Podcasts about mike no

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Join Brevin Knight and Rob Fischer as they discuss: - Bad home losses for the Grizzlies- More injury news - Santi Aldama's consistency- Mike Tyson in the ring

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Episode 3588: Backstabbing Of Mike No Johnson Johnson

Join us as we return to the lands of Zakhara and to a new group of adventurers looking for the first library. Content Warnings: Violence, Undead, Bad Puns, Fantasy Violence, Gore, Death Sponsored by: - Phoenix Dice: https://www.phoenixdice.com Supported by: - Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms: http://dnd.wizards.com/products/digital-games/console-mobiletablet-pcmac/idle-champions-forgotten-realms - Bearded Ladies: https://www.beardladies.com/ Cast of Players: - Royce - played by Michael - - Umami - played by Ali - https://twitter.com/kurodil - Umberto - played by Tom - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis - Aytac - played by Mike - No social media - Devorn - played by Josh - https://twitter.com/DevornKnight - Tom as the Dungeon Master - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis You can also find us at: - Twitch: http://twitch.tv/rolltogetherrpg - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rolltogetherrpg - Twitter: http://twitter.com/rolltogetherrpg - Instagram: http://instagram.com/rolltogetherrpg - Facebook: http://facebook.com/rolltogetherrpg - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rolltogetherrpg.bsky.social - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@rolltogetherrpg We are using: - Hero Forge: http://heroforge.com - D&D Beyond: https://www.dndbeyond.com/ #rolltogether #dungeonsanddragons #actualplay #dnd

Join us as we return to the lands of Zakhara and to a new group of adventurers looking for the first library. Content Warnings: Violence, Undead, Bad Puns, Fantasy Violence, Gore, Death Sponsored by: - Phoenix Dice: https://www.phoenixdice.com Supported by: - Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms: http://dnd.wizards.com/products/digital-games/console-mobiletablet-pcmac/idle-champions-forgotten-realms - Bearded Ladies: https://www.beardladies.com/ Cast of Players: - Royce - played by Michael - - Umami - played by Ali - https://twitter.com/kurodil - Umberto - played by Tom - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis - Aytac - played by Mike - No social media - Devorn - played by Josh - https://twitter.com/DevornKnight - Tom as the Dungeon Master - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis You can also find us at: - Twitch: http://twitch.tv/rolltogetherrpg - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rolltogetherrpg - Twitter: http://twitter.com/rolltogetherrpg - Instagram: http://instagram.com/rolltogetherrpg - Facebook: http://facebook.com/rolltogetherrpg - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rolltogetherrpg.bsky.social - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@rolltogetherrpg We are using: - Hero Forge: http://heroforge.com - D&D Beyond: https://www.dndbeyond.com/ #rolltogether #dungeonsanddragons #actualplay #dnd

Join us as we return to the lands of Zakhara and to a new group of adventurers looking for the first library. Content Warnings: Violence, Undead, Bad Puns, Fantasy Violence, Gore, Death Sponsored by: - Phoenix Dice: https://www.phoenixdice.com Supported by: - Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms: http://dnd.wizards.com/products/digital-games/console-mobiletablet-pcmac/idle-champions-forgotten-realms - Bearded Ladies: https://www.beardladies.com/ Cast of Players: - Royce - played by Michael - - Umami - played by Ali - https://twitter.com/kurodil - Umberto - played by Tom - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis - Aytac - played by Mike - No social media - Devorn - played by Josh - https://twitter.com/DevornKnight - Tom as the Dungeon Master - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis You can also find us at: - Twitch: http://twitch.tv/rolltogetherrpg - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rolltogetherrpg - Twitter: http://twitter.com/rolltogetherrpg - Instagram: http://instagram.com/rolltogetherrpg - Facebook: http://facebook.com/rolltogetherrpg - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rolltogetherrpg.bsky.social - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@rolltogetherrpg We are using: - Hero Forge: http://heroforge.com - D&D Beyond: https://www.dndbeyond.com/ #rolltogether #dungeonsanddragons #actualplay #dnd

Join us as we return to the lands of Zakhara and to a new group of adventurers looking for the first library. Content Warnings: Violence, Undead, Bad Puns, Fantasy Violence, Gore, Death Sponsored by: - Phoenix Dice: https://www.phoenixdice.com Supported by: - Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms: http://dnd.wizards.com/products/digital-games/console-mobiletablet-pcmac/idle-champions-forgotten-realms - Bearded Ladies: https://www.beardladies.com/ Cast of Players: - Royce - played by Michael - - Umami - played by Ali - https://twitter.com/kurodil - Umberto - played by Tom - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis - Aytac - played by Mike - No social media - Devorn - played by Josh - https://twitter.com/DevornKnight - Tom as the Dungeon Master - https://twitter.com/ThomasJancis You can also find us at: - Twitch: http://twitch.tv/rolltogetherrpg - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rolltogetherrpg - Twitter: http://twitter.com/rolltogetherrpg - Instagram: http://instagram.com/rolltogetherrpg - Facebook: http://facebook.com/rolltogetherrpg - Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/rolltogetherrpg.bsky.social - Threads: https://www.threads.net/@rolltogetherrpg We are using: - Hero Forge: http://heroforge.com - D&D Beyond: https://www.dndbeyond.com/ #rolltogether #dungeonsanddragons #actualplay #dnd

If you missed the other episodes with thoughtbot Incubator Program partcipants and founders Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito of Goodz, you can listen to the first episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e2incubatorgoodz) and the second episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e4incubatorgoodz), and the third episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e6incubatorgoodz) to catch up! Lindsey Christensen and Jordyn Bonds catch up with the co-founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal, where they share insights from their journey during the Incubator program, including the usefulness of the application process in aligning their vision and the challenges and benefits of user interviews and the importance of not overreacting to single user feedback and finding a balance in responding to diverse opinions. They reveal the varied reactions of users to Goodz's product, highlighting the different market segments interested in it. As the Incubator program nears its end for Goodz, Chris and Mike reflect on their achievements and future plans. They've made significant progress, such as setting up an e-commerce site and conducting successful user interviews. The co-founders discuss their excitement about the potential of their product and the validation they received from users. Mike mentions the importance of focusing on B2B sales and the possibility of upcoming events like South by Southwest and Record Store Day. Transcript: LINDSEY: Thanks for being here. My name's Lindsey. I head up marketing at thoughtbot. If you haven't joined one of these before, we are checking in with two of the founders who are going through the thoughtbot Startup Incubator to learn how it's going, what's new, what challenges they're hitting, and what they're learning along the way. If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy, and we hope your team and your product become a success. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. So, today, we are joined by our co-founders, Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, Co-Founders of the startup Goodz. And we also have another special guest today, Danny Kim, from the thoughtbot side, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. So, I think, to start off, we'll head over to the new face, the new voice that we've got with us today. Danny, tell us a little bit about your role at thoughtbot and, specifically, the incubator. DANNY: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me join in on all the fun. I'm one of the product managers at thoughtbot. I typically work for the Lift-Off team. We usually work with companies that are looking to, like, go into market with their first version MVP. They might have a product that exists and that they're already kind of doing well with, and they kind of want to jump into a new segment. We'll typically work with companies like that to kind of get them kicked off the ground. But it's been really awesome being part of the incubator program. It's my first time in helping with the market validation side. Definitely also, like, learning a lot from this experience [laughs] for myself. Coming at it specifically from a PM perspective, there's, like, so much variation usually in product management across the industry, depending on, like, what stage of the product that you're working in. And so, I'm definitely feeling my fair share of impostor syndrome here. But it's been really fun to stretch my brand and, like, approach problems from, like, a completely different perspective and also using different tools. But, you know, working with Mike and Chris makes it so much easier because they really make it feel like you're part of their team, and so that definitely goes a long way. LINDSEY: It just goes to show everyone gets impostor syndrome sometimes [laughter], even senior product managers at thoughtbot [laughter]. Thanks for that intro. It's, you know, the thoughtbot team learns along the way, too, you know, especially if usually you're focused on a different stage of product development. Mike, it's been only three weeks or a very long three weeks since last we checked in with you, kind of forever in startup time. So, I think the last time, we were just getting to know you two. And you were walking us through the concept, this merging of the digital and physical world of music, and how we interact with music keepsakes or merchandise. How's my pitch? MIKE: Good. Great. You're killing it. [laughter] LINDSEY: And has anything major changed to that concept in the last three weeks? MIKE: No. I mean, I can't believe it's only been three weeks. It feels like it's been a long time since we last talked. It's been an intense three weeks, for sure. No, it's been going really well. I mean, we launched all sorts of stuff. I'm trying to think of anything that's sort of fundamentally changed in terms of the plan itself or kind of our, yeah, what we've been working on. And I think we've pretty much stayed the course to sort of get to where we are now. But it's been really intensive. I think also having sort of Thanksgiving in there, and we were kind of pushing to get something live right before the Thanksgiving break. And so, that week just felt, I mean, I was just dead by, you know, like, Thursday of Thanksgiving. I think we all were. So, it's been intense, I would say, is the short answer. And I'm happy, yeah, to get into kind of where things are at. But big picture, it's been an intense three weeks. LINDSEY: That's cool. And when we talked, you were, you know, definitely getting into research and user interviews. Have those influenced any, you know, changes along the way in the plan? MIKE: Yeah. They've been really helpful. You know, we'd never really done that before in any of the sort of past projects that we've worked on together. And so, I think just being able to, you know, read through some of those scripts and then sit through some of the interviews and just kind of hearing people's honest assessment of some things has been really interesting. I'm trying to think if it's materially affected anything. I guess, you know, at first, we were, like, we kind of had some assumptions around, okay, let's try to find, like...adult gift-givers sounds like the wrong thing, adults who give gifts as, like, a persona. The idea that, like, you know, maybe you gift your siblings gifts, and then maybe this could be a good gift idea. And I think, you know, we had a hard time kind of finding people to talk in an interesting way about that. And I think we've kind of realized it's kind of a hard persona to kind of chop up and talk about, right, Chris? I don't know [crosstalk 04:55] CHRIS: Well, it also seemed to, from my understanding of it, it seemed to, like, genuinely stress out the people who were being interviewed... MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: Because it's kind of about a stressful topic [inaudible 05:03], you know, and, like, especially -- LINDSEY: Why? [laughs] CHRIS: Well, I think, I don't know, now I'm making assumptions. Maybe because we're close to the holiday season, and that's a topic in the back of everybody's mind. But yeah, Danny, would you disagree with that? Those folks, from what we heard, seemed like they were the most difficult to kind of extract answers from. But then, if the subject changed and we treated them as a different persona, several of those interviews proved to be quite fruitful. So, it's just really interesting. DANNY: Yeah. It really started, like, you kind of try to get some answers out of people, and there's, like, some level of people trying to please you to some extent. That's just, like, naturally, how it starts. And you just, like, keep trying to drill into the answers. And you just keep asking people like, "So, what kind of gifts do you give?" And they're just like, "Oh my goodness, like, I haven't thought about buying gifts for my sister in [laughs], like, you know, in forever. And now, like [laughs], I don't know where to go." And they get, like, pretty stressed out about it. But then we just kind of started shifting into like, "All right, cool, never mind about that. Like, do you like listening to music?" And they're like, "Yes." And then it just kind of explodes from there. And they're like, "This last concert that I went to..." and all of this stuff. And it was much more fruitful kind of leaning more towards that, actually, yeah. LINDSEY: That's fascinating. I guess that speaks to, especially at this stage and the speed and the amount of interviews you're doing, the need for being, like, really agile in those interviews, and then, like, really quickly applying what you're learning to making the next one even more valuable. MIKE: Yeah. And I think, you know, like, we launched just a little sort of website experiment or, like, an e-commerce experiment right before Thanksgiving. And I think now, you know, we're able to sort of take some of those learnings from those interviews and apply them to both sort of our ad copy itself but also just different landing pages in different language on the different kind of versions of the site and see if we can find some resonance with some of these audience groups. So, it's been interesting. LINDSEY: Are you still trying to figure out who that early adopter audience is, who that niche persona is? MIKE: I think we -- CHRIS: Yes, we are. I think we have a good idea of who it is. And I think right now we're just trying to figure out really how to reach those people. That, I think, is the biggest challenge right now for us. MIKE: Yeah. With the e-commerce experiment it was sort of a very specific niche thing that is a little bit adjacent to what I think we want to be doing longer term with Goodz. And so, it's weird. It's like, we're in a place we're like, oh, we really want to find the people that want this thing. But also, this thing isn't necessarily the thing that we think we're going to make longer term, so let's not worry too hard about finding them. You know what I mean? It's been an interesting sort of back and forth with that. CHRIS: From the interviews that we conducted, you know, we identified three key personas. Most of them have come up, but I'll just relist them. There's the sibling gift giver. There was the merch buyers; these are people who go to concerts and buy merchandise, you know, T-shirts, albums, records, things along those lines to support the artists that they love. And then the final one that was identified we gave the title of the 'Proud Playlister'. And these are people who are really into their digital media platforms, love making playlists, and love sharing those playlists with their friends. And that, I would say, the proud playlister is really the one that we have focused on in terms of the storefront that we launched, like, the product is pretty much specifically for them. But the lessons that we're learning while making this product and trying to get this into the hands of the proud playlisters will feed into kind of the merch buyers. MIKE: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's funny, like, this week is kind of a poignant week for this, right? Because it's the week that Spotify Wrapped launched, right? So, it's like, in the course of any given year, it's probably, like, the one week of the year that lots and lots and lots of people are thinking about playlists all of a sudden, so trying a little bit to see if we can ride that wave or just kind of dovetail with that a bit, too. LINDSEY: Absolutely. And do you want to give just, like, the really quick reminder of what the product experience is like? MIKE: Oh yeah [laughs], good call. CHRIS: This is a prototype of it. It's called the Goodz Mixtape. Basically, the idea is that you purchase one of these from us. You give us a playlist URL. We program that URL onto the NFC chip that's embedded in the Good itself. And then when you scan this Good, that playlist will come up. So, it's a really great way of you make a playlist for somebody, and you want to gift it to them; this is a great way to do that. You have a special playlist, maybe between you and a friend or you and a partner. This is a good way to commemorate that playlist, turn it into a physical thing, give that digital file value and presence in the physical world. LINDSEY: Great. Okay, so you casually mentioned this launch of an e-commerce store that happened last week. MIKE: It didn't feel casual. LINDSEY: Yeah. Why [laughter]...[inaudible 09:45] real casual. Why did you launch it? How's it going? MIKE: I don't know. Why did we launch it? I mean, well, we wanted to be able to test some assumptions. I think, you know, we wanted to get the brand out there a little bit, get our website out there, kind of introduce the concept. You know, this is a very...not that we've invented this product category, but it is a pretty obscure product category, right? And so, there's a lot of sort of consumer education that I think that has to go on for people to wrap their heads around this and why they'd want this. So, I think we wanted to start that process a little bit correctly, sort of in advance of a larger launch next year, and see if we could find some early community around this. You know, if we can find those core people who just absolutely love this, and connect with it, and go wild around it, then those are the people that we're going to be able to get a ton of information from and build for that persona, right? It's like, cool, these are the people who love this. Let's build more for them and go find other people like this. So, I think, for us, it was that. And then, honestly, it was also just, you know, let's test our manufacturing and fulfillment and logistics capabilities, right? I mean, this is...as much as we are a B2B, you know, SaaS platform or that's what we envision the future of Goodz being, there is a physical component of this. And, you know, we do have that part basically done at this point. But we just, you know, what is it like to order 1,000 of these? What is it like to put these in the mail to people and, you know, actually take orders? And just some of that processing because we do envision a more wholesale future where we're doing, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of this at a time. And so, I think we just want to button up and do some dry runs before we get to those kinds of numbers. CHRIS: I think it also it's important to remember that we are talking in startup time. And while this last week seems like an eternity, it's been a week [laughs] that we've had this in place. So, we're just starting to learn these things, and we plan on continuing to do so. MIKE: Yeah. But I think we thought that getting a website up would be a good way to just start kind of testing everything more. LINDSEY: Great. Danny, what went into deciding what would be in this first version of the site and the e-commerce offering? DANNY: I mean, a lot of it was kind of mostly driven by Chris and Mike. They kind of had a vision and an idea of what they wanted to sell. Obviously, from the user interviews, we were starting to hone in a little bit more and, like, we had some assumptions going into it. I think we ultimately did kind of feel like, yeah, I think, like, the playlisters seem to be, like, the target market. But just hearing it more and hearing more excitement from them was definitely just kind of like, yeah, I think we can double down on this piece. But, ultimately, like, in terms of launching the e-commerce platform, and the storefront, and the website, like, just literally looking at the user journey and being like, how does a user get from getting onto a site, like, as soon as they land there to, like, finishing a purchase? And what points do they need? What are the key things that they need to think through and typically will run into? And a lot of it is just kind of reflecting on our own personal buyer behavior. And, also, as we were getting closer to the launch, starting to work through some of those assumptions about buyer behavior. As we got there, we obviously had some prototypes. We had some screenshots that we were already working with. Like, the design team was already starting to build out some of the site. And so, we would just kind of show it to them, show it to our users, and just be like, hey, like, how do you expect to purchase this? Like, what's the next step that you expect to take? And we'd just kind of, like, continue to iterate on that piece. And so... LINDSEY: Okay. So you were, before launching, even showing some of those mockups and starting to incorporate them in the user interviews. DANNY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we tried to get it in there in front of them as early as possible, partially because, like, at some point in the user interviews, like, you're mostly just trying to first understand, like, who are our target customers? Who are these people? And we have an assumption of or an idea of who we think they are. But really, like, once you start talking to people, you kind of are, like, okay, like, this thing that I thought maybe it wasn't so accurate, or, like, the way that they're kind of talking about these products doesn't 100% match what I originally walked into this, you know, experiment with. And so, we, like, start to hone in on that. But after a certain point, you kind of get that idea and now you're just like, okay, you seem to be, like, the right person to talk to. And so, if I were to show you this thing, do you get it, right? Like, do you understand what's happening? Like, how to use this thing, what this product even does. And then also, like, does the checkout experience feel intuitive for you? Is it as simple as, like, I just want to buy a T-shirt? So, like, I'm just going to go by the T-shirt, pick a size, and, you know, move on with my life. Can we make it as seamless as that? LINDSEY: And so, you mentioned it's only been a week since it's been live. Have you been able to learn anything from it yet? And how are you trying to drive people to it today? MIKE: Yeah, I think we learned that sales is hard [laughs] and slow, and it takes some time. But it's good, and we're learning a lot. I mean, it's been a while since I've really dug deep in, like, the analytics and marketing kind of metrics. And so, we've got all the Google Tag Manager stuff, you know, hooked up and just, you know, connecting with just exploring, honestly, like the TikTok advertising platform, and the YouTube Pre-Rolls, and Shorts. And, like, a lot of stuff that I actually, since the last time I was heavily involved in this stuff, is just totally new and different. And so, it's been super interesting to see the funnel and sort of see where people are getting in the site, where people are dropping off. You know, we had an interesting conversation in our thoughtbot sync yesterday or the day before, where we were seeing how, you know, we're getting lots of people to the front page and, actually, a good number of people to the product page, and, actually, like, you know, not the worst number of people to the cart. But then you were seeing really high cart abandonment rates. And then, you know, when you start Googling, and you're like, oh, actually, everybody sees very high cart abandonment rates; that's just a thing. But we were seeing, like, the people were viewing their cart seven or eight times, and they were on there sort of five times as long as they were on any other page. And it's this problem that I think Danny is talking about where, you know, we need to actually get a playlist URL. This gets into the minutiae of what we're building, but basically like, we need to get them to give us a playlist URL in order to check out, right? And so, you sort of have to, like, put yourself back in the mind of someone who's scrolling on Instagram, and they see this as an ad, and they click it, and they're like, oh, that thing was cool. Sure, I will buy one of those. And then it's like, no, actually, you need to, you know, leave this, go into a different app, find a play...like, it suddenly just puts a lot of the mental strain. But it's a lot. It's a cognitive load, greater than, as you said, just buying a T-shirt and telling what size you want. So, thinking through ways to really trim that down, shore up the amount of time people are spending on a cart. All that stuff has been fascinating. And then just, like, the different demographic kind of work that we're using, all the social ads platforms to kind of identify has been really interesting. It's still early. But, actually, like, Chris and I were just noticing...we were just talking right before this call. Like, we're actually starting to get, just in the last 12 hours, a bunch more, a bunch, but more people signing up to our email newsletter, probably in the last 12 hours that we have in the whole of last week. Yeah, I don't know, just even that sort of learning, it's like, oh, do people just need time with a thing, or they come back and they think about it? CHRIS: Yeah. Could these people be working on their playlists? That's a question that I have. MIKE: [chuckles] Yeah, me too. CHRIS: It's like, you know, I'm making a playlist to drop into this product. It's really interesting. And I think it gives insight to kind of, you know, how personal this product could be, that this is something that takes effort on the part of the consumer because they're making something to give or to keep for themselves, which is, I think, really interesting but definitely hard, too. DANNY: Yeah. And I also want to also clarify, like, Chris just kind of said it, like, especially for viewers and listeners, like, that's something that we've been hearing a lot from user interviews, too, right? Like, the language that they're using is, like, this is a thing that I care about. Like it's a representation of who I am. It's a representation of, like, the relationship that I have with this person that I'm going to be giving, you know, this gift to or this playlist to, specifically, like, people who feel, like, really passionate about these things. And, I mean, like, I did, too. Like, when I was first trying to, like, date, my wife, like, I spent, like, hours, hours trying to pick the coolest songs that I thought, you know, were like, oh, like, she's going to think I'm so cool because, like, I listen to these, like, super low-key indie rock bands, and, like, you know, so many more hours than she probably spent listening to it. But that's [laughs] kind of, like, honestly, what we heard a lot in a lot of these interviews, so... LINDSEY: Yeah, same. No, totally resonates. And I also went to the site this week, and I was like, oh damn, this is cool. Like, and immediately it was like, oh, you know, I've got these three, you know, music friends that we go to shows together. I'm like, oh, this would be so cool to get them, you know, playlists of, like, music we've seen together. So, you might see me in the cart. I won't abandon it. MIKE: Please. I would love that. CHRIS: Don't think about it too long if you could -- [laughter]. LINDSEY: I won't. I won't. CHRIS: I mean, I would say I'm really excited about having the site not only as a vehicle for selling some of these things but also as a vehicle for just honing our message. It's like another tool that we have in our arsenal. During the user interviews themselves, we were talking in abstract terms, and now we have something concrete that we can bounce off people, which is, I think, going to be a huge boon to our toolset as we continue to refine and define this product. MIKE: Yeah, that's a good point. LINDSEY: Yeah. You mentioned that they're signing up for, like, email updates. Do you have something you're sending out? Or are you kind of just creating a list? Totally fine, just building a list. MIKE: [laughs] No. CHRIS: It's a picture of Mike and I giving a big thumbs up. That's, yeah. [laughter] MIKE: No. But maybe...that was the thing; I was like, oh great, they're signing up. And I was like, gosh, they're signing up. Okay [laughter], now we got to write something. But we will. LINDSEY: Tips to making your playlist [crosstalk 19:11] playing your playlist -- MIKE: Yeah [crosstalk 19:13]. CHRIS: Right. And then also...tips to making your playlists. Also, we're advancing on the collectible side of things, too. We are, hopefully, going to have two pilot programs in place, one with a major label and one with a major artist. And we're really excited about that. LINDSEY: Okay. That's cool. I assume you can't tell us very much. What can you tell us? MIKE: Yeah. We won't mention names [chuckles] in case it just goes away, as these things sometimes do. But yeah, there's a great band who's super excited about these, been around for a long time, some good name recognition, and a very loyal fan base. They want to do sort of a collection of these. I think maybe we showed the little...I can't remember if we showed the little crates that we make or not, but basically, [inaudible 19:52] LINDSEY: The last time, yeah. MIKE: So, they want to sell online a package that's, you know, five or six Goodz in a crate, which I think will be cool and a great sort of sales experiment. And then there's a couple of artists that we're going to do an experiment with that's through their label that's more about tour...basically, giving things away on tour. So, they're going to do some giveaway fan club street team-style experiments with some of these on the road. So, first, it's ideal, provided both those things happen, because we definitely want to be exploring on the road and online stuff. And so, this kind of lets us do both at once and get some real learnings as to kind of how people...because we still don't know. We haven't really put these in people's hands yet. And it's just, like, are people scanning these a lot? Are they not? Is this sort of an object that's sitting on their shelf? Is it...yeah, it's just, like, there's so much we're going to learn once we get these into people's hands. LINDSEY: Do you have the infrastructure to sort of see how many times the cards are scanned? CHRIS: Mm-hmm. Yep, we do. MIKE: Yeah. So, we can see how many times each one is scanned, where they're scanned, that sort of thing. CHRIS: Kind of our next step, and something we were just talking about today with the thoughtbot team, is building out kind of what the backend will be for this, both for users and also for labels and artists. That it will allow them to go in and post updates to the Goodz, to allow them to use these for promotion as people, you know, scan into them to give them links to other sites related to the artists that they might be interested in before they move on to the actual musical playlist. So, that's kind of the next step for us. And knowing how users use these collectibles, both the kind of consumer Good and the artist collectibles that we were just talking about, will help inform how we build that platform. LINDSEY: Very cool. And right now, the online store itself that's built in Shopify? MIKE: Yeah. The homepage is Webflow that Kevin from the thoughtbot team really spearheaded in building for us. And then, yeah, the e-commerce is Shopify. LINDSEY: Y'all have been busy. MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: Is there anything else maybe that I haven't asked about yet that we should touch on in terms of updates or things going on with the product? MIKE: I don't know. I don't think so. I think, like Chris said, I mean, we're just...like, now that the site has kind of stood up and we're really switched over to kind of marketing and advertising on that, definitely digging into the backend of this kind of SaaS platform that's going to probably be a big focus for the rest of the, you know, the program, to be honest. Yeah, just some other things we can do on the next front that could eventually build into the backend that I think can be interesting. No, I guess [laughs] the short answer is no, nothing, like, substantial. Those are the big [crosstalk 22:26] LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, that was my next question, too, which is kind of like, what's next, or what's the next chunk of work? So, it's obviously lots more optimization and learning on the e-commerce platform, and then this other mega area, which is, you know, what does this look like as a SaaS solution? What's the vision? But also, where do we start? Which I'm sure, Danny, is a lot of work that you specialize in as far as, like, scoping how to approach these kinds of projects. DANNY: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we were just talking about this today. Like, part of it is, like, we can, like, really dig into, like, the e-commerce site and, like, really nailing it down to get it to the place where it's like, we're driving tons more traffic and also getting as low of a, like, cart abandonment rate as possible, right? But also, considering the fact that this is in the future, like, large-scale vision. And there's, like, also, like, we're starting to, I think, now iron out a lot of those, like, milestones where we're kind of like, okay, like, we got, like, a short-term vision, which is, like, the e-commerce site. We got a mid-term vision and a potential long-term vision. How do we validate this long-term vision while also still like, keeping this short-term vision moving forward? And, like, this mid-term vision is also going to, like, help potentially, either, like, steer us towards that long-term or maybe even, like, pivot us, like, into a completely different direction. So, like, where do you put your card, right? Like, how much energy and time do we put into, like, each of these areas? And that's kind of, like, the interesting part of this is starting to talk through that, starting to kind of prioritize, like, how we can maximize on our effort, like, our development and design effort so that things just kind of line up more naturally and organically for our future visioning, so... MIKE: Yeah. A lot of different things to juggle. I saw there was a question. Somebody asked what the URL is, but I don't seem to be able to [crosstalk 24:10]. LINDSEY: The same question as me. We got to drop the link for this thing. MIKE: Yeah, getthegoodz.com. CHRIS: That's G-O-O-D-Z. LINDSEY: Get in there, folks MIKE: Yeah, get [crosstalk 24:23]. LINDSEY: And let us know how it goes. MIKE: Yeah, please [laughs]. Any bugs? Let us know. Yeah. I think that those...yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Danny, in terms of juggling kind of the near-term and longer-term stuff. You know, it's a good kind of reminder our big focus, you know, in the new year is going to be fundraising, right? We're already talking to some investors and things like that. So, it's like, okay, yes, as you said, we could tweak the cart. We could tweak the e-commerce. Or, like, can we paint the big picture of what the longer-term version of this company is going to be in a way that makes it compelling for investment to come in so that there can be a long-term version of this company? And then we can build those things. So yeah, it's definitely a balance between the two. LINDSEY: Oh, also, just casual fundraising as well. [crosstalk 25:06] MIKE: Yeah, yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: But it's hard. It's like, you wake up in the morning. It's like, do I want to, like, write cold emails to investors? Or do I want to, like, look at Google Analytics and, like, tweak ad copy? That's actually more fun. So, yes. LINDSEY: Yeah, life of the founder, for sure. All right. So, that's getthegoodz (Goodz with a z) .com. Check it out. We'll tune in and see what happens with the e-commerce site, what happens with the SaaS planning the next time that we check in. But Chris, Mike, Danny, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on over the last few weeks: the good, the bad, the challenge, the cart abandonment. And, you know, best of luck to you over the next few weeks, and we'll be sure to check in and see how it's going. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Transcript:  LINDSEY: Thank you to our viewers and listeners. We are catching up once again with one of the startups going through the thoughtbot Incubator. My name is Lindsey Christensen. I'm joined today by Jordyn Bonds, who heads up the thoughtbot incubator, as well as our Co-Founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal. Welcome, everybody. MIKE: Thanks, Lindsey. LINDSEY: Before we get started, before we put Chris and Mike back in the hot seat, at the top here, Jordyn, we have a special announcement for our viewers and listeners. JORDYN: Application window is open for session 1 of 2024, folks. You can go to thoughtbot.com/incubator and apply. And Chris and Mike can tell you how easy or hard applying was. MIKE: It was easy. It was totally easy. It's a very straightforward process. CHRIS: Yeah, it was way more straightforward than a lot of applications that we've dealt with in the past, for sure. JORDYN: Ha-ha. And if you've got a business idea that involves software but you haven't gotten anything out there yet, come talk to us. We will help you make sure that it's a good idea and that there are people who might buy it, and maybe get you even a little further than that. MIKE: We actually have a friend who's considering applying. I'll tell him applications are open. He's worried his idea is not big enough to actually be a business idea, so we'll see. CHRIS: Even the process of doing the application was really helpful for us because it helped us get aligned on exactly what we were doing, yeah. JORDYN: I love that. And I found that to be true when I was a founder applying to some of these things, in particular, applying for an SBIR grant was one of the most challenging things that we did, but it was so productive. I was so annoyed by it at the time, and then I cribbed from that thing. It actually sort of forced us to make a business plan [laughs], and then, basically, we ran it, and it was great [laughs]. CHRIS: Yeah. I think that was, for us, that was our point where we were like, "Is this idea fleshed out enough to move forward?" And we were like, "Yes, it is. Let's go. Let's do this." JORDYN: So, use the application as a forcing function, everybody. It will help you clarify your thinking. LINDSEY: Yeah. Jordyn, what would you say to Mike's friend who's questioning if their idea is big enough? How do you respond to that sentiment? JORDYN: That is a fascinating sentiment because I feel like so much more often, I am trying to help founders with the opposite problem where they think this thing is so big that they are not thinking about what step 1 is going to look like. They're just, like, in 10 years, we're going to be the next Amazon, and I'm like, "Maybe [laughter]. Let me help you figure out how to get to that giant vision." So, I don't come across the "Is this big enough to be a business?" question as often. And, I don't know, what would I say? I guess I need the details. LINDSEY: It could be a perfect fit MIKE: It could be. JORDYN: It could be a perfect fit. LINDSEY: In a way, that's what you're answering, right? MIKE: Right. LINDSEY: In some of this work. MIKE: That is true. So, yeah, you guys would certainly...just thinking through the process we've gone through the last two months, it would definitely help them flesh that out. LINDSEY: Which is a great segue. MIKE: Great segue. LINDSEY: Chris and Mike, we're actually coming up to the end of your incubator time. CHRIS: It's so sad. LINDSEY: Can you believe it? MIKE: It's gone by really fast. I mean, eight weeks is not a long time, but it has gone by very, very fast. CHRIS: It felt like a very long time in the middle of it. MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: But now that it's over, it feels like a blink that it's coming to a close. MIKE: I don't know. It's funny. I think we had some note in our retro today that was like, maybe the very end of the year is not the best time to do an accelerator just because you have, like, the holidays kind of jumping in here in the end. So, that might have helped make it feel like a... I feel like the end of the year always feels like a rush anyway. So, I think just life gets a little bit busier this time of year, too, but yeah. CHRIS: Yeah, my gingerbread man decorating game is, like, really down this season because we've been so busy. Tragic. LINDSEY: Chris, can you remind our viewers and listeners who might not be familiar what was the idea that you and Mike have been exploring with the incubator or, like, what did you come in with? CHRIS: So, with Goodz, what we're trying to do is make little, physical collectibles objects that connect back to the digital content that a user loves. The idea being that today, we are awash in these digital files, links, so many things on our desktops, on our phones, on our devices, and it's really hard to tell which part of those are really, really important to us. So, by giving them a presence in the physical world, that denotes that's something that's really important, worth keeping, worth sharing, and showing off to your friends and family. And to start this off, mostly because Mike and I are both kind of music nerds, we're starting off with a music focus, but at some point, we're hoping to move into other realms, too. LINDSEY: And a lot of the incubator, as repeat listeners will know, is focused on really kind of evolving user interviews all the way through and narrowing in on, you know, a core audience, a core market. Mike, how has that evolution been? I think the last time we chatted was around three weeks ago. What has the latest iteration of user interviews looked like in terms of the people you're talking to and even what you're asking them? MIKE: It's been a really fascinating process. I mean, I'm trying to think of where we were exactly the last time we talked to you, but I think we'd probably just launched the e-commerce site that we had been experimenting with putting up. LINDSEY: Yeah, exactly. MIKE: And so, and we really then started cranking on user interviews kind of once that was live. And so, moving away from the conceptual and more into like, "Okay, share your screen. Here's the link. Like, tell me what you think is going on here," and really sort of getting users who had never, you know, never heard our pitch, never been involved with us to sort of try to wrap their heads around what we are and what we're doing just based on that website and trying to sort of make iterative changes based on that. You know, for me, because I had not done user interviews very much in the past, like, it's very tempting, like, you get sort of 1 note from 1 person in 1 interview, and you're like, oh, we need to change this word. That word didn't make any sense to them, or this thing needs to be blue instead of pink. I think, for me, it was like, all right, how do we kind of synthesize this data in a responsible way? And it emerged naturally, which, I mean, Jordyn and all thoughtbot folks said that it would, but you sort of started hearing the same things again and again. And we never really got to a place where, like, you heard the exact same things from everyone. But there were enough buckets, I feel like, where we're like, okay, like, this part really isn't making that much sense to people, or, like, we do really need to, you know, structure this differently to convey. So, it was a bunch of that kind of work over the last three weeks or so and sort of just getting a sense of like, are we conveying our message? It's hard. I mean, it's a new, like, we're not the only people making physical products with NFC chips in them, but it is not the most common, like, product. Like, it is kind of a new category out there. And so, really trying to understand just right off the bat, do people get it? And you get wildly different answers [laughs] as to whether they get it or they don't, which has been fascinating, too. JORDYN: Yeah. [crosstalk 7:12] LINDSEY: Chris or Jordyn, anything to add there? JORDYN: Yeah. You get the best, like, bootcamp in the don't overreact to a single user interview experience in some ways because we [laughs]...it would literally be like, interview in the morning someone says this thing. Interview in the afternoon, someone says the exact opposite thing [laughter]. And you're like, okay [laughs], like, which one of these things are we going to respond to, if either of them? CHRIS: Yeah. It's hard. As somebody with, like, a strong desire to please, it's hard to reign yourself in and want to change things immediately, but it definitely makes sense to do so in the long run. MIKE: But yeah, but, I mean, like I said, I do feel like it kind of came down to buckets. It's like, okay, you're that. I can, like, categorize you with all those other people and you with all those other people. And yeah, I hear you. I'm like, yeah, it's tempting to want to please them all. But I think with this one, we're fighting hard to be like...or we sort of have a philosophy that this product is emphatically not for everyone because, at the end of the day, you get a lot of people who are like, "Wait, you're just putting a link to a streaming playlist on a physical object? Why don't I just text someone the link?" And sometimes that breaks down by age group, like, 18-year-olds being like, "What are you talking about, old man? LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: Like, why the hell would I do that? It makes no sense." But it sort of skews all over the age ranges. But then there'll be other people who are 18 or 20 years old who are like, "Wow, I never had cassettes when I was growing up," or "I never got to make, you know, mixtapes or CD-Rs for people." And like, you know, so it's, yeah, it's about finding the people who are the early adopters. As Jordyn has said a lot, it's like, we need to find those early adopters and, like, make them love us, and then other people will come later. CHRIS: I mean, some of the most gratifying moments, I think, are there's been some interviews where people have been so excited that after the interview, they've gone and purchased our products, which is just, like, the coolest feeling ever. LINDSEY: Wow. MIKE: Yeah, it's pretty cool. LINDSEY: Are you open to sharing a little bit more about what those buckets or what those segments look like? CHRIS: I mean, I think there's folks who outright just get it almost immediately, and I think those people tend to be hardcore music collectors, hardcore music fans, Jordyn and Mike, please feel free to jump in if you disagree with any of this. They just get it right off the bat. Then I think there's, in my experience, there's another bucket of people who are a little more hesitant, and maybe they wouldn't buy it, but they seemed really excited about the idea of getting one as a gift, which is really interesting. They're like, "I don't know if I'd buy this, but I'd really like to have one." And then there is another segment, like, which Mike just mentioned, of folks who just don't see the value in this whatsoever, which is totally fair. MIKE: Yeah, totally. I think it's also...I see it almost as, like, a matrix. There's, like, desirability, and, like, technical understanding because people were like, "I technically understand what this is, and I do not want it in my life." Or like, "I get what this is and, oh my God, I have to have that," or like, "I don't really understand what you're talking about, but, man, I love physical stuff. Like, sure I want..." you know, it's like, it goes across those two planes, I think. JORDYN: I will say that it, I think you alluded to this before, Mike, but, like, we're going to run a whole analysis of...because we did a ton of interviews, and we haven't actually done that, like, sort of data-driven thing of like, are there trends in the demographics somewhere that we're not getting? Because the pattern has not been there. Like, someone will talk to an 18-year-old, you know, at 1:00 p.m. who is just, like, "Why on earth would I ever want this?" And then I, like, you know, will talk to a 21-year-old who is like, "I love this." And it's like, why? Like, this is the answer. The thing we're trying to get out now is, like, what is the difference between those two people? It's not a demographic thing that we can see from the outside, so what is it instead? But with consumer stuff like this, often, you don't necessarily...you don't need that in such great detail when you're starting. You just kind of, like, throw it out there and see who grabs it, and then you start to build sort of cohorts around that. And that is kind of what these interviews have shown us is that there are people who will grab it, and that was part of what we were trying to validate. Are there people who Mike and Chris do not know personally who will, like, get this and be psyched about it immediately? And that is, you know, check unequivocally true. Like Chris said, there are people that we were, you know, that we had recruited on this user interviews platform [chuckles] who then just turned around and bought the product because they were so psyched about it. One of the guys I interviewed was like, "Can I invest in your company right now?" Like, during the interview, and I was like, "Maybe?" [laughs] CHRIS: There was, like, another person who wanted to work for us immediately... JORDYN: Yes, great. CHRIS: Which was really interesting and kind of awesome. JORDYN: Yeah, they're like, "Are you hiring?" You're just like, okay. So, it's validating that there are people all over that spectrum. Like, where those trends lie, though, which is, I think, what you were asking, Lindsey, not as straightforward and in a fascinating way. So, we still have a little more, like, number crunching to do on that, and we may have an answer for you later. LINDSEY: That's exciting. Exactly. I'm curious: what are the connecting dots between the folks who are really into it, and how might that impact how you approach the business? MIKE: Yeah, it's hard. It's definitely going to be a niche to start. And so, we got to figure out kind of got to crack the code on how we find those people. LINDSEY: And, Mike, I think you had also mentioned last time that, you know, you or both of you have a network kind of in the music industry, and you've been floating the idea past some people there. Have you been having more of those conversations over the last few weeks, too? MIKE: We have, yeah. Well, so yeah, we've had a couple more just kind of straight-up pitch calls versus like, "Hey, there's this cool thing we're doing," and having those people be like, "Cool. Let's do a pilot." And so, they're ordering, you know, 500 or 1,000 units at a time, which is rad. LINDSEY: Whoa. MIKE: For the first...yeah. LINDSEY: Okay, very cool. MIKE: Yeah. The first two or three of those should happen in January or maybe early February, but yeah, those are done and in production and arriving soon. So, that's really exciting with some cool bands. We won't say the names in case it doesn't [laughs] work out, but it does look like it's going to work out. LINDSEY: And so, it's specific bands that are creating merch for their fans. MIKE: Yeah, yeah. So, we're working with one artist manager on a band that he manages, and then we're working with a record label. And they're going to try with a couple of smaller artists. And so, yeah, it's actually really good for us. One is going to be straight-up sales, most likely, and it's, like, selling these things. And the other ones will be given away as kind of promo items on tour artists, which is also a really interesting use case for us, too, that we're excited about and using them as a way to sort of get email addresses and, like, fans engaged and stuff, so... And then yeah, then I had another conversation, and they want to talk about doing some pilots. So far, like, that side of things is going great. We're sort of 3 for 4 in terms of initial calls leading to pilots right off the bat, which is kind of unheard of from [laughs] my experience. LINDSEY: Yeah, I'd say so. No, a lot of very good signals. MIKE: Really good signals. But then we were able to turn some of those into user interview conversations, actually, as well over the course of the last couple of weeks, which has been really helpful, like, talking to manager and label-type people about what they might want out of a software product that is associated with this because we're not just thinking about making physical products but sort of coupling that with an online toolset. And that part, we haven't gotten as far along as we did with the direct-to-consumer e-commerce, but it's been fascinating. LINDSEY: So, what has been happening with the online shop? As you noted the last time we talked, it was just a baby less than a week-old Shopify site getting, you know, some first hits of people going around maybe putting things in their basket. I'm sure a lot has happened over the last few weeks. What kind of work, what kind of insights have you seen around the site? CHRIS: We've been, I mean, we've been selling stuff at a slow but steady pace. It's been great because it's enough to, you know, because our product really straddles the line between physical and digital; there's a lot of physical aspects to this that we need to figure out and kind of the level of orders that we've been getting have been really...it's, like, the perfect number to think about fulfillment issues, things like what kind of package does this go in? How do we mail this out? Things along those lines, just very basic, practical questions that needed to be answered. But yeah, it's been great. We actually, I mean, we hit our goal for the amount of these that we wanted to get in people's hands before Christmas, which is pretty awesome. And we continue now with the lessons learned. I think our plan is to try and make a push for Valentine's Day because these seem like they would be a great Valentine's Day present: make a playlist; share it with your loved one; share it with a friend; share it with somebody you don't like at all. Who knows? LINDSEY: [laughs] CHRIS: But yeah, that's kind of our next sales push, we think. LINDSEY: The hate playlist. CHRIS: [inaudible 15:40] hate playlist. MIKE: Yeah, perfect. Real passive-aggressive. CHRIS: Just Blue Monday, like, by New Order, like, 14 times. LINDSEY: [laughs] Yeah, every song is just like a sub-tweet... MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: About something they've done and [inaudible 15:53] Have you updated the site? Like, how do you decide what gets updated on the site? [laughter] Everyone laughed. MIKE: It was a little haphazard, I would say, there for a minute. But -- CHRIS: We got the site up very, very quickly. And from my perspective, I've been dealing a lot with the physical side of things, just getting great product photos up there, which is, like, something that thoughtbot has actually been super helpful with. You know, everybody on the team is starting to submit photos of their Goodz in the real world and using their Goodz, which is great. And we continued to update the site with that but also making sure our text made sense, refining copy in response to things that people said during user interviews. The checkout process, the process of adding the URL that we point the Good to that, we did a bunch of experimentation there based on what people were saying during user interviews. So, it has been a little haphazard, but we have made a bunch of changes. LINDSEY: Jordyn, has there been any experiment, like, structured experimentation around the site or how you're getting people to the site? JORDYN: Mike actually did a little bit of ad funnel work that I don't think we've, like, even remotely scratched the surface of. So, I wish I could say that was conclusive, but I think we've found a little bit more...here are plenty of sales that are from people that nobody here knows. MIKE: True. JORDYN: So, people are finding out about this somehow [laughs]. But I think it's a little bit, like, word-of-mouth sort of chain of events is our sense so far. I wanted to say, though, about the site, we did get what Chris was saying about, like, this experiment was, in part, about fulfillment and figuring out how fulfillment would work and packaging, and not just messaging and not just closing the sale with consumers, but also, just, like, how do you fulfill these? But one of the really fun things we've managed to do in the last, since we talked last time, which I can't even believe...I feel like this wasn't even a gleam in our eyes for this project, but we managed to get out, like, stood up and out the door, and working in production in the last few weeks is a way for folks to actually assign the URL to their mixtape themselves. Previously, the plan had just been for Chris and Mike to do that, which is fine but a little bit unscalable, right? CHRIS: That was a huge dream or, like, that was high on our wish list. And we didn't think we'd get to it. And it's been pretty amazing that we have, yeah. JORDYN: Yeah, so that was one thing that is an update to the site. So, then we had to do a little bit of, like, micro iterating, on, like, the messaging around that. Like, how do you communicate to people? This is, like, a little bit of an abstract challenge, right? Like, here's this object. It's going to point to a digital thing. How do you tell the physical object which digital thing it's pointing to [laughs]? So, a lot of our recent interviewing has been to sort of get inside the mind of the consumer about how they're thinking about that and how we can best communicate that to them. So that's been a lot of the, like, recent iteration is getting that mechanism stood up and then the messaging around it. CHRIS: It's also really cool because it adds to the utility of the object itself in the sense that now our Goodz, when a user gets one, they can add a URL to their Good themselves, but they can also change that URL. So, it's much more malleable. JORDYN: Which is something that in one of our early user interviews was, like, a hot request [laughs], and we were like, "Someday, someday." And it's, you know, I should actually go back to her and be like, "Someday is today." [laughter] MIKE: Well, yeah, and just as Chris was saying, it just makes it so much easier to ship these out without having to manually load them, and you could sell them, and yeah, retail outlets, like, it just opens up a lot of opportunities for us for them. LINDSEY: And Mike mentioned that some of the, like, kind of future looking aspirations for the solution are, you know, how might you figure out the B2B, like, SaaS aspect of it? Jordyn, is that something that's been explored at all at this point, or is it early? JORDYN: That experiment I just described is actually sort of the link between the two projects. It sort of proves the concept and proves the value in some ways, and it has given us a little bit more visibility into sort of how we're going to execute some of this technical stuff. Like, how easy, how difficult is it going to be? These little experiments all build your confidence around your ability to do those things and what it's going to look like. And so, this experiment absolutely feeds into that question. But I would say it was really this week where we got to have a really fun brainstorming sort of blue sky conversation about that that I don't think would have been nearly as both creative and blue sky or rooted in reality as it was if we hadn't done these experiments and hadn't talked to so many...we had so much work...we could participate in a conversation like that so much more confidently and creatively because all of us had a lot more shared context. So, we really got to dream big, like, what is a SaaS platform built around these physical objects? And I don't want to, you know, I'm not going to give it away at this moment because we had a lot of, like, really cool ideas. It's one part talking to the B2B customer, which, you know, you mentioned earlier, getting what their pain points are, and what they're looking for, what they need, but then also dreaming big about now we understand the technology a little bit more and how it feels to use it. What does that unlock in our brains? The analogy I used in that conversation and that I use all the time is like, the users of Twitter invented hashtags, right? Twitter did not invent hashtags. And so, hey, everybody out there, newsflash: users invented hashtags, not Twitter or something else, if you didn't realize that Twitter was where those things kind of emerged. But there was just a user behavior that was happening in the wild, and Twitter was just very good at making that easier for them, looking at that and being like, "Oh, hey, is this a thing you all want to do? Here, we'll make that even more useful for you." And it was part of Twitter's early success that they were able to do that. And so, that was the kind of thinking we were trying to employ here is, like, now that we have these objects and we understand a little bit more how it feels to use them, you get these second order effects. What does that then make us think of? What is then possible to us that we wouldn't have been able to dream of previously because we didn't quite get it? So, that was really happening this week. LINDSEY: So, as the incubator time wraps up, what are the kind of final activities or deliverables, one, that Goodz wants and you know that they're going to get? What are the parting gifts as we send you out into the next phase? MIKE: Yeah, well, loads of stuff. I mean, we're getting all that code that [SP] Guillermo and the guys worked on to let people set their own playlist settings. And we've got that up in a GitHub repository now. And we've got a bunch of great design work that's all being handed over, like Chris was saying, product shots that a bunch of the team members were taking, synthesizing all the user interviews. We're actually sort of making some kind of final reports on those, so it's kind of more usable, actionable data for us. The whole website, you know, that didn't exist before. And that will sort of continue to grow as the entire website for Goodz moving forward. I don't know. That's a lot. What else was there, Chris? CHRIS: As a result of all that, I mean, one of the things I'm most excited about is now we have a small user base who actually has the physical products that, hopefully, we can get them to answer questions. That's huge for what's coming next. Starting the path towards the SaaS platform, too, it's really helped narrow our scope and think about, you know, how to make that successful or if it will be successful. LINDSEY: Yeah, that sounded like a big discussion this week that I know has been on your minds from the beginning. Wait, the last time, also, you said you were starting to get emails, too. Have you emailed anyone yet, or are you still holding on to them? MIKE: Oh. No, I still haven't sent a newsletter out [laughs], actually, but we have Mailchimp set up. Yeah, no, we've got a good kind of core of our, yeah, early folks on there. We'll start getting a newsletter out with some sort of regularity. We're building up the socials very slowly just focusing on Instagram mostly right now and trying to get back into that game. It's been a long time since I've had to do kind of social marketing stuff. And so, it's a lot of work, as it turns out, but we'll get all that cooking. I think this was just such a sprint, working with the thoughtbot folks and trying to get all this stuff done. Before the end of the year, now we can sort of take a breath and start engaging folks in the new year. LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, so, do you know what you want to do next or what the next phase looks like? Are you going to do fundraising? MIKE: We're certainly going to continue to have some fundraising conversations. We've had some conversations emerge over the last, you know, since we've been in thoughtbot, again, not the greatest time of year to try to be raising a round. But we're also not, like, desperately, urgently needing to do that right this second. I think, you know, part of it is the fundraising landscape, you know, doesn't look amazing. And we're still sort of building out a lot of traction, and sort of every week, there's some new, exciting thing, or we've got some new, big artists who wants to do something. So, I think, in some ways, to the extent that we can bootstrap for a little while, I think we will, yeah. So, we will focus on...I'd like to get back to focusing on, like, B2B sales. I'd like to hit the ground in January and just start talking to a bunch of music industry folks. And thinking ahead a little bit, sort of Q1 and Q2, like, what are the big tentpole events? You know, you got South by Southwest coming up in March. You got Record Store Day in April, or whenever it is. But, you know, there's, like, a bunch of those sorts of things that it's like, oh, let's not let those things suddenly be tomorrow. Like, right now, they're all still two or three/four months out. Like, let's make sure we're queued up for those things and see what happens. And Jordyn has been giving really good advice on the fundraising side where it's just like, just keep getting cool stuff like that and just do almost like little drip campaigns with funders who aren't maybe giving you the time of day or think it's too early, and just kind of keep going back to them. Like, the best excuse to go back to funders is like, "Hey, we just closed this new thing. We just launched this new thing. We just got this thing working. Hey, we're launching with this major band," Like, enough of those happen, and I think the fundraising will happen more organically. It's a strategy. CHRIS: I think we're really lucky in the fact that, you know, now, at this point, we're not talking about vapourware, you know, like, these are actual things that actually exist that, like, anybody could go onto our site right now and buy, which is awesome. And because of that, the product's going to continue to evolve, and, hopefully, our sales record will continue to evolve, too. LINDSEY: Amazing. Well, that feels like a good place to wrap up, maybe. Are you going to hang around in our incubator Slack, the thoughtbot incubator Slack for all our past founders? MIKE: Yes. Emphatically, yes. LINDSEY: Okay. We're holding you to it then [laughs]. CHRIS: I'm excited about that. We met with the other founders yesterday for the first time, and it was a really great and interesting conversation. It was cool seeing how diverse all these projects are and how folks are working on things that we had no idea about and how we're working on stuff that they have no idea about, and it was really great. It felt like a good cross-pollination. MIKE: Agreed. LINDSEY: That's awesome to hear. Jordyn, any final thoughts? JORDYN: [inaudible 26:58] out there listening and watching and want to join this community of founders [laughs], don't you want to have office hours with Chris and Mike? LINDSEY: All right, thoughtbot.com/incubator. You can apply for session 1 of the 2024 incubator program. And yeah, you two, if you have more recommendations, referrals, definitely send them our way. Chris, Mike, Jordyn, thank you so much once again for joining and catching us up on all the exciting developments for Goodz. MIKE: Thank you. LINDSEY: A lot of really cool milestones. JORDYN: I got to say, so much good stuff. And like, you know, just wrapping it all up almost diminishes the impact of any single one of those things that we just talked about, but it's, like, pretty amazing. People out there, apply to the incubator but also go buy yourself a Goodz mixtape. It's cool with playlists on it. MIKE: It's a good point. JORDYN: Give it to your BFF. Come on. LINDSEY: Getthegoodz.com. MIKE: Getthegoodz.com. Awesome. LINDSEY: All right. Thanks, Chris and Mike. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Chris Cerrito, Jordyn Bonds, and Mike Rosenthal.

