyage to the Stars #2. Justin:              Yeah, get off earth. Earth sucks. Alex:                 WYND #4. Justin:              Good. Not enough wind. It's very still. Alex:                 More wind. Wicked Things #5. Justin:              Chilling. Alex:                 Low #25. Justin:              Oh, no. Fun. It was fun. Alex:                 Yeah. That was fun. Wait. Okay. Low #25. Can we actually stop for a second? I know we're very much versed in the podcast, but the whole reason I put that in The Stack was to get your take on it, Justin. Low #25, penUltimate issue of the series. What do you think? Justin:              We look at this as a whole. My review of the last issue was, I can't believe he's willing to take us here and I bought it and then it was like, “Oh, no. Rug-pull everything is terrible.” I don't know where we're going to go with this at the end of the day. Pete:                How about that reveal though? That was fucking bananas. Justin:              Everything about this book is bananas. They push everything in every direction all the time. That's why the series is one of the richest series we've reviewed in this. Maybe top Remender. Maybe top Remender. Alex:                 Yeah. This has really blown me away as for what Remender is doing in this comic. I didn't really, really appreciate it until this second to the last issue, like everything that he's doing. Justin:              Yeah, 100%. Alex:                 It's making me feel like we should probably do a separate podcast about Top Remender. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              Yeah. Pete:                We just got to determine like break it down, top 10. Justin:              The remaining Remenders. The Remenders that remain. Pete:                Right. Yeah. Alex:                 Getting back to the list, Canto II: The Hollow Men #2. Justin:              Really, Canto? Can? No. Alex:                 The Immortal She-Hulk #1. Justin:              Legit. Love this book. I can't believe they're making She-Hulk terrifying now too. Alex:                 Yeah. Yeah. Undiscovered Country, number- Justin:              I'm worried that this is going to become my job from here on now. Don't say anything and then just give us the one liner nonsense thing. Alex:                 Yeah. We're almost through it. There's a lot of titles though. Undiscovered Country, number eight. Justin:              Perfectly clear of what's happening all the time. Alex:                 Mega Man: Fully Charged #2. Justin:              Playing the video game, except my fingers are not sore. Alex:                 Nice. Yeah. Juggernaut, number one. Justin:              This guy is unstoppable. Alex:                 Yeah. Black Magic #14. Justin:              Somebody stop him. Alex:                 I'm definitely getting the impression that you've read all this book. Justin:              100%. Alex:                 Black Magic #14. Justin:              Great to see this book back. I've missed this book. Alex:                 Yeah. Power Rangers: Drakkon New Dawn #2. Justin:              Once again, surprisingly into the Power Rangers. Time to do a rewatch. Alex:                 Great. That was my reaction too. Pete:                Go, go Power Rangers. Justin:              I [crosstalk 00:51:58]. Alex:                 Maestro #2. Justin:              This guy, I wanted more music. I feel like he's not doing any conducting. Alex:                 The Goddamned: The Virgin Brides #3. Justin:              This book really makes you want to get back into the bible. Alex:                 Judge Dredd False Witness #3. Justin:              I'm not prepared to be judged. Alex:                 Okay. Justin:              This book was judging me. Alex:                 Great. Finally, that brings us to Bliss #3. Once again, this is a great issue of this book. This really flips the premise in a certain way. We spent the first two issues knowing and loving this dad. In this third issue, we find out he is not all, he's cracked up to be. It's real dark, real sad, but I thought real good. Pete, what was you takeaway from this one? Pete:                Yeah. I was really impressed with this issue. A lot of things click into place in this issue. We get a lot of forward movement and a way we can all follow, which is great. Yeah, it went from being like tripped out stone or what's going on to like, “Oh, shit. There's a lot of evil fucked up shit going on in a way that is very much pointed at this family.” I think that really grounds it in the son-mom stuff was just so touching and powerful. The panels of the mom's face are just unbelievable. Justin:              Yeah. The art on this book, I think, really crushes. It adds some air, this air of tension in fantastical remorse and just loss throughout the book. It reminds me of like the dark crystal a little bit or- Alex:                 Yeah. Justin:              … especially with the non-human creatures. Even Neil Gaiman's Coraline a little bit. It feels like a more adult version of it. The scenes at the end where the dad reveals what he's capable of are just tough. Alex:                 Yeah. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              The coloring as well throughout is just beautiful. Pete:                Yeah. It's really intense. Alex:                 Great. Great book. Definitely pick it up. That is it for The Stack. If you like to support us, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. to Crowdcast and YouTube. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher or the app of your choice. To subscribe and listen to the show, did I say pateron.com/comicbookclub to support the show? Pete:                You did now. Alex:                 Okay. There we go. At Comic Book Live on Twitter. Comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and many more. We'll see you next time on The Stack. The post The Stack: X Of Swords, Speed Metal And More appeared first on Comic Book Club. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On today's Stack podcast: Iron Man #1, You Look Like Death: Tales From The Umbrella Academy #1, Batman #99, Thor #7, Stillwater #1, Detective Comics #1027, Goosebumps: Secrets of the Swamp #1, Giant-Size X-Men: Storm #1, Big Girls #2, Justice League #53, Seven Secrets #2, The Immortal Hulk #37, Dryad #5, Catwoman #25, Once & Future #11, X-Men #12, Faithless II #4, The Amazing Spider-Man: The Sins of Norman Osborn #1, and Head Lopper #13. SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Full Transcript: Alex:                 What is up y'all? Welcome to The Stack. I'm Alex. Justin:              I'm Justin. Pete:                I'm Pete. Alex:                 And on The Stack we talk about a bunch of comics that have come out today. Pete:                Sure do. Alex:                 We review them, unless they're DC comics, those rap scallions, they come out on Tuesdays. They go out for 24 hours. You already know about them. Justin:              Yes, but you can read them today. You can read comics whenever you want. That's the freedom of the comic book industry. Alex:                 Right. And if you break into writer's brain, you can read comics that haven't even been made yet, man. You know what I'm talking about? Justin:              Yes. I know what you mean by breaking into a writer's brain too. You talk about with like a hammer? Alex:                 Yeah, man. But six feet away, keep your safe distance. Let's get into this because I don't know where I was going. Pete:                Wait, what? Yeah, what the fuck. Alex:                 I don't know where I was going with this, Pete. Iron Man, number one from Marvel written by Christopher Cantwell, art by Cafu. This is, as you can imagine, another new start for Iron Man, a back-to-basic start after the big robot war. And this book spends quite a bit of time with Tony Stark, the man, before it puts him in a classic Iron Man costume, throws him up against a new, old threat. What'd you think about this book? How'd you feel about this versus the last couple of years in Tony's life? Justin:              I don't know if I'd call it an Iron Man