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3 episodes with Jill Thompson
6 episodes with Jill Thompson
2 episodes with Jill Thompson
2 episodes with Jill Thompson
3 episodes with Jill Thompson
2 episodes with Jill Thompson
2 episodes with Jill Thompson
3 episodes with Jill Thompson
2 episodes with Jill Thompson
From the BG Ad Group Studio this is your news minute on the Marietta Daily Journal Podcast presented by Credit Union of Georgia. Today is Wednesday, March 13th, and I'm Keith Ippolito. Man Indicted for Murder in Fatal Beating of West Cobb Mother 41-year-old Charles Franklin Cook of Marrietta has been indicted for the murder of Melinda Jolly, a mother of four. The incident took place on January 17. The charges against Cook include malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault related to family violence, and cruelty to children. Cook has a previous charge for child cruelty while under the influence of alcohol. As of now, he is being held at Cobb jail without any provision for bond. Here is Jill Thompson talking about her cousin Melinda's death: ***JILL THOMPSON*** A fundraising page established by Melinda's elder sister, Kathleen Jolly, has successfully raised more than $46,000. The funds will be used to support the care and upbringing of three of Melinda's children. Donations to support Melinda Jolly's children can be made through a dedicated GoFundMe page. For more news about our community, visit mdjonline.com. For the Marrietta Daily Journal Podcast, I'm Keith Ippolito. Produced by The BG Podcast Network #NewsPodcast #CurrentEvents #TopHeadlines #BreakingNews #PodcastDiscussion #PodcastNews #InDepthAnalysis #NewsAnalysis #PodcastTrending #WorldNews #LocalNews #GlobalNews #PodcastInsights #NewsBrief #PodcastUpdate #NewsRoundup #WeeklyNews #DailyNews #PodcastInterviews #HotTopics #PodcastOpinions #InvestigativeJournalism #BehindTheHeadlines #PodcastMedia #NewsStories #PodcastReports #JournalismMatters #PodcastPerspectives #NewsCommentary #PodcastListeners #NewsPodcastCommunity #NewsSource #PodcastCuration #WorldAffairs #PodcastUpdates #AudioNews #PodcastJournalism #EmergingStories #NewsFlash #PodcastConversations #podcast #podcasts #podcaster #podcastlife #podcastshow #podcasting #podcasters #podcastersofinstagram #itunes #applepodcasts #spotifypodcast #soundcloud #youtube #radio #radioshow #comedy #music #hiphop #art #entrepreneur #covid #motivation #interview #repost #loveSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Nous concluons aujourd'hui notre série d'interviews réalisées lors de la Heroes Comic-Con 2023, qui se tenait à Bruxelles à la fin du mois de septembre dernier. Après les retranscriptions de nos rencontres avec Ivan Reis et André Lima Araujo, nous avons le plaisir de vous proposer cette discussion plus longue en compagnie de la talentueuse Jill Thompson. Passée chez Vertigo aux côtés de Neil Gaiman, créatrice de hits des comics indé' avec Scary Godmother ou Bêtes de Somme, Jill Thompson continue d'émerveiller régulièrement le monde de la bande dessinée avec ses planches toutes en aquarelle, et votre rédacteur avait particulièrement gardé en mémoire l'impeccable album Wonder Woman : The True Amazon, resté injustement inédit en VF. Qu'à cela ne tienne : vous avez désormais rendez-vous avec Jill Thompson. Si vous souhaitez la retrouver au format écrit, elle est également disponible sur Comicsblog.fr à ce lien. On vous rappellera également l'importance de partager ces contenus de fond si vous appréciez le travail réalisé ! Remerciements : Rémi Lach, David Macho Gomez et Antoine Boudet.
Flux House, a new boutique imprint at Dark Horse that features the writing (and sometimes art) of bestselling cartoonist Matt Kindt, with crime, science fiction, and humor stories, all told and presented in startling and untraditional ways. Kindt has been writing and illustrating espionage and action-fueled comics like BRZRKR (with Keanu Reeves), Apache Delivery Service, BANG! Dept. H, Ether, Fear Case, MIND MGMT, Folklords, Revolver, 3 Story, Super Spy, and Pistolwhip for the last two decades. And it's safe to say that he is having a moment this spring... (More details below.) This year brings: The publication of his new series, Spy Suburb. This 3 part mini-series from Dark Horse Comics and Flex Books launched on January 11. This comic is the funniest thing Kindt has ever written. As Dark Horse Publisher Mike Richardson said, “If you close your eyes and imagine John Wick being dropped into a Wes Anderson film, you'll have a sense of the world of SPY SUPERB.” The release of Mind MGMT: Bootleg in hardcover (February 15, comic shop date; February 28, bookstore date). The latest series in the conspiracy-laden and mind-twisting universe of MIND MGMT, MIND MGMT: BOOTLEG marks the first time the series has been illustrated by an artist other than Kindt, featuring the work of Farel Dalrymple, Jill Thompson, David Rubín, and Matt Lesniewski. In MIND MGMT, a covert government agency of psychic super spies fell into oblivion after one of their top agents went rogue. What looked like the end was only the beginning as a former leader of MIND MGMT explores the darkest parts of the world and recruits a team of forgotten agents to rebuild the organization, bend reality, and go to war with a competing agency. Mister Mammoth is the world's greatest detective. The only mystery he can't seem to solve? How, exactly, he became the world's greatest detective… This spring, Dark Horse will publish the clever existential noir MISTER MAMMOTH, the first-ever original graphic novel from bestselling cartoonist Matt Kindt's all-new imprint, Flux House. Writer Matt Kindt will be joined on MISTER MAMMOTH by internationally acclaimed artist Jean-Denis Pendanx in his U.S. debut. Also in March, BOOM! Studios will publish the final issue of BRZRKR the 12-part comic book series co-created and co-written by movie star Keanu Reeves. The issue is co-written by Reeves and Kindt, and features artist Ron Garney, colorist Bill Crabtree and letterer Clem Robins. In April Flux House and Dark Horse will publish Hairball by Kindt and artist Tyler Jenkins with colors by Hilary Jenkins. In this supernatural thriller from the Eisner-nominated creators of Fear Case and Apache Delivery Service, a dysfunctional family's mounting problems may or may not be caused by an unlikely culprit: the family's cat. Upcoming Flux House publications will take many forms and formats, with each release having a distinct presentation including unique trim-sizes with two publications to be magazine-sized and special print features (like die-cut and fur) and a punch-card dust jacket that reveals a secret message. These publications are personally designed by Kindt to be both books and art objects. Today's episode is brought to you by Reburn. Please, treat yourself and get a copy of this brilliant indie comic. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/comics-in-motion-podcast/message
Talk about someone who does it all, Jill Thompson has been creating all manner of wonderful things for comics, children's books, stage, and even wrestling for over 30 years now! She debuted with First Comics and Now Comics in the 80s, and parlayed that into a Wonder Woman run in the early 90s. She was the artist for the "Brief Lives" arc on Sandman, beginning a relationship with the Endless characters that continues to this day thanks to projects like The Little Endless Storybook, the manga Death: At Death's Door, and the Dead Boy Detectives. Jill's own creation, Scary Godmother, started as a comic series before turning into a play and two animated specials. And somewhere in between all of this, she's designed costumes and other pieces for professional wrestlers! You can follow Jill on all the socials: @thejillthompson. _____________________________________________Check out a video version of this episode on our YouTube channel: youtube.com/dollarbinbandits.If you liked this podcast, please rate, review, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts. And tell your friends!Looking for more ways to express your undying DBB love and devotion? Email us at dollarbinbandits@gmail.com. Follow us @dollarbinbandits on Facebook and Instagram, and @DBBandits on Twitter.
Jill Thompson @nourishbyjill helps guide women through nutrition and life changes. On the episode today we talked about moving through the contraction: anxiety, depression, loss of self and divorce. We also talked about expansion and how much there is to look forward to. The messiness of life and wellness and everything that can be in between. I can't wait for to listen!GUEST CONTACT@nourishbyjill SUPPORT US:Share this episode with a friend! Hell, share it with 5 friends! ;) Enjoy listening to the show? We now have an official way to support Body Breaking Free! Click the link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1552090/support ADD ME ON:Website: https://katiekaygraham.com/IG: @katiekaygrahamNewsletter: katiekaygraham.com/newsletterBODY BREAKING FREE LISTEN ON: Apple Podcast | Spotify Podcast | Audible
What are the biggest challenges and successes that come with teaching personal finance to ELL students? Yanely is joined by NGPF's resident Spanish translator Chris Salm as well as two educators Z and Jill Thompson to talk about teaching personal finance to English Language Learners. The three will speak about the biggest challenges and successes with teaching the course to ELL students and share some differentiation strategies to use in the classroom. Enjoy!
It’s been TEN YEARS since I started this podcast, and it’s time for my TENTH trip to the Baltimore Comic-Con. Once again, Brett cosplays up and joins me to meet creators and buy comics. I’ve got interviews with Bob Hall, Joe Staton, Jill Thompson, and a number of other creators [...]
It’s been TEN YEARS since I started this podcast, and it’s time for my TENTH trip to the Baltimore Comic-Con. Once again, Brett cosplays up and joins me to meet creators and buy comics. I’ve got interviews with Bob Hall, Joe Staton, Jill Thompson, and a number of other creators [...]
On this week's sinister slice of Spooktober, Chris and Sylvie let their scare down and revisit the delightful Halloween special where the only eerie thing about it is the early CGI animation. It's Scary Godmother: Halloween Spooktacular - the surprisingly uplifting tale of a queer friend group of over-the-top movie monsters partying and vibing together on the scariest night of the year. We break down Mainframe Entertainment's perfect holiday special in terms of queer representation, its bold experiments with animation, the state of media release in the era, and where exactly the fandom lies for Jill Thompson's comic book series. "Scary Godmother: Halloween Spooktacular" is produced by Mainframe Studios and originally aired October 26, 2003. If you liked what you heard please consider giving us a like, share, follow, and rating to help us reach a wider audience. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/CartoonNightPod?s=20 Theme song by https://soundcloud.com/hvsyn
Alex, Heather and Philip review the 2003 animated TV special, 'Scary Godmother: Halloween Spooktakular' from Mainframe Entertainment. The Canadian studio behind classic kids' shows like 'ReBoot' and 'Beast Wars' obtained the TV rights to Jill Thompson's 'Scary Godmother' book series in the late nineties. They eventually produced two hour-long TV specials that aired in the United States on Cartoon Network. The first 'Scary Godmother' follows a group of five kids on Halloween; one of whom is the young cousin of the mischievous Jimmy. Jimmy concocts a plan to scare his cousin Hannah so that she'll agree to stay home while the older kids stay out. She is deathly scared of monsters, so they stage a monster encounter in an abandoned house. Hannah is rescued and brought to the "Fright Side" by Scary Godmother, a kindly witch who watches over children on Halloween. Hannah learns to overcome her fears and even has a chance to get back at her pranksters with some real spooky magic. Follow The ThawedCast: Conversations About Animation: twitter.com/thawedcast and instagram.com/thawedcast. instagram.com/southernrosecosplay, instagram.com/ayeedeezy, instagram.com/philipehlke. Visit thawedcast.com
Description Returning guest John Darowski joins Joe to talk about Beasts of Burden, a comic book series created by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. It tells the story of a group of dogs (and a couple cats) that protect the … Continue reading →
When is a comic no longer a comic? Matt Kindt is determined to find out with his new Dark Horse Comics imprint, Flux House. The comic creator has always strived to push the art form, but he feels he can go even crazier and further by breaking the norms. The new four-part Mind MGMT: Bootleg series, made in collaboration with artists Farel Dalrymple, Jill Thompson, David Rubín, and Matt Lesniewski, is simply stage one in what's sure to be a revolutionary play to alter comics. In this episode, we chat with Matt Kindt about the Fluxus art movement and how it inspired him to do more with the comic book medium. We discuss the challenges of revolution within a capitalistic system and how to get around those necessary hiccups. It begins with putting your faith in the audience. They always want to go on a wild ride. Anyone who has attended a Matt Kindt book signing knows the artist delights in modifying a mass-produced object like a comic into a unique, one-of-a-kind artifact. With Flux House, can he replicate the experience on a grander scale? Kindt is not totally sure, but he's determined to find out. Mind MGMT: Bootleg #1 is currently on stands at your local shop. You can follow Matt Kindt through Twitter, Instagram, and his website. Our conversation with Matt Kindt is part two in our week-long celebration building up to the return of San Diego Comic-Con International. Part one was our chat with Survival Street writers James Asmus and Jim Festante. You can listen to their episode HERE. Part three drops this Thursday and will see Scott Snyder's return to CBCC, discussing his latest wave of Comixology creations. Part four arrives on Saturday, and it's a delightful chat with Love Everlasting co-creators Elsa Charretier and Tom King. Follow along with our Comic-Con coverage using the hashtag #CBCCatSDCC on our Twitter and Instagram. And, please, share these episodes with your friends. And, of course, follow Comic Book Couples Counseling on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Twitter @CBCCPodcast, and you can follow hosts Brad Gullickson @MouthDork & Lisa Gullickson @sidewalksiren. Send us your Words of Affirmation by leaving us a 5-Star Review on Apple Podcasts. SUPPORT THE PODCAST BY JOINING OUR PATREON COMMUNITY. Continue your conversation with CBCC by hopping over to our website where we have reviews, essays, and numerous interviews with comic book creators. Podcast logo by Aaron Prescott @acoolhandfluke, podcast banner art by @Karen_XmenFan.
1982, Matt Wagner s'inspirera notamment de Batman pour livrer aux comics indépendants une saga dont il ne mesurait pas encore l'impact. Au fil des décennies suivantes, Grendel va évoluer et traverser les époques, les genres, et être manipulé par une multitude d'artistes. Aujourd'hui, notre podcast débute avec et se concentre sur Grendel. Après quoi, nous vous parlerons également du très attendu Supergirl : Woman of Tomorrow de Tom King et Bilquis Evely. Et pour clôre ce podcast, nous profiterons de la réédition de Secret War pour revenir sur cet événement qui divise tant. Grendel : le succès incontrôlable d'un comics indépendant Balmung vous présente ici Grendel, ce comics des années 80 qui a lancé Matt Wagner chez l'éditeur Comico. D'abord prévu comme une histoire en quelques épisodes, le scénariste reviendra constamment dessus jusqu'à réécrire son histoire principale. Dans l'exercice d'une narration expérimentale où les genres et les époques s'entremêlent, Grendel a rapidement été considéré comme un lieu d'expérimentation, à la fois pour Matt Wagner, mais également pour ses invités. Et ils sont nombreux ! Tim Sale, Chris Sprouse, Cliff Chiang, Phil Hester, Michael Allred, Kelley Jones, Ashley Wood, Jill Thompson ou encore Stan Sakai. Une diversité contrôlée par la narration rendant le tout terriblement savoureux. Supergirl : Woman of Tomorrow et Secret War Le dernier titre de Tom King attendu pour cette année : Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow ! Une épopée cosmique et introspective (évidemment) de la cousine de Superman. Si les thèmes sont revisités, adaptés au personnage, Tom King modifie totalement sa manière d'aborder le sujet avec une écriture simplifiée, concentrée sur ses protagonistes. Une aventure particulièrement colorée qui a fait l'unanimité ! En revanche, Secret War nous laisse dubitatif. Pourquoi cet événement est-il si important ? On vous en explique les raisons, malgré un Garbiel Del Otto illustrant l'intégralité de cet événement et Brian M. Bendis aux commandes. Programme Grendel Tomes 1 & 2 Supergirl : Woman of Tomorrow Secret War On vous souhaite une bonne écoute en espérant que vous passerez un bon moment en notre compagnie. On vous invite à vous abonner sur la plateforme de podcast que vous utilisez. N'hésitez pas à réagir sur notre page Facebook et sur notre compte Twitter. A très vite dans vos écouteurs ! Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Welcome to the (Not So) New 52, a real-time retrospective of DC Comics' New 52 imprint! Discussed this week: 0:00:00 - Intro 0:02:19 - Birds of Prey #9 (Duane Swierczynski and Travel Foreman) 0:09:38 - Catwoman #9 (Judd Winick and Guillem March) 0:16:31 - Nightwing #9 (Kyle Higgins and Eddy Barrows, Andres Guinaldo) 0:23:53 - Red Hood and the Outlaws #9 (Scott Lobdell and Kenneth Rocafort) 0:31:25 - Batwoman #9 (J.H. Willaims III, W. Haden Blackman and Trevor McCarthy) 0:38:56 - Supergirl #9 (Michael Green, Mike Johnson and Mahmud Asrar) 0:45:57 - Green Lantern Corps #9 (Peter J. Tomasi and Fernando Pasarin) 0:54:04 - Captain Atom #9 (J. T. Krul and Freddie Williams II) 1:02:17 - DC Universe Presents #9 (James Robinson and Bernard CHang) 1:10:32 - Justice League #9 (Geoff Johns and Jim Lee) 1:19:10 - Wonder Woman #9 (Brian Azzarello and Tony Akins) 1:27:46 - Blue Beetle #9 (Tony Bedard and Marcio Takara) 1:36:35 - Legion of Super-Heroes #9 (Paul Levitz and Francis Portela) 1:43:35 - The Shade #8 (James Robinson and Jill Thompson) 1:52:12 - Next Week's Books patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mildfuzztv twitter: @DCComicsPodcast (Use #New52) audio link: https://the-not-so-new-52.pinecast.co/ video link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu70d0W3I5cZzQUPH0CUbF64E2f4oMysw UK Merch store: https://shop.spreadshirt.co.uk/mild-fuzz-tv/ US Merch store: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/mild-fuzz-tv-us
Interview with Stephanie Phillips! Remembering George Perez Comic Reviews: DC Flashpoint Beyond 1 by Geoff Johns, Jeremy Adams, Tim Sheridan, Mikel Janin, Xermanico, Romulo Fajardo Jr, Jordie Bellaire Nubia Coronation Special by Stephanie Williams, Vita Ayala, Marguerite Sauvage, Colleen Doran, Darryl Banks, Jill Thompson, Alitha Martinez, Hi-Fi, Alex Guimares Earth-Prime 3: Legends of Tomorrow by Lauren Fields, Daniel Park, Paul Pelletier, Jose Luis Lopez Guardia, Jonas Trindade, Andrew Hennessy, Hi-Fi, Adriano Lucas Marvel Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbid by Steve Orlando, Nyla Rose, David Cutler, Jose Marzan Jr, Roberto Poggi, Irma Kniivila Spider-Man 2099 Exodus Alpha by Steve Orlando, Paul Fry, Neeraj Menon Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi 1 by Christopher Cantwell, Ario Anindito Strange Tales Infinity Comic by Al Ewing, Ramon Bachs Image Frontiersman Lock-Up Special 1 by Patrick Kindlon, Nicolo Assirelli Metal Society 1 by Zack Kaplan, Marco Lesko, Guilherme Balbi Twig 1 by Skottie Young, Kyle Strahm, Jean-Francois Beaulieu Dark Horse Stone King by Kel McDonald, Tyler Crook Boom Dune: Waters of Kanly 1 by Kevin J. Anderson, Brian Herbert, Francesco Mortarino, Raul Angulo Dynamite Red Sonja: Red Sitha 1 by Mirka Andolfo, Valentina Pinti AfterShock Dogs of London 1 by Peter Milligan, Artecida, Valentina Bianconi Valiant Archer and Armstrong Forever 1 by Steve Foxe, Marcio Fiorito, Guimaraes Vault Quests Aside 1 by Brian Schirmer, Elena Gogou ComiXology The Panic 1 by Neil Kleid, Andrea Mutti Additional Reviews: Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Picard season 2 finale, Moon Knight season 1 finale, Superstore, Lady Killer, Locke & Key: Golden Age, I Want To Be Where the Normal People Are News: Gwen Stacy miniseries finally concludes, Venom 3 in development, Azrael miniseries The Rise of the Megablockbuster Trailers: Obi-Wan Kenobi, House of the Dragon, Avatar II Comics Countdown: Deadly Class 52 by Rick Remender, Wes Craig, Lee Loughridge Radiant Black 14 by Kyle Higgins, Marcelo Costa, Igor Monti Friday 5 by Ed Brubaker, Marcos Martin, Muntsa Vicente Batman: Killing Time 3 by Tom King, David Marquez, Alejandro Sanchez Once and Future 25 by Kieron Gillen, Dan Mora, Tamra Bonvillain Manifest Destiny 46 by Chris Dingess, Matthew Roberts Batman 123 by Joshua Williamson, Trevor Hairsine, Howard Porter, Rain Beredo, Tomeu Morey Twig 1 by Skottie Young, Kyle Strahm, Jean-Francois Beaulieu Nubia: Coronation Special by Stephanie Williams, Vita Ayala, Marguerite Sauvage, Colleen Doran, Darryl Banks, Jill Thompson, Alitha Martinez, Hi-Fi, Alex Guimares Little Monsters 3 by Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen
On this week's Stack podcast: Flashpoint Beyond #1 DC Comics Written by Geoff Johns, Jeremy Adams and Tim Sheridan Art by Xermanico and Mikel Janin Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird #1 Marvel Written by Nyla Rose and Steve Orlando Art by David Cutler Metal Society #1 Top Cow Written by Zack Kaplan Art by Guilherme Balbi Archer & Armstrong Forever #1 Valiant Written by Steve Foxe Art by Marcio Fiorito Nubia Coronation Special #1 DC Comics Written by Stephanie Williams and Vita Ayala Art by Marguerite Sauvage, Colleen Doran, Darryl Banks, Jill Thompson and Alitha Martinez Twig #1 Image Comics Written by Skottie Young Art by Kyle Strahm Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha Marvel Written by Steve Orlando Art by Paul Fry Earth Prime: Legends of Tomorrow #3 DC Comics Written by Daniel Park and Lauren Fields Art by Paul Pelletier, Jose Luis Frontiersman: Lock-Up Special #1 Image Comics Written by Patrick Kindlon Art by Nicolò Assirelli Batman #123 DC Comics Written by Joshua Williamson Art by Howard Porter, Trevor Hairsine Little Monsters #3 Image Comics Written by Jeff Lemire Art by Dustin Nguyen One-Star Squadron #6 DC Comics Written by Mark Russell Art by Steve Lieber A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance #7 Image Comics Written by Rick Remender Art by André Lima Araújo Batman: Killing Time #3 DC Comics Written by Tom King Art by David Marquez Deadly Class #52 Image Comics Written by Rick Remender Art by Wes Craig Once & Future #25 BOOM! Studios Written by Kieron Gillen Art by Dan Mora Radiant Black #14 Image Comics Written by Kyle Higgins Art by Marcelo Costa and Eduardo Ferigato JLA: Rock of Ages DC Comics Written by Grant Morrison Art by Howard Porter SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
On this week's Stack podcast: Flashpoint Beyond #1 DC Comics Written by Geoff Johns, Jeremy Adams and Tim Sheridan Art by Xermanico and Mikel Janin Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird #1 Marvel Written by Nyla Rose and Steve Orlando Art by David Cutler Metal Society #1 Top Cow Written by Zack Kaplan Art by Guilherme Balbi Archer & Armstrong Forever #1 Valiant Written by Steve Foxe Art by Marcio Fiorito Nubia Coronation Special #1 DC Comics Written by Stephanie Williams and Vita Ayala Art by Marguerite Sauvage, Colleen Doran, Darryl Banks, Jill Thompson and Alitha Martinez Twig #1 Image Comics Written by Skottie Young Art by Kyle Strahm Spider-Man 2099: Exodus Alpha Marvel Written by Steve Orlando Art by Paul Fry Earth Prime: Legends of Tomorrow #3 DC Comics Written by Daniel Park and Lauren Fields Art by Paul Pelletier, Jose Luis Frontiersman: Lock-Up Special #1 Image Comics Written by Patrick Kindlon Art by Nicolò Assirelli Batman #123 DC Comics Written by Joshua Williamson Art by Howard Porter, Trevor Hairsine Little Monsters #3 Image Comics Written by Jeff Lemire Art by Dustin Nguyen One-Star Squadron #6 DC Comics Written by Mark Russell Art by Steve Lieber A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance #7 Image Comics Written by Rick Remender Art by André Lima Araújo Batman: Killing Time #3 DC Comics Written by Tom King Art by David Marquez Deadly Class #52 Image Comics Written by Rick Remender Art by Wes Craig Once & Future #25 BOOM! Studios Written by Kieron Gillen Art by Dan Mora Radiant Black #14 Image Comics Written by Kyle Higgins Art by Marcelo Costa and Eduardo Ferigato JLA: Rock of Ages DC Comics Written by Grant Morrison Art by Howard Porter SUBSCRIBE ON RSS, ITUNES, ANDROID, SPOTIFY, STITCHER OR THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK. SUPPORT OUR SHOWS ON PATREON. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The World Hockey Report Podcast is the leading hockey podcast covering the sport hockey on a global scale presented by The Hockey Podcast Network With your host: Cody Janzen, presented by Lordco Auto Parts Presented by Draftkings.com USE promo code THPN for signup bonuses & weekly deals for Daily Fantasy & SportsBook App. World Hockey Report is LIVE on 12oz Sports, Zingo TV Channel 761, and 12ozSportsNetwork.com/live. World Hockey Podcast is Presented by The Hockey Podcast Network BUY MERCH TODAY: Premium Pullover Hoodie Classic Crewneck Sweatshirt Women's Classic V-Neck Tee Classic Tee NHL Teams Anaheim Ducks Arizona Coyotes Boston Bruins Buffalo Sabres Calgary Flames Carolina Hurricanes Chicago Blackhawks Colorado Avalanche Columbus Blue Jackets Dallas Stars Detroit Red Wings Edmonton Oilers Florida Panthers Los Angeles Kings Minnesota Wild Montreal Canadiens Nashville Predators New Jersey Devils New York Islanders New York Rangers Ottawa Senators Philadelphia Flyers Pittsburgh Penguins San Jose Sharks Seattle Kraken St Louis Blues Tampa Bay Lightning Toronto Maple Leafs Vancouver Canucks Vegas Golden Knights Washington Capitals Winnipeg Jets World Hockey Report - Featuring Jill Thompson & Adam Ehrmantraut (April 28th, 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The World Hockey Report Podcast is the leading hockey podcast covering the sport hockey on a global scale presented by The Hockey Podcast Network With your host: Cody Janzen, presented by Lordco Auto Parts Presented by Draftkings.com USE promo code THPN for signup bonuses & weekly deals for Daily Fantasy & SportsBook App. World Hockey Report is LIVE on 12oz Sports, Zingo TV Channel 761, and 12ozSportsNetwork.com/live. World Hockey Podcast is Presented by The Hockey Podcast Network BUY MERCH TODAY: Premium Pullover Hoodie Classic Crewneck Sweatshirt Women's Classic V-Neck Tee Classic Tee NHL Teams Anaheim Ducks Arizona Coyotes Boston Bruins Buffalo Sabres Calgary Flames Carolina Hurricanes Chicago Blackhawks Colorado Avalanche Columbus Blue Jackets Dallas Stars Detroit Red Wings Edmonton Oilers Florida Panthers Los Angeles Kings Minnesota Wild Montreal Canadiens Nashville Predators New Jersey Devils New York Islanders New York Rangers Ottawa Senators Philadelphia Flyers Pittsburgh Penguins San Jose Sharks Seattle Kraken St Louis Blues Tampa Bay Lightning Toronto Maple Leafs Vancouver Canucks Vegas Golden Knights Washington Capitals Winnipeg Jets World Hockey Report - Featuring Jill Thompson & Adam Ehrmantraut (April 28th, 2022)
Love Raising Us - Women, Career, Motherhood, and the Messy Truth about Raising Ourselves
In this episode, Erin and guest Jill Thompson of @NourishbyJill discuss:- Jill's journey to finding a healthy lifestyle- Why healthy eating and moving our bodies matters- What are macros and why does having an awareness and understanding of macros important?- Tips for meal prep - How weight lifting and exercise plays a role in women's healthFor more from Jill, follow her on Instagram at @NourishbyJillFor more from Erin, follow her on Instagram at @LoveRaisingUs
The Florida School Board Insurance Trust (FSBIT) turned to drone technologies to help survey their school district properties, which span 12 counties. Eric Seaborg and James Woodside, Alliant, spoke with one of the founders of the program, Jill Thompson, Information Director, FSBIT to learn how the groundbreaking program got started. In addition, discuss how their use of drone technologies has improved their ability to survey properties in significantly less time and reduce the risk of accessing difficult-to-reach areas.