If you missed the first and second episodes with thoughtbot Incubator Program partcipants and founders Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito of Goodz, you can listen to the first episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e2incubatorgoodz) and the second episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e4incubatorgoodz) to catch up! Lindsey Christensen, head of marketing at thoughtbot is joined by Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, co-founders of the startup Goodz, and Danny Kim, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. Mike and Chris discuss the progress of Goodz, focusing on the recent intense weeks they've had. Goodz, a startup merging the digital and physical worlds of music, has stayed on course with its initial concept. Mike details their approach to Thanksgiving and the launch of their e-commerce experiment. He shares insights from recent user interviews, which have influenced their approach and understanding of their target audience. When the discussion turns to the challenges of launching and maintaining their e-commerce platform, Mike and Chris talk about learning from analytics, marketing strategies, and the importance of understanding consumer behavior. They discuss the challenges in balancing short-term and long-term goals, and the upcoming fundraising efforts. Transcript: LINDSEY: Thanks for being here. My name's Lindsey. I head up marketing at thoughtbot. If you haven't joined one of these before, we are checking in with two of the founders who are going through the thoughtbot Startup Incubator to learn how it's going, what's new, what challenges they're hitting, and what they're learning along the way. If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy, and we hope your team and your product become a success. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. So, today, we are joined by our co-founders, Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, Co-Founders of the startup Goodz. And we also have another special guest today, Danny Kim, from the thoughtbot side, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. So, I think, to start off, we'll head over to the new face, the new voice that we've got with us today. Danny, tell us a little bit about your role at thoughtbot and, specifically, the incubator. DANNY: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me join in on all the fun. I'm one of the product managers at thoughtbot. I typically work for the Lift-Off team. We usually work with companies that are looking to, like, go into market with their first version MVP. They might have a product that exists and that they're already kind of doing well with, and they kind of want to jump into a new segment. We'll typically work with companies like that to kind of get them kicked off the ground. But it's been really awesome being part of the incubator program. It's my first time in helping with the market validation side. Definitely also, like, learning a lot from this experience [laughs] for myself. Coming at it specifically from a PM perspective, there's, like, so much variation usually in product management across the industry, depending on, like, what stage of the product that you're working in. And so, I'm definitely feeling my fair share of impostor syndrome here. But it's been really fun to stretch my brand and, like, approach problems from, like, a completely different perspective and also using different tools. But, you know, working with Mike and Chris makes it so much easier because they really make it feel like you're part of their team, and so that definitely goes a long way. LINDSEY: It just goes to show everyone gets impostor syndrome sometimes [laughter], even senior product managers at thoughtbot [laughter]. Thanks for that intro. It's, you know, the thoughtbot team learns along the way, too, you know, especially if usually you're focused on a different stage of product development. Mike, it's been only three weeks or a very long three weeks since last we checked in with you, kind of forever in startup time. So, I think the last time, we were just getting to know you two. And you were walking us through the concept, this merging of the digital and physical world of music, and how we interact with music keepsakes or merchandise. How's my pitch? MIKE: Good. Great. You're killing it. [laughter] LINDSEY: And has anything major changed to that concept in the last three weeks? MIKE: No. I mean, I can't believe it's only been three weeks. It feels like it's been a long time since we last talked. It's been an intense three weeks, for sure. No, it's been going really well. I mean, we launched all sorts of stuff. I'm trying to think of anything that's sort of fundamentally changed in terms of the plan itself or kind of our, yeah, what we've been working on. And I think we've pretty much stayed the course to sort of get to where we are now. But it's been really intensive. I think also having sort of Thanksgiving in there, and we were kind of pushing to get something live right before the Thanksgiving break. And so, that week just felt, I mean, I was just dead by, you know, like, Thursday of Thanksgiving. I think we all were. So, it's been intense, I would say, is the short answer. And I'm happy, yeah, to get into kind of where things are at. But big picture, it's been an intense three weeks. LINDSEY: That's cool. And when we talked, you were, you know, definitely getting into research and user interviews. Have those influenced any, you know, changes along the way in the plan? MIKE: Yeah. They've been really helpful. You know, we'd never really done that before in any of the sort of past projects that we've worked on together. And so, I think just being able to, you know, read through some of those scripts and then sit through some of the interviews and just kind of hearing people's honest assessment of some things has been really interesting. I'm trying to think if it's materially affected anything. I guess, you know, at first, we were, like, we kind of had some assumptions around, okay, let's try to find, like...adult gift-givers sounds like the wrong thing, adults who give gifts as, like, a persona. The idea that, like, you know, maybe you gift your siblings gifts, and then maybe this could be a good gift idea. And I think, you know, we had a hard time kind of finding people to talk in an interesting way about that. And I think we've kind of realized it's kind of a hard persona to kind of chop up and talk about, right, Chris? I don't know [crosstalk 04:55] CHRIS: Well, it also seemed to, from my understanding of it, it seemed to, like, genuinely stress out the people who were being interviewed... MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: Because it's kind of about a stressful topic [inaudible 05:03], you know, and, like, especially -- LINDSEY: Why? [laughs] CHRIS: Well, I think, I don't know, now I'm making assumptions. Maybe because we're close to the holiday season, and that's a topic in the back of everybody's mind. But yeah, Danny, would you disagree with that? Those folks, from what we heard, seemed like they were the most difficult to kind of extract answers from. But then, if the subject changed and we treated them as a different persona, several of those interviews proved to be quite fruitful. So, it's just really interesting. DANNY: Yeah. It really started, like, you kind of try to get some answers out of people, and there's, like, some level of people trying to please you to some extent. That's just, like, naturally, how it starts. And you just, like, keep trying to drill into the answers. And you just keep asking people like, "So, what kind of gifts do you give?" And they're just like, "Oh my goodness, like, I haven't thought about buying gifts for my sister in [laughs], like, you know, in forever. And now, like [laughs], I don't know where to go." And they get, like, pretty stressed out about it. But then we just kind of started shifting into like, "All right, cool, never mind about that. Like, do you like listening to music?" And they're like, "Yes." And then it just kind of explodes from there. And they're like, "This last concert that I went to..." and all of this stuff. And it was much more fruitful kind of leaning more towards that, actually, yeah. LINDSEY: That's fascinating. I guess that speaks to, especially at this stage and the speed and the amount of interviews you're doing, the need for being, like, really agile in those interviews, and then, like, really quickly applying what you're learning to making the next one even more valuable. MIKE: Yeah. And I think, you know, like, we launched just a little sort of website experiment or, like, an e-commerce experiment right before Thanksgiving. And I think now, you know, we're able to sort of take some of those learnings from those interviews and apply them to both sort of our ad copy itself but also just different landing pages in different language on the different kind of versions of the site and see if we can find some resonance with some of these audience groups. So, it's been interesting. LINDSEY: Are you still trying to figure out who that early adopter audience is, who that niche persona is? MIKE: I think we -- CHRIS: Yes, we are. I think we have a good idea of who it is. And I think right now we're just trying to figure out really how to reach those people. That, I think, is the biggest challenge right now for us. MIKE: Yeah. With the e-commerce experiment it was sort of a very specific niche thing that is a little bit adjacent to what I think we want to be doing longer term with Goodz. And so, it's weird. It's like, we're in a place we're like, oh, we really want to find the people that want this thing. But also, this thing isn't necessarily the thing that we think we're going to make longer term, so let's not worry too hard about finding them. You know what I mean? It's been an interesting sort of back and forth with that. CHRIS: From the interviews that we conducted, you know, we identified three key personas. Most of them have come up, but I'll just relist them. There's the sibling gift giver. There was the merch buyers; these are people who go to concerts and buy merchandise, you know, T-shirts, albums, records, things along those lines to support the artists that they love. And then the final one that was identified we gave the title of the 'Proud Playlister'. And these are people who are really into their digital media platforms, love making playlists, and love sharing those playlists with their friends. And that, I would say, the proud playlister is really the one that we have focused on in terms of the storefront that we launched, like, the product is pretty much specifically for them. But the lessons that we're learning while making this product and trying to get this into the hands of the proud playlisters will feed into kind of the merch buyers. MIKE: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's funny, like, this week is kind of a poignant week for this, right? Because it's the week that Spotify Wrapped launched, right? So, it's like, in the course of any given year, it's probably, like, the one week of the year that lots and lots and lots of people are thinking about playlists all of a sudden, so trying a little bit to see if we can ride that wave or just kind of dovetail with that a bit, too. LINDSEY: Absolutely. And do you want to give just, like, the really quick reminder of what the product experience is like? MIKE: Oh yeah [laughs], good call. CHRIS: This is a prototype of it. It's called the Goodz Mixtape. Basically, the idea is that you purchase one of these from us. You give us a playlist URL. We program that URL onto the NFC chip that's embedded in the Good itself. And then when you scan this Good, that playlist will come up. So, it's a really great way of you make a playlist for somebody, and you want to gift it to them; this is a great way to do that. You have a special playlist, maybe between you and a friend or you and a partner. This is a good way to commemorate that playlist, turn it into a physical thing, give that digital file value and presence in the physical world. LINDSEY: Great. Okay, so you casually mentioned this launch of an e-commerce store that happened last week. MIKE: It didn't feel casual. LINDSEY: Yeah. Why [laughter]...[inaudible 09:45] real casual. Why did you launch it? How's it going? MIKE: I don't know. Why did we launch it? I mean, well, we wanted to be able to test some assumptions. I think, you know, we wanted to get the brand out there a little bit, get our website out there, kind of introduce the concept. You know, this is a very...not that we've invented this product category, but it is a pretty obscure product category, right? And so, there's a lot of sort of consumer education that I think that has to go on for people to wrap their heads around this and why they'd want this. So, I think we wanted to start that process a little bit correctly, sort of in advance of a larger launch next year, and see if we could find some early community around this. You know, if we can find those core people who just absolutely love this, and connect with it, and go wild around it, then those are the people that we're going to be able to get a ton of information from and build for that persona, right? It's like, cool, these are the people who love this. Let's build more for them and go find other people like this. So, I think, for us, it was that. And then, honestly, it was also just, you know, let's test our manufacturing and fulfillment and logistics capabilities, right? I mean, this is...as much as we are a B2B, you know, SaaS platform or that's what we envision the future of Goodz being, there is a physical component of this. And, you know, we do have that part basically done at this point. But we just, you know, what is it like to order 1,000 of these? What is it like to put these in the mail to people and, you know, actually take orders? And just some of that processing because we do envision a more wholesale future where we're doing, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of this at a time. And so, I think we just want to button up and do some dry runs before we get to those kinds of numbers. CHRIS: I think it also it's important to remember that we are talking in startup time. And while this last week seems like an eternity, it's been a week [laughs] that we've had this in place. So, we're just starting to learn these things, and we plan on continuing to do so. MIKE: Yeah. But I think we thought that getting a website up would be a good way to just start kind of testing everything more. LINDSEY: Great. Danny, what went into deciding what would be in this first version of the site and the e-commerce offering? DANNY: I mean, a lot of it was kind of mostly driven by Chris and Mike. They kind of had a vision and an idea of what they wanted to sell. Obviously, from the user interviews, we were starting to hone in a little bit more and, like, we had some assumptions going into it. I think we ultimately did kind of feel like, yeah, I think, like, the playlisters seem to be, like, the target market. But just hearing it more and hearing more excitement from them was definitely just kind of like, yeah, I think we can double down on this piece. But, ultimately, like, in terms of launching the e-commerce platform, and the storefront, and the website, like, just literally looking at the user journey and being like, how does a user get from getting onto a site, like, as soon as they land there to, like, finishing a purchase? And what points do they need? What are the key things that they need to think through and typically will run into? And a lot of it is just kind of reflecting on our own personal buyer behavior. And, also, as we were getting closer to the launch, starting to work through some of those assumptions about buyer behavior. As we got there, we obviously had some prototypes. We had some screenshots that we were already working with. Like, the design team was already starting to build out some of the site. And so, we would just kind of show it to them, show it to our users, and just be like, hey, like, how do you expect to purchase this? Like, what's the next step that you expect to take? And we'd just kind of, like, continue to iterate on that piece. And so... LINDSEY: Okay. So you were, before launching, even showing some of those mockups and starting to incorporate them in the user interviews. DANNY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we tried to get it in there in front of them as early as possible, partially because, like, at some point in the user interviews, like, you're mostly just trying to first understand, like, who are our target customers? Who are these people? And we have an assumption of or an idea of who we think they are. But really, like, once you start talking to people, you kind of are, like, okay, like, this thing that I thought maybe it wasn't so accurate, or, like, the way that they're kind of talking about these products doesn't 100% match what I originally walked into this, you know, experiment with. And so, we, like, start to hone in on that. But after a certain point, you kind of get that idea and now you're just like, okay, you seem to be, like, the right person to talk to. And so, if I were to show you this thing, do you get it, right? Like, do you understand what's happening? Like, how to use this thing, what this product even does. And then also, like, does the checkout experience feel intuitive for you? Is it as simple as, like, I just want to buy a T-shirt? So, like, I'm just going to go by the T-shirt, pick a size, and, you know, move on with my life. Can we make it as seamless as that? LINDSEY: And so, you mentioned it's only been a week since it's been live. Have you been able to learn anything from it yet? And how are you trying to drive people to it today? MIKE: Yeah, I think we learned that sales is hard [laughs] and slow, and it takes some time. But it's good, and we're learning a lot. I mean, it's been a while since I've really dug deep in, like, the analytics and marketing kind of metrics. And so, we've got all the Google Tag Manager stuff, you know, hooked up and just, you know, connecting with just exploring, honestly, like the TikTok advertising platform, and the YouTube Pre-Rolls, and Shorts. And, like, a lot of stuff that I actually, since the last time I was heavily involved in this stuff, is just totally new and different. And so, it's been super interesting to see the funnel and sort of see where people are getting in the site, where people are dropping off. You know, we had an interesting conversation in our thoughtbot sync yesterday or the day before, where we were seeing how, you know, we're getting lots of people to the front page and, actually, a good number of people to the product page, and, actually, like, you know, not the worst number of people to the cart. But then you were seeing really high cart abandonment rates. And then, you know, when you start Googling, and you're like, oh, actually, everybody sees very high cart abandonment rates; that's just a thing. But we were seeing, like, the people were viewing their cart seven or eight times, and they were on there sort of five times as long as they were on any other page. And it's this problem that I think Danny is talking about where, you know, we need to actually get a playlist URL. This gets into the minutiae of what we're building, but basically like, we need to get them to give us a playlist URL in order to check out, right? And so, you sort of have to, like, put yourself back in the mind of someone who's scrolling on Instagram, and they see this as an ad, and they click it, and they're like, oh, that thing was cool. Sure, I will buy one of those. And then it's like, no, actually, you need to, you know, leave this, go into a different app, find a play...like, it suddenly just puts a lot of the mental strain. But it's a lot. It's a cognitive load, greater than, as you said, just buying a T-shirt and telling what size you want. So, thinking through ways to really trim that down, shore up the amount of time people are spending on a cart. All that stuff has been fascinating. And then just, like, the different demographic kind of work that we're using, all the social ads platforms to kind of identify has been really interesting. It's still early. But, actually, like, Chris and I were just noticing...we were just talking right before this call. Like, we're actually starting to get, just in the last 12 hours, a bunch more, a bunch, but more people signing up to our email newsletter, probably in the last 12 hours that we have in the whole of last week. Yeah, I don't know, just even that sort of learning, it's like, oh, do people just need time with a thing, or they come back and they think about it? CHRIS: Yeah. Could these people be working on their playlists? That's a question that I have. MIKE: [chuckles] Yeah, me too. CHRIS: It's like, you know, I'm making a playlist to drop into this product. It's really interesting. And I think it gives insight to kind of, you know, how personal this product could be, that this is something that takes effort on the part of the consumer because they're making something to give or to keep for themselves, which is, I think, really interesting but definitely hard, too. DANNY: Yeah. And I also want to also clarify, like, Chris just kind of said it, like, especially for viewers and listeners, like, that's something that we've been hearing a lot from user interviews, too, right? Like, the language that they're using is, like, this is a thing that I care about. Like it's a representation of who I am. It's a representation of, like, the relationship that I have with this person that I'm going to be giving, you know, this gift to or this playlist to, specifically, like, people who feel, like, really passionate about these things. And, I mean, like, I did, too. Like, when I was first trying to, like, date, my wife, like, I spent, like, hours, hours trying to pick the coolest songs that I thought, you know, were like, oh, like, she's going to think I'm so cool because, like, I listen to these, like, super low-key indie rock bands, and, like, you know, so many more hours than she probably spent listening to it. But that's [laughs] kind of, like, honestly, what we heard a lot in a lot of these interviews, so... LINDSEY: Yeah, same. No, totally resonates. And I also went to the site this week, and I was like, oh damn, this is cool. Like, and immediately it was like, oh, you know, I've got these three, you know, music friends that we go to shows together. I'm like, oh, this would be so cool to get them, you know, playlists of, like, music we've seen together. So, you might see me in the cart. I won't abandon it. MIKE: Please. I would love that. CHRIS: Don't think about it too long if you could -- [laughter]. LINDSEY: I won't. I won't. CHRIS: I mean, I would say I'm really excited about having the site not only as a vehicle for selling some of these things but also as a vehicle for just honing our message. It's like another tool that we have in our arsenal. During the user interviews themselves, we were talking in abstract terms, and now we have something concrete that we can bounce off people, which is, I think, going to be a huge boon to our toolset as we continue to refine and define this product. MIKE: Yeah, that's a good point. LINDSEY: Yeah. You mentioned that they're signing up for, like, email updates. Do you have something you're sending out? Or are you kind of just creating a list? Totally fine, just building a list. MIKE: [laughs] No. CHRIS: It's a picture of Mike and I giving a big thumbs up. That's, yeah. [laughter] MIKE: No. But maybe...that was the thing; I was like, oh great, they're signing up. And I was like, gosh, they're signing up. Okay [laughter], now we got to write something. But we will. LINDSEY: Tips to making your playlist [crosstalk 19:11] playing your playlist -- MIKE: Yeah [crosstalk 19:13]. CHRIS: Right. And then also...tips to making your playlists. Also, we're advancing on the collectible side of things, too. We are, hopefully, going to have two pilot programs in place, one with a major label and one with a major artist. And we're really excited about that. LINDSEY: Okay. That's cool. I assume you can't tell us very much. What can you tell us? MIKE: Yeah. We won't mention names [chuckles] in case it just goes away, as these things sometimes do. But yeah, there's a great band who's super excited about these, been around for a long time, some good name recognition, and a very loyal fan base. They want to do sort of a collection of these. I think maybe we showed the little...I can't remember if we showed the little crates that we make or not, but basically, [inaudible 19:52] LINDSEY: The last time, yeah. MIKE: So, they want to sell online a package that's, you know, five or six Goodz in a crate, which I think will be cool and a great sort of sales experiment. And then there's a couple of artists that we're going to do an experiment with that's through their label that's more about tour...basically, giving things away on tour. So, they're going to do some giveaway fan club street team-style experiments with some of these on the road. So, first, it's ideal, provided both those things happen, because we definitely want to be exploring on the road and online stuff. And so, this kind of lets us do both at once and get some real learnings as to kind of how people...because we still don't know. We haven't really put these in people's hands yet. And it's just, like, are people scanning these a lot? Are they not? Is this sort of an object that's sitting on their shelf? Is it...yeah, it's just, like, there's so much we're going to learn once we get these into people's hands. LINDSEY: Do you have the infrastructure to sort of see how many times the cards are scanned? CHRIS: Mm-hmm. Yep, we do. MIKE: Yeah. So, we can see how many times each one is scanned, where they're scanned, that sort of thing. CHRIS: Kind of our next step, and something we were just talking about today with the thoughtbot team, is building out kind of what the backend will be for this, both for users and also for labels and artists. That it will allow them to go in and post updates to the Goodz, to allow them to use these for promotion as people, you know, scan into them to give them links to other sites related to the artists that they might be interested in before they move on to the actual musical playlist. So, that's kind of the next step for us. And knowing how users use these collectibles, both the kind of consumer Good and the artist collectibles that we were just talking about, will help inform how we build that platform. LINDSEY: Very cool. And right now, the online store itself that's built in Shopify? MIKE: Yeah. The homepage is Webflow that Kevin from the thoughtbot team really spearheaded in building for us. And then, yeah, the e-commerce is Shopify. LINDSEY: Y'all have been busy. MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: Is there anything else maybe that I haven't asked about yet that we should touch on in terms of updates or things going on with the product? MIKE: I don't know. I don't think so. I think, like Chris said, I mean, we're just...like, now that the site has kind of stood up and we're really switched over to kind of marketing and advertising on that, definitely digging into the backend of this kind of SaaS platform that's going to probably be a big focus for the rest of the, you know, the program, to be honest. Yeah, just some other things we can do on the next front that could eventually build into the backend that I think can be interesting. No, I guess [laughs] the short answer is no, nothing, like, substantial. Those are the big [crosstalk 22:26] LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, that was my next question, too, which is kind of like, what's next, or what's the next chunk of work? So, it's obviously lots more optimization and learning on the e-commerce platform, and then this other mega area, which is, you know, what does this look like as a SaaS solution? What's the vision? But also, where do we start? Which I'm sure, Danny, is a lot of work that you specialize in as far as, like, scoping how to approach these kinds of projects. DANNY: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we were just talking about this today. Like, part of it is, like, we can, like, really dig into, like, the e-commerce site and, like, really nailing it down to get it to the place where it's like, we're driving tons more traffic and also getting as low of a, like, cart abandonment rate as possible, right? But also, considering the fact that this is in the future, like, large-scale vision. And there's, like, also, like, we're starting to, I think, now iron out a lot of those, like, milestones where we're kind of like, okay, like, we got, like, a short-term vision, which is, like, the e-commerce site. We got a mid-term vision and a potential long-term vision. How do we validate this long-term vision while also still like, keeping this short-term vision moving forward? And, like, this mid-term vision is also going to, like, help potentially, either, like, steer us towards that long-term or maybe even, like, pivot us, like, into a completely different direction. So, like, where do you put your card, right? Like, how much energy and time do we put into, like, each of these areas? And that's kind of, like, the interesting part of this is starting to talk through that, starting to kind of prioritize, like, how we can maximize on our effort, like, our development and design effort so that things just kind of line up more naturally and organically for our future visioning, so... MIKE: Yeah. A lot of different things to juggle. I saw there was a question. Somebody asked what the URL is, but I don't seem to be able to [crosstalk 24:10]. LINDSEY: The same question as me. We got to drop the link for this thing. MIKE: Yeah, getthegoodz.com. CHRIS: That's G-O-O-D-Z. LINDSEY: Get in there, folks MIKE: Yeah, get [crosstalk 24:23]. LINDSEY: And let us know how it goes. MIKE: Yeah, please [laughs]. Any bugs? Let us know. Yeah. I think that those...yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Danny, in terms of juggling kind of the near-term and longer-term stuff. You know, it's a good kind of reminder our big focus, you know, in the new year is going to be fundraising, right? We're already talking to some investors and things like that. So, it's like, okay, yes, as you said, we could tweak the cart. We could tweak the e-commerce. Or, like, can we paint the big picture of what the longer-term version of this company is going to be in a way that makes it compelling for investment to come in so that there can be a long-term version of this company? And then we can build those things. So yeah, it's definitely a balance between the two. LINDSEY: Oh, also, just casual fundraising as well. [crosstalk 25:06] MIKE: Yeah, yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: But it's hard. It's like, you wake up in the morning. It's like, do I want to, like, write cold emails to investors? Or do I want to, like, look at Google Analytics and, like, tweak ad copy? That's actually more fun. So, yes. LINDSEY: Yeah, life of the founder, for sure. All right. So, that's getthegoodz (Goodz with a z) .com. Check it out. We'll tune in and see what happens with the e-commerce site, what happens with the SaaS planning the next time that we check in. But Chris, Mike, Danny, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on over the last few weeks: the good, the bad, the challenge, the cart abandonment. And, you know, best of luck to you over the next few weeks, and we'll be sure to check in and see how it's going. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal.