costume, but other than that I think this is a fun book. I feel like Tony Stark is popping a little bit more here. He feels a little bit on his own, less tied up in a sort of the galaxy brain, worried about everything, stuff that he's mostly been in for the last few years and more just like the guy who puts on the suit. Pete:                It's nice to see him not being a robot or a dead version of himself or whatever it is. It's nice to see Tony being Tony, but there's a lot of interesting things in this comic. I didn't really get past the sad girl playing her violin outside of an Apple store and then asked to leave where she was crying and walking away, that was fucking heartbreaking, man. That was cold as ice. But I'm interested to see what happens. The problem is what I didn't like was there was this moment where it was just like the movie where Tony Stark's like, “Oh yeah.” And then someone comes out to him at a party and was like, “Hey Tony, I got this thing to pitch you.” And he's like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, later.” And then that person becomes the villain. And that was like we saw that in this comic as well. And I was like, “Well, it's kind of played out, but all right, I'll see what's up.” Alex:                 But it plays out differently, right? Because he turns around to the guy- Pete:                A little differently. Alex:                 I mean, that's a classic Iron Man, Tony stark scenario. What I liked about this book is I spent most of the running time thinking we were going to be running out of time that I was like, “Jesus, why are they spending so much time on Tony Stark out of armor? Get to it already, you're going to run out of the page length here. But this was well paced. It was well thought out and they clearly gave it a little bit of extra time to breathe. You could spend time with Tony Stark before putting him in an action scenario. I don't know if it's going to pay out with the page length every issue necessarily like that, but it's refreshing and nice. Like you were saying Justin, to see him on a back-to-basics level, Tony stark, because we haven't really seen that in a very, very long time. Justin:              Yeah. Reading this I was like, “Oh yeah, he used to be sort of a dude who dealt with his own stuff. And now he's been trapped in the Neanderthal age in a cave for a while.” Also a couple more details I love, Terrax as a villain. One of my favorite villain characters, cosmic villains, who you don't see hardly ever, like cool acts, cool look, cool looking dude. And I love the triangle shield in the first couple of pages and the Iron Man armor. Alex:                 I agree. Good stuff. Art by Cafu as well, yes. Pete:                Yeah. The art was great. The moment where he, spoiler alert, flies through a helicopter blade was pretty bad ass. Alex:                 Yeah. All very cool stuff. Let's move on and talk about You Look Like Death: Tales from the Umbrella Academy, number one, from Dark Horse Comics, story by Gerard Way and Shaun Simon, art and colors by I.N.J. Culbard. This of course does not have the regular artists Gabriel Ba on Umbrella Academy. And that's because- Pete:                Yeah, what the fuck. Alex:                 Hold on. You can probably tell from the title, this is a spinoff. This is a side story focusing on Klaus as he gets kicked out of the Umbrella Academy and heads off to Hollywood. Man, there's just a lot of fun. You got to love this, Klaus high on drugs. Justin:              You know Alex is going to love this. The original Klaus head. Alex:                 I love Klaus. I also love going back to the Umbrella Academy after being so deep into the show with Umbrella Podcademy our Umbrella Academy podcast, to revisit the characters in the original format. It's like, “Oh right, Kraken's actually a badass and not just a sad sack. That's nice to see, that's fun.” Justin:              Yeah. What's your favorite type of hero, bad-ass or sad sack? Alex:                 Great question. It's very much a toss up. Pete, you got to love the vampire buggy, right? Pete:                Yeah. [crosstalk 00:05:44]. That was really fun. First of, [crosstalk 00:05:47]. Justin:              Wait, hold up, Why'd you go to Pete for the vampire monkey? Alex:                 Because I was reading the book and I was like, “Pete's going to hate this, but he's going to like the vampire monkey.” Justin:              Is that true? Pete:                Well, I didn't hate it. I mean, what's upsetting is the father just kills me in this, just how cold this fucking dad is, it's hard to get past and it's just hammered all the time during the book, so it's tough. If this father had any compassion, these kids would have such a better chance in life, and it is just heartbreaking. Justin:              Pete shitting on fatherhood, going after the whole enterprise. Pete:                That's right. Just you guys better fucking get your shit together and fucking [crosstalk 00:06:33]. Alex:                 I just kicked out my son. I told him he was cut off. Justin:              Wow. Alex:                 He headed to Hollywood. He got crazy high. Justin:              Nice. He's going to love it out there. Pete:                Yeah. Anyways, Klaus is fun. It's nice to revisit this a little bit, but I like Gabriel Ba. Justin:              Are you crying, Pete? I love, the art really pops in this, especially once the story moves out to the West coast, I feel like the scenes are really great, really fun. Great all around. Alex:                 Yeah. Let's move on then to Batman number 99 from DC Comics written by James Tynion IV and art by Jorge Jimenez. This is the I think penultimate chapter of the Joker war storyline- Justin:              It seems that way. Alex:                 … this is the Joker has basically destroyed Gotham city, taken over Bruce Wayne's fortune. Finally Batman and the crew are fighting bad Batman by appealing to his family saying, “I messed up, get back together with me all. Let's take this town.” Catwoman meanwhile is attacking financially trying to get the funds back. Man, this is the stuff that happens in this issue. And I almost don't want to spoil it, but particularly towards the end made me exclaim out loud. There are two moments towards the edge of the issue that I went, “Haha,” just like that, out loud. What'd you guys think about it? Pete:                Well, I was really … This is a lot of fun. This book is great. Part of me does really want to kind of get back to the bat and cat stuff, that was kind of set up before this. So seeing them kind of a part is driving me crazy a little bit. But man, the whole start of this, like Joker rolling in his fucking limo, this is really insane to kind of see where things are right now. And it really does get you kind of like hyped for that and in such a great way. I mean the panels where Batman just kind of lands in front of the spot where he's supposed to be, so epic, so well done. I love this kind of show down kind of atmosphere that is being set up. And the reveal at the end was holy fucking shit. Justin:              Yeah. James Tynion is such a tactical writer. He comes at the full story and the individual scenes with different angles than we've seen before. We get to spend more time with the Joker than I feel like we get to see normally. Normally the Joker is just cackling and plotting against Batman. In this we get to see a little bit more of him doing the logistical bits of his plan, and then executing in the way leading up to that last page reveal. And that stuff is fun and smart and makes this story seem fresh despite the fact that we've been … I want to say drowning in Joker for the past couple of years. Alex:                 Yeah. Well that, and also that it is another Gotham city is in flames story, but it's still … which we've seen a million times. I don't know why anybody lives there, but to your point, it's still feels dangerous. It still feels like it could go either way at the end of the day. Great, great stuff. Pete:                Just before we move on, we were talking about some oh shit moments towards the end. But also