The wonderful and talented, Jill Thompson, joins me on the podcast to chat about art, process, comics, and, of course, Scooby-Doo! Never miss an episode! Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all good podcatchers. Check out the Official Site If you'd like to join the conversation follow us on Facebook or Twitter More info and bonus material for episodes available at the official show blog Please consider rating, reviewing, and sharing the show. Your support means a lot and goes a long way to helping grow the audience and the podcast so we can continue to bring you more ambitious and high quality Scooby-Doo and Hanna-Barbera related content in the future.
Things are starting to come to a head in our penultimate episode for The Sandman Book Club! Brief Lives follows the story of Dream and Delirium as they search the world for Destruction, their missing brother. Meanwhile, the next volume (The World's End) brings us another anthology with hints at what to expect in the final two volumes of the series. ----more---- Jessika: I feel like I'm very straight passing recently. So I went out and ordered by self some doc Martins, just work there. These are my doc Martins. I am bisexual. *laughs* Hello! Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we seek to find Destruction one issue at a time. My name is Jessika Frasier, and I'm joined by my cohost, the fountain of facts, Mike Thompson. Mike: Hello. Hello. Hello. Jessika: Hello, Mike. And if you, listener, are new around here, the purpose of this podcast is to study comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. This episode, we're continuing on with the fourth episode of our book club as we discuss volume seven and eight of the Sandman series, if you haven't already listened to our previous episodes on the Sandman and want to catch up, which by the way, we highly recommend we're discussing two volumes at a time. So go check out episode 15 for volumes one and two episode 17 for volumes three and four, and episode 19 for volumes five and a six, And if you're thinking "These guys are great. I would love to show my support for this amazing podcast, but how?" Well friends I'll tell you. It really helps us. If you rate and review us on the platform you're listening through, especially apple pod pass and pod chaser, it really helps with discoverability and in helping us reach other nerdlings that just might enjoy the show. Plus it gives us that validation boost that Mike and I both being generally anxious, so need. So show us some love wherever you listen, please. And thank you. You can also tell your friends how awesome we are so they can join in on this fun. Mike: Yeah. Uh, I definitely thrive on words of affirmation as pointed out by Comic Book Couples Counseling in our last episode. Jessika: Yes, please give us all the affirmation. But before we jump into our main conversation about volume seven and eight of the same. what is one cool thing you've read or watched lately? Mike: I recently learned that the Books of Magic, which is a bit of a spin-off to the Sandman and a bit of sequel and a bit of something totally original, is getting the omnibus treatment. So this was actually really exciting for me because I read all the trades when I was in high school and college. And I was disappointed at how it felt like the series ended halfway through the story. And then I learned way later that DC only collected the first 50 of like 75 total issues into trades, which is why the series felt like it ended the way it did, I guess. Didn't sell that well. And so DC stopped putting them out, but DC put out an omnibus late last year, and then they're going to release another one in a couple of months. And it's going to contain the rest of the series as well as all of the different tie in books. And I wound up getting it for over half off from Target during this big deal they had on books where it was like, buy two, get one free. And they also weirdly had it for over half off. So yeah, I snapped that fucker up. Jessika: Hey hey tar-get. Mike: I know. Right. It was great. but yeah, we've been having a lot of rainstorms here in the bay area lately, and it's kind of the perfect weather to read an oversized book, featuring the adventures of Tim hunter, who is this British teenager who's due to become the most powerful magician in the current age of man and...It's a really good read still. It's one of those books from the nineties that was originally a mini series by Neil Gaiman, and then other authors picked it up and put their own spin on it, you know? And we saw that with Lucifer as well. the books of magic had a couple of different authors, but they had prolonged runs and then they had a rotating cast of artists meanwhile Lucifer had Mike Carey at the helm guiding everything for all 75 issues. And then Neil Gaiman wrote the original miniseries for the books of magic, but then, you can still feel his fingerprints all over it, which is really cool. Jessika: Yeah, that's neat. Mike: Yeah. There's some cool little Easter eggs in it. Like I think I mentioned in last episode during the brain wrinkles about how we actually see Hamnet, who was in the Midsummer Night's Dream issue of Sandman show up in the Books of Magic as the page of Titania, the queen of fairies. Jessika: Yeah, totally validated me. Mike: I remember, you and I talking about that and you were like, I don't know. Did he go with Titania? And I was sitting there going, I don't know, maybe . , you know, he could have it's left open-ended no, he went with Titania, so... Jessika: yeah. Mike: yeah. Jessika: that. Mike: But yeah. What about you? What have you been scoping out? Jessika: Well, my good friend and a listener Noel -hey- gave me a reprint of a one-shot Image comic called Aria: The Heavenly Creatures, which was written by Brian Holguin, illustrated by Jay Anacleto with Brian Haberlin, colored by Drew Passata Raymond Lee and Brian Haeberlin and letter by Francis Taka Naga. And I, I wanted to call them all out because the illustration, this comic is absolutely phenomenal. It's gorgeous. It's just, it's a veritable work Bart on every page and it's done in a really soft and hazy almost Dreamlike way. Mike: Hm. Jessika: And there aren't any harsh outlines it's detailed and very lifelike and all of the fabric just looks so like rich and realistic. Noel was telling me that the character Lady Kildare was actually in another longstanding series, but this one had the rights removed to use the character. I believe, I'm not sure why. but it was set in the smokestack that was Victorian London. Hence some of the reasons for the haze, the story follows Kildare, who is from the fairy realm as she stumbles upon and subsequently sets to saving a fallen angel who was being held active by a man who runs a sideshow. And it gives off extreme queer vibes and has an absolutely strong, and bad-ass leading lady, which, you know, I'm absolutely here for. Mike: What. Jessika: yeah. what? Who's heard of this? Mike: nobody told me this. Jessika: what she's a feminist who would have known. Mike: I can't believe you're telling me this now. It's like 20 episodes. We're all alive. Jessika: This is 21. I got ya. Mike: I'm quitting! I'm quitting right now! How dare you? Jessika: You know what, Mike? Let's move on to our next topic. Our main topic. Mike: that series does sound rad though. I haven't heard of it before, so I'm gonna have to check it out. Jessika: Yeah, you should. It's definitely, it's very interest. Mike: All right. Now we can move on. Jessika: Okay, let's go. Oh, right. So we are moving on to volume seven and eight of the Sandman series. So volume seven is titled Brief Lives and was published 1992 and 93 and comprises volumes 41, through 49 of the Sandman series written of course, by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Jill Thompson and Vince Locke. Mike: Yeah. And we've seen both of these artists before in the series, like Vince Locke helps with, the short story about the Wolf people. Jessika: That's right. Mike: and then Jill Thompson, Jill Thompson did the, the Chibi story that we saw Jessika: Oh, that's right. Mike: in the parliament of Rooks issue. Her chili style drawings of Death and Dream wound up becoming their own thing. It's called the Little Endless Jessika: Aw. Mike: and they did them as kind of like storybooks. Jessika: That's so cute. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Oh, obviously I'm going to have to go down a Jill Thompson rabbit hole. This volume in particular is chunked into chapters. So I'm going to break down the story in that way. so we begin chapter one with an older man making a long arduous Trek to put flowers on a Memorial for Johannah Constantine. We find Orpheus living his endless life of being just a head, not ahead of the game, Just, a literal head. He's been there. for so long that he uses his current helper for the helper's grandfather, as the task of Orpheus's care has been passed down the familial line. We cut to Delirium who is lost on and living on the streets because she cannot find her realm and is obsessively talking about her quote unquote lost brother. She has what can probably be best described as an anxiety or panic attack after wandering into a club and mistaking a cute goth woman for being her sister, Death. Desire, swoops in and takes her to her realm, but refuses to help her in the search for their brother, but suggests that Delirium visit Despair in her realm And ask if she will help. Despair also refuses to assist, but we get a glance into the brother whose identity has been kept vague up to this point, which is Destruction. We get to see a brief interaction during the black plague where Despair and Destruction for both out admiring their work. Despair then ignores a mirror page, quote, unquote from her twin Desire who wanted to talk about her and their brother and the fact that Delirium is looking for him. Mike: Yeah. And I think this is the first time that we actually see Destruction as a person. Before that he showed up in the issue where we saw Orpheus his wedding, but he was like fully clad in armor and he had like a giant helm. So it was obscuring his face. Jessika: Yeah. And we didn't ever really get introduced necessarily. We just knew that he just was like, there. Mike: Yeah. I can't remember if they out and out named him, you know, it probably would help if I went back and re-read the issue right now, but I think they, identified him as part of the family Jessika: Yeah. That's what I think it was vague. Mike: because he has, he has a whole, he has a whole conversation with Orpheus, after, after Eurydice dies, where he kind of consoles him. I think, right, like I'm not misremembering. Jessika: I don't remember now that was too many issues ago, Mike: Yeah. Jessika: But he's definitely there. He definitely was there and I, and I think it was just like vague as to his ties. Like he was family, but. Mike: Yeah. And then when he's going through the town with Despair during the black plague, he's like very gregarious and like actually much more human seeming than honestly all of the other endless, he's one of those people where he's not going about his duty somberly but he's not like delighting in it either. He's just kind of like, you know, he's just a dude. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. He like has a job and he's doing his job, but he's he still sees what effect that takes on others? Mike: Yeah. He feels like a much more human member of the endless than most of his siblings. Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Say so. So chapter two brings us to Dream and his realm. Where he is once again, moping over a woman who has left him instead of dealing with the grief of his lost love interest, whom he'd only known for a scant couple months. He instead orders Lucien to have her quarters in the castle be dismantled and he's causing constant rain in the Dream realm, as well as in the Dreams of mortals and Delirium shows up and is at first identified as an intruder by the gargoyles outside of Dream's castle. Mike: I mean, does it really surprise us? That Dream is just the mopiest moper whoever moped? I know that Neil Gaiman wanted the characters designed to be like a mix of him when he was in his late twenties, cause he was this tall kind of gangly guy, crossed with Robert Smith from The Cure. Which, I mean, like, it feels like something from a cure Song where it's like, my woman left me and so I'm, causing it to rain all over my realm Jessika: Oh my gosh, causing it to flood. Mike: It's very much that that kind of like new wave emo vibe that I keep getting from Dream. So, you know, spot on. Jessika: Oh, it totally is though. So Delirium shows up and is again, is at first identified as an intruder by the gargoyles outside of Dream's castle. And Dream invites Delirium inside and offers her a meal and then asks her what he can help with. And it took Delirium some time to get her request out and Dream being the super patient guy he is -just kidding, he's not- was starting to get frustrated, but Delirium finally got out her request or Dream to help her find their lost brother admitting that she had already asked Desire and Despair. Dream become suspicious that Desire had something to do with Delirium, getting that idea, but Desire swears that she had nothing to do with it and urges Dream to just kick her out and refuse to help. We get a flashback from when Delirium was still Delight and her own relationship with Destruction. When Dream returns, he ends up offering to help Delirium try to locate Destruction through some of Destruction's friends. When told of this, Lucien tries to coax him out of going, but Dream admits that he just needs something to take his mind off his current malady and could use the distraction. Dramatics. He also leaves on a literal, "this is straight forward, What could possibly go wrong?" note. Which why, why set yourself up in that way? Anyway. Mike: I thought that was great. Jessika: We begin chapter three with a man named Ernie CapEx, who has had a Dream where he is remembering the smell of wooly mammoths, recalling that he had lived for innumerable years, yet passing a construction zone. He is hit with an entire brick wall slash building itself that accidentally fell from overhead from an active, construction zone he was passing. As CapEx emerges from the rubble. He believed himself to have gotten out of the situation unscathed yet Death, comes, and collect him, pointing to his body, buried beneath the rebel and state that he got, what everybody gets a lifetime back. The waking world Dream has brought the leery into a travel agency in Dublin, looking for an acquaintance of Dreams after much back and forth with the woman working at the front desk. Dream finally sent the message about drinking wine in Babylon before Pharamond -now called Mr. Farrell- finally came to meet them. I love that while they were waiting in the lobby, Delirium was like making frogs, like actual animate frogs. Mike: Yeah. And I think that was called out where Ferrell is sitting there and he's like, what are they doing? And the receptionist is like, they're making frogs. like she's making them appear out of thin air. It was. Jessika: So chaotic. During their meeting, Fairmont agrees to assist Dream after recalling our Dream and help them in the past, by suggesting a different profession, they asked Delirium about the list she had mentioned of their brother's friends, and she went and bought it and included the Lawyer, the Alderman, Etain of the Second Look and the Dancing Woman. we get a glimpse of a Etain who has had a Dream about a poem. She goes to write, but it escapes her. She also narrowly escaped from her apartment as it explodes from ignited gasoline. Mike: Yeah. She, has like a moment where she figures out that something is wrong and just needs to get out like as soon as possible. Jessika: yeah, she had the forethought to grab her purse and then held it in front of her as she broke through the window with the force of her running body, shielding herself with purse. So bad-ass. And she was just in her underwear and a tank top at the time. So lucky for her She had her purse with her and he'd go off into Kmart, some clothes and shoes. We then pan to a man who looked suspiciously like Destruction with no facial hair. And he is trying to paint. His dog, Barnabas, comes to advise him that he is hearing an odd noise from inside a room where they find a round churning pool surrounded by framed portraits. He falls at the family room and states it is an early warning system. Dream and Delirium fly on a plane in first-class and then are picked up by a chauffeur in a classic convertible on their way to see apex chapter four begins with an alderman who was nervously perceiving an out of season Northern lights display, knowing that is an negative omen. He does a ritual and changes itself into a bear with a human shadow bites off the human shadow and the shadow takes the man's clothes and his name and identity, and goes back into the world. The bear remains a bear and forgets he was anything else prior. Meanwhile, back in the waking world, Dream and Delirium are being driven around What looks like a suburban neighborhood. And Dream is clearly looking for something or someone they roll up to Bernie Cape axes house, where they're informed by a son that his father is dead. Dream gets really pushy with the chauffeur who insists that she needs to stop to rest for the night before they start driving the 12 to 14 hours, you know, like mortals need sleep and all Mike: What was the chauffeur's name again? Ruby, right? Jessika: it was Ruby. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yup. Mike: Yeah. She was rad. I actually really liked that. She was, she was a. Just a cool character, but then she also like actively pushed back on Dream and she's like, I don't give a fuck who you are. I don't care that my boss is calling in a favor. This is not how this works. Jessika: Exactly. Exactly. It's like, yeah, she definitely had solid boundaries. It was awesome. So it was going to take 12 to 14 hours to get to their next destination, which per Deliriums list is Etain of the Second Look in Ohio. Dream, finally concedes to stop and they go to a motel to Russ for the night. And in the motel, we get background on Ruby, the chauffer, who is a polyglot and all around badass. As we said, Delirium is letting herself go in order to find another one of the characters on their lists. The scene cuts to an exotic nightclub where one of the dancers is sick prior to going. While looking in the mirror. One of the other dancers who was assisting the sick dancer sees Delirium, who verifies that she is the Dancing Lady that is on the list and tells her that they will see her soon. So Dream goes back to his own realm and speaks with Lucien asking for assistance and finding some of the information they need to find their brother. Dream also recollects a situation and conversation with Destruction and the Corinthian in the 17 hundreds. But at the time Dream didn't realize that Destruction was telling him that he was going to be leaving. Mike: Yeah. And the Corinthian, this is the same Corinthian who we saw basically as the celebrity at the serial killer convention back in the Doll's House, right? Jessika: Yeah. it was the Doll's House. Mike: Yeah. But it was before he had really gone off the deep end, but I really dug the character design where he's kind of dressed as a French dandy and he's still rocking sunglasses, like, but he's got, he's got like the giant puffy wig and I thought that was great. Jessika: yeah, it was a nice little, a nice little. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Back in the motel Dream returns to his body, to firefighters, trying to get him out. Ruby fell asleep with a lit cigarette and the motel burned down, killing Ruby in the process, or so we're made to believe. Mike: Yeah, but at the same time, it's implied that someone or something is taking out all of the leads on Destruction. And they're not sure if the Endless themselves were being targeted as well. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Mike: So there's that, there's that ominous tease. Jessika: Chapter five brings us to the search for the Dancing Lady. As well as some driving lessons for Delirium. So irresponsible. Mike: which we should note, they bring Matthew the Raven in to teach Delirium how to drive and Matthew is basically having a panic attack the entire time, trying to teach her the rules of the road because teaching Delirium, the rules of anything is not going to work. Jessika: Yeah. Well, because she tried like, initially Dream was just like, yeah, go for it. And she's like all over the road, she's like swerving in and out of stuff. She's not on the correct side. And it was just a whole thing. Mike: no, it was, it was very good watching Matthew, just panic. And he's like sitting there squawking and flapping his wings, like crazy. It was good. I loved it. Jessika: Oh, well. And before that, I mean, they had a... the reason the Matthew out called in was because they had a run in with highway patrol and that ended with the man being plagued with feeling like bugs were crawling on him, like forever. Forever. He always was just going to feel like that. Mike: Yeah. That was like, and that was basically Delirium. Just does it as a hand wave thing, which you know, I have that as something to talk about later on. But. Yeah. It's the first instance where we see Delirium being just as casually cruel as the rest of her siblings. Jessika: Yeah. Yup. Without really realizing it, you know, it's almost like it's not even a thought, which is even worse. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So they get to the exotic dance club and Tiffany -whom Delirium had been using as a conduit- and Ishtar, who we find out as a former goddess of love. So she, at one point tells Tiffany that nobody comes to really see her dance just for TNA, but after Dream and Delirium and Matthew pay a visit with Dream, extracting nothing from who we find out is Destruction's former lover, but also warning her that she might be in danger. Ishtar goes out to the stage to dance and literally goes atomic dancing her true dance. The whole club explodes with a naked, Tiffany barely making it out alive. Desire, shows up and gives Tiffany their coat and talks about how Ishtar was thinking about her desire for Destruction up until her final moment. Mike: Yeah. Well, something that was interesting about Tiffany is that Ishtar, we've gotten glimpses of her, where Ishtar is like taking care of her. And it's very clear that she has some mental issues going on as well as possibly a drug addiction. She had a drug addiction, right? Cause at one point she was trying to eat some eggs and stuff that Ishtar made for her and then she wound up puking it up. And then she winds up stumbling out of the club and surviving while Desire gives her the jacket. And then I think that kind of becomes sort of like one of those revelatory moments that we always hear about with born again, Christians, which, you know, we see later on at the very end. Anyway. Moving on. Jessika: Well, chapter six brings us back to Destruction who is trying his hand at yet another artistic endeavor. And once again, producing lackluster results, he mentions to Barnabas that now is not the time for him to Dream or else he might give up too much. Back with Dream and Delirium Dream has had enough of his sister's bullshit and basically tells her that he's fucking back off to his own realm and she needs to go back to hers. He refuses to help her any further. Mike: he's really a Dick about it too. There's a very cold delivery to it. And it's very, again, it's very cruel, where he really talks down to her and treats her like a lesser rather than an equal. Jessika: Yeah. It would be one thing to put up a boundary, which I would absolutely respect if you said, you know what I, for XYZ reason, I really can't help you at this point. Here's what I can do for you. Or I can support you in this way, but it's not even like that. He's just like middle fingers in the air. Like here I go back to my realm, like Mike: Basically just fire both middle fingers off and go deuces I'm out! Jessika: Exactly. So Delirium is very upset obviously by this treatment from her brother and his response and sulks off to her own realm. And Dream is very salty when he gets back and tells him while at a stopped dancing, which, sorry, you're no fun, but stop stomping on everybody else's rose garden. He lets Pharamond know about Ruby's demise and then Dream creates a realm for bast to come and talk. And even though he's told everyone that he is no longer looking for his brother, that is the exact question he is going to ask a very flirty Bast. Mike: right. And this is because back in Season of the Mists, when all the different gods were vying for Hell, the gods of Egypt didn't exactly have a lot to offer, but Bast said, I do know where your brother is. Jessika: Which I didn't really put two and two together, obviously. Mike: No, I mean, well, I mean, here's the thing is like back then, like, you know, and that one they hinted at at where I think they had a curtains drawn over Destruction's portrait. This was something that was a very tangentially hinted at if even that much. But it's kind of interesting to see how Neil Gaiman clearly had an idea of what he wanted to do. Like, even that far back, like we're talking at this point years back. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely the long game for the plot line. Mike: which, anything that you read by him, He always has these small seeds that he plants that wind up growing into something bigger. Like if you read American gods, which is, a dense tome of a book, and I guess there's the, the director's cut version that they released a couple of years ago, which is even longer, there's a number of small things that he has his like kind of tangental side stories, and then they wind up building into something much bigger towards the end. Jessika: Oh, it's always so cool. It's such a good story teller. Mike: Yeah. It's just, sometimes you sit there and view people's talent and you're like, that's not fair. Jessika: No, right? So when Dream appears back in the main part of his castle, Lucien lets him know that there is some trouble in the portrait gallery and when they get there, he discovers that one of the portrait has gone black. Dun dun dun! Mike: Yeah, like solid black, like that's, that's all there is. Jessika: Solid black. Incommunicado. Death comes to see Dream and asks him what he did to Delirium. explained there so far failed by. And Death basically told him he needed to go make up with the sister. Mike: Yeah. I mean, like, it's basically like a smack on the back of the head. Like she is like, talking about people tired of other people's bullshit. Death is about done with dreams at this point. I think. Jessika: Yeah. She's like stopping douche and just make up with her. Good Lord. And so Dream falls into Delirium's chaotic world, which is filled with color and random pictures and words. And you find her crying, having cut off all of her already short multicolored hair. He apologizes to her admitting the he had had ulterior motives for wanting to travel in the waking world. As there was a woman, he knew that he wanted to try to look up while they were in that world. Mike: And it's implied that it's the woman that left him at the beginning who were not actually ever told who that is, right? Jessika: No, she gets no name. She just, she's just a plot point. You know? I love that. Yeah. No, we never, we never see her. We never interact with her. She doesn't get a name. So... too bad or not feminist on this show. Mike: What, what was the quote that Lisa gave us in the last episode? It was like, uh... Jessika: Oh, which one? God, we are, she was talking about nothing. There's nothing better than a woman who was empty. That was one of them. Mike: Yeah, that was exactly what I was thinking of. Like what better purpose for a woman than to be empty and waiting for a man to fill her hole or something? I was like, ah, god damn it Lisa. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. Oh, yup. That's just a welcome to the patriarchy. Front row seat: Every woman. Or female identifying person. So dream tells Delirium that he will help her find their brother, but in earnest. chapter seven begins with Destruction trying out yet another fine art. And this time it's the culinary arts. He is somewhere in proximity to an actual town, as he goes and picks up supplies from there and feeds the dog, Barnabas some chocolate, which don't do that, do not do that to your actual dog. This is a special, magical dog. Mike: I'm still not sure if that was done intentionally to show that Barnabas was like something else or if it was because Neil Gaiman didn't have a dog and didn't know what you are supposed to and supposed to not feed them. Jessika: I hope it's the former. If it's the former, it's pretty cheeky. Let's just say. Mike: But yeah, like I legit tensed up when I read that again. I'm like... Jessika: I did too. My dog was sitting right next to me and I literally out loud was Like. no, no, no, no. So. Barnabas, is it on some chocolate as he and Destruction discuss Destruction's other artistic endeavors, like sculpting, which by the way, all of these have been done with varying degrees of mediocrity so far. Mike: And Barnabas calls it out. Like, he is blunt and it's kinda great. Jessika: Yup. He's a, no nonsense kind of guy for sure. back with dream of Delirium dream, besides that they must get their older brother involved and notified destiny. They have to find his realm using amaze or labyrinth. And he is of course expecting their arrival. The only advice a destiny can offer dream is something that he had already realized, but doesn't seem to want to be true: That he had to see a certain "oracle." Destiny also told him that the woman he loves has never and will never love him. And you will see her one more time, but that you will not like the outcome. Delirium sees Dream's distress and comes to his aid. Speaking very coherently. And with her eyes the same color when bustin, she said that she was able to do that if she wanted, but that it hurt to do it for very long and that she felt like she needed to step up for him when he was down. Mike: I kind of love that. I thought it was great. I thought it also showed that she's actually a better quote unquote "person" than he is in a lot of ways because she did that kind of like naturally, without anyone telling her she had to. Jessika: Yeah, it was very, it was instantaneous and it was very selfless. We then get to jump into Destiny's recollection of a story in his book of destruction, calling a family meeting, where he says he's leaving and that he does not want to be found and is no longer going to be associated with the family. Each family member reacts a little bit differently to the news, but Delirium seems to be the most visually upset. So the Oracle in question turns out to be Orpheus. So Dream ends up going there, to Orpheus's island, and in exchange for destruction's location. Dream now owes Orpheus a boon. So they've very easily traversed to destruction's location by boat, where they meet Barnabas and the formal eternal being himself. Destruction meets them with literal open arms and invites them inside with beast that he has made himself, which by the way, they were just sticks about that. They didn't even want It that Mike: It looked really good too. Like it looked like a really good meal. Jessika: It looked like the one thing he was actually able to do well, Mike: Yeah. Jessika: like he finally figured it out. Hey, I can cook. Mike: Well, I mean, speaking of someone who, you know, bakes enthusiastically people generally don't care so much about how your food looks as much as they do about how it tastes. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. So chapter eight brings us to Destruction's decision. He speaks with Delirium and Dream about the reason he had left family and the fact that he was going to exit existence s Barnabas to stay with Delirium and watch over her. Mike: Yeah. And then he reveals during this conversation that the reason that so many people that knew him have been dying was because of certain safeguards I think is how we phrased it. which, I mean, it's fine. I guess it also kind of, it drives home that the endless are not actually people and they don't feel things like guilt or shame, but I don't know. I was kind of hoping the first time that I read this, that we would get some third agent involved. Someone who is actively trying to hunt down destruction or something like that, but we didn't get it. Jessika: Nope. Mike: It kind of got hand-waved away. Jessika: Yeah. Yep. Just all right. Well that was because I didn't want anybody to find me, so I just gotta to make sure nobody finds me regardless of, you know, who gets in my way. And if Mike: Yeah. Jessika: trying, it's gonna Mike: Cool. Cool bro. Cool. Jessika: Yeah. Pretty rough. Destruction torches the portraits and the gallery. He shrinks his sword and pool, which was rad by the way. And he puts them in, he puts them on a stick in a polka-dot handkerchief and walks literally into the stars. Mike: Yeah. It's that like hobo stick from turn of the century artwork. Whereas the people who were just wandering the rails and stuff and they have a stick and then they have their belongings in, you know, in this little kind of sack tied to the end. Jessika: Yeah. You could tell, he was like, oh, this is what this is supposed to look like. You could tell it was like an affectation, which was kind of adorable. He's been trying this whole time to be someone else, You know, and, and even when he left, he was trying to be someone else. So it's like, man, I hope you find yourself out there. Mike: Well, yeah, it... he's been trying to be human and this is another affectation that he's put on. To seem human. Jessika: Dream then tells Delirium that he has to go see his son. Oh. And also that dream needed to kill Orpheus. Mike: That was such a great cliffhanger moment. Jessika: I know. I actually, I literally gasped. It's like, whoa. We begin chapter nine back to Orpheus's home island where after a bit of back and forth re dream allows Delirium to accompany him, to see his son. She says her chaotic hello, and then Death double-checks with Orpheus that this is what I wanted. They have a very meaningful conversation about their relationship and life and change. And then Dream kills Orpheus. Dream meets up with Delirium outside where Despair has entered the scene. She shows regret and not going with delirium to find and ultimately see destruction for one final time. Delirium pieces out with Barnabas and Despair meets up with Desire who should be happy as it had accomplished what it wanted to have happen... to have Dream spill the blood of one of the family, but she is somehow still lacking proper fulfillment from the situation. Dream returns to his own realm and is unusually empathetic to everyone around them, wanting to know how people are and speaking with soft vendor, standing, leaving every person he interacts with in a state of poodle. He visits Adros who was one of the Island's caretakers and asks him to bury Orpheus in an unmarked grave. He also starts making plans to let people know that they are no longer in danger and generally thinking about the well-being of others. And that is that they're no longer in danger of being harmed by Destruction's safeguards. Dream washes his hands of the blood of his son, literally. And he remembers a flashback advice given after the Death of Eurydice. Throughout this volume, different characters have told dream in different ways that he is changing, evolving as a person, but he fought this notion up until the end of this chapter, where he seems to have made peace with his decision and accepting the fact that maybe has the capacity for change after all. So, Mike, what did you think about this volume? And do you have a favorite story or event? Mike: Yeah. I'm of two minds on this. Like the plot itself feels like this very necessary one. And it's one that moves the story of Dream and his siblings forward in a pretty meaningful way. But I also found myself continuing to realize that the Endless are these very alien beings who just happened to look human. And oftentimes they're not very kind to each other or to anyone else. And I don't really think I like most of them to be honest. I keep thinking about that moment in the club where Desire basically forces two women to fall in love and then reveals it's going to lead to obsession and stalking and I think maybe a murder. And there's just this casual cruelty that they generally seem to possess, like even Delirium. Like we talked about how she gets irritated with the highway patrolman. And then was like, you're going to think that you have bugs crawling onto your skin for the rest of your life. We see that at the end of this volume, like how it's played out. And it's really rough. He's like in a sanitarium. And, that said I will say, I think Delirium is the most human of the endless, except maybe Death, because she feels all the same things that we do. And it's somehow driven her to her current state. Like we never actually see, I don't think what caused her to go from Delight to Delirium. Jessika: Oh, interesting. Okay. Mike: I think it's one of those things that, that game and kind of teases out, but then just leaves us to, let us wonder about afterwards. Jessika: Well, damn Mike: Yeah. And that said, I think my favorite thing about this volume was honestly, was Barnabas. Like I really enjoyed how he had that brutal honesty and was really funny. Whenever destruction would ask him to critique whatever piece of art he just attempted and then he agrees to go with delirium as I don't quite know how to describe this new role for him, I guess like a sanity check dog, as opposed to a seeing eye dog. Jessika: Yeah. Like maybe an emotional support dog. Mike: Yeah. Like he, he's a cosmic emotional support dog, I guess. Jessika: Yeah. You gotta ramp it up and you've got like cosmic powers. You have to, like, there has to be a safeguard for that kind of a, it takes a special service dog. Mike: Yeah. But I felt like he was the best character throughout the whole story. He's funny. And he's weird. And he's also the companion that we all want our dogs to be. I'm not going to lie. Like I'm probably projecting onto him, but I've recently left a job that was incredibly stressful and was actually causing me to start having anxiety attacks. And my dog, Iggy, would clue into when I was freaking out and he would just hop into my lap and calm me down. don't think we deserve dogs and Barnabas is kind of the manifestation of why that's the case. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And on that note, I know that Jill Thompson, who was the main artists for this volume based Barnabas on a real life dog who belonged to a neighbor who she said was quote, "unkind to the animal." And so she decided to like memorialize them in a comic, which kind of adds that extra emotional punch to it. Jessika: yeah, which I'm sorry. Are we obsessed with Jill Thompson answer? Yes, we are. Mike: A hundred percent. Jessika: Jill hit us up. Mike: What about you? Was there anything that really stuck out to you? Jessika: I was really struck with the part where delirium is at dinner and asks. "Have you got any little milk chocolate people, about three inches, high men and women. I'd like some of them filled with raspberries and cream." She makes them kiss throughout the scene. And after a dream and delirium have left, there is one frame of the last two chocolate people, a man and a woman, which is described as such: "touched by her fingers, the two surviving chocolate people populate desperately losing themselves in a melting frenzy of lust spending. The last of their brief borrowed lives in a spasm of raspberry cream and fear." Something about the fact that delirium was both animating and then eating little candy people is just so intense and horrifying. Mike: Yup. Jessika: And for how much of a throwaway frame it was, it really said a lot about Delirium in just that one situation, you know, even bringing it back to what you had mentioned, just that casual, like she's created a life and she doesn't even care what happens to it? She's just going to destroy it. She'll just leave it to just melt. It doesn't matter to her. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, that's, I think part of the thing with the Endless is that they're older than gods and galaxies. At some point, when you were these beings that kind of surpass already cosmic things, I don't know, maybe. you just have that perspective where you're like, Hm, you're less than an ant and it's not because I don't like you... It's just, Hmm. Jessika: Yeah, totally. Well. We're bringing it back to the art. Do you have a favorite panel or illustration that caught your eye? Mike: Yeah. The scene where destruction is talking with dream and delirium under that starry sky, like right before he pieces out. It's one of those things where every panel feels like this legit work of art. And in the moment when he actually pieces out, it just feels simultaneously strange and surreal and totally ordinary. And I loved it. It's now one of the sequences that I think about when I think about Sandman, like I've got a couple of moments from, different stories that I've talked about in the past. Like in Men of Good Fortune and there's that three panel sequence with Hob Gadling and his face. And then, this is another one. it felt like there were a bunch of different emotions wrapped up in the entire scene. And I really liked how I just, it left me feeling satisfied at the end, which, you know, you want good art to do. And then it's not exactly a favorite art moment. But one detail that I really liked was how after Orpheus dies, which by the way, the moment that he dies is kind of cool because we don't actually see what dream did, but we see the symbol of death. And then, Orpheus is dead. But one detail that I've really liked was how after Orpheus dies and dream has blood dripping from his hands, there's a trail of red flowers, blooming where the blood hits the ground. Jessika: Yeah. That's really sweet. It was those same red flowers that he had that Orpheus had been sending up to Johanna, Constantine's memorial Mike: Yeah. Yeah. so I'm curious, like what about you? What was your favorite art moment? Jessika: Well, I actually have a tie, so you're just gonna have to hear both. Mike: that's kind of funny because normally I'm the one where I'm like, I have two, maybe three. Jessika: I couldn't decide this time, usually very decisive, but you know. Sandman's got me like... so in chapter five they visit the exotic dance club and the illustration was super neat. They didn't have any heavy outlines. It was lit differently, you know, the, the drawing style and it just had like shapes, comprising most of the forms, which was neat. And it was a good way to show the distorting light that neon and other lights. You know, give off the appearance. And it also gives the vibe for the place they were in. The customers are also not looking at details and the reader won't get any, you know, the stage lights were also different from the backstage lighting, but the line work was the same, which was also an interesting choice. It made it feel like the club was just a world of its own, with its own visual rules. Mike: Yeah. And the moment where Ishtar takes the stage and she kind of goes nuclear, the art style is very distinct and the way that she's drawn compared to everything else, it's like, she's no longer a concrete form. It's kind of like, she is the idea of a woman in the midst of a very real world, which I thought was a really cool way to do it. Jessika: Yeah. I think so too. Yeah, I think so. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And my other favorite art moment is when Dream goes into Delirium's round Mike: Mm. Jessika: it's so colorful and it's a chaotic and it's hard to know where to look, to take everything in. And I found myself kind of looking at the pages far away and then up close because the little details come out when you're close, but the distance lets you see the whole big chaotic picture. So it was really neat to portray like a really neat way to portray that vibe. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: so Mike, do you have any final thoughts about this volume before we move on? Mike: Yeah, I was kind of entertained at how dream threw a giant tantrum because his latest girlfriend bounced and it sort of just drove home how he's still very much a mediocre white guy in his thirties. But, but I also, I will say I did appreciate how this volume brought closure to Orpheus's story and, and how we saw some genuine emotion and regrets from Morpheus at the end of it. There's that moment where after he's having that, recollection of telling Orpheus to live, you can see him in his, I guess his throne or his personal chair or whatever it was. And he looks really sorrowful and that's, I think, the first time that we've seen. Express any true emotion other than anger? Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. Mike: No. Jessika: Well, let's move along to volume eight and this is titled Worlds End. And was originally published in single magazine farm as the Sandman issues, 51 through 56 in 1993, written as always by our boy, Neil Gaiman illustrated by Brian Talbot, Alex Stevens, John Watkiss, Michael Zuli, Michael Alfred, Shaya Anson Pensa and Gary Amarro. This volume is another anthology. The first story is titled the tale of two cities, and it begins with a car accident where a man named Brant Tucker was behind the wheel with the car's owner, Charlene Mooney in the passenger seat. A large black-horned animal, bigger than a car was in the middle of the road, causing him to veer off and hit a tree Brant bulls Charlene from the wreckage and carries her to find help, winding up at a place called the World's End Inn. Where there are many very curious characters, similarly waiting out the storm, but this isn't a snowstorm like brand had initially thought it is a reality storm, a centaur who is touted to be a prolific healer, tends to Charlene and after drinking a very comforting honey flavored liquid Brant falls into a short coma of 15 hours and awakens to find everyone around a table, trading stories. One of the men at the table, Mr. Geharris goes on to tell a story about a man who enjoyed wandering around the city until the night that he fell or more accurately rode a train into the dreams of his city. After catching a glimpse of a silver gleaming path during his daily lunchtime walk, the man spaces out at work and leaves late missing his usual train. The train he catches is not the right one at all, as Dream as the only other passenger. And it doesn't make the usual stops instead, quickly zipping to an unknown destination when he arrives, all of the landmarks are familiar, but not quite recognizable. He comes upon another older man who tells him his theory that this is the dream of a city. He finds his way out through a familiar doorway where he was later able to read out the tail to Mr. Harris stating that he's not afraid of the dreams of the cities. He's more worried about what might happen if they wake up and decide to take over. Mike: Yeah. And that last bit, gives, everything kind of this weird Lovecraftian kind of vibe where it's painting cities to kind of seem like they are these eldritch beings that we just happened to be living in. And I kind of dug that Jessika: Yeah. Well, I don't know. I am of the opinion that a city is a living, breathing organism in a way. I mean, there are definite veins and arteries of traffic and, there's different inner workings that make the whole thing rent. I don't know. It just, it feels alive. Mike: what was that like the mortal engine series, like Peter Jackson produced a movie. That they based on the books about how after effectively, like a giant world war cities become these mobile entities and they wind up like roaming the world and harvesting smaller towns and villages for resources. Jessika: Oh, I Like, that. Mike: it's a cool idea. It's one where I, I haven't read the book. I've only, I've only seen the trailers, but it looked cool. I don't know. I think it did not actually get that great a review. So I'm waiting for it to come to Netflix before I watch it Jessika: yeah. Fair. So moving on to the second story, which is titled Cluracan's Tale, and it's told by its namesake who is similarly waiting out the store. And this is the very same thorough can who was the brother to Nuala the quote unquote gift given to dream by the Fey after all the underworld drama? Mike: right in season of the miss. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. His story takes place in the land of Fae where Cluracan is being told by her majesty the queen that he must act as an ambassador on her behalf and intervene in a dealing in Australia of the Plains. Evidently he had been planning to visit Nuala, but would have to set that aside to go on a mission for the queen. She gives him some instructional scrolls, which he was like, yeah, cool. I'll read those later and sets on his way. He's guided to the palace where he meets the psychopomp, who is basically trying to gain power of all the realms tax people and make himself wealthy and powerful. don't know if that sounds familiar. Mike: Neil Gaiman, continuing to be oddly prescient. Jessika: Man. Cluracan bursts out an uncontrollable prediction, which lands him in jail with iron cuffs and chains. He falls into the dream realm where he sees Nuala. And when he awakes Dream is there and undoes his chains and lets him out as a favor to Nuala. Once out Cluracan spreads rumors throughout the town about the psychopomp causing the town to riot the psychopomp and his adviser. Hide out in the crypt where he is mocking. The former leaders Cluracan comes to face the psychopomp, but before he's able to do. One of the dead bodies comes back the life and fucks up the oily little man by sending them both out of a stained glass window from way high up. Cluracan was on his way back to give his queen the news when he was caught in the storm and absolutely admits to embellishing his story. Mike: Which I mean, that's kind of in keeping with Cluracan's character. He's very much the grandiose storyteller. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. So the next story is called Hob's Leviathan and is told by a young person who goes only by the name, Jim, while Brant and Charlene have come from June, 1993, Jim and the rest of the ship's crew came from September, 1914. Mike: I actually really liked that detail because it shows the fluid nature of time throughout all of these stories that we're reading. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. Not only time, but other realms, like, you know, we had reality budding up against the Fey realm and budding up against wherever the hell centaurs come from and all that good stuff, Jim had worked on several other ships and had finally started working on the Sea Witch. The captain reluctantly took on a passenger who we find out to be Hob Gadling during their merchant voyage and also find a stowaway. The stowaway is named Gunga Din, who told a very sexist story about how all women cheat and along the way they encounter a sea serpent. When Jim asks Bob, why nobody is talking about the sea serpent, Hob states that some things just go unsaid and who would believe that story anyway, and then reveals that he knows that Jim is actually a girl in the end. Jim says that there is only so much more time that this disguise will work, but for now they can still be called Jim. Mike: Yeah. And Gunga Din I think that's a Rudyard Kipling poem from like the late 1900s... Jessika: Oh, hence the sexism Mike: yeah. I mean, I don't remember the details about that. I think we read that in junior year English for high school. but Rudyard Kipling stuff it has that, unmistakable whiff of colonialism. Jessika: Yeah. Colonialism is a thing. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Golden Boy is the title of our next story and starts with Brant being a very sleepy guy. He wakens to a sandwich and miraculously hot coffee that had been left for him starts looking around the inn. He runs into another guest who states he is a seeker and follower quote, unquote, and tells the story of the one he follows. In another reality, we follow the growth of a boy named Prez Rickard who becomes the 19-year-old president of the United States with a pension for fixing broken timepieces. Now, Mike, off recording, we've talked about Prez before, I know this is a passion of yours. Would you like to give us some background on the character. Mike: Oh man. Pres. Okay. yeah, we haven't actually talked about them on this show before, and we probably should at some point, but I, but the funny thing is we did talk about him when we were spinning up the podcast that eventually morphed into Ten Cent Takes. So there's like a last episode out there with some of this info. Prez was this comic that DC did back in the early 1970s. It was following the passage of the 26th amendment, which lowered the voting age. And basically the idea was what would happen if a followup amendment allowed teenagers to get elected to office. And the core concept was there's a kid named Prez who is named so because his mom wants him to be president one day, he becomes this local hero after getting all the clocks in his town to run on time and winds up, getting elected president after kind of thwarting, a convoluted scheme by the shady political fixer named boss smiley and Boss Smiley is a weird guy. Like I think, I think if I remember him, he's like a human person, but then he's got like a smiley face button for a face. Jessika: Yeah. It's weird. Mike: the problem is, is it's been a while since I read the original issues and I may be mixing it up with what's in here. And then also the followup reboot they did back in 2015, which we'll talk about that in a minute. But the seventies comic only lasted for four issues and it had some really wild stories. Like one of my favorites is he fights a legless vampire on a skateboard and he goes toe to toe with this distant descendant of George Washington, who was leading an extremist militia group. He survives it and assassination attempt on him after he comes out as pro gun control. And I need to show you that comic cover with the vampire, because he's got like, he's got a werewolf as an assistant, just like a torso and then... Jessika: Sounds a lot like terror. Shout out to DG Chichester. Mike: Oh man. All right. Take a look at this. Jessika: No, it's on a wheelie cart. Mike: Uh, yeah. Jessika: I was not. Oh no, there, there, are problems. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Oh no. Okay. Let me just paint a picture for everyone. So we have the DC logo in the corner. It says in the middle of the cover Vampire in the wWite House! Prez: First Teen President 20 cents number for March. It's got the comics code authority, of course, which we love. So the door is being opened by what looks like, uh, some militia men, as well as a native American person. Who's very little stereotypically drawn, Mike: I believe that's character name is Eagle free. Jessika: Oh no, I'm Mike: Hold on. Jessika: not loving it. Mike: Yeah, I mean, it was, it was the early 1970s. They, uh, they weren't very politically correct. Jessika: can't see my head shaking. It's shaking. I don't love it. Mike: It looks like the Native American mascot that you see when a team is named the Indians. Jessika: Yes, exactly. It's a little rough. you saying "We're too late, that creature's found the president!" and just as... he says Prez who, by the way, is wearing a red sweater, which has the presidential logo with Prez USA around it. So that's already funny. He seems to be in the oval office. Papers are flying everywhere and there's half a vampire on a rolly cart who by the looks of it has flown in and is now trying to bite his neck or strangle him or bite his shoulder and strangle him is what it looks like. Not entirely sure what he's going to do here. So Yeah. Mike: And that's like the final issue of Prez as well, I believe. Jessika: It would escalate into vampirism and be like, oh, where do we go from here? Pres and a vampire. Mike: Yeah. pres everything that I love about comics and the press books are why I collect where you just find these weird, strange, silly moments, and then you can bust it out to show to people. And they just want to know all about it. And then you guys get to talk about it for awhile. Jessika: it's the concept itself is so laughable that even if it were an option to like elect an 18 year old, like most of us would be like, I remember what I was 18. This sounds like an awful idea. This sounds like a terrible idea. Mike: I remember what I was like when I was 30. Good Lord. I wouldn't want me when I was 30 as president. Jessika: That's what I'm saying? Yeah. I'm 35. I'm oh, Hey. I'm just now of presidential age. So nobody vote for me. Nobody vote for me. I don't want that job, but I thought my job was stressful. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: I have like seven employees. Like I don't, I don't want to have like the country as my, as my dealings with that's a lot. Mike: Yeah. But the other thing is that in 2015, DC did a mini series revival slash reboot of Prez. Where instead of Prez Rickard... Rickard still shows up and he's kind of like this wildly congressmen, and he's a lot of fun, the idea it's updated for the modern age, where basically you can vote via Twitter. And... Jessika: Oh, no. Mike: and this girl who goes viral because of like a humiliating video at our fast food job, winds up getting elected president. And it's very funny and very smart. And I can't remember who wrote it, but Ben Caldwell did the art who has this wonderful style. That's kind of a mix of cartoony and then more traditional. And it it's really good. And it's also very affordable. You can find it very easily for not much money. In fact it might be on Hoopla. Jessika: Ooh, we love Hoopla. Mike: Yeah, let's see if it's on Hoopla. Jessika: Hey everyone. I would like to take this time to remind everyone to support your local library, to support your local comic book. You're a local small bookstore, small artists. Mike: We are recording this on small business Saturday. Jessika: We are Mike: So Jessika: that's right. Mike: press volume, one from 2015, by Mark Russell and Ben Caldwell and Mark Morales is available on Hoopla. Highly recommend it. It's a great read. Jessika: Yes. Well, thank you. So back within, the story, so that was a nice background on Prez, but back to what happened within this anthology story. So press has many trials where he's tempted by that character Boss Smiley that you had mentioned, but he declined each time wanting to work for his people instead of selling out so that he could receive the rewards offered by the creepy smiling guy. Even after his fiancé is killed and he's injured by a shooter, he still does not give into temptation after finishing his second term of office and denying want change laws so he could continue through a third, Prez hit the road and beyond some Elvis level sightings, he disappeared into the sunset. When Prez died, despite the lack of news on the subject, collectively the nation knew the tragedy that had befallen them. When Death came to retrieve Prez, he was led to gold gates in the clouds and was met by Boss Smiley. Who explains that there are other Americas, other realities that are unknown to most when Prez explains that he wants to leave to the afterlife of broken watches he was told about. Boss smiley says he will not let him leave that he has to stay with the boss. Dream shows up and puts the kibosh on Boss Smiley's plan, taking Prez out of the situation and literally disappearing in front of the boss's angry visage. Dream explains that Death was the one to call attention to this plight and that he had her the thank for his rescue. Before dream sends him off to the real afterlife, Prez gives dream a pocket watch. And the narrator mentioned that he could be out there spreading his good word or waiting to hop back into reality, but we may never know. Mike: Yeah. And I really liked that one because it was, the Neil Gaiman spin on a classic obscure character. But I liked the idea of. this person who was in the DC universe, like, you know, a real in quotes character becoming an urban legend. And by that becoming a dream of a nation. And I liked the idea of Morpheus stepping in and being like, nah, he's, he's mine. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. exactly. So our next story is called Cerements and begins of course, back at the World's End In. And the storyteller for this tale is named Petrefax an apprentice and Stacy has a true story about another member of the party he has with his master BlackRock. Both are from necropolis. We begin in a glass where clap Roth is teaching ways to get rid of a body and quizzes at daydreaming Petrefax Petrefax is assigned by black broth to go see an air burial that was scheduled. The party members of this gathering tell their own stories of the lore of death and the ceremony surrounding it. There was a tale about a prior city that was not showing enough respect for it that ended up being destroyed and reestablished and another that followed the search for hidden place in the city that holds a book that knows many things about death and the departed Brent becomes convinced that the end is actually just them in death, but one of the other people at the end states that they can explain the Inn and magic. Mike: yeah, and I don't think we've seen Necropolis before now, but I know it shows up later on in the series. Jessika: this is the first time that I had. The final story is called world's end, which shows the storm breaking and the different patrons departing to their respective homes and realms. Well sort of Charlene decided that she didn't really care for her reality anyway, and wants to stay on working at the Inn. Although Brant absolutely tries to talk her into going back with him in vain. Petrefax decided that he hadn't seen enough realms and decides to leave and go venturing with Chiron the centaur. When Brant gets back, the car is in one piece without a scratch on it. And it is registered in his name. All signs of Charlene's existence have been erased from the reality in which he lives with Brant being the only person on earth to remember Charlene. Mike: Yeah. And then it's revealed that he was telling the story to a bartender. And that basically when he got to their final destination, he called his work and said, I'm not coming back. Like everything has changed. And then he stays out there and, yeah, it was just, it was kinda, it was one of those ones that ended in a way that was kinda weirdly bittersweet it felt a little sad, even though most everybody got what they wanted. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Well, Mike, was there a scene or event in this volume that stood out to you? Mike: I mean, there's a lot, actually, this is one of the volumes that I really do. Like, but the one that I always really find myself going back to is the story about Prez, which, you know, I mean, based on our prior conversation, probably shouldn't surprise anyone. I really loved how Gaiman created something that was very true to the character, but also was a totally different spin at the same time. And it really felt fun and thoughtful. And I enjoyed how biblical it felt in a lot of ways with Prez being this kind of Christ-like figure. And then Boss Smiley being the adversary. Like they even have the moment where Boss Smiley is trying to tempt him on top of a mountain. Yeah, like I just, I think that is one of my favorite of the Sandman short stories. Jessika: Yeah. That doesn't surprise me about you. Absolutely. Mike: What about you? Jessika: No, I really liked the part where Charlene went on a rampage about how there weren't any women in their stories except to further the plot line or be decoration. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: It was like, yes, girl. Mike: I mean, even with the one about Prez it's like he has a fiancé who gets shot and that's about it. Jessika: Yep, totally fridged. Mike: Yup. Jessika: Yeah. And it also, I also appreciated Gaiman for actually taking the time to point this out in the narratives. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: I mean, it would have been nice if there actually had been women in the narratives instead of him just pointing it out. You know, something to think about. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: But that is one of the things that I like about this series in general, while there are some really, really violent things that do happen to women. There are female characters who take charge and step up and act as main characters and have more of a presence. Is it the whole series? No, but I do feel that this is at least trying to be somewhat inclusive. You know, in the way cis male author. And do so. What was your favorite art moment in this. Mike: I think it was the funeral procession that we see towards the end, it's shown across several two page spreads and it's really striking and knowing what I know, it's really interesting with all the foreshadowing that the wake provides us with, but the way that it's presented, we don't know what's g