Mike Perham is the creator of Sidekiq, a background job processor for Ruby. He's also the creator of Faktory a similar product for multiple language environments. We talk about the RubyConf keynote and Ruby's limitations, supporting products as a solo developer, and some ideas for funding open source like a public utility. Recorded at RubyConf 2023 in San Diego. -- A few topics covered: Sidekiq (Ruby) vs Faktory (Polyglot) Why background job solutions are so common in Ruby Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) Ractors (Actor concurrency) Downsides of Multiprocess applications When to use other languages Getting people to pay for Sidekiq Keeping a solo business Being selective about customers Ways to keep support needs low Open source as a public utility Mike Mike's blog mastodon Sidekiq faktory From Employment to Independence Ruby Ractor The Practical Effects of the GVL on Scaling in Ruby Transcript You can help correct transcripts on GitHub. Introduction [00:00:00] Jeremy: I'm here at RubyConf San Diego with Mike Perham. He's the creator of Sidekiq and Faktory. [00:00:07] Mike: Thank you, Jeremy, for having me here. It's a pleasure. Sidekiq [00:00:11] Jeremy: So for people who aren't familiar with, I guess we'll start with Sidekiq because I think that's what you're most known for. If people don't know what it is, maybe you can give like a small little explanation. [00:00:22] Mike: Ruby apps generally have two major pieces of infrastructure powering them. You've got your app server, which serves your webpages and the browser. And then you generally have something off on the side that... It processes, you know, data for a million different reasons, and that's generally called a background job framework, and that's what Sidekiq is. [00:00:41] It, Rails is usually the thing that, that handles your web stuff, and then Sidekiq is the Sidekiq to Rails, so to speak. [00:00:50] Jeremy: And so this would fit the same role as, I think in Python, there's celery. and then in the Ruby world, I guess there is, uh, Resque is another kind of job. [00:01:02] Mike: Yeah, background job frameworks are quite prolific in Ruby. the Ruby community's kind of settled on that as the, the standard pattern for application development. So yeah, we've got, a half a dozen to a dozen different, different examples throughout history, but the major ones today are, Sidekiq, Resque, DelayedJob, GoodJob, and, and, and others down the line, yeah. Why background jobs are so common in Ruby [00:01:25] Jeremy: I think working in other languages, you mentioned how in Ruby, there's this very clear, preference to use these job scheduling systems, these job queuing systems, and I'm not. I'm not sure if that's as true in, say, if somebody's working in Java, or C sharp, or whatnot. And I wonder if there's something specific about Ruby that makes people kind of gravitate towards this as the default thing they would use. [00:01:52] Mike: That's a good question. What makes Ruby... The one that so needs a background job system. I think Ruby, has historically been very single threaded. And so, every Ruby process can only do so much work. And so Ruby oftentimes does, uh, spin up a lot of different processes, and so having processes that are more focused on one thing is, is, is more standard. [00:02:24] So you'll have your application server processes, which focus on just serving HTTP responses. And then you have some other sort of focused process and that just became background job processes. but yeah, I haven't really thought of it all that much. But, uh, you know, something like Java, for instance, heavily multi threaded. [00:02:45] And so, and extremely heavyweight in terms of memory and startup time. So it's much more frequent in Java that you just start up one process and that's it. Right, you just do everything in that one process. And so you may have dozens and dozens of threads, both serving HTTP and doing work on the side too. Um, whereas in Ruby that just kind of naturally, there was a natural split there. Global Interpreter Lock [00:03:10] Jeremy: So that's actually a really good insight, because... in the keynote at RubyConf, Mats, the creator of Ruby, you know, he mentioned the, how the fact that there is this global, interpreter lock, [00:03:23] or, or global VM lock in Ruby, and so you can't, really do multiple things in parallel and make use of all the different cores. And so it makes a lot of sense why you would say like, okay, I need to spin up separate processes so that I can actually take advantage of, of my, system. [00:03:43] Mike: Right. Yeah. And the, um, the GVL. is the acronym we use in the Ruby community, or GIL. Uh, that global lock really kind of is a forcing function for much of the application architecture in Ruby. Ruby, uh, applications because it does limit how much processing a single Ruby process can do. So, uh, even though Sidekiq is heavily multi threaded, you can only have so many threads executing. [00:04:14] Because they all have to share one core because of that global lock. So unfortunately, that's, that's been, um, one of the limiter, limiting factors to Sidekiq scalability is that, that lock and boy, I would pay a lot of money to just have that lock go away, but. You know, Python is going through a very long term experiment about trying to remove that lock and I'm very curious to see how well that goes because I would love to see Ruby do the same and we'll see what happens in the future, but, it's always frustrating when I come to another RubyConf and I hear another Matt's keynote where he's asked about the GIL and he continues to say, well, the GIL is going to be around, as long as I can tell. [00:04:57] so it's a little bit frustrating, but. It's, it's just what you have to deal with. Ractors [00:05:02] Jeremy: I'm not too familiar with them, but they, they did mention during the keynote I think there Ractors or something like that. There, there, there's some way of being able to get around the GIL but there are these constraints on them. And in the context of Sidekiq and, and maybe Ruby in general, how do you feel about those options or those solutions? [00:05:22] Mike: Yeah, so, I think it was Ruby 3. 2 that introduced this concept of what they call a Ractor, which is like a thread, except it does not have the global lock. It can run independent to the global lock. The problem is, is because it doesn't use the global lock, it has pretty severe constraints on what it can do. [00:05:47] And the, and more specifically, the data it can access. So, Ruby apps and Rails apps throughout history have traditionally accessed a lot of global data, a lot of class level data, and accessed all this data in a, in a read only fashion. so there's no race conditions because no one's changing any of it, but it's still, lots of threads all accessing the same variables. [00:06:19] Well, Ractors can't do that at all. The only data Ractors can access is data that they own. And so that is completely foreign to Ruby application, traditional Ruby applications. So essentially, Ractors aren't compatible with the vast majority of existing Ruby code. So I, I, I toyed with the idea of prototyping Sidekiq and Ractors, and within about a minute or two, I just ran into these, these, uh... [00:06:51] These very severe constraints, and so that's why you don't see a lot of people using Ractors, even still, even though they've been out for a year or two now, you just don't see a lot of people using them, because they're, they're really limited, limited in what they can do. But, on the other hand, they're unlimited in how well they can scale. [00:07:12] So, we'll see, we'll see. Hopefully in the future, they'll make a lot of improvements and, uh, maybe they'll become more usable over time. Downsides of multiprocess (Memory usage) [00:07:19] Jeremy: And with the existence of a job queue or job scheduler like Sidekiq, you're able to create additional processes to get around that global lock, I suppose. What are the... downsides of doing so versus another language like we mentioned Java earlier, which is capable of having true parallelism in the same process. [00:07:47] Mike: Yeah, so you can start up multiple Ruby processes to process things truly in parallel. The issue is that you do get some duplication in terms of memory. So your Ruby app maybe take a gigabyte per process. And, you can do copy on write forking. You can fork and get some memory sharing with copy on write semantics on Unix operating systems. [00:08:21] But you may only get, let's say, 30 percent memory savings. So, there's still a significant memory overhead to forking, you know, let's say, eight processes versus having eight threads. You know, you, you, you may have, uh, eight threads can operate in a gigabyte process, but if you want to have eight processes, that may take, let's say, four gigabytes of RAM. [00:08:48] So you, you still, it's not going to cost you eight gigabytes of RAM, you know, it's not like just one times eight, but, there's still a overhead of having those separate processes. [00:08:58] Jeremy: would you say it's more of a cost restriction, like it costs you more to run these applications, or are there actual problems that you can't solve because of this restriction. [00:09:13] Mike: Help me understand, what do you mean by restriction? Do you mean just the GVL in general, or the fact that forking processes still costs memory? [00:09:22] Jeremy: I think, well, it would be both, right? So you're, you have two restrictions right now. You have the, the GVL, which means you can't have parallelism within the same process. And then your other option is to spin up a bunch of processes, which you have said is the downside there is that you're using a lot more RAM. [00:09:43] I suppose my question is that Does that actually stop you from doing anything? Like, if you throw more money at the problem, you go like, we're going to have more instances, I'll pay for the RAM, it's fine, can that basically get you out of these situations or are these limitations actually stopping you from, from doing things you could do in other languages? [00:10:04] Mike: Well, you certainly have to manage the multiple processes, right? So you've gotta, you know, if one child process crashes, you've gotta have a parent or supervisor process watching all that and monitoring and restarting the process. I don't think it restricts you. Necessarily, it just, it adds complexity to your deployment. [00:10:24] and, and it's just a question of efficiency, right? Instead of being able to deploy on a, on a one gigabyte droplet, I've got to deploy to a four gigabyte droplet, right? Because I just, I need the RAM to run the eight processes. So it, it, it's more of just a purely a function of how much money am I going to have to throw at this problem. [00:10:45] And what's it going to cost me in operational costs to operate this application in production? When to use other languages? [00:10:53] Jeremy: So during the. Keynote, uh, Matz had mentioned that Rails, is really suitable as this one person framework, like you can have a very small team or maybe even yourself and, and build this product. And so I guess from... Your perspective, once you cross a certain threshold, is like, what Ruby and what Sidekiq provides not enough, and that's why you need to start looking into other languages? [00:11:24] Or like, where's the, turning point, or the, if you [00:11:29] Mike: Right, right. The, it's all about the problem you're trying to solve, right? At the end of the day, uh, the, the question is just what are we trying to solve and how are we trying to solve it? So at a higher level, you got to think about the architecture. if the problem you're trying to solve, if the service you're trying to build, if the app you're trying to operate. [00:11:51] If that doesn't really fall into the traditional Ruby application architecture, then you, you might look at it in another language or another ecosystem. something like Go, for instance, can compile down to a single binary, which makes deployment really easy. It makes shipping up a product. on to a user's machine, much simpler than deploying a Ruby application onto a user's desktop machine, for instance, right? [00:12:22] Um, Ruby does have this, this problem of how do you package everything together and deploy it somewhere? Whereas Go, when you can just compile to a single binary, now you've just got a single thing. And it's just... Drop it on the file system and execute it. It's easy. So, um, different, different ecosystems have different application architectures, which empower different ways of solving the same problems. [00:12:48] But, you know, Rails as a, as a one man framework, or sorry, one person framework, It, it, I don't, I don't necessarily, that's a, that's sort of a catchy marketing slogan, but I just think of Rails as the most productive framework you can use. So you, as a single person, you can maximize what you ship and the, the, the value that you can create because Rails is so productive. [00:13:13] Jeremy: So it, seems like it's maybe the, the domain or the type of application you're making. Like you mentioned the command line application, because you want to be able to deliver it to your user easily. Just give them a binary, something like Go or perhaps Rust makes a lot more sense. and then I could see people saying that if you're doing something with machine learning, like the community behind Python, it's, they're just, they're all there. [00:13:41] So Room for more domains in Ruby [00:13:41] Mike: That was exactly the example I was going to use also. Yeah, if you're doing something with data or AI, Python is going to be a more, a more traditional, natural choice. that doesn't mean Ruby can't do it. That doesn't mean, you wouldn't be able to solve the problem with Ruby. And, and there's, that just also means that there's more space for someone who wants to come in and make an impact in the Ruby community. [00:14:03] Find a problem that Ruby's not really well suited to solving right now and build the tooling out there to, to try and solve it. You know, I, I saw a talk, from the fellow who makes the Glimmer gem, which is a native UI toolkit. Uh, a gem for building native UIs in Ruby, which Ruby traditionally can't do, but he's, he's done an amazing job at sort of surfacing APIs to build these, um, these native, uh, native applications, which I think is great. [00:14:32] It's awesome. It's, it's so invigorating to see Ruby in a new space like that. Um, I talked to someone else who's doing the Polars gem, which is focused on data processing. So it kind of takes, um, Python and Pandas and brings that to Ruby, which is, is awesome because if you're a Ruby developer, now you've got all these additional tools which can allow you to solve new sets of problems out there. [00:14:57] So that's, that's kind of what's exciting in the Ruby community right now is just bring it into new spaces. Faktory [00:15:03] Jeremy: In addition to Sidekiq, you have, uh, another product called Faktory, I believe. And so does that serve a, a similar purpose? Is that another job scheduling, job queueing system? [00:15:16] Mike: It is, yes. And it's, it's, it's similar in a way to Sidekiq. It looks similar. It's got similar concepts at the core of it. At the end of the day, Sidekiq is limited to Ruby. Because Sidekiq executes in a Ruby VM, it executes the jobs, and the jobs are, have to be written in Ruby because you're running in the Ruby VM. [00:15:38] Faktory was my attempt to bring, Sidekiq functionality to every other language. I wanted, I wanted Sidekiq for JavaScript. I wanted Sidekiq for Go. I wanted Sidekiq for Python because A, a lot of these other languages also could use a system, a background job system. And the problem though is that. [00:16:04] As a single man, I can't port Sidekiq to every other language. I don't know all the languages, right? So, Faktory kind of changes the architecture and, um, allows you to execute jobs in any language. it, it replaces Redis and provides a server where you just fetch jobs, and you can use it from it. [00:16:26] You can use that protocol from any language to, to build your own worker processes that execute jobs in whatever language you want. [00:16:35] Jeremy: When you say it replaces Redis, so it doesn't use Redis, um, internally, it has its own. [00:16:41] Mike: It does use Redis under the covers. Yeah, it starts Redis as a child process and, connects to it over a Unix socket. And so it's really stable. It's really fast. from the outside, the, the worker processes, they just talk to Faktory. They don't know anything about Redis at all. [00:16:59] Jeremy: I see. And for someone who, like we mentioned earlier in the Python community, for example, there is, um, Celery. For someone who is using a task scheduler like that, what's the incentive to switch or use something different? [00:17:17] Mike: Well, I, I always say if you're using something right now, I'm not going to try and convince you to switch necessarily. It's when you have pain that you want to switch and move away. Maybe you have Maybe there's capabilities in the newer system that you really need that the old system doesn't provide, but Celery is such a widely known system that I'm not necessarily going to try and convince people to move away from it, but if people are looking for a new system, one of the things that Celery does that Faktory does not do is Celery provides like data adapters for using store, lots of different storage systems, right? [00:17:55] Faktory doesn't do that. Faktory is more, has more of the Rails mantra of, you know, Omakase where we choose, I choose to use Redis and that's it. You don't, you don't have a choice for what to use because who cares, you know, at the end of the day, let Faktory deal with it. it's, it's not something that, You should even necessarily be concerned about it. [00:18:17] Just, just try Faktory out and see how it works for you. Um, so I, I try to take those operational concerns off the table and just have the user focus on, you know, usability, performance, and that sort of thing. but it is, it's, it's another background job system out there for people to try out and see if they like that. [00:18:36] And, and if they want to, um, if they know Celery and they want to use Celery, more power to Faktory them. Sidekiq (Ruby) or Faktory (Polyglot) [00:18:43] Jeremy: And Sidekiq and Faktory, they serve a very similar purpose. For someone who they have a new project, they haven't chosen a job. scheduling system, if they were using Ruby, would it ever make sense for them to use Faktory versus use Sidekiq? [00:19:05] Mike: Uh Faktory is excellent in a polyglot situation. So if you're using multiple languages, if you're creating jobs in Ruby, but you're executing them in Python, for instance, um, you know, if you've, I have people who are, Creating jobs in PHP and executing them in Python, for instance. That kind of polyglot scenario, Sidekiq can't do that at all. [00:19:31] So, Faktory is useful there. In terms of Ruby, Ruby is just another language to Faktory. So, there is a Ruby API for using Faktory, and you can create and execute Ruby jobs with Faktory. But, you'll find that in the Ruby community, Sidekiq is much widely... much more widely used and understood and known. So if you're just using Ruby, I think, I think Sidekiq is the right choice. [00:19:59] I wouldn't look at Faktory. But if you do need, find yourself needing that polyglot tool, then Faktory is there. Temporal [00:20:07] Jeremy: And this is maybe one, maybe one layer of abstraction higher, but there's a product called Temporal that has some of this job scheduling, but also this workflow component. I wonder if you've tried that out and how you think about that product? [00:20:25] Mike: I've heard of them. I don't know a lot about the product. I do have a workflow API, the Sidekiq batches, which allow you to fan out jobs and then, and then execute callbacks when all the jobs in that, in that batch are done. But I don't, provide sort of a, a high level. Graphical Workflow Editor or anything like that. [00:20:50] Those to me are more marketing tools that you use to sell the tool for six figures. And I don't think they're usable. And I don't think they're actually used day to day. I provide an API for developers to use. And developers don't like moving blocks of code around in a GUI. They want to write code. And, um, so yeah, temporal, I, like I said, I don't know much about them. [00:21:19] I also, are they a venture capital backed startup? [00:21:22] Jeremy: They are, is my understanding, [00:21:24] Mike: Yeah, that, uh, any, any sort of venture capital backed startup, um, who's building technical infrastructure. I, I would look long and hard at, I'm, I think open source is the right core to build on. Of course I sell commercial software, but. I'm bootstrapped. I'm profitable. [00:21:46] I'm going to be around forever. A VC backed startup, they tend to go bankrupt, because they either get big or they go out of business. So that would be my only comment is, is, be a little bit leery about relying on commercial venture capital based infrastructure for, for companies, uh, long term. Getting people to pay for Sidekiq [00:22:05] Jeremy: So I think that's a really interesting part about your business is that I think a lot of open source maintainers have a really big challenge figuring out how to make it as a living. The, there are so many projects that they all have a very permissive license and you can use them freely one example I can think of is, I, I talked with, uh, David Kramer, who's the CTO at Sentry, and he, I don't think they use it anymore, but they, they were using Nginx, right? [00:22:39] And he's like, well, Nginx, they have a paid product, like Nginx. Plus that or something. I don't know what the name is, but he was like, but I'm not going to pay for it. Right. I'm just going to use the free one. Why would I, you know, pay for the, um, the paid thing? So I, I, I'm kind of curious from your perspective when you were coming up with Sidekiq both as an open source product, but also as a commercial one, how did you make that determination of like to make a product where it's going to be useful in its open source form? [00:23:15] I can still convince people to pay money for it. [00:23:19] Mike: Yeah, the, I was terrified, to be blunt, when I first started out. when I started the Sidekiq project, I knew it was going to take a lot of time. I knew if it was successful, I was going to be doing it for the next decade. Right? So I started in 2012, and here I am in 2023, over a decade, and I'm still doing it. [00:23:38] So my expectation was met in that regard. And I knew I was not going to be able to last that long. If I was making zero dollars, right? You just, you burn out. Nobody can last that long. Well, I guess there are a few exceptions to that rule, but yeah, money, I tend to think makes things a little more sustainable for sure. [00:23:58] Especially if you can turn it into a full time job solving and supporting a project that you, you love and, and is, is, you know, your, your, your baby, your child, so to speak, your software, uh, uh, creation that you've given to the world. but I was terrified. but one thing I did was at the time I was blogging a lot. [00:24:22] And so I was telling people about Sidekiq. I was telling people what was to come. I was talking about ideas and. The one thing that I blogged about was financial experiments. I said bluntly to the, to, to the Ruby community, I'm going to be experimenting with financial stability and sustainability with this project. [00:24:42] So not only did I create this open source project, but I was also publicly saying I I need to figure out how to make this work for the next decade. And so eventually that led to Sidekiq Pro. And I had to figure out how to build a closed source Ruby gem, which, uh, There's not a lot of, so I was kind of in the wild there. [00:25:11] But, you know, thankfully all the pieces came together and it was actually possible. I couldn't have done it if it wasn't possible. Like, we would not be talking if I couldn't make a private gem. So, um, but it happened to work out. Uh, and it allowed me to, to gate features behind a paywall effectively. And, and yeah, you're right. [00:25:33] It can be tough to make people pay for software. but I'm a developer who's selling to other developers, not, not just developers, open source developers, and they know that they have this financial problem, right? They know that there's this sustainability problem. And I was blunt in saying, this is my solution to my sustainability. [00:25:56] So, I charge what I think is a very fair price. It's only a thousand dollars a year to a hobbyist. That may seem like a lot of money to a business. It's a drop in the bucket. So it was easy for developers to say, Hey, listen, we want to buy this tool for a thousand bucks. It'll ensure our infrastructure is maintained for the next decade. [00:26:18] And it's, and it's. And it's relatively cheap. It's way less than, uh, you know, a salary or even a laptop. So, so that's, that's what I did. And, um, it's, it worked out great. People, people really understood. Even today, I talk to people and they say, we, we signed up for Sidekiq Pro to support you. So it's, it's, it's really, um, invigorating to hear people, uh, thank me and, and they're, they're actively happy that they're paying me and our customers. [00:26:49] Jeremy: it's sort of, uh, maybe a not super common story, right, in terms of what you went through. Because when I think of open core businesses, I think of companies like, uh, GitLab, which are venture funded, uh, very different scenario there. I wonder, like, in your case, so you started in 2012, and there were probably no venture backed competitors, right? [00:27:19] People saying that we're going to make this job scheduling system and some VC is going to give me five million dollars and build a team to work on this. It was probably at the time, maybe it was Rescue, which was... [00:27:35] Mike: There was a venture backed system called IronMQ, [00:27:40] Jeremy: Hmm. [00:27:41] Mike: And I'm not sure if they're still around or not, but they... They took, uh, one or more funding rounds. I'm not sure exactly, but they were VC backed. They were doing, background jobs, scheduled jobs, uh, you know, running container, running container jobs. They, they eventually, I think, wound up sort of settling on Docker containers. [00:28:06] They'll basically spin up a Docker container. And that container can do whatever it wants. It can execute for a second and then shut down, or it can run for, for however long, but they would, um, yeah, I, yeah, I'll, I'll stop there because I don't know the actual details of exactly their system, but I'm not sure if they're still around, but that's the only one that I remember offhand that was around, you know, years ago. [00:28:32] Yeah, it's, it's mostly, you know, low level open source infrastructure. And so, anytime you have funded startups, they're generally using that open source infrastructure to build their own SaaS. And so SaaS's are the vast majority of where you see sort of, uh, commercial software. [00:28:51] Jeremy: so I guess in that way it, it, it gave you this, this window or this area where you could come in and there wasn't, other than that iron, product, there wasn't this big money that you were fighting against. It was sort of, it was you telling people openly, I'm, I'm working on this thing. [00:29:11] I need to make money so that I can sustain it. And, if you, yeah. like the work I do, then, you know, basically support me. Right. And, and so I think that, I'm wondering how we can reproduce that more often because when you see new products, a lot of times it is VC backed, right? [00:29:35] Because people say, I need to work on this. I need to be paid. and I can't ask a team to do this. For nothing, right? So [00:29:44] Mike: Yeah. It's. It's a wicked problem. Uh, it's a really, really hard problem to solve if you take vc you there, that that really kind of means that you need to be making tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. If you are building a small or relatively small. You know, put small in quotes there because I don't really know what that means, but if you have a small open source project, you can't charge huge amounts for it, right? [00:30:18] I mean, Sidekiq is a, I would call a medium sized open source project, and I'm charging a thousand bucks for it. So if you're building, you know, I don't know, I don't even want to necessarily give example, but if you're building some open source project, and It's one of 300 libraries that people's applications will depend on. [00:30:40] You can't necessarily charge a thousand dollars for that library. depending on the size and the capabilities, maybe you can, maybe you can't. But there's going to be a long tail of open source projects that just, they can't, they can't charge much, if anything, for them. So, unfortunately, we have, you know, these You kind of have two pathways. [00:31:07] Venture capital, where you've got to sell a ton, or free. And I've kind of walked that fine line where I'm a small business, I can charge a small amount because I'm bootstrapped. And, and I don't need huge amounts of money, and I, and I have a project that is of the right size to where I can charge a decent amount of money. [00:31:32] That means that I can survive with 500 or a thousand customers. I don't need to have a hundred million dollars worth of customers. Because I, you know, when I started the business, one of the constraints I said is I don't want to hire anybody. I'm just going to be solo. And part of the, part of my ability to keep a low price and, and keep running sustainably, even with just You know, only a few hundred customers is because I'm solo. [00:32:03] I don't have the overhead of investors. I don't have the overhead of other employees. I don't have an office space. You know, my overhead is very small. So that is, um, you know, I just kind of have a unique business in that way, I guess you might say. Keeping the business solo [00:32:21] Jeremy: I think that's that's interesting about your business as well But the fact that you've kept it you've kept it solo which I would imagine in most businesses, they need support people. they need, developers outside of maybe just one. Um, there's all sorts of other, I don't think overhead is the right word, but you just need more people, right? [00:32:45] And, and what do you think it is about Sidekiq that's made it possible for it to just be a one person operation? [00:32:52] Mike: There's so much administrative overhead in a business. I explicitly create business policies so that I can run solo. you know, my support policy is officially you get one email ticket or issue per quarter. And, and anything more than that, I can bounce back and say, well, you're, you're requiring too much support. [00:33:23] In reality, I don't enforce that at all. And people email me all the time, but, but things like. Things like dealing with accounting and bookkeeping and taxes and legal stuff, licensing, all that is, yeah, a little bit of overhead, but I've kept it as minimal as I can. And part of that is I don't want to hire another employee because then that increases the administrative overhead that I have. [00:33:53] And Sidekiq is so tied to me and my knowledge that if I hire somebody, they're probably not going to know Ruby and threading and all the intricate technical detail necessary to build and maintain and support the system. And so really you'll kind of regress a little bit. We won't be able to give as good support because I'm busy helping that other employee. Being selective about customers [00:34:23] Mike: So, yeah, it's, it's a tightrope act where you've got to really figure out how can I scale myself as far as possible without overwhelming myself. The, the overwhelming thing that I have that I've never been able to solve. It's just dealing with billing inquiries, customers, companies, emailing me saying, how do we buy this thing? [00:34:46] Can I get an invoice? Every company out there, it seems wants an invoice. And the problem with invoicing is it takes a lot more. manual labor and administrative overhead to issue that invoice to collect payment on the invoice. So that's one of the reasons why I have a very strict policy about credit card only for, for the vast majority of my customers. [00:35:11] And I demand that companies pay a lot more. You have to have a pretty big enterprise license if you want an invoice. And if the company, if the company comes back and complains and says, well, you know, that's ridiculous. We don't, we don't want to pay that much. We don't need it that much. Uh, you know, I, I say, okay, well then you have two, two things, two, uh, two things. [00:35:36] You can either pay with a credit card or you can not use Sidekiq. Like, that's, that's it. I'm, I don't need your money. I don't want the administrative overhead of dealing with your accounting department. I just want to support my, my customers and build my software. And, and so, yeah, I don't want to turn into a billing clerk. [00:35:55] So sometimes, sometimes the, the, the best thing in business that you can do is just say no. [00:36:01] Jeremy: That's very interesting because I think being a solo... Person is what probably makes that possible, right? Because if you had the additional staff, then you might say like, Well, I need to pay my staff, so we should be getting, you know, as much business as [00:36:19] Mike: Yeah. Chasing every customer you can, right. But yeah. [00:36:22] Every customer is different. I mean, I have some customers that just, they never contact me. They pay their bill really fast or right on time. And they're paying me, you know, five figures, 20, a year. And they just, it's a, God bless them because those are, are the. [00:36:40] Best customers to have and the worst customers are the ones who are paying 99 bucks a month and everything that they don't understand or whatever is a complaint. So sometimes, sometimes you, you want to, vet your customers from that perspective and say, which one of these customers are going to be good? [00:36:58] Which ones are going to be problematic? [00:37:01] Jeremy: And you're only only person... And I'm not sure how many customers you have, but [00:37:08] Mike: I have 2000 [00:37:09] Jeremy: 2000 customers. [00:37:10] Okay. [00:37:11] Mike: Yeah. [00:37:11] Jeremy: And has that been relatively stable or has there been growth [00:37:16] Mike: It's been relatively stable the last couple of years. Ruby has, has sort of plateaued. Um, it's, you don't see a lot of growth. I'm getting probably, um, 15, 20 percent growth maybe. Uh, so I'm not growing like a weed, like, you know, venture capital would want to see, but steady incremental growth is, is, uh, wonderful, especially since I do very little. [00:37:42] Sales and marketing. you know, I come to RubyConf I, I I tweet out, you know, or I, I toot out funny Mastodon Toots occasionally and, and, um, and, and put out new releases of the software. And, and that's, that's essentially my, my marketing. My marketing is just staying in front of developers and, and, and being a presence in the Ruby community. [00:38:06] But yeah, it, it's, uh. I, I, I see not a, not a huge amount of churn, but I see enough sales to, to, to stay up and keep my head above water and to keep growing, um, slowly but surely. Support needs haven't grown [00:38:20] Jeremy: And as you've had that steady growth, has the support burden not grown with it? [00:38:27] Mike: Not as much because once customers are on Sidekiq and they've got it working, then by and large, you don't hear from them all that much. There's always GitHub issues, you know, customers open GitHub issues. I love that. but yeah, by and large, the community finds bugs. and opens up issues. And so things remain relatively stable. [00:38:51] I don't get a lot of the complete newbie who has no idea what they're doing and wants me to, to tell them how to use Sidekiq that I just don't see much of that at all. Um, I have seen it before, but in that case, generally, I, I, I politely tell that person that, listen, I'm not here to educate you on the product. [00:39:14] It's there's documentation in the wiki. Uh, and there's tons of, of more Ruby, generic Ruby, uh, educational material out there. That's just not, not what I do. So, so yeah, by and large, the support burden is, is not too bad because once people are, are up and running, it's stable and, and they don't, they don't need to contact me. [00:39:36] Jeremy: I wonder too, if that's perhaps a function of the price, because if you're a. new developer or someone who's not too familiar with how to do job processing or what they want to do when you, there is the open source product, of course. but then the next step up, I believe is about a hundred dollars a month. [00:39:58] And if you're somebody who is kind of just getting started and learning how things work, you're probably not going to pay that, is my guess. And so you'll never hear from them. [00:40:11] Mike: Right, yeah, that's a good point too, is the open source version, which is what people inevitably are going to use and integrate into their app at first. Because it's open source, you're not going to email me directly, um, and when people do email me directly, Sidekiq support questions, I do, I reply literally, I'm sorry I don't respond to private email, unless you're a customer. [00:40:35] Please open a GitHub issue and, um, that I try to educate both my open source users and my commercial customers to try and stay in GitHub issues because private email is a silo, right? Private email doesn't help anybody else but them. If I can get people to go into GitHub issues, then that's a public record. [00:40:58] that people can search. Because if one person has that problem, there's probably a dozen other people that have that same problem. And then that other, those other 11 people can search and find the solution to their problem at four in the morning when I'm asleep. Right? So that's, that's what I'm trying to do is, is keep, uh, keep everything out in the open so that people can self service as much as possible. Sidekiq open source [00:41:24] Jeremy: And on the open source side, are you still primarily the main contributor? Or do you have other people that are [00:41:35] Mike: I mean, I'd say I do 90 percent of the work, which is why I don't feel guilty about keeping 100 percent of the money. A lot of open source projects, when they look for financial sustainability, they also look for how can we split this money amongst the team. And that's, that's a completely different topic that I've. [00:41:55] is another reason why I've stayed solo is if I hire an employee and I pay them 200, 000 a year as a developer, I'm meanwhile keeping all the rest of the profits of the company. And so that almost seems a little bit unfair. because we're both still working 40 hours a week, right? Why am I the one making the vast majority of the, of the profit and the money? [00:42:19] Um, so, uh, I've always, uh, that's another reason why I've stayed solo, but, but yeah, having a team of people working on something, I do get, regular commits, regular pull requests from people, fixing a bug that they found or just making a tweak that. that they saw, that they thought they could improve. [00:42:42] A little more rarely I get a significant improvement or feature, as a pull request. but Sidekiq is so stable these days that it really doesn't need a team of people maintaining it. The volume of changes necessary, I can easily keep up with that. So, I'm still doing 90 95 percent of the work. Are there other Sidekiq-like opportunities out there? [00:43:07] Jeremy: Yeah, so I think Sidekiq has sort of a unique positioning where it's the code base itself is small enough where you can maintain it yourself and you have some help, but primarily you're the main maintainer. And then you have enough customers who are willing to, to pay for the benefit it gives them on top of what the open source product provides. [00:43:36] cause it's, it's, you were talking about how. Every project people work on, they have, they could have hundreds of dependencies, right? And to ask somebody to, to pay for each of them is, is probably not ever going to happen. And so it's interesting to think about how you have things like, say, you know, OpenSSL, you know, it's a library that a whole bunch of people rely on, but nobody is going to pay a monthly fee to use it. [00:44:06] You have things like, uh, recently there was HashiCorp with Terraform, right? They, they decided to change their license because they, they wanted to get, you know, some of that value back, some of the money back, and the community basically revolted. Right? And did a fork. And so I'm kind of curious, like, yeah, where people can find these sweet spots like, like Sidekiq, where they can find this space where it's just small enough where you can work on it on your own and still get people to pay for it. [00:44:43] It's, I'm trying to picture, like, where are the spaces? Open source as a public utility [00:44:48] Mike: We need to look at other forms of financing beyond pure capitalism. If this is truly public infrastructure that needs to be maintained for the long term, then why are we, why is it that we depend on capitalism to do that? Our roads, our water, our sewer, those are not Capitalist, right? Those are utilities, that's public infrastructure that we maintain, that the government helps us maintain. [00:45:27] And in a sense, tech infrastructure is similar or could be thought of in a similar fashion. So things like Open Collective, things like, uh, there's a, there's a organization in Europe called NLNet, I think, out of the Netherlands. And they do a lot of grants to various open source projects to help them improve the state of digital infrastructure. [00:45:57] They support, for instance, Mastodon as a open source project that doesn't have any sort of corporate backing. They see that as necessary social media infrastructure, uh, for the long term. And, and I, and I think that's wonderful. I like to see those new directions being explored where you don't have to turn everything into a product, right? [00:46:27] And, and try and market and sale, um, and, and run ads and, and do all this stuff. If you can just make the case that, hey, this is, this is useful public infrastructure that so many different, um, Technical, uh, you know, applications and businesses could rely on, much like FedEx and DHL use our roads to the benefit of their own, their own corporate profits. [00:46:53] Um, why, why, why shouldn't we think of tech infrastructure sort of in a similar way? So, yeah, I would like to see us explore more. in that direction. I understand that in America that may not happen for quite a while because we are very, capitalist focused, but it's encouraging to see, um, places like Europe, uh, a little more open to, to trialing things like, cooperatives and, and grants and large long term grants to, to projects to see if they can, uh, provide sustainability in, in, you know, in a new way. [00:47:29] Jeremy: Yeah, that's a good point because I think right now, a lot of the open source infrastructure that we all rely on, either it's being paid for by large companies and at the whim of those large companies, if Google decides we don't want to pay for you to work on this project anymore, where does the money come from? [00:47:53] Right? And on the other hand, there's the thousands, tens of thousands of people who are doing it. just for free out of the, you know, the goodness of their, their heart. And that's where a lot of the burnout comes from. Right. So I think what you're saying is that perhaps a lot of these pieces that we all rely on, that our, our governments, you know, here in the United States, but also around the world should perhaps recognize as this is, like you said, this is infrastructure, and we should be. [00:48:29] Paying these people to keep the equivalent of the roads and, and, uh, all that working. [00:48:37] Mike: Yeah, I mean, I'm not, I'm not claiming that it's a perfect analogy. There's, there's, there's lots of questions that are unanswered in that, right? How do you, how do you ensure that a project is well maintained? What does that even look like? What does that mean? you know, you can look at a road and say, is it full of potholes or is it smooth as glass, right? [00:48:59] It's just perfectly obvious, but to a, to a digital project, it's, it's not as clear. So, yeah, but, but, but exploring those new ways because turning everybody into a businessman so that they can, they can keep their project going, it, it, it itself is not sustainable, right? so yeah, and that's why everything turns into a SaaS because a SaaS is easy to control. [00:49:24] It's easy to gatekeep behind a paywall and it's easy to charge for, whereas a library on GitHub. Yeah. You know, what do you do there? You know, obviously GitHub has sponsors, the sponsors feature. You've got Patreon, you've got Open Collective, you've got Tidelift. There's, there's other, you know, experiments that have been run, but nothing has risen to the top yet. [00:49:47] and it's still, it's still a bit of a grind. but yeah, we'll see, we'll see what happens, but hopefully people will keep experimenting and, and maybe, maybe governments will start. Thinking in the direction of, you know, what does it mean to have a budget for digital infrastructure maintenance? [00:50:04] Jeremy: Yeah, it's interesting because we, we started thinking about like, okay, where can we find spaces for other Sidekiqs? But it sounds like maybe, maybe that's just not realistic, right? Like maybe we need more of a... Yeah, a rethinking of, I guess the, the structure of how people get funded. Yeah. [00:50:23] Mike: Yeah, sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to think at a higher level. You know, we, the, the sustainability problem in American Silicon Valley based open source developers is naturally going to tend toward venture capital and, and capitalism. And I, you know, I think, I think that's, uh, extremely problematic on a, on a lot of different, in a lot of different ways. [00:50:47] And, and so sometimes you need to step back and say, well, maybe we're, maybe we just don't have the right tool set to solve this problem. But, you know, I, I. More than that, I'm not going to speculate on because it is a wicked problem to solve. [00:51:04] Jeremy: Is there anything else you wanted to, to mention or thought we should have talked about? [00:51:08] Mike: No, I, I, I loved the talk, of sustainability and, and open source. And I, it's, it's a, it's a topic really dear to my heart, obviously. So I, I am happy to talk about it at length with anybody, anytime. So thank you for having me. [00:51:25] Jeremy: All right. Thank you very much, Mike.

This week, it's an Off Mike Discussions episode! Mike Smith recaps the Montana Film Festival and talks new releases like SAW X, TOTALLY KILLER, PATHAAN, and THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR; meanwhile, Mike D has thoughts on NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU, and subjected his friends to a double feature of THE BOOGENS and TREMORS.

Mike Halleen, Milo's Grandpa and Pearce's father-in-law, was born in 1938. He's a Minnesota boy who's witnessed the world grow up in the 20th century and beyond. As a Covenant pastor, he took up the calling of both his grandfathers and has always been a steady flame of faith, compassion and understanding for his family.Mike can tell a story (or a thousand) and move you to tears and laughter while captivating your heart as you feel his hopes and regrets and wonder at the world.He is a real human being and we're lucky to have him. This a long one- almost 2 1/2 hours- so stop and start as you wish, but we promise you, you won't regret taking the ride with us!Growing Up Naked Theme composed, performed and recorded by Isaac DellMusic- "Honeycomb" performed by Jimmie RodgersA White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation) performed by Marty Robbins

Mike Halleen, Milo's Grandpa and Pearce's father-in-law, was born in 1938. He's a Minnesota boy who's witnessed the world grow up in the 20th century and beyond. As a Covenant pastor, he took up the calling of both his grandfathers and has always been a steady flame of faith, compassion and understanding for his family.Mike can tell a story (or a thousand) and move you to tears and laughter while captivating your heart as you feel his hopes and regrets and wonder at the world.He is a real human being and we're lucky to have him. This a long one- almost 2 1/2 hours- so stop and start as you wish, but we promise you, you won't regret taking the ride with us!Growing Up Naked Theme composed, performed and recorded by Isaac DellMusic- "Honeycomb" performed by Jimmie RodgersA White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation) performed by Marty Robbins

無情工商時間～ 賴老師的課程：文法百寶箱上架，lai200 https://lihi2.com/oKcha 快速幫你複習一下這集的主題句 ＆ 單字： 你等下想吃啥？ What do you want to eat later? 補充學習 我不餓 I'm not hungry 我剛吃飽 I just ate. / I'm already full. 我都可以啊 I'm fine with anything./ Anything is ok. 情境對話 Duncan：你等下想吃啥？ What do you want to eat later? Mike：不知道，你有想法嗎？ I don't know, any ideas? Duncan：吃 7-11 好了 Let's eat 7-11. Mike：蛤，我不想吃超商 What? I don't want to eat convenience store food. Duncan：那換你提想吃啥 Then why don't you suggest something to eat. Mike：還是你決定好了 No, it's OK. You can decide. 小額贊助支持本節目： https://open.firstory.me/user/ckf6dwd77euw20897td87i5wj 留言告訴我你對這一集的想法： https://open.firstory.me/user/ckf6dwd77euw20897td87i5wj/comments Powered by Firstory Hosting

Welcome to this week's Socially Distant Sports Bar with Elis James, Mike Bubbins and Steff Garrero. This is Part 2 of this week's episode.  Part 1 is out every week on Wednesdays - go back and listen to it! If you want to listen to the full podcast every TUESDAY, including bonus content not available on the free version, then head to either  https://anchor.fm/nata-media/subscribe or  https://www.patreon.com/distantpod DISTANT POD LIVE  We're playing Islington Assembly Hall in London on 22nd May 2023. We're opening this year's Podcast Show LIVE festival. https://tourlink.to/SDSPTPS FAT WHITES x DISTANT POD If you want to help us fund defibrillators in locked cabinets outside sports clubs around the country then click on this link to buy our new range of Coffees: Distant Pod x Fat Whites. You can buy 3 different roasts - Mike's is called The Barryista, Elis' is The Paper Pants Ripper and Steff's is The 3am Run Club. https://fatwhites.square.site/  DOWN THE CLUBHOUSE You can watch us on BT Sport's Down The Clubhouse https://www.bt.com/sport/watch/bt-sport-shows/down-the-clubhouse    THIS WEEK'S EPISODE PART 1 (PUBLISHED ON WEDNESDAY) Mike: Ian Holloway talks about his deaf daughter. https://twitter.com/footballramble/status/1638586335685484564?s=46&t=WOTqzD_z9n9xMX6zmRy4xw Steff: Skateboarding Duck https://fb.watch/js95tOt6i1/  Elis: Bloke finally snaps https://twitter.com/FootbaIITwats/status/1640098340112064517 PART 2 (PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY)  Mike Documentary: Glenn Webbe https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jhdl/legends-of-welsh-sport-series-2-glenn-webbe  Elis Books: Booked! The Gospel According to Our Football Heroes by John Smith https://www.amazon.co.uk/Booked-Gospel-According-Football-Heroes/dp/1785313932/ref=pd_lpo_1?pd_rd_w=cc7zV&content-id=amzn1.sym.efc89c20-c5a9-4620-b6cd-2f4e51bac956&pf_rd_p=efc89c20-c5a9-4620-b6cd-2f4e51bac956&pf_rd_r=8T54R8ME6QTHHPV5QANS&pd_rd_wg=3kBmI&pd_rd_r=8cbb6b50-c6c4-438a-bc04-9ad25c5c1619&pd_rd_i=1785313932&psc=1   Second Yellow by John Smith https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Yellow-Further-Adventures-Footballing/dp/1785316796  PATREON/SPOTIFY EXTRA SECTION SECOND ROUND OF CLIPS (ONLY via https://anchor.fm/nata-media/subscribe & https://www.patreon.com/distantpod ) Mike: No arms golfer https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cp-4laRPNuj/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= Steff: They Haven't Seen Me https://twitter.com/Hanbotts/status/1639786056210956288  Elis: Clive Thomas being booed https://twitter.com/1968Tv/status/1640422702476345358 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to this week's Socially Distant Sports Bar with Elis James, Mike Bubbins and Steff Garrero. This is Part 1 of this week's episode.  Part 2 is out every week on Fridays. If you want to listen to the full podcast every TUESDAY, including bonus content not available on the free version, then head to either  https://anchor.fm/nata-media/subscribe or  https://www.patreon.com/distantpod DISTANT POD LIVE  We're playing Islington Assembly Hall in London on 22nd May 2023. We're opening this year's Podcast Show LIVE festival. https://tourlink.to/SDSPTPS FAT WHITES x DISTANT POD If you want to help us fund defibrillators in locked cabinets outside sports clubs around the country then click on this link to buy our new range of Coffees: Distant Pod x Fat Whites. You can buy 3 different roasts - Mike's is called The Barryista, Elis' is The Paper Pants Ripper and Steff's is The 3am Run Club. https://fatwhites.square.site/  DOWN THE CLUBHOUSE You can watch us on BT Sport's Down The Clubhouse https://www.bt.com/sport/watch/bt-sport-shows/down-the-clubhouse    THIS WEEK'S EPISODE PART 1 (PUBLISHED ON WEDNESDAY) Mike: Ian Holloway talks about his deaf daughter. https://twitter.com/footballramble/status/1638586335685484564?s=46&t=WOTqzD_z9n9xMX6zmRy4xw Steff: Skateboarding Duck https://fb.watch/js95tOt6i1/  Elis: Bloke finally snaps https://twitter.com/FootbaIITwats/status/1640098340112064517 PART 2 (PUBLISHED ON FRIDAY)  Mike Documentary: Glenn Webbe https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001jhdl/legends-of-welsh-sport-series-2-glenn-webbe  Elis Books: Booked! The Gospel According to Our Football Heroes by John Smith https://www.amazon.co.uk/Booked-Gospel-According-Football-Heroes/dp/1785313932/ref=pd_lpo_1?pd_rd_w=cc7zV&content-id=amzn1.sym.efc89c20-c5a9-4620-b6cd-2f4e51bac956&pf_rd_p=efc89c20-c5a9-4620-b6cd-2f4e51bac956&pf_rd_r=8T54R8ME6QTHHPV5QANS&pd_rd_wg=3kBmI&pd_rd_r=8cbb6b50-c6c4-438a-bc04-9ad25c5c1619&pd_rd_i=1785313932&psc=1   Second Yellow by John Smith https://www.amazon.co.uk/Second-Yellow-Further-Adventures-Footballing/dp/1785316796  PATREON/SPOTIFY EXTRA SECTION SECOND ROUND OF CLIPS (ONLY via https://anchor.fm/nata-media/subscribe & https://www.patreon.com/distantpod ) Mike: No arms golfer https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cp-4laRPNuj/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= Steff: They Haven't Seen Me https://twitter.com/Hanbotts/status/1639786056210956288  Elis: Clive Thomas being booed https://twitter.com/1968Tv/status/1640422702476345358 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Boys (at least most of them) are BACK with another great episode, this time featuring special guest Bayleigh. In this episode, they discuss valuable college memories and lessons and usher in the epic return of Draft Night!!! They draft four artists to determine the best concert lineup! Tune in to the episode and cast your vote for the draft on your social media platforms!  Email us at everythingnothingshow@gmail.com to submit your fan questions!  Intro: LAKEY INSPIRED - Chill Day Outro song: Otis McDonald - Main Street   Please Like, comment, subscribe, and review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and SHARE! We appreciate your support and hope you reach out with ideas or overall engagement!  IG: instagram.com/_everythingandnothingpod_/ FB: facebook.com/everythingandnothingpod Twitter: twitter.com/EandNShow

He should not have even dared to hope...

About MikeBeside his duties as The Duckbill Group's CEO, Mike is the author of O'Reilly's Practical Monitoring, and previously wrote the Monitoring Weekly newsletter and hosted the Real World DevOps podcast. He was previously a DevOps Engineer for companies such as Taos Consulting, Peak Hosting, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and many more. Mike is originally from Knoxville, TN (Go Vols!) and currently resides in Portland, OR.Links Referenced: @Mike_Julian: https://twitter.com/Mike_Julian mikejulian.com: https://mikejulian.com duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at AWS AppConfig. Engineers love to solve, and occasionally create, problems. But not when it's an on-call fire-drill at 4 in the morning. Software problems should drive innovation and collaboration, NOT stress, and sleeplessness, and threats of violence. That's why so many developers are realizing the value of AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature Flags let developers push code to production, but hide that that feature from customers so that the developers can release their feature when it's ready. This practice allows for safe, fast, and convenient software development. You can seamlessly incorporate AppConfig Feature Flags into your AWS or cloud environment and ship your Features with excitement, not trepidation and fear. To get started, go to snark.cloud/appconfig. That's snark.cloud/appconfig.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With Tailscale SSH, you can do exactly that. Tailscale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate SSH.Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built in key rotation, permissions is code, connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. Tailscale is completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and my guest is a returning guest on this show, my business partner and CEO of The Duckbill Group, Mike Julian. Mike, thanks for making the time.Mike: Lucky number three, I believe?Corey: Something like that, but numbers are hard. I have databases for that of varying quality and appropriateness for the task, but it works out. Anything's a database. If you're brave enough.Mike: With you inviting me this many times, I'm starting to think you'd like me or something.Corey: I know, I know. So, let's talk about something that is going to put that rumor to rest.Mike: [laugh].Corey: Clearly, you have made some poor choices in the course of your career, like being my business partner being the obvious one. But what's really in a dead heat for which is the worst decision is you've written a book previously. And now you are starting the process of writing another book because, I don't know, we don't keep you busy enough or something. What are you doing?Mike: Making very bad decisions. When I finished writing Practical Monitoring—O'Reilly, and by the way, you should go buy a copy if interested in monitoring—I finished the book and said, “Wow, that was awful. I'm never doing it again.” And about a month later, I started thinking of new books to write. So, that was 2017, and Corey and I started Duckbill and kind of stopped thinking about writing books because small companies are basically small children. But now I'm going to write a book about consulting.Corey: Oh, thank God. I thought you're going to go down the observability path a second time.Mike: You know, I'm actually dreading the day that O'Reilly asks me to do a second edition because I don't really want to.Corey: Yeah. Effectively turn it into an entire story where the only monitoring tool you really need is the AWS bill. That'll go well.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. So yeah, like, basically, I've been doing consulting for such a long time, and most of my career is consulting in some form or fashion, and I head up all the consulting at Duckbill. I've learned a lot about consulting. And I've found that people have a lot of questions about consulting, particularly at the higher-end levels. Once you start getting into advisory sort of stuff, there's not a lot of great information out there aimed at engineering.Corey: There's a bunch of different views on what consulting is. You have independent contractors billing by the hour as staff replacement who call what they do consulting; you have the big consultancies, like Bain or BCG; you've got what we do in an advisory sense, and of course, you have a bunch of MBA new grads going to a lot of the big consultancies who are going to see a book on consulting and think that it's potentially for them. I don't know that you necessarily have a lot of advice for the new grad type, so who is this for? What is your target customer for this book?Mike: If you're interested in joining McKinsey out of college, I don't have a lot to add; I don't have a lot to tell you. The reason for that is kind of twofold. One is that shops like McKinsey and Deloitte and Accenture and BCG and Bain, all those, are playing very different games than what most of us think about when we think consulting. Their entire model revolves around running a process. And it's the same process for every client they work with. But, like, you're buying them because of their process.And that process is nothing new or novel. You don't go to those firms because you want the best advice possible. You go to those firms because it's the most defensible advice. It's sort of those things like, “No one gets fired for buying Cisco,” no one got fired for buying IBM, like, that sort of thing, it's a very defensible choice. But you're not going to get great results from it.But because of that, their entire model revolves around throwing dozens, in some cases, hundreds of new grads at a problem and saying, “Run this process. Have fun. Let us know if you need help.” That's not consulting I have any experience with. It's honestly not consulting that most of us want to do.Most of that is staffed by MBAs and accountants. When I think consulting, I think about specialized advice and providing that specialized advice to people. And I wager that most of us think about that in the same way, too. In some cases, it might just be, “I'm going to write code for you as a freelancer,” or I'm just going to tell you like, “Hey, put the nail in here instead of over here because it's going to be better for you.” Like, paying for advice is good.But with that, I also have a… one of the first things I say in the beginning of the book, which [laugh] I've already started writing because I'm a glutton for punishment, is I don't think junior people should be consultants. I actually think it's really bad idea because to be a consultant, you have to have expertise in some area, and junior staff don't. They haven't been in their careers long enough to develop that yet. So, they're just going to flounder. So, my advice is generally aimed at people that have been in their careers for quite some time, generally, people that are 10, 15, 20 years into their career, looking to do something.Corey: One of the problems that we see when whenever we talk about these things on Twitter is that we get an awful lot of people telling us that we're wrong, that it can't be made to work, et cetera, et cetera. But following this model, I've been independent for—well, I was independent and then we became The Duckbill Group; add them together because figuring out exactly where that divide happened is always a mental leap for me, but it's been six years at this point. We've definitely proven our ability to not go out of business every month. It's kind of amazing. Without even an exception case of, “That one time.”Mike: [laugh]. Yeah, we are living proof that it does work, but you don't really have to take just our word for it because there are a lot of other firms that exist entirely on an advisory-only, high-expertise model. And it works out really well. We've worked with several of them, so it does work; it just isn't very common inside of tech and particularly inside of engineering.Corey: So, one of the things that I find is what differentiates an expert from an enthusiastic amateur is, among other things, the number of mistakes that they've made. So, I guess a different way of asking this is what qualifies you to write this book, but instead, I'm going to frame it in a very negative way. What have you screwed up on that puts you in a position of, “Ah, I'm going to write a book so that someone else can make better choices.”Mike: One of my favorite stories to tell—and Corey, I actually think you might not have heard this story before—Corey: That seems unlikely, but give it a shot.Mike: Yeah. So, early in my career, I was working for a consulting firm that did ERP implementations. We worked with mainly large, old-school manufacturing firms. So, my job there was to do the engineering side of the implementation. So, a lot of rack-and-stack, a lot of Windows Server configuration, a lot of pulling cables, that sort of thing. So, I thought I was pretty good at this. I quickly learned that I was actually not nearly as good as I thought I was.Corey: A common affliction among many different people.Mike: A common affliction. But I did not realize that until this one particular incident. So, me and my boss are both on site at this large manufacturing facility, and the CFO pulls my boss aside and I can hear them talking and, like, she's pretty upset. She points at me and says, “I never want this asshole in my office ever again.” So, he and I have a long drive back to our office, like an hour and a half.And we had a long chat about what that meant for me. I was not there for very long after that, as you might imagine, but the thing is, I still have no idea to this day what I did to upset her. I know that she was pissed and he knows that she was pissed. And he never told me exactly what it was, only that's you take care of your client. And the client believes that I screwed up so massively that she wanted me fired.Him not wanting to argue—he didn't; he just kind of went with it—and put me on other clients. But as a result of that, it really got me thinking that I screwed something up so badly to make this person hate me so much and I still have no idea what it was that I did. Which tells me that even at the time, I did not understand what was going on around me. I did not understand how to manage clients well, and to really take care of them. That was probably the first really massive mistake that I've made my career—or, like, the first time I came to the realization that there's a whole lot I don't know and it's really costing me.Corey: From where I sit, there have been a number of things that we have done as we've built our consultancy, and I'm curious—you know, let's get this even more personal—in the past, well, we'll call it four years that we have been The Duckbill Group—which I think is right—what have we gotten right and what have we gotten wrong? You are the expert; you're writing a book on this for God's sake.Mike: So, what I think we've gotten right is one of my core beliefs is never bill hourly. Shout out to Jonathan Stark. He wrote I really good book that is a much better explanation of that than I've ever been able to come up with. But I've always had the belief that billing hourly is just a bad idea, so we've never done that and that's worked out really well for us. We've turned down work because that's the model they wanted and it's like, “Sorry, that's not what we do. You're going to have to go work for someone else—or hire someone else.”Other things that I think we've gotten right is a focus on staying on the advisory side and not doing any implementation. That's allowed us to get really good at what we do very quickly because we don't get mired in long-term implementation detail-level projects. So, that's been great. Where we went a little wrong, I think—or what we have gotten wrong, lessons that we've learned. I had this idea that we could build out a junior and mid-level staff and have them overseen by very senior people.And, as it turns out, that didn't work for us, entirely because it didn't work for me. That was really my failure. I went from being an IC to being the leader of a company in one single step. I've never been a manager before Duckbill. So, that particular mistake was really about my lack of abilities in being a good manager and being a good leader.So, building that out, that did not work for us because it didn't work for me and I didn't know how to do it. So, I made way too many mistakes that were kind of amateur-level stuff in terms of management. So, that didn't work. And the other major mistake that I think we've made is not putting enough effort into marketing. So, we get most of our leads by inbound or referral, as is common with boutique consulting firms, but a lot of the income that we get comes through Last Week in AWS, which is really awesome.But we don't put a whole lot of effort into content or any marketing stuff related to the thing that we do, like cost management. I think a lot of that is just that we don't really know how, aside from just creating content and publishing it. We don't really understand how to market ourselves very well on that side of things. I think that's a mistake we've made.Corey: It's an effective strategy against what's a very complicated problem because unlike most things, if—let's go back to your old life—if we have an observability problem, we will talk about that very publicly on Twitter and people will come over and get—“Hey, hey, have you tried to buy my company's product?” Or they'll offer consulting services, or they'll point us in the right direction, all of which is sometimes appreciated. Whereas when you have a big AWS bill, you generally don't talk about it in public, especially if you're a serious company because that's going to, uh, I think the phrase is, “Shake investor confidence,” when you're actually live tweeting slash shitposting about your own AWS bill. And our initial thesis was therefore, since we can't wind up reaching out to these people when they're having the pain because there's no external indication of it, instead what we have to do is be loud enough and notable in this space, where they find us where it shouldn't take more than them asking one or two of their friends before they get pointed to us. What's always fun as the stories we hear is, “Okay, so I asked some other people because I wanted a second opinion, and they told us to go to you, too.” Word of mouth is where our customers come from. But how do you bootstrap that? I don't know. I'm lucky that I got it right the first time.Mike: Yeah, and as I mentioned a minute ago, that a lot of that really comes through your content, which is not really cost management-related. It's much more AWS broad. We don't put out a lot of cost management specific content. And honestly, I think that's to our detriment. We should and we absolutely can. We just haven't. I think that's one of the really big things that we've missed on doing.Corey: There's an argument that the people who come to us do not spend their entire day thinking about AWS bills. I mean, I can't imagine what that would be like, but they don't for whatever reason; they're trying to do something ridiculous, like you know, run a profitable company. So, getting in front of them when they're not thinking about the bills means, on some level, that they're going to reach out to us when the bill strikes. At least that's been my operating theory.Mike: Yeah, I mean, this really just comes down to content strategy and broader marketing strategy. Because one of the things you have to think about with marketing is how do you meet a customer at the time that they have the problem that you solve? And what most marketing people talk about here is what's called the triggering event. Something causes someone to take an action. What is that something? Who is that someone, and what is that action?And for us, one of the things that we thought early on is that well, the bill comes out the first week of the month, every month, so people are going to opened the bill freak out, and a big influx of leads are going to come our way and that's going to happen every single month. The reality is that never happened. That turns out was not a triggering event for anyone.Corey: And early on, when we didn't have that many leads coming in, it was a statistical aberration that I thought I saw, like, “Oh, out of the three leads this month, two of them showed up in the same day. Clearly, it's an AWS billing day thing.” No. It turns out that every company's internal cadence is radically different.Mike: Right. And I wish I could say that we have found what our triggering events are, but I actually don't think we have. We know who the people are and we know what they reach out for, but we haven't really uncovered that triggering event. And it could also be there, there isn't a one. Or at least, if there is one, it's not one that we could see externally, which is kind of fine.Corey: Well, for the half of our consulting that does contract negotiation for large-scale commitments with AWS, it comes up for renewal or the initial discount contract gets offered, those are very clear triggering events but the challenge is that we don't—Mike: You can't see them externally.Corey: —really see that from the outside. Yeah.Mike: Right. And this is one of those things where there are triggering events for basically everything and it's probably going to be pretty consistent once you get down to specific services. Like we provide cost optimization services and contract negotiation services. I'm willing to bet that I can predict exactly what the trigger events for both of those will be pretty well. The problem is, you can never see those externally, which is kind of fine.Ideally, you would be able to see it externally, but you can't, so we roll with it, which means our entire strategy has revolved around always being top-of-mind because at the time where it happens, we're already there. And that's a much more difficult strategy to employ, but it does work.Corey: All it takes is time and being really lucky and being really prolific, and, and, and. It's one of those things where if I were to set out to replicate it, I don't even know how I'd go about doing it.Mike: People have been asking me. They say, “I want to create The Duckbill Group for X. What do I do?” And I say, “First step, get yourself a Corey Quinn.” And they're like, “Well, I can't do that. There's only one.” I'm like, “Yep. Sucks to be you.” [laugh].Corey: Yeah, we called the Jerk Store. They're running out of him. Yeah, it's a problem. And I don't think the world needs a whole lot more of my type of humor, to be honest, because the failure mode that I have experienced brutally and firsthand is not that people don't find me funny; it's that it really hurts people's feelings. I have put significant effort into correcting those mistakes and not repeating them, but it sucks every time I get it wrong.Mike: Yeah.Corey: Another question I have for you around the book targeting, are you aiming this at individual independent consultants or are you looking to advise people who are building agencies?Mike: Explicitly not the latter. My framing around this is that there are a number of people who are doing consulting right now and they've kind of fell into it. Often, they'll leave one job and do a little consulting while they're waiting on their next thing. And in some cases, that might be a month or two. In some cases, it might go on years, but that whole time, they're just like, “Oh, yeah, I'm doing consulting in between things.”But at some point, some of those think, “You know what? I want this to be my thing. I don't want there to be a next thing. This is my thing. So therefore, how do I get serious about doing consulting? How do I get serious about being a consultant?”And that's where I think I can add a lot of value because casually consulting of, like, taking whatever work just kind of falls your way is interesting for a while, but once you get serious about it, and you have to start thinking, well, how do I actually deliver engagements? How do I do that consistently? How do I do it repeatedly? How to do it profitably? How do I price my stuff? How do I package it? How do I attract the leads that I want? How do I work with the customers I want?And turning that whole thing from a casual, “Yeah, whatever,” into, “This is my business,” is a very different way of thinking. And most people don't think that way because they didn't really set out to build a business. They set out to just pass time and earn a little bit of money before they went off to the next job. So, the framing that I have here is that I'm aiming to help people that are wanting to get serious about doing consulting. But they generally have experience doing it already.Corey: Managing shards. Maintenance windows. Overprovisioning. ElastiCache bills. I know, I know. It's a spooky season and you're already shaking. It's time for caching to be simpler. Momento Serverless Cache lets you forget the backend to focus on good code and great user experiences. With true autoscaling and a pay-per-use pricing model, it makes caching easy. No matter your cloud provider, get going for free at gomemento.co/screaming That's GO M-O-M-E-N-T-O dot co slash screamingCorey: We went from effectively being the two of us on the consulting delivery side, two scaling up to, I believe, at one point we were six of us, and now we have scaled back down to largely the two of us, aided by very specific external folk, when it makes sense.Mike: And don't forget April.Corey: And of course. I'm talking delivery.Mike: [laugh].Corey: There's a reason I—Mike: Delivery. Yes.Corey: —prefaced it that way. There's a lot of support structure here, let's not get ourselves, and they make this entire place work. But why did we scale up? And then why did we scale down? Because I don't believe we've ever really talked about that publicly.Mike: No, not publicly. In fact, most people probably don't even notice that it happened. We got pretty big for—I mean, not big. So, we hit, I think, six full-time people at one point. And that was quite a bit.Corey: On the delivery side. Let's be clear.Mike: Yeah. No, I think actually with support structure, too. Like, if you add in everyone that we had with the sales and marketing as well, we were like 11 people. And that was a pretty sizable company. But then in July this year, it kind of hit a point where I found that I just wasn't enjoying my job anymore.And I looked around and noticed that a lot of other people was kind of feeling the same way, is just things had gotten harder. And the business wasn't suffering at all, it was just everything felt more difficult. And I finally realized that, for me personally at least, I started Duckbill because I love working with clients, I love doing consulting. And what I have found is that as the company grew larger and larger, I spent most of my time keeping the trains running and taking care of the staff. Which is exactly what I should be doing when we're that size, like, that is my job at that size, but I didn't actually enjoy it.I went into management as, like, this job going from having never done it before. So, I didn't have anything to compare it to. I didn't know if I would like it or not. And once I got here, I realized I actually don't. And I spent a lot of efforts to get better at it and I think I did. I've been working with a leadership coach for years now.But it finally came to a point where I just realized that I wasn't actually enjoying it anymore. I wasn't enjoying the job that I had created. And I think that really panned out to you as well. So, we decided, we had kind of an opportune time where one of our team decided that they were also wanting to go back to do independent consulting. I'm like, “Well, this is actually pretty good time. Why don't we just start scaling things back?” And like, maybe we'll scale it up again in the future; maybe we won't. But like, let's just buy ourselves some breathing room.Corey: One of the things that I think we didn't spend quite enough time really asking ourselves was what kind of place do we want to work at. Because we've explicitly stated that you and I both view this as the last job either of us is ever going to have, which means that we're not trying to do the get big quickly to get acquired, or we want to raise a whole bunch of other people's money to scale massively. Those aren't things either of us enjoy. And it turns out that handling the challenges of a business with as many people working here as we had wasn't what either one of us really wanted to do.Mike: Yeah. You know what—[laugh] it's funny because a lot of our advisors kept asking the same thing. Like, “So, what kind of company do you want?” And like, we had some pretty good answers for that, in that we didn't want to build a VC-backed company, we didn't ever want to be hyperscale. But there's a wide gulf of things between two-person company and hyperscale and we didn't really think too much about that.In fact, being a ten-person company is very different than being a three-person company, and we didn't really think about that either. We should have really put a lot more thought into that of what does it mean to be a ten-person company, and is that what we want? Or is three, four, or five-person more our style? But then again, I don't know that we could have predicted that as a concern had we not tried it first.Corey: Yeah, that was very much something that, for better or worse, we pay advisors for their advice—that's kind of definitionally how it works—and then we ignored it, on some level, though we thought we were doing something different at the time because there's some lessons you've just got to learn by making the mistake yourself.Mike: Yeah, we definitely made a few of those. [laugh].Corey: And it's been an interesting ride and I've got zero problem with how things have shaken out. I like what we do quite a bit. And honestly, the biggest fear I've got going forward is that my jackass business partner is about to distract the hell out of himself by writing a book, which is never as easy as even the most pessimistic estimates would be. So, that's going to be awesome and fun.Mike: Yeah, just wait until you see the dedication page.Corey: Yeah, I wasn't mentioned at all in the last book that you wrote, which I found personally offensive. So, if I'm not mentioned this time, you're fired.Mike: Oh, no, you are. It's just I'm also adding an anti-dedication page, which just has a photo of you.Corey: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. This is going to be one of those stories of the good consultant and the bad consultant, and I'm going to be the Goofus to your Gallant, aren't I?Mike: [laugh]. Yes, yes. You are.Corey: “Goofus wants to bill by the hour.”Mike: It's going to have a page of, like, “Here's this [unintelligible 00:25:05] book is dedicated to. Here's my acknowledgments. And [BLEEP] this guy.”Corey: I love it. I absolutely love it. I think that there is definitely a bright future for telling other people how to consult properly. May just suggest as a subtitle for the book is Consulting—subtitle—You Have Problems and Money. We'll Take Both.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. My working title for this is Practical Consulting, but only because my previous book was Practical Monitoring. Pretty sure O'Reilly would have a fit if I did that. I actually have no idea what I'm going to call the book, still.Corey: Naming things is super hard. I would suggest asking people at AWS who name services and then doing the exact opposite of whatever they suggest. Like, take their list of recommendations and sort by reverse order and that'll get you started.Mike: Yeah. [laugh].Corey: I want to thank you for giving us an update on what you're working on and why you have less hair every time I see you because you're mostly ripping it out due to self-inflicted pain. If people want to follow your adventures, where's the best place to keep updated on this ridiculous, ridiculous nonsense that I cannot talk you out of?Mike: Two places. You can follow me on Twitter, @Mike_Julian, or you can sign up for the newsletter on my site at mikejulian.com where I'll be posting all the updates.Corey: Excellent. And I look forward to skewering the living hell out of them.Mike: I look forward to ignoring them.Corey: Thank you, Mike. It is always a pleasure.Mike: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Mike Julian, CEO at The Duckbill Group, and my unwilling best friend. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice along with an angry, annoying comment in which you tell us exactly what our problem is, and then charge us a fixed fee to fix that problem.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Do you ever daydream about living abroad? Once the reality of paying the bills hits, most of us let that dream die. But that dream can happen — it's possible if you want it badly enough and you work for it. If you're committed to this dream, work towards it — and eventually, you'll find yourself in a new adventure!  In this episode of The Pollen Podcast, Diana joins two of her closest friends, Emily and Mike, in Italy and talks about their journey to living abroad in the Czech Republic. But it's not all fun and romance though! Emily and Mike share their struggles and some of the cultural barriers they've experienced living abroad. Remember: we won't get everything we dream of at first, but the more we work at it, the closer we'll get.   Listen to this episode to gain the insight and courage to live abroad!  Create your own creative entrepreneurship story of clarity, professional confidence, and profit. Join Diana's 90-day group course Camp Clarity and learn everything you wish you already knew, like how to land dream clients, harness the power of social media, and make the money you deserve. Learn more here. 