some touching stuff that happens in this too just before Batman kind of gives his speech or right after it, someone gets a gift, very touching. Alex:                 You're talking about the Nightwing costume, right? Pete:                Yeah, I am. I'm trying not to spoil it you fuck, but cool. Alex:                 Well, I mean, I think that's okay. We've already seen him in the costume several times because of the publishing schedule. But yeah, it's good bad family staff, James Tynion gets it. It works really well. This is a great issue. We went on to another one, Thor number seven from Marvel Comics written by Donny Cates and art by Aaron Kuder. This is pick it up after the death of Galactus last issue. And Thor's big vision, that some bad things are coming not just his way, but the Marvel universe's way. And he is throwing [inaudible 00:10:52] down on Broxton once again, because he feels like he is not worthy to pick it up. Turns out more people might be worthy to pick it up. As usual Donny Cates just find some fun, unique angles on his characters. And I love Aaron Kuder's art so much, just I love it. Every time it's just a pleasure to see his name. Pete:                Yeah. It's very enjoyable. The art is fantastic. Sorry, Justin, I didn't mean to cut you off. Justin:              No, please, it's your time to shine. Pete:                Well, this is such a fun back and forth between Tony and Thor that I love very much. Yeah, this is what a cool kind of setup for this new kind of arc. Very excited to see where this goes. A little kind of twist on the unworthy. But I'm very much on board and it's also great to see the kind of blanking on his name there [crosstalk 00:11:55]. Yeah, thank you. I'm just going to say horse Thor. Justin:              Speaking of Beta Ray Bill, when he takes his helmet off that dude's fucked. Alex:                 It's weird. Scary. Very weird. Yeah. I don't like it. He looks much less like a horse without his helmet. Justin:              Yeah. And much more like a nightmare that I'm going to have tonight. I mean, this book reminded me of a conversation we've had a lot about Batman. Thor is a character that is often pretty serious. Like God dealing with God level things speaking in very heightened language, yet Donny Cates finds a way to make this fun. There's a lot of humor here and that Thor can play around, something we've been talking about a lot lately with Batman is like, why does it always have to be doom and gloom, there's room in our ability as fans to take two sides of a character, someone who takes their job seriously, but also likes to play around a little bit with his friends. And this book does a great job of keeping the action fun, the stakes high, I mean two issues ago, everything was hell. And now here we are where we're having fun with words on [inaudible 00:13:04]. Pete:                Yeah, just leave words on the hammer, man. Alex:                 Words on the hammer, that's what I always say. Moving on to one that I know Justin is super psyched about, Stillwater number one from Image Comics written by Chip Zdarsky and art by Ramon K. Perez. Now this is a bit of a spoiler because they only eventually get around to it in the second half of the book, but it is the concept of the book is about a guy who loses his job, gets an inheritance or so he thinks, that brings him to the small town of Stillwater. And it turns out in the small town of Silverwater, nobody ever dies. Things get darker from there. Justin, talk about this book a little bit. Justin:              I mean the art by Ramon K. Perez is so good. I love his work on everything that he does. I think the first book that really caught my eye he did was I think called Tale of Sand, I want to say, based on a Jim Henson script. And great book and this just art really shines. The story itself reminded me a lot of Lovecraft Country actually, the first two episodes of that, except with none of the race elements and it's just sort of spoiled white dudes doing the … going on a similar journey. But the way the story ends is exciting and curious what the next move is, if that make sense. Pete:                Yeah, this is the new like, hey, I'm a prince, and if you send me money I'll send you money tenfold. When you get the letter that somebody died and there's inheritance, you don't fall for that. All right. That's a trap. It's clear. If you didn't know that person- Alex:                 Wait, sorry. Pete, did you just say somebody died and left me money? Let me know where I need to go to pick it up. Pete:                Oh, okay, well you got to go to Stillwater. Justin:              And let me say on the other side, Pete, your rich great uncle did die and you have to go get that money. You can't just leave that hanging there just because you're scared. Pete:                I'm not going to fall for that, all right. It's some creepy town where- Alex:                 No, I back up what Justin is saying, this is true and accurate. And if you give us $50 right now, we'll tell you where to go. Pete:                Oh, okay. All right. Well, I'll just Venmo you guys then. Alex:                 Yeah, that sounds great. Actually, you know what might be easier is if you gave us your credit card number. Pete:                Oh okay, sure. Yeah, why don't I give it to you right over here? Alex:                 All right, go ahead. Pete:                Five, five, five, five, five. Justin:              It is weird it's all fives. It is crazy. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Wait, actually I had a question just to step back. Thor, I didn't try this yet. The phone number he puts down on me on [inaudible 00:15:52] for Tony, that's just like a regular two on two number, right? That's pretty weird. Justin:              Yeah, let me, I guess you're right here. Two, one, two, nine, seven, zero, four, one, three, three. Alex:                 Ooh, I don't get any phone service down here. You want to give it a call? Justin:              Yeah, I'll give it a call. Alex:                 Okay. That sounds great. Pete:                Oh man, that's exciting. Alex:                 Yes. Meanwhile, I'll talk about Stillwater. This reminded me a little bit of Revival, the Tim Seeley book, just in terms of concept, which is a great book that everybody should check out. It does feel a little more [inaudible 00:16:26] and a little more focused on this character. I'm also sure Chip Zdarsky is aware of revival and trying to do something different in that. But I'm curious to see how it delineates itself from that going on, just in terms of the pure people coming back to life. You're about to call the number Justin? Justin:              Yes. We have not planned this, so we truly have no idea what's going to come up here. Alex:                 There's going to be an old lady that's going to be like, “Hello.” Speaker 4:        Yes, this is Iron Man. However, due to some big blonde jerk, I no longer use this number. But hey, nice try anyway. For all things Tony stark, please visit www.tonystarkironman.com, and try and stay safe out there, yeah. I'm busy enough as it is. Alex:                 Ah, that's fun. Justin:              Is that Downey? Alex:                 That's cool. Maybe. Justin:              It could be, it sounds like him. Alex:                 Yeah. Fun stuff. Good [inaudible 00:17:22] comic books. Pickup Stillwater number one, moving on to, this is going to be a mouthful, are you ready? Detective Comics number 1027 from DC Comics. This isn't an anniversary issue, so it's a bunch of stories. It is written by Peter J. Tomasi, Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Greg Rucka, James Tynion IV, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Marv Wolfman, Grant Morrison, Tom King, Scott Snyder, Dan Jurgens and Mariko Tamaki. And the art is by Brad Walker, David Marquez, Chip Zdarsky, Eduardo Risso, Riley Rossmo, John Romita Jr., Emanuela Luppachino, Chris Burnham, Walter Simonson, Ivan Reis, Kevin Nowlan and Dan Mora. Justin:              You read so fast, it sounded like you said Snot Snyder. Pete:                It did sound like Snot Snyder. Alex:                 