Once again, we're walking the moonlit path of dreams and discussing The Sandman. In this episode, we're talking about the fifth and sixth volumes: A Game of You and Fables & Reflections. ----more---- Mike: I don't think I'm getting a birthday present. I am relatively certain that they want to fire me out of a cannon into the sun Jessika: Hello. And welcome to Ten cent takes the podcast where we cause whiplash from rapid time leaps, one issue at a time. My name is Jessica Frasier and I'm joined by my cohost, the curious collector, Mike Thompson. Mike: Man, my collection has been growing by leaps And bounds lately. Yeah. COVID has not been kind to my closet free space. Jessika: Oh, well, and you recently gave me my first short box, So thing. So Mike: I'm not sorry. Jessika: no, don't be, I needed a place for the, my, I looked over at my, at my bookshelf one day and went, oh no, I have a lot of single issues that are just kind of sitting on a shelf. Mike: you know, you're a collector when you just have the random piles of single issues hanging out, Jessika: I just have random piles of trade paperbacks. And just like, my counter is literally covered. Not only do I have every one of the Sandman series, just like chilling on my counter. I got, um, moon girl and, uh, um, devil devil dinosaur, and that's just chilling. So I've just got all this stuff, like all over. Mike: Yeah, it's a, it's insidious. It takes over. your life. One issue at a time. Jessika: Well, what better way to fill a tiny house shaped like a pirate ship than with comics. Mike: Hm. Fair. Jessika: If you haven't listened before the purpose of our podcast is to study comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest weirdness and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. This episode, we are returning to our book club and we will be looking at volumes five and six of the Sandman series. If you haven't checked out the first couple episodes of the series, I highly recommend you go back and take a lesson. It's episodes 15 and 17. Mike: Yeah. And we're covering two volumes at a time. Jessika: Yes, we are. So 15 was one and two and 17 was three and four. So you're joining us for five and six. So welcome aboard. Mike: Welcome to the deep end of the pool children. you don't get an inner tube and we don't have any water wings. Sorry. Jessika: There's absolutely no lifeguard on duty. We are not responsible Dulce at this time. Mike: If You are enjoying our podcast, please go ahead and rate and review on whatever platform you're listening on. If that's an option it's especially helpful. If you can rate us on apple podcasts, there's a lot of discoverability, , or if you have overcast, you can always do a star for the episode and that'll push promotion as well. Or if you're a comic fan and you're liking what we're talking about, and you've got some friends who you think would actually enjoy it? as Well, please let them know any little bit helps. We really appreciate all of you who are spending your time with us. Jessika Audio: We also want to support other podcasts that we really like in this space. So this week spotlight is on the last comic shop podcast. Here's a quick review of what to expect from them. If you want us to feature your show, go ahead and drop us off. Jessika: before we leave into our main main topic, Mike, what is one cool thing you've read or watched? Mike: I was on hooplah the other day and I came across a new series by Jeff Lemire, who is the guy who wrote Sweet Tooth along with a bunch of other excellent. But it's called Gideon Falls and they have the first five volumes on there. it's a really interesting series. It starts off feeling kind of like a horror supernatural thriller involving a Catholic priest who comes to this town and he's very quickly wrapped up in nefarious things going on and it's really creepy. And then there's a B- story involving a guy who is in this kind of weird dystopian, urban environment, far away from the small town of Gideon falls. as the story continues, it morphs from being a, , supernatural horror murder mystery into a bit more science fiction and mad science while still keeping those original vibes. , and also there's a lot of personal tragedy involved with the main characters. That's really cool to read too, which I mean, that's what Jeff Lemire does is he writes these things that just, they make you a lot of times feel like you need to watch Schindler's list for a pick me up. They're excellent, but they are brutal at times. so after I read that, I then proceeded to read through the, what if omnibus that they had on hooplah and I needed something a little bit lighter to cleanse by. Jessika: That's very relatable. Definitely been in that situation myself. Mike: but what about you? Jessika: Well, I have, I recently purchased the book herding cats, which is a black and white anthology comic by Sarah Anderson Mike: like this is the woman who did hyperbole and a half, right? Jessika: yes. Yeah. And also the one that I've spoken about before fangs. Mike: Yeah. The love story between the vampire and the werewolf. Jessika: Aha. Aha. Mike: Yes, I listen. Jessika: you do, you're very good, probably multiple times because we record and then edit and relisten relisten. And this style of comic is definitely way different than the fangs one. , it's more of a simple design and it's just, it's a really fun time to begin with. I highly recommend her stuff to begin with. So hurting is a part of her Sarah scribbles collection. And if you've seen some of those strips floating around online, they're pretty cute. each page of the book is showing like a small relatable instance about daily. And it's definitely a mood booster. If you're looking for a different palette cleanser, this is definitely it, it kept me giggling the whole way through. And despite it's title, it's definitely not a whole book of cat Comics. I promise. Cause I'm not necessarily a cat person per se. I mean, they're fine, but I'm, I'm not a cat person, but you will see some in there. Mike: I'm more of a cat person than you are Jessika: You've truly are you are with your little dog cat. Mike: the Duchess Sprocket fonts adipose. Jessika: Oh goodness. The names we give our pets. I swear. I think the most fun part about this book though, is that there's also a section at the back. , and it has advice to young artists and it's complete with Comics to go with the advice, which is super cute. Mike: Oh, that's awesome. That's really cute. Jessika: Yeah. That's really sweet. All right. Now onto the meat of our episode, this one's going to be a chunker buckle up everyone. So volume five of the Sandman series is titled a game of you and was published in 1991 and 92 it's composed of issues. 32 through 37 of the Sandman series and was written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Sean McManus. Colleen Duran, Brian Talbot and Stan. We begin our tail in somewhere called the land and voices stadium may needed to find help and that the lane was in great peril and that they were waiting for the person, destined, to save them. Ultimately, one of the voices states their decision to go find the person that is supposed to save them. Meanwhile, Barbie, which was a surprise for me to see her again, is a woken by her neighbor, Wanda. And it's revealed that even though she sleeps, Barbie is unable to dream. Mike: And we should note who Barbie and Wanda are, because the last time that we saw them was in the doll's house and Barbie at the time had been married to a yuppie named Ken who, when the dream, the vortex, was that what it was the dream for techs. Jessika: Yeah, it was the dream vortex caused by Rosewall. Mike: Yeah. So when the dream vortex hit and. Ripping everybody's dreams into one another. There's this weird kind of overlap. Ken and Barbie had some sort of a fight. We don't know exactly what about, but it was basically, I think it was tied to the fact that Ken was, he was an eighties, yuppy, Wallstreet, wannabe, and his fantasies involved, things that Barbie found kind of testable. And then Wanda was the landlord, right? Jessika: No, actually that was a different person, but, um, Wanda. Yeah, Wanda's a new, person and she's in the new place. The Barbie moves to, Mike: Okay. Like I totally read that wrong. I have spent, I've spent decades thinking that Wanda was the same person as, Jessika: I Mike: uh, Jessika: name now, Mike: yeah. Jessika: but he was, he was queer in the sense that he was like cross-dressing, but not necessarily like, he wasn't necessarily trans from my understanding. Mike: Yeah. but the other thing is that on the back of the book, I think they sit there and they refer to the drag queen. for, for this volume, Jessika: oh, well that's just rude. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: That's just transphobic. Mike: yeah. Hold on. Let's, let's take a look at this now. Jessika: Well, I am going to yell about the transphobia, so we'll , just wrap it up now. We'll get started here. Mike: Yeah, so it's literally the promo text on the back is taken apartment house, add in a drag queen, a lesbian couple, some talking animals, talking severed, head, a confused heroine and a deadly Kuku. So I don't think that's on Neil Gaiman. I think that's more DC comics than anything else, Jessika: I agree. That was whoever was writing the cover script. Mike: but that is something that, because I read that description, I thought it was the landlord Hal from doll's house, because Hal was someone who clearly was like tight with Barbie and also had a drag persona? Jessika: there was a one-off statement about how pal gave her be addressed to the landlord for this place where she moved to New York. Mike: I missed that. Okay. Jessika: It's again, one of those, you know, I'm glad I could catch something you didn't. Cause it's usually the other way round. Mike: Yeah. No,, but honestly between that and, the, uh, the promo text on the back, I thought that one had moved on from her assigned gender and was now living in her actual identity. But that was clearly not the case. And that was a little confusing to me. But the other thing is that, you know, the art style had changed. And so I wasn't sure if it was just a new artist rendering an old character. So on me. Jessika: that's caught me a few times though, where I'm like, wait, the art's a little bit different. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Am I like, is this the same character? And I had to kind of suss out who the character was , which is fine. It was easy enough, Mike: That's kind of shocking that they sit there and still identify Wanda as a drag queen. Like these days Jessika: yeah. Mike: anniversary book. Jessika: Yeah. That was very disappointing to me. didn't realize that. And that just Mike: Not great. Jessika: Neil, that one probably wasn't Neal. Awesome. It was God dammit. Mike: I doubt it was like, I don't, that, reeks of marketing . Jessika: Well, there are absolutely people who write the, the covers and whatevers. Mike: yeah. Jessika: So Barbie is living once again, an eclectic type living situation, but has moved to New York. Like we were saying beside Wanda, her neighbors include a lesbian couple named Hazel and Foxglove and a seemingly square bear of a young woman named Thessaly and a middle-aged man named George, who seems to keep to himself for the most part. Barbie also gets very creative with her makeup for the day, painting a black and white checkerboard onto half of her face. And Wanda has decided that spite their lack of money, they should go shopping and at Tiffany's even, Mike: Yeah, I really liked Arby's makeup because it felt very much like what you see on Tech-Talk these days, which is all optical illusions and cool stuff like that. So, Neil Gaiman, oddly prescient, or the 1990s. Jessika: He's doing us good right now. So we quickly cut to the dream realm where Dream is talking with Matthew, the Raven and his son, something happening in a far part of the dream realm, that there was some sort of transition. We zip back to Barbie and Wanda who are on the subway. A woman approaches them for change and Wanda brushes her off. While Barbie throws a of quarters in her cup, the woman becomes very upset when she sees that she is sharing the subway car with a puppy and starts yelling and panicking saying that she doesn't like dogs. The dogs scare her and she exits the car. The first available stop then up the stairs and out of the subway onto the main road, still yelling about not liking dogs. She is immediately face to face with what looks like a giant yellow dog with a large mustache that had to be bigger than a bus. This thing was huge. Mike: Yes, Jessika: And it didn't even really look like a dog, but that was probably the closest approximation to what you could call it, Mike: it's kind of this weird amalgamation between a Saint Bernard and a lion. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good way to say it. Mike: as we learn we have seen him before in Barbie's very kind of like Alison Wonderland meets Lord of the rings dreams that she was having before the events of adult's house. Jessika: Yes. And we will definitely be talking about those Mike: No. Jessika: and the woman upon seeing this huge dog what's herself and then faints meanwhile, Wanda and Barbie have made it to their stop and go forward breakfast prior to their shopping spree. After being asked about the subject, Barbie explains that she hasn't been able to dream after a weird night back where she used to live. And after that point, things fell apart with her relationship with Ken, she said she stopped communicating with him anymore and they weren't really being intimate. And then Ken found another woman and was like bringing the other woman over, even though Barbie was there. It was super wack. Mike: Yeah, And I mean, I dunno, good for her for, knowing right out of that situation. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. She didn't deserve that. Mike: No, Jessika: So pan back to giant dog thing who is looking super rough, it. Mike: uh, Jessika: He's still trying to complete his quest, even though he's limping along, the police are trying to cordon off the area and Barbie and Wanda are passing along that same way. Barbie recognizes her friend calls him by name Martin. And as he's trying to make his way towards her, the police fire on him from multiple angles, he falls in a heap to Barbie's feet and tells her that she needs to go back. The land needs her and gives her the serpentine, which appears to be a large pink stone in an ornate fitting on a necklace, one a pulls away as Martin dies from his injuries. She gets Barbie home and helps her into her apartment. And Barbie realizes that the necklace was from her dreams. And then her whole room fills with blackbirds who turn white, which was, that was a wild thing. And outside the door, George seems very interested in the situation and tries to ask Wanda, but she just brushes him off. Mike: Right. And it's , kind of creepy, like his demeanor is that he seems like that weird sorta infatuated in cell who's uncomfortably interested in one of his neighbors. Jessika: yeah, he's like at the door with his head down. He's like post Barbie. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: I wish you could see me, everyone. Cause I'm just like girl. then he goes and grabs a whole ass Raven and puts it in his mouth and swallows it whole and grinning the whole time and mentioned the. Mike: Yeah, by that point in time, it's not surprising that he is off in a creepy, supernatural way. there've been enough weird little hints about them throughout the issue. Jessika: Yeah. He's just kind of a lurking most of the time, which is very strange. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: There's a whole lot of other apartment drama, of course. And , Hazel was taken advantage of while drunk and is now pregnant, but hasn't told her partner Fox glove. she's also pretty naive about how reproduction works in the first place, which is super depressing. Like she didn't know basic things. Mike: It felt like she was written to be unbelievably dumb about this one topic, even though she's in a queer relationship in New York, she works as a chef. And when we're first introduced to her, she seems very no bullshit because when we first meet her, it's Wanda trying to get milked for Barbie and Hazel is like, kind of. Antagonistic towards Wanda. And you're not sure if it's because she's possibly transphobic or if she's just not a morning person, because they let Wanda come in and grab some milk and it just seems like they're kind of cranky people who are not thrilled to be woken up in the morning. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. Mike: But then like later on, she has these moments that are just, literally unbelievably naive and I don't think her character was written like she should have been. I don't know. I, I'm curious if, when they do an audio book of this, if they ever get around to it, how Gaiman's going to rewrite her. Jessika: Yeah. Same as I, I just think, yeah, there was a lot missing from this character. Just didn't feel like you said believable as a character, just in all of these different pieces to her. So Barbie is still waking out a bit about her experience and with the birds and everything else, and Martin 10 bones, all that stuff, and tries to decompress while watching TV. And she starts drifting in and out of sleep. And by extension in and out of the dream realm, Nuala actually does show up again. I know we had said prior that we weren't sure if she does, but she does, Mike: yeah. And new Allah was the ferry who had been given to Dream as a gift in volume four without her consent, by the way, it was kind of like surprise you now serve the dream Lord, Jessika: Yeah. You're not coming home with me. Sorry. This is now your problem. Ugh. Mike: which, I mean like, admittedly, we all kind of wish that we could do that with our siblings at one point or another, Jessika: well, Mike: I mean, Jessika: my brother doesn't listen to this anymore, so it's fine. Oh goodness. So Nuala does show up and she tries to warn Barbie. That shit is about to get complicated at which point Barbie does fall asleep and passes into the dream. cut to creepy George, who is cutting himself open. He pulls open his chest, exposing his ribs, where a bunch of blackbirds had evidently been waiting and subsequently fly out of him. The other members of the apartment complex start having weird and awful dreams and the birds visit each sleeping individually individual thusly catches the bird, trying to harass her and with a glance at ignites in her hand, which affects George. This is the first real glimpse of the idea that thusly may not be the quiet innocuous individual that she first seemed to be. And she then goes to see George at his apartment wielding a kitchen knife. Mike: Yeah, I thought that was really cool. And the thing is, is that that's actually a really good example of kind of game and doing , some misdirection because he doesn't drop any hints about her. All you get the idea of is that she's extremely straight-laced and kind of nebbish for lack of a better term. Jessika: Yeah, Mike: yeah, and then she just busts out powers and she's really not featured much before this either, which was kinda. Jessika: yeah, And back in the. Barbie is having to reacclimate herself to her own dream character as she has only the fleeting memories of the night she spent there. And everybody in the building starts to awaken and the birds disappear. They're all shaken after their nightmares. And one by one thusly visits, the apartments of the other residents starting with Hazel and Fox glove followed by Wanda. Leslie already knew the Barbie was in trouble and Wanda used her spare key to get into Barbie's apartment at Besley's urging and Barbie was out hold still in the dream room. Leslie asked Wanda to carry Barbie to George's apartment since Wanda was quote unquote the strongest and then Hazel who I'm sorry, is just dumber than a rock points to Wanda's genitals and says, Hey, you have a thingy, which firstly, take a step back, captain obvious. And secondly, so the fuck what? Mike: Yeah. And it goes back to that thing that we were talking about with Hazelwood. It's like, she is suddenly this very, almost childlike person, even though she is a grown ass adult and a queer relationship in New York city. Like, I dunno, it's, it's not great. It feels. Very clumsy. Jessika: It sure did. And I think childlike is, is probably the best way to put it because it did feel that way. Like she was seeing something for the first time and it's like, girl, Mike: it's like you're pregnant. This isn't the first time you seen one Jessika: seriously, Mike: anyway. Jessika: goodness. The party, Firenze, Georges gross poster size picture of Barbie that he has framed up on his wall Mike: Yup. Jessika: and is informed that Thessaly has killed George and he is in the bathtub. So Wanda's freaked out by all of this. Of course, I would also be very freaked out at this. not going to lie to you. Mike: Also we need to, we need to Go back. for a second and it's not that George is dead and in the bathtub it's oh no. George is in the bathtub and they go, oh, is he taking a shower? It's weird that he's taking a shower at 2:00 AM. And she's like, no, no, no, no. I killed him. And his body is in the bathtub and that's when the freaking out happens. Jessika: Yeah, Mike: I thought that was great. I loved it. Jessika: I did too. Cause definitely left the door open to George's house and everyone's like, George. Hello. Mike: Yeah. No. Jessika: Oh, of course one is freaked out and she says that she's going to leave and she physically cannot. As if by magic, Leslie also says that she is going to get George to talk and starts the disgusting process of doing so she has to remove his eyes, his face skin, and his tongue, this, she actually bid out, which was fucking as fuck. Mike: Yeah, after it looks like she's kissing his skinless face. Jessika: Uh, yeah, was horrifying and nails these to the wall and then tells George that it's time to come back and horrifyingly. He does come back and WordStar coming from the face nail to the wall and it's gross. So thusly starts to interrogate him about his plans and he begins to tell the group the CU. Wanda is disgusted and runs to the bathroom where she vomits and the rest of the group seemingly is surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I don't know that I would be personally, so Thessaly who is now out for revenge against the cuckoo for, you know, trying to fuck with her in her sleep states that she needs some menstrual blood and asks Fox glove. And when she asks, why she has to with Besley reveals that she has not been straight in a long time, And that Hazel is pregnant, which they definitely do not have time to deal with at the moment. But hill was obviously shocked and upset by the news. And Wanda is told that she can't go onto the next part of their journey because she needs to watch Barbie. But there seems to be an underlying reason after conversing with a being that seemed to be made of light stating that she needs to seek entry into the dream realm. Mike: Oh so it's actually, um, it's the threefold goddess who the fates basically who keep on showing up throughout. So it's, it's that, mother maiden crone, who normally, when we see them, it's, they're different phases, but they're all kind of part of the same amorphous black shape. So , depending on the artist, it's like, one being, but with like, you know, the three different identities at the same time, but it's also the. Jessika: Yeah. And I didn't get that. It was those three again, so thank you for, Mike: That's something I caught, like on my second or third read through Jessika: Okay. Well, I feel better about a thumb. Mike: it's. I mean, it's a fleeting moment. They only show up for like a page maybe. Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: meanwhile, on the street, our friend, the I don't like dogs, lady is pointing out to a passer-by that the moon is acting strange, that it had disappeared from the sky. He states that it must be an eclipse, but she says that it just left. It was not like it gradually blacked out like normal eclipse. So Wanda watches us the three women walk into the light and disappear out of the room and the moon reappears in the sky for our friend on the street, Wanda starts questioning her womanhood because she vomited during the interrogation that somehow has makes her less of a woman. But I would argue that I would do the same. That whole situation was so gnarly. Mike: Yeah. it's very pagan ritually. it feels like, old school kind of like druidic, I'm sure that someone's going to get mad at me for saying this, but , it's very pagan, a cult. I don't know the rituals, but it feels like a lot of those things that you read about and fantasy novels that are set in, like our theory and times. Jessika: Totally. So the head then starts talking to. back in the dream realm, RB and company are making their way to their destination and have some near misses and find some other dead friends along the way the land has suffered since she has been gone, they talk about the cuckoo and how the bird lays its eggs and the nest of others. And once hatch, the young cuckoos push out the other eggs or young of the bird who initially built the nest while also fesses up to Morpheus about having warned Barbie. But he agrees that she did the right thing, princess, Barbara, and party, get to their destination, the sea and send, lose the parrot to get help. Mike: Yeah. And at this point there's only one other companion left. Who's like a, like an aardvark or an anteater. Oh, is it okay? That was some Jessika: It's a rat. It's like a, yeah, some rodent where it like Mike: and a trench Jessika: a order. Yeah. It looks like a reporter of a pie. Mike: Yeah. And, as their journey has been going on, it's kind of like, , the group of friends in the horror movie who are slowly getting picked off one by one. and the one That always gets me is the monkey. And I can't remember his name. But he would scout ahead and then he didn't come back and Barbie at one point asks if they think that he's okay and one of them just goes no, and then they go and find his body and it's like, Hmm. Hmm. Jessika: Yeah. That was really. And back at the apartment, this was a very web flashy, one where it's very back and forth. Uh, back at the apartment, Wanda is talking to George's face and she asks him why she was left behind. He says it's because she's a man stating that the moon Magic that was used can only be used by biological women, which yikes. No, no, no, no, I don't. I don't like that one bed. And George also offhandedly states that they should be concerned about the weather. So back in the dream realm, Luiz has betrayed Barbie and brings armed guards to their hiding place on the lift. And they also killed the last remaining member of the party. So Barbie is dragged away by the guards and then is paraded through the town into a small pink house. Mike: Which is the house that she grew up. Jessika: It is, yeah. It turns out to be a replica of her childhood home. she is also confronted by someone who appears to be her as a child, which is strange. child Barbie starts explaining that she had basically possessed her dreams and was taking over. Barbie becomes more and more visibly weak from being , in the house and around the young doppelganger. Ann Young Barbie leaves the house with her entourage of large dark plaid guards. Mike: While dragging older Barbie with her. Jessika: Yeah. So back in New York things have started to get wild. A hurricane that had just left, turned around and heads back into town. The women walk a path of Moonlight to the dream realm where thusly fesses up that she's been around a pretty long time and starts in on her plan for revenge. I would not want to cross this lady. It did not take much for her to get pissed off enough to want to kill people. Mike: I mean, I found it pretty relatable. Jessika: So they run across one of Barbie's failed companions who tells them that the cuckoo Barbie Mike: Well, they come across the body and then facily resurrects them in a similar manager that she did to George. Jessika: Correct. Mike: Yeah. And that's how they're able to get him to talk. Jessika: So during the walk Fox glove and Hazel discuss their future and Fox glove decides to raise the child as theirs and they make up in a sense. in New York, the storm is raging. George is making terrible transphobic jokes from the wall and the woman outside has been caught in the storm. So one helps a woman get inside out of the storm, in the dream realm, young Barbie, as an acting and plan, and has gone out to the most ancient point of the land. The higher gram that's land her two companions start making their way over, but are met by young Barbie who points them over to the threat quote, unquote, stating that lose is the cuckoo and loses a parrot. I might add. So the fact that she's saying the para did it is actually kind of a good assumption to make a Kuku. Fastly goes over confirms with the bird that she is in fact, the cuckoo and strangles her and snaps her neck. when Hazel asks why she did it, she says that the bird had to be taught a lesson. The lesson was that you don't get a second chance, which yeah. Mike: Yeah, Nestle is, uh, the epitome of don't fuck around. Jessika: yeah. found out. then young Barbie explains to Barbie and the others that the time has come to do what she had been brought here for. Back in New York are I don't like dogs. Friend is named Maisie and she is rightfully creeped out by George's face on the wall siding, bad vibes, which agreed more transphobic questions on some stories from Maisie about another trans family member she had, . It was just bad news bears. Barbie does a, she is told by young Barbie back in the dream realm and slams the porpoise teen into the large stone HIRA gram. And there's a great explosion at which point it's revealed the young Barbie is actually the cuckoo and that her goal, the whole time had been to get Barbie, to destroy the Portland teen and the high program. And then the cuckoo wouldn't be held in the land any longer breaking the spell and the land would subsequently be destroyed. So the necklace also disappears right off of Barbie's sleeping chest back in. Morphine's appears and Stacy, he created the land and puts Barbie back in control of her own mind as she had been Bewitched by the cuckoo and all of the characters of the land start filing past, ending with one dark haired and scarred woman in white, who clearly had history with dream, like every other fucking woman in here. So vessel, he tries to claim the life of the cuckoo. But dream is like, Nope. And states that he's displeased, that she's caused some major shit. Mike: Yeah, he was. If I remember, right. Dream was upset that she had trespassed into the dream realm without his permission. Jessika: Correct? Yeah. Mike: And it's also implied that her getting the goddess to grant her and foxglove and Hazel passage to the dream realm resulted in the hurricane. Jessika: Oh no, that was absolutely implied. Yeah. The implication was that if you pull the moon out of the sky, you're going to fuck with the tides. Yeah. Yeah. so we turn again to New York where that storm is even fiercer than before. And then there is an explosion of weather from outside and the world starts to. In the dream realm, dream states that he owes Barbie a boon and also reveals that Rose Walker, from , our doll's house volume had partially caused this mess. During that fateful night of converging dreams. Barbie asks that she and the other three women get back safe and sound, and they are sent back and we end volume five with a funeral Wanda's funeral. Barbie was pulled from the wreckage and was able to recover, but Wanda amazi did not make it. The funeral was similarly depressing and not just because Wanda had passed away, but because they were using Wanda's dead name and it cut her hair and had put her in men's clothing. And she was buried by her family who clearly had no idea who she really was nor cared to listen to find out. And even the headstone had her dead name listed. So Barbie took out a bright shade of lipstick and wrote Wanda on the headstone Barbie dreams that she sees Wanda with a smiling pale woman wearing black. And she finally seems happy. Mike: do we ever find out where the funeral is being held? It's just, it's implied that it's vaguely south Midwest. Jessika: She had to travel. And it did kind of seem in the south. I don't know that we got an exact location. Mike: Yeah. It was, it. was somewhere, very God-fearing and intolerance of people that are the least bit different. Jessika: Yeah. Well, what were your overall impressions of this story and who are your favorite least very characters or events of the fifth? Mike: Uh, you know, this volume is a really, it's an interesting change of pace because up until now, we've gotten stories where even if dream wasn't the main character, he played a really prominent role in the narrative, even if he was sitting in the background and this time around, he really doesn't show up a lot. And when he does, it's kind of just a bookend, the story. It's funny because whenever I talk about something that Neil Gaiman wrote and I'm like, oh, it's not my favorite thing. It's still better than 95% of things that I've read. this is not one of my favorite Sandman stories. Part of it is just because it's, it does provide that, that whiplash that you get where we're pivoting back and forth between the dream realm and New York. And there is a clumsiness too, to a lot of the characters, like we've already talked about Hazel. I feel like new Haven was trying to provide a narrative where someone who is trans is human, because he has several scenes with Wanda where Wanda talks about it and is very adamant that she is a woman and the story, the narrative doesn't judge or mocker for that. But , as you said, George is gross and transphobic, which makes sense. And, Maisie that the homeless lady is kinder. but you know, there, there is still that moment of are you a man or a woman? and then she relates the story about her grandson. it's not explained if he was just very femininely gay or if he was trans. Um, but she sounds like she was supportive of him, but then , he got killed during some sort of hotel hookup, which, I mean, that was a real risk with gay culture. Like, you know, especially during that time. I think it's one of the Columbia, your stories of the overall Sandman series. I don't think it's bad, but viewed through a 20, 21 lens, I think he could stand some revision. I don't know. I, my, my opinion is pretty much my opinion, I think, has the least value in, in any conversation about gender identity, because I'm a CIS white guy. Back on track, uh, did it, did it, uh, you know, I, I did actually really enjoy how we got to see some of the characters from the doll's house return, especially Barbie. it's really frustrating that I kept on thinking that we had seen Wanda in the doll's house. And it turns out that that was some misleading copy. That kind of made me think that like, oh, sorry. I liked how we got to see more of a strange fairies hill of a dream from that book and how it was spun out into a larger story that had a bunch of twists and turns. I don't know if I had a least favorite character, honestly, like, yeah, the Kuku is a hateful character, but I also thought it was kind of interesting that, that she was trying to kill Barbie so that she could exist. And then I don't think the cuckoo shows up again. I think the cuckoo just like bounces after this, when she flies off. I for some reason, like, I remember when I thought the KUKA was going to come back and be an even bigger batter nastier villain, but I don't think that happens. I could be wrong. It's been awhile, but I don't think it does. I thought was a really great character. Like we already talked about how, the way that they actually reveal that there's a lot more to where character and also how she is just straight out of Fox all the way through the story. and then, I guess, I guess my least favorite character is Hazel's character and it's not because of anything that was really wrong with her role in the story. It was just, she was very clumsily writ. Jessika: Yeah, Mike: like I said, I think she just comes across as dumb at the most convenient and unbelievable times. It's just, it's too coincidental where at one point she's asking about like, oh, well, don't, you have to kill a rabbit to like, what, what was it like she was asking about like to perform an abortion or, or Jessika: see if you're pregnant. Cause that Mike: yeah. Like, come on, okay. Jessika: Yeah, actual most ridiculous thing. I know. Mike: , I don't know. Like, do you agree to disagree? Like, I feel like I might be reading too much into this just with my own thoughts, but Jessika: Oh no I was, I was pretty disappointed in how this whole thing was written. I'm not gonna lie to you. I was disappointed in the transphobia. Let's start there. Mike: yeah. Jessika: It just felt like the entire volume, it may have been done with the intention of bringing to light some of the challenges that trans women face like deadnaming or of constantly being told that genitalia is what makes one, a woman or the idea that to do trans correctly, you need to get surgery or the blatant violence against trans people. But I don't think enough was done to highlight someone doing the right thing and giving example of allowing someone to just live their life genuinely. And Barbie is a good example of a somewhat decent advocate, but I wish that the lesbians in the building had done more to be open or even just not completely stupid about the situation. It just felt really TERF-y Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Which, you know, to, to explain for any of you who don't know a turf as it's trans exclusionary, radical feminist, which is just a way to say you don't want trans women in your fucking woman club for some fucking odd reason. Mike: Yeah, And I mean, back in 1991, when this was written, that wasn't really a thing like, gender queerness, wasn't really a known thing. It was your transsexual like, did you ever see the movie soap dish with Sally field and Whoopi Goldberg and Elizabeth shoe and Kevin Klein? Jessika: No. Mike: It's a really funny movie up until the last 10 minutes, uh, where it's, it's about the cast of a soap opera and how the behind the scenes stuff is even more ridiculous than what's going on in the soap opera. It's great. But then the last 10 minutes or so it's revealed that the villain who's been pulling everyone's puppet strings, , she's , publicly humiliated by being outed on live television as a trans woman. And that's the punchline. in, 1991, This was considered wildly funny. this is an example of how our views have changed in the past 30 years. for the better where we can look at this and say, this is, this is not great. Jessika: Yeah. I mean, it's still happening though. And that's it, it's still a very real problem within the, you know, the LGBTQ plus community. Mike: a hundred percent. Jessika: Yeah. It's just in the end, I felt like there were no lessons learned by the people who had been the most transphobic. Mike: Yeah, I mean, cause George, we knew was going to be terrible. , and then Hazel and Fox glove, there was no. resolution on that because by the time that they get back, Wanda's dead. Jessika: Yeah. Yup. And which that also felt refrigerators. Like you're going to kill off the one trans person, like okay. Mike: Yeah. And there's the, the happy ending of, we see Wanda perfect. And in this amazing dress with death, waving goodbye to say farewell to Barbie, which is it's. I mean it's Jessika: But she, but my problem with that is she looks a little bit different. Like she looks more feminine and she looks more in it's. That's not necessarily what, and I mean, I'm not trans, so I can't speak to this experience, but to me ha, having known people and talk to their experience, that's not necessarily what they want. They don't want to be a totally different person. They just want to be them genuinely. Mike: Yeah. I mean, I certainly can't speak for people who are trans or gender fluid, or, or anything in that realm. Like that is well outside my wheelhouse. I can just say, I agree with you. It feels achy. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and yeah, since, no real lessons , were learned. I mean, maybe that's the real message that people don't fucking learn. And if so, thank you. That's goddamn. Depressing. Mike: Yeah. The one nice moment was when Barbie wrote Wanda's name on her tombstone and the bright lipstick, that was nice because you know, it was loud and it was flamboyant and it was very much everything about Wanda's personality, but it was really dissatisfying as an ending. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Did you have a favorite art moment in this volume? Mike: I'm not sure that I had a favorite art moment, but I was really affected every time one of Barbie's friends died or where she found their bodies. like it, it genuinely made me sad. You know, I've already talked about how, when they found per natto, the monkeys corpse and how it was really sad, but Martin 10 bones and his expression right before the cop shot him, because he just looked, it was that look of, oh, I found my friend , and I've got the message, but like, it, uh, it reminded me of the time that I'd take my dog into the vet to put them down. Jessika: Mm. Hmm. Mike: you know, and that's, it's, it's that moment where you, uh, when you're holding the dog and it's like, oh, everything's okay. And then they give him the shot and he gives you this look just fucking rips you apart every time. So not really, uh, not really a favorite moment, but definitely in effecting one. Jessika: Oh, you're trying to get me go on to, Mike: Yeah. Um, I dunno. What about you? Jessika: well, I really enjoyed how they did the color and line work and the moon. Mike: Yeah, those were cool. Jessika: Yeah, it was neat to see how they use the negative space and implied shapes using lions. And it also made me feel like I was a part of the scene. There was almost like I had to shield my own eyes from the full white pages. Mike: Yeah. that was, that was neat. Jessika: any final thoughts about this volume before we move on? Mike: like I said, it's not really my favorite. I keep thinking about Hazel and Fox glove. And it's interesting because like Fox glove was, , the girlfriend of the woman who put out her own eyes with the forks or , the, the skewers and the diner, Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. I figured you were going to bring that up. I was, I was like, how can I condense this crazy story? Mike: Yeah. And so that, I, that was kind of a neat throwback because I remember Fox glove is like a very, it's like a throwaway name or something like that. And then I think her name is Julie shows up in the jacket that she was wearing and her eyes , are not visible during the nightmares when everyone's being plagued by the Cuckoo's Binion's. I will say that moment where Hazel and Fox glove are first in the dreaming and Fox lava sitting there and basically screaming at Hazel about getting pregnant and it feels like it's going to get real ugly. And she's like, when we get back, I'm gonna , call you all sorts of names and tell you how dumb you are and do you know how much it's going to cost for us to raise a baby. and she's like, we're going to have to buy one of those stupid expensive books to name the kid. And I was like, oh, Okay. , and then they're holding hands by the end of that page. And it's, it's sweet. that story continues actually in a couple of mini series about death, that, that game in road. And they're really good. they've got their own sense of tragedy and everything, but they're, they're solid, I don't know, it's not my favorite , but it does a lot of things that are really interesting. And I also think that it leads to some really cool stuff down the road. Jessika: Let's move on to volume six, Mike: Okay. Jessika: titled fables . And flections. This was originally published in single magazine form as the Sandman 29 through 31 38 through 40 50 Sandman special one and vertigo preview one between 1991 and 1993. So very much a true compilation written by Neil Gaiman illustrated by Brian Talbot, Stan wool, Craig Russell, Sean McManus, Jon Watkiss, Jill Thompson, Duncan Eagleson and Kent Williams. And this was very much a, an anthology of a bunch of different stories that didn't necessarily tie together as a, an overarching plot like previous volume did. Mike: Yeah. it's very much like dream country just with about double the cost. Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. The first story is fear of falling. A musical theater writer and director who is wanting to give up right before his show. While sleeping. He is visited by Morpheus who ends up inspiring him to take the leap of courage. It took to finish his project to completion. Next up was destined mirrors, three Septembers and a January the story of the emperor of the United States. Here's the scene. San Francisco, 1859. Dream is drawn into a contest with his siblings, desire to spare and delirium, to see who could push a man to his death, each trying different tactics to try to lure him into one of those emotions. When Morpheus entered the scene, he basically just gave the man his exact dream. He wanted to be king and Morpheus stated that he was the emperor of the USA. He starts making proclamations about his claim to the throne and starts gaining popularity and the charity of the town around him. And he actually becomes famous for being the emperor and is even sought after, by tourists, visiting San Francisco. He has called crazy at times, but does not fall prey to madness desires, unable to tempt him as he already has everything he dreams of and despair was never in the picture. After his dreams came true. He was truly content and dream had won the contest death swoops in looking stylish as ever and leads. Mike: Yeah. And emperor Norton is actually someone who really existed in San Francisco. Like he's a part of our local history and Jessika: I didn't know that. Mike: yeah, no he's emperor, Joshua Norton, the imaginary emperor. he's a really cool part of San Francisco lore and I highly recommend, , reading up on him if he ever get the chance. he's one of my favorite stories about the city that. I grew up in. Jessika: Oh, I'm definitely gonna look into that now. Cause I mean, I love just a Stone's throw away and I can't believe I've never heard that before. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: The next story is mirrors Thermador said in England in 1794 with Morpheus, just swooping into the home of Johanna Constantine. And I'm sure that name sounds familiar in the middle of the nights and I'm not going to lie. It was really creepy when he was just like Nabu, all your people are asleep, just you and I. Sugar was like big. Nope. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And then he's like, Hey, I have this super dangerous mission. UN she's all, but what's in it for me. And apparently she just believes in vague promises and agrees to help with him and with his family matter that he needs a mortal to intercede in. And it. Then it is post the French revolution. The reign of terror is in full swing and Johannah gets caught sneaking through the town late at night with a decapitated head in a bag, you know, casual Mike: who hasn't been out on a Saturday night with a human head and their satchel come on. Jessika: Mr. Al of late God. Once you got my bag, nothing you'd be interested in. So She ultimately gets picked up by the law sands head and as kept as a prisoner under a further threat, if she does not tell them where the head is, this whole thing about like her spreading superstitions or some bullshit. Mike: , Yeah, because robes Pierre was all about reason and eliminating superstition and religion. If I remember my high school history, Jessika: you are correct. Is that whole logic piece, which he was just going off about. So she dreams a little dream and visits, Morpheus and reveals that the head is Morpheus, a son Orpheus, so Joe had a basically says, this is your fight, but I'm in the ring little hope over here, Hugh the extra creep factor where the law rightfully figures out that she probably hit the head with all the other heads and go tell her to fetch the one they're looking for. Johanna gets the head, props it up, covers her ears. And tells Orpheus to sing. It drives the map, puts them in a trance unclear, but she is able to get away and get Orpheus to a little island paradise where he has previously been. We also come to find out that Morpheus is quite the absentee parent. , it was so sad. There was this part where Orpheus asks Johannah basically does this mean he cares about me and she's like, dunno. Mike: Yeah, it's a, anyone that's grown up with with strained relationships to their parents, like can just feel that gut. Jessika: Yeah. The fourth story is convergence. The hunt. So we find ourselves this time in a story within a story. Uh, grandfather tells his begrudging granddaughter, a tale about a man named Vaseline who becomes obsessed with finding a Duke's daughter based on a measure painting that was given to him by a Romani peddler, as he goes off in search of this woman, he has never met. He first encounters, the Romani peddler that had given him the miniature she is dead on the forest path, that he just swoops her bag of items and moves off through the forest. He meets several characters along the way, including Baba Yaga and a tall slender librarian, each particularly interested in one of the stolen items. He was peddling one night while hunting a dearest his target is taken out by a woman of the forest who factors into the story a little bit later upon reaching the Duke's mansion. He is led to a dungeon to rot, but is saved by the tall librarian who really, really, really wanted that book because it turns out the book is from the dream realm and Morpheus would be very, very, displeased. Should it not be returned? Mike: We've met the librarian before in passing, he's Lucy in the librarian of the dream realm. Like he's the first one that Morpheus basically reintroduces himself to once he gets back to the dream realm preludes and Nocturnes, but like he doesn't show up a lot. , it's one of those things where he's kind of like a central figure to the dreaming, but he doesn't show up a lot in the stories. , I don't remember. I think he may have appeared in passing in season of the mists. I can't remember, but anyway, sorry. His name is Lucien. Like that's, That's all I was trying to, right? Jessika: So in exchange for the book, Morpheus takes Vasily to the woman's room, but when he gets there, vastly simply looks at her and gives her the necklace back saying this belongs to you later on in his life. He runs back into the woman who took down the deer while there are both in Wolf form. And at the end of the story, the granddaughter assumes that her grandfather has made up the story to assuage her from dating her current boyfriend. But an ending comment, lets the reader know that the story may have some truth after all. Mike: that was one of my favorite closing modes. I I'm not gonna lie. Jessika: It was sweet. So our next tale distant mirrors. focuses on Julius. Caesar's next of Ken Augustus, who after a dream decides that he must live one day in the life of a beggar. So he calls upon an actor who happens to be a , little person to assist him in getting into the role for the day and show him the ropes. They start by making artificial boils on their faces and arms. They dress and rags and take to the streets in a dream, he was approached by Morpheus who knew about his troubled past being brutalized by the man. He looked up to the man, a whole empire looked up to, there was also this whole situation with there being two different futures. Augustus had read the prophecies, edited some destroyed others so that that overall people wouldn't know what was truly predicted. And so that he could make his own course of choosing by being a baker one day a year, he was not being watched by Julius and the other gods and therefore could plan without them watching after Augustus's death, the actor who had accompanied him that day wrote the story of his day with the emperor. However, the harsh details of Augustus's life remained a mystery that he himself took to. Next up. We once again, go back in time with convergence. Soft places. If you don't have whiplash yet, just wait. You will get it by the end of this episode. But this time we go to see Marco polo who was lost in the desert and having the most odd dream. He runs into a person who says his cellmate is named Marco polo and they that run into our buddy Fiddler's green or Gilbert, who we saw in the doll's house who tries to impart a lesson on Marco polo. Marco thinks that he is going to be stuck in the dreaming, but when he emerges, he is back with his father and was only a few hundred feet away from the party upon waking Marco forgets the dream. He was just a part of the Seventh story is the song of Orpheus we again, meet Orpheus this time, his head is still firmly attached to his neck and he is going to be married that day. His friend, is also at the wedding along with Morpheus and all of Morpheus as sibling. The bride reminds, era status of his long dead wife. And during the wedding, he requests a private meeting with Eurydice fading, a need for assistance. He states his intention to rape her and goes to grab her, but she needs him and runs off where she steps on and is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies right there. Orpheus realizes that she is no longer around and panics asking if something has happened to her grieving, the loss of his bride Orpheus seeks help from berserk his father than his aunt death, demanding that she bring her back death states that she cannot, that Euridice is any underworld now, and that he is unable to go and come back as he is a mortal after more prompting, she does state that she is able to just not collect him basically. And he would survive coming back from the underworld, but she also tells him that this is not what he wants and that he should go home. Or if he is however, it does the exact opposite and begins his journey to the gate death had described. So he makes his way to the underworld where he's buried across the river sticks and makes his way past Cerberus the three headed dog and through the endless amount of people in the underworld, he gets to Hades and Persephone who asked him for a song. And he asks for his wife back and plays a haunting melody that brings the underworld to a halt. Hades states that he could have his wife back, but that she will follow him as a shadow up and out of the underworld. The one rule was that he could not look behind him before he reached the exit of the underworld, or she would go back down. He made it almost all the way there, but started doubting thinking that he was the butt of Hades, this joke. But when he turned around, he saw Eurydice just before she was dragged back into the other world. Orpheus broke the surface alone and screamed understanding that he had just bought his only chance to have his bride back. Time-lapse Orpheus as many years older and living in solitude, he is visited by his mother, Kelly OB, who had a falling out with Morpheus after he would not assist Orpheus with his quest to bring back your IDC is not interested in talking with her, but she wants him. The picante are on their way and that he should leave as soon as possible. So she disappears and soon after the forest breaks out and cries, a crowd of naked women covered in wine and blood are running right towards him and ask that he take part in their rituals of sex, wine, and eating raw flesh. He states that he cannot participate as his heart belongs to someone else. And they basically say, yeah, we weren't asking. And they literally rip him apart. And eventually decapitate him, sending his head, flying into a river. He, of course can't die. So he's just stuck, literally rolling on a river. Mike: Yeah. It's very much the stories that Orpheus is known for. Everybody knows him from the story of him and URI dicey, but, surprise. There is actually a major part of Greek mythology where he gets ripped apart by boxes, insane followers and yeah. You're I find you don't want to take part in the ritual. we're going to turn you into one of the ritual supplies and just eat. Yeah, Jessika: Yeah, pretty much. So Orpheus the head washes a shore and Morpheus comes to see him. He wants to say, goodbye has arranged for Orpheus to be taken care of, but says the he'll never see Orpheus again. His life is his own next is convergence parliament of Rooks.. We visit Daniel and Hippolyta again, she puts Daniel down to nap and he wanders into the dream realm where he goes to the house of secrets and is with Matthew Eve and Abel Eve tells the story of Adam's three wives and Abel after Kane interrupts of course tells a very optimistic and happy version of their story, where everybody got along after all. And after all was said and done, Hippolyta has no idea that Daniel has gone anywhere while he was napping. Mike: we keep getting hints dropped about Daniel and it's gonna play out in a very big way later on. Jessika: I'm excited. So our last story distant mirrors, Ramadan is about the king of Baghdad, who has everything. Anyone could want ruling over a prosperous city. However, something still feels wrong to him. So he goes down into the secret depths of the palace where numerous wonders were kept. You procures a ball, which holds multitudes of basically like bad vibe entities. He summons Morpheus stating that he would break the ball, therefore releasing all of the bad vibes if Morpheus didn't appear. And when he actually follows through and drops the ball, Morpheus catches, it takes it and asks, why have you summoned me in, what the fuck do you want? The king wanted to trade control of his city in order to ensure that it was going to last forever. Morpheus agreed, but in true Morpheus fashion, he put the city in a jar and left the man to be the king of a city in shambles. So Mike overall impressions of a story, favorite characters or. Mike: Yeah. like I said, this one is a lot like dream country and there's one more volume later on where we get the one-shot stories to provide us with breathers, , , from the overall narrative. They were printed, as they were in, in various orders, but then DC collected them into the different volumes in ways. That makes more sense. but it's interesting because in this case we got a collection of stories without another prolonged round of like soul crushing horror and dark fantasy. I think the anthology volumes actually do a lot to move Sandman from the realm of horror and more into the realm of fantasy, because a lot of the times the individual stories aren't as dark or, as, as brutal. like a lot of times they're a little bit more philosophical or meditative, but I liked them a lot, but I mean, I only own, two issues of Sandman like individual. and one of them is issue number eight, which is the first appearance of death. And the other one is issue 31, which is the one that features three Septembers in a January. The story about . I love that story about Norden. I think that one's great. We already talked about how he was a real person and, he is this really interesting character out of history who is both the epitome , of kind of the magic of a dream and also what you can achieve even when you're faced with a ton of tragedy, because he was actually almost, I think he was basically completely wiped out due to a bad rice shipment and he did die penniless. And at the same time, San Francisco fucking loved him. Like they kept standing, box tickets for him at the symphony on opening night He was arrested once by an officer and the judge actually did immediately dismiss him when he was brought before him. And basically said like, , as an emperor, he is never declared war. He's never tried to invade anyone. He hasn't done terrible things. Other emperors should be like him. And I loved, how desire tried to tempt him with the ghost of a, dead snake oil salesman and the other bit where it turns out he had, like a Chinese information network, , where it turns out that the Chinese populace of San Francisco, which was hugely prevalent at the time, because of the gold rush and. Other things. , I loved the idea that he actually did have , this amazing fantastical life that was already fantastical, but then there were even more elements of fantasy woven into it. and then the other one is, , the parliament of ropes. It's , the story of Cain and Abel and Eve, you know, the purlin or Rooks hits me in a personal way because the bit we're able tells the story about him and Kane and, it's what this person who, who just idolized his brother wanted from the relationship, even though they do have their own strange in certain ways loving relationship, but also Cain murders able on a regular basis throughout the series. And it made me think about, how I stopped talking to my brother a number of years ago, but I still think about him a lot. And I wish that things were different between us, like. I often wonder what things would have been like if we had wound up being slightly different people and I construct those fantasies in my head still sometimes, but yeah. honestly I like this a lot better than I like that. I like the previous volume, because it gives me a lot more to think about, um, I don't know. How do you feel about it? Jessika: Yeah, I, you know, it's funny as I actually really liked the story of Joshua, the emperor of the United States, Mike: Yeah. Jessika: I really like how they kept the narrative bag, leaving the reader wavering between believing that he really had been successful in his reign as the legitimate emperor of the U S or if he was just some sweet old man who was really well-liked well-respected and generally taken care of by this town of other really eccentric. Mike: Yeah. And it turns out the truth is a little bit of both. Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, I guess so. I mean, he did get out of, out of a core thing, huh? Mike: Well, and when he died, basically, he was going to be put in a Popper's grave. And I believe like the merchants association basically paid for a really Swank funeral and of people came to the viewing like, you know, but thousands of people turned out for. Jessika: what I'm going to research this so sweet. Mike: Hmm, Jessika: Yeah. I thought it was really wholesome that he was just so content to have the title of emperor. He didn't have some weird power trip about colonizing or being otherwise oppressive. I would say that that was genuinely refreshing to see him just so content to be valued and validated. Oh shit. That's all I want, Mike: that's all, any of us want. Also, I liked that he hung out with mark Twain and the story, and I don't know if he and mark Twain were friends in real life, but mark Twain was a reporter in San Francisco. after he got run out of the state of Nevada, Jessika: maybe we'll have to specifically look at up. Well, did you have a favorite art moment in this volume? Mike: I had to, I really liked the art of the hunt, which is the story of the grandfather. Cause it felt really like, it felt really scratchy and you're kind of reminded me of those old European crosshatched wood prints. And then that actually makes sense because I realized it was inked by this guy named Vince Locke. And he's this guy who he actually illustrated a bunch of tabletop role-playing games for white Wolf games in the 1990s. And then he also created the comic that the movie, a history of violence was based off of. If you remember that. Jessika: I do. Mike: but like, I always really liked his style. Like I thought it was really cool and really unique. He's done a lot of other cool stuff as well. He had a comic series called dead world that was a zombie apocalypse kind of comic. If I remember right , well, before the walking dead ever came along like, you know, 30 years. , and then there's the whole issue of Ramadan, which is the story set in Baghdad. so Ramadan was illustrated by P Craig Russell and Russell was a, the first openly gay comic creator. and he's still working today in his art style. It's just, it's one of the most fucking beautiful things you'll ever see. And it's really adaptable into a bunch o
This episode features an innovator of Canadian comics and a man who tried to legitimize an art form in The Great White North. Mark wrote adaptations of Michael Moorcock's classic Corum novels for First Comics in collaboration with Ken Hooper and Jill Thompson, and also wrote and co-created the critically acclaimed independent superhero series Northguard with Gabriel Morrissette. In a slightly different comics domain, Mark is well-known in Canada as the co-creator of Angloman, a political parody series first published by Signature Editions in two bestselling books. Angloman later appeared as a weekly comic strip in the Montreal Gazette. Join in as André and Mark discuss inherited Trauma, growing up in the rich Jewish community of Montreal and his goals of being the Canadian Alan Moore!
The World Hockey Report Podcast is the leading hockey podcast covering the sport hockey on a global scale presented by The Hockey Podcast Network With your host: Cody Janzen, presented by Lordco Auto Parts. Show Rundown: -Hockey Night in Canada Analyst, Harpreet Pandher (@HarpPandher) -Jill Thompson, Sports Artist and Photographer (@Sabresbunny) Presented by Draftkings.com USE promo code THPN for signup bonuses & weekly deals for Daily Fantasy & SportsBook App. World Hockey Report is LIVE on 12oz Sports, Zingo TV Channel 761, and 12ozSportsNetwork.com/live. World Hockey Podcast is Presented by The Hockey Podcast Network BUY MERCH TODAY: Premium Pullover Hoodie Classic Crewneck Sweatshirt Women's Classic V-Neck Tee Classic Tee NHL Teams Anaheim Ducks Arizona Coyotes Boston Bruins Buffalo Sabres Calgary Flames Carolina Hurricanes Chicago Blackhawks Colorado Avalanche Columbus Blue Jackets Dallas Stars Detroit Red Wings Edmonton Oilers Florida Panthers Los Angeles Kings Minnesota Wild Montreal Canadiens Nashville Predators New Jersey Devils New York Islanders New York Rangers Ottawa Senators Philadelphia Flyers Pittsburgh Penguins San Jose Sharks Seattle Kraken St Louis Blues Tampa Bay Lightning Toronto Maple Leafs Vancouver Canucks Vegas Golden Knights Washington Capitals Winnipeg Jets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The World Hockey Report Podcast is the leading hockey podcast covering the sport hockey on a global scale presented by The Hockey Podcast Network With your host: Cody Janzen, presented by Lordco Auto Parts. Show Rundown: -Hockey Night in Canada Analyst, Harpreet Pandher (@HarpPandher) -Jill Thompson, Sports Artist and Photographer (@Sabresbunny) Presented by Draftkings.com USE promo code THPN for signup bonuses & weekly deals for Daily Fantasy & SportsBook App. World Hockey Report is LIVE on 12oz Sports, Zingo TV Channel 761, and 12ozSportsNetwork.com/live. World Hockey Podcast is Presented by The Hockey Podcast Network BUY MERCH TODAY: Premium Pullover Hoodie Classic Crewneck Sweatshirt Women's Classic V-Neck Tee Classic Tee NHL Teams Anaheim Ducks Arizona Coyotes Boston Bruins Buffalo Sabres Calgary Flames Carolina Hurricanes Chicago Blackhawks Colorado Avalanche Columbus Blue Jackets Dallas Stars Detroit Red Wings Edmonton Oilers Florida Panthers Los Angeles Kings Minnesota Wild Montreal Canadiens Nashville Predators New Jersey Devils New York Islanders New York Rangers Ottawa Senators Philadelphia Flyers Pittsburgh Penguins San Jose Sharks Seattle Kraken St Louis Blues Tampa Bay Lightning Toronto Maple Leafs Vancouver Canucks Vegas Golden Knights Washington Capitals Winnipeg Jets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week we are reading Matt Wagner's GRENDEL...or at least the Grendel Omnibus, the first part of a MUCH longer running series of noir comics - which ultimately evolved into a study on the nature of aggression. But for us, Grendel is just an anti-hero that poses the question, what if Batman were a viiglante mob boss with a sweet double pointy stick (don't forget the orphaned little girl and the Native American werewolf arch-nemeisis who uses his violent compulsions for good). Grendel was an indie comic that launched in the 80s and became all the rage in the grim and gritty 90s. At first, the comic follows Hunter Rose, AKA Grendel, an assassin who ascends to the top of New York City's criminal underworld. Getting silly things like plot out of the way up front, the book dives into a bunch of one shots illustrated by various artists telling micro tales of Grendel's adventures in various styles, illustrated by now superstar artists like Tim Sale, Guy Davis, Mike Allred, Darick Robertson, Michael Avon Oeming, Jill Thompson and many more. Grendel has had an on again, off-again history, with new series popping up every few years, given his iconic status. In fact, in 2009, his first incarnation from this week's Omnibus read, Hunter Rose was rated by IGN as the 88th-greatest villain of all time. Eventually, Grendel as a series would evolve into something much different, with the character of Grendel becoming a spirit that possesses many different people. More recently, it was announced that Grendel is finally getting his very own Netflix series, with creator Matt Wagner at the helm, and starring Abubakr Ali as Hunter Rose. And if you made it this far into the description, you'll likely want to make it to the end of the episode, where Ryan & Raman have a deep argument about cultural perceptions, spirituality, and the implied meaning of Rosebud from Citizen Kane....