In this episode Mike misses his first episode off having the time of his life in Vegas. Riley and Pat have to soldier on with out their MVP. They start with overs and unders and spicy meatballs. Then talk a little Packers, Open Championship, Brewers, Tots, NASCAR, and rap things up with Walker Texas Ranger Season 2 episode 1 recap. Follow us on Twitter: @banging_drum Facebook: Banging on the Drum page Email us at bangingonthedrum@gmail.com

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Mike Maynard, Managing Director and CEO, Napier Group (Chichester, England) Mike Maynard is Managing Director and CEO at Napier Group, an agency focused on marketing technical products to technical audiences. Clients include major companies selling semiconductors, industrial automation systems, cellular communications infrastructure, complex software, and even a baggage-handling system manufacturer. The customer “audience” for these products is “super-targeted, super technical, and . . . demanding.” A disillusioned engineer who loved talking tech, Mike stopped designing products and re-engineered himself as a tech salesman. In 2008, he bought out the tech-focused marketing agency his company had been using – two weeks before the dot com crash. With ALL of his money invested in the agency, Mike had no choice but to make the venture succeed. Today, the agency is a mix of geeks – engineers or technical journalists who understand the technology – and marketing experts. Based in Chichester, England, the agency works with a good number of American companies to target their American customers . . . and is in the process of adding a U.S. office. Some of Napier's clients have products with fairly quick purchase/sales cycles. Others, such as the airport baggage handling system manufacturer, may have cycles ranging from seven to twenty years. When the sales cycle is long, a client is not “trying to think about closing a sale all the time.” Multi-year sales cycles require marketing to build relationships and rapport. The objective is to keep the product long-term on the minds of “future” customers by helping them stay apprised of industry trends and leading-edge developments. Mike explains that, when a product is technical, “people shortlist a very small number of suppliers.” While the customer journey for a consumer product is usually short and straightforward, marketing technical products takes a “very long time,” “involves different stages of research,” and “requires “very different information.” Mike says you have to understand your customers, what they need, and the information they need; “take this really complicated thing and then narrow it down to clear reasons why somebody should consider the product;” “keep talking to the client over a long period of time because of the long sales cycle”; and make their decision and customer journey as easy as possible. In this interview, Mike discusses TURTL, an in-Beta, analytics-rich, flipbook style content platform that tracks audience engagement – whether a document is opened, how long a reader looks at it, and how far through the information the reader gets – which allows document owners to optimize their content, enrich relevant and eliminate irrelevant information, and customize the material to the needs of individual prospects.  Instead of following “vanity metrics” (click-through rates, numbers of clicks), TURTL helps answer the questions, “What does your audience care about? What do you need to give them more of? What do you need to stop talking about? How can you optimize your campaigns?” Mike says, “It's a phenomenal superpower,” being able to “learn from the behavior of your audience” particularly when you've got the long, complex documents typical in tech industries. Mike can be reached at his agency's website: napierb2b.com, on LinkedIn (Mike Maynard at Napier), or by email at: mike@napierb2b.com. ROB: Welcome to the Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Kischuk, and I am joined today by Mike Maynard, Managing Director and CEO at Napier Group based in Chichester, England. Welcome to the podcast, Mike. MIKE: Thanks for having me on the podcast, Rob. Appreciate it. ROB: Excellent to have you here. Why don't you start us off with an introduction to Napier Group? What is the firm's expertise? MIKE: Basically, what the firm does is we get geeks and techies excited. Our business is helping people market in the B2B technology space. It's all about selling technical products to a technical audience that's making a technical decision. ROB: Got it. How technical are we talking here? Is it gadgets, is it software, or is it heavy-duty engineer cloud platform kind of software developer stuff? MIKE: It's pretty geeky stuff, Rob. To give you an idea of some of our clients, we work with one of the leading semiconductor companies in the world. We work with companies that sell industrial automation systems. We work with people selling cellular communications infrastructure. We even work with the world's largest manufacturer of baggage handling systems. ROB: It sounds like these are not Super Bowl ads, right? This sounds like pretty targeted audiences. MIKE: These are super-targeted, super technical, and generally speaking pretty demanding audiences, yeah. It's definitely not Super Bowl ads. ROB: It seems like whether you're talking about semiconductors, whether you're talking about communications, this is pretty technical stuff. I'm imagining you're largely a firm of marketers; how do you equip your team to be prepared to speak this language? Are they reformed geeks, or what is the secret here? MIKE: I'm not sure I'm reformed, but I certainly am a geek. I started my career as an electronics engineer and spent years in design and then in technical support for semiconductor companies. So I'm certainly very technical. And actually, just over half the agency is very technical, typically coming from either an engineering or a technical journalism background. So how do we equip people? The answer is we mix together people who understand the technology with people who are really good at marketing, and that's how we get the results. ROB: Got it. I am also a computer engineer by education, but now wear all the hats, much as you do in some seasons, I am sure. How, then, do you think about how to reach the audience, where to reach the audience? How do you find these very specific buyers? And these also sound like probably longer purchase cycles while we're at it. MIKE: Yeah, two very insightful questions, Rob. Talking about the purchase cycles, we do have a range of purchase cycles. With some of our clients' products, we can actually get fairly quick turnarounds, and indeed, a couple of our clients actually sell online, so they will be able to sell particularly things like development kits (the things to start a development process going) online fairly quickly, although there'll then be a development cycle involved for the engineers. But if you look at, for example, selling a baggage handling system into an airport, if you want to sell a baggage handling system, someone's really got to be building an airport terminal to buy a baggage handling system. They need somewhere to put it. Actually, you look at those sales cycles, the fastest turnaround they can get is typically about 7 years, and the sales cycle goes up to 20 years for these systems. It really is a case of not trying to think about closing a sale all the time. With a multi-year sales cycle, that's ridiculous. It's about building that relationship, that rapport through marketing, and basically staying top-of-mind, staying the product that the customers want to choose. ROB: How do you stay top-of-mind for seven years? MIKE: The answer is you have to do interesting stuff. It's really simple. In all our industries, if you look at it, there are people buying who are making very technical decisions over a long sales cycle. What these guys and girls want to do is understand what's going on in the market, because they may go for a long period of time without making any specific purchasing decision. If you could be helping them, educating them, telling them about the trends, and hopefully introducing developments that actually are leading the industry, then you're going to get them engaged. It's about presenting that kind of information in a compelling way that really gets the techies excited. It's about helping them as well as marketing to them. ROB: I'd imagine at least you have plenty of time to pull together a case study. It's not a quick turnaround, necessarily. MIKE: The problem is everybody wants case studies, and case studies are notoriously difficult to get done. We're forever trying to get case studies. Actually, the case studies are one of the fastest things that happen because typically they happen once a sale is completed and you've had a product, for example, go into production. Then you can turn around the case study really quickly. So you wait for it for a really long time – it's like being a kid waiting for Christmas. You think it's forever till it's going to happen. You know that the client's got this amazing project they're working on, and then finally you get the opportunity, and suddenly Christmas is there and it's amazing, and you get a fantastic case study. ROB: Yeah, that sounds like Christmas all over again. If we rewind the clock a little bit, what led you into this business? How did this whole thing get started? MIKE: It's a very unplanned story. I used to be an engineer, and I was designing electronic systems. I designed everything from systems that could engrave printing rollers using big industrial lasers through to recording for music studios. Then I decided I wasn't very good at the engineering part. I actually quite liked talking about the technology, so I went into technical sales. In the UK at the time, you used to get a company car, a car provided by the company, if you were in marketing. I kind of liked the idea of moving into marketing because my car was getting old, so I moved into marketing because of that and spent a few years in marketing, running European marketing for a semiconductor company. Then I went on a course. It was a residential management course, and there were a few glasses of wine on the last night, and we got into talking about what people's ambitions were. Someone said to me, “You should run your own business, Mike.” I think they were really polite and they were saying, “Oh, my God, I would hate to be your manager, Mike,” but they presented it in this lovely way of . . . “You should run your own business.” About two months later, my main contact at the agency I was using said, “The two founders are looking to retire and sell the business, and I think you should buy it.” I thought, how hard can it be to run an agency? I've done marketing. An agency's got to be basically the same as being on the client side. Let's just try it. And then I learnt. ROB: Purchasing a business can take on a few different forms. What did the purchase process and structure look like for you? I imagine there's enough distance between here and there that you can probably talk a little bit about it. MIKE: The approach actually was really simple. There were some technical issues; obviously, companies structure very differently. In the UK, you can have a partnership or you can have a limited liability company or you can have a listed company. At the time, the current company was a partnership. I basically bought the assets, put it into a limited liability company because I had no money, and certainly after the purchase, I had no money. I never really added up how much debt I'd run up because I think I would've never done it if I'd realized that. But it was a relatively straightforward process. Frankly, buying businesses is nowhere near as difficult as it sounds. But I do have one great bit of advice for buying businesses. If you're going to buy an agency that is 100% focused on technology clients, buying that agency about two weeks before the dot-com crash is a really, really bad idea. That's my advice to anyone: get your timing right. That's probably a bigger challenge than actually the whole process of buying a business. ROB: Yes, timing would seem to matter a great deal there. But perhaps then also part of going through that season has probably helped along the way. How did you make it through the downturn, the dot-com crash? That's certainly a baptism by fire, if you will, into the privileges of business ownership. MIKE: That's a great question. I think making it through was not really the problem, because I'd taken all the money I had, I put it into the business – there was no option. I had to make it succeed. I think a lot of agency owners will relate to this with COVID and typically having to leave the office, work from home – you get through that. I think the biggest problem is how that impacts you in the longer term. For me, after buying the agency, it really made me overly cautious. We were always wanting to have cash in the bank. We always wanted to be safe. We wanted to have runway. We didn't go out and invest as much as we should. We didn't actually take advantage of the cycles when there were upcycles. It really had a long-term impact on me. Agency owners who've been through COVID, a lot of agency owners have really struggled; the one thing I'd say is these exceptional situations are exceptional. And yes, there'll be problems. There'll be bumps on the road. It won't be an easy route. But I think as we come out of this horrible pandemic, we've got to look back to building our confidence as agency owners and being prepared to go back to taking the risks you were taking before the pandemic. ROB: How did that experience, and maybe the learning from that dot-com crash, affect your reaction to however much 2008 impacted you, and then what sort of footing were you on heading into COVID? You saw it. You clearly saw, “Here we go again”; how did your mind and your attitude react differently in that case? MIKE: That's a great question because I think the two are very different. 2008 obviously had a big impact on us, again, being a technology agency with a big tech downturn. But we were still running the business very conservatively. We were still, in my opinion, being a little bit overly cautious. We had cash, we were safe, we got through the downturn, and it was okay. By the time we get to the pandemic and COVID, we changed our philosophy. We were investing more. We're still running the business with cash in the bank rather than running it on an overdraft, so to some extent keeping safe. But honestly, for us – and we were lucky in the business we're in. There are other agencies that have been hit far harder. For us, we came through COVID and it was like, actually, the impact to the business was pretty small. I mean, yes, we had to move everybody, make them remote, we had to do that in virtually no time, we had to deal with communications issues. We had all these problems. But basically, the money kept coming in, and that was great. Some of the clients cut back, but nobody really pulled out. It was actually so much easier having been through financially what were far worse downturns. ROB: Yeah. Some of these products you're talking about – I think any marketer, any client, any seller, any buyer is expecting the entire conversation to last longer than any downturn, so I can see how that makes sense. I am curious as I think about it – most of what you're talking about, these things sound like they are more sold than bought, if you will. They're things where, as a marketer, you're not just trying to get somebody to check out and buy a bunch of things to outfit all their cellphone towers for their entire country network buildout. In some ways you're equipping and supporting a salesforce, I would imagine. So. what are the channels that you're reaching, and how do you come alongside when the actual purchase is probably with a human and maybe an RFP and a whole bunch of other things? MIKE: That's a great question. If you look at the research with these highly involved decisions – and I know LinkedIn has published something recently about financial purchases – actually, people shortlist a very small number of suppliers. Typically a couple of suppliers. What you have to do is really understand the customer journey. People talk about the customer journey, and you can look at a customer journey for a consumer product; it's very short, and it's probably not that involved. A customer journey for the kind of products we're taking, it takes a very long time. It involves different stages of research. They need very different content, very different information. It's about really getting into the head of those customers, understanding what they're doing, understanding what they're going through, what they need, and then delivering the right information. I can't change our clients' products, and I can't make our client always have the best product in the world. But what I can do is present the product in the best light, and I can make it as easy as possible for the customer to choose our client's product. A lot of it is about removing these roadblocks that make it difficult to choose and just making that journey as smooth as possible. ROB: It's such an interesting journey along that way. You did mention, as we were getting you lined up to be on the podcast, you're going to be at the B2B Expo in Los Angeles at the start of April. How does that fit into your mix of operating the firm? And that's a little bit of a journey for you. MIKE: Because we're in technology, most of our clients are American, or certainly most of our revenue comes from clients that are ultimately headquartered in the States. Silicon Valley is a big area for us, but also we have some industrial technology companies we work with who are based in the States. So, we've always got a lot of our business from the States. At the moment, we're looking for creative things to do. We've recently signed a partnership with a content platform called TURTL. We're looking to promote that as well, both in Europe and in the U.S. And then lastly – and this is news that very few people know outside of the company – we actually have someone who's moving out to the States in the next week or two to begin opening a presence in the U.S. We're already working for American companies to target some of their American customers, and now we're building that out. That's the next stage. All of these things came together, along, frankly, with a 50% grant from the UK government to go to the show. So it made a lot of sense to go and see if it works. It's very much an experiment for us. It could be a complete disaster, but I think like every marketing tactic, if you don't try it, how do you know whether it works? ROB: Sure. That's actually a topic that's been very near and dear to us as well. When you talk about these conferences, the decision of how much to experiment versus how much to commit – when you come to thinking about going to a conference like that, how do you think about what an experiment looks like versus a strong conviction that it's the right place? What do those different investments look like? MIKE: That's a great question. I think you look firstly at the cost in terms of money, and then secondly at the cost in terms of time. For us, we've got a number of clients in the States, and I can combine a meeting with probably three of those clients as well as the event. I can actually get these client meetings that I'd probably want to fly to the States for anyway included. That makes it very much more compelling. There's not much for time cost involved. As I say, we've signed this new technology partnership; we really want to promote that. We think there's a lot of opportunity. The company is UK-based. It's just launching and trying to build in the States. Again, it's perfect timing. You look at everything and you go, “Does my gut feel that the amount I'm investing is a small amount compared to the potential return? Yeah, I need one client from this show and I'm gold.” That's a relatively small investment. If I don't get anybody, it's not the end of the world. I've had some great client meetings, I've learnt a lot about the market, I've been able to go to the States in front of some American clients and some prospects. It almost feels like it's a “can't-lose,” even though we're doing the tradeshow route – which, particularly after COVID, feels a little bit risky. ROB: Right, it's a little bit of an experiment for everyone, but it's definitely a good perspective to think about needing one good client to rationalize the entire endeavor. It sounds like TURTL is strategic to you. Tell a little bit more about what that does. What does it do, how does it work, how does it help you? MIKE: We've recently signed up with the guys. They have a technology to present information in somewhat like a flipbook style. You go online, you read the information, and you can delve down into the topics that interest you. On the face of it, that's kind of like a number of other technologies, but what TURTL does is provides phenomenal analytics to the marketers. Typically, in our world, it's all PDF. All the datasheets, manuals, instructions, brochures, everything is PDF. You send someone a PDF. Did they open it? I don't know. Did they read the first page? I don't know. Did they get to the end? I don't know. With a TURTL document, you get information on which pages they looked at, how long they looked at it, where they delved down for deeper information. Hopefully the TURTL guys won't mind me saying this – the technology for presentation is good, it's really good, but it's not world-changing. The technology behind the analytics, though, for my clients is amazing because they're producing massive books of information, and they have no idea whether anybody reads some of those pages. Now they know, and that's so powerful. They can optimize the content. And of course, within TURTL, like many of these other platforms, you can customize the content as well. You can work on the pages that people, your audience, care about, and you can also make sure you filter out the ones that are irrelevant to each prospect. To me – and maybe this is more of a trend than just about TURTL – we've gone away from analytics being, “What's your click-through rate? How many clicks did you get?” Everyone has realized that's kind of vanity metrics, and now I think analytics are “What does your audience care about? What do you need to give them more of? What do you need to stop talking about? How can you optimize your campaigns?” That's something that, to me, TURTL will give our clients, and it's a phenomenal superpower. ROB: It reminds me a little bit of DocSend, but for a different industry. Do you know DocSend? MIKE: Yeah, DocSend. ROB: I googled them again just to make sure I wasn't crazy, and they're all about investors and investing and those pitch decks that you send to investors. But it's the same need and the same problem. It helps me picture – the displaying of the document, that's table stakes. It's necessary. It's what the product has to do. You can't do anything if you don't do that. But it's the insights it can give you that really – you know where you're wasting your time, where you're not. There's a lot going on there, what content is communicating and maybe what isn't. Or even with client needs, right? MIKE: Absolutely. It lets you really understand what matters to the audience. You could do that on an individual level and that's kind of cool, but it's that aggregate level. We produced a general TURTL document from one of our previous PDFs, did a little bit of promotion over email, and 70% of people flipped all the way to the end. We were like, 70% going to the end? I wouldn't have bet that on PDF. And okay, some of it is a new format, some of it is exciting. Then we look at it and it's like, page seven – nobody liked that. Why do we talk about this stuff? Nobody cares. The next thing we're going to do is take out page seven, and suddenly that document becomes even more engaging to the audience. So, you can really learn from the behavior of your audience, and that to me is really powerful, particularly when you've got long and complex documents, which a lot of our clients have. ROB: Mike, we talked a little bit about the past of the firm, but as you reflect – we've already shared some lessons, but what are some of the key lessons you feel like you have learned in building and operating the business and things you might suggest to yourself to do a little bit differently if you had the chance to go back and tell yourself? MIKE: Wow, that's a great question. I think looking back – I actually talked with one of my other directors, who has been with me for the whole journey, from buying the agency all the way through to today, and we said we lacked confidence. Quite often, if you don't come from an agency background, you're not used to what agencies do at different sizes. You think big agencies are some sort of unbelievable, amazing organization that you can't touch. To me, we lacked confidence to go pitch for some of the big businesses. When we look at where we do our best job, where we deliver the best value, actually a lot of the time that's with our biggest clients. Not with the small companies, but with the really biggest clients. So, I think it's about being confident in your offering and what you're doing and really being prepared to put yourself out there. ROB: I can almost see once you have that confidence, you think about “who is not your customer” more clearly, but also probably it creates an interesting perspective on what industries you see emerging and who would be a good customer. What have you seen coming to market that you would not have predicted, but you look at it and say “Hey, that's actually a great prospect for us”? What types of things have surprised you? MIKE: That's really interesting. I think certainly the comment about being prepared to be clear about who's not your customer is really important. We've turned down quite a few clients – probably more clients than we've actually pitched, over the last six months. In terms of the markets that are interesting, I think actually if you look at your business, what you need to do as an agency owner is see what you're good at and then see what's one step away. As you want to grow and expand out, you need to look at where you are one step away. A lot of what we do is around quite complex software, so we're really good at helping software companies sell a complex product. There are lots of areas in business where software is really taking over, whether that be in terms of advertising technology or whether it's in terms of purchasing or whether it's in terms of understanding maintenance in a plant. All of those are a slightly step away from what we were doing originally, but actually we're really good at that stuff because we understand how to take this really complicated thing and then narrow it down to clear reasons why somebody should consider the product, and then keep talking to that person over a long period of time, because there's a long sales cycle. ROB: In software, do you end up with anything that's a much shorter purchase cycle maybe than some of the complex hardware? Or do you find software with longer implementation cycles, more considered purchases, is a better fit? MIKE: If I'm to be honest – and this comes back to the fact that as you grow your agency, you've got to be confident about where it's not a good fit – if it's more of an impulse buy, it's a very short sales cycle, why do you need us? We're really good at taking this technical information and communicating it over a long period of time. That's what works really well. Why would you get us if it's a software where you just need to run Google Ads and people buy it? So, I think it's probably not the right fit for us. It's not somewhere we'd go, and it's certainly not somewhere we're chasing. We're definitely chasing the complex enterprise kind of software businesses because that's where we're successful. That's where we add value. ROB: There's certainly a buzz phrase circling in the software world of product-led growth. Everybody talks about PLG this and PLG that. Is that not at all relevant to some of these more enterprise solutions? Or are there ways it's creeping its way in that are worth discussing? MIKE: I think in terms of product-led growth, it's difficult. The enterprise software companies are trying to be more agile. They're trying to look more like almost the prosumer-type companies. But it is a different sale, because what you're doing is selling something that's going to handle a very large proportion of activities. It's a very complex project. It's got a lot of different processes inside it. If I'm the enterprise buying that, I kind of want to know that if it works today, it's going to work tomorrow and it's going to keep going. Stability is actually a real benefit. So, I think we are going to see the software engineering market fragment, and there's definitely the less involved purchases in software that are fantastic. You look at it in marketing, it could be anything from tools to create banner ads to some of the tools to view websites on different platforms. They're actually quite low engagement processes, and there's relatively low switching costs. They don't matter. I think there'll always be software like that, and that's great because you get very fast innovation. You get new players in the market. At the other end, you've got something like a marketing automation platform, and there, it's not the platform that's complicated; it's the data and getting your CRM data, getting things synced up, getting history, being able to get things to work based upon behavior. And honestly, if you buy a marketing automation system and it looks completely different in a year's time, that's a huge risk for anybody. So, I think different things need different approaches, and we're definitely into the complex product where a certain degree of stability is absolutely important. It's vital for the customer. ROB: Certainly makes sense. Mike, when people want to find and connect with you and Napier Group, where should they go to find you? MIKE: We've obviously got a website, napierb2b.com. People can go there. People can go on LinkedIn and find me; I'm Mike Maynard at Napier. I'm the only Mike Maynard at Napier, so that should be fairly easy. But frankly, I just love talking to people, so if anyone wants to email me, I think most agency owners will work out my email address; it's mike@napierb2b.com. Just send me an email. I'd love to hear from you. ROB: That is excellent. Mike, thank you so much for coming on, for sharing your expertise and your experience. We are all better for it, and I wish you the best. MIKE: No problem. Thanks for having me on the podcast, Rob. ROB: Thank you very much. Take care. Thank you for listening. The Marketing Agency Leadership Podcast is presented by Converge. Converge helps digital marketing agencies and brands automate their reporting so they can be more profitable, accurate, and responsive. To learn more about how Converge can automate your marketing reporting, email info@convergehq.com, or visit us on the web at convergehq.com.

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

Ryan and Wabba, joined by special guest Court Lalonde, talk about the Bruins, NHL, and other rants we've been holding in since our last episode.