Oh man, thank you for picking on the thing that I screwed up out of 20 names. Justin:              Alex, I just wanted to say, you really nailed it when you said Peter J. Tomasi, Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Greg Rucka and the rest. Alex:                 I like this package. I know we talk a lot about short story [inaudible 00:18:30], this is like- Pete:                Justin loves talking about nice packages. Justin:              Wow. Alex:                 This is a good set of Batman stories. I was fully prepared to be like, “Yeah, I don't know, I like this one.” But I like most of them. Justin:              Yeah. No, it was hard to pick a favorite as well. I really liked the masterclass story was a good use of the bat family where everyone really got to pop for a second. The Grant Morrison detective number 26 story was like- Alex:                 So funny. Justin:              So fun. And I was like, “Oh, Grant Morrison. Yes. I haven't seen that Grant Morrison in quite a while.” Where it's just like finds a little fun bit and just needles it into a story. Alex:                 I mean, I'll mention with the idea of the story is as you can figure out, it's the guy who came to the issue before Batman and he's already to be the next big vigilante. He's going to be the silver ghost. He has the whole plan. He has his origin story. He has his motivation, everything. And then he goes out of his first mission and he sees Batman and he's like, “Ah, shit.” Justin:              This guy's got good branding, good ears. Alex:                 To your point it's great, I want more of that out of Grant Morrison. I don't need crazy musical notes from Superman saving the universe anymore, just give me that fun stuff. He did that on Klaus as well at least at the beginning where it's just the simple idea of what if Santa was battle Santa. That's great, more of that fun stuff. Pete, which ones did you like? What are you into? Pete:                I really loved the fraction happy returns, the Rocco rookie story was really great that we've had an eye on you was a awesome moment. Justin:              That was cool. Pete:                Love the shout-out to the old costume and generations fractured and the Dan Mora art and the gift, yes please, just fantastic. Alex:                 Yeah. Just such a good package across the board. Pete:                It really is. It's one of those ones where you're like, “All right, a collection,” but then you're like, “Holy shit, this is worth it.” Alex:                 Yeah, pretty much every story is good. The art is great, definitely pick this up. Next step, Goosebumps: Secrets of the Swamp, number one from IDW written by Marieke Nijkamp, and art by Yasmin Flores Montanez. This is a new story, I guess, set in the Goosebumps universe. This is honestly something that is very much out of my wheelhouse. I never read Goosebumps as a kid or anything like that. But it's about a kid who is a gamer. She has one prosthetic arm, so clearly she feels uncomfortable about going outside. But she meets another friend who's a prominent gamer and they begin exploring their town that has some spooky monsters in it. What'd you think about this book? Pete:                Well, yeah, I'm not really a big Goosebumps head, but I really like the start of this. This is a solid first issue. Does a great job of introducing interesting characters and then throwing into a shit show. And I understand like you look up to some hero, somebody you admire and they're like, “Oh yeah, kid, you want to roll with me? Guess what? We're going out into the nightmare that is this world.” Alex:                 And I appreciate you explaining all ages, mostly kids book as throwing them into a shit show. Pete:                Well, what would you call that fucking swamp land that they live in? Justin:              There's nothing wrong with swamp. Pete:                I'm not saying that, but the swamp with monsters- Justin:              What's so scary about a swamp, Pete? Because it feels it's moist. Pete:                No, they have straight up monsters in their fucking swamp. Justin:              But you seemed like hung up on the swamp. Pete:                You're the one hung up [crosstalk 00:22:03]. Alex:                 Fill the swamp, fill the swamp. Justin:              That is what you always cheer. Even your time cheerleading at Cornell University, you were a huge fill the swamp. Alex:                 See you, go big red. Pete:                Oh my God. Justin:              Just building out some of our background on the show. I liked this a lot, I also didn't read Goosebumps, so I don't know what Goosebumps brings to this story. It's just like a creepy story I guess, the branding on it, because this story of these people coming together sort of through gaming and then the gaming becoming real. And then they go on the swamp to face a monster, could stand on its own in a fun way. Pete:                Yeah, it's a fun- Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:22:51] a story, like you said, I like the character, so I wanted a little more out of the story. But I feel like obviously we're going to get that in the second issue. Pete:                Issue two is a good spot to look for that. Justin:              Yeah. Wait for it. Alex:                 There you go. Let's move on to another one, Giant-Size X-Men: Storm, number one from Marvel, written by Jonathan Hickman and art by Russell Dauterman. Now we have talked incessantly, but these Giant-Size X-Men books about what is going on here, these seem like half finished stories. What is happening? Well, [inaudible 00:23:21] as one might say. Pete:                Nope. Alex:                 No, but I would not say that. This issue- Pete:                I also wanted to say though that this Jordan D. White said that this issue would change things for Storm forever. So there was a lot of hype going into this issue. Justin:              Well, and can you pinpoint what that is? Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              What? Pete:                Turns out Storm is sick and she's got some things going on, and it makes me very sad. Justin:              Well, but she- Alex:                 No. Justin:              But she's cured by the end, spoiler. Pete:                Yeah. Is she though? Because it seems like that demon they pulled out of her is just going to grow. Alex:                 The only thing that I was going to say, just to kind of finish up the thing that I was saying that we can turn over to the rest of it, is this is finally bringing together some threads specifically from the Giant-Size X-Men issues. We get the Nightcrawler one, which focused a little bit on Cypher. We get the Storm one obviously which, or I guess it was the Jean Grey one maybe- Justin:              I think so. Alex:                 I honestly don't remember. Whatever it was, it was a Storm story and they're finally picking up on that. And we also get the [inaudible 00:24:31] one picking up with that as well and started to loop all of these disparate threads together. Justin, what did you think about this? Because you've been very, critical is probably the wrong word, but I would say dubious at least about [crosstalk 00:24:44]. Justin:              Yeah, surprised just in general that these have been sort of off the main character standalone stories or seemingly standalone stories. But to your point where you were just saying, I do think this amounts to a lot, it feels like, I don't know if maybe it's faded in our minds because of how much has happened in the X universe since the Dawn of X. But so much of those first issues were about sort of the artificial intelligence that will eventually destroy not only the mutants but the humans and be the real enemy. If humans and mutants can get over their shit and face AI. Justin:              And it feels like maybe this is the moment where it starts. That being in the world which the whole premise of the world is that it accelerates time, it accelerates evolution. They pull this techno organic virus that Storm picked up in a recent issue where they went into … what is