It's finally October and we're starting it off with a CLEAN episode and a movie that many *thought* was a fever dream or some kind of mandela effect. First off, it's REAL and it's GOOD! Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson, everyone! NEXT EPISODE - Scary Godmother: The Revenge of Jimmy (2005) PATREON (AD FREE EPISODES AND MORE!) ➟ https://patreon.com/screampodcast SCREAM! PODCAST WEBSITE ➟ https://www.thescreampodcast.com/ SCREAM! SOCIALS: Instagram ➟ https://z-p42.www.instagram.com/screampodcast/ Twitter ➟ https://twitter.com/thescreampod Facebook ➟ https://www.facebook.com/thescreampod/?ref=py_c SCREAMPODCAST@YAHOO.COM HORROR SOUP SOCIALS: Instagram ➟ @horrorsoup Twitter ➟ @horrorsoupsucks LETTERBOXD (MOVIE REVIEW APP) ➟ https://letterboxd.com/horrorsoupcaleb/ ~Music Credits~ ETHAN HURT – WWW.ETHANHURT.COM KYLE HERMAN - @iamkyleherman on Instagram Thank you to this episode's sponsors! - wickedclothes.com/scream
Sonho retorna ao inferno neste arco que tem referências ao mito de Orfeu , Lúcifer pedindo demissão, além do deus ex machina mais roubado da história! Andreia D'Oliveira e Valdir Fumene Jr. continuam a saga de Sandman comentando o arco Estação das Brumas, escrita por Neil Gaiman e com arte de Kelley Jones, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III, Matt Wagner, Dick Giordano, George Pratt e P. Craig Russell. Prelúdios e Noturnos – Leitura das edições #1-8Casa de Bonecas – Leitura das edições #9-16Terra dos Sonhos – Leitura das edições #17-20 Estação das Brumas – Leitura das edições #21-28(ESTAMOS AQUI!)Um Jogo de Você – Leitura das edições #32-37Fábulas e Reflexões – Leitura das edições #29-31, #38-40 e #50Vidas Breves – Leitura das edições #41-49Fim dos Mundos – Leitura das edições #51-56Entes Queridos – Leitura das edições #57-69O Despertar – Leitura das edições #70-75 Comentados no episódio: Filme: Brilho de uma paixão de Jane Campion (2009 ‧ Romance/Drama ‧ 1h 59m)HQ: Sandman apresenta: Lúcifer - A opção Estrela-da-Manhã (2001)HQ: Morte: A Festa de Jill Thompson (2003)Livro: Deuses Americanos de Neil Gaiman (2009)Livro: Mitologia Nórdica de Neil Gaiman (2017) Créditos do tema Perpétuos: Luís Alfredo Filho.
It's Casual Friday on this episode of Talking Buffalo Podcast, taped lived from Casey's Black Rock and Patrick Moran is joined by both sports writer Joe Yerdon and Buffalo Sabres/NHL mega fan Jill Thompson to discuss several topics ranging from the Sabres to Western New York, wings and more. Joe is a constant on Talking Buffalo Podcast but this marks Jill's first-ever appearance on the podcast. We spend some time getting to know her, including how she became such a huge Sabres and NHL fan and the incredibly impressive knowledge she knows of the sport. They spend considerable time on some Sabres topics, including reaction to the disparaging comments former Buffalo goaltender Robin Lehner recently made about the organization, a look into if Evander Kane had a negative influence on the Sabres young skilled players during his time here and if there will be significant fan interest in returning to Key Bank Center with (as of now) fans being allowed back for games this upcoming season. Casey's Black Rock is the new presenter of the Casual Friday episodes of this podcast. Going forward some of the Friday podcast episodes will be taped there. Today Patrick, Joe and Jill try some their medium, honey mustard grilled and Jamaican jerk grilled wings and offer opinions as well as the bar itself and vibe at Casey's. All this and much more! Follow Jill on Twitter @Sabresbunny. Follow Joe on Twitter @JoeYerdon. ♦♦♦♦♦ Follow Patrick Moran/Talking Buffalo Podcast Twitter: @PatMoranTweets. Facebook: Talking Buffalo Podcast YouTube: Talking Buffalo Podcast YouTube Channel Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Welcome to Comics From The Multiverse, our DC comics podcast! Discussed this week: 0:00:00 - Intro 0:05:06 - ComiXology Top 10 0:12:20 - Infinite Frontier #3 (Joshua Williamson) 0:33:57 - Superman: Son of Kal El #1 (Tom Taylor and John Timms) 0:54:19 - Detective Comics #1040 (Mariko Tamaki and Dan Mora) 1:14:00 - Batman Secret Files: Huntress #1 (Mariko Tamaki and David Lapham) 1:22:06 - Action Comics #1033 (Philip K Johnson and Daniel Sempere) 1:34:06 - Wonder Woman #776 (Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad and Jill Thompson) 1:49:42 - Checkmate #2 (Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev) 1:59:53 - Robin #4 (Joshua Williamson and Jorge Corona) 2:09:04 - Strange Adventures #11 (Tom King and Mitch Gerads & Doc Shaner) 2:25:39 - PATREON: American Vampire #21 3:12:40 - Picks of the Week patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mildfuzztv twitter: @DCComicsPodcast facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mildfuzznetwork/ Audio: https://comicsfromthemultiverse.podbean.com/ UK Merch store: https://shop.spreadshirt.co.uk/mild-fuzz-tv/ US Merch store: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/mild-fuzz-tv-us #DCComics #InfiniteFrontier #StrangeAdventures
Comic Reviews: Batman Secret Files: Huntress by Mariko Tamaki, David Lapham, Trish Mulvihill Icon and Rocket: Season One 1 by Reginald Hudlin, Doug Braithwaite, Scott Hanna, Andrew Currie, Brad Anderson Superman: Son of Kal-El 1 by Tom Taylor, John Timms, Gabe Eltaeb Wonder Woman: Black and Gold 2 by Mariko Tamaki, Che Grayson, Stephanie Williams, Tillie Walden, Rachel Smythe, Jamie McKelvie, Corin Howell, Ashley Woods, Jordie Bellaire I Am Not Starfire by Mariko Tamaki, Yoshi Yoshitani Amazing Fantasy 1 by Kaare Andrews Symbiote Spider-Man: Crossroads 1 by Peter David, Greg Land, Jay Leisten, Frank D'Armata Sweet Paprika 1 by Mirka Andolfo Groo Meets Tarzan 1 by Mark Evanier, Sergio Aragones, Tom Yeates, Tom Luth, Stan Sakai Avatar the Last Airbender: Suki Alone by Faith Erin Hicks, Peter Wartman, Adele Matera Dune: Blood of the Sardaukar 1 by Kevin J. Anderson, Brian Herbert, Adam Gorham, Patricio Delpeche TMNT Annual 2021 Tom Waltz, Casey Maloney, Keane, Delgado Astonishing Times 1 by Frank Barbiere, Arris Quinones, Ruairi Coleman, Lauren Affe Gods of Brutality 1 by Rich Woodall, Mark Welser Lunar Ladies 1 by Omar Morales, Joel Cotejar Boston Metaphysical Society: Scourge of the Mechanical Men by Madeleine Holly-Rosing, Gwynn Tavares Chronocat 1 by Stu Perrins, Armando Zanker Cinnamon 1 by Victoria Douglas 99 Cent Theater Overmorrow 1 by Brenton Bolin, David Monge, Rex Lokus Darkstorm Origin 1 by Kevin Grevioux, Ruben Meriggi, Ben Carbonero Cyber Attack on America: SuperAvni and Dabung Girl Accursed Vampire by Madeline McGrane Additional Reviews: Centaurworld, Heart in a Box, Conan by Busiek, Jungle Cruise, Owl House ep8, surprise movies review from Glenn News: bizarre WWE TV miniseries about infamous steroid trial, Junction HC from Titan, new Blacksad, Tales From the Quarantine, Doctor Who news, Hawkeye premiere date and controversy, DC launches new comics for kids enterprise with Walmart, Sweet Tooth renewed, ScarJo vs. Disney, new black label mini by Jock, YA graphic novel starring Scott Free Tales From the Quarantine: https://tales-from-the-quarantine.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders Comics Countdown: Department of Truth 11 by James Tynion IV, Martin Simmonds Something is Killing the Children 18 by James Tynion IV, Werther Dell'Edera, Miquel Muerto Head Lopper 16 by Andrew MacLean, Jordie Bellaire Beta Ray Bill 5 by Daniel Warren Johnson Wonder Woman 776 by Becky Cloonan, Michael Conrad, Jill Thompson, Jordie Bellaire, Paulina Ganucheau Daredevil 32 by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawkthorne, Adriano Di Benedetto Strange Adventures 11 by Tom King, Mitch Gerads, Evan Shaner Accursed Vampire GN by Madeline McGrane Robin 4 by Joshua Williamson, Jorge Corona Money Shot 13 by Tim Seeley, Sarah Beattie, Caroline Leigh Layne, Kurt Michael Russell
Vuelve nuestra sección TITANES, esta vez con la vida y carrera de dos mujeres importantes en el mundo del comic. Primero, Jill Thompson, dibujante de Wonder Woman Sandman, The Invisibles, entre otros, y creadora de la línea de comics y libros Scary Godmother. Después, Louise Simonson, editora de X-Men y New Mutants (supervisando sagas como Dark Phoenix y Days of Future Past), guionista de New Mutants, X-Factor, y Man of Steel; co-creadora de personajes como Power Pack, Apocalypse, Steel, y Doomsday. Con música de Siouxsie and the Banshees, y Weezer. Escuchalo o bajalo de acá: http://bit.ly/perdidos439 Próximo programa: Highlander - La Saga.
Does your cat or dog have bad breath, but you find that maintaining their dental hygiene through teeth cleaning and regular check-ups is cost prohibitive. Well, I may have a solution for you! Or at least Jill Thompson has.On this episode I chat with Jill who is the owner of Kissable K9 Care. Kissable K9 Care is a successful and affordable cosmetic teeth cleaning service that includes brushing and scaling above the gum line with the use of hand instruments to gently remove tartar. Jill talks in-depth about this service and how it is designed to be used with home care and veterinarian visits to maintain results, the obstacles she has had to face, as well as the methods that she and her staff use to relax your pet. To learn about all of that and more, LISTEN IN, because knowing is caring!For more information on Kissable K9 Care and their services, please visit: www.kissablek9care.comYou can also call Kissable K9 Care at: (905) 329-8598 or email at kissablek9info@gmail.com. To book a mobile appointment Call: (416) 995-3792 or Email: amandak9care@gmail.com. Kissable K9 Care can also be reached on Facebook: Kissable K9 - Home | FacebookPlease remember to follow or subscribe to ensure that you never miss an episode.To really help the show, please don't forget to Rate and Review each episode that you find helpful/educational.Email me at: val@valtalkspets.com with topics you think would be of interest or with any questions you may have.Also, visit and be a part of my website at valtalkspets.com and help it grow!Thanks for listening!
Anton och Anders har läst och förundrats (inte enbart postitivt) av Norse Mythology där P. Craig Russell, Mike Mignola, David Rubín, Jerry Ordway, Jill Thompson, Piotr Kowalski, Galen Showman och Lovern Kindzierski tolkat Neil Gaimans texter. Freddie har läst manga-klassikern Berserk av Kentaro Mieura i en deluxe-utgåva och Extremity av Daniel Warren Johnson. Anders har...
On this week's comic book review podcast: Magic #1 BOOM! Studios Written by Jed MacKay Illustrated by Ig Guara Green Lantern #1 DC Comics Written by Geoffrey Thorne Art by Dexter Soy and Marco Santucci The Silver Coin #1 Image Comics Written by Chip Zdarsky Art by Michael Walsh Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory #1 Dark Horse Comics Written by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer Art by Benjamin Dewey King in Black #5 Marvel Written by Donny Cates Art by Ryan Stegman Venom #34 Marvel Written by Donny Cates Art by Ivan Coello Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters #2 Oni Press By Chris and Laura Samnee The Swamp Thing #2 DC Comics Written by Ram V Art by Mike Perkins Seven Secrets #7 BOOM! Studios Written by Tom Taylor Art by Daniele Di Nicuolo The Immortal Hulk #45 Marvel Written by Al Ewing Art by Joe Bennett Dead Dog's Bite #2 Dark Horse Comics By Tyler Boss Batman #107 DC Comics Written by James Tynion IV Art by Jorge Jimenez and Ricardo Lopez Ortiz The Last Witch #4 BOOM! Box Written by Conor McCreery Illustrated by V.V. Glass America Chavez: Made In The USA #2 Marvel Written by Kalinda Vazquez Art by Carlos Gómez Fear Case #3 Dark Horse Comics Written by Matt Kindt Art by Tyler Jenkins Suicide Squad #2 DC Comics Written by Robbie Thompson Art by Eduardo Pansica Nocterra #2 Image Comics Written by Scott Snyder Art by Tony S. Daniel Geiger #1 Image Comics Written by Geoff Johns Art by Gary Frank Far Sector #11 DC Comics Written by N.K. Jemisin Art by Jamal Campbell Crime Syndicate #2 DC Comics Written by Andy Schmidt Art by Kieran McKeown and Bryan Hitch Bliss #6 Image Comics Written by Sean Lewis Art by Caitlin Yarsky 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 ThanAlex: What is up, everybody? Welcome to The Stack. I'm Alex. Pete: I'm Pete. Alex: And on The Stack, we talk about a bunch of books that have come out this week. Tons of books out this week. Lots of number ones to get through. Pete: Tons. Tons. Alex: So let's jump into it talking about Magic. Number one from BOOM! Studios written by Jed MacKay, art illustrated by Ig Guara. This is a bit of a reinvention of the classic universe people probably know from Magic: The Gathering and the card games. It takes a bunch of Planeswalkers, essentially magic folks and otherwise, has them attacked, spoiler over the course of the issue, and they end up having to band together. I got to tell you, I obsessively collected Magic: The Gathering cards as a kid, but I don't think I ever paid attention to the mythology. So I didn't know a lot going into this, but I still, as usual with the Jed MacKay book, enjoyed it quite a bit. What did you think, Pete? Pete: Yeah, I thought it was cool. It definitely seemed like I was like, “Oh, there's a lot more going on than I know about.” But I wasn't sure. But, man, loved the Medusa character for sure. Alex: Well, the thing that I really liked about this, and again, this is a spoiler for the issue, but it sets it up as this very typical fantasy world and then wrecks everything about halfway through the issue. And I thought that was- Pete: That was really hard. Alex: Yeah. I thought that was a really bold, fun move. It's basically saying, “Oh, this fantasy world that maybe you know from card games, from books, I assume, and otherwise, don't worry about that. We're going into our own story. We're doing our own thing.” So just kind of just follow it from there. Pete: Why did you say, “I assume.” Are you worried that people do magic for real. I'm thinking are you talking about them? Alex: No. I assume there are magic novels, but I don't know. Pete: Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. Okay. Okay. Alex: Yeah. I just don't know enough about this world, but [crosstalk 00:02:02] Pete: I thought you were throwing shade to magicians for a second. Alex: Oh my God. I never would. They would come after me. Green Lantern, number one from DC Comics written by Geoffrey Thorne, art by Dexter Soy and Marco Santucci. In this, we are getting the Oa's on the Green Lanterns, dealing with the new status quo of the universe. There is a new United Planets, as we've seen over the Superman books and otherwise, and that is affecting things here where they're trying to decide, “Hey. If we're the United Planets, if we have our own police force, what do we need the Green Lanterns for?” Of course, things go a little wrong over the course of this issue. Pete, now you're not the biggest fan of Green Lantern other than a book we're going to talk about it a little later at The Stack. But what did you think of this one? Pete: Well, first off, I want to just say a couple of nice things about the book. Really love the start, very crazy heavy action, kind of love this kind of who done it. And then, a spoiler, fun killing one of the floating large shirt tail peep know-it-alls. I've always wanted to do that. So I'm glad it finally happened in this book. Alex: Can I just interrupt? It's weird to me that you don't like the guardians given you love short people and they are very short. Pete: Yes I do. I love short people very much. Know-it-alls, I have a problem with. Also, the whole flowing large shirt thing bothers me. And I also hate how they look like you with the giant heads and always talking about how smart they are. Alex: What the fuck. How dare you? Also, thank you. I would love to look like [inaudible 00:03:46] Pete: I'm sure you would. Also, you would look amazing in a flowing gown. I mean, how are you going to have a Green Lantern number one and not have Far Sector in your shit? It's the best Green Lantern of all time and you're going to have a Green Lantern number one and- Alex: Here's the thing, she is in, and this is a little bit of a spoiler from the title, a Far Sector. So there's no reason for her to come back to the main planet for this. I will say I kept going back and forth in this issue where I thought based on the cover, “Okay. This is going to focus on the new teen Lantern character and what's going on with her.” It doesn't completely. She plays into it, but there's so much going on here that there were things that I felt like, “All right. I don't quite get this or why this is here or what's going on.” But by the end, so much was set up that I felt like, “Okay. We have a solid. This is just throwing everything at the wall. Let's see what sticks going into the second issue.” Pete: All right. Alex: Next up. Let's talk about one of my favorite issues of the week, which I know Pete probably didn't like, as well. We're starting off so well here, the Silver Coin number one from Image Comics, written by Chip Zdarsky, art by Michael Walsh. It's creepy, but it's supposed to be creepy. I love this book. This is a new horror anthology from a bunch of folks like Chip Zdarsky and, I think, well, I should probably look up who else is on it. But there's a bunch of folks that are contributing and they're each, I think, going to write a different issue as it follows this evil cursed silver coin through different situations. Alex: Here, we get a rock and roll tale that ends in a very Tales from the Crypt style way. Love the art by Michael Walsh. Like you said, creepy and terrifying in exactly the right way and viewers just dread into it. Chip Zdarsky writes a good rock and roll tale. I enjoyed this quite a bit. I didn't know what to expect going in, but I like this. I was always a sucker back in the day for Tales from the Crypt and shows like that, and this channels those very well. Pete: I agree. I definitely agree. It does have a fun Tales from the Crypt feel. It's also going to be cool to see how this moves forward, but this first story is just kind of the classic band selling their soul to the devil to kind of make it big. But it's got a very kind of interesting, it's not that in all the right ways. And, I think, it's the way they kind of leave it with the coin is very cool to see how this is going to keep moving forward. So as creeped out as I was and how much I knew Zalben enjoyed it, I still enjoyed this. And, I think, not only did I enjoy it, but I'm looking forward to see how the next one goes. Alex: They call them comics, but they're not very funny. Pete: I don't know what you're doing, but please, stop. Alex: That was my Crypt Keeper. He was always doing like [crosstalk 00:06:48] Pete: Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty good. My bad. My bad. Alex: Thank you. Let's talk about something I do think you liked because this is one of your favorite series out there. Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory number one from Dark Horse Comics, written by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer, art by Benjamin Dewey. If you haven't followed the series, this is about a bunch of dogs and other animals that investigate supernatural mysteries. Here, we're getting a tale from back in the day of a sheep dog back in World War II, I believe, who is looking into a simile supernatural mystery there. Man, I love this series. It's so adorable and terrifying at the same time, the perfect mix. Pete: Okay. So a couple of things I want to ask. So here's the hard part for me about Beasts of Burden, okay? Beast of Burden, love the story, love the idea but, originally, Jill Thompson on the art, who does these amazing water colors and you get that in kind of the fold Beast of Burdens created by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. So then, I feel weird about supporting this book. Okay. It's the same writer. It's the same title. I should be supporting this book, but it's not this amazing watercolor artist. I love Sarah's art. I think this is very cool, different take. Alex: Benjamin Dewey did the art. Pete: Oh, I thought it said Sarah Dyer. Alex: I think Sarah Dyer wrote it with Evan Dorkin. Pete: Oh, my bad. My apologies. Alex: That's all right. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Pete: Regardless, art is clean. It's a different take on it, all of the same characters we love. The story is great. But I kind of have this thing of like, “Should it be okay that I'm still reading this book? Or is it betraying Jill and her amazing work?” Talk me through this, Zalben. How should we do this? Alex: I mean, I sort of had the same thought process as you because Jill Thompson's art is so gorgeous and so necessary to this book that I was thrown initially, when I saw Benjamin Dewey's art. I do think Benjamin Dewey's art is real good, as well. Pete: Oh, yeah. Alex: It's super fun for a flashback tale. Yeah. I don't know anything that might be on behind the scenes. It's entirely possible given artistic schedules, maybe Jill Thompson is working ahead on something else that takes place in the present. And, excuse me, Benjamin Dewey is doing this thing because it takes place in the past. I don't think Evan Dorkin was like, “Screw you, Jill Thompson. I'm doing my own comic at my own time.” or anything like that. So I don't think it's anything you need to feel bad about necessarily. But Jill Thompson is great, so it's okay to miss her art at the same time. This is super fun. Alex: You don't need to know anything about Beasts of Burden to jump into this. All you need to know is talking animals, supernatural mysteries. There's a terrifying last page here that maybe out loud I'd go. So it's good stuff. Next up, King in Black number five from Marvel, written by Donny Cates, art by Ryan Stegman. I thought this was worth talking about in a block with Venom number 34 from Marvel, also written by Donny Cates, art by Iban Coello because they're both ends of the era leading directly into the next status quo for Venom and I believe Donny Cates leaving the title after this. King in Black wraps up. They made King in Black saga. Venom number 34 interweaves with it a little bit and sets up, spoiler, a new status quo for Flash Thompson. Pete, go ahead. Pete: What was the order reading this? Because I read King in Black first and then I was like, “Oh, I think I should have read Venom first.” I just want to [crosstalk 00:10:29] Alex: We are simpatico here. I had the same thought process where I got to about page five of King in Black and thought, “Wait, did I miss something? What's going on here?” Pete: Yeah. Yeah. Alex: So I think Venom number 34 happens concurrently with King in Black. So you kind of can read them in any order, but probably you should read Venom number 34 first, then King in Black number five. Pete: Yeah. Because I did the opposite and I was like, “I shouldn't have done that.” Because reading Venom, it's kind of like, “Oh, I know what's going to happen.” So read King in Black number five first, then read Venom. Okay. But let's kind of go in that order, King in Black. First off, Donny Cates did this epic giant tail and I feel like was really impressive. All the stuff with the son was great. This was a giant kind of epic event, but also had a lot of small, amazing moments, a lot of great Flash Thompson moments, a lot of, “Holy shit, look at the size of that sword. I've never seen Silver Surfer with a giant sword before. This is fucking cool.” It just got even better. I really love this book. I really loved how it ended. It ended so well I wanted to go back and reread the whole thing again. Man, this was really a lot of fun and I was surprised at how much it covered and how much happened in it. Alex: I did appreciate that the ending here brought it back around to Eddie Brock and Venom. I thought that was a really good sense of focus under the event both in King in Black number five and Venom number 34. I think he gave a nice crest to the story he wants to tell, though there's probably at least one more issue going on there before he really wrapped things up. Yeah. I also appreciate the fact I really identified with people throughout this event being like, “Ugh, is this a Venom thing? I hate symbions. This sucks.” Because that's my general feeling going into it but, like you said, Donnie Cates and company made it feel very cool and big and fun throughout the event. So good times. Pete: Yeah. Also, it's a great book to pick up if you're like… I love comics where someone's mostly free falling and just kind of thinking about things and then there's flashbacks and stuff because they really [crosstalk 00:12:51] Alex: Are you a big Tom Petty fan? Then check out King in Black number five and Venom number 34. Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters number two from Oni Press by Chris and Laura Samnee. This is a almost mostly silent series at this point. It's all ages as well about a girl looking for her sister who has gotten lost in the wild with the unpossible monsters in the title. Beautiful, beautiful book. I want more of it every time is my only thing. I kind of want to wait until there's a trade. And then maybe hand it to my kids and say, “Hey, check this out.” But gorgeous. Pete: Yeah. I mean you and your kids this, and you're a cool dad. You're winning. This is a really amazing book. Art is, I mean, I say it all the time, but it's worth it alone. It's just so fantastic. Love the role building. Love the pace of this. Storytelling is unbelievable. Touching, badass, all the right things. Yeah. I can't get enough. Yeah. It does read quick and I'm sure I'll read it a lot better than the trade, but man, single issues have been a lot of fun. Alex: Let's move on then to talk about the Swamp Thing number two from DC Comics, written by Ram V, art by Mike Perkins. We have a new Swamp Thing here who is investigating some weird doings out in the desert. We had the setup, but not exactly the explanation in the first issue. Here, the new Swamp Thing is exploring his powers and abilities a little bit more and tangling with somebody new and very, very bad. This book is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. Mike Perkins' art is incredible. And Ram V is really leaning into that. This, to me, feels like, I feel like you're going to yell at me here, Pete, but this feels like on par with the first couple of issues of Batwoman by J.H. Williams III. It's just breaking the layouts, playing with it, playing with the format feels really engaging and dark in a very similar way. Pete: Yeah. That's hell of a praise. That's really fantastic praise. Okay. I agree. It's absolutely gorgeous. This is a lot of fun. Swamp Thing can be hit or miss for me. I enjoyed this issue a lot. I didn't enjoy all the human stuff as much, but I really thought this was cool. And also, we got to talk about this. You guys don't go to central park in the middle of the night because there's full grown dudes being born out of trees and I'm glad Swamp Thing is finally talking about it. It's fucked up and someone needs to look into this because it's not right, man. It's just really messed up. Alex: I'll tell you what, I've been to The Ramble at night and I don't think that's what dudes are doing in trees. Pete: Well, that's what's happening in this comic book. Alex: Great book. Seven Secrets number seven from BOOM! Studios, written by Tom Taylor, art by Daniele Di Nicuolo. Pete: I mean, Seven Secrets number seven. I mean, that's you. Alex: We still don't know what the secrets are, but in this issue, our main character has wandered off the road into the land of fairy [crosstalk 00:16:08] Pete: We don't know all the secrets. We know a couple. Alex: We don't know anything. The secrets are still secret in this book. We know they're important, but we don't know what they are or anything about them, which is kind of wild. But we do know more about the main character, about where he comes from, another really good issue of this very fun title. I'm enjoying it. How about you, Pete? Pete: Yes. Absolutely. Art's amazing. Paneling is fantastic. And if you're going to do a glowing horse with a fish tail, this is just the peak that which all should be measured. This is very creative. Very cool. Interesting paneling, amazing storytelling. Yeah. This is just really kind of creepy and tripped out in all the right ways. It's one of those things where you got to be like, “All right. I'm definitely going to find out the secret in this issue.” But they do such a good job of keeping you busy in all the right ways. I'm impressed by this book. Alex: By the way, the thing you mentioned, the horse with the tail of a fish, like they say in the book, it's called a sulky, which is where the expression taking a sulky comes from. Pete: Oh my God. You're such a dad joke. It's ridiculous. Alex: The Immortal Hulk number 45 from Marvel, written by Al Ewing, art by Joe Bennett. In this issue, the Hulk is once again, dead, killed by the U-Foes, trapped in the land below grid, I always forget what the name is. But it's Joe Fixit and the dumb, very flabby, kid Hawk being trapped by the leader while back on earth, things are going wild. I'll tell you what, not only do I love this book, like we talk about every issue. Not only are all the designs absolutely terrifying and the amount that Al Ewing and Joe Bennett are building into the mythology, rather fascinating. But I don't think any other book, since a Brian K. Vaughan book like Saga, consistently on the last page out loud makes me go, “Oh, here we go.” Every single time out of the gate. Pete: Yeah. I mean, I wish I could, after reading this book and all the crazy thing, is I wish I could have been on this pitch meeting for Marvel. Can you imagine how you'll be going, “All right, listen. I'm going to take Hawk and I'm going to twist them and I'm going to turn them. And it's going to be so gross and so fucked up, it's probably going to turn a lot of people away. But if people check this out.” I mean, this keeps getting weirder and more fucked up, yet I'm having such a great time. I don't know. I don't know how to describe this to somebody. I don't know what's going on. I love the last page. I can not wait to see what's happening. I don't know. I'm so confused. I'm so grossed out. I love this book. I love the way it starts with the quote every time. And then it gets all sorts of fucked up. This is some groundbreaking, really cool shit right here. Alex: This is one of the most epic Hulk rods of all time. And it's so exciting to be able to be reading that right now. I love it. Next up, let's talk about one that I know you really liked a lot, Dead Dog's Bite number two from Dark Horse Comics by Tyler Boss. Now this is one we missed talking about the first issue of this, which I really regret because Tyler Boss, great artist. We know him from 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank, which he did with Matthew Rosenberg and other things. Pete: The Burgee. Alex: This is about a woman who is investigating a disappearance. It's weird. It's funny. The panel layouts are great. I loved it. Love this issue. Pete: It's really impressive. This is very, very creative in all the right ways. The Boss is killing it here. I mean, it kind of takes a little