Happy Halloween! We're joined by comics scribe Daniel "D.G." Chichester to talk about the history of horror comics, Marvel's return to the genre in the early 1990s, and the macabre anti-hero Terror (whom Chichester co-created).  ----more---- Issue 18 Transcript   Mike: [00:00:00] It's small, but feisty, Mike: Welcome to Tencent Takes, the podcast where we dig up comic book characters' graves and misappropriate the bodies, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson, and I am joined by my cohost, the Titan of terror herself, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: It is I. Mike: Today, we are extremely fortunate to have comics writer, Daniel, DG Chichester. Dan: Nice to see you both. Mike: Thank you so much for taking the time. You're actually our first official guest on the podcast. Dan: Wow. Okay. I'm going to take that as a good thing. That's great. Mike: Yeah. Well, if you're new to the show, the purpose of our [00:01:00] podcast as always is to look at the weirdest, silliest, coolest moments of comic books, and talk about them in ways that are fun and informative. In this case, we looking at also the spookiest moments, and how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we're going to be talking about horror comics. We're looking at their overall history as well as their resurrection at Marvel in the early 1990s, and how it helped give birth to one of my favorite comic characters, an undead anti-hero who went by the name of Terror. Dan, before we started going down this road, could you tell us a little bit about your history in the comic book industry, and also where people can find you if they want to learn more about you and your work? Dan: Absolutely. At this point, people may not even know I had a history in comic books, but that's not true. Uh, I began at Marvel as an assistant in the mid-eighties while I was still going to film school and, semi quickly kind of graduated up, to a more official, [00:02:00] assistant editor position. Worked my way up through editorial, and then, segued into freelance writing primarily for, but also for DC and Dark Horse and worked on a lot of, semi-permanent titles, Daredevil's probably the best known of them. But I think I was right in the thick of a lot of what you're going to be talking about today in terms of horror comics, especially at Marvel, where I was fiercely interested in kind of getting that going. And I think pushed for certain things, and certainly pushed to be involved in those such as the Hellraiser and Nightbreed Clive Barker projects and Night Stalkers and, uh, and Terror Incorporated, which we're going to talk about. And wherever else I could get some spooky stuff going. And I continued on in that, heavily until about 96 / 97, when the big crash kind of happened, continued on through about 99 and then have not really been that actively involved since then. But folks can find out what I'm doing now, if they go to story maze.substack.com, where I have a weekly newsletter, which features [00:03:00] new fiction and some things that I think are pretty cool that are going on in storytelling, and also a bit of a retrospective of looking back at a lot of the work that I did. Mike: Awesome. Before we actually get started talking about horror comics, normally we talk about one cool thing that we have read or watched recently, but because this episode is going to be dropping right before Halloween, what is your favorite Halloween movie or comic book? Dan: I mean, movies are just terrific. And there's so many when I saw that question, especially in terms of horror and a lot of things immediately jumped to mind. The movie It Follows, the recent It movie, The Mist, Reanimator, are all big favorites. I like horror movies that really kind of get under your skin and horrify you, not just rack up a body count. But what I finally settled on as a favorite is probably John Carpenter's the Thing, which I just think is one of the gruesomest what is going to happen next? What the fuck is going to happen next?[00:04:00] And just utter dread. I mean, there's just so many things that combined for me on that one. And I think in terms of comics, I've recently become just a huge fan of, and I'm probably going to slaughter the name, but Junji Ito's work, the Japanese manga artist. And, Uzumaki, which is this manga, which is about just the bizarreness of this town, overwhelmed with spirals of all things. And if you have not read that, it is, it is the trippiest most unsettling thing I've read in, in a great long time. So happy Halloween with that one. Mike: So that would be mango, right? Dan: Yeah. Yeah. So you'd make sure you read it in the right order, or otherwise it's very confusing, so. Mike: Yeah, we actually, haven't talked a lot about manga on this. We probably should do a deep dive on it at some point. But, Jessika, how about you? Jessika: Well, I'm going to bring it down a little bit more silly because I've always been a fan of horror and the macabre and supernatural. So always grew up seeking creepy media as [00:05:00] a rule, but I also loves me some silliness. So the last three or so years, I've had a tradition of watching Hocus Pocus with my friend, Rob around Halloween time. And it's silly and it's not very heavy on the actual horror aspect, but it's fun. And it holds up surprisingly well. Mike: Yeah, we have all the Funkos of the Sanderson sisters in our house. Jessika: It's amazing watching it in HD, their costumes are so intricate and that really doesn't come across on, you know, old VHS or watching it on television back in the day. And it's just, it's so fun. How much, just time and effort it looks like they put into it, even though some of those details really weren't going to translate. Dan: How very cool. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah. So, but I also really like actual horror, so I'm also in the next couple of days is going to be a visiting the 1963 Haunting of Hill House because that's one of my favorites. Yeah. It's so good. And used to own the book that the movie was based on also. And seen all the [00:06:00] iterations and it's the same storyline the recent Haunting of Hill house is based on, which is great. That plot line has been reworked so many times, but it's such a great story, I'm just not shocked in the least that it would run through so many iterations and still be accepted by the public in each of its forms. Mike: Yeah. I really liked that Netflix interpretation of it, it was really good. Dan: They really creeped everything out. Mike: Yeah. There's a YouTuber called Lady Night, The Brave, and she does a really great summary breakdown explaining a lot of the themes and it's like almost two hours I think, of YouTube video, but she does these really lovely retrospectives. So, highly recommend you check that out. If you want to just think about that the Haunting of Hill House more. Jessika: Oh, I do. Yes. Mike: I'm going to split the difference between you two. When I was growing up, I was this very timid kid and the idea of horror just creeped me out. And so I avoided it like the plague. And then when I was in high [00:07:00] school, I had some friends show me some movies and I was like, these are great, why was I afraid of this stuff? And so I kind of dove all the way in. But my preferred genre is horror comedy. That is the one that you can always get me in on. And, I really love this movie from the mid-nineties called the Frighteners, which is a horror comedy starring Michael J. Fox, and it's directed by Peter Jackson. And it was written by Peter Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh. And it was a few years before they, you know, went on to make a couple of movies based on this little known franchise called Lord of the Rings. But it's really wild. It's weird, and it's funny, and it has some genuine jump scare moments. And there's this really great ghost story at the core of it. And the special effects at the time were considered amazing and groundbreaking, but now they're kind of, you look at, and you're like, oh, that's, high-end CG, high-end in the mid-nineties. Okay. But [00:08:00] yeah, like I said, or comedies are my absolute favorite things to watch. That's why Cabin in the Woods always shows up in our horror rotation as well. Same with Tucker and Dale vs Evil. That's my bread and butter. With comic books, I go a little bit creepier. I think I talked about the Nice House on the Lake, that's the current series that I'm reading from DC that's genuinely creepy and really thoughtful and fun. And it's by James Tynion who also wrote Something That's Killing the Children. So those are excellent things to read if you're in the mood for a good horror comic. Dan: Great choice on the Frighteners. That's I think an unsung classic, that I'm going to think probably came out 10 years too early. Mike: Yeah. Dan: It's such a mashup of different, weird vibes, that it would probably do really, really well today. But at that point in time, it was just, what is this? You know? Cause it's, it's just cause the horrifying thing in it are really horrifying. And, uh, Gary Busey's son, right, plays the evil ghost and he is just trippy, off the wall, you know, horrifying. [00:09:00] Mike: Yeah. And it starts so silly, and then it kind of just continues to go creepier and creepier, and by the time that they do some of the twists revealing his, you know, his agent in the real world, it's a genuine twist. Like, I was really surprised the first time I saw it and I - Dan: Yeah. Mike: was so creeped out, but yeah. Dan: Plus it's got R. Lee Ermey as the army ghost, which is just incredible. So, Mike: Yeah. And, Chi McBride is in it, and, Jeffrey Combs. Dan: Oh, oh that's right, right. right. Mike: Yeah. So yeah, it's a lot of fun. Mike: All right. So, I suppose we should saunter into the graveyard, as it were, and start talking about the history of horror comics. So, Dan, obviously I know that you're familiar with horror comics, Dan: A little bit. Mike: Yeah. What about you, Jess? You familiar with horror comics other than what we've talked about in the show? Jessika: I started getting into it once you and I started, you know, talking more on the [00:10:00] show. And so I grabbed a few things. I haven't looked through all of them yet, but I picked up some older ones. I did just recently pick up, it'll be more of a, kind of a funny horror one, but they did a recent Elvira and Vincent Price. So, yeah, so I picked that up, but issue one of that. So it's sitting on my counter ready for me to read right now. Mike: Well, and that's funny, cause Elvira actually has a really long, storied history in comic books. Like she first appeared in kind of like the revival of House of Mystery that DC did. And then she had an eighties series that had over a hundred issues that had a bunch of now major names involved. And she's continued to have series like, you can go to our website and get autographed copies of her recent series from, I think Dynamite. Jessika: That's cool. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Nice. Mike: Speaking of horror comedy Elvira is great. Jessika: Yes. Mike: I recently showed Sarah the Elvira Mistress of the Dark movie and she was, I think really sad that I hadn't showed it to her sooner. Jessika: [00:11:00] That's another one I need to go watch this week. Wow. Don't- nobody call me. I'm just watching movies all week. Dan: Exactly. Mike: It's on a bunch of different streaming services, I think right now. Well it turns out that horror comics, have pretty much been a part of the industry since it really became a proven medium. You know, it wasn't long after comics became a legit medium in their own, right that horror elements started showing up in superhero books, which like, I mean, it isn't too surprising. Like the 1930's was when we got the Universal classic movie monsters, so it makes a lot of sense that those kinds of characters would start crossing over into comic books, just to take advantage of that popularity. Jerry Siegel and Joel Schuster, the guys who created Superman, actually created the supernatural investigator called Dr. Occult in New Fun Comics three years before they brought Superman to life. And Dr. Occult still shows up in DC books. Like, he was a major character in the Books of Magic with Neil Gaiman. I think he may show up in Sandman later on. I can't remember. Jessika: Oh, okay. Dan: I wouldn't be surprised. Neil would find ways to mine that. [00:12:00] Mike: Yeah. I mean, that was a lot of what the Sandman was about, was taking advantage of kind of long forgotten characters that DC had had and weaving them into his narratives. And, if you're interested in that, we talk about that in our book club episodes, which we're currently going through every other episode. So the next episode after this is going to be the third episode of our book club, where we cover volumes five and six. So, horror comics though really started to pick up in the 1940s. There's multiple comic historians who say that the first ongoing horror series was Prized Comics, New Adventures of Frankenstein, which featured this updated take on the original story by Mary Shelley. It took place in America. The monster was named Frankenstein. He was immediately a terror. It's not great, but it's acknowledged as being really kind of the first ongoing horror story. And it's really not even that much of a horror story other than it featured Frankenstein's monster. But after that, a number of publishers started to put out adaptations of classic horror stories for awhile. So you had [00:13:00] Avon Publications making it official in 1946 with the comic Erie, which is based on the first real dedicated horror comic. Yeah. This is the original cover to Erie Comics. Number one, if you could paint us a word picture. Dan: Wow. This is high end stuff as it's coming through. Well it looks a lot like a Zine or something, you know it's got a very, Mac paint logo from 1990, you know, it's, it's your, your typical sort of like, ooh, I'm shaky kind of logo. That's Eerie Comics. There's a Nosferatu looking character. Who's coming down some stairs with the pale moon behind him. It, he's got a knife in his hand, so, you know, he's up to no good. And there is a femme fatale at the base of the stairs. She may have moved off of some train tracks to get here. And, uh, she's got a, uh, a low, cut dress, a lot of leg and the arms and the wrists are bound, but all this for only 10. cents. So, I think there's a, there's a bargain there.[00:14:00] Mike: That is an excellent description. Thank you. So, what's funny is that Erie at the time was the first, you know, official horror comic, really, but it only had one issue that came out and then it sort of vanished from sight. It came back with a new series that started with a new number one in the 1950s, but this was the proverbial, the shot that started the war. You know, we started seeing a ton of anthology series focusing on horror, like Adventures into the Unknown, which ran into the 1960s and then Amazing Mysteries and Marvel Tales were repurposed series for Marvel that they basically changed the name of existing series into these. And they started doing kind of macabre, weird stories. And then, we hit the 1950s. And the early part of the 1950s was when horror comics really seemed to take off and experienced this insane success. We've talked about how in the post-WWII America, superhero comics were kind of declining in [00:15:00] popularity. By the mid 1950s, only three heroes actually had their own books and that was Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Which, I didn't realize that until I was doing research. I didn't, I just assumed that there were other superhero comics at the time. But we started seeing comics about horror and crime and romance really starting to get larger shares of the market. And then EC Comics was one of those doing gangbuster business during this whole era. Like, this was when we saw those iconic series, the Haunt of Fear, the Vault of Horror, the Crypt of Terror, which was eventually rebranded to Tales from the Crypt. Those all launched and they found major success. And then the bigger publishers were also getting in on this boom. During the first half of the 1950s Atlas, which eventually became Marvel, released almost 400 issues across 18 horror titles. And then American Comics Group released almost 125 issues between five different horror titles. Ace comics did almost a hundred issues between five titles. I'm curious. I'm gonna ask both of you, what [00:16:00] do you think the market share of horror comics was at the time? Dan: In terms of comics or in terms of just like newsstand, magazine, distribution. Mike: I'm going to say in terms of distribution. Dan: I mean, I know they were phenomenally successful. I would, be surprised if it was over 60%. Mike: Okay. How about. Jessika: Oh, goodness. Let's throw a number out. I'm going to say 65 just because I want to get close enough, but maybe bump it up just a little bit. This is a contest now. Dan: The precision now, like the 65. Jessika: Yes. Mike: Okay. Well, obviously we don't have like a hard definite number, but there was a 2009 article from reason magazine saying that horror books made up a quarter of all comics by 1953. So, so you guys were overestimating it, but it was still pretty substantial. At the same time, we were also seeing a surge in horror films. Like, the 1950s are known as the atomic age and media reflected [00:17:00] societal anxiety, at the possibility of nuclear war and to a lesser extent, white anxiety about societal changes. So this was the decade that gave us Invasion of the Body Snatchers The Thing from Another World, which led to John Carpenter's The Thing eventually. Um, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Hammer horror films also started to get really huge during this time. So we saw the beginning of stuff like Christopher Lee's, Dracula series of films. So the fifties were like a really good decade for horror, I feel. But at the same time, violent crime in America started to pick up around this period. And people really started focusing on juvenile criminals and what was driving them. So, there were a lot of theories about why this was going on and no one's ever really come up with a definite answer, but there was the psychiatrist named Frederick Wortham who Dan, I yeah. Dan: Oh yeah, psychiatrist in big air quotes, yeah. Mike: In quotes. Yeah. [00:18:00] Yeah. And he was convinced that the rise in crime was due to comics, and he spent years writing and speaking against them. He almost turned it into a cottage industry for himself. And this culminated in 1954, when he published a book called Seduction of the Innocent, that blamed comic books for the rise in juvenile delinquency, and his arguments are laughable. Like, I mean, there's just no way around it. Like you read this stuff and you can't help, but roll your eyes and chuckle. But, at the time comics were a relatively new medium, you know, and people really only associated them with kids. And his arguments were saying, oh, well, Wonder Woman was a lesbian because of her strength and independence, which these days, I feel like that actually has a little bit of credibility, but, like, I don't know. But I don't really feel like that's contributing to the delinquency of the youth. You know, and then he also said that Batman and Robin were in a homosexual relationship. And then my favorite was that Superman comics were [00:19:00] un-American and fascist. Dan: Well. Mike: All right. Dan: There's people who would argue that today. Mike: I mean, but yeah, and then he actually, he got attention because there were televised hearings with the Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. I mean, honestly, every time I think about Seduction of the Innocent and how it led to the Comics Code Authority. I see the parallels with Tipper Gore's Parent Music Resource Center, and how they got the Parental Advisory sticker on certain music albums, or Joe Lieberman's hearings on video games in the 1990's and how that led to the Electronic Systems Reading Board system, you know, where you provide almost like movie ratings to video games. And Wortham also reminds me a lot of this guy named Jack Thompson, who was a lawyer in the nineties and aughts. And he was hell bent on proving a link between violent video games and school shootings. And he got a lot of media attention at the time until he was finally disbarred for his antics. But there was this [00:20:00] definite period where people were trying to link video games and violence. And, even though the statistics didn't back that up. And, I mean, I think about this a lot because I used to work in video games. I spent almost a decade working in the industry, but you know, it's that parallel of anytime there is a new form of media that is aimed at kids, it feels like there is a moral panic. Dan: Well, I think it goes back to what you were saying before about, you know, even as, as things change in society, you know, when people in society get at-risk, you know, you went to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Right. Which is classically thought to be a response to communism, you know, and the feelings of communist oppression and you know, the different, you know, the other, and it's the same thing. I think every single one of these is just a proof point of if you want to become, suddenly well-known like Lieberman or Wortham or anything, you know, pick the other that the older generation doesn't really understand, right? Maybe now there are more adults playing video games, but it's probably still perceived as a more juvenile [00:21:00] thing or comics or juvenile thing, or certain types of movies are a juvenile thing, you know, pick the other pick on it, hold it up as the weaponized, you know, piece, and suddenly you're popular. And you've got a great flashpoint that other people can rally around and blame, as if one single thing is almost ever the cause of everything. And I always think it's interesting, you know, the EC Comics, you know, issues in terms of, um, Wortham's witch hunt, you know, the interesting thing about those is yet they were gruesome and they are gruesome in there, but they're also by and large, I don't know the other ones as well, but I know the EC Comics by and large are basically morality plays, you know, they're straight up morality plays in the sense that the bad guys get it in the end, almost every time, like they do something, they do some horrific thing, but then the corpse comes back to life and gets them, you know, so there's, there's always a comeuppance where the scales balance. But that was of course never going to be [00:22:00] an argument when somebody can hold up a picture of, you know, a skull, you know, lurching around, you know, chewing on the end trails of something. And then that became all that was talked about. Mike: Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, spring boarding off of that, you know, worth them and the subcommittee hearings and all that, they led to the comics magazine association of America creating the Comics Code Authority. And this was basically in order to avoid government regulation. They said, no, no, no, we'll police ourselves so that you don't have to worry about this stuff. Which, I mean, again, that's what we did with the SRB. It was a response to that. We could avoid government censorship. So the code had a ton of requirements that each book had to meet in order to receive the Comics Code Seal of Approval on the cover. And one of the things you couldn't do was have quote, scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead or torture, which I mean,[00:23:00] okay. So the latter half of the 1950's saw a lot of these dedicated horror series, you know, basically being shut down or they drastically changed. This is, you know, the major publishers really freaked out. So Marvel and DC rebranded their major horror titles. They were more focused on suspense or mystery or Sci-Fi or superheroes in a couple of cases, independent publishers, didn't really have to worry about the seal for different reasons. Like, some of them were able to rely on the rep for publishing wholesome stuff like Dell or Gold Key. I think Gold Key at the time was doing a lot of the Disney books. So they just, they were like, whatever. Dan: Right, then EC, but, but EC had to shut down the whole line and then just became mad. Right? I mean, that's that was the transition at which William, you know, Gains - Mike: Yeah. Dan: basically couldn't contest what was going on. Couldn't survive the spotlight. You know, he testified famously at that hearing. But had to give up all of [00:24:00] that work that was phenomenally profitable for them. And then had to fall back to Mad Magazine, which of course worked out pretty well. Mike: Yeah, exactly. By the end of the 1960s, though, publishers started to kind of gently push back a little bit like, Warren publishing, and Erie publications, like really, they didn't give a shit. Like Warren launched a number of horror titles in the sixties, including Vampirilla, which is like, kind of, I feel it's sort of extreme in terms of both sex and horror, because I mean, we, we all know what Vampirilla his costume is. It hasn't changed in the 50, approximately 50 years that it's been out like. Dan: It's like, what can you do with dental floss, Right. When you were a vampire? I mean, that's basically like, she doesn't wear much. Mike: No, I mean, she never has. And then by the end of the sixties, Marvel and DC started to like kind of steer some of their books back towards the horror genre. Like how some Mystery was one of them where it, I think with issue 1 75, that was when they [00:25:00] took away, took it away from John Jones and dial H for Hero. And they were like, no, no, no, no. We're going to, we're going to bring, Cain back as the host and start telling horror morality plays again, which is what they were always doing. And this meant that the Comics Code Authority needed to update their code. So in 1971, they revised it to be a little bit more horror friendly. Jessika: Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with, walking dead or torture shall not be used. Vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be permitted to be used when handled in the classic traditions, such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high caliber literary works written by Edgar Allen Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle, and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world. Mike: But at this point, Marvel and DC really jumped back into the horror genre. This was when we started getting books, like the tomb of Dracula, Ghost Rider, where will finite and son of Satan, and then DC had a [00:26:00] bunch of their series like they had, what was it? So it was originally The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, and then it eventually got retitled to Forbidden Tales of the Dark Mansion. Like, just chef's kiss on that title. Dan: You can take that old Erie comic and throw, you know, the Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love as the title on that. And it would work, you know. Mike: I know. Right. So Dan, I'm curious, what is your favorite horror comic or comic character from this era? Dan: I would say, it was son of Satan, because it felt so trippy and forbidden, and I think comics have always, especially mainstream comics you know, I've always responded also to what's out there. Right. I don't think it's just a loosening the restrictions at that point, but in that error, what's going on, you're getting a lot of, I think the films of Race with the Devil and you're getting the Exorcist and you're getting, uh, the Omen, you know, Rosemary's baby. right. Satanism, [00:27:00] the devil, right. It's, it's high in pop culture. So true to form. You know, I think Son of Satan is in some ways, like a response of Marvel, you know, to that saying, let's glom onto this. And for a kid brought up in the Catholic church, there was a certain eeriness to this, ooh, we're reading about this. It's like, is it really going to be Satanism? And cause I was very nervous that we were not allowed even watch the Exorcist in our home, ever. You know, I didn't see the Exorcist until I was like out of high school. And I think also the character as he looks is just this really trippy look, right. At that point, if you're not familiar with the character, he's this buff dude, his hair flares up into horns, he just wears a Cape and he carries a giant trident, he's got a massive pentacle, I think a flaming pentacle, you know, etched in his chest. Um, he's ready to do business, ya know, in some strange form there. So for me, he was the one I glommed on to the most. [00:28:00] Mike: Yeah. Well, I mean, it was that whole era, it was just, it was Gothic horror brought back and Satanism and witchcraft is definitely a part of that genre. Dan: Sure. Mike: So, that said, kind of like any trend horror comics, you know, they have their rise and then they started to kind of fall out of popularity by the end of the seventies or the early eighties. I feel like it was a definite end of the era when both House of Mystery and Ghost Writer ended in 1983. But you know, there were still some individual books that were having success, but it just, it doesn't feel like Marvel did a lot with horror comics during the eighties. DC definitely had some luck with Alan Moore's run of the Swamp Thing. And then there was stuff like Hellblazer and Sandman. Which, as I mentioned, we're doing our book club episodes for, but also gave rise to Vertigo Comics, you know, in the early nineties. Not to say that horror comics still weren't a thing during this time, but it seems like the majority of them were coming from indie publishers. Off the top of my head, one example I think of still is Dead World, which basically created a zombie apocalypse [00:29:00] universe. And it started with Aero comics. It was created in the late eighties, and it's still going today. I think it's coming out from IDW now. But at the same time, it's not like American stopped enjoying horror stuff. Like this was the decade where we got Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm street, Evil Dead, Hellraiser, Poltergeist, Child's Play, just to name a few of the franchises that we were introduced to. And, I mentioned Hellraiser. I love Hellraiser, and Dan, I know that you have a pretty special connection to that brand. Dan: I do. I put pins in my face every night just to kind of keep my complexion, you know? Mike: So, let's transition over to the nineties and Marvel and let's start that off with Epic Comics. Epic started in the eighties, and it was basically a label that would print, create our own comics. And they eventually started to use label to produce, you know, in quotes, mature comics. So Wikipedia says that this was your first editorial job at Marvel was with the [00:30:00] Epic Line. Is that correct? Dan: Well, I'll go back and maybe do just a little correction on Epic's mission if you don't mind. Mike: Yeah, yeah. Dan: You know, first, which is it was always creator owned, and it did start as crude. And, but I don't think that ever then transitioned into more mature comics, sometimes that just was what creator-owned comics were. Right. That was just part of the mission. And so as a creator-owned imprint, it could be anything, it could be the silliest thing, it could be the most mature thing. So it was always, you know, part of what it was doing, and part of the mission of doing creator-owned comics, and Archie Goodwin was the editor in chief of that line, was really to give creators and in to Marvel. If we gave them a nice place to play with their properties, maybe they would want to go play in the mainstream Marvel. So you might get a creator who would never want to work for Marvel, for whatever reason, they would have a great Epic experience doing a range of things, and then they would go into this. So there was always levels of maturity and we always looked at it as very eclectic and challenging, you know, sometimes in a good [00:31:00] way. So I'll have to go back to Wikipedia and maybe correct them. My first job was actually, I was on the Marvel side and it was as the assistant to the assistant, to the editor in chief. So I would do all of the grunt work and the running around that the assistant to the editor in chief didn't want to do. And she would turn to me and say, Dan, you're going to go run around the city and find this thing for Jim Shooter. Now, then I did that for about five or six months, I was still in film school, and then left, which everyone was aghast, you don't leave Marvel comics, by choice. And, but I had, I was still in school. I had a summer job already sort of set up, and I left to go take that exciting summer job. And then I was called over the summer because there was an opening in the Epic line. And they want to know if I'd be interested in taking on this assistant editor's job. And I said, it would have to be part-time cause I still had a semester to finish in school, but they were intrigued and I was figuring, oh, well this is just kind of guaranteed job. [00:32:00] Never knowing it was going to become career-like, and so that was then sort of my second job. Mike: Awesome. So this is going to bring us to the character of Terror. So he was introduced as a character in the Shadow Line Saga, which was one of those mature comics, it was like a mature superhero universe. That took place in a few different series under the Epic imprint. There was Dr. Zero, there was St. George, and then there was Power Line. Right. Dan: That's correct, yep. Mike: And so the Shadow Line Saga took his name from the idea that there were these beings called Shadows, they were basically super powered immortal beings. And then Terror himself first appeared as Shrek. He's this weird looking enforcer for a crime family in St. George. And he becomes kind of a recurring nemesis for the main character. He's kind of like the street-level boss while it's hinting that there's going to be a eventual confrontation between the main character of St. George and Dr. Zero, who is kind of [00:33:00] a Superman character, but it turns out he has been manipulating humanity for, you know, millennia at this point. Dan: I think you've encapsulated it quite well. Mike: Well, thank you. So the Shadow Line Saga, that only lasted for about what a year or two? Dan: Probably a couple of years, maybe a little over. There was about, I believe, eight to nine issues of each of the, the main comics, the ones you just cited. And then we segued those over to, sort of, uh, an omni series we call Critical Mass, which brought together all three characters or storylines. And then try to tell this, excuse the pun, epic, you know story, which will advance them all. And so wrapped up a lot of loose ends and, um, you know, became quite involved now. Mike: Okay. Dan: It ran about seven or eight issues. Mike: Okay. Now a couple of years after Terror was introduced under the Epic label, Marvel introduced a new Ghost Rider series in 1990 that hit that sweet spot of like nineties extreme with a capital X and, and, you know, [00:34:00] it also gave us a spooky anti heroes like that Venn diagram, where it was like spooky and extreme and rides a motorcycle and right in the middle, you had Ghost Rider, but from what I understand the series did really well, commercially for Marvel. Comichron, which is the, the comic sales tracking site, notes that early issues were often in the top 10 books sold each month for 91. Like there are eight issues of Ghost Rider, books that are in the top 100 books for that year. So it's not really surprising that Marvel decided to go in really hard with supernatural characters. And in 1992, we had this whole batch of horror hero books launch. We had Spirits of Vengeance, which was a spinoff from Ghost Rider, which saw a Ghost Rider teaming up with Johnny Blaze, and it was the original Ghost Writer. And he didn't have a hellfire motorcycle this time, but he had a shotgun that would fire hell fire, you know, and he had a ponytail, it was magnificent. And then there was also the Night Stalkers, [00:35:00] which was a trio of supernatural investigators. There was Hannibal King and Blade and oh, I'm blanking on the third one. Dan: Frank Drake. Mike: Yeah. And Frank Drake was a vampire, right? Dan: And he was a descendant of Dracula, but also was a vampire who had sort of been cured. Um, he didn't have a hunger for human blood, but he still had a necessity for some type of blood and possessed all the attributes, you know, of a vampire, you know, you could do all the powers, couldn't go out in the daylight, that sort of thing. So, the best and worst of both worlds. Mike: Right. And then on top of that, we had the Dark Hold, which it's kind of like the Marvel equivalent of the Necronomicon is the best way I can describe it. Dan: Absolutely. Yup. Mike: And that's showed up in Agents of Shield since then. And they just recently brought it into the MCU. That was a thing that showed up in Wanda Vision towards the end. So that's gonna clearly reappear. And then we also got Morbius who is the living vampire from [00:36:00] Spider-Man and it's great. He shows up in this series and he's got this very goth rock outfit, is just it's great. Dan: Which looked a lot like how Len Kaminsky dressed in those days in all honesty. Mike: Yeah, okay. Dan: So Len will now kill me for that, but. Mike: Oh, well, but yeah, so these guys were all introduced via a crossover event called Rise of the Midnight Sons, which saw all of these heroes, you know, getting their own books. And then they also teamed up with Dr. Strange to fight against Lilith the mother of demons. And she was basically trying to unleash her monstrous spawn across the world. And this was at the same time the Terror wound up invading the Marvel Universe. So if you were going to give an elevator pitch for Terror in the Marvel Universe, how would you describe him? Dan: I actually wrote one down, I'll read it to you, cause you, you know, you put that there and was like, oh gosh, I got to like now pitch this. A mythic manifestation of fear exists in our times, a top dollar mercenary for hire using a supernatural [00:37:00] ability to attach stolen body parts to himself in order to activate the inherit ability of the original owner. A locksmith's hand or a marksman, his eye or a kickboxer his legs, his gruesome talent gives him the edge to take on the jobs no one else can, he accomplishes with Savage, restyle, scorn, snark, and impeccable business acumen. So. Mike: That's so good. It's so good. I just, I have to tell you the twelve-year-old Mike is like giddy to be able to talk to you about this. Dan: I was pretty giddy when I was writing this stuff. So that's good. Mike: So how did Terror wind up crossing into the Marvel Universe? Like, because he just showed shows up in a couple of cameos in some Daredevil issues that you also wrote. I believe. Dan: Yeah, I don't know if he'd showed up before the book itself launched that might've, I mean, the timing was all around the same time. But everybody who was involved with Terror, love that Terror and Terror Incorporated, which was really actual title. Love the hell out of [00:38:00] the book, right. And myself, the editors, Carl Potts, who was the editor in chief, we all knew it was weird and unique. And, at one point when I, you know, said to Carl afterwards, well I'm just gonna take this whole concept and go somewhere else with it, he said, you can't, you made up something that, you know, can't really be replicated without people knowing exactly what you're doing. It's not just another guy with claws or a big muscle guy. How many people grab other people's body parts? So I said, you know, fie on me, but we all loved it. So when, the Shadowline stuff kind of went away, uh, and he was sort of kicking out there is still, uh, Carl came to me one day and, and said, listen, we love this character. We're thinking of doing something with horror in Marvel. This was before the Rise of the Midnight Sons. So it kind of came a little bit ahead of that. I think this eventually would become exactly the Rise of the Midnight Sons, but we want to bring together a lot of these unused horror characters, like Werewolf by Night, Man Thing, or whatever, but we want a central kind of [00:39:00] character who, navigates them or maybe introduces them. Wasn't quite clear what, and they thought Terror, or Shrek as he still was at that point, could be that character. He could almost be a Crypt Keeper, maybe, it wasn't quite fully baked. And, so we started to bounce this around a little bit, and then I got a call from Carl and said, yeah, that's off. We're going to do something else with these horror characters, which again would eventually become probably the Midnight Sons stuff. But he said, but we still want to do something with it. You know? So my disappointment went to, oh, what do you mean? How could we do anything? He said, what if you just bring him into the Marvel Universe? We won't say anything about what he did before, and just use him as a character and start over with him operating as this high-end mercenary, you know, what's he going to do? What is Terror Incorporated, and how does he do business within the Marvel world? And so I said, yes, of course, I'm not going to say that, you know, any quicker and just jumped into [00:40:00] it. And I didn't really worry about the transition, you know, I wasn't thinking too much about, okay. How does he get from Shadow Line world, to earth 616 or whatever, Marcus McLaurin, who was the editor. God bless him, for years would resist any discussion or no, no, it's not the same character. Marcus, it's the same character I'm using the same lines. I'm having him referenced the same fact that he's had different versions of the word terrors, his name at one point, he makes a joke about the Saint George complex. I mean, it's the same character. Mike: Yeah. Dan: But , you know, Marcus was a very good soldier to the Marvel hierarchy. So we just really brought him over and we just went all in on him in terms of, okay, what could a character like this play in the Marvel world? And he played really well in certain instances, but he certainly was very different than probably anything else that was going on at the time. Mike: Yeah. I mean, there certainly wasn't a character like him before. So all the Wikias, like [00:41:00] Wikipedia, all the Marvel fan sites, they all list Daredevil 305 as Terror's first official appearance in. Dan: Could be. Mike: Yeah, but I want to talk about that for a second, because that is, I think the greatest villain that I've ever seen in a Marvel comic, which was the Surgeon General, who is this woman who is commanding an army of like, I mean, basically it's like a full-scale operation of that urban myth of - Dan: Yeah. Mike: -the dude goes home with an attractive woman that he meets at the club. And then he wakes up in a bathtub full of ice and he's missing organs. Dan: Yeah. You know, sometimes, you know, that was certainly urban myth territory, and I was a big student of urban myths and that was the sort of thing that I think would show up in the headlines every three to six months, but always one of those probably friend of a friend stories that. Mike: Oh yeah. Dan: Like a razor an apple or something like that, that never actually sort of tracks back. Mike: Well, I mean, the thing now is it's all edibles in candy and they're like, all the news outlets are showing officially [00:42:00] branded edibles. Which, what daddy Warbucks mother fucker. Jessika: Mike knows my stand on this. Like, no, no, nobody is buying expensive edibles. And then putting them in your child's candy. Like, No, no, that's stupid. Dan: No, it's the, it's the, easier version of putting the LSD tab or wasting your pins on children in Snickers bars. Jessika: Right. Dan: Um, but but I think, that, that storyline is interesting, Mike, cause it's the, it's one of the few times I had a plotline utterly just completely rejected by an editor because I think I was doing so much horror stuff at the time. Cause I was also concurrently doing the Hellraiser work, the Night Breed work. It would have been the beginning of the Night Stalkers work, cause I was heavily involved with the whole Midnight Sons work. And I went so far on the first plot and it was so grizzly and so gruesome that, Ralph Macchio who was the editor, called me up and said, yeah, this title is Daredevil. It's not Hellraiser. So I had to kind of back off [00:43:00] and realize, uh, yeah, I put a little too much emphasis on the grisliness there. So. Mike: That's amazing. Dan: She was an interesting, exploration of a character type. Mike: I'm really sad that she hasn't showed back up, especially cause it feels like it'd be kind of relevant these days with, you know, how broken the medical system is here in America. Dan: Yeah. It's, it's funny. And I never played with her again, which is, I think one of my many Achilles heels, you know, as I would sometimes introduce characters and then I would just not go back to them for some reason, I was always trying to kind of go forward onto something new. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Is there anything about Terror's character that you related to at the time, or now even. Dan: Um, probably being very imperious, very complicated, having a thing for long coats. Uh, I think all of those probably, you know, work then and now, I've kind of become convinced weirdly enough over time, that Terror was a character who [00:44:00] and I, you know, I co-created him with Margaret Clark and, and Klaus Janson, but I probably did the most work with him over the years, you know? So I feel maybe a little bit more ownership, but I've sort of become convinced that he was just his own thing, and he just existed out there in the ether, and all I was ultimately was a conduit that I was, I was just channeling this thing into our existence because he came so fully formed and whenever I would write him, he would just kind of take over the page and take over the instance. That's always how I've viewed him, which is different than many of the other things that I've written. Mike: He's certainly a larger than life personality, and in every sense of that expression. Jessika: Yes. Mike: I'm sorry for the terrible pun. Okay. So we've actually talked a bit about Terror, but I [00:45:00] feel like we need to have Jessika provide us with an overall summary of his brief series. Jessika: So the series is based on the titular character, of course, Terror, who is unable to die and has the ability to replace body parts and gains the skill and memory of that limb. So he might use the eye of a sharpshooter to improve his aim or the arm of an artist for a correct rendering. And because of the inability for his body to die, the dude looks gnarly. His face is a sick green color. He has spike whiskers coming out of the sides of his face, and he mostly lacks lips, sometimes he has lips, but he mostly lacks lips. So we always has this grim smile to his face. And he also has a metal arm, which is awesome. I love that. And he interchanges all of the rest of his body parts constantly. So in one scene he'll have a female arm and in another one it'll sport, an other worldly tentacle. [00:46:00] He states that his business is fear, but he is basically a paid mercenary, very much a dirty deeds, although not dirt cheap; Terror charges, quite a hefty sum for his services, but he is willing to do almost anything to get the job done. His first job is ending someone who has likewise immortal, air quotes, which involves finding an activating a half demon in order to open a portal and then trick a demon daddy to hand over the contract of immortality, you know, casual. He also has run-ins with Wolverine, Dr. Strange Punisher, Silver Sable, and Luke Cage. It's action packed, and you legitimately have no idea what new body part he is going to lose or gain in the moment, or what memory is going to pop up for him from the donor. And it keeps the reader guessing because Terror has no limitations. Mike: Yeah. Dan: was, I was so looking forward to hearing what your recap was going to be. I love that, so I just [00:47:00] want to say that. Jessika: Thank you. I had a lot of fun reading this. Not only was the plot and just the narrative itself, just rolling, but the art was fantastic. I mean, the things you can do with a character like that, there truly aren't any limits. And so it was really interesting to see how everything fell together and what he was doing each moment to kind of get out of whatever wacky situation he was in at the time.So. And his, and his quips, I just, the quips were just, they give me life. Mike: They're so good. Like there was one moment where he was sitting there and playing with the Lament Configuration, and the first issue, which I, I never noticed that before, as long as we ready this time and I was like, oh, that's great. And then he also made a St. George reference towards the end of the series where he was talking about, oh, I knew another guy who had a St. George complex. Dan: Right, right. Right, Mike: Like I love those little Easter eggs. Speaking of Easter eggs, there are a lot of Clive Barker Easter eggs throughout that whole series. Dan: [00:48:00] Well, That's it. That was so parallel at the time, you know. Mike: So around that time was when you were editing and then writing for the HellRaiser series and the Night Breed series, right? Dan: Yes. Certainly writing for them. Yeah. I mean, I did some consulting editing on the HellRaiser and other Barker books, after our lift staff, but, primarily writing at that point. Mike: Okay. Cause I have Hellraiser number one, and I think you're listed as an editor on it. Dan: I was, I started the whole Hellraiser anthology with other folks, you know, but I was the main driver, and I think that was one of the early instigators of kind of the rebirth of horror at that time. And, you know, going back to something you said earlier, you know, for many years, I was always, pressing Archie Goodwin, who worked at Warren, and worked on Erie, and worked on all those titles. You know, why can't we do a new horror anthology and he was quite sage like and saying, yeah. It'd be great to do it, but it's not going to sell there's no hook, right? There's no connection, you know, just horror for her sake. And it was when Clive Barker [00:49:00] came into our offices, and so I want to do something with Archie Goodwin. And then the two of them said, Hellraiser can be the hook. Right. Hellraiser can be the way in to sort of create an anthology series, have an identifiable icon, and then we developed out from there with Clive, with a couple of other folks Erik Saltzgaber, Phil Nutman, myself, Archie Goodwin, like what would be the world? And then the Bible that would actually give you enough, breadth and width to play with these characters that wouldn't just always be puzzle box, pinhead, puzzle box, pinhead, you know? And so we developed a fairly large set of rules and mythologies allowed for that. Mike: That's so cool. I mean, there really wasn't anything at all, like Hellraiser when it came out. Like, and there's still not a lot like it, but I - Jessika: Yeah, I was going to say, wait, what else? Mike: I mean, I feel like I've read other books since then, where there's that blending of sexuality and [00:50:00] horror and morality, because at the, at the core of it, Hellraiser often feels like a larger morality play. Dan: Now, you know, I'm going to disagree with you on that one. I mean, I think sometimes we let it slip in a morality and we played that out. But I think Hellraiser is sort of find what you want out of it. Right. You go back to the first film and it's, you know, what's your pleasure, sir? You know, it was when the guy hands up the book and the Centobites, you know, or angels to some demons, to others. So I think the book was at its best and the movies are at their best when it's not so much about the comeuppance as it is about find your place in here. Right? And that can be that sort of weird exploration of many different things. Mike: That's cool. So going back to Terror. Because we've talked about like how much we enjoyed the character and everything, I want to take a moment to talk about each of our favorite Terror moments. Dan: Okay. Mike: So Dan, why don't you start? What was your favorite moment for Terror [00:51:00] to write or going back to read? Dan: It's a great question, one of the toughest, because again, I had such delight in the character and felt such a connection, you know, in sort of channeling him in a way I could probably find you five, ten moments per issue, but, I actually think it was the it's in the first issue. And was probably the first line that sort of came to me. And then I wrote backwards from it, which was this, got your nose bit. And you know, it's the old gag of like when a parent's playing with a child and, you know, grabs at the nose and uses the thumb to represent the nose and says, got your nose. And there's a moment in that issue where I think he's just plummeted out of a skyscraper. He's, you know, fallen down into a police car. He's basically shattered. And this cop or security guard is kind of coming over to him and, and he just reaches out and grabs the guy's nose, you know, rips his arm off or something or legs to start to replace himself and, and just says, got your nose, but it's, but it's all a [00:52:00] build from this inner monologue that he's been doing. And so he's not responding to anything. He's not doing a quip to anything. He's just basically telling us a story and ending it with this, you know, delivery that basically says the guy has a complete condescending attitude and just signals that we're in his space. Like he doesn't need to kind of like do an Arnold response to something it's just, he's in his own little world moments I always just kind of go back to that got your nose moment, which is just creepy and crazy and strange. Mike: As soon as you mentioned that I was thinking of the panel that that was from, because it was such a great moment. I think it was the mob enforcers that had shot him up and he had jumped out of the skyscraper four and then they came down to finish him off and he wound up just ripping them apart so that he could rebuild himself. All right, Jessika, how about you? Jessika: I really enjoyed the part where Terror fights with sharks in order to free Silver Sable and Luke Cage. [00:53:00] It was so cool. There was just absolutely no fear as he went at the first shark head-on and, and then there were like five huge bloodthirsty sharks in the small tank. And Terror's just like, what an inconvenience. Oh, well. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Like followed by a quippy remark, like in his head, of course. And I feel like he's such a solitary character that it makes sense that he would have such an active internal monologue. I find myself doing that. Like, you know, I mean, I have a dog, so he usually gets the brunt of it, but he, you know, it's, it is that you start to form like, sort of an internal conversation if you don't have that outside interaction. Dan: Right. Jessika: And I think a lot of us probably relate to that though this pandemic. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: But the one-liner thoughts, like, again, they make those scenes in my opinion, and it gave pause for levity. We don't have to be serious about this because really isn't life or death for Terror. We know that, and he just reminds us that constantly by just he's always so damn nonchalant. [00:54:00] Dan: Yeah. He does have a very, I'm not going to say suave, but it's, uh, you know, that sort of very, I've got this, you know, sort of attitude to it. Mike: I would, say that he's suave when he wants to be, I mean, like the last issue he's got his whiskers tied back and kind of a ponytail. Dan: Oh yeah. Jessika: Oh yeah. Dan: Richard Pace did a great job with that. Mike: Where he's dancing with his assistant in the restaurant and it's that final scene where he's got that really elegant tuxedo. Like. Dan: Yeah. It's very beautiful. Mike: I say that he can be suave and he wants to be. So I got to say like my favorite one, it was a visual gag that you guys did, and it's in issue six when he's fighting with the Punisher and he's got this, long guns sniper. And he shoots the Punisher point blank, and Terror's, like at this point he's lost his legs for like the sixth time. Like he seems to lose his legs, like once an issue where he's just a torso waddling around on his hands. And so he shoots him the force skids him back. [00:55:00] And I legit could not stop laughing for a good minute. Like I was just cackling when I read that. So I think all of us agree that it's those moments of weird levity that really made the series feel like something special. Dan: I'm not quite sure we're going to see that moment reenacted at the Disney Pavilion, you know, anytime soon. But, that would be pretty awesome if they ever went that route. Mike: Well, yeah, so, I mean, like, let's talk about that for a minute, because one of the main ways that I consume Marvel comics these days is through Marvel unlimited, and Terror is a pretty limited presence there. There's a few issues of various Deadpool series. There's the Marvel team up that I think Robert Kirkman did, where Terror shows up and he has some pretty cool moments in there. And then there's a couple of random issues of the 1990s Luke Cage series Cage, but like the core series, the Marvel max stuff, his appearance in books like Daredevil and Wolverine, they just don't seem to be available for consumption via the. App Like I had to go through my personal [00:56:00] collection to find all this stuff. And like, are the rights just more complicated because it was published under the Epic imprint and that was create her own stuff, like do you know? Dan: No, I mean, it wouldn't be it's choice, right. He's probably perceived as a, if people within the editorial group even know about him, right. I was reading something recently where some of the current editorial staff had to be schooled on who Jack Kirby was. So, I'm not sure how much exposure or, you know, interest there would be, you know, to that. I mean, I don't know why everything would be on Marvin unlimited. It doesn't seem like it requires anything except scanning the stuff and putting it up there. But there wouldn't be any rights issues. Marvel owned the Shadow Line, Marvel owns the Terror Incorporated title, it would have been there. So I'm not really sure why it wouldn't be. And maybe at some point it will, but, that's just an odd emission. I mean, for years, which I always felt like, well, what did I do wrong? I [00:57:00] mean, you can find very little of the Daredevil work I did, which was probably very well known and very well received in, in reprints. It would be like, there'd be reprints of almost every other storyline and then there'd be a gap around some of those things. And now they started to reappear as they've done these omnibus editions. Mike: Well, yeah, I mean, you know, and going back the awareness of the character, anytime I talk about Terror to people, it's probably a three out of four chance that they won't have heard of them before. I don't know if you're a part of the comic book historians group on Facebook? Dan: I'm not. No. Mike: So there's a lot of people who are really passionate about comic book history, and they talk about various things. And so when I was doing research for this episode originally, I was asking about kind of the revamp of supernatural heroes. And I said, you know, this was around the same time as Terror. And several people sat there and said, we haven't heard of Terror before. And I was like, he's great. He's amazing. You have to look them up. But yeah, it seems like, you know, to echo what you stated, it seems like there's just a lack of awareness about the character, which I feel is a genuine shame. And that's part of the [00:58:00] reason that I wanted to talk about him in this episode. Dan: Well, thank you. I mean, I love the spotlight and I think anytime I've talked to somebody about it who knew it, I've never heard somebody who read the book said, yeah, that sucks. Right. I've heard that about other things, but not about this one, invariably, if they read it, they loved it. And they were twisted and kind of got into it. But did have a limited run, right? It was only 13 issues. It didn't get the spotlight, it was sort of promised it kind of, it came out with a grouping of other mercenary titles at the time. There was a new Punisher title. There was a Silver Sable. There was a few other titles in this grouping. Everyone was promised a certain amount of additional PR, which they got; when it got to Terror. It didn't get that it like, they pulled the boost at the last minute that might not have made a difference. And I also think maybe it was a little bit ahead of its time in certain attitudes crossing the line between horror and [00:59:00] humor and overtness of certain things, at least for Marvel, like where do you fit this? I think the readers are fine. Readers are great about picking up on stuff and embracing things. For Marvel, it was kind of probably, and I'm not dissing them. I never got like any negative, you know, we're gonna launch this title, what we're going to dismiss it. But I just also think, unless it's somebody like me driving it or the editor driving it, or Carl Potts, who was the editor in chief of that division at that point, you know, unless they're pushing it, there's plenty of other characters Right. For, things to get behind. But I think again, anytime it kind of comes up, it is definitely the one that I hear about probably the most and the most passionately so that's cool in its own way. Mike: Yeah, I think I remember reading an interview that you did, where you were talking about how there was originally going to be like a gimmick cover or a trading card or something like that. Dan: Yeah. Mike: So what was the, what was the gimmick going to be for Terror number one? Dan: What was the gimmick going to be? I don't know, actually, I if I knew I [01:00:00] can't remember anymore. But it was going to be totally gimmicky, as all those titles and covers were at the time. So I hope not scratch and sniff like a, uh, rotting bodies odor, although that would have been kind of in-character and cool. Mike: I mean, this was the era of the gimmick cover. Dan: Oh, absolutely. Mike: Like,that was when that was when we had Bloodstrike come out and it was like the thermographic printing, so you could rub the blood and it would disappear. Force Works is my favorite one, you literally unfold the cover and it's like a pop-up book. Dan: Somebody actually keyed me in. There actually was like a Terror trading card at one point. Mike: Yeah. Dan: Like after the fact, which I was like, shocked. Mike: I have that, that's from Marvel Universe series four. Dan: Yeah. we did a pretty good job with it actually. And then even as we got to the end of the run, you know, we, and you can sort of see us where we're trying to shift certain aspects of the book, you know, more into the mainstream Marvel, because they said, well, we'll give you another seven issues or something, you know, to kind of get the numbers up. Mike: Right. Dan: And they pulled the plug, you know, even before that. So, uh, that's why [01:01:00] the end kind of comes a bit abruptly and we get that final coda scene, you know, that Richard Pace did such a nice job with. Mike: Yeah. I mean, it felt like it wrapped it up, you know, and they gave you that opportunity, which I was really kind of grateful for, to be honest. Dan: Yeah. and subsequently, I don't know what's going on. I know there was that David Lapham, you know, series, you did a couple of those, which I glanced at, I know I kind of got in the way of it a little bit too, not in the way, but I just said, remember to give us a little created by credits in that, but I didn't read those. And then, I know he was in the League of Losers at one point, which just didn't sound right to me. And, uh. Mike: It's actually. Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to say this cause, it's basically a bunch of, kind of like the B to C listers for the most part. And. So they're called the Legal Losers. I think it's a really good story, and I actually really like what they do with Terror. He gets, she's now Spider Woman, I think it's, Anya Corazon, but it was her original incarnation of, Arana. And she's got that spider armor that like comes out of her arm. And so she [01:02:00] dies really on and he gets her arm. And then, Dan: That's cool. Mike: What happens is he makes a point of using the armor that she has. And so he becomes this weird amalgamation of Terror and Arana's armored form, which is great. Dan: Was that the Kirkman series? Is that the one that he did or. Mike: yeah. That was part of Marvel Team-Up. Dan: Okay. Mike: it was written by Robert Kirkman. Dan: Well, then I will, I will look it up. Mike: Yeah. And that one's on Marvel unlimited and genuinely a really fun story as I remembered. It's been a couple of years since I read it, but yeah. Dan: Very cool. Mike: So we've talked about this a little bit, but, so

SPOILERS: In this episode we review the second half of Enemy at the Gates - a book that gets better and better with every re-read. About halfway through the episode we really get going with our thoughts and analysis on the final sequence of events. Yeah, THAT final sequence.   Please subscribe, rate & review using Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting platform. You can find us online at MitchRappPod.com and on Twitter for Instagram @mitchrapppod. And as always, “Just let Mitch be Mitch.”   This episode is made possible and kept ad-free thanks to our fantastic Patrons! For less than the price of a novel a month, you can help us keep the show going and get access to exclusive content and signed book giveaways! Become a Patron today at Patreon.com/MitchRappPod.   Disclaimer: This podcast is not affiliated with Vince Flynn, Kyle Mills, or Simon & Schuster. The music soundtrack is Guerilla Tactics by Rafael Krux.