the place they went into? Alex:                 The orcas, I think. Justin:              Yeah. Orcas and The Children of the Vault is what I was trying to think of. And she pulls this techno organic virus, The Children of the Vault also a hyper evolving hyper time place, and takes it to this other even more pocket dimension where the time extends, it happens even faster. And I think that is the AI evolution that will eventually lead to some of the real monsters that the X-Men face in the Dawn of X issues. And the people we have at the end of this issue, sort of being there are Phantom X, Phantom X's sort of twin, I guess. And then a random dude from AIM. Alex:                 Yeah. And the other thing that's kind of messed up about it, particularly as of a fan of the character is Cypher and Warlock seem to know what's going on and seem to be kind of cool with it, which is not great. There's definitely been some weird, potentially dangerous stuff going on with Cypher and Warlock over the course of this entire run. And that certainly seems to be the clearest tip of the hat to what's happening here. So yeah, I 100% agree with you, Justin. This is like, I think the important thing, it's surprising you said Storm, because I think the important thing is to the overall plot of what is happening with the X-Men line since the very beginning, versus necessarily Storm. Justin:              Yeah. It feels like a bigger thing. That's why I always say, “Don't trust the guy that speaks all the languages.” He's up at the bar, he's talking to the bartender, ordering you a weird drink because he knows too much. Alex:                 But yeah, good issue. Particularly if you've been reading these Giant-Size X-Men books, if you've read House of X and Powers of X, you really like those. I think this is a good thing to pick up on to kind of get potentially the ongoing story. Let's move out to Big Girls Number two from Image Comic story and art by Jason Howard. I think we were pretty into but a little reserved on the first issue of this book, takes place in a post apocalyptic world where women grow to gigantic size, men also grow to gigantic size, but become monsters and are attacking one of the last remaining cities. We've been following one of the so-called Big Girls who was fighting back against them. We get more fleshed out about the world, this issue. I like this issue a lot more personally, because of the details and the nuance that it added. How'd you guys feel? Pete:                Yeah, this is good because it's like, all right, now we're kind of really getting understanding of who's who, where's what type of situation. Justin:              Who's big, who's little. Pete:                Yeah. Men are monsters, women are saving the world, it's great. I do think though that the kind of reveal at the end is really what's going to kind of take this concept and kind of push it. But the art's great, the action's phenomenal. It's a interesting world, so I'm excited for more. But I'm glad that and agree with Zalben that issue too kind of like solidify things a little bit better. Justin:              Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's nice to sort of, like you're saying, Pete, see the sides of where everyone is. We have our main character who's a little bit dubious about the status quo. And then we have this sort of rebel faction in the back half that is maybe- Pete:                Also I was a little worried about how slow that one main character was to pull the trigger to save that other person's life there. I was like, thought that would be a bigger issue and might come back. Alex:                 We'll have to see what happens. Justin:              I love the double page spread in the middle of the book of our main Big Girl being operated on, and sort of repaired like really- Pete:                Oh yeah, that was fun, some of the like- Justin:              Cowgirl as she's known. Pete:                Yeah. Alex:                 Very Gulliver in that moment. Pete:                Yeah, Gulliver, and I was going to say like, Fraggle Rock reminded me of the dozers a little bit. Alex:                 Yeah. [crosstalk 00:29:49]. Justin:              You say Fraggle Rock a lot, just in general. Pete:                Down at Fraggle Rock. Down at Fraggle Rock. Alex:                 Down at Fraggle Rock. Justin:              That's not a criticism, that's just an open ended statement. Pete:                Every time I walk by a construction society, I want to take a bite out of it, what? Justin:              Every time I walk past a pile of garbage, I want to talk to you. Pete:                Yeah. Justin:              You walk past a construction site and you're like, “What up dozers?” And they're like, “Get the fuck out of here.” Alex:                 We're trying to build radishes here, come on. Justice League number 53 for DC Comics written by Joshua Williamson and art by Xermanico. This is tying into Dark Nights: Death Metal. This arc is called Doom Metal, and focuses on one mission of … I think it's fair to call them sub Justice League members, slash- Justin:              Woo, spicy. Alex:                 Yeah, I'm sorry. [crosstalk 00:30:43]. Justin:              Shots fired. Alex:                 It's Detective Chimp. It's hot girl. She's a member of the Justice League. But they are going after Perpetua's throne. Pete, you raised your hand, what would you like to say? Pete:                I would say cute start, what a touching adorable start. Little Robin trying to sneak up on Batman [inaudible 00:31:05]. Justin:              Great. I guess I agree with Pete technically. But I do like- Pete:                I mean the POV angles, it really was a kid looking up at these heroes. I thought that was such great attention to detail that really gives- Alex:                 This really is not helping my theory that you don't read beyond the first page or two, Pete. Pete:                Okay, fine. Justin:              That's one conspiracy theory I can get behind. Pete:                How about they born on a Doomsday panel that was later your dick, that was awesome. Alex:                 I mean that was page four. Justin:              Oh, he's flipping through the book right now. Alex:                 How about this thing at the last page that I just looked at. Justin:              Yeah. You see this UPC code on the back cover? Woo, did not see that coming. That's how you buy the book, they scan it. Alex:                 What were you going to say, Justin? Justin:              Ah, yes. I thought Pete was going to have a slight rebuttal. Pete:                No, I'm just enjoying how much you guys enjoy shooting holes in everything I'm trying to do. Justin:              Trying to do? Alex:                 Oh man. Justin:              What are you going to do? Pete:                I don't know, give my opinion, but apparently it's not good enough because it only is stuff that happens in the beginning. Alex:                 It's a very good opinion. It's a very good opinion. I'm just doing a classic comic book club La Zalben. Justin:              That's why they call him Alex La Zalben. I agree with Pete. There's a lot of fun of this book. I love this sort of … it feels like a side quest in a fantasy game or a fantasy series in a fun way. I could read a lot of this Death Metal stuff for maybe a long time. It's fun. [crosstalk 00:32:48]. Alex:                 It's surprising, right? Justin:              Yeah. Alex:                 Because it's silly. Pete, you did bring up the born on a Doomsday, [inaudible 00:32:56] who are also Doomsdays, it's the sort of thing where you get to this point you're like, “This is so stupid, but it works at the same time.” It's just mashing your toys together, that's all it is. But they're having such a good time with it. It's fun to read. Justin:              Aaron and Garney arm falls off, you put a Doomsday on. Alex:                 Exactly. All right. Let's move on to Seven Secrets number two from Boom! Studios written by Tom Taylor and art by Daniele di Nicuolo. We really like the first issue of this though. I think there's a little criticism from some of us about the end perhaps being a little confusing or not sure where it was going necessarily. But it is about a world where there's a secret society. They hold seven secrets. We're focusing on one character who's part of that, who is the son of two of the characters who hold two of those secrets. At least one of those characters dies in the last issue. And that there's a big villain who's trying to take them all down. We flash back this issue and get an origin. I thought not only was this issue great, but the cliffhanger was superb. One of the best that I've read in a really long time, the last sentence of the book, and made me even way more into this book than I was before. Pete:                Wow. I read that like last part and was like, “Oh man, that's more heartbreaking than we need. You didn't need to do that at the end.” But I agree, this is information that we needed and it's important. Moving forward I'm glad they kind of took a breath to give us this kind of flashback type of thing. Yeah, I'm really into this book now. This issue got me more hyped about it. Justin:              Yeah. Especially in an issue that felt like he was laying a lot of groundwork, it felt like sort of an exposition issue. A lot of like sort of drama in the King's court style drama. And then to end on that emotional, just build up to that last panel was really well done. Pete:                I can't even look at … I'm sorry. Alex:                 No. All I was going to say was that I'd be really fascinated to hear how Tom Taylor structured this, because it almost feels like you have this very Harry Potter sort of training section that potentially would come first. Then you go out to the inciting incident, which is the thing where the society gets messed up. And then you follow through from there, but he flipped it. He went from first issue, the second issue and he reversed the order of them and it works so well, it's very, very smart. Justin:              Yeah. The words I was trying to come up with earlier were palace intrigue. This issue is so much palace intrigue, and ending on a real strong emotional beat. Pete:                I was just going to say that I can't look at a gold little ducky without getting choked up anymore. Alex:                 Oh man, sad stuff. Let's move on to something that probably creeps you the fuck out, Pete, the Immortal Hulk number 37 from Marvel- Pete:                Oh, Jesus Christ. Alex:                 … written by Al Ewing Alan and art by Joe Bennett. The door is finally open. We finally know who the big villain of this book is. It's the leader of course. Pete:                Yeah, of course it is. Alex:                 Or maybe it is. There might be something behind that. But the leader is looking to manipulate the green door the way that the Hulk and other gamma radiated heroes have been resurrected constantly, hence the Immortal Hulk of the title. While the Hulk is outside fighting in the real world, the leader is inside this hellscape or whatever is going on there. He has taken over Rick Jones. He has taken over … who's the second one he's taken over? I don't remember. Oh, he's taken over the irradiated guy, whatever the irradiated guy from the early on the run. Pete:                Yeah, from the [crosstalk 00:36:57]. Alex:                 And there's nobody else that he's taken over as well that he hits at, we don't know who that is yet. But, oh God, I cannot say enough about how terrifying it is to read every issue of this book. Pete:                Yeah, it's too much, man. It's too much. It's gone too far. It's gone too far. Justin:              I love this book and the way, the sense of dread that's been building from issue one and it just keeps extending to end, not only with the writing, but the art, despite all of the body, just disaster that's happening on all these pages. You still get references too older Hulk artists. The last page feels like right out of the Hulk history, and so much of it, it feels just so big, every issue big and horrifying, just like I want everything to be. Alex:                 This is a very meta way of looking at it, but it is very exciting to be reading an all timer. You don't get that often when you're reading a book, but you read this book and you're like, “This is a Hulk run that people are going to talk about for decades.” This is going to be talked about in the same breath as Peter David's run, as the original run, as all these other classic runs of a Hulk and other characters. And I don't know how this is going to add up, I don't know where this could go. But being in the middle there between Al Ewing's writing and Joe Bennet's art, which is like Cronenberg-esque in exactly the right way. It's very exciting to read every issue of this book. Pete:                Yeah, 100%. Alex:                 Great. Thanks. Glad you agree, Pete. Just [inaudible 00:38:50], no thanks. Pete:                Well, I mean, I'm glad you guys are having fun. Alex:                 That's nice. Justin:              Pete's scared. Pete:                This is a horror book with one of my favorite characters, so you guys enjoy your time, I'll wait until we get Hulk. Justin:              Is there another book you could read where the Hulk does something like, I don't know, like smash. Pete:                No, I don't think there is. [crosstalk 00:39:13]. Alex:                 Dryad number five from Oni Press written by Kurtis Wiebe illustrated by Justin Osterling. I'll give a little pluggy plug here. Go check out our bonus episode where we talk to the team behind this book in the comic book club feed, it was a blast and a pleasure to talk to them about the last issue of the book, as well as the run. But Dryad number five, we have our main characters now in the city, they are battling folks, they are trying to figure out what's going on, the kids have no idea. There's a big twist as usual towards the end of this issue. What'd you think about this one? Justin:              This book continues to go its own way. You cannot predict the storytelling here and it's fully into sci-fi, big sci-fi, Blade Runner-esque, corporate intrigue. And did not see that coming, curious with some still fantasy elements popping through. But it's one of the few books I feel like we read where it's like, “I have no idea where we're headed.” Pete:                Yeah. It's very interesting. Each issue is kind of like its own thing, and what's great is you don't know what you're going to get when you pick up this book, but it continues to tell a story just somehow more creatively in different ways. It's impressive to kind of see this thing move forward. I continue to be impressed by the art and the storytelling. This one, we get a lot more action. And then some of the stuff that Zalben likes at the end, but like it's … Alex:                 What does that mean? Pete:                You know what I'm talking about, that hot tub shit at the end, got a little weird that you're into. Alex:                 What? No, come on, Pete. I mean, that was pretty hot. Justin:              I mean, I love a hot tub. I wish there was another book you were talking about [crosstalk 00:41:07]. Alex:                 You know what's best about that is the hot tub scene. The hot tub scene being cut between the guy who had his legs blasted off, I was like, “Fuck yeah. Give me more of that, inject that into my veins.” No, it was good, that was fine. That was a good Ted scene and fleshed out more about the world, but I'm way more into what's going on with the kids and what's happening at the end. Great, great stuff. Alex:                 Catwoman number 25 from DC Comics written by Ram V, an art by Fernando Blanco. This is a bunch of different things. This is tying into the Joker War. Almost an essential chapter of it, as we find out what Catwoman does with Bruce Wayne's money. But also setting up a new classic status quo for Catwoman that I thought was great. I like this book across the board. I had a little burp there at the end, I'm sorry. Justin:              How dare you. Pete:                Okay. I really love the amazing flashback sequences with the kind of tiger stuff that was almost like this orangest type painting kind of thing, that was really cool. Plus the way they kind of drew the action with Catwoman was really a lot of fun, where you're kind of on the same page, you see her kind of doing different moves. To me that's kind of like old school comic book style and I really enjoyed that. Justin:              We talked about this a little- Pete:                I also burped at the end, that was weird. Justin:              That is weird you guys, gas management, gas management bros. Alex:                 Justin has covered for you. Justin:              No, I am fully in charge. Pete:                Oh God. Justin:              I think we talked about this a little bit earlier when we were talking about the Batman books. But I want some resolution on the Batman Catwoman relationship, because it feels like we've been in this space because of whatever happened with changing up the creative teams when they did. We're in this place where it's like, wait, she's just moving his money around and sort of not hanging out, what's the deal? Want to know about their relationship. But aside from that sort of unrelated bother, this was an essential chapter I think. Seeing Catwoman doing this makes you understand the main story a lot more for the Joker War. Alex:                 Yeah, I agree. All right. Let's move into a little part of the show. And this is the end of the show here, which I like to call the Pete sandwich. And the reason I call it the Pete Sandwich is because we got a book Pete really wants to talk about, three books Pete does not want to talk about, and then a book Pete wants to talk about. Pete:                Yeah, sandwich. Alex:                 Pull back the curtain a little bit. But let's get to it. Justin:              And the best way to eat a sandwich is you start with the piece of bread that you really like, then you eat the middle, and then you get to the other piece of bread, which is the other thing you really like. Pete:                Bread's nice, man. Sometimes nice, fresh bread makes everything better. Justin:              You just mash the sandwich bread first into your face and chew your way up. Alex:                 Whenever I go to a deli, I'm like, “Hey, I'll have a Italian Hero. Then take the Salami and the pepperoni and the Capocollo, you throw that out, [inaudible 00:44:20] you throw that out.” Justin:              Capocollo, I love it. Alex:                 You get rid of it. [crosstalk 00:44:24]. Justin:              Just some slightly oily bread. Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:44:28], no, you put it out there and you throw it out. I don't like it. Oil and vinegar, you throw it out. Once & Future number 11 from Booms! Studios written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Dan Mora. Holy shit, the end of this issue is fucking insane, not to curse too much. But they have been fighting Grendel of the Beowulf myth, they took care of Beowulf. This issue, they fight, they take care of Grendel. You can kind of see where this is going. You know where this is going. But the way Dan Mora draws this is so horrific and so perfect. This issue is great. I like this series anyway, but this is one of my favorite issues in a while. Pete:                Yeah. This is really just kind of back to what started this thing and made us love it so much, just unbelievable action. This amazing grandmother in the heart of it. I can't, I mean, if you don't like this book, I don't know what to tell you. This to me is great comics, unbelievable art, unbelievable storytelling. The action and violence is mwah, chef's kiss, just fantastic. I'm having so much goddamn fun with this book. Justin:              Yeah. Shout-out to our interview with Kieron Gillen, where we talked about this book a lot. Because it really informs a lot of the process and it makes it so much richer to read this book, hearing him talk about it. Because you get to see in this issue the story that they're sort of caught up in and fighting catch up with them simultaneously. It feels like they've been sort of alongside the story or ahead of the story a little bit. And this last panel, last couple of panels or pages, you really see the story come up and be like, you're done, we got you here. And that's really satisfying to see on top of the fact that it's just a great action story and sequence and wildly bloody in a fun way. Alex:                 Yeah. So good. This is just great. Let's move on to the … sorry, I got a little sick there even thinking about a Capocollo of the stack. X-Men number 12 from Marvel Comics written by Jonathan Hickman and art by Leinil Francis Yu. In this issue- Pete:                What the fuck? What the fuck is going on? Justin:              Uh-oh. He's in [crosstalk 00:46:58]. Alex:                 This is a classic. Pete:                No, no, no, no, no, this, okay, all right, fine. You're going to have fuck island, you're going to … you can't keep adding crazier shit on top of crazier shit. Alex:                 No, man. This is classic- Pete:                You have to deal with it, you can't keep just fucking adding crazy shit. Justin:              Can't you? Pete:                How did Hickman say … how did he pitch [inaudible 00:47:22]. Okay guys, I'm going to change X-Men forever. And just when you think it can't get crazier, I'm going to keep adding crazier … I'm not going to deal with that, I'm just going to keep going to crazy town and then walk away. Alex:                 The reason I said this was the Capocollo is because it has the surprising, sliced peppercorns in the middle where you're like, “Whoa, where did that come from?” Justin:              Woo, spicy. Alex:                 Yeah, classic X-Men book. As we all know, Apocalypse originally came from the dimension of our Rocco separate Island next door to- Pete:                What the fuck. Alex:                 That has since had sex with and enjoyed with [inaudible 00:47:59]. His grandchildren have kept on his legacy. There is the opposite of apocalypse, the evil apocalypse, because as we all know, the apocalypse is good now. Justin:              Famously heroic. Pete:                What is happening? Alex:                 I don't know. Pete:                This doesn't make any sense. Alex:                 This is definitely like, it's funny to read this after the past couple of the issues where Jonathan Hickman was like, “I don't know, [inaudible 00:48:26] is killing shit out of the moon or whatever,” I don't know what's going on. This is fun. They're just killing some plants. We're having a good time, isn't this fun? Pete:                Is he throwing darts at a board? Alex:                 Yeah, this is fun [crosstalk 00:48:35]. He's like, “Did you forget that I'm Jonathan Hickman?” [crosstalk 00:48:43]. Justin:              I think I can shout out everyone's favorite panel from this issue, for everyone's favorite page, excuse me. The info page sort of two thirds the way through where we list the [inaudible 00:48:54]. And it's an infographic where we find out about the summoners from the school of [inaudible 00:49:01], this world that we just invented and arrived at, and how you can either be a shitty summoner, a decent summoner or a kick ass summoner. And can summon Pete, this [inaudible 00:49:12] is fun. You can summon our hoard of elementals, and up to three major [inaudible 00:49:17]. Alex:                 It is wild that at the course of one issue Jonathan Hickman is like, “Oh yeah, Apocalypse had a wife and also a evil opposite Apocalypse who is going to kick off his Ten of Swords type thing or whatever, because there's all these powerful swords. It's not big deal. Anyway, let's go into a hole, it's all good.” And then it picked up this random game that he introduced and that got away from in the last issue is insane. Justin:              Yeah. And he's like, “Oh, don't worry. In case you're of worry this isn't an X-men book focused on the heroic X-Men, don't worry because we got Banshee and Unus the Untouchable coming along for the ride.” Alex:                 Also they're all mutants and one of their powers is to never lose, which is crazy. Justin:              That's a hell of a thing to say. Alex:                 Yeah. I mean, this is saying a lot. This was the most Jonathan Hickman issue of X-Men so far. Justin:              I mean, it's a full on fantasy story at this point. That's why I think this issue is a real, is pointing us to what Ten of Swords is going to be, and it's going to be this. It's going to be epic grand scale battles with people and places that we don't know too much about and may never.” Alex:                 But that's okay. Well, all I'm going to say is, I've been enjoying this enough and this has been crazy enough that I'm willing to follow them down this rabbit hole into your insaneville that I don't understand. Justin:              100%. Alex:                 But I also think … Hold on. Pete, I do want to hear what you have to say, but the only thing that I want to say is you think back to nineties, two thousands, X-Men they were like, “Oh yeah, there's a mega level mutants. Oh yeah, now there's externals.” All of these things that we 20, 30 years down the road are like, yes, yes, that's part of canon and I get that and I understand that. That's what they're doing right now. That's what he is doing is he's adding in these insane details to the X-Men Mythos that decades down the road we're going to be like, “Yes, I remember that. That is Arakko. That's what happens there.” Justin:              Alex, what are you crazy? Immortal mutants that don't know they're immortal that's normal. Ten Swords, that's insane. Can you imagine Ten Swords? Alex:                 You're right. I'm sorry. That's too bad. I apologize. Pete:                I just want to start by saying I'm not willing to follow them into this crystal anus that they're walking into. All right. This is too insane. It's not an X-Men book. I don't know what the fuck's going on anymore. Justin:              I guess I'm changing your birthday plans, Pete, because it's very similar to that. Pete:                Okay. Well, I have no idea what the fuck is happening, who fuck is doing what. Cool. I'm glad people are having fun, but wake me when the X-Men show up. Alex:                 I don't usually like to talk about further episodes of The Stack, but next week we're going to be reading Dawn of X of Swords, Enter the Crystal Anus number one. And I hope you're going to read it, Pete. Justin:              I have a feeling you're going to love it. I feel bad because the Crystal Anus is on my favorite bars in Brooklyn and it closed because of COVID. Pete:                Oh, it's too bad. Alex:                 All right, let's move on to the … let's say salami of this particular Stack. Faithless number two, number four- Pete:                Here we go. Alex:                 … from a Boom! Studios written by Brian Azarello and art by Maria Llovet. I feel like we were a little down on the last issue of Faithless. Justin, I'm talking specifically to you because Pete doesn't want to talk about this at all. This issue I thought was very good. This is, Faith finally shows off her art. She goes on a tour of Turin I believe, with maybe a demon or a fallen angel or something like that. Very weird, very dark. What were you going to say? Justin:              I was going to say, I feel like what we've been talking about is it feels like this book has been spinning its wheels for a couple of issues where it's like, “We get it. She's an artist.” There's all these like dark clouds gathering around her with demonic intentions. But I think this issue, especially the back half for the back third, we get sort of what the book is about a little bit. And it's about her being this conduit through sex to connect with ghosts and sort of use them in her art. And that feels, knowing that is great, is helpful to maybe giving her a power in the story to guide it as opposed to just be this innocent washed up in all this chaos. Alex:                 Yeah. I mean it's interesting because it's kind of a battle for her soul type thing, right? They've been pretty clear about that, it's [inaudible 00:54:12] et cetera. But you have this master artist who is coming in, who is encouraging to go further in the darkness, versus she has this guy who comes out of the devil's door, but he's good in a way, he inspires her to be better. But it's fascinating, this is … Pete, you must've loved this issue, right? Justin:              The devil's door was actually the back entrance to the Crystal Anus and again it closed forever. Pete:                Yeah. I mean, what sucks is I thought we were going to kind of get away from all the madness a little bit and then it's like, “Oh, this is a nice date.” But then it's like, “Oh yeah, of course the dead person with an open head wound is going to still get some, because this is a fucking weird ass book.” Alex:                 It gives you hope though, right? If you ever [inaudible 00:55:03]. Pete:                Yeah. I had a little hope and then the douchebag showed up at the end again. Alex:                 No, I mean if you ever get a head wound, you might still be on the market. Pete:                Yeah, still bangable. Yeah, it's true. Just because you got an open head wound doesn't mean you still can't get some I guess is the moral- Justin:              That's the spirit. Alex:                 That's what it says on my Tinder profile. Justin:              Alex, you've been married for so long, you got to shut that Tinder profile down. Alex:                 I did actually not to veer into a true story. I don't think we're married yet, but we're definitely for like- Pete:                How the fuck. Alex:                 No, I had a Nerve profile and four years into dating my wife right before I proposed to her I was featured on nerve as a single. And I was like, “Oh shit, oh no.” Pete:                That's hilarious. Justin:              Bummer, metal pocket the ring for a couple of weeks. Alex:                 Yeah. I honestly went on only like three or four dates before I shut it down off of that. But yeah, then we got married. Justin:              That's a beautiful story and was a great toast at your wedding by the way. Alex:                 Thank you. All right. Let's move on to the serrano ham of The Stack. The Amazing Spider Man- Justin:              Oh, this is a high-Class sub. Alex:                 It's a good sub. It's a brooklyn style sub. The Amazing Spider-Man, Sins of Norman Osborn number one from Marvel Comics written by Nick Spencer and art by Federico Vicentini. This is another essential chapter of the storyline it feels like, that I don't understand why it's a one shot other than them trying to maybe hit the timing right for anniversary issues or something. But Spider-Man is trying to save Norman Osborn. The spider family is trying to decide whether to stop him or not from the Sin-Eater. I thought this was very good. I've been liking this storyline quite a bit. Justin:              I mean, I agree. I've been loving the Sin-Eater stuff, like such a departure from what Nick Spencer was doing before. This storyline is wild. There's so much happening here touching on a ton of continuity- Alex:                 So much stuff. Justin:              The fact that the Sin-Eater kills negative man, and then adapts his powers, it's like, oh, you have to know, you have to have been reading Spider-Man for a long time to know what the fuck is happening. Pete:                Yeah. Also it's just so much like stuff that you're like, oh, that could have been an ending, oh, that could have been an ending. And then the whole juggernaut thing is just such a couple panels that could have been such a huge thing. I was just really surprised at how much shit is jam packed in this issue and what the actual like oh shit reveal at the end is. There's just so much stuff packed in here, it's kind of surprising a little bit. Alex:                 Yeah. But it's a good issue, particularly if you've been reading Amazing Spider-Man, definitely pick this one up. Last one, back to the bread as we expected. Head Lopper number 13 from Image Comics story and art by Andrew Maclean. Pete, I got to say, there is no head lopping of this boo