bit of like gives me that Hawkeye feel with a little bit of, God, what was it, King's Vision with the different panelings and stuff here. But it's got this great Indie kind of creative field, but just the paneling and the logos and the different stuff that they're doing. I mean, I'm enthralled watching someone put money in a machine to try to get soda out. How can you do that? How is that enthralling? Yeah. I'm just really, really impressed with how creative and fantastic this book is. The scene where she goes and sits down with their mom at the fucking lunch table. Oh my God. This is crazy. I cannot wait to see how this kind of unfolds or gets explained. This is fantastic. I'm completely on board. Alex: Me, too. I want to go back and read the first issue at this point. I feel bad about missing it. This is great. Next up, Batman number 107 from DC Comics, written by James Tynion IV, art by Jorge Jimenez and Ricardo Lopez Ortiz. In this issue, we're continuing to find out about how Batman is dealing with the new status quo of Gotham City. Scarecrow is on the move. Other forces are, as well. And the backup story is about Ghost-Maker. What'd you think, Pete? Pete: All right. I've never seen Scarecrow so badass portrayed in a Batman book in a while. This is very interesting and cool. Tynion's doing unbelievable stuff. The art's fantastic. The Harley Quinn stuff has been so enjoyable. I think just kind of sprinkled throughout this Batman run and I think in a great way, and then we kind of get this new lady in red with green plant dogs who loves roses, so very intriguing. Tynion has done introducing a lot of different new characters with Ghost-Maker and now this lady in red. This is interesting to see what's going to be happening here for Batman. Yeah. I've been enjoying it. Alex: I'm going to throw a theory out at you. So there's a character named Simon Saint, who we know is tied to the magistrate program that we saw in the future state books that essentially takes over Gotham and turns it into a police state, potentially in the future. Is Simon Saint Scarecrow? Because there's a scene in the book where- Pete: Don't you fucking spoil this for me, you son of a bitch. Alex: No. I have no idea. But there's a scene in the book where Simon Saint is looking outside and Scarecrow almost seems to be talking into his mind standing on a gargoyle. We've previously seen Scarecrow in his office sitting there in the darkness and it almost seems like maybe there's a split personality thing going on there. Pete: Oh, interesting. Alex: Just a thought. Whatever it is, love this book. I'm glad James Tynion has the, whatever you call it, handcuffs off or something like that and is able to just go wild in this book. It's great. Next up, The Last Witch number four from Boom! Box, written by Conor McCreery, art illustrated by V.V. Glass. As a little bit of a note, we're going to have Conor McCreery on our live show in a couple of weeks, so definitely check that out. I know you and Justin are going- Pete: For real? Alex: For real. I love giving you news on our podcast. Pete: Oh, man, that's great. Dude, this book has been fantastic. I cannot wait to talk about this. Alex: Yes. We'll talk about this one, then. We have our young witch is continuing to learn magic as she goes on a hunt for other witches. Here, we meet a refugee from Ferry who seems to be working with her. Maybe he's not, necessarily. What'd you think about this issue? Pete: Yeah. Really great set up. I mean, first off, the girl's grandmother's just fantastic. What a badass. Alex: You love a grandma. Pete: There's nothing better than a badass grandma, all right? I don't know what it is, but it's glorious. Yeah. So just interesting. Alex: That's the thing that you love about grandmas, Pete. They keep getting older and so do you. Pete: Okay. Great. Stop being creepy. Yeah. Yeah. It seemed like a interesting kind of dude tagging along on this. Amazing kind of last page reveal on that. Yeah. Love the art. It makes it seem like it's this kind of all ages, innocent thing, but there's really a lot going on underneath the surface. So I'm very intrigued by this. Love all the main characters. It does such a great job of giving you story, giving you fun, giving you action. Yeah. I can't wait to see how this all unfolds. Alex: I like the V.V. Glass art in particular on this book. It really feels like sort of a, Don Bluth isn't exactly right, but it's very classic animation style where you could almost feel like it's moving between the panels. It's very nice. Next up, America Chavez: Made in the USA number two from Marvel, written by Kalinda Vazquez, art by Carlos Gomez. In this, we're continuing to find more about the origin of America Chavez and it is not what we thought it was. We're definitely in retcon territory here, folks, where we find out there's a family after she left the Utopian Parallel that adopted her and kept her for a while. We get to see how she started to develop her characters and there's the hint that everything she knew was wrong. I'm really enjoying the series quite a bit. And I say this as somebody who likes the concept of America Chavez a little better than the solo series I've seen. I've always liked her in a team book, but haven't quite understood the character out of here. This is so far and we're in the early going, maybe my favorite American Chavez story so far. Pete: Oh, cool. Yeah. I agree. This is really great. I feel like the art's fantastic. We're getting just enough backstory where it doesn't feel like too much. It's done so well with the kind of back and forth. I also really liked her with Spider-Man. That was great. Yeah. It's very interesting how we're kind of slowly getting her backstory, I would say a lot more in this issue, which is good. I'm very interested to see how this goes. I like how she's moving about the world solving kind of things, trying to figure stuff out. Sometimes when that's done, it can seem forced but it feels really natural here. Yeah. I mean, going into old-timey arcade place at night, that's just not a smart idea. Nothing's good is going to happen there. Alex: Next up, Fear Case number three from Dark Horse Comics, written by Matt Kindt, art by Tyler Jenkins. Pete, you read this book and we missed it, right? What'd you think about this one? Pete: Yeah. I thought this was creepy in all the right ways. Very interestingly drawn. I love the kind of pencil kind of take on it. A lot of really powerful panels. And I just kind of finding things out with the characters here. Really love the last page, oh, shit kind of reveal. I think this is very interesting to see how each one of these fear cases kind of unfold. I think it's really well done. The art's fantastic. Alex: Next up, Suicide Squad number two from DC Comics, written by Robbie Thompson, art by Eduardo Pansica. This is continuing the assault on Arkham storyline, which finds the Suicide Squad trying to liberate Talon from Arkham Asylum just as seemingly Scarecrow is, not Scarecrow, excuse me, joker's fear toxin is being released throughout it as we've seen in a couple of other comic books. As usual with Suicide Squad, a bunch of people die. It's very dark. There's complicated and morality here. I think this is a really good classic Suicide Squad story with some very nice superhero art by Eduardo Pansica. What do you think, Pete? Pete: Yeah. I agree. I think this is really cool. Also, I'm glad that in Suicide Squad, the comic, we're getting more Peacemaker here getting us ready for the movie. Really an over the top kind of person. So I think having what's his face playing it is going to be very- Alex: John Cena. Pete: Yeah. Alex: Can you smell what John Cena is cooking? Pete: No. No. No. You can't see me, okay? But I also really love the pulp fiction heart attack moment. I thought that was fun. Alex: Good stuff. Next up, I don't know anything about wrestling. Nocterra number two from Image Comics, written by Scott Snyder, art by Tony S. Daniel. Pete: Just for the audio podcast, I was waving my hand in front of my face like John Cena does. Alex: Okay. All right. Why does he do that? Pete: Because you can't see him. You can't see. Alex: Is that where the Drax [inaudible 00:29:26] came from? No, that's Dave Bautista. Nevermind. Pete: Yeah. Alex: They're different people? Pete: Yeah. Alex: Okay. Pete: See how it works is they're different people. Alex: Okay. I don't see people. Pete: Wow. Alex: I just don't see people. I don't see things. Okay. Nocterra number two written by Scott Snyder, who we had on the live show. He talked quite a bit about this as well, as many spoilers for Nocterra number three, which was very cool and very fun. So check out that live podcast if you hadn't. In this book, we're continuing our journey through a world where it's always night and it's filled with horrific creatures. Tony S. Daniel's art is stunning here as usual. Just great action scenes. They're fighting a terrifying villain named Blacktop Bill. This is great. This is like duel on sci-fi steroids is what I'd compare it to. You love this issue too, right? Pete: Oh my God. Yeah. And I love Blacktop Bill. Yeah. And also, really amazing art, bold choices. We talked about that Batman issue with him but two solid pages of all black, bold, bold choice. I was like, “Wait, did this not download right? What's going on here?” Yeah. I think this is really getting crazier and crazier. Yeah. This is just really over the top fun. Yeah. It kind of reminds me of having metal in all the right ways where it's like, “Oh yeah, this is just gonna be completely non-stop trucker fucking.” Yeah. This is fun. Alex: Well, I also like the fact that it's not delaying or an issue too. We already know a ton of information and things about the world. Pete: But it's so much to know. That's the fun part. Alex: Well, exactly. But it's the sort of story where it feels like, “Oh, okay. These are things that you kind of drag out and get to an issue 12.” But nope. We're getting them in issue two. And that's awesome. Next up. Let's chat about Geiger number one from Image Comics, written by Geoff Johns, art by Gary Frank. Now, before we get into it, I do want to mention, this was initially at the top of our stack. We moved it down here because if you haven't read it, there was a big interview with Ray Fisher from Justice League talking about his treatment from Geoff Johns. There were a lot of quotes in there. There were a lot of back and forth. We don't know anything necessarily about it. Certainly, we want to listen to every single viewpoint and understand what went on. Alex: As the story continues, we will continue to discuss it and find out more about it. But as is, I felt like it was still potentially worth talking about a Image Comic book from Geoff Johns and Gary Frank that's coming out. So we'll see. Maybe we'll scrub this from the podcast later, if more things come out. But as is, let's talk about the comic as the comic and as it is. So that all said, this is a new issue from this team who's worked on Doomsday Clock as well as a lot of other things. Here, we're getting an original property set in a post-apocalyptic world where one man has been seemingly affected by the radiation and gained radiation powers. The world, specifically, Las Vegas here has been split into different ruling factions as the outside of the world is not safe. What'd you think about this book, Pete? Pete: Yeah. I don't know about all that shit. This is kind of news to me. Alex: Again, I love giving you news right on the podcast. Pete: Yeah. So, hopefully, we're not enjoying something that's whatever. I don't know what to say, but just looking at this comic as a comic and hopefully… All right. My point is that this is very cool idea. I've very much enjoyed the action. I thought the glowing man was really badass. I'm very interested to see how this kind of all enfolds. This two-headed dog is my favorite. This is really very, very cool. You got the broady kind of villain. So if everything's okay, I'll be interested to see how this all unfolds. Alex: Yeah. Sorry I threw you there, Pete. I can see you're really struggling with it and that is totally fair. I think the thing that I would say about this is Gary Frank's art is meticulous as always as well as of layouts. I do think a lot of the problems that we had with Doomsday Clock, which got very in its head about the whole Watchmen of it all. There's a lot of themes and ideas and images that I think do get hit on and in a certain way, and not a necessarily bad way recycled here, but it feels much more wide open. It feels a little looser, both in terms of the storytelling and the plotting. And it'll be interesting to see, potentially, if everything gets clear, what this team does away from DC Comics. This is something that we talked with Scott a bit about as he is on his Rumspringa from DC Comics right now, about how you don't have the corporate responsibility. You don't have the things that you need to write because you're serving a greater master here. Alex: So again, we'll see what happens. If anybody has any feedback or questions about any of this, we, of course, are happy to chat either at comicbookclublive@gmail.com at Comic Book Live on Twitter or in our page here on Slack. We'd love to get your feedback on whether we should be covering this comic or not. But again, we like to cover number ones. We like to talk about this. This is a big superstar team, so it was worth throwing in there. Maybe not as the first comic book in The Stack. Next up, let's move to happier climbs with Far Sector number 11 from DC Comics, written by N.K. Jemisin, art by Jamal Campbell. Another fantastic issue of this book that just gets bigger and bigger every issue out of the gate. Pete, this is the Green Lantern you like. Go ahead. Pete: I mean, it sets the bar higher and higher with each issue and then continues to meet that bar and go above it. I mean, it's just fantastic. 20% ring to save 20 billion. I mean, come on. This is exciting stuff. Everything has been unfolding in such a cool way. The art alone is worth the pickup. It is gorgeous in all the right ways. Characters designs are new and fresh, breaking this mold of stereotypical people and what they should look like. I love every single minute of it. Alex: Well, I say this every issue, but I don't think you can undervalue the fact that Jamal Campbell has drawn every issue of Far Sector, as well as N.K. Jemisin writing it, and they make a great team together. I know it's not always possible with the monthly schedule of comic books, but I love that they have been able to continue together and kept this world consistent and build on it and make it look weirder and more interesting every issue out of the gate. It's great. This book is great. And I'm really curious to see if it ends with issue 12. Is it going to continue? What's going to happen? Because it's such a fun interesting premise that they've set up here. One little side note- Pete: Am I to go and take over Green Lantern? We don't need Green Lantern. We got Far Sector. Alex: There you go. One little side note I'll mention, I checked out, because I love this book so much, I read N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became which is a novel. It's awesome. I know everybody probably already noticed this, but just in case you haven't checked it out yet, it is, I don't even kind of want to spoil it, but it's about people who become living cities and it's not the same themes. But you can kind of get a sense of similar things that she's trying out here in Far Sector. Particularly as a new Yorker, I love it because it's based in New York. It's so of New York. Such an awesome book. Alex: Again, I'm sure a lot of people have read it who are listening to this, but if you've only checked out our comics, definitely read that, as well. It's well worth it. Next up, Crime Syndicate number two from DC Comics, written by Andy Schmidt, art by Keiran McKeown and Bryan Hitch. I think we were a little split on the first issue of this because it takes a more satirical look at the Crime Syndicate, at the evil Justice League. Here, we get them fighting Starro and we also get a backstory for Owlman. What'd you think about this one, Pete? Pete: It's interesting. It's cool. I mean, the Flash, shirtless Flash, with the crazy chain pants was hysterical. So fun. Alex: I like this a little better. I felt the humor was a little strained in the first issue, but it hits more of its rhythm in this one. I like the backup story here. Bryan Hitch's art is always pretty good. So I was ready to jump ship after this issue, but I think I'm more than willing to check out a third issue after this one. Pete: Cool. Alex: Next up, Bliss number six from Image Comics, written by Sean Lewis, art by Caitlin Yarsky. We are, I think, getting towards the end game here as we finally find out a big secret from the past of the father and son who were trying to find each other in this world where gods run a muck. There's some great bits here with one god that the son is palling around with, this turtle god who hangs his mouth open the entire time. There's some very dark and emotional stuff that happens as well. What did you think, Pete? Pete: Yeah. This is just really unbelievable. Fantastic storytelling. This has been a real roller coaster of rooting for them or not rooting for them. It seems like really evil, but then the other side to him. We've got the AOC on the cover with the old balance of power there, the scales. Yeah. I really think this is a very interesting, cool world and it's really done very well. The art and the characters are weird in all the right ways. Yeah. We find out a lot about the family in this. This is great. This really continues to be a book that you're like, “What is this going to be?” every time you pick it up and it doesn't disappoint. Alex: Totally agree. And that's it from The Stack. If you'd like to support us patrion.com/comicbookclub. 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 comic books. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe, listen, and follow the show. At Comic Book Live on Twitter, 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: Magic, Green Lantern 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: Ultramega #1 Image Comics By James Harren Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade #1 Marvel By Si Spurrier & Sergio Dávila Orphan and the Five Beasts #1 Dark Horse Comics By James Stokoe Catwoman #29 DC Comics Written by Ram V Art by Fernando Blanco Radiant Black #2 Image Comics Written by Kyle Higgins Art by Marcelo Costa The Amazing Spider-Man: King in Black #1 Marvel Written by Jed MacKay Art by Michele Bandini, Alberto Albuquerque Nightwing #78 DC Comics Written by Tom Taylor Art by Bruno Redondo Orcs! #2 Kaboom! By Christine Larsen The Trials of Ultraman #1 Marvel Written by Kyle Higgins & Mat Groom Art by Francesco Manna, Eduardo Ferigato and Gurihiru Justice League #59 DC Comics Written by Brian Michael Bendis, Ram V Art by David Marquez, Xermanico Snow Angels #2 ComiXology Written by Jeff Lemire Art by Jock 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. Alex: And on The Stack, we talk about a bunch of books that come out this week, but not Head Lopper. Justin: Yeah, what the fuck, man? Alex: Never Head Lopper, never, ever. [crosstalk 00:00:22] They barely lop any heads anymore in that book. [crosstalk 00:00:28] Justin: It should be Head Notper because they're not lopping anything up. Alex: It's a very good book. We're just not talking about it in The Stack. Instead, we're going to kick things off, talking about Ultramega #1, from Image Comics by James Harren. I think you actually said it best on the live show, Justin, so I don't know if you want to just take it from here, but I think you totally nailed my thoughts on this book. Justin: Yeah. And so this book is a take on Kaiju, sort of a dark take. I've never been a Kaiju guy in comic book form. Pete: Really? Justin: Just in the comics, I feel like a lot of them are sort of similar to what we've seen before. And this book is such a dark take on it. You're in this character's head, it's just such a fresh version of this type of book. I loved every bit of the story and so many surprising moments and especially where it lands by the end. This was definitely the… Caught me off guard and was the most surprising and exciting book of the week for me. Pete: Wow. Alex: Pete, what about you? Pete: I loved it. The art's unbelievable. This is a real epic book. Unbelievable battles, super gross. Yeah. The storyline is really creative and different. It's dark in all the right places, creepy and gross looking in all the right places and huge and intense and others. And it's just really, really well done. Justin: [crosstalk 00:01:56] Sorry, before you get there, Alex, one last thing, it's also the rare book that goes hard. It doesn't just set up the premise and then sit in it and be like, “Tune in next week.” Kind of a thing. It goes hard at the ideas and really pushes it. Alex: The basic premise of the thing. And this gives away the first couple of pages, which I think are surprising and exciting in and of themself as they slowly spool out the story. But I'll do this just to tease people about it and then not talk about what happens probably in the last two thirds of the book. Well, the general idea is this weird eye creature or space being gives three people powers to turn into giant beings kind of called, at least one of them is called Ultramega. And they are able to identify a Kaiju virus that has embedded itself in people, but the catch is when they approach those people, when they see it, it activates that virus and they turn into these giant Kaiju and then they need to fight them. And it's kind of what the world deals with after that. But as Justin was mentioning, it spins in these crazy, crazy dark directions that are so good. Alex: Art wise as well, Pete, I don't know if you're going to take exception to this, but this reminded me in a really pleasant way of Daniel Warren Johnson and his work, just because all of the action. I think this was the thing as well that really shocked me about this book because I'm also not a huge Kaiju fan most of the time, is how clear and unique the action felt across the board, how well it was staged. Great. And it just builds too, over the course of the book. It starts with these big fights and they only get huger by the end. It's amazing. Pete: Yeah, it really is impressive. I guess I'm the only guy who likes Kaiju but that being said, I agree with Justin with the way that it moves. This book, it feels like they really sat on this book a little bit before releasing it and went over it again and again, and tightened and made all these different things because the way it… It's just a powerhouse from start to finish. Alex: And the creator talks about this a little bit at the end, we should also mention it's an oversized book. I might have the page count, but it's at least 60 pages or so. Justin: Yep. 62 pages of comic action. Alex: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:04:12] And he talks about this in the end where he says, I know, normally it felt like you should be doing 20 ish pages of a book, but there's so much more he wanted to say in this first issue that he just jammed it all in there and worked on it and it's totally worth it. This is an incredible book. Definitely pick it up. Easily the pick of the week, but lots of other good things on The Stack so keep listening to our podcast because here we go. [crosstalk 00:04:34] Justin: Yeah, don't shut it off just because we got a banger. [crosstalk 00:04:36]. Alex: Comic book shop. Pete: No, I mean, that's how I would listen to it. I would just be like, “Well, all right, looks like this is the one they recommend. That's on you, dear. I'm going to go to the shop.” Alex: Well, stay tuned for our even more pick of the week that we're going to have [crosstalk 00:04:51] Justin: Oh, nice. Way to sell it up. P.T. Barnum. Pete, when you listen to albums back in the day were you're like, “Oh, great song, smash. I'm done with this shit.” Pete: It's all right, man. Justin: You're like Pearl Jam Ten or Pearl Jam One, throw the rest away. I don't care about the rest of these songs. Alex: Black Knight: Curse of the Ebony Blade #1 from Marvel by Si Spurrier and Sergio Davila, we read the Black Knight King in Black One Shot, enjoyed that. But I think our general impression was it felt like, “Ah, this is really just setting up a Black Knight series.” Surprise, it was in fact setting up a Black Knight series. And what you get here is also a very dark take on a classic Marvel character. Justin, you're a fan of the Black Knight. How'd you feel about this one? Justin: I love the Black Knight and this was another great book. They do a great job in this book of specifically setting up a Black Knight as sort of the dark side of a Thor. Black Knight famously an Avenger, sort of a mid-tier Avenger who wasn't a super big hero, but was around a lot in different eras of the Avengers. And in this, he feels that. He's like, “I wish I had friends. I wish I could hang out with the Avengers.” It's sad. Pete: Yeah. It's got to be tough. You're so close yet so far away. Justin: Yeah. Well, he was in, he's in the Avengers. [crosstalk 00:06:13] Pete: That's what I mean, but they won't hang out with him. Justin: Yeah. It's a bummer. They only call him for the real fucked up missions. But in this, there's a great moment in here where Thor can't pick up Black Knight's sword, the Cursed Ebony Blade, because he's too pure and he's like, “You have to have a darkness. It has to feel your shadow.” Which I thought was just a great comparison as Thor was just throwing his worthy hammer in the air. And then you have this blade that is too dark for anyone to pick up but our guy Dane. Pete: Which is surprising, because you would think with Thor's drinking, he would have a little bit of a dark side, but apparently not. Justin: Yeah. He's a social drinker. Pete: Well, it's interesting, the way the conflict that he has and the way that he has to use kind of the darkness inside of him. It's not the goodness that he uses to fight. It's the dark side. It's kind of like the anger. So I very much related to that. And it was very cool. Like this moment of him trying to deal with his emotions and talk things out in a way that he can be okay with who he is and how he battles and stuff like that. I thought it was very interesting and cool. Alex: I like this book quite a bit too. Let's move on and talk about Orphan and the Five Beasts #1 from Dark Horse Comics by James Stokoe. Pete, I don't know why you need your Head Lopper when you got your Orphan and the Five Beasts. I mean, come on, you got an angry fighter, you got a bunch of lopping going on. That's got to satisfy you. Justin: This is right over the Pete plate right here. Pete: Yeah. I mean, this was great. Don't get me wrong. This was a lot of fun. The thigh master or whatever it was really fucking bad-ass. Just kind of the cloak dude who is just really great at fighting. I very, very much enjoyed this book. Alex: And just to be clear, we like Head Lopper. I'll stop pretending that I'm slamming it over the rest of the podcast. Justin: Love Head Lopper. Alex: But this is exactly what you wanted, to have James Stokoe, I'm trying to think how to describe it, but just like quest to kill five increasingly, probably deadly villains who have killed this ronin's master sort of story. You kind of know what you're in for, but it's the regular requisite James Stokoe insane art. This is very fun. It's very enjoyable and it looks great. Pete: Yeah. I also really liked the kind of setup. Sometimes we get a set up of like, “I have to avenge because of this or whatever.” And it's sometimes interesting, but sometimes kind of typical. This is a very kind of cool a story to kind of set up how this is all going to go down, this whole you make a promise to, “Okay, I'll give you this power, but then you've got to come back and learn the right way to use it.” And I thought it was a very cool setup for [inaudible 00:09:07] and for all this unbelievable fighting and action. Justin: This feels like it's at the intersection of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the classic, Usagi Yojimbo and Ball Z, Dragon Ball Z. And that intersection is actually where Pete lives. If you're ever looking to send some mail to Pete, that's the address. Pete: Yeah. I definitely get my mail there. There's no question. Alex: Let's move on and talk about Catwoman #29 from DC Comics written by Ram V., art by Fernando Blanco. In this issue, Catwoman is running shit downtown, but there's some different forces who are closing in on her at the same time. A couple of things that I'll throw out to you guys right at the top here, first of all, I sort of felt this last week, but I felt this even more this week, I am really appreciating Future State even more based on the fact that DC set up these art teams, kind of gave them two months to play around and figure things out and then put them on the permanent titles. And that pays off here with a really good, beautifully drawn story. I haven't read Catwoman in a really long time, but I like this quite a bit. On the flip side of things, I am wondering, and I know there has been blow back, should they have renumbered these to #1? Justin: Wow. Pete: Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. Justin: I'm surprised they didn't, to be honest. But I do think coming out of Future State, which was all #1s and #2s, I get why they just kept going. And I appreciate that a little bit more because I think Future State was sort of the bait to get you to sign on to these books with these great new creative teams. And I want to say, I feel like Ram V. is having a moment. Pete: Yeah. Ram V.! I agree. I really liked this book. I like how the villain is a kind of similar to Ghost in the Ant-Man movie. I also love this kind of strung out Riddler a little bit who's hooked on that Ivy. You know what I mean? A very interesting take. There's a lot going on in this book, which I appreciate. This is a very cool Catwoman book. The art's fantastic. Alex: I particularly like playing in this villainous side of the world. Catwoman always straddles this weird line, particularly now that she's canonically with Batman, has fallen more on the side of the heroes, but you do have all these characters in Gotham that have been on both sides. You have Poison Ivy, you have Harley Quinn, you have Catwoman, you have Riddler. All of these ones that are like, “They're bad, but are they really that bad?” To throw those into a book together as a cast and throw them against even worse villains, I think is a great place for Catwoman to be as a character. Justin: I feel like the move there is to make them sort of selfish heroes, as opposed to villains. They're like heroes who do what they want as opposed to just always saving the day, which I think makes for a more interesting story. Alex: I agree. Moving on, Radiant Black #2 from Image Comics written by Kyle Higgins, art by Marcelo Costa. We loved the first issue here, it was about a guy that discovers a weird black hole over a train track, gets some powers, felt very much invincible, even though it's a different story and it's a different character. And it had a lot of the sense of that, that in my mind continues with the second issue, which finds him having breakfast with his dad multiple times, meeting up with another person with similar powers and fighting them. Great. I had a good time reading this book again and I'm very into it after two issues. Pete: I would like to point out though, kids out there, if you see a floating black hole, you shouldn't go towards it and try to grab it, okay. That's a bad idea. We don't want to encourage that kind of stuff. Justin: And that's a PSA we've done for years. We've put that out there on public radio and… We're the big don't touch the black hole guys. Alex: What'd you think about this book, Justin? Justin: Nice, great question, Alex. I like the second issue a lot. I was fine with it in the first issue. And I think the second issue has made me like it more where we get into the character a little bit. It does feel like Invincible a lot without sort of the epic, worldwide storytelling. This is very much about this kid who wants to be a writer and failed and has to go back home and he's using his under the radar or his like, I need to figure out my life, “super powers” of being an Uber driver to aid in his super heroics. And I think that's cool. Pete: Yeah. I think this is not only stylistically very cool. And I liked the outfits and when they're suited up, how that all looks, it looks really looks amazing. But I also like the person inside the suit and the struggles with what's going on. And yeah, you don't want to deal with your parents. Sure, you got to talk to them around mealtime, but otherwise, parents, fuck off. You know what I mean? I got shit to do. So I appreciated the check-in stuff. But I'm very interested to see now that he has a plan, how this is all going to go. Alex: Think it should be interesting to follow. Next up, The Amazing Spider-Man: King in Black #1 from Marvel written by Jed MacKay and art by Michele Bandini. In this, we're getting two stories. The first one has Spider-Man feeling super guilty as I think, frankly, he should about everything that's happening in King in Black. Teaming up with Reptil, who is one of the characters from Avengers Academy and then Avengers Arena, I believe, as well. And then the backup story shows us what's happening from Reptil's perspective and kicks off a new Reptil series that is coming later in the year, which is pretty surprising. Justin: And you got the Querque on the art there, the backup story. Alex: The Querque? Justin: Yeah. Albuquerque. Alex: Oh, was that Rafael Albuquerque? Justin: You're god damn right it is. Alex: Is it? Are you sure about that? Justin: That's all I'm fucking looking at right here. That's what it says. Alex: All right. Justin: [crosstalk 00:15:15] story. Alberto Albuquerque. Alex: Alberto Albuquerque. That's not Rafael Albuquerque. Justin: You're right. It's a different, but it's still… Pete: A different Querque. Alex: Well, thank you for giving him credit, regardless. I appreciate that. Pete: Yeah. Classic. Classic. But let me just ask you something. Alex: Yeah. What? Justin: It's about time… Throw the question. Pete: Nick Spencer is completely off this book now? Alex: [crosstalk 00:15:46] This is not Amazing Spider-Man. This is a King in Black One Shot. What emotions are you going through right now? Justin, can you talk about this book? Because Pete's [crosstalk 00:15:59] You are all over the place right now. Pete: I was just hoping that this was the start of something fresh and new. Justin: Pete came with such joy. He's like “I got the Querque. I got Jed MacKay, Nick Spencer and Alex just devastated. [crosstalk 00:16:18] One, two punched it. Pete: Yeah. That was a combo I wasn't ready for. Justin: Let me just say also, let's keep in mind that our podcast is the main news source for Pete LePage. He doesn't get his news anywhere else about anything, not just comics, but truly every bit of news he gets is right here. Alex: Every morning he opens up The Stack podcast and he's like, “Ah, what's happening to the world today.” Pete: But the comic itself, a very touching kind of a classic Spider-Man story, very moving. I really enjoyed all of it. I thought this was a great kind of little guy versus big monsters. I thought this was such a great Spider-Man story. And I think that this is for me, one of the… I feel like this is a great example of why Spider-Man is great. Justin: I liked this book a lot as well. I'm a big Jed MacKay fan, the writer of this. He writes the Black Cat book- Pete: Brother of Adam MacKay, right? Justin: That's not accurate. Again, not accurate. Just guessing about stuff, not working right now. Jed MacKay's Black Cat book. I've been a huge fan of, so it was great to see him taking on this Spider-Man book. And I agree, starting with Spider-Man feeling guilty about bringing the Venom suit back. We've all felt bad when we brought like a suit back from somewhere and it devastated the world. Whether it's with mobs or just starting a fashion trend, it caused problems. Alex: Yes. Just to stay in order, Justin, Pete, go ahead. Justin: Reptil, as a character, got a lot of love in this issue. I did not see that coming and leading up to Reptil #1. Okay. Let's give it a try. Alex: It's fun. He could turn into dinosaurs. That's pretty cool. I like this issue quite a bit as well. Let's move on to another big surprise though. In retrospect, given the team and it shouldn't necessarily have been. Nightwing #78 from DC Comics written by Tom Taylor, art by Bruno Redondo. Alex: I'll tell you straight up, when I read this book, I was like, “Oh, another Nightwing book. Here we go.” First couple of pages, I was like, “Holy shit, this is great. Why is this so good?” And then we got to the credits and I realized, “Oh, that's why it's so good.” [crosstalk 00:18:38] This team is great. So this is Nightwing is back in the costume. He doesn't have the memory loss, which he pokes fun of a little bit in the middle of this issue, which is very fun, but he is back in Blüdhaven dealing with all that entails. Barbara Gordon comes to visit him. It was a big spoiler for the issue, but I'll mention this because I'm sure Pete wants to talk about this in particular. The major feature of the issue is Alfred turns out to have been a billionaire and leaves all of his money to Nightwing. Pete, how did you feel about this? Pete: The letter was so touching and so moving. I really loved it. Yeah. How heartbreaking is it that the Alfred wrote him a letter every year because of the business that they're in and how crazy their life is. I was just so moved. I thought it was such a touching letter. Yeah, this was one of my favorite issues for the week. I love the humor in it. The fun bit about having Dick for a name, the dad bit, the Alfred with the dishes moments there. I got choked up for that. And then the whole fucking John Wick of it all, you don't fuck with dogs, man. Don't fuck with somebody's dog. That is just disgusting, as Nightwing put it. And yeah, it was just really just blockbuster fun. Yeah, I was just [crosstalk 00:20:09] Alex: Is that a joke on the fact that Blockbuster, the character, appears in here? Pete? Justin: Yes. Pete: Yeah, yeah. Justin: He'll say yes. Now that you said it. Alfred the butling billionaire. Who would have thought? This guy was just butling for the fun of it. The love of the game. Pete: When the Waynes died, they must've been like, “Here's a shit ton of money to raise our… Just in case.” Alex: And he was stealing it, he was stealing it from Bruce Wayne. Justin: Yeah he stole that money. Alex: Every year, squirreling away a little bit of Bruce Wayne's money. Justin: Here's what he's doing. He's telling the Wayne's that he's buying these expensive English cucumbers, and he's buying some shitty fell off the back of a truck cucumbers and pocketing the difference. [crosstalk 00:20:53] Pete: I'm not going to sit here and let you fucking… Alfred is nothing but an angel. All right? That house of insanity and he's the only sane one, all right? [crosstalk 00:21:04] So don't fucking talk shit about Alfred. Alex: Justin's making a little bit of sense here because that might explain why Batman never eats any of the soup that he gets him because it tastes like shit. Justin: It's trash soup. Because he's not buying the high end stuff, he's not buying the Progresso, he's buying like… Huh? Pete: Don't you fucking say that. Alex: [crosstalk 00:21:24] or whatever. Even Bruce is like, “Oh, this is bad.” Pete: [inaudible 00:21:31]. Alex: “I don't like this.” Justin: Wait, Pete, are you telling me you're like Alfred cooks the best food? Pete: Yeah. Justin: You know that for a fact? Pete: Fact! Justin: He only made little sandwiches and soups. It's not like he was bringing out like a dinner. Pete: You don't know what he was doing while we weren't looking [crosstalk 00:21:48] Alex: What do you think his worst dish was? The thing when all the bat family [inaudible 00:21:53] And they're like, “Oh, he's making his lasagna. That's bad.” Justin: “Master Bruce, I prepared your favorite French toast.” Justin: “Oh, Alfred's French toast.” Pete: Yo, he's dead, you fuckers. Where's the respect? Alex: “It's just too eggy.” Justin: There's no cinnamon in it. Put a spice in it. For god sakes. Justin: [inaudible 00:22:20] He doesn't even buy the good maple syrup. He buys the shitty stuff. Pete: You don't know that. Don't say that. Alex: It's not even maple. It's not from Vermont. It's not B grade. Pete: Don't you fucking… Alex: It's Log Cabin. Justin: [inaudible 00:22:33] Log Cabin syrup. Pocketing the difference. Justin: [crosstalk 00:22:36] Justin: And then he's given this difference. He gave it to Nightwing in this issue and that's continuity right there. That's the truth. Alex: I don't want to downsize just to get back- Pete: I hate talking comics with you guys. It's the fucking worst. Justin: That's crazy because you do it a lot. Pete: All you do is just fucking kill my dreams and hopes. You take everything that I like in an issue and just do bits until it's not fun anymore. You've killed Foggy Nelson for me and you can't fucking leave Alfred alone. The fucking guy just died and I still can't get any enjoyment out of… Justin: What do you think Foggy's worst dish is? Alex: All of them. Justin: “Hey, Matt, I made dinner tonight. It's a bunch of old gum.” Alex: I was doing the old man laugh. Where he's going… Pete: [crosstalk 00:23:36] Please leave me alone. Justin: I love Nightwing. I love this issue. Tom Taylor is also on a great run of books. It's great to see Nightwing, get back to some of the old stuff. Being in Blüdhaven, sort of carving out his own area away from Gotham. Pete: Great use of Blockbuster. Justin: Great use of Blockbuster. Barbara's in this issue, touching on his relationship with Alfred, which I do think despite what I said about how just God awful his lasagna was. Pete: Fuck you. Justin: He did have a great connection with Alfred. And I love seeing that here on display. What's he going to do with that money? Just buy some cool spandex? Alex: I don't know. Justin: Blow it on spandex? Alex: I do want to shout out also Bruno Redondo's art. There is a gorgeous, gorgeous two page spread that happens earlier in the issue where Nightwing is jumping off a roof and it's the classic Batman jumping in front of the moon thing. But it's him jumping in front of the sun. And I thought it was just such a smart, awesome thing to do to delineate Nightwing from Batman. Loved it. Let's move on to a book that I'm betting Pete liked as well. Orcs! #2 from BOOM! By Christine Larsen. Just a bunch of orcs, doing fun orc stuff. Pete, how did you feel about this one? Pete: Yeah, we loved to the first issue of this. I like this kind of this team up, if you will, of characters. I also love the love of story in this. People will risk a lot for a great story. I can appreciate that. The torture I go through so I can read comics is real. I thought this was fun. I also love the dedication that the person wears an eye patch and has two eyes just for the love of the game. That was really fun. I think the art and storytelling is great. I love the mix of cute and gruesome things. I like where this is going. This is exciting. Justin: Yeah. The story within the story stuff is really fun. This reminded me of, this is a hyper-specific reference, but in the movie Willow, all the brownies, the little people that ride along, that's what this book reminds me of. Pete: Really? Justin: The orcs are sort of like a version of those guys. Alex: Yeah. I can see that. I think it's a fun book. People should definitely check it out. Next up. The Trials of Ultraman #1 from Marvel, written by, again, Kyle Higgins and Matt Groom, art by Francesco Manna, Eduardo Ferigato and Guri Hiru. We checked out the first issue of this book. And haven't checked in in a while. Obviously, this is a new story of Ultraman. It was interesting reading this in the same week as another Kyle Higgins book and another Kaiju book. How do you think it stacked up in comparison? Justin: I wish I had read this one first, before I read Ultramega, because Ultramega felt so genre breaking that this felt very within the genre. And if you're a fan of Kaiju books, I think this is a great version of that and it's setting up a lot of interesting twists and turns on it and a potential new villain that I was surprised. I thought it was the backup story. I thought it was an advertisement for another book. And then it tied right into to this book. So yeah, I like this, but it definitely feels like just a fun new version of a Kaiju book. Pete: Yeah. I thought this was kind of a comparison regardless of what is better or whatever. I thought this was a cool take. It felt different enough where I wasn't like, “Oh, this is kind of too similar.” I enjoyed where this was coming from and the perspective, I also like the start of this book. Yeah. I like what this is setting up. It's not as long as the other one. It's a little bit shorter, but they do a good job of keeping it simple, teasing the story, putting all the things in place. I've followed it well, I understood what was going on. Thought it was great art and storytelling. I think this is good. Alex: My favorite part of this book is still the insert pages. I think these are the ones that Guri Hiru is drawing where it's instruction manuals for what to do for the Kaiju organization or if a Kaiju attacks. They're super fun. They're super cute. I like that quite a bit. And it really breaks- [crosstalk 00:27:52] Justin: The Kaiju steps. Alex: Kaiju steps. There you go. I enjoy those quite a bit. Agree with you guys. Otherwise, next up, Justice League #59 from DC Comics written by Brian Michael Bendis and Ram V., art by David Marquez and Xermanico. So the front story is Brian Michael Bendis on Justice League for the first time. Backup story is Ram V. doing Justice League Dark. What'd you guys think? Pete: I thought it was a fun issue. It's kind of a setup issue, but really love the story and the art and Green Arrow wants more out of life. Justin: It's interesting what the take here. This feels like a Black Adam book in a lot of ways. And re-introducing one of Bendis' characters right, at the end. Alex: Naomi. Yeah. Justin: Yeah. So I don't know, that got me a little bit, like this feels like a very Bendis move where I don't know what the story is going to be about. It feels like it's like him being like, “Here's some stuff I think is cool.” And I want it to be a little bit more of like, “Here's an idea that I'm excited to create for these characters.” The art's really beautiful in the front story. Good Aquaman issue if you're an Aqua fan, but I don't know what the direction here is. It feels like it's almost like, “You like the Justice League? Well, here's a totally different bunch of people who are going to operate like the Justice League.” The Justice League Dark backup by Ram V. I thought was great. Spin this off and make it a book. Pete: Yeah. Alex: I agree. I really liked the backup. That was dark and weird and interesting in a very different way than James Tynion did the book, which I loved. But it was interesting to see this change and this more mythical take on the characters. For the front story, like this better than the Legion of Superheroes. I thought that was very messy. There were too many characters going on. It's surprising that Justice League feels like it has less characters and is more focused. So that's a little ridiculous, but the characterizations are good and fine. I don't know. Like you said, there's a lot of Bendis isms in the book and I would like to see what he does going forward, but it felt a little derivative down to basically doing the New Avengers cover on the cover here, but with the Justice League. And if he's going to do that, New Avengers felt different because it was Bendis coming in and doing his Bendis thing on Avengers for the first time. You don't necessarily get this here. I want him to do something bolder and more exciting. Justin: Yeah. If you want to do the New Avengers for Justice League, give us that hit, give us that swing and have all these new characters introduced and have it be that because that's still a story that sticks right in the memory because it was such a big new change for the Avengers. Instead, it feels like sort of a middle ground here. Pete: I agree. Alex: Last one, let's talk about Snow Angels #2 from ComiXology written by Jeff Lemire, art by Jock. We liked the first issue of this one, I believe, quite a bit. Takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where everybody lives in a snow filled trench. A family, a father, and two daughters is being chased by a guy named The Snowman. That picks up this issue. Pete, you've always been scared of snowmen. What did you think of this one? Pete: Yeah. I mean, what's great is snowmen themselves are scary, but this is a nice heightening of that idea. Yeah. I think this is a great… First off an amazing team. And this is very action oriented, which I very much enjoy. And this does a great job. Each issue kind of leaving you really wanting more. I think this is a very intense, kind of reminds me of that horror movie where nobody can talk or whatever. So I think this is really fun. Very creative. Love the way it ended. Love the art. Alex: A Quiet Place? Is that what you're thinking of? Pete: Yeah, A Quiet Place. [crosstalk 00:31:55] Justin: Oh, I thought We Have To Talk About Kevin. Is that what it is? Pete: No, it was A Quiet Place. Justin: Nice. Either way, this book, everyone's skating really hard in this book. Pete: You got to skate hard, bro. Justin: You got to skate hard. So that was stressful. Great pace to this book. And a lot of just tense, a lot of tension. And I think A Quiet Place is a good comparison, I think. Alex: I would compare it to The Mighty Ducks, which is a movie with skating in it. Justin: That's true. That's true. And Pete, I know you love this. It's sort of a cutting edge with less romance. Pete: [inaudible 00:32:31] Alex: This is a great book. Definitely pick it up. You have another point you want to make Pete. What's up? Pete: Yeah. I just wanted to, while you're wrapping up, while I was waiting for Head Lopper to come through, I did read Superman Red & Blue #1, and I just wanted to say, really fun, love the coloring, really amazing art. The Boy Who Saved Superman, a story by Wes Craig and Jill Thompson. So amazing. The art was unbelievable. His water colors and the little Clark Kent stuff was very, very adorable. Alex: I love how you act like, “Well, I have no say in what happens in this show.” Justin: And then you secretly just review stuff at the end. That's nice. You take control in a way that I just would never be so audacious. Pete: Well, thank you. Justin: I would like to review my dinner that I made earlier, it was… But taco night, obviously… Pete: Couldn't have been better than what Alfred would have prepared. Justin: Yeah. I made Alfred's trash lasagna. Alex: Foggy's famous pile of worms. And that is it for our Stack podcast. If you want to support us, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube. iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and follow @comicbooklive on Twitter, ComicBookClub on YouTube, comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and more. Until next time, we'll see you at the virtual comic book shelf. The post The Stack: Ultramega, Black Knight And More appeared first on Comic Book Club. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/comicbookclub See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Just in time for the holidays, in this extended seventh episode of Dream Journal, the podcast group POPSKL (Pissed-Off, Psychic Scary Kids of LA) sits down with special superstar guest artist and writer Jill Thompson to discuss her work on Brief Lives, the seventh volume of Neil Gaiman's seminal comic series, The Sandman. Together, we discuss characters, themes, and her craft. The podcast group - being creators themselves - bring a unique perspective to this roundtable discussion about the themes and characters within this volume which sends the storyline heading toward its conclusion. They tout big conversations for big stories, and well, this is one of the biggest! They also converse about what makes them tic, some recent or past dreams that have affected them, and some personal recommendations if you love The Sandman. Sit back, brew some java, and join the conversation.
Julius Howe is back in the bookclub but instead of the ABC Warriors we consider Grant Morrison's nineties classic The Invisibles, with art by Steve Yeowell and Jill Thompson.Check out Julius' comedy on his YouTube channel and at his website.You can find a list of episodes so far and all the upcoming books on the Facebook page, follow the podcast on Twitter, and on instagram, or email me comments and suggestions to MCBCpodcast@gmail.com If you cannot see the audio controls, listen/download the audio file here Or Download hereRight click and choose save link as to download to your computer.
We've reached the grand finale of our Deep Dive into Kindred of the East, folks! Give it a listen and if you like it, support us on Patreon to hear the rest of the Deep Dive series as we explore the rest of the kindred of the east books.CreditsOriginal Concept and Design: Robert HatchAdditional Design: Phil Brucato, Jackie Cassada, Mark Cenczyk, Nicky ReaAuthors: Justin Achilli, Phil Brucato, Jackie Cassada, Mark Cenczyk, Richard E. Dansky, Robert Hatch, Ian Lemke, Nicky Rea, Ethan SkempDeveloper: Robert HatchEditor: Ed HallArt Director: Lawrence SnellyLayout and Typesetting: Robby PooreLogo Design: Ash ArnettFront and Back Cover Design: Lawrence SnellyRunchuu Typeface: Ash Arnett and Robby PooreInterior Art: Andrew Bates, Tim Bradstreet, Matt Clark, Mike Danza, Guy Davis, Tony Diterlizzi, John Estes, Jason Felix, Darren Frydendall, Michael Gaydos, Doug Alexander Gregory, Rebecca Guay, Tony Harris, Leif Jones, Karl Kerchel, Eric Lacombe, Vince Locke, George Pratt, Robby Poore, Steve Prescott, Andrew Ritchie, Matt Roach, Andrew Robinson, Alex Sheikman, Ray Snyder, Ron Spencer, Jill Thompson, Melissa Uran, John Van Fleet, Karl WallerBook Design: Lawrence Snelly and Robby PooreCalligraphy: Andy LeePurchase it here: Kindred of the East(https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/2552/Kindred-of-the-East?affiliate_id=268487)Support the showSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/25yearsofvampirethemasquerade/posts)
We discuss three volumes by Jill Thompson featuring characters from the Sandman. The Little Endless books would make perfect bedtime stories for children, and At Death's Door is a Manga inspired look at some of the background action of A Season of Mists.Content Note: The Sandman series deals with and features some particularly dark and troubling subject matters and we have discussed them briefly and in depth in this podcast.Here is a list of some of the subjects that feature in Book 4, Season of Mists:Extreme violence, including graphic depictions of blood and dead bodies.Child abuse and neglect, including bullying.A brief reference to sexual assault.If you would like more information about the subjects that feature in the comics and in the podcast (we can provide time codes if you wish to skip over these sections) then please feel free to email us:MCBCpodcast@gmail.comIf you enjoy our discussion then please subscribe in your podcast app or on our blog at HandfulOfDustPodcast.blogspot.com The piano music featured in this episode is Strange Dream by David Hilowitz from the Free Music Archive. Download here Right click and choose save link as to download to your computer.
Alexis Hejna and Mark Radulich review the Eisner award-winning graphic novel, Wonder Woman The True Amazon by Jill Thompson!
We return to the anthology format for 2002's Red, White, & Black. This week we focus on the first three stories in the Omnibus all written by Matt Wagner (natch). First we see the Devils Week by Matt Wagner, then The Nasty Li'l Devil by Jill Thompson. Next we get into the Law & Order SGU (Special Grendel Unit) story Evidence of the Devil by Cliff Chiang, and finally, the life changing meeting of Grendel and Teddy Boy Ciccone Devil's Assumption by Andy Kuhn. A rip-roaring start!! Vivat Grendel and Keep on Grendelin'!! Eli Schwab https://cosmiclionproductions.com/ Grab a Wizerd: The Comic MegaZine here: https://cosmiclionproductions.com/t/xn--wizrd-9kc @CosmicLion on Instagram Ben Granoff @BenGranoff on Instagram Much love to Matt Wagner who is now on instagram @MattWagnerComics We are also on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-devil-in-detail/id1515990826 and Spotify! https://open.spotify.com/show/1jzmBWoPHse5b2oNVbMwOu?si=OFofifuxTyKjeITOmHWxQA
Podcast-- Operation: Cheetah (1992) Finally, we're talking about the William Messner-Loebs run on Wonder Woman, the host's favorite series of Amazing Amazon adventures! Unfortunately, the transition out of George Pérez's long and well regarded run isn't the smoothest. We chart some of the bumps along the way from War of the Gods to Wonder Woman Special #1 & Wonder Woman (Vol. 2) #63. Bonus interview material read from Amazing Heroes #197 featuring Loebs, artist Jill Thompson, and editors Tom Peyer & Dan Thorsland discussing thoughts early in the run, story plans that never came about, and more! This episode's non-paying advertisers: Beetlemania! A podcast devoted to the legacy of the Blue Beetle. TreasuryCast We don't have a Magic Sphere, so if you want to communicate with us about the podcast... Tweet host Diabolu Frank directly, or commune with @rolledspine as a group. Email Diabolu If the main Diana Prince as the New Wonder Woman blog isn't your thing, try the umbrella Rolled Spine Podcasts. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/diabolu-frank/message
It's our love letter to the Criterion Collection (@criterion) in all its greatness. We're joined by film critic, comics writer and podcast Will Pfeifer (@willpfeifer) to discuss our favorite Criterions (some you may not even remember) and the just-released Dr. Strangelove (spine number 821, for you collectors). We also talk about some of Will's comics work, including Finals with Jill Thompson (@thejillthompson) and H.E.R.O, with Kano (@kano_es). We also discuss Will's movie podcast Out of Theaters (@outoftheaters) done with Billy Kulpa (@billykulpa) and Kevin Haas (@kevinmhaas). Will has news about Out of Theaters, so stick around to the end for that.
The Headlocked Comic panel at the 2016 C2E2 event in Chicago. Mick Foley, Ken Anderson, Jill Thompson, Mike Kingston and I discuss the marriage between comics and professional wrestling. WARNING This episode is AWESOME
The Two Guys are back with the second half of their marathon interview with Evan Dorkin. This installment picks up where yesterday's segment left off, in a discussion of the Beasts of Burden series. Derek asks if this Dark Horse title has become a defining work of Evan's, if he's now known as the "Beasts of Burden guy" instead of the "Milk and Cheese guy." And Evan goes on to share some information on the next comic in the series, What the Cat Dragged In, and his continued working relationship with Jill Thompson. Also in this half, the conversation gets more superhero-y, with Evan discussing his work with DC's World's Funnest and Bizarro Comics and his creation of Fight-Man for Marvel. He also expresses his unfiltered thoughts on current superhero fan culture, including the ridiculous premises surrounding Peter Parker's Aunt May -- "I almost married Doctor Octopus. That's how fucked up my life is" -- and the unlikely reality of today's box office hits: "Shit, it's Ant-Man. I'm paying money to see Ant-Man…Fucking Ant-Man!" Along the way the guys also talk about Bill and Ted's Excellent Comic Book, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Yo Gabba Gabba!, Milk and Cheese, and the new Stela project with Sarah Dyer (his wife), Calla Cthulhu. There is a lot packed into this part of the conversation, and, when set alongside yesterday's first half, it is the longest interview in the history of The Comics Alternative. And that's just dorkalicious!
Have you ever listened to an interview on The Comics Alternative and thought, "That was good, but I wish the Two Guys had talked longer with their guest?" If so, then this conversation will scratch that itch...and more. In this episode Gene and Derek have the pleasure of talking with Evan Dorkin, and getting much more than they bargained for. In fact, the interview lasted over two hours and forty-five minutes, so the guys decided to break up the conversation over two episodes. In this first half of the interview, Derek and Gene talk with Evan about The Eltingville Club, released last month from Dark Horse Books -- and reviewed by the guys a few weeks ago -- and how his experiences with comics culture all fed into the stories. Along with this, they discuss the pilot of Welcome to Eltingville and the twists and turns of creating the animation during the early days of Adult Swim. The guys also begin talking with Evan about his and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden series and how this has become one of his career-defining works. (They continue their conversation on Beasts of Burden in the second half of the interview.) And they learn, much to their excitement, that Evan would like to bring back his wild series, Dork, in some manner. As you might expect in an interview with the creator of Milk and Cheese, hilarity abounds. The guys point out that this is not only the longest interview they've ever conducted, but also one packed with the most laughs. Among other topics, you'll hear Evan talk about the absurdities of convention culture, the sheer idiocy of Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy -- "the Trump of animation" -- and his complete disregard for Batman's gadgets. Plus, he berates Derek for not remembering the role of Ecto-1 in the last Eltingville Club story. What more could you want in a podcast interview? But there IS more to this interview. Be sure to return tomorrow for the second half!
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