What happens when you combine two of the biggest brands of the early 1980s? You get RadioShack's TRS-80 Whiz Kids comics, with special guest stars from the DC Universe. Marvel at snarky teens sassing the Man of Steel, then laugh at how he makes them perform complex math with mediocre computers! ----more---- Episode 16 Transcript Mike: [00:00:00] I used to go into an office, and when I did that, I had a dog that everybody loved and I baked cookies every day. Hello, hello, hello, welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we sell out as superheroes, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined by my co-host, the talk show host of terror, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Bwahahaha! I like when you give me nicknames that are a little mischievous and/or villainous, by the way. Mike: I mean, villains are always the most fun. Jessika: They really are. They get to do all the cool shit.  Mike: Yeah. You need a strong villain in order to have a good story. Jessika: Absolutely.  Mike: The purpose of this podcast is to look at notable moments in comic book history. [00:01:00] They can be big or they can be small, but we always hope that they're interesting, and we like to talk about them in ways that are both fun and informative. Today, we are going to be going back back back to the eighties and talking about the time that Superman sold computers for Radio Shack. Jessika: Fucking sellout.  Mike: Man, I don't. Can you blame him though? I mean, he was a reporter, like he needed the extra cash. Jessika: That's true. That does not pay all that much, from my understanding  Mike: Uh, speaking as someone who worked as a journalist for a decade, I can tell you it does not.  Jessika: Confirmed, everyone.  Mike: Confirmed. Before you freak out and think that you've missed an episode or that things are airing out of order, we are actually still doing the Sandman book club series, but we have decided to break it up, so it's not just one giant slog for people who aren't interested in Sandman. So that way there's a little something for [00:02:00] everybody, even as we're doing that prolonged experience. So every other episode will be the Sandman book club. Before we get to that though. What is one cool thing that you have read or watched recently? Jessika: Just last night, I watched the first episode of the Amazon Prime, let me just say it's 18+, animated series, Invincible.  Mike: Hmm.  Jessika: Have you seen that yet?  Mike: I haven't, I read the comic for a while and I really liked it, but then it just kind of felt very repetitive. And also, I didn't like how the comic got very women in refrigerator-y. Jessika: Oh, okay, fair enough.  Mike: Like yeah. Um, I hear it's great. I just, it's kind of, it's kind of like The Boys where like, I read the comic and, and then when they announced they were making a TV [00:03:00] show, I went, eh don't know. I like, I'm not sure. I really want to see that translated to the screen and then it was great. And so I'm sure that Invisible will be great. Jessika: I will be talking about The Boys later, in fact.  Mike: Oh okay. Well, then. Jessika: But for now, yeah, I know, spoilers. So for those of you who hadn't seen it yet, it's about a teenage boy whose father is a famous superhero and the kid himself has also potentially expected to get powers, which he, not spoiling anything, he does, and very early on in this episode. And when this happens, his father starts teaching them how to use them properly, even though he seems a little disappointed, even, that his really did have powers, which was kind of strange, but we'll see where that goes. But what I really liked about this series, is that they make fun of our well-known superheroes with a character like Batman and one that's very much like Wonder Woman, et cetera. And again, I don't want to give too much away, but the ending is [00:04:00] super intense, and I'll definitely be watching more of it tonight after we've finished recording this.  Mike: Yeah. And I will say that the comic itself has moments that are shockingly intense too. And it's really interesting because there are these moments that feel very wholesome and playful, and then there are other scenes that are complete 180 and it's really, it's kind of whiplash.  Jessika: That was how it felt in the show as well. So I mean, that translated definitely.  Mike: Yeah, it's one thing that's actually really neat is that it's the guy who wrote the comic, Robert Kirkman, is also the guy who created the walking dead.  Jessika: Hm.  Mike: So, you know, dude knows how to write a hit.  Jessika: Yeah.I guess so, huh. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Well, what about you? What have you been reading or watching?  Mike: You mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you had read the first issue of a series called Die, by Kieron Gillen.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: I'd heard about it. I thought it looked [00:05:00] interesting. And then you mentioning that, threw it back on my radar, and so I found the first three volumes on Hoopla and I wound up bingeing through all of them in a couple of hours. And it's really good. I really like how it matches up a bunch of D & D tropes along with other things. And I just, I really, really enjoyed it. And so I want to say thank you for putting that on my radar. Jessika: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. You're welcome. And I'll have to go on Hoopla and check out more myself because I'd been wanting to, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.  Mike: No, shall we, uh, shall we mosey along?  Jessika: Mosey let's do it.  Mike: What do you remember about Radio Shack when you were growing up? Jessika: Good old Radio Shack. Radio Shack was huge, when I was growing up. It was [00:06:00] definitely a household name and it had a reputation that it carried most electronics related items that you may want or need to purchase. So just on my memory block here in particular, they used to carry a radio that was pretty easy to alter, to be a scanning radio, to use for ghost hunting. And for a while, it was a great cheap alternative to buying something made for that purpose. And it was priced really low and like affordable versus like buying something that was made for that purpose.  Mike: Mm. Jessika: And I've trying to find one of those radios for years now, but honestly, it's probably a dead end at this point, and I should just pony up the money to buy actual ghost hunting equipment. I mean, honestly, I should probably, if I want it, like I'm a full ass adult, I can afford the expensive things, maybe.  Mike: We have credit cards now, Jessika. Jessika: Just charge it.I say I can afford the expensive things, like I really can, which isn't actually true.  Mike: All right.[00:07:00]  Jessika: I can afford the mid-level things.  Mike: Yeah. I dunno. We used to have money and then we got air conditioning, and we're poor now. Jessika: I'm safe. I'm squirreling it away, man. Trying to buy a house, it's expensive.  Mike: Yeah. Especially where we live. Jessika: I don't recommend it. Folks.  Mike: Yeah, no, just. Jessika: Just stay away.  Mike: Yeah. Welcome to the Bay Area. The dystopian capitalist apocalypse. Jessika: Everything is overpriced, and on fire.  Mike: We're not making this up. Everything is literally on fire these days.  And, and over priced, but that's just California in general. Yeah. Well, I mean, I had a similar experience to you, in different ways, but like, you know, it was the same brand awareness of Radio Shack. I didn't realize until I was doing the research for this episode, that Radio Shack is actually a hundred years old [00:08:00] as of this year. Jessika: What? How? Mike: Yeah. It was founded in 1921 by these two brothers, Theodore and Milton Deutchman. They set up a mail order business and a single retail location that was focused on providing parts for ham radio, which was a field that was still pretty new back then. And they wound up doing pretty well for a while, but they basically were bankrupt by the early 1960s. But you know, like 40 years is not a bad run. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: And then they got acquired by the Tandy corporation in 1960 for $300,000. Up until this point, Tandy had been this leather goods company and they were looking to basically get into the business of appealing to hobbyists, which they felt Radio Shack would be able to do. So, in order to do this, Tandy basically performed a complete overhaul of the unprofitable company it had just acquired, and the Wikipedia page has a really solid [00:09:00] summary of what happened. Jessika: Tandy closed Radio Shack's unprofitable mail order business, ended credit purchases, and eliminated many top management positions eating the salespeople, merchandisers and advertisers. The number of items carried was cut from 40,000 to 2,500, as Tandy sought to identify the 20% that represents the 80% of sales and replaced Radio Shacks handful of large stores with many little holes in the wall, large numbers of rented locations, which were easier to close and reopen elsewhere if one location didn't work out.  Mike: Yeah. So basically they were just going for a strategy that made Radio Shack into a much leaner, more nimble operation, which that's like the goal these days, those are kind of the golden buzzwords, but they were actually trying to do that. Charles D. Tandy, who was the guy who actually ran Tandy corporation back then, said that they were [00:10:00] basically not looking for the guy anymore, who wanted to spend his entire paycheck on the sound system, and instead they were looking for customers who wanted to save money by buying cheaper goods and then like improving them through modifications and accessories. So now they were really appealing towards nerds, and aiming at kids who are going to like work on stuff for the science fairs. And honestly it, it worked. I mean, when I was growing up Radio Shack was that store you went to, when you needed some small part a replacement, there was always one nearby. And even if they didn't have a name brand part, they usually had an off-brand version of whatever you needed. And, I never went there thinking that it was going to break the bank. It was always a fairly affordable thing. Jessika: Yeah. Agreed. I can think of like four different locations where they had a Radio Shack, just like in our area here.  Mike: Yeah. And I mean, like, I grew up in San Francisco in the eighties, and they were all over the place.[00:11:00]  So now, what's interesting is that the whole rise of personal computers happened to coincide with this period of success for Radio Shack. The late seventies was when personal computers with microprocessors started to actually be a thing on the consumer market, but typically if you wanted one, you had to build them from a kit. Like you, you physically had to, like, buy the kit and then assemble it, following the instructions, which, I mean, I'm not going to lie. That is terrifying to me. Jessika: That is terrifying. And it's total nerd shit too. They were right.  Mike: Right. Fucking nerds. Jessika: Nerd bait. Mike: Radio Shack actually wound up introducing the TRS 80 in 1977. And it was a game changer for the company because it was one of the first pre-built computers. And it was simultaneously backed by a national retail chain.  It was this super basic computer that sold for $600, which adjusting for inflation is like $2,700 nowadays. [00:12:00]  Jessika: Holy shit. There's no way. There's no way the average family is like, let's get one of those right away. Mike: No, it was, I mean, you know, this was for people who were super enthusiast, or had a lot of disposable income, which the middle-class used to have back then.  Jessika: Different times.  Mike: The salad days. But yeah, so the TRS 80, even though it had a fairly high price point sold like hotcakes, like gangbusters. I found this book and it's called, Priming the Pump: How the TRS 80 Enthusiast Helped Spark the PC Revolution, by Teresa Welsh and David Welsh. It has this really interesting history about that point in time, which, I mean, I'm not going to lie, I was waiting for her to be really dry, but it's full of a lot of really personal stories and anecdotes and it's cool, I really dug it. Basically, when they started manufacturing this computer, they were only expecting to sell 50,000 units. There's this great quote, talking about how [00:13:00] much of a surprise the first TRS computer sales were. Jessika: Both Charles Tandy and John Roach may have been skeptical about such a large. But it turned out to be an underestimation. When the first anniversary of the products came, the company found the, had sold many more than the prediction and taken a whopping 250,000 orders for TRS eighties. Most of them still undelivered. Actually we've seen various numbers in different sources, so we can't verify this number, but they certainly sold considerably more than 50,000. Don French said they received a number of threatening phone calls from people who demanded delivery of their TRS 80 right away. Ooh! Mike: Yeah, so after this huge success, they then ended up following the TRS 80 with the TRS 80 Color in 1980. And basically the first TRS computer was kind of like a full, complete unit with a built-in monitor and everything. [00:14:00] The TRS 80 Color, in turn, was just the computer itself, and then you would plug in a color TV instead of using this built-in monitor. The TRS computers wound up selling well enough that Radio Shack really leaned hard into the computer business, and they even started offering computer camps for pre-teens in the early eighties, which was kind of an extension of that mission that they wanted to appeal to kids who wanted to excel at science fairs, because I mean, you know, those were the new nerds. So if you want to learn more about the TRS computers, by the way, there's this really great site called MatthewReadsTRS80.org. That helped me kind of learn about a lot of this stuff. I'll put it in the show notes, but it's really kind of an interesting walk-through, this particular venue of history. Anyway, this was the high point for Radio Shack, to be perfectly honest. By September of 1982, the company had more than 4,300 stores just in America and [00:15:00] more than 2,000 independent franchises and towns that were not large enough to have a company owned store. So, for comparison, there are fewer GameStops worldwide today than there were Radio Shacks in the early eighties.  Jessika: Wow.  Mike: Like, I realized that GameStop has been having a rough go of it lately, but there's still a lot of them around. Jessika: Yeah. Huh. Mike: And during this period of unmitigated success, that's when the Whizkid's started to show up in comic books. The early eighties were right around the time when computers were starting to get a lot of prominent, you know, quote unquote roles in media. If you're listening to this and you want to learn more, there is a site dedicated to media prominently featuring computers and storylines, and it's called Starring the Computer, that tracks stuff like this all the way back to the fifties. It's an incomplete list, but it's really interesting, and they have a whole section devoted to Tandy computers.[00:16:00] Like, I remember there was an episode of Murder, She Wrote very early on where she moves to New York and there's this whole plot about how she's gotten a computer to write her novels on. And then evidence is falsified with a modem. It's really interesting. And you know, the computer was this suddenly viable object that could play a part in people's everyday lives and could serve as a driving narrative device. But as far as I can tell the first time anyone made comics specifically focusing on educating people about personal computers was when Radio Shack started to do these comic books. And I think that's just because it was such a new thing, especially on the personal consumer market, because, you know, up until recently computers had been these huge things that took up buildings on their own.  Jessika: Yeah. And they had to be, like cooled, professionally, and I mean, it was just this whole thing.  Mike: Yeah. I mean, there [00:17:00] is a movie right now on Disney plus called The Computer That Wore Tennis Shoes.  Jessika: Oh, yeah! Mike: A very early Kurt Russell, and it's one of those things where the whole he's in college and he winds up getting shocked, I think, and there's this whole thing, this computer gets basically downloaded into him. So he has the processing power and knowledge of this computer, but they show you the computer and it like, it is a giant monstrosity of a thing that takes up, I think, an entire lab.  Jessika: It does. I remember that movie. Mike: And I mean, our phones, these days are more powerful than those. So RadioShack started making comics in 1971. They were putting out a series of educational comics called the science fair story of electronics via the Radio Shack education comic book program. But, then in 1980, they pivoted and they started giving away these new comics in stores. You could also, [00:18:00] if you were a teacher, you could send in a request to Radio Shack on school letterhead and get a free pack of 50.  Jessika: Oh, wow. Mike: And yeah, like, you know, they were really pushing that hard because these comics were educational, but they were also advertisements.  Jessika: Very much so. Oh, that was something I messaged you earlier,  was like, wow. I was reading just an ad there, wasn't I?  Mike: But, I mean, I will say they were, they were educational.  Jessika: Yeah, absolutely.  Mike: Yeah, so the Superman Radio Shack giveaway comics starred the aforementioned Whiz Kids, Alec and Shanna, along with their teacher Mrs. Wilson, but for the first three issues, which were published in 1980, 81 and 82, they also starred Superman and other characters from the DC Universe.  Jessika: I need to correct you for a second, because you said Mrs. Wilson, and it definitely was Ms. Wilson.  Mike: Oh, I'm sorry. That's right.  Jessika: It was Ms. Wilson, and I think that will come into play [00:19:00] later.  Mike: That is true. She did not have a ring on her finger. Jessika: She did not. She looked a little close to all the superheroes that waltzed right up in there, half naked into her classroom.  Mike: I mean, can ya blame her? Jessika: No, she was hot too.  Mike: Right? We're going to talk about each of these specific issues, but first up is the Computer That Saved Metropolis, which was published in July of 1980. So, even though this was a promotional giveaway, DC committed some pretty serious talent to the book. The first two issues were written by Cary Bates, who was this long-term writer for DC. He wrote a ton of action comics, Superman, and the New Adventures of Superboy, as well as being the head script writer for the live action Superboy series in the 1980s that we discussed a couple episodes back.  Jessika: Totally. Mike: He also worked as a script writer for various cartoons, including Gem and Gargoyles.  Jessika: Oh, hell yeah.  Mike: Right. [00:20:00] But then also his name might sound familiar to some people listening to the show because we mentioned him on the New Guardians episode where, it turns out he wrote issues two through 12 of the New Guardians. The art for this issue, meanwhile, was handled by Jim Starlin and Dick Giordano. Both of them are pretty big deals too. Starlin became a big name in comics during the seventies. He garnered a lot of acclaim for his cosmic space opera stories. He co-created characters like Shang-Chi and Thanos. Giordano in turn was an artist who had recently come back to DC comics and was serving as the Batman editor at the time. He actually got promoted shortly after this to be the company's managing editor in 1981. And then he was promoted again to executive editor in 83, and then he stayed with the company until the mid nineties when he retired, after his wife died. And then, aside from being a giveaway issue, this comic actually ran as a backup story in the July, 1980 ssues for Action [00:21:00] Comics, Legion of Superheroes, House of Mystery and Superboy. So Superman schilling Radio Shack computers, and forcing children to perform complex math for him, and definitely, probably schtupping Ms. Wilson, like, I think we need to agree that, that those two totally smashed. Jessika: Oh, absolutely. And I have my theories about her and Supergirl as well.  Mike: Yeah. Yeah.  Jessika: They had a moment.  Mike: Right? Jessika: We both took the same picture of that same shot and I sent it to you and you were like, no way. Mike: I thought that was so funny.  Jessika: Don't worry, we'll post that one.  Mike: I, oh God. Like, I just, that was great. It was like great minds think alike. But yeah, all of this is officially a canon part of DC comics lore, which is wild. Like [00:22:00]  Jessika: It's bat shit bananas.  Mike: Yeah. Now weirdly it looks like this is the only issue that actually made it into other DC comics. So, you know, the other two or their own standalone things. And aren't officially cannon, I guess. All right. How would you describe the 1980 issue? The Computers That Saved Metropolis? Jessika: Well, these were like both very advertisey and complex at the same time in their narrative, which was interesting. So, this first one, I'm going to give you a little bit of backstory about these bitches. I say these bitches, because I'm going to be talking about a whole classroom full of children. So I obviously really like children. I have a bachelor's in French and everyone's like, you should teach. And I'm like, no, I shouldn't.  Mike: Oh, oh no. Let's talk about that for a sec. I majored in history my first time through college, and everyone also said I should teach. And I was like, I fucking hate [00:23:00] children. I worked at Disneyland it poisoned me again. And don't get me wrong. I have, I have two stepchildren now. I love them. I would die for them. They're great. But kids in general, not a fan. They're sociopathic little monsters. Jessika: Mm hmm. So the comic starts off with Superman doing patrols around Metropolis, and apparently he just does that. And he just jets off to a sixth grade classroom at the whim of Ms. Wilson.  Mike: I have my own theory about this. Jessika: Oh my goodness. He's supposed to be a guest teacher about computers, apparently. Like, First of all, for some reason, along with his super abilities, he's also a super computer genius. And is he accredited? Like is he allowed to be teaching students?  Mike: No. Okay. There, there are two things to discuss here. So you have [00:24:00] to remember that Superman from the Golden Age through the modern age was largely a weird sci-fi series where the main character was this alien who had all these powers that constantly changed. There wasn't really any editorial control until they streamlined it with Crisis on Infinite Earths. But on top of that, he was generally shown to be an amazing genius, like just whenever they needed it. But ,he built the Superman robots. He. I can't remember if he made the Phantom Zone Projector or if the Phantom Zone Projector was on artifact from Krypton, he was constantly trying to restore the city of Kandor, which was basically shrunk down to the size of a bottle, and it was a Kryptonian city, to restore it to its full size. Like in that issue of Super Boy, we read, he like put all those chemicals together and created the pools that granted the dogs, various powers.  Jessika: Yeah, no, I guess you're, I guess he's always been [00:25:00] smart.  Mike: Yeah. But then the other thing is that Superman is a little bit too earnest in this issue. Like, he shows up exactly on time. And then he is clearly trying to impress these kids to make a good impression with Ms. Wilson. And everything about this reeks of a dude who had a one night stand and is now desperate to hook up again. So what he's doing is he's trying to prove that A) he is reliable and B) he is good with kids. Jessika: Yep. No, that's totally how it felt.  Mike: I'm not speaking from experience. Jessika: Oh, so anyway, Superman creepily knows all the students' names, I guess, because he used his x-ray vision to look at the teacher's seating chart, even though that's not how x-rays work. That's always bothered me. I'm sorry, we don't have time for this.  Mike: [00:26:00] Thomas Edison would like a word. Jessika: Seriously. Also, I have to mention that the whole class was bored as fuck even after Sups flew in. And I don't know about you, but every kid I knew, wanted to know about computers and have a turn on the computer when we got them in the library at school or when someone got one at home.  Mike: Oh, yeah. Jessika: So the idea that one of the kids in his class is being dismissive of the whole idea of not doing normal schoolwork and just doing computer class instead with fucking Superman of all people. It's just ridiculous.  Mike: Oh yeah. And that kid actively shit talked Superman repeatedly.  Jessika: Oh, he's a shit heal. Oh. And he still gets to be the fucking like, protagonist. Fuck. Mike: Oh, it was so funny. I like, my favorite was when he beats Superman at a math problem later on and like the shit talking starts immediately, and I'm like, my dude, this is possibly not a good move to irritate a guy who could literally vaporize you with a [00:27:00] glare. Jessika: That's just it. That is just it. Yeah. No. Why would you try to piss this guy off? And then Shanna's like, Ooh, Superman. You better tell him. I was like, dude, Shanna, you, you need to shut the fuck up immediately and not goad this situation.  Mike: You know, that was probably the most realistic part of this entire comic, because speaking as someone that lives with an 11 year old, they are shit stirrers. Jessika: Oh my gosh. So, Supes takes the kids up to the roof because of course he does, and he proceeds to give the class some very long-winded exposition about the history of computers and their size and what they do and how they've evolved from the first computers, and moving into how they're used in society today from space travel to transistor radios, which what a time capsule of a callout.  Mike: [00:28:00] Yeah. Jessika: This whole thing was a whole time capsule.  Mike: Yeah. Very much is. Jessika: Of course, there was also some lovely product placement throughout and some not-so-subtle comments on affordability versus common household items. Tangent that always cracked me up to say, this computer is less expensive than a TV. Well, okay, but maybe I need a TV and I don't need a computer. They do vastly different things, or they did at that point.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: It kind of reminds me of saying like this China set costs less than a month of gross. Okay, well, I need to eat and I don't necessarily need a China set, so.  Mike: Yeah, I mean, he was hard selling those kids. Jessika: Oh yeah. He was like, you should ask your parents to go out and buy you one.  Mike: Yup. Jessika: So, of course, Supes hears with his super hearing a tornado and he like jets the fuck out of there. And, he defeats it by [00:29:00] blowing the wind or something like that. And then he feels all sick and shit, and comes across a villain named Major Disaster who, you know, just as his name implies, causes quote unquote natural disasters like there's floods and shit. It was a little ridiculous.  Mike: Yeah, he was always kind of like a C- to D-list villain who would use weapons and equipment to make natural disasters. My knowledge of this character is hazy at best, but I think eventually he gained the ability to manipulate probability. He didn't appear a lot and he's been dead for a while, I think. Cause I remember him showing up as a zombie in Blackest Night. Jessika: Oh.  Mike: But, I mean, I remember reading this stuff and I was like, this is kind of a cool, like off-the-wall villain. I dig him. You know, I certainly liked them a lot better than other villains that I've seen in Superman books where it's like, you know, generic alien warlord number five. Jessika: Seriously. Well, and when I read the name, Major Disaster, I was like, [00:30:00] same, girl. So, of course Superman needs the help of these children that he like, makes them perform these, like, high-stress situational calculations on the computer for him. Instead of like asking the adult he's banging in the room. Mike: I mean. Jessika: Honestly, come on, like, get the adults involved, like, Alec and Shanna don't need to save the day. They're supposed to be in sixth grade, even though they look way older than that. Mike: Like, yeah, they looked like kind of like eighth or ninth graders. Like they were a little bit older, it seemed.  Jessika: The second one, they looked older than that, they looked like they were teenagers in the second one, for some reason, I was like, what's that? And then the third one, they got young again. And I was like, I don't know what's happening with you guys, but. Mike: Yeah. I mean, I will say that I was willing to believe that Alec was in sixth grade just because he had that awful fucking bowl haircut that like.  Jessika: My brother had that.  Mike: Right. Yeah. But [00:31:00] when did he stop having it? Jessika: No, no, you're right. Probably after he was like in, probably after middle school.  Mike: Yeah. It's, you know, it's that thing where suddenly you realize, oh, I can go to a barber instead of having my parents cut my hair.  Jessika: Oh. So the kids basically do a bunch of calculations, and they double check each other's work by doing the same calculation on two separate computers that Supes and flown in prior and just left there. Apparently.  Mike: Yeah. And there's a whole thing about how Major Disaster had knocked out all the other computers in town, but he didn't know about these two personal computers because personal computers were a new thing. And that's the other reason that they're the ones who were performing the calculations and then they're on radio headsets with Superman providing this information. Jessika: I still say you're in a school that has way more adults than just the one standing in that room, and even that one's not involved. So. Mike: I mean, well, and the other thing is that the math equations that he's throwing at them are like this jet is falling out of the sky at this speed. [00:32:00] The wind is this fast. They're going at this angle. How fast do I need to go to catch them without doing damage to the plane or the people inside. And it's like, first of all, of course, yes, as you said, it's high stress, but second, like I still don't know how to do that math equation. I don't know how these sixth graders did because they looked like they were in a pretty shitty school that Superman made worse at one point when he liked tunneled up through the floor and just left a giant hole. Jessika: He was like, I'll fix that later.  Mike: Sure you will, sure you will, Clark. Jessika: It's awful. Uh. So he finally of course finds the villain, defeats him, whatever. Then the kids are hailed as heroes and as a reward, I guess they get to be at a Radio Shack commercial about the computers they used. I mean, cool. I guess.  Mike: Yeah. It was kind of a, a, meh ending, but, but yeah. Like, I dunno. Did you [00:33:00] like the issue overall? I'm curious. Jessika: It got really in the weeds playing up the computer aspects, which okay. I get it. You know, again, I get it. This is an advertisement, but dude, snooze fest, I put it down a few times and had to pick it back up, during those computer exposition parts. And you know, I'm slightly bothered by a vague plot line, but all in all, like it was, it was fine.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: To use your line.  Mike: Yeah. I mean, reading through it, some of the computer history stuff I thought was actually pretty interesting  Jessika: Yeah. Yeah.  Mike: Like, when they went up on the roof and he was saying, you know, so the space that we're sending in actually is the size of what computers used to fill. And yeah, it does get a little too in the weeds because they're trying to get a little too much exposition in there at the same time. I felt like overall it walked a relatively fine line of providing action that was kind of [00:34:00] interesting. And, and the plot line of, oh, well, yeah, his powers were on the fritz because there was microscopic kryptonite particles in the tornado and he inhaled them when he was getting ready to blow it out. Like, I thought that actually was surprisingly well thought out for basically a licensed advertisement. You know, this was, this was effectively a full length version of one of those like hostess, Twinkies ads that they used to do.  Jessika: Right?  Mike: Yeah. But like, I didn't hate it. I found it charming. Jessika: It had its moments.  Mike: Yeah. I'm not going to lie, I found the undeniable sexual attention between Superman and the kid's teacher really entertaining. Jessika: Yeah, definitely it was palpable. I thought it was even funnier too, that the kids were even, like Ms. Wilson, how do you know Superman?  Mike: And she doesn't answer! Jessika: And she was like, She like side eyes.[00:35:00] How do I know Superman?…Biblically.  Mike: Well, and that was the funny thing was when we were talking about this ahead of the episode, I was like, so yeah, they, they totally smashed, right? Like, like that's not up for debate. Jessika: No, it's really not. It happened.  Mike: All right. let's move on to the next issue. So. Clearly, this was a successful marketing tool because in 1981, DC and Radio Shack released a brand new book that was called Victory By Computer. So this time the main story was illustrated by a couple of legendary artists. There was Curt Swan and Vince Colletta. Coletta started as an artist and anchor from the Silver Age of comics. He frequently collaborated with Jack Kirby who is known as, you know, the king of comic books, and a lot of folks considered their run on Thor to be the definitive take on the character.  Kurt Swan's involvement, on the other hand, is especially noteworthy. [00:36:00] He is considered by many comic book artists to be the Superman artist. He started penciling Superman and Superboy comics in the late forties. And he didn't stop until DC put them out to pasture in the mid eighties because they were rebooting Superman via Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Arlen Schumer, who's this major comic book historian, says Swan penciled over 19,000 covers and pages of interior art for Superman comics.  Jessika: Whoa! Mike: Yeah. Like again, they were putting some serious talent behind these books. Jessika: They were pumping out a lot of content, to be fair.  Mike: Yeah. How would you summarize Victory By Computer? Jessika: We find ourselves, yet again at the elementary school, I put in heavy quotations of kids that look like they're about 17 years old, this issue. So Shanna and smartass Alec are back at it. This time, Supergirl joins the class to [00:37:00] teach them about the pocket computer. What a fucking throwback.  Mike: Like, that's something that we need to explain. Like the pocket computer was, basically kind of like a smart calculator that could perform basic functions and had a little keyboard in there. And I don't know how much they sold for, but they couldn't have been cheap. Jessika: I can't imagine so, yeah. Well, and by the way, at this point in the scene where Supergirl pulls out, her pocket computer, she pulls out of a pocket on her cape. So canonically, there are pockets in the capes. Mike: Yeah. They can't get them on the rest of their costume, but they can get them in their capes.  Jessika: Which means that there's just stuff like weighing down the cape, so it shouldn't even be moving like it does.  Mike: I remember in an early issue of Superman, the eighties series that John Byrne was doing, there is a bit where he stops by a balloon vendor because he's got a drone pursuing him and he winds up like [00:38:00] thinking, oh, it's lucky that I always carry a few spare dollars in like my belt buckle because he had that yellow belt back then, which side note I miss the yellow belt. I don't know if it's back, cause I haven't read any Superman comics for a while, but they got rid of it for quite some time. Like, I mean, you know, it's the Henry Cavill look now or it's the full blue suit. I miss the red trunks in the yellow belt. Jessika: Yeah. the good old days. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So Supergirl decides to use her super powers to show the class they are able to find information on the TRS 80's as fast as she was able to find it, like physically with her super powers looking for it. And it was like, okay, sure.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: When an odd comparison, but fine.  Mike: Yeah, it was really weird, there was a bit where they, like, it almost felt like they were hacking into the newsfeed of, I think the Daily Planet to get headlines, even though I'm sorry, but like, come on really, you think that a [00:39:00] print journalistic outlet is going to have top of the line technology back then come on. Jessika: No they're not putting any of that into a computer. They're still handwriting everything.  Mike: Yes. I think back then they were still using, the electric typewriter that had like the built-in, it was quote unquote memory, but it was, you know, not really. Jessika: Not as we know it now, at least. And there was some definite sexual tension with Ms. Wilson at Supergirl as well. We will post the picture. Um.  Mike: Right. It's this whole bit where Supergirl is like, oh, don't worry. I'm a school teacher in my secret identity. And I'm like, I don't know. Like, Are you just trying to impress her with this? What's the end goal of revealing this crucial information about your secret identity, Supergirl? Jessika: I know, right. She's just trying to connect with another human. She's like I'm also a school teacher. We should talk about it over dinner sometime.  Mike: And then maybe move in together after three weeks of dating, and adopt three cats. Jessika: Oh, my gosh. So, Super girl basically [00:40:00] teaches the class and then she I'll bet she just left those fucking pocket computers too, because you know, just like Superman just left the computers there. He was like, have fun kids.  Mike: Okay. Yeah, but here's the thing, like, you really think that some middle school kids or elementary school kids, however old they fucking are. You really think that they're going to sit there and try to steal the computers that the literal alien gods from other planets dropped off and taught them about? Jessika: Oh, I'm not, I'm not worried. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, no, I'm not worried about them stealing it. I'm just like Superman just apparently has like the extra spending cash that he can just like drop off two computers to a school and just like fuck off. Like really?  Mike: No, I mean, I, I viewed it the other way of just like, they're like, they're not worried about it. They're like, yeah. We'll, we'll get those back. Don't worry.  Jessika: Oh, so Supergirl apparently gets asked to go on [00:41:00] patrol by Superman and she spots something fishy. And so she goes to check it out, but it was a trap, of course. Mike: Yeah, but I mean, it wasn't even a very good trap. Jessika: Is a stupid trap. It was like, if you're a superhero and you happen to get curious, because you happen to be going near this location, maybe. And she like fell right into maybe a four foot by four foot hole in the ground. So I'm not really sure how that worked either. They just were like, nah, she's going to fall right here.  Mike: Yeah. Like she fell through the skylight after getting hit with like a blast of red sun radiation, or whatever it is.  Jessika: You know what it was, they used their TRS 80 to calculate where she was going to fall. So she gets stuck in what's basically like, it's like a lounge. It's like somebody's living room, and they have a computer there with a phone. So it's like, they weren't even trying that hard to keep her [00:42:00] there.  Mike: No, it was, it was absolutely the, like what a seventies swinger house looks like in all the movies that we see now where you're just like, oh, oh, okay. Jessika: It basically had a conversation pit.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah. So of course, she remembers the phone number from Ms. Wilson's classroom. Mike: Yeah, because the rotary phone had the phone number printed on the front of it, because that was a thing that used to happen. Jessika: I feel like that's a little more explaining than she needed to give. I think she is making up for the fact that she just knows that number by heart.  Mike: I was going to say, I think she really wanted to get Mrs. Wilson's phone number, and then it just happened to actually be helpful in a way other than getting her a date. Jessika: Gosh, Ms. Wilson, man. And canonically bisexual? Question mark? Mike: I don't see why not. I think we can, I think we can [00:43:00] officially declare it. Jessika: Someone's going to @ us, I hope they do. So at any rate, she gets in touch with the class. She makes them do all these weird wacky calculations, has some get in touch with Superman. And by the time Superman gets there, like she's gotten out of it because she also used the computer to find out that there were like underground tunnels. And so she's like, I'll just walk out of these tunnels.  Mike: Yeah, basically it turns out it was like an old mob hide out and the students were able to look up some articles, which again, like, I don't know, because I was born in 81 and I don't have a good idea of what computer and internet adjacent technology was like back then. But they apparently look up articles about this hideout that got busted and they learned from the articles that there were underground tunnels that. Whatever, it was dumb, they don't even show her getting out. It was dumb. Jessika: No, she's just like walking out afterwards and Superman's, like, [00:44:00] oh, I was here to save you. And she's like, I just took the tunnels dude. And then like the bad guys are just, they just happened to be driving by. So they were like, well, let's just go get the bad guys. What do you think? It looks like, oh those are Lex Luther's dudes. Let's just go get the bad guys.  Mike: Yeah. And there's a whole thing where like, Lex Luther has announced from jail that like Superman is going to break him out and it's a much looser plot than the first issue was. Like the first issue, there was like, I felt like a much tighter story, you know, in between the educational bits, this one, it felt like they were kind of stretching to figure out a way to connect all this stuff. Jessika: For sure. Yes. Mike: Yeah. Yeah. So I think we can safely say that this was not our favorite of three books. Jessika: No, this one was so ridiculous. I mean, I loved the heavy, heavy [00:45:00] gay overtones. Mike: I mean, when do we not love the heavy gay overtones? Come on. Jessika: It's the agenda after all: brunch for everyone.  Mike: Yeah. So like, do you have any final thoughts on this, or should we move on to the last of the three books? Jessika: Ugh. That's just once mosey.  Mike: Okay. All right. So 83 was when we got the final book, which is the Computer Masters of Metropolis. So, this time Paul Kupperberg wrote the script for the comic. Kupperberg, he's not exactly a household name in terms of comic books, but he is actually pretty prolific. He's written over a thousand comics during his time as a writer, including the first appearance of He-Man and then he wrote the subsequent Masters at the Universities for DC. Yeah, like, you know, so I've read some of his stuff and I didn't even realize it. Also like, this is actually my favorite factoid about him. He served as the senior editor of the Weekly World News shortly [00:46:00] before it got shut down in 2007. Jessika: What? Mike: Yeah. And like that automatically makes me like the dude, because the Weekly World News was one of my favorite things when I was in college, and because I was so good at Photoshop in high school and college, and I was interested in journalism, but I also love the weird stuff, I actually wanted to apply to the weekly world news for a job just for like a little while. And be like, yeah, like I Photoshop pictures of bat boy. Like, I really was hoping that that would be a thing, and then they shut down right after I graduated college and broke my cold black heart. Jessika: It's a damn shame.  Mike: But yeah. So, meanwhile, the art was handled again by Curt Swan and then he was also assisted by Frank Chiaramonte. Chiaramonte was Swan's regular anchor on the main Superman book from 1978 to 82. And then this is one of his last books that he worked on because he died really young in January of [00:47:00] 83. He was only 40 years old. Like.  Jessika: Oh.  Mike: Yeah, it's really weird too. I was trying to figure out what happened and all I could find was that just, he died young. But, he was regarded pretty well and he worked on a lot of stuff. So I think if he hadn't died, he probably would've, you know, gone on to great things. But the Computer Masters of Metropolis doesn't have a publish date other than 1982, which means it came out less than a year before his death, because he died in January of 83.  Jessika: Oh, dang.  Mike: Yeah. All right. So what happened in the Computer Masters of Metropolis?  Jessika: So, those are some lucky kids studying at whatever outskirts elementary school this is. Cause it's not in Metropolis proper, it's like in the suburbs of Metropolis somewhere.  Mike: Yeah. You know, it's superhero-adjacent to the city. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. Right. And again, not sure why Ms. Wilson seems to be on really, really [00:48:00] friendly terms with all the superheroes in the area, but Wonder Woman shows up to take them to the World's Fair, which of course is being held in Metropolis.  Mike: Yeah. Which I mean, okay. Why, why not?  Jessika: Exactly. Meanwhile, Lex Luther was salty about being denied entry for an exhibit for the World's Fair because the organizers didn't want to encourage his villainy.  Mike: It's so good. It's so good. Jessika: And so Luther decides to try to blackmail a way in, but that didn't work. So, of course he decides the thing to do is to threaten, to like completely destroy the fair, and ultimately creates another red solar radiation trap. This time, luring Superman into a room, rigged with explosives and bathed in red solar radiation, dun, dun, dun. So once again, there are computers in the room, I think, so. So he reaches out to [00:49:00] Alec and Shanna who are told that Wonder Woman should also be at the fair and to page page her. And she's basically like, okay, why are children paging me right now? But finds out that Superman is being held at the plantarium. She lassos the whole damn building and whips it around and it somehow deactivates the red solar radiation beam? Question mark? Mike: I don't know, man, I was pretty checked out when I was reading this. Like. They reused a lot of the same stuff, too. Like the same art where they were showing the computer chip, getting threaded through the needle, the bit where the kids are all walking on the giant demo version of the TRS,  Jessika: Oh, and those kids were being very nice because they acted surprised and very impressed to see that same damn exhibit for a second time.  Mike: Yeah. Which previously had showed up in the last issue. And I mean, like, it was a lot more exposition this time around too.  Jessika: It was.  Mike: [00:50:00] Anyway, sorry. Jessika: No, not at all. So Superman escapes and they catch Luther and the day is saved. And the end scenes were particularly silly. The mayor I'm assuming goes to thank Wonder Woman for saving the day. And she's like, but also these children, who just happened to be standing on the stage, like right behind her anyway, like the mayor, just, wasn't going to say anything about those kids on the stage, too, apparently. And they had a computer on stage with them? They were like, and this is the computer, let it hold the key too. And you got to know that like both Wonder Woman and Superman have to have entire rooms dedicated to the key to Metropolis that they get every time they save some damn building or something, they're all like, chuck another one in there. No, no, no. You kids keep that one.  Mike: It's fine. I've got 12 at home that are much nicer. Jessika: They're hanging on a wall around in a study.  Mike: They just use them as like coat racks. Jessika: [00:51:00] So Alec and Shanna, once again, saved the day, I guess.  Mike: Yeah, I mean, this was actually my least favorite of the three comics, because again, it was recycling art or, or using very similar art. It was making a lot of the same points, but it felt a lot more telling, not showing. And while I was really happy to see Lex Luther being next level petty, which, these days, you know, Lex Luther is a billionaire CEO, scientist who also has like armies of underlings performing super science for him that he's able to utilize. He's basically he is a more-  Jessika: Jeff Bezos.  Mike: Yeah, He is He is a, I was going to say, he's just, he's a more nakedly transparent, Jeff Bezos.  Jessika: Oh, you actually were going to say that. I'm sorry. I stole that right from out from under you. Mike: [00:52:00] No. I mean like it's, I'm sorry, like Jeff Bezos exploits his workers and use the money that he got from that to take a rocket ship and play astronaut, which side note, one of my favorite things about that entire story is that NASA at the last minute redefined, I think it was NASA, redefined what constitutes the definition of an astronaut, so he couldn't get an astronaut patch or pin. An astronaut pin, I think. Jessika: Which, again, the level of petty, but this is what I need. This is what I need to see, because it can't always be fucking Lex Luther winning.  Mike: Yeah. But anyway, like I really appreciated that we got to see Lex Luther being a super villain goon, like very flamboyant, flying around with his own little personal jet pack or jet boots, whatever they were like, they were like, it was like little rockets that he had attached to like his. I'm I'm struggling to remember if it was on his boots or on his waist. It was one or the other, right? Jessika: Yeah, I think it was [00:53:00] on his, I think you're right about the boots. And then he also had those fancy power gauntlets.  Mike: Yeah. And I mean, the other thing is back in this era, Lex Luther actually had a couple of different costumes that he wore that were very colorful and over-the-top, and it was like green and purple. So it kind of was that, that Joker color motif again, you know, it was really striking. And so he had that outfit of kind of the purple and green spandex that we saw in this issue. But then he also had this really baller set of green power armor that he used to really make Superman's life miserable for awhile. Like I said, after 1983, Radio Shack stopped with the Superman comics, but they didn't actually stop making comics. They kept on doing these comics with the Whiz Kids, but they instead moved over to Archie comic publications. I haven't been able to find out why the partnership's stopped. There's very little actual [00:54:00] documentation about these comics outside of a bunch of articles saying, oh yeah, they happened. Like they were a thing. They were dumb. And then pretty much all I've been able to find otherwise is people selling them. Cause there's still a lot of them around. And if you're looking for a fun piece of comic book history, these aren't very expensive, even in mint condition. That said the Tandy brand was starting to fall out of popularity by 83. For some perspective, it's estimated that Tandy controlled up to 60% of the personal computer market in the late seventies, which is like an astronomical market share. However, and this is from an article by a guy named Ron White, that he wrote for a magazine called 80 Micro in 1987, and you can now find it on a site called Vintage is the New Old, and we'll put this in the show notes again, Tandy's market share was down to 25% by 86. So it's a pretty fast fall from grace. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: And then, even though Archie was publishing the comics, [00:55:00] none of the Archie characters actually showed up in any of these books with the Whiz Kids, although Radio Shack did publish Archie in the History of Electronics separately.  Jessika: Oh. Mike: Like, yeah. But based on that, my guess is that Radio Shack was looking to save some cash and Archie was probably a much better deal. I'm guessing it costs a lot more to license DC superheroes than it does to just make a comic without any big name characters. Jessika: Oh, I am sure.  Mike: Yeah. And then shortly after Archie took over the publication duties, the TRS computer line got rebranded to the Tandy computer. So it makes sense that the comic was rebranded from the TRS Whiz Kid's to the Tandy computer Whiz Kids. And that's actually, when I first became aware of this whole venture, because Nostalgia Alley, which is the local retro game store up in Petaluma, has a copy of one of the Tandy Whiz Kids comics on the shelf behind the counter. And so I [00:56:00] spotted that one time and I was talking to Jason, the owner, and he let me check it out for a couple of minutes. And that's when I started looking into this whole thing, which, per usual, led us down a rabbit hole. Jessika: Love these rabbit holes of ours.  Mike: Yeah, they're fun. Anyway, the Tandi Whiz Kid's comics kept on coming out until 1992. And based on what I understand, they featured the Whiz Kids solving crimes, using Tandy computers and other Radio Shack products. I haven't read them. I do really want to track down a copy of the Computer that Said No To Drugs though. Jessika: Who was offering computers drugs? They are expensive! Mike: I, I don't know. I'm really curious about everything about that. Jessika: Hey man, you want to hit this? It's just a fucking computer. And it's like, what are you talking about, dude?  Mike: Oh, I'm having flashbacks now of that episode of, uh, Futurama where Bender gets hooked on electricity. Jessika: Oh, hahahaha. [00:57:00]  Mike: They keep on referring to it as jacking on anyway. Yeah. But the early nineties were when things really started to go downhill for Radio Shack and they never really stopped, because stores like Best Buy and Walmart just started to really eat their lunch. And then, it got to the point where they've had to declare bankruptcy twice in the past five years or so. Like they also declared Nick Cannon as their chief creative officer around the time of the first bankruptcy. Yeah. And now they've been bought by some shady sounding company out of Florida. So the brand is still around, but it's not really the company that we grew up with. And I don't know, I'm honestly not sure what's worse, like partnering with Nick Cannon, or being this pale reflection of your former glory. They both sound pretty bad. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: But yeah, that's the story about Superman, and how he wound up acting as a computer salesman for [00:58:00] a couple of years. You got any final thoughts? Jessika: So I'm just shaking my head over here. Like my nostrils are flaring.  Mike: How was that different from any other conversation I lead though? Jessika: I literally prepare myself for these, cause I'm like, all right, you can get angry, but don't get too angry. My secret is I'm always angry.  Mike: Dun dun dun. Jessika: Hmm. So you know, it's really interesting to see how very far we've come since these issues came out in the early eighties. Like, we're sitting here on small laptops, I've got a phone and a tablet right here in front of me as well, and you and I are basically sitting across from each other, having a conversation, even though we're not even in the same physical location.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: It blows my mind how amazing things like high speed trains and basic information [00:59:00] searches seemed back then, when they're so commonplace now. Like, I seriously Google everything. I would be nowhere without Google.  Mike: Yeah. My career is because of the internet. Jessika: Yeah. Yours, yours sure, is absolutely that's, yeah. That's a wild thing to think about too. And it's also wild to think about how much more advanced technology has become even in just, I had to do the calculations 40 years time, which I about had a panic attack when I mathed that out because. Ha ha ha. We're almost 40. Mike: Yep. Actually this episode is going to air right around the time that I'm going to be turning 40. Jessika: Yup. Happy birthday, to Mike.  Mike: Thanks, I hate it.  Jessika: No, Yeah. Right. At least you're not my mom giving my dad a [01:00:00] vulture piñata for his 40th birthday. Mike: No, Sarah has declared that she wants my 40th birthday to be a super soft birthday, which if you've ever watched Letterkenny.  Jessika: Yes! I was hoping You were going to say that. There has to be a unicorn.  Mike: I know, I think it's going to be put on hold until we're all vaccinated, but we might do a belated super soft birthday. Jessika: Yeah, okay. I figured you guys are going to have a family super soft birthday. But, if you want to have a super soft after birthday, when things clear up, I am, I am there and I will be eating some lovely pink frosted cupcakes with you.  Mike: You're on, big shoots. So we are now at the point of the episode where we're going to wrap things up with our Brain Wrinkles, which is when we discussed the one thing that is comics or comics adjacent that we just can't get out of our head. So you want to start things off? Jessika: Oh sure. [01:01:00] As I promised, I just finished watching the latest season of The Boys, which is season two. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. That show is bat shit wild. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: And what's been sticking in my head is the abuse dynamic between Homelander and mean, anybody he deals with, really? Mike: I was gonna say, everybody? Jessika: Yeah. And it's so interesting, cause as he was growing up, he was taught that not only is he more powerful than any person, he has been told that he is special and is entitled to do whatever pleases him. Which is really scary to see him manipulating others, using fear as a motivator to encourage them to comply. And honestly, the reason it scares me the most is just the powerlessness that these people, and most often women, are terrified into just following through with Homelander's whims.  Mike: Yeah. yeah. There's a lot of really [01:02:00] uncomfortable moments in that show. But I like the show, which I didn't expect. Jessika: Well, I do like that it's putting a spotlight onto that dynamic, cause that's a dynamic that we show is very one-sided, usually a little victim blamey.  Mike: Mmhmm.  Jessika: You know, why didn't she just leave kind of a narrative, which we all know it's not that easy.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And I think this is a really good example of why it's not that easy, in a very powerful way. And, it does remind me of people who are stuck in abusive households or relationships and are in different ways, powerless to leave their situations. So, hopefully it sparks some conversation.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Well, but what about you?  Mike: Mine is also TV related, but it's not quite as topical as your thoughts. So, I actually was trying to show my stepson[01:03:00] some X-Men cartoons the other day. And as we started to watch the first episode of Wolverine and the X-Men, he started to ask me all these questions about who the different characters were, because they basically start the show off assuming that the audience knows who all of the X-Men are, because at the time when it launched, the X-Men were a major brand, and then Disney acquired Marvel right before this. And then, they kind of made mutants personas, non grata, and, the mutants have not been featured in Disney programming up until the point where basically for the past 10 years, major media representation for kids of characters, like the X-Men, aren't all that common. And so it was just kind of a really thoughtful moment for me, where I realized I had to start them over from the beginning with an earlier X-Men cartoon, where he gets all these introductions. And I think there's going to be this generation that is going to grow up learning who the X-Men are a lot later than a lot of us [01:04:00] did. Like I knew all of the X-Men by the age of nine and I suspect. Jessika: Oh, yeah. Mike: Yeah. And so I think it's going to be really interesting to watch a generation of teenagers discover the X-Men really for the first time outside of, you know, Wolverine and Deadpool, because everybody knows who they are. Jessika: Yeah, of course. Hm. Mike: But yeah.  Jessika: That's wild.  Mike: Yeah. It's kind of one of those surreal moments of realization. Yeah.  Jessika: Hmm.  Mike: So, in two weeks we will be back with our next installment of the Sandman book club, which is going to be volumes three and four. And then until then we'll see you in the stacks. Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us, so text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website.  Mike: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer and Mike Thompson written by Mike Thompson, and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound, our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan [01:05:00] MacDonald, and was purchased with a standard license from Premium Beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who you can find on Instagram as @lookmomdraws. Jessika: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions, or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter; the official podcast account is tencenttakes. Jessika is jessikawitha, and Jessika spelled with a K, and Mike is vansau, V a N S a U.  Mike: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen. And if you like, what you hear, tell your friends. Jessika: Stay safe out there.  Mike: And support your local comic shop. Lfa66XA001sq2SOSeOU7

In this episode, we pay homage to the fantastic genre of alien invasion movies. Movies like Independence Day, Skyline, War of the Worlds, etc. Aliens arrive, and though their intentions are unclear at first, we quickly learn that they are not here to be peaceful and make friends. It's up to a military leader and her scientist ex to figure out how to stop the invasion and save the world. This episode has love, drama, and port-a-potties (yes, port-a-potties)! Links Independence Day movie on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_Day_(1996_film) War of the Worlds on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film) Skyline  on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyline_(2010_film) Time Codes Segment 1 - Discussion the Genre Tropes: 03:30 Segment 2 - Creating the Movie Outline: 09:47 Segment 3 - Picking the Improv Comedy Games: 16:36 Start of show: 24:55 Improv Game - Movie Trailer: 25:17 Improv Game - Best of Times Worst of Times: 26:53 Improv Game - One Word at a Time Typewriter: 34:30 Improv Game - Blind Line: 46:15 Improv Game - Cutting Room: 56:23 End of show, into announcements: 1:07:17 More Information About the Show, Mike, and Avish Subscribe to the podcast:  Our Website: www.AvishAndMike.com Our Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/143183833647812 Avish's site: www.AvishParashar.com  Mike's site: www.MikeWorthMusic.com/   Transcription of the “Discussing the Genre Tropes” Segment (Unedited and Un-Cleaned up) Avish: What do you think when you think of a big budget alien invasion movie. Mike: Oh boy well so to start with um there's always the ominous foreshadowing right so it's always like. Mike: You know they find some alien tech like buried in like in guardians all over the world or look there's an establishing shot, so they let you know, right from the get go that something bad's going on. Mike: that's because the establishing act one usually act one is all about the impending dread of the arrival of the Aliens in a mysterious fashion and the US in various countries trying to establish contact with it it's almost always like that right. Avish: yeah they figured out that they're not sure, a lot of time is. Avish: Are they friendly are they dangerous in the first act it's a lot of. Avish: there's like usually there's like a military character or group that knows the Aliens are there knows the Aliens are coming, but then there's like the general populace, that is, like just discovering the aliens and not sure what's going on with them. Mike: Right right right and. Mike: You know act one usually ends with the first blast of aggression that's that's the crossing of the threshold right where it's. Avish: Like a big I mean independent they certainly. Avish: Had big aggression, but a lot. Mike: yeah. Mike: And then they did you know what they did, which was really cool and this is, if we can try and boy, this is a bridge too far, maybe, but we should try it. Mike: Independence Day nail it because they had three crossing of the threshold at the same time, so the chopper was destroyed. Mike: At the same time that the scientists will, at that time there was a doomsday timer at the same time that all the ships start opening up their lights on top of New York City.    Mike: So it was like every every every feeler from our planet, that was out was getting was getting.    Avish: Like a lot of shifts we're hitting a lot of fans all.    Mike: The shifts in the fans yeah.    Avish: that's right, then we get into the um there's a lot of scrambling like there's a total overwhelm right like the Aliens are always just.    Mike: completely outside yeah absolutely dominant right then act two is the regroup and usually the counter attack and the best part is well I.    Avish: Think, part two, is like the over like act one is where we're learning we're not sure Act two is where the Aliens just dominate.    Avish: X three I feel is when you get kind of we're getting more proactive we're going to fight back, but it usually is relatively ineffective.    Mike: mate right.    Avish: You know okay we're going to drop the nuke and Independence Day, and that does nothing.    Mike: yep or in or in Independence Day, though the knockoff them like virtus scored they may mount a couple of offenses in the early, just like wipe them out like just because they're just.    Mike: underground and stuff like that now they're usually has to be a macguffin that changes the tide something involving human ingenuity and usually involving like the little rogue science team to kind of figure something out right.    Avish: Well it's always yeah it's it's the the other civilian version like there was, like the civilian in the military yeah the civilian figure something out Independence Day, with the virus in war of the worlds, it was a real virus.    Mike: yeah but we're the world's this is kind of funny like it's one of the few movies, where the humans had nothing to do with just defeated the.    Avish: retrospective terrible storytelling.    Mike: yeah yeah so it's a great. Avish: ultimate deus ex machina it's like.    Avish: Oh yeah yeah yeah you're.    Avish: gonna wipe you out, but the common cold cold.    Mike: Because he's angel these aliens all this advanced technology that hungered for our world didn't research, the common virus and bacteria.    Avish: Like insides where they didn't research, the planet was covered in water.    Mike: yeah so 1% water yes.    Avish: We, for our story we'd like a more proactive, but it could also be the author trope that comes up a lot, which I don't know we're gonna do is the hive mind alien queen trope where it's like.    Avish: yeah discovered to fight back you know we don't need to destroy the entire alien race which is dominant we.    Avish: got killed.    Mike: queen yeah the board the board idea that you know.    Avish: The Board mind or yeah a lot of.    Avish: Like rain of fire which is dragons not aliens but it's like hey we killed.    Avish: The Queen dragon and all the dragons die, so I.    Mike: Actually, never saw that it looks good and cool.    Avish: I saw it in the theater I don't remember very much about it, which should tell you something.    Avish: it's yeah my recollection is I wouldn't call it a good movie, but it may have been a fun movie.    Mike: you've already reminded me that there will be, because any trope there will be a Matthew mcconaughey character in our in our.    Avish: character.    Mike: yeah and he's gonna be in our show.    Mike: Because now. Avish: Oh there's almost always um. Some.    Avish: relationship in peril you know there's like the estranged. Avish: husband and wife back to each other or the father trying to save the sound of the mother trying to say or in shark NATO, where it was the guy from beverly hills.    Mike: No, I know from American pie, I engineering and Terry fantastic some kind of like.    Avish: To the main characters will be connected.    Avish: Yes, some kind of romance or love.    Mike: There is usually a general slash military leader who is initially at odds with the heroes and heroin, but then has kind of a come to Jesus thing and at three and four.    Avish: yeah they're not like evil they're just.    Avish: opinionated damien's yeah.    Avish: yeah yeah and that's our five minutes, I think the final thing i'll throw in there is.    Avish: Most of these don't have a real villain like the entire alien race is like the villain does not like a head alien.    Avish: Even if it's a queen it's not like.    Avish: Being a character.    Mike: and much of the conflict actually allies, with a disaster movie it's like they're trying to escape a building as it's getting nuked by laser bolts or.    Mike: You know the the Aliens blow up a dam and obviously it's a way it's a cheap way for people to get like a little disaster movie in there it's like Oh, they start a forest fire and you have to flee and now you have to be you have to fight, you have to defeat.    Avish: Yes, I like a lot of times yeah when they are blowing stuff up the Aliens are the disaster like Independence Day, the first half of that movie is like pure just disaster movie. Mike: Exactly so that's yeah that's your thing we got to think of it's like there's a healthy component to disaster before that it's not like Star Wars or star trek where it's like SCI fi space flights and stuff.    Avish: All right.    Mike: we're good place we're in a good spot. Transcription of the “Creating the Outline” Segment (Unedited and Un-Cleaned up)    Avish: For this movie it's going to be rough in a high level and because we're going to be using improv games to play this we may end up veering from the outline in minor ways, or even a major ways, but this is kind of our starting point.    Mike: yeah we reserve the right to change anything and everything exactly.    Avish: But this is what we're going to kind of roughly stick to you, so our five minute timer starts now alright so for this one you're thinking prologue well, so we always start your first time listening, where we start with a prologue or a movie trailer.    Avish: We want a prologue of the Aliens arriving and all that or do you want just the movie trailer.    Avish: of you.    Mike: can see it either way man, you make the call today.    Mike: I like them both.    Avish: The movie trailer, for we last couple times we don't a prologue so let's do a trailer.    Mike: yeah yeah yeah.    Avish: alright.    Avish: So now for outline what happens in act one.    Avish: Of the Aliens need to arrive and people need to find out the military and the civilian need to find out.    Mike: Right military finds out first.    Mike: And they have to find out, first because they need to start mobilizing their stuff to be ahead of the civilian population.    Mike: yeah realizing response alright a. Avish: Civilian a the civilians to find out, we also need to establish the relationship for the civilian right like.    Mike: yeah and and let's keep it simple let's let's go with the.    Mike: main hero.    Mike: Love interest.    Avish: I mean, if you want it, and this can come out of the improv you want to keep it simple also one thing there's like the coincidence right so it's like. Avish: It could be the military person and the civilian main character are like husband wife or access or boyfriend girlfriend or you know, instead of having an extra character which sometimes when we're doing improv can get a little confusing.    Mike: Man all right, our accents are only so good. Mike: We only have I only have so many American deal with you know that, should we can do that a main character mean here leverages military commander, we have to establish.    Mike: Now now do we want the main hero to have agency in terms of like there's a reason he wants to defeat the Aliens or is he just caught up in it and just happens to be heroic.    Avish: Well, I think the military one wants to defeat the aliens and the civilian one just kind of gets caught up maybe because they're connected to the military person or there.    Mike: huh yeah.    Avish: It just happened to be.    Mike: I haven't read yet tell me this is like look look getting too granular but, like the Aliens had some tech they're using the setup the assault and the main hero gets a hold of the tech or translates the tech or somehow is able to use it against the aliens. Avish: yeah I think that's good that's kind of like how Jeff goldblum figured out the countdown codependent thing.    Avish: yeah all right, and then at the end of by the end of act one the Aliens will have attacked like.    Mike: yeah and then there's this just mass destruction that.    Avish: yeah maybe attempt contact.    Avish: And then attack yep.    Mike: And it bleeds out the attacks bleed over into active, because at the end of Act two is going to be a bunch of disaster scenes you know what I mean like you know that i'm trying to get through.    Avish: And that's it's gonna be a lot of like yeah vignettes of disaster scrambling attacks.    Mike: yeah.    Mike: Military getting pummeled.    Mike: Civilians fleeing right.    Avish: And at this point if they haven't connected in Act two, I think, is when our main characters we'll all meet up like if we've got a military and civilian and maybe a third one they'll all kind of connected this point.    Mike: All parties unify and a location yeah.    Mike: See, I would, I would say I don't always like oh man, I wonder what they didn't like escape from La or whatever it is battlefield la but and watch those movies were like apparently horrible like battleship was horrible.    Avish: battles a battle Los Angeles was.    Avish: Okay, it was mildly entertaining.    Avish: So I think at the end of Act two is when kind of everyone gets together.    Mike: yeah and then, and then the yeah and then at three is usually the prep retaliatory strike.    Avish: yeah and real quick if you're listening and you're familiar with story and act structure of most use a three act structure we use a four were basically divide out to into.    Avish: Act two and three, because actually longer now, we have had the first half of us the reactive, the second half is proactive so.    Mike: Right games, you want to talk about the end of the big act to block so.    Avish: Act three right.    Mike: good guys do retaliatory strike yeah.    Avish: They formulate a plan and retaliate work.    Mike: Usually the strike is ineffective to mildly effective, you know we'll give them the BAT you know it did it doesn't But then what usually happens is.    Mike: Civilian main characters.    Mike: discover macguffin right. Avish: yeah or though I think I will have like the end of act three like that's kind of how it they kind of figured out so.    Mike: yeah I.    Avish: figured out at the end, I think, in addition to the.    Avish: I think this is where you get the big disagreement, you know you're saying how the middle of like the there's usually a more veteran military leader, I think this is where the disagreement kind of comes to a head.    Mike: yeah we're the leader. Avish: In effect, tool and then they kind of have to turn to the civilian solution. Mike: mm hmm exactly and then act for is usually mounting the the assault yeah.    Avish: And i'll plan and usually there's a heightened sense of danger, like the the Aliens figure out where the good guys are hiding or they have captured you know the someone important to the the main characters.    Mike: yep and and yeah and the heightened sense of danger, this is the last chance, where I know we're a little over but it's all right, usually a split narrative usually there's like. Mike: When you're looking at the military side of it used to be epic battle and usually there's a smaller commando team is doing something else. Mike: You know, to mean like again yeah. Avish: This is very independent and if we're going, I mean may get too confusing for our forum, but if we had a third, to be like the third will be like. Avish: The by standards civilians like trying to stay safe there's like counter attack small desperate strike force and then everyone else just trying to survive.    Mike: Right exactly. Avish: And Randy quaid flying a plane. Mike: Wait wait with the new version one with a. Avish: A biplane and like a crop missing. Mike: So, by the way, because you guys are listening, and this is how funny love this stuff that apparently that scene was in the original test screening of Independence Day Randy quaid character. Avish: or SCI fi on like YouTube the original. Mike: Like and apparently the audience just. Mike: They were like yeah X that. Avish: Terrible. Avish: I don't know and he, like. Avish: It missile like strapped in the backseat of his plane. Mike: yeah yeah like. Mike: Worst armory gunnery sergeant ever like you just let's go walk off with the sidewinder.    Mike: Alright, so so. Mike: Cheap.

Episode 445, September 7, 2021. This week is a smorgasbord of KISS talk from classic to current and all points in between, with no Mike or Tommy. Forget the haters, we won! Press requests please contact Michael Brandvold at www.michaelbrandvold.com Since launching in 2012 Three Sides of the Coin has been viewed or listened to […]

This week, we're taking a look at The New Guardians! DC's short-lived attempt at a topical superhero comic is... look. Just strap in. This is one of the wildest comic rides you'll ever go on.  ----more---- Episode 14 Transcript   Mike: [00:00:00] Y'all need Satan. Mike: Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we cringe at cursed comics, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson, and I am joined by my cohost, the taskmaster of trivia herself, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Ooh, it is I.  Mike: How are you doing tonight? Jessika: Oh, pretty good. How are you?  Mike: Uh, you know, I, I can't complain the week is coming to an end, so it's, something I'm looking forward to is this weekend and just chillin' out. Jessika: Thank goodness. Yes, my BFF is in town, so that's, I'm very excited. She lives in Maine, so it's like very, very exciting that she is here. She's from around here, but just like visiting right now. So yes, I'm excited.  Mike: That's rad. If you're [00:01:00] new to the show, the purpose of this podcast is to study comic books in ways that are both fun and informative, hopefully. What we like to do is we like to look at some of the weirdest, strangest, silliest, or coolest moments in comic books, and then talk about how they are woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we are going to be looking at the New Guardians, one of DC's stranger and more interesting maxi series that they produced from the 1980s. All right. Jessika: I'm vigorously shaking my head, as you were saying. And I'm just like, here we go. Mike: That was not a face that said my body is ready. Jessika: No, it's, it's not ready. Like, I mean, there's no lie.  Mike: I, I don't know. I, I don't know if anybody can truly be ready to talk about the New Guardians.[00:02:00]  Jessika: Are we going to have to put some sort of a warning? We're absolutely gonna have to put a warning on this episode. Like if you have little ears, please, I don't care what other episode, like we throw the F bomb around if that's your thing. That's fine. Most episodes are probably okay for that. But this one, please put the little ears away. Because I'm not holding back. Mike: We're going to have to do an extra swearing warning is what you're saying.  Jessika: Yeah. Like we'll have almost a content warning. I mean, we're getting into some, some heavy content this episode.  Mike: All right. Before we do that, though, we should talk about one cool thing that we've read or watched recently. So why don't you take it? Jessika: So knowing full well that I'm very behind in my media consumption. I watched the first episode of Star Wars' the Bad Batch.  Mike: Oh, nice. Yeah, that looks like a really cool show.  Jessika: It's really good. Yes. I [00:03:00] really, really liked it. The first episode was legit, almost movie length. It's 70 minutes long.  Mike: Wow. Jessika: And I wasn't really expecting that. So I was, as I was watching it I'm like how long if I've been watching this show? Like, I mean, it was really good. I was involved and everything, but at one point I was just like, how long has this been? And I did the little button and I was like, oh, that makes sense. So it just was kind of.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: I love how the show is recreating the bits that we don't get to see about the rise of the empire and what that looked like from the inside of like the empire itself, which is so fascinating. And the computer animation is really neat. The 3d appearance gives it like some realism and depth.  Mike: Yeah. And from what I've seen is that animation style that they kind of started with 15 years ago with the clone wars series. That's kind of continued on, right? Yeah. I've only [00:04:00] watched a little of that, but that stuff has gotten so cool with all the different things that they've done with it.  Jessika: It really has. So yeah, I'm excited. I'm gonna watch some more of that one. And what about you? What are you checking out?  Mike: Well, Sarah and I watched the Suicide Squad last weekend and we really enjoyed it, but I want to talk about that later on. I started reading a new comic series that I picked up at Brian's Comics in Petaluma over the weekend, it's called Nocterra, and it's from Image comics. It's written by it's written by Scott Snyder and it's illustrated by Tony S Daniel. And it, it gives me similar vibes to Undiscovered Country, which is another series from Image and Snyder himself. I'm only one issue in, but the core concept is that it's this post-apocalyptic world a couple of decades after something called the big PM. Basically that is permanent night's settled over everything and all of these spooky monsters that they, they spiritually feel a little bit like the xenomorphs from Aliens, but they don't look like them.[00:05:00]  They reside in the darkness and they can only be kept at bay with bright lights. The comic is following Val, who was a young girl when the big PM hit as she has since become a ferryman, which is, she's basically a big rig trucker, but she's transporting cargo and that can be people, or it can be other things between the different outposts of humanity. And the first issue sees her getting hired by this mysterious guy who is all of a sudden he shows her that he is sporting a fresh sunburn. And, and that's kind of where it's going from there. It's interesting. I'm really curious to see where it goes. So, yeah, I'm gonna head back up to the shop and pick up the other issues that they have. Jessika: Very fun.  Mike: Yeah. Mike: All right. Are you ready to actually do this? Jessika: Uh, yeah.  Mike: All right.  Jessika: There was pain in my voice, but we're here. [00:06:00] You gave me an out earlier to be totally, to be totally fair.  Mike: I did. Okay. So, this episode is happening because you were the one who sent me a TikTok from Nikhil Clayton, who, first of all, he is absolutely delightful and he has a series called What the Fuck Comics, and this particular video was focused on a character called Hemogoblin, who is literally a white supremacist AIDS vampire. And then if you want to do a. I feel like we need to play this so that our listeners can hear the delightful summary of how batshit this character was. Jessika: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Goodness gracious.  Hello, and welcome back to What the Fuck Comics, the show where we discuss old plot lines and characters, and ask the ever important question. What the fuck? So good news, person, right now. This little monstrosity behind me is the Hemogoblin. He [00:07:00] was a doozy character from the 1980s, and if his name gives you a bad feeling about where we're going with this, you're probably right. He was the creation of a white supremacist group with the ultimate goal of getting rid of all non white people. How? The same way Reagan was going to do it, with the fucking thing AIDS epidemic. Yeah, this guy is an AIDS vampire. He's got all this classic vampire powers, but with the slight exception that when he bites you, you don't become a vampire, you just get AIDS. And I stress again, the he debuted in the 1980s. This was DC's attempt at being topical. Now, thankfully he was only in a handful of issues, so he didn't have a very big effect on anything, but wait, what's that? Sorry. Nevermind. He killed someone. Specifically this guy, Extrano. Extrano was a wizard superhero whose name may or may not have translated directly to strange. Who also just happened to be openly gay. And yes, after a fight with the Hemogoblin, he contracted AIDS and eventually died. And what happened to everyone's favorite personification of mocking tragedy? He also died. Of AIDS [00:08:00] Because what else was going to happen? DC, what the fuck?  Yeah. Mike: Yeah. So, uh, you sent me that video,  Jessika: Yeah, I did.  Mike: What was your initial reaction to it when you first saw it?I'm curious. Jessika: At first I thought, okay, in no way, can this be real? But we all know how awful people are. I was mouth agape in shock, honestly, and I did, I did immediately think of you. I sent it to you within a minute of seeing it because I was like, fuck, do you know about this?  Mike: This is, this is the, the pinnacle of our friendship is that, that you saw something that terrible and you send it to me. Jessika: Oh, [00:09:00]  Mike: But yeah, because as soon as you sent this to me, I was like, fuck, do I know about this? I wrote about it! And I got really excited to tell you all about the New Guardians and Hemogoblin and everything else terrible about comics. Jessika: So yes, every one I did, I opened this can of worms. So either, I'm sorry, or you're welcome, however, you're taking this. Mike: It's a little bit of both. I mean, I'm not going to lie. I was so excited at the idea of talking about how completely bad shit this entire thing is. So. Jessika: Oh, well let's, let's plow on. This is something.  Mike: Yeah. Hemoglobin appeared in a comic series from the late eighties called the New Guardians, but in order to talk about the New Guardians, we needed to actually take a step back and talk about Millennium, which was this giant DC crossover comic event that the team spun out of. So, Millennium took place [00:10:00] in early 1988, and it was the company's third crossover. Before that they had Crisis on Infinite Earths and Legends. And you, and I've talked about Crisis briefly in the past. We noted about how it was this giant crossover thing that streamlined DC's, rather convoluted comics time. And it created something coherent that wove together, not only classic comic characters, like the Justice Society and the Charleston comic characters that DC had recently acquired like Blue Beetle and the Question and Peacemaker, who is now in the DCEU as part of the Suicide Squad. But it also made, it made all those characters, a coherent part of the timeline with the modern DC characters, like the Justice League and Superman and Batman, et cetera, et cetera. Crisis is still this like widely acclaimed storyline, a lot of critics and readers still feel that it is [00:11:00] arguably the best crossover ever. I've read it. I like it a lot. I think it's groundbreaking for what it did, and as a result, I think it deserves a special place in comics history. Legends in term was Legends was fine. It's passable I've re-read it several times., and I always forget the main story except for a couple of random plot points, including that, that was what introduced us to the Suicide Squad. And then after that we got Millennium. Millennium was written by Steve Engelhart and he's this pretty prolific comics writer who has been in the industry for a while. I think he might be retired at this point, from the seventies through the nineties, he was pretty prolific. He bounced back and forth a lot between Marvel and DC during the seventies and eighties, but the seventies is arguably when he did his best work. He wrote a really well-known run on Dr.Strange for a couple of years from 74 to 76. And then he also co-created Shang-Chi with [00:12:00] Jim Starlin in 1973, which we're about to get a movie of. It also sounds like he did a lot of drugs during the same period. , and he's talked about it pretty openly. There's this collection of interviews and essays from across the industry called Comics Between the Panels, and he gave us this amazing quote. Jessika: Oh, goodness. We'd rampage around New York City. There was one night when a bunch of us, including Jim Starlin went out on the town. We partied all day, then did some more acid than roamed around town until dawn, and saw all sorts of amazing things, most of which ended up in Master of Kung Fu, which Jim and I were doing at the time.  Mike: Yeah. And master of Kung Fu is what Shang-Chi's original series was called. Jessika: Got it. Oh, wow.  Mike: This little quote has absolutely nothing to do with our overall discussion, but it's such a wonderful, weird little detail about the [00:13:00] guy that I felt we had to include it. Jessika: It gives me a really good idea of why this was as drug-addled as it was. Well, there were other reasons.  Mike: I'm gonna show you the cover of Millennium's first issue. And I'd like for you to paint us a word picture. Jessika: All right. So in red with yellow behind it, it says Millennium week one, Millennium, DC. 75 cents. And then it has all of the DC superheroes, kind of like that portrait in the Shining, like they're all kind of stacked up, back there and they're looking at something, it's called The Arrival at the bottom. So my guess is they're looking at aliens, which is such a hot topic, every DC superhero that I can recall is in this picture.  Mike: It is a veritable who's who? Of DC characters,  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: But I mean, they all look [00:14:00] horrified.  Jessika: They do, they look horrified. It's all in gray tone with a little bit of green splashed on it. Mike: Yeah. It promises something that it doesn't really deliver on. Millennium was, it was interesting because they basically were dropping every issue of the core series, I believe every week, so that's how you were getting week one, week, two, week three. Because the core series ran for two months. But it also features this really complicated plot. So, the arrival that is advertised on the cover basically occurs when a Guardian of the Universe, the guys who run the Green Lanterns named, and I'm not making this up, Herupa, Hando Hu, all H's, starting. And then the female equivalent of the Guardians, which I believe they are responsible for the Star Sapphires, which are the pink color, the pink equivalent, and they're all about love. Because the Green Lanterns, at this point they've established that [00:15:00] there are different rings for each color of the emotional spectrum. The Zamoran girlfriend is Nadia Safir. Herupa and Nadia are on this quest to unlock the super potential of 10 people on earth, who they deem the Chosen, they say that these people will become immortal and they're going to guide humanity into its next stage of evolution. But they're really vague about all of that. Essentially these people are destined to become the next group of the Guardians and kind of take over running the universe, since the Guardians and their girlfriends have decided to kind of peace out to another part of the universe and then enjoy some debatably well-earned retirement after a few billion years of running things. Jessika: This is your problem now.  Mike: Yeah, exactly.  Herupa and Nadia show up to all these superheroes and then announce their mission, and then they do it in a way that's not even remotely dramatic. Basically they show up, they tell the heroes what's going on, and then the heroes agreed to help find and protect the Chosen [00:16:00] and everyone starts making plans to do so. And then meanwhile, this plan is opposed by a group of robots that are known as the Man Hunters. The Man Hunters were the original version of the Green Lantern Corps. They were the beta test. They basically doled out justice for about half a billion years, and then they went insane. And then the Guardians replaced them with the Green Lantern Core. I think part of the established insanity honestly just involves nursing a grudge for 3 billion years, because that's how long they've been around. And they like to hang out and just basically sulk on their hidden planet, which is apparently undetectable, and then ruin the Guardian's plans whenever they can. Obviously they decide to wreck Herupa's plans because they're still pissed off and they have a bunch of double agents on earth who are androids, or mind-controlled people, or traitors, who help attack the heroes and basically try to kill the Chosen. Jessika: Wow. That's like a new level. Like, that's next [00:17:00] level petty.  Mike: I mean, they're, they're an entire robot race of that shitty dude who can't get over the fact that his ex has moved on and is dating somebody else. Jessika: Oh no, we've all met that guy.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Ugh. If you haven't met that guy, you are that guy. I hate to tell you.  Mike: Yeah, right? So the Guardians shitty robot exes wind up being a little successful. There were originally going to be 10 Chosen, but by the end of the series, only six are actually still around to receive their powers because it takes a while before they're granted their specialness. One of them was senile when the series began. There's another guy named Janwilheim kroef. I think that's how you say his name, it's Afrikaans, so I'm sure I'm butchering it. He gets kicked out because he's such a racist asshole from Apartheid, South Africa that nobody wants anything to do with him. [00:18:00] And then I think two of them are murdered over the course of the story, but we don't see it in the core series.  Cause there's like 30 tie-in issues and I haven't read them all because I have shit to do. But yeah, the final roster of the New Guardians includes Jet, who is a Jamaican woman who, when we meet her is living in fascist Britain, which I think is just Margaret Thatcher's England, I've never heard it referred to as fascist England, that was a new one.  Also she has a written accent that I'm going to call comically offensive. Jessika: It is so, it is, I, yes, that is a great description of what that is. That's how I felt about it as well. Mike: We also get Ram, who is a Japanese businessman who then becomes a walking computer and can talk to electronics. Gloss is this woman from the People's Republic of China. Who can suddenly command dragon lines while showing this insane amount of cleavage. And she keeps on flirting with Ram too. It's really weird and creepy.[00:19:00]  Betty Clawman. She was an Aborigine who eventually wound up living in the dream time. She's not really a presence in the New Guardians, but she's still officially a member. There's Extrano, who was noted in that TikTok video, who was a Peruvian gay man who develops magical abilities. Extrano's an interesting case, because at this point in time, the Comics Code Authority would not actually allow publishers to acknowledge his sexuality. But this dude is so flamboyant, he insists on being called auntie, and when the Guardian first shows up to announce that he is one of the chosen, he kind of flirts with him? Jessika: There's also that part where they're talking about sex and God, I don't know why they would be having such an overt conversation about sex, but Harbinger says something about, oh, would you want to go have sex? [00:20:00] He's like, not with you, honey, or something like that. Mike: Something to that effect. Yeah. Jessika: To that effect, yeah. And it was like, okay.  Mike: Yeah. No, he's very flamboyant. Like there is, I mean, come on guys. You're not fooling anyone. Jessika: He like points his toe out in a lot of the comics, like in a, in a way that they only draw females doing like a lot of the way they have him standing is very feminine, which is interesting. Not always.  Mike: His outfit originally, it's almost like a unisex series of magical robes, where you could see it on either a male or female character. And then his hair is very flamboyant too. He has in a lot of ways, very effeminate features, which then changes later on when they give him that costume change. And we'll talk about that later on but you know, he's this kind of nebbish little guy and he's very flamboyant, and, if you grew up in the Bay Area, you knew a lot of people like that. So, the final, one of the Chosen, [00:21:00] if I remember right, is Tom Kalmaku, he's one of Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern's friends, he's a mechanic for Ferris air. He's been around since the sixties. And eventually it's revealed that he has the power to “bring out the best in people”, but, it's really vaguely defined and we don't really know what it means. And then he winds up declining to go with the team, cause he doesn't want to put his family at risk, but he's still a part of the New Guardians storyline overall. And then after that, they were joined by a longtime villain called the Fluoronic Man, who he's got a bunch of powers over nature. And then Harbinger, who was one of the main characters during Crisis on Infinite Earths, and she's been kicking around the DC universe afterwards, but she wound up being another main character during the Millennium storyline. So that is the TLDR summary, which is already too long, but whatever, but now we can actually talk about the New Guardian series. Like how would you describe [00:22:00] this series? If you had to sell it to someone with an elevator pitch, like, what would you say. Jessika: Overall the New Guardians have been chosen to be Earth's protectors. They are from around the world with the obvious idea that there is a global participation and representation, their main arc is against a white supremacist who is causing all of the destruction, seen in the comics due to his desire to rid the world of all other races. They are basically world social justice warriors who take a very active role in change.  Mike: First of all, that's a very succinct summary of that comic. The series was originally written by Englehart, he was continuing on, and it was drawn by veteran artists, Joe Staton. Cary Bates took over writing duties with issue two and pat Broderick, who is the guy who created Tim Drake, AK Robyn, number three, eventually finished out the series as its penciler. Here's the funny thing, the series isn't [00:23:00] really all that well known or remembered by the general public, but it's kind of notorious within the comics industry and among certain collectors because its villains were so fucking bonkers. Like in the first two issues, we get Hemogoblin who is a vampire that he's sort of a vampire. He looks like count Orloff from Nosferatu he's got the same face and everything, but he was created in a lab by Janwilheim Kroef's scientists like Janwilheim Kroef has apparently just, I don't know exactly how he has access to all the super doomsday science, but somehow he does. So the vampire winds up coming to the United States ends up attacking the group in a dance club. If I remember right or no, right outside a dance club, that's what happened. And then he bites Jet, who is, I have to state this one of the [00:24:00] first black, super heroines in DC comics history, and also attacks Extrano. And I don't think he bites him, but he scratches him, but he gives both of those characters HIV.  Jessika: Mmhm.  Mike: And then he winds up dying because this system burns itself out. Thanks to his accelerated form of aids that he has. And Harbinger it's weird. They don't quite explain how, but she's almost like cosmically sympathetic to Jet's being. And so she winds up developing the same wound as Jed and then also developing HIV. But that goes away.  Jessika: Yeah, they had some symbiotic link. It was very strange.  Mike: Yeah. Symbiotic. That's the word I was looking for. It's very weird. Um, and it's, it's not really explained for a comic, for a comic series with so much exposition, there's a lot that is not well explained or defined. Jessika: There's one point where they're obviously making [00:25:00] fun of their own exposition and they're like, hey, I know this is a lot to listen to. I appreciate you being. I was like, oh gosh. Yeah. Don't you know it.  Mike: Yeah. Hemoglobin winds up dying from AIDS because of course he fucking does. And, and then the next issue, whisks is off to Columbia where we get to meet Snowflake, who I love Snowflake. How, how would you describe him? I'm curious. Jessika: Oh, man. Just your way. Cause I have so heavy. He's basically just a really coked up weightlifter.  Mike: Fair.  Jessika: Yeah. Apparently it has something to do with the power of cocaine, heavy quotes, coursing through him that gives him his powers question, mark. I have to read this description of himself because it is just something. And he says this at one [00:26:00] point during the comic.  Mike: Yeah. And he is also a pyrokinetic, we should note, so this quote has like extra weight to it. Jessika: Exactly. Every cell of my being burns with the white hot ecstasy. Cocaine is my god, and I am the instrument of its will.  And he has all these coked up people that are basically just zombies doing his way. But like nowhere, does it say why he's the instrument of drugs and not his fellows?  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Maybe he was the only one that could afford to buy a fancy spandex suit and spend all of his time getting yoked. Maybe that's it. They're like, oh yeah, this guy, this guy with privilege. Pick him.  Mike: Well, and he, like, he like really beats the shit out of the New Guardians too. And then he gets randomly thrown into a shed with a bunch of chemicals and then it explodes and that's how you get them. It. Jessika: Yeah. He died in [00:27:00] what was basically a drug shed explosive.  Mike: Yeah, I'm okay. I'm sorry. But if this was a horror movie and the monster died that way, it would just be like, okay. So we're obviously going to have the guy come back in the next movie and I was waiting for that, but we never get him back again. Jessika: I was waiting for that, also. I was waiting for that like Ninja Turtles, like here comes Shredder with his hand out of like the rubble.  Mike: Nope.  Jessika: Oh my gosh. So what did you think of that guy's like Fabio white hair. That was like a point of pride, but you know, it had to take some constant maintenance, so. Mike: Well, I mean, he had that much cocaine, what if he just sat there and used that as his like dry shampoo? Jessika: Oh, oh that's, that's awful because the, I, yeah, that's awful. That's awful. It's really funny too. Cause it's like they're mixing up their drugs, if they think that coke is going to cause super strengthened agility. [00:28:00] Like, what they should have had was a coked up guy that just talked really fast and wanted to party and have a bunch of sex. And like, that was his super power.  Mike: Right.  Jessika: Like that's, that's what I've always seen portrayed in the movies and shit. People don't get really strong. That's PCP, when somebody is really crazy on like PCP or something, that's always been what I've heard, but like, that's always in very rare instances when somebody goes off the handle or something and you hear about that, but it was so ridiculous. I mean, you could literally smell the war on drugs, undertones. They were palpable. Mike: Oh yeah.  Jessika: I could taste them. Mike: Reagan? Papa Reagan, is that you? Jessika: Are you listening? I am. Oh, I mean, all it all, he was certainly memorable. I mean, maybe not for the right reasons.  Mike: All right? [00:29:00] Well, I'm going to break this to you. Snowflame has actually like infamous in comic book history. Like I, I was looking up his first appearance today just to see what stores are selling that issue for. Jessika: I'm sorry is for you mean like in this issue, was he in more than just this?  Mike: No, as far as I know, that's his only issue. Jessika: Oh God, you scared me. I was like.  Mike: No. So, but yeah, like it's funny because people still talk about that one villain. They don't talk about the New Guardians, but they will talk about Snowflame because they, I think they find it charming, basically the, you know, just how ridiculous the villain is. But his first appearance, like is going for 50 to 75 bucks at a lot of stores these days. Jessika: Oh. Wow. Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the fact that his powers are fueled by cocaine is just, it's kind of charming, honestly, like people just sit there and like, oh, that's cute. If only we knew then what we know now.  Jessika: Right. [00:30:00]  Mike: Like, I don't know if you got told this growing up, but, but I was part of that DARE generation. Jessika: Oh, Absolutely. Cops in the classroom and everything, which no, don't do that.  Mike: Yeah. And I remember every time the cops came to DARE and they were telling us about all the drugs, they would tell us cocaine is the worst drug out there. Jessika: Which, lol.  Mike: Yeah. Like I could not help, but think of that when I was reading this issue. And I mean, I guess it makes sense. Cocaine was pretty prevalent during the eighties and crack cocaine was really starting to become this huge epidemic in cities across the country by the end of the decade. But, you know, cocaine was the drug that white people knew better. So it got focused on a lot in media, like, you know, in TV shows and comics and movies, all that stuff. And then even though Snowflame died and never came back, apparently, the issue after also deals with [00:31:00] cocaine, because like the villains are, they're like a gang of child soldiers in LA and there. Jessika: I'm throwing my hands up because I don't even know.  Mike: Yeah. Cause they're referred to as kids at one point, but like some of them have a lot of facial hair and it's very weird. And they stage, an attack on the New Guardians' bungalow hotel that they're staying at. Because I guess being the Chosen if humanity doesn't pay enough to afford an Avenger's tower, but this gang is also paid in cocaine by Snowflame's people.  Jessika: It is implied that they're children, But it's like, come on. You're not going to be overtaken by like a gang of children, like this is, this is not the Newsies. Like, you're fine. Mike: No, but the other thing is like, you know, in the eighties, that was really, again, part of the whole gang panic was the eighties and nineties.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Like, you know, that was a huge thing where, news [00:32:00] media at the time was just painting teenage gangs out to be the scourge of the country. Jessika: Yeah, well, and they've got both the gang aspect and the drug aspect that they're like, oh, watch out every one don't want your kids involved in this.  Mike: Fuck, yeah, they were really beaten that horse well past the point of being dead.  Jessika: God. It was. So it was so obvious. My cheeks hurt a little bit, cause it really smacked me.  Mike: Yeah. Well, those first three issues are really kind of the most fun, I felt because after that, the series just kind of limps along. And Jet keeps getting weaker and weaker due to the virus, progressing from HIV to AIDS, because I don't know Hemogoblin had some accelerated form of it or something. And then she eventually dies when she sacrifices herself, helping fight off an alien invasion. She sacrifices herself because she ran out of energy because she had AIDS.  Jessika: [00:33:00] Yeah. Yeah. And then it's not lost on me that they choose the one woman of color and the gay dude to both get AIDS out of everyone or HIV at the very least.  Mike: Yeah, it is. We'll, we'll talk about that later on, but it's not great. After this point, Janwilheim Kroef becomes more and more of the central villain as the story progresses. Eventually he has his plan revealed and it's kind of weird, it's like to make white supremacy go global, which, I mean, first of all, it was already global, but he's basically trying to turn it up to 11. The comic is not at all subtle for drawing parallels between him and Nazis. And then, I mean, it's just, it's so over the top that you almost hit that point where you feel like you're disconnecting from it, because it's just beating you over the head with this message. For the last few issues he's running around and he's got a military uniform with a black arm band and he's [00:34:00] throwing up his hand while he's talking. And, you know, speaking about the inferior races and how he's going to unite the world under his banner of hatred. It's uh. Jessika: Oh, yeah. he does a whole, like, you know, leader, speech, propaganda situation. I mean, it's, it was really heavy handed.  Mike: Yeah. And then he does the thing where he kidnaps Tom Kalmaku's girlfriend, and then she's pregnant. And he wants to surgically experiment on her unborn child. But it's very nonsense and nothing really comes from it other than eventually he gets a hold of Tom, and then thinks that he killed him by throwing him into a pit of minorities that he's surgically experimented on or something and turned them all into cannibal mutants.  Jessika: Get a but like, can we talk about how fucking macabre that whole fucking situation was them? [00:35:00] The fucking, like they were talking about dissecting fetuses and stuff. It was fucking wild. I mean, they had a fetus that was hooked up to stuff, like in a thing when he was in like having a dream. And it was just like, it was insane. It was a lot.  Mike: It was really a lot, but at the same time, it was kind of boring. Like it was really gruesome and horrifying in concept, but then when they put it on the page, it was, it was all delivered with so much exposition and it wasn't actually. Moving in any way, like I was just bored. Jessika: No, it wasn't, it wasn't, but I guess it was just, it was shocking to me that that was where they were going with it. You know what I mean? That, that, it just was a lot. And for me, I could kind of tell that it was written by men.  Mike: Oh yeah. Totally.  Jessika: It's just, that was just something that I wasn't really expecting, to be honest with you.  Mike: Yeah. And I had forgotten about it up until the point where I was rereading these issues. I don't have the sales data on the series. [00:36:00] I get the impression that this was a series that was not doing well, sales wise, and the writers were just trying to do what they could to get people, to pay attention to it. And I don't know if that's the case. It's a feeling that I get in my gut, I could be way off.  Jessika: The vibe, I hear.  Mike: The other thing is like, aside from being really kind of gross and horrifying, this whole plot about Kroef and what he's trying to do, it just, it's kinda nonsense. It doesn't make sense. That's the only way I can describe it. Like, I dunno, he wanted to figure out how Tom got powers or something like that, and so he was going to experiment on the baby, but then the baby was totally normal. And so he just decided to blow up his mountain base and then throw Tom into a pit to get eaten by mutants. But then Tom developed his own super powers at the same time that Kroef was developing his and Kroef is all about. Jessika: Latent fucking super powers. Jesus.  Mike: Oh it's dumb.Yeah. And [00:37:00] Kroef finds up developing the superpowers to basically bring out hatred and other people and also make them serve him while Tom becomes.  Jessika: Which, also, unexplained?  Mike: Yeah. And then Tom is basically Jesus and Buddha combined. He has that aforementioned like “bring out the best ability”, where he just kind of sits and meditates and then appears to people in visions and can literally hand wave away anything that he wants to it's. You know, viewing this through a modern lens. I'm like, oh, so he was that be best campaign by Melania Trump just made manifest.  Jessika: Yes. Yes. Yes.  Mike: It sounds simultaneously wholesome and absolutely incomprehensible. I don't know how else to describe it, but yeah. And basically Tom saves the day at the very end of the series. He rescues the New Guardians from Kroef who is like mind controlling them or something. And then halfway through, they also gave Extrano a much more masculine costume [00:38:00] and he was suddenly jacked and he ran around with a crystal skull, which he would use for magic again, not well explained, whatever. Jessika: Yep. I was what I, it felt like he got more jacked. And I was wondering about that.  Mike: Oh no. He, 100% started to hit the gym and take his creatine. Jessika: I was like, did the skull contain protein powder? I. Mike: Right.  Jessika: He was actually at a GNC this whole time.  Mike: Well, you know, you had a side hustle. Cause superhero-ing doesn't pay the bills. Jessika: Oh, no. Has he gotten involved in a multi-level marketing scheme? Do we need to save him from that now?  Mike: Yeah. Probably Beach Body. Jessika: It worked for me.  Mike: Ugh. If you become my downline, I can get you shredded and castin' spells too. [00:39:00] Yeah. And you know, it's, it's funny because all of the New Guardian's powers are really vague and, you know.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: It's funny because, Extrano, when he was first announced, he's like, I'm a witch. Cause that's, that was his thing. And I'm like, okay, cool. So you're a magic user. His magic is really, it's not well explained what he can and can't do. It seems like half the time he's just casting illusions. And then, you know, suddenly he's able to generate a force field and levitate everybody around and whatever. Okay.  Jessika: He's basically the plug for the leaks in the team. Mike: Yes. Yeah. Whatever they might be.  Jessika: Filling that void. Yep.  Mike: What was your overall impression of this series? Jessika: It went from goofy to intense to, it just was like, you know, we already talked about the fetus dissection conversations. Obviously I got stuck on that because holy shit, that was [00:40:00] extreme. Okay. So I did like that there were a balanced amount of women and that there was a global representation, which was definitely something I had been whining about in our last episode. So thank you.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: But the women just had absolutely nothing on, you know, Gloss' outfit literally cut down to her pelvic bone. I mean, there was literally like two, it was two inches from her couch.  Mike: Do you remember that dress that J-Lo wore to the Oscars like 25 years ago? That was super scandalous at the time?  Jessika: I know the one. Yes. Mike: Yeah. No. It's the superhero equivalent of that Oscar's dress. Jessika: It sure is. Yeah. Like how are you even supposed to fight when you think you're going to slip a nip or sneak a cheek, like really how? This is a prime example of those types of comics where they look like they were drawn by a 12 year old boy.  Mike: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. And it's funny [00:41:00] because, if I remember right, in Millennium, because she's part of the People's Republic, they're all wearing like the same kind of like very nondescript kind of burlap sack style clothing that, I mean also problematic in its own way, but it's just, it was really interesting to see her go from a very kind of almost asexual character to being this horned up Asian woman stereotype. Jessika: Yeah. It was really intense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there were at the very beginning, a few times where I was like, oh, what's going to happen next issue, but it did like, it dwindled. You know, like you said, towards the end and it just got really manic and crazy and just like, felt like a drug-induced fever dream.  Mike: Yeah. It, I found myself comparing it to US 1, the series that we did a couple of episodes ago. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Where that was another batshit shit series, but it was fun, and [00:42:00] I never found myself really getting frustrated with it because it never felt boring. And this one, I got bored a lot. Jessika: It was a little bit of a slog.  Mike: But I mean, especially when characters, either the villains or the heroes were sitting there and recapping their backstory for like the 10th time, you know, it, I just don't care. Like, come on guys. You've already got me. You really think that the person reading issue number nine is not going to know what's going on. Come on. Jessika: Yeah, exactly.  Mike: Yeah. And I got to agree with you, you know, you have to give the series a little bit of credit because the New Guardians was a diverse team and they had some interesting abilities, but everything about it just felt really cringey, for lack of a better word. It's like somebody took a list of the current social issues at the time, and then just like focus grouped the hell out of them. And then they created a superhero comic around it. [00:43:00] And I don't know, you can tell it's hard as in the right place, but everything about the comic itself just gets more and more painful. It's kind of akin watching someone trying to be especially woke, but you're sitting there really hoping that they're going to reign in their efforts by about 50%, by the end of it. Like, I mean, even the villains are topical. Like, the three that we talked about, we've got Janwilheim Kroef, who was part of the Apartheid government in South Africa. And this was in 1988, which is right when the apartheid was really getting put under the international media's microscope. Basically, the series was running right before Nelson Mandela got released from jail. And then we already talked about Snowflame and how he was relevant to the time. And then Hemogoblin it was topical because the AIDS crisis was really starting to take off in America at this point in time as well.[00:44:00] But yeah, it's a. It's a cringey read. Jessika: Yeah. I've just been shaking my head this whole time. The listeners can't hear that, but just know it was happening.  Mike: Yeah.Yeah. You know, and it's funny cause DC doesn't really talk about the New Guardians, or the crossover they originated from, that much. Like, they acknowledge Millennium happened. They actually collected it into a graphic novel a few years ago, but it's only those core eight issues, and it really doesn't make a lot of sense because in between each issue, there is all this very crucial stuff that happens. And so those core eight issues are almost like the recaps and the setup for what's going to happen next. So it's, you know, it's still technically canon in terms of DC lore, but it's not really discussed in polite company. And I mean, case in point, Tom Kalmaku is I think still around in the [00:45:00] DC universe,  Jessika: Really.  Mike: He's a long time cast member of the Green Lantern comics. I know, I read a couple of issues that had him show up in, I want to say 2010. It might've been a little bit earlier than that. But I know that his character was even in that Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie. Jessika: Oh, you know what? No, you're right. You are right.  Mike: But his powers, as far as I know, are never mentioned again, like they just kind of were like, no, that didn't really happen. Or we don't, we don't talk about that. And then, you know, it's the same with the New Guardians. They occasionally pop up individually, but they never really get the band together. I think they were still a team in Green Lantern comics, but then there was a villain named Entropy who wound up attacking the headquarters that they were operating out of. Cause they were hanging out in the Green Lantern headquarters on earth. And then it was assumed that they all died. So that TikTok video was saying that, Extrano died from HIV. [00:46:00] He might have, but as far as I know, what happened was everybody assumes that he died during that attack, and he still had HIV. But I don't know at that point, I'm not as familiar with the Green Lantern and storylines from that era.  Jet somehow reappeared as the leader of the Global Guardians, Extrano had a recent cameo in Midnighter, and he was a supporting character, and he actually was like much more normcore this time around. But he was actually openly gay this time around, which was kinda cool. Jessika: Oh, good.  Mike: Yeah. And then other than that, like most of the New Guardians spend a lot of time dying. So, yeah, as I mentioned, the entire team was absorbed and presumably killed by the super villain Entropy before Flash point rebooted the DC Universe, gloss was hanging out with Jet for a short while, but then she got killed by the villain, Prometheus, like, she got to decapitated.  There's like, yeah, it is not subtle. And then Ram [00:47:00] was, again, it was one of those cameo things, but he was shown in passing as a victim of this villains' superpower death matches where it was like a super power fight club kind of thing, and it was shown that he had died, I think. But yeah, so yeah, that is the New Guardians and their, their wild ride across the DC Universe. Jessika: Wow. I'm going to, I'm going to put on a face mask after this. I'm gonna soak my feet, gonna decompress.  Mike: And as far as I know, there is no collected version of this maxi series, like, so, you know, basically you have to buy the individual issues, at least what I've seen, which I mean, somehow I own, I think I found the entire series as like a bundle. You know, at one of the local comic shops and they were just like, whatever, like 12 bucks get out.[00:48:00]  Jessika: Please take these and leave.  Mike: We will pay you to take it out. Jessika: Oh God. It's like when stores want you to take cursed items home, they're like, we just don't want this in our possession any longer.  Mike: Yeah. But I mean, like that said, you can find some really fun stuff in those bundle boxes. Like that's how I actually came across the whole series of US 1was at Flying Colors Comics the last time I was there. I found the first issue of Brian's, but then they had the complete collection at Flying Colors. So that was exciting.  Jessika: Nice.  Mike: I recently found the, I think it was the complete series of Ren and Stimpy, you know, for 30 bucks, which was fun. Jessika: Nice. And in the bundle boxes, they do like a full series? So whatever you pull it's like the whole thing? Mike: Or, they'll, do a full run of like a certain like, you know, set of issues.  Jessika: Nice. Oh, that's cool.  Mike: That's why I always liked to collect for, as I like to collect for the things where it's like the fun stories or the weird moments in comic history, or just, kind of cool, interesting moments. [00:49:00] And so you can find that stuff. If you're looking for just fun stuff to read, look at the, they used to call them like the quarter bins. I think they're now like dollar bins where, you know, they're the issues themselves are kind of ratty or they're worthless, but you can find a lot of really fun stuff, no, it's a great way to just enjoy comics if you're not collecting them to basically appreciate like your stock portfolio. Jessika: Very cool.  Mike: Yeah.    Mike: All right. Well, I believe it is time or Brain Wrinkles, which is that one thing that has comics or comics adjacent that we just can't kick out of our noggin. What is stuck in your gray matter this week? Jessika: Well, we've got another addition to the letter mafia.  Mike: Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.  Jessika: Ooh. So per DC cannon Tim Drake, our current Robin has. A whole mission where he gets to go save a [00:50:00] longtime friend, Bernard from the villain du jour, and during which point, Bernard confesses his feelings for Drake, whom he does not know his Robin. So he's like confessing his love and hoping that he has a chance for love. And then it ends with them going on a date.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: I love it.  Mike: Yeah. It's really interesting.  Jessika: He's bisexual, canonically, everyone.  Mike: Yup. I'm very curious to see how this is going to play out in the future. I know a lot of right-wing shit heal comic sites and prevalent voices across the web are mad about this. And so I'm automatically overjoyed just to hear that this ruined their day.  Jessika: Yeah. Yeah.  Mike: Overall, the sentiment seems pretty positive to it as well, which I think speaks volumes about where we are now compared to when I started reading comics. Jessika: Agreed.  Mike: Yeah. I'm pretty jazzed about it. I'm curious to see where they go with it [00:51:00] and the one thing that's been really interesting is I saw the BBC was asking what this meant for movies, and I was kind of sitting there. It doesn't fucking matter. Like they're not going to put it in a movie.  Because here's the thing that a lot of people don't quite get, is that inclusivity for the LGBTQ plus community and movies is very fleeting because major movie studios, these days have recognized the power of the international box office and they thus need to put in stuff that they can edit out for the Chinese and Russian, and a handful of other smaller markets. So it was a big deal that in the last Star Wars movie, we get to see two guys kissing, it's a second and, you know, whatever that's going to get edited out in certain regions because they want to be able to make their millions. Jessika: Yeah, arguably edited out in the places that matter [00:52:00] most.  Mike: Yeah, exactly. But I am glad to see that we're getting more representation and especially bi people in particular are getting more representation in meaningful, thoughtful ways.  Jessika: Yes, well, and bi men. There's always been that boring trope of like how amazing it is that women can be bisexual, but it's often looked upon with disgust or completely disregarded when it comes to men. And I, quite frankly, there's no difference people, like.  Mike: Yup.  Jessika: It's just, it's just people hating. And it's the toxic masculinity of, you know, if you're a man, you do certain things and it's just like, come on guys, you need to back the fuck off. This is why you're as, as harmed as you are in your lives, because you had all these stupid us standards you had to stick with, and couldn't fucking talk about your feelings. And now you're just a ragey asshole. So here we are. Here we are. How do you feel? Oh, you won't tell me. [00:53:00] You don't even know.  Mike: Yeah. God.  Jessika: Let's see how mucho of that I cut out.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So what about you? Um, what's wrinklin' and around in there.  Mike: Yeah. You know, I can't believe how much I enjoyed The Suicide Squad. I keep on thinking about it. And I mean, I knew I was going to like it because I have yet to see anything by James Gunn that I haven't liked. I've been a fan of his since he did the movie Slither back in 2005 ish, which also had Nathan Fillion and Michael Rooker in it. Jessika: Ooh.  Mike: Yeah, you know, he makes entertaining movies and I was not prepared for some of the things that happen in The Suicide Squad. It is absolutely wild what a [00:54:00] course correction that movie is, especially when you compare it to the first one. It kind of reminded me of Shizam and Birds of Prey. It was just this absolutely delightful blast of chaos. And, you know, it was fun. It was refreshing. And if this is where we're going with the DCEU, as opposed to the fucking Snyder cut, then I'm fully on board with this, like, sign me up for 10 more movies.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Just no more Jokers, please.  Jessika: I'll actually watch this one with a gusto, you know. Mike: No.  Jessika: Probably sooner rather than later.  Mike: Sarah wants to watch it again.  Jessika: Oh, okay. Now that's a shining review then. Yes.  Mike: Yeah. I'm really excited to talk with you about how batshit it is, and like the stuff that they do with it, which is really in a lot of ways, it's really brave, like what they did. They also, they kill off a lot of characters.  Jessika: Ooh.  Mike: I was not prepared for how many characters they were going to kill off. I knew they were gonna kill off a couple, but like.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: It's, it is astounding. [00:55:00] The choices that they made.  Jessika: Damn. Maybe, I don't know everyone. What's up, y'all, we might need to do an episode about this one.  Mike: I think that that would actually be pretty cool.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Especially we could talk about how they got started, how they appeared in comics and then also how this movie in certain ways reminded me of their DC animated universe appearance. Jessika: Yes. Okay. I, if, if it compares to that, which, you know, I love that.  Mike: Yeah. There's a, there's an episode of Justice League Unlimited called Taskforce X, which is a really great Suicide Squad story. Like I, yeah, that'd be kind of fun. We should, we should talk about that.   But next time, our next episode, we are going to be starting something new. We're going to do, well, I guess it's like a book club. Jessika: I would say it's a book club. Yeah. Mike: Yeah. So we're going to read through and talk about the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman, the core [00:56:00] Sandman series, ahead of the Netflix TV show, which is coming out supposedly sometime this year, but I'm really excited about it. And we may actually have a couple of guests as guest hosts or maybe just one who knows we'll find out. Jessika: To be decided.  Mike: But yeah, we'll be back in two weeks and until then, we'll see you in the stacks.  Jessika: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes accessibility is important to us. So text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website.  Mike: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer and Mike Thompson written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound. Our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan MacDonald and was purchased with a standard license from Premium Beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who you can find on Instagram as @lookmomdraws. Jessika: If you'd like to get in touch with us, [00:57:00] ask us questions, or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter, the official podcast account is tencenttakes. Jessika is @jessikawitha, and Jessika is spelled with a K. And Mike is @vansau, V A N S A U.  Mike: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen. Jessika: Stay safe out there. Mike: And support your local comic shop. 

No Lucks Given Podcast is a great motivational and inspiring podcast around entrepreneurship hosted by Celebrity Chef Brother Luck. Packed with great conversations around self improvement and life as a business owner. Founded on the principles of Pride, Courage, Perseverance, and Determination. Chef Brother Luck his own knowledge of running multiple small businesses of his own. You can definitely mark this podcast as a good podcast to listen to! Co-hosted by Dana Keith who is another inspiring and motivational entrepreneur. In this episode we discuss sudden passing of Chef Mike. We talk about death. The importance of life insurance. Appreciating the time with people and making an impact along the way. Enjoy this episode and Welcome to #NoLucksGiven

Zane introduces us to an old school wrestling fan who also works in Radio. No ,it is not Dave it's Mike Traina! A familiar voice to sports fans in Utah but also knows wrestling. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Today we're checking out a couple of Jessika's latest estate sale finds: Superboy 109 & 110. Are these swingin' sixties stories about the Boy of Steel any good? Well, no. Not really. But they certainly gave us something to talk about! ----more---- Episode 13 Transcript Jessika: [00:00:00] Dude. It's always fucking Florida, Mike: I can't think of anything that comes out of Florida that's good. Jessika: Hello. Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we traverse tumultuous time continuities, one issue at a time. My name is Jessika Frazier and I am joined by my cohost, the dastardly dog dad, Mike Thompson.  Mike: That's a fair description.  Jessika: That was a segue. We need to talk about your newest acquisition.  Mike: What, Mo?  Jessika: No. We've talked about Mo. What was your newest acquisition in relation to the squad?  Mike: Oh, right. We bought a dog wagon over the weekend.  Jessika: Yeah, you did! Mike: And then, uh, already busted it out and taking them all over the neighborhood [00:01:00] and to the beach. I think it was proven to be a wise investment when this neighbor who we'd never seen before stopped his car in the middle of the road and yelled at us about how cute he thought it was. He was like, “that's the cutest thing I've ever seen!” He was this big old dude. I'm like, alright, I'm on board with this. All right. Success.  Jessika: Amazing.  Mike: It was very wholesome.  Jessika: Well, I think Mike'll have to post at least one or two pictures of the dogs  in this week's transcript. Mike: Yeah, no, we  can absolutely post photos of the dogs in this episode's transcript.  Jessika: Yes. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Well, 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. Today we'll be discussing the boy of steel, Superboy. While there are many variations of this character, we are going to be focusing on the OG [00:02:00] comics from 1944 to 69 as the ones that we talk about, but we will also just briefly touch upon the other comics, TV shows, and movies sporting the same character, as well as touch upon the absolute nightmare that is the timeline continuity, or lack thereof, that is Superman's life story. But before we do that, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched lately?  Mike: Sarah and I have been watching a show called Motherland: Fort Salem. Have you heard of this?  Jessika: I have, I was interested. Should I start it?  Mike: Yeah, we really dig it. It's on FreeForm, but it's streaming on Hulu. It takes place in this world where the United States stopped hunting witches 300 years ago and there was something called the Salem Accords signed. So now we have a world that's dominated by the USA and witches make up, as far as I can tell, the entirety of its armed forces. Jessika: [00:03:00] Oh, snap.  Mike: It's really cool. And the whole thing is magic is based on sound and resonance. And it's really a unique spin on things, but the show follows these three young witches who are recruited into the army and then start navigating their way through it. And the larger society, that's a part of the military and it's very comic book-y in terms of its plotting and character development and then the meta narrative as well. It's really cool. And it's really diverse in terms of casting. The storylines are really thoughtful in a lot of ways, and it's very queer. Like, extremely queer.  Jessika: Yes.  Mike: And the shows in the middle of its second season. And it's gotten much better. Like, I mean, it was already, it was already very good, but it feels like the second season, they really got the kick things up and they've really upped the creep factor. There's a whole thing about witch hunters re-emerging in kind of striking back at witches and riling up public sentiment. It feels very topical. [00:04:00] And then the whole thing is that because which is get their powers from the sound of their voice, what these witch hunters are doing is they're actually like cutting out witches' voice boxes and then weaponizing them. It's really cool and really creepy. And I really like it. Jessika: Oh, damn. That is like horrific. And like wow, that's an interesting concept.  Mike: Yeah. Sarah and I have been really, really enjoying it. And it's definitely something that we put on when the kids aren't around obviously, but,  Jessika: Oh, yeah.  Mike: but it's really solid. So yeah, not a comic book this time. But certainly something that I think a lot of comic book fans would enjoy.  How about you? Jessika: Well, once again, Lauren from Outer Planes in Santa Rosa comes through on the recommendations. Because she suggested the Image series, Man Eaters: The Cursed.  Mike: Hm.  Jessika: It's so fun. It starts off with 15 year old Maude being forced to go to summer camps. So her parents can go on this romantic vacation by themselves without her.  Mike: [00:05:00] Relatable.  Relatable, mom and dad.  Jessika: Absolutely. Well, and it's so funny because they put these fun little, like. It's almost like little artifacts in there , for you. So they have the registration card where they're registering her. And so it's like, will you be on vacation while your child is at camp? And it's like, YES. Like it literally asked that as a question like it's expected.  Mike: Good.  Jessika: It's pretty funny. Another thing I found that's really funny is they have the campers have these buttons. They're like warning buttons for insurance purposes. And they say things like sleepwalker or lice, or like Gemini. Which like big Gemini myself, like absolutely issue some warnings.  Mike: I love it. Jessika: And I love that there is one male character so far in this, and he's the least prepared for everything and Maude totally [00:06:00] roasts him a couple of times.  Mike: Again, relatable. Because the one who does all the home repairs around here, it ain't me. Jessika: Oh my gosh. So yeah, no, I added that to my pull list.  Mike: Yeah, that sounds great. Jessika: All right. Well, welcome to another episode of Jessika's estate sale fines. This week we'll be looking at Superboy, the comics, and I'm going to run us through the timeline of the comics as they came out, along with the TV shows and movies that were associated with those. So a lot of this is going to be like informational about when the comic came about and the character, Superboy  as Kal-El Mike: I'm super excited.  Jessika: there was a lot to it. And actually there was a  lot of different weirded consistencies that we're definitely gonna get into. As I've already hinted at that, I think you'll find very [00:07:00] funny,  Mike: I'm so excited.  Jessika: Okay. before I get too deep into this topic, I want to give a shout out to the resources that I use to compile my information today: An article from DC on DC comics.com fan news blog by Megan Downey, titled “Reign of the Superboys: The strange history of the Boy of Steel,” the Wikipedia article on Superboy, a blog post on captaincomics.ning.com in a forum called the comics round table by username commander Benson titled “deck log entry, number 176 Superboy: the time of his life,” and IMDB. for those of you who are. For those of you who are somehow unfamiliar with the basic storyline of Superboy's origins. not to be confused with Superman's origins, which he swoops in a little bit differently initially in the comics than this. but Kal-El in this instance was sent to earth by his parents before their home planet of Krypton [00:08:00] was destroyed. He was discovered in the crater left by his arrival by locals Martha and Jonathan Kent, who adopted him, raising him as their own son and naming him Clark. At age eight, Clark is told how he was found and finds out more about his origins from Krypton. Martha makes him an indestructible suit out of a blanket that he was found with one that came from Krypton and is imbued with the same powers that he himself holds. And it's basically just like Superman fucking around and not being in school.  Mike: Yeah, it almost entirely takes place in Smallville, which… it's kind of like the DC universe version of Cabbot Cove from Murder, She Wrote, where you're just like, how many fucking people die in this town? You know, in Smallville, it's, it's more along the lines of how many fucking supervillains hang out in this town in the middle of nowhere, Kansas,  Jessika: That's just it. What is it? A convention?  Mike: I guess. Jessika: Oh, so Superboy as a character was created by Joe Schuster and [00:09:00] Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel in 1938, but was rejected twice by Detective Comics before the growing popularity of the comic Robin, the Boy Wonder, finally convinced them to change their stance and they then decided to use it to try to relate to a younger readership with a younger character, which makes sense. Thus, Superboy made his comic debut in 1945, but just as a feature in the anthology, More Fun Comics issue 101. Now, of course, it wouldn't be comics without a little bit of drama. Schuster had assistance from Don Cameron instead of Siegel, as Siegel was serving in World War II and stationed in Hawaii. And he actually had to hear about Superboy's and inaugural publication through a letter from Schuster. DC didn't send them any notification nor was he able to actively participate in the trajectory of the plot line  since he was serving. It [00:10:00] was kind of a fuck you.  Mike: considering how heavily Superman was a part of propaganda. There is literally a cover of Superman running a printing press that says, I think it says, like, “help slap a Jap.” Jessika: Oh, that hurt me.  Mike: Yeah. Like, I mean, Superman was very much part of World War II propaganda, and that's insane that they wouldn't let one of his creators participate in the storylines because he was serving in the, uh, okay. Whatever. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, it's pretty rough. So apparently there was already a rift in Siegel and Schuster's relationship. And so this just increased that strain. After that first issue, Superboy appeared in More Fun Comics, bimonthly issues through number [00:11:00] 107, but was picked up by Adventure Comics debuting in April of 1946. So he was bouncing around, that was issue number 103. And he was the lead feature for the anthology on this one Mike: Hm  Jessika: and remained the headlining feature for over 200 issues and continued being featured in Adventure Comics until 1969.  Mike: That's such a huge, just, that's an incredible run. Jessika: Yeah. It's a ton of time. And especially considering like he had, this was just like a side gig for Superboy. Really. He had other stuff going that he was doing.  Mike: Yeah, I do know that at one point in the sixties, Superboy was I believe the number two comic in America and the only one that was doing more than that was Superman. Jessika: It's like you were reading ahead. No, seriously. That's in my notes.  Mike: Oh, really? Okay, cool.  Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, yeah, no. And actually was frequently number two. We'll just  get to it now. It was frequently number two for a lot of it's run.[00:12:00]  So notable storylines that we got from Adventure Comics were intro to Krypto, the super dog, the origin story of his rivalry with Lex Luther, which that continues pretty far. So it's interesting that they, like, created the origin story.  Mike: Yeah. They had like teenage Lex Luther show up in Smallville, right?  Jessika: Yeah, yes, yes. Correct.  Mike: I think he had hair  Jessika: Back when he had hair, yeah.  Mike: Yeah. And that's something that's continued up until modern times as well. Mark Waid's Birthright, I know, did that… where it basically revealed that Clark Kent had been for a short time friends with Lex.  Jessika: Oh, wow. Of course. They had to be friends before they were enemies. Frenemies. There was also the the debut of the 30th century superhero team, the Legion of superheroes.  As Superboy, continue to frequent the pages of anthology comics in April of 1949, he became the sixth superhero to get his own comic book. and was the first new superhero [00:13:00] title to succeed after World War II. Mike: Oh, wow. That's crazy.  Jessika: Right?  Mike: I had no idea that there were only six superhero comics back then. Jessika: Yeah. Not with our own titles.  Mike: I mean, that's wild.  Jessika: Totally. I didn't realize that either.  Mike: yeah Jessika: notable storylines from this namesake comic were intro to Ilana Lang and Pete Ross, the storyline of the first Bizarro and first appearances of Legion of superheroes characters, Mon-El and Ultra Boy.  He also appeared in Legion of superheroes volume. One, which was printed as an anthology. Superboy itself continued until 1976 when the comic was renamed Superboy and the Legion of superheroes. Superboy was involved in the storyline until issue number 2 59. When he leaves after learning new information regarding the death of his parents.[00:14:00]  Dramatics. Mike: Yeah, I haven't read a lot of those, but the idea is that he's displaced through time and he winds up hanging out with the Legion for a while. And then if I remember right, Supergirl winds up joining the Legion after a while, too. Basically, so they can have kind of a headliner. Jessika: I smell them trying to fix a time continuum. But that's maybe I'm biased. Based on the research I've been doing,     The series was then retitled Legion of superheroes volume two, and ended with issue number 354 and 1979. There was also a three-part mini series called Secrets of the Legion of Superheroes that was published in 1981. And despite the general decline of superhero readership, Superboys' popularity continued to grow and adventure comics and Superboy frequently sold over a million copies combined.  Mike: That's an insane amount of comics these days. You know, back then that [00:15:00] was wild. Jessika: I mean, it definitely groundbreaking for its time. I would say it was, it sounded like it was huge. The popularity may also have been due to the fact that Superboy was found on more than just comic book stands. He was also on the TV and in the movies, he appeared in a 26 minute movie called the Adventures of Superboy and multiple six-minute episodes airing with the New Adventures of Superman, which aired for 1966 to 70, the Superman Aquaman Hour of Adventure from 67 to 68 and the Batman Superman Hour 68 to 69. All of which were just continuations are within that same world as the initial comic book.  Mike: Right. And those were all animated series too, I think, right?  Jessika: they were. They were. And here's something fun for you to watch if you wanted to click on that link.  Mike: Okay.  [Superboy INTRO AUDIO PLAYS] I love the image of like infant CBRE, boy, just lifting a piano. All right.  Jessika: Very patriotic.  Mike: Yeah. I love the fact that they have Krypto in there. Like I've always had a soft spot for Krypto. I am a little offended that his cowlick isn't in the shape of an S though. Come on guys. You know, this is an amateur hour.  Jessika: Missed opportunity. Mike: Right. But yeah, that was super cute.  Jessika: Wasn't that fun? Yeah. So I can,  I could see kids get getting really excited about seeing that. And then they walk by the newsstand and they go, I just saw that on TV.  Mike: yeah, exactly.  Jessika: [00:17:00] So I think they had a good thing going with that at that point. Mike: Oh, a hundred percent. So that was in the sixties, you said, right?  Jessika: Yes.  Mike: So that was right when television was becoming the dominant form of entertainment in the United States. I think by 1959 or 1960, it was something like 90% of households in America had televisions. And Saturday morning cartoons were starting to become a thing, which by the way, you guys should go back and listen to that episode about Saturday morning cartoons. It's our first episode. And we talk all about the evolution of that and how it connected with Comics. Jessika: It was a fun one. So pretty much right after the Legion of Superheroes volume two ended, the New Adventures of Superboy was published in 1984. That had 54 published issues,  Mike: Okay. That's a respectable run.  Jessika: Yeah. It's not anything too wild. Yeah. In 1985, DC tried to tie up some of those pesky plot holes that we're going to discuss later [00:18:00] on, for sure, by creating a comic that told the story of Clark Kent's transitional years in college at Metropolis University, going from Superboy effectively to Superman. And while this was supposed to last for 12 installments, they only ended up publishing six, mostly due to the fact that Crisis on Infinite Earths was published  Mike: I was about to ask. Yeah.  Jessika: Yep. That actually featured the eraser of Superboy  and yet another attempt to correct a timeline.  Mike: Well, Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first real attempt by DC to sit there and stream everything into a coherent timeline. And at the same time they had John Byrne's The Man of Steel, which came out I think right after. Crisis on infinite earths. And that also streamlined Superman's very convoluted history. The problem is is that by that point in time, you had almost 50 years of continuity, which made no fucking [00:19:00] sense. Jessika: And we'll discuss it later, but there wasn't necessarily a need for continuity back in the day. I mean, they didn't have to have it. They were just there for like, we're doing this adventure. This is fun. They're going to enjoy it. And there wasn't a feeling that you had to necessarily link it with what came before it or what was going, coming after it in the same way that we want now as readers and as fans, we want everything to make sense because we want more of the story in that  way. Mike: We want that overarching meta plot. Jessika: Exactly. Exactly. So despite DC's attempt to write Superboy out of the universe completely, he appeared once again in Legion of Superheroes Volume Three, which ran from 86, 87 and while Crisis on Infinite Earths had erased Superboy. To some extent in other time, continuations, they now needed to recreate him in order to have a cohesive storyline for [00:20:00] Legion of Superheroes. Mike: God. Jessika: So they were like, what are we going to do? Oh, I know pocket universe.  Mike: Why not?  Jessika: Why not? So in this version, it's set in a pocket universe created by the villain Time Trapper.  Mike: I think the Time Trapper… so the Time Trapper is like a villain who has had multiple identities. It's the same villain ultimately, but it's different people wind up becoming the Time Trapper. And I think, Superboy became the time trapper point.  Jessika: This doesn't surprise me at all. What the hell?  Mike: Yeah, don't, don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure that it happened, uh, during one of their big, crossovers,  Jessika: Oh, no, Mike: Comic books are dumb and I love them.  Jessika: I do, too. This is actually part of the  reason I really do like them. Because I like seeing all of these little differences. It doesn't make me mad. I just find it very funny.  Mike: Yeah. so the Time Trapper created a pocket [00:21:00] universe and then they used him to bring Superboy back.  Jessika: Yeah, exactly. And so he, but here's the funny part. He was really just like a sideline character in this. He came in and issued 24 and he was killed off in 38. Mike: Superboy was going. Okay. I'm not going to ask question.  Jessika: Yeah. Cause he had to like sacrifice himself to save the world. I mean,  that's, you know, common trend in these, right.  Mike: Of course.  Jessika: Yeah.  It was convenient. If not obvious.  Mike: Okay.  Jessika: Superboy apparently would not, could not be stopped. As was apparent in 1988 with not only a comic publication, but also a TV appearance. Once again, this time live action.  Mike: I remember that show.  Jessika: Yeah, it was here and that was gone.  Mike: It lasted for a couple of seasons, but I think they had a couple of different actors play Superboy. Jessika: They did. Yeah. So it was four seasons and it started out starring John Hames Newton for season one [00:22:00] and then recast replaced for the remainder of the four seasons. So the rest of the three by Gerard Christopher.  Mike: Oops.  Jessika: So that was a 22 minute runtime, pretty normal for that time. but there again, it went along with the same year that the Superboy volume two hit shelves. You know, they did another one of those timing things thinking, Hey, it worked what? 30 years ago.  Let's do it again.  Mike: Yeah. It's that whole transmedia thing. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. the show ultimately lasted until 1992, the same year a one-shot comic called the last Superboy was published. But that seemed to be the last dying ember from the fire that is Superboy, as we've talked about up until this point, except one thing. And I know that we want to talk about it a little bit, which is Smallville. And I know we've mentioned it, but I didn't watch that. Did you watch that show?  Mike: Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? I, I was all over that show for the first few seasons. Jessika: Okay. I [00:23:00] just really, it was just cause I had a crush on Kristin Kruek, but unfortunately she got involved with that horrific NXIVM cult.  Mike: I thought It wasn't her. It  was the… Jessika: It was Alison Mack, but  like, but  she was involved for a few years,  unfortunately. Big. Yikes.  Mike: I don't know too much about it. I just know that Alison Mack was one of the big ringleaders for it and it was wild. Jessika: She was, yeah.  Mike: Like she, I think she left Smallville to like devote herself full-time to that cult.  Jessika: That sounds right. Yeah, she was, she was definitely a big part of it. yeah, it was rough. I've been following it.  Mike: I really liked Smallville when it first came out. I remember getting so excited when they had a little teaser ad for it where I think it's Krystin Kreuk is wandering through the darkness and she hears something and turns and then you see Tom Welling step out of the shadows and he says something along the lines “Oh, Hey, it's just me. It's it's Clark.” and then it just says Smallville, and I was like, oh mother fucker. That's amazing. [00:24:00] And yeah, it was, it was fine. It was very teen angsty, but they had a lot of deep cuts for comic fans. And, I think I stopped watching around season four  because it just started to, it felt like it really sort of jumped the shark,  Jessika: Oh, okay. Yeah. I was going to, ask if it's  something I should rewatch. I don't know. Stuff from that. Timeframe is so cringey these days.  Mike: A lot of it's cringey. I remember a whole thing with his heat vision was tied to like him being horny.  Jessika: No. Why do you have to do that?  It's so unnecessary.  Mike: But you know, what's funny is they actually brought Tom Welling back in the whole DC Arrowverse recently where they have a version of Lex Luther. Who's traveling the multi-verse and he shows up at, he shows up at the Kent farm and Tom welling is there. I thought it was just, it was great. It was, it was just, it was a really cute little nod. Jessika: That is pretty cute. I do like that.  Mike: And then he got all mad because he was trying to suck Superman's powers [00:25:00] away. And then it turns out Superman gave up his power so that he can have a family and a normal life. And then the now powerless Superman pops him in the nose. It was kind of good.  Jessika: That is cute.  Mike: I was fine with this. It was very, it was very wholesome. Jessika: So there are other iterations of Superboy, but they're not necessarily Clark Kent and some of them are, but they kind of stray off into different timeline. And I could have gone down that rabbit hole, but Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: you know, I didn't. Here we are.  Mike: that's fine.  Jessika: So I also know that I, more than hinted, we've talked about a little bit, uh, the continuity troubles that plagued Superboy.  Mike: Right,  Jessika: I, I gotta say some of these transgressions are just capital B A D bad. But they get a bit of a pass again, you know, like I said, because Comics at that point [00:26:00] really didn't hinge on a time continuum.  Mike: Right. That wasn't a thing.  Jessika: No, it wasn't. So, we got to give them a little bit of credit except when they actually started figuring it out and they still did absolutely nothing about it, which is what we're going to talk about. Mike: Okay.  Jessika: Because after Superman, they kind of figured out, oh, people are wanting more of a storyline and we've already given Superman kind of a timeframe. And now this has to be Superboy. So it needs to be earlier. So they were like, Okay. Superboy is from the 30s.  Mike: Right.  Jessika: But Superman at that time, I think was supposed to be set in the 60s or the 50s. And the math did not add  Mike: Right.  Jessika: at all to get to that point. So right off the bat. You've just you're wrong about the dates. what's even more funny to me is that in the first iterations of the Superman comic, the origin story is always [00:27:00] that the first time he came to earth was when he came to metropolis, like as a full ass adult.  Mike: Right.  Jessika: So what's, what's up, you know, so that's where it's like, all Right. this is already… Mike: This is convoluted. Yeah. Jessika: exactly. So you and I read a couple of comics from the time period of those original comics, and we read them from specifically from 1963. What I love about these is you could actually, at that, I don't, maybe they still do this. I haven't seen it yet in my Comics. You could write in and they would publish the comments and the editor … Mike: they still do this.  Jessika: Okay, cool. So the editor writes a comment back,  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: So we have a few of these.  Mike: Okay.  Jessika: And I would love for you to read them for us.  Mike: Okay. So we have a few of these here. the first one says dear editor, since Superman was a Superboy before World War II and television sets, weren't perfected and [00:28:00] sold to the public until after World War II. How come you show TV roof antennas, and Superboy stories. Kevin Herron, Tiffin, Ohio. And the editor responded with you're right, Kevin, we're wrong. We made a booboo. Editor. Jessika: Okay. Mike: The next one is dear editor. How come in Superboy comics. You illustrate such modern inventions as a bombs, atomic subs, jet planes, television, et cetera, all devices, which weren't invented until 1945 for later. And which certainly weren't around when Superman was born, Ken parent Wheaton, Illinois. The response is historians refer to such inconsistency as anachronisms. They are a necessary form of literary license required to achieve dramatic effects. Movies exercise this option very often. For example, the first umbrella was invented in 1740 yet numerous period films devoted to the life in the middle ages have shown heroines protecting themselves from the sun with a parasol. Editor Jessika: I love how he's getting like a little salt here with his answers.  Mike: Just a little bit. [00:29:00]  Jessika: He's like, but Webster's dictionary says…  Mike: God. Yeah. I don't miss those days. These days. Usually when you see the letters section of a comic, it's usually people talking about how much something meant to them, or at least in the ones that I read it. It's always really nice. So.  Jessika: That's sweet.  Mike: All right. So the last one: dear editor in the recent story, the amazing bizarro you had Superboy dropping an atomic bomb on bizarro. How is this possible, as Superboys adventures. They're supposed to have happened before 1945 and scientists had not perfected the H-bomb until  1945. Steve Spangler, Sonoma, California,  Jessika: Boom representation. That's right down the road from us.  Mike: the response is “we goofed! From now on no more a bombs in Superboy. Editor.”  Jessika: Well, that's easy.  Mike: Oh, that's great. At some point it's like, come on guys, it's a comic book.  Jessika: Yeah,  Mike: I think it's, are you [00:30:00] really expecting the science fiction comic, starring an alien who just happens to look exactly like a human, but has more super powers than God is going to be historically and scientifically accurate all the time. Okay. Whatever. I don't…  Jessika: I know. I know. I know. I hear you. I do well. And what's funny too, is at one point, Lana Lang is in a beauty competition and it says 1952.  Mike: Well, it's reassuring to know that nerds were always this nitpicky. Jessika: Absolutely. That really is.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So the time in consistencies didn't end there. As I mentioned, there have been multiple timelines that have been created and destroyed to ensure some kind of consistency in the Superman universe. But whether or not that was actually a success is really anybody's opinion. It's up to the listener. [00:31:00] But if you're interested in finding out more about this travesty of a timeline, go check out that blog post I mentioned at the top of the episode, I'm on Captain Comics Presents, it's got a lot more examples of the inconsistencies from those OG comics. Mike: Yeah. Well, okay. One thing I will note is that DC kind of figured this out recently where they, ran a series called doomsday clock, and it's Dr. Manhattan from the Watchman universe with Superman. And the very end of it is revealing that there is now a “metaverse” in DC. Where it's like, oh yeah. So Superman arrived in the 30s and started being a superhero, you know? And then also he also arrived in the 60s and then he also arrived in the 80s and so on and so forth. And so it,  it sort of makes sense of that for those people who care. Jessika: Well, and it's like the same kind of Marvel multi-verse that we have going on with that, with the  Spider-Man is pointing to each other.  Mike: Yeah. It [00:32:00] basically, it takes the concept of a multi-verse and then it adds another layer and it does it in a way that feels, hm, I'm not going to say plausible, but it just, it kind of works and, you know, I actually liked it, but that's just me. Jessika: Yeah. you know what, and what's funny about Superman is I don't like Superman, so it's funny that we're doing this whole episode. I just thought it, was interesting. These Superboy comics when I saw them, well and I picked them up because like, honestly, like the titles were horrific and I will have some very liberal things to say about them, but yes, I, you know, but honestly, what's very funny, even though I hate Superman, I don't know what it was about the Superman symbol that I used to love.  And I didn't read the comics. I'd watch the show from the eighties. And I'd seen the Christopher Reeves movies. We loved those. But other than that, I wasn't like huge in the Superman, but if I had gotten a tattoo, when I was 18 years old, it would have been a Superman symbol. So I'm very glad my mom never, she never [00:33:00] listens to this. So she will never know that I'm confessing that, she talked me out of making a very bad tattoo decision because she doesn't need any more gloating rights,  Mike: Yeah. I don't know. I kind of viewed him like Captain America, where I thought he was really boring. And then I realized that if you find the right writer, Superman really, really works. I've come to really enjoy a lot of Superman stories, but you know, it depends.  Jessika: And I think you're right. That I, I probably just haven't found the right writer or the right style. And I did recently start do I start birthright? I started something recently.    Mike: I think it was  Birthright, based on our conversations. Jessika: yeah. So I will get back into that at some point in time. I just have such a stack now will obsessed. Oh no. Mike: Oh no,  Jessika: Oh, no. more Comics. So Mike, you and I read a couple of these issues that I found at that estate sale. That was Superboy boys. Numbers, 109 [00:34:00] and 110. So do you want to recap 109 us?  Mike: Yeah. Okay. You've mentioned that these are anthology comics and so Superboy at this point in time, apparently was having two or three storylines per issue. based on the two that we read, each one had two different stories in it.  Superboy 109 has the first story is the Super Youth of Brozz. The title story about the rival super dogs doesn't show up until later, which that always surprises me, when the cover action isn't the first story and everything else is in a backup, but whatever.  Jessika: It's a little confusing.  Mike: the Super Youth of Brozz is about how a young Clark Kent winds up sort of becoming friends with another teenage orphan in Smallville named Fred who's, quote, timid that's his like defining character trait. That's all that anybody used to describe him. And he gets picked on by the towns in crowd of teenagers. It's revealed that he lives in the [00:35:00] Smallville orphanage, which okay. He literally walks back to the orphanage and then Superboys spies on him and he's crying because he overheard people talking about how they didn't want to adopt him  because he was too much of a wimp I'm just like, oh, okay.  Jessika: Thanks for being super toxic Superboy. That's so great.  Mike: Superboy winds up deciding to give him confidence. And so he takes him to a planet called Brozz where Fred gains super powers from the atmosphere. And then Superboy actually loses his overtime for reasons that are not really well explained because you know, Superboy, he gets his powers from the yellow sun. And then later on, he gets his powers back sort of from the little spacecraft that they brought Fred over in, because it had some remnants of Earth's atmosphere, which that's not how science works. I was a history major and even I can tell you that. Superboy has this whole convoluted plot about how if he can get Fred to have super power's he'll gain confidence, which Fred sort of does. He eventually saves Superboy's life and then decides to stay on the planet and be a superhero. And he gets offered to be adopted, but he declines the offer for some bizarre reason, something about like, you know, basically he doesn't want to put his, foster parents at risk. And Superboy heads home to earth and has a final thought about how he wouldn't be the person he was, if it hadn't been for the Kents. The end. Jessika: Yeah. Yup.  Mike: Yep. But the title story, which is the Super Dog That Replaced Krypto is basically at some point, Superboy rescues a dog named Swifty, which looks like a Greyhound. Swifty winds up months later, tracking down Superboy in Smallville, which means that Superboy didn't [00:37:00] even drop this dog off at a shelter. Apparently he just got him out of harm's way and then just left him. So strike one, Supes.  Jessika: Yeah. It's not.  Mike: Then Superboy winds up temporarily granting Swifty the same powers that Krypto has. And then it seems like he's testing them out, but it doesn't quite work out that way. Swifty loses his powers and then he's, again, I guess, left alone. He's just as far as I can tell, he's a homeless dog in Smallville. Jessika: Yeah. There's  a lot of orphans in the story.  Mike: after his powers fade some villains who were trapped in the Phantom zone, but crossover and are sort of the Phantom zone wind up trying to take mental control of Superboy and Krypto, they don't have any luck. They are able to influence Swifty. And then they guide him through a process that grants him super powers. And then I think it also makes them evil, but it's not really well explained.  Jessika: Oh, it's because the Phantoms were  influencing him. [00:38:00]  And so their intentions were like his intention. So  because they had negative vibes against Superboy. That's what I got out of it, but it's, it's really vague.  Mike: Super vague.  Superboy decides to randomly hold a series of tests for Swifty and Krypto to be the new super dog. And like, he does this as opposed to like, just like letting  them both help him out. Jessika: that's what I'm saying. Like, it wasn't even to like, be the next super dog. It was like to  go be the ambassador on this trip  Mike: Oh, is that it? Okay.  Jessika: yeah. And then , why wouldn't  you want like an entourage of fucking, like super dogs with you? Why would you two super dogs is way better than one super dog. Like, I don't know what the fuck his problem  was Mike: 100%. So anyway, the Phantom zone criminals helps Swifty, win the contest, Swifty becomes the super [00:39:00] dog for at least this instance. And then he leads both Krypto and Superboy into a kryptonite death trap. Like there's literally a spring that like hurls kryptonite at them. And then at the last second Krypto manages to blast Swifty with the duplicate Ray, which creates a bizarro Swifty, who's good as opposed to the original version. Superboy comes up with a potion or, sorry, the Bizarro Swifty saves them. And then Superboy comes up with a potion that strip Swifty's powers and restores his good nature. And then he creates a collar that repels the Phantom zone ghosts so they can't control the dog again. And that's it like, Swifty's apparently the sad homeless dog in Smallville who just gets sad every time that he sees Superboy and Krypto fly by. And he thinks about how he wants to be Superboys' dog again. Jessika: It's really depressing. And I would never do that to Carl for the record. I would never. Okay.  Mike: I mean, [00:40:00] yeah, this, this issue definitely rubbed me the wrong way. Just for that, where I'm like, God, Superboy. it couldn't even find a home for the dog who tracked you down across the country and just wanted to be your friend. Jessika: You're fucking Superboy have two fucking dogs. Like, I don't know how difficult this is. Like, well, where Martha. Martha is like, no, we've already gotten one super dog in the house.  Mike: Yeah, right.  Jessika: No, this one's just normal, now! I swear. Mike: between the two of us, we have four dogs. So, I  mean, we're definitely the wrong audience for this, Jessika: for sure. And I bought this comic for the fact that there were like super dogs on there. I got very excited.  Mike: yeah. And the thing is, is that there's a whole menagerie, a super pets like you eventually get like Comet the super horse. Like it's no, there, there was a monkey. There was, I think, I think it was Streaky the super cat too.  Jessika: Oh, no.  Mike: It's not like, you know, [00:41:00] there wasn't a whole collection of super pets. But whatever.    Jessika: Yeah. What did you think of this since you haven't told, since you haven't started telling me already. Mike: It reminded me that Superman and Superboy stories from this era just a lot of times don't make any sense.  I have a collection from the late eighties called the Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, and It's got stories from the forties to the eighties and even those early great stories, in quotes, they're pretty out there. And neither of these stories are anywhere close to what's contained in that book. I don't know. My biggest complaint is how Superboys' logic is always terrible. Like why does Fred need to be made into another version of the Superboy in order to gain confidence? Why not just help them with the core issue, which is that nobody wants to adopt them  from the Smallville orphanage, which again, lawl. Jessika: Yeah. Like what does it have two orphans in there?  Mike: It just, it seems like helping them find a [00:42:00] family would do a lot more good. And likewise, why not just adopt Swifty too? Like  it's shitty and it's dumb, but all of this reminded me of the site called Super Dickery, which I showed you.  Jessika: Yes.  Mike: It was the site that's originally focused on the absolute insanity of Superman comic covers. So many of these comics would feature things like Superman, just fucking over his friends. That was a repeated theme for years. There's one where he has Lois lane strapped to the grill of a truck and he's flying out after he drove it off a cliff. And just saying something to the effect “I'll see you later, Lois.” Jessika: Holy shit.  Mike: And there's another one where Aquaman, Jimmy Olsen are dying of thirst in the desert and Superman's just lording over them with this pitcher of water. the site was around at least in 2005, which is when I first came across it. It's kind of defunct. Now. I don't think has been updated for a couple of years, but you can go back on archive.org and just scroll through all these things. The [00:43:00] tagline was Superman's a Dick and here's the evidence and it's great. Like that is a way to kill an afternoon. Let me tell ya. Jessika: Oh, I definitely checked out a few of those today and I was  rolling. Rolling. He definitely came off  as an asshole in this comic. Like, no question, no question.  You know, what makes me the most mad is that he has the ability to give Swifty super powers. He has the ability to make both dogs talk.  Mike: Oh my God. Yeah. Jessika: What the fuck are you doing?  Mike: there was a cover on Super Dickery where it's young Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne, and they've created a computer that lets them see the future and like, Hey, we're going to grow up to be crime fighters and superheroes. So we're going to be best friends. It's like cool. You know, what also would be useful? I don't know. Maybe telling Bruce Wayne that his parents are going to get murdered and it can be avoided.  Jessika: Seriously. Holy shit. Oh my God. Yeah. But then he wouldn't have his [00:44:00] homie. Superboy's  just all in it for himself.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: And like, why does he just have something lying around the  has fandoms as I can get out? Why does he have that? Doesn't make any sense. Mike: We don't have another two hours to discuss the Phantom Zone. Jessika: Kal-El you silly boy. So let's, let's move on to the other comic we read, which, uh, we're just be just as angry about, by the way. Spoiler case you were wondering. So what happened in issue? Number 110? Cause I did get sequential ones, which is great, kind of.  Mike: Right. Okay. So again, we have two stores. We have the Surrender of Superboy and the runt of steel, the surrender of supervise story is the one that we actually get on the cover. It's Superboy in Krypto losing a tug of war match to some old man. And we're basically told, well, you won't believe who the old man is. In the Surrender of Superboy, Clark [00:45:00] Kent, and Lana Lang traveled to South America to accompany her, I guess he's a college professor, dad on an archeological dig. One of the flowers recovered is this legendary hate flower, which causes any living, being that smells it to hate the first human they see after smelling it. They're like very specific that it's, you will hate the first human. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: When they get back to Smallville, Lana smells the hate flower by accident. She sees Superboy flying outside and then dun, dun dunnnn winds up developing an intense hatred for the boy of steel. She grabs. I think it's like, it's… do we ever get a name for this thing? It's like a devil's mask? Jessika: I think she just calls it devil's mask. Cause it's a devil's witch mask or something like that on the wall. It's very vague again.  Mike: So she's in this museum, she grabs this thing off the wall because there's no fucking security anywhere. And it specifically says what it does, where it's says the person who wears this can summon souls , or spirits from the past and have them obey them for an hour. And then she [00:46:00] starts using it to cause trouble. Sir Lancelot and then George Washington are her first minions, but they refuse to help because they claim that they've heard about Superboy's heroic  deeds and even in the past, which Jessika: No, no, no, It's not a thing. No.  Mike: I just, I can't, man, it's so dumb. Jessika: When I read that, I was like, what, what is actually going on right now? I literally stopped reading for a few minutes.  Mike: Everything about the story it feels like monkeys at a typewriter.  Jessika: Yes,  Mike: So then she summons Merlin to humiliate Superboy at this super strength exhibition that he's doing in order to benefit the old folks home and Merlin, it turns out is the old man who beats him in the tug of war on the cover. Which by the way, this is like three panels in the comic. And it's not that big a deal.  Jessika: it's really not.  Mike: yeah, after that she summons Edgar Allen Poe and [00:47:00] Sherlock Holmes. She says they're the two greatest detective minds of the past. So they help her solve a jewel highs that Superboy can't and then she framed Superboy by having Hercules, Samson, and Atlas tear apart the Smallville Scientific Institute. Um, let's see, she summons Venus, Helen of Troy, and Juliet to basically seduce Superboy. And then she spurns him at a dance. And also I'm sorry, but really? JULIET? Like, come on. Jessika: Juliet was a child who fell into a situation and was a tragic  figure.  Mike: Juliet was a stupid teenager. Like, I can't, I can't even,  I'm sorry.  Jessika: She probably had acne and Superboy definitely had that hair where it was brushed forward and then spiked up in the front. Mike: Yep.  Jessika: Absolutely. Yep.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Fuckin' assholes. All of them, Mike: So she [00:48:00] spurns them at this dance and her dad gets mad at her. He's like, I heard you were very rude to Superboy.  Jessika: Which by the way, the fact that he wears that fucking suit to every occasion, like,  come on, dude.  Mike: I just love that idea. Jessika: Can you have like a literal suit, like, a super suit. That actually looks nice?  Mike: Just get something, like, get a nice Navy blue, kind of slim fitting suits have an Ascot popping out with your Superman logo.   All the girls would be all over you. It'd be great. Jessika: Oh, my gosh. Can you imagine the Kent's first trip to a fancy restaurant where they have to like, get the borrow jacket, like the  loaner jacket from the restaurant, because he's wearing his stupid ass suit and they're  like, Oh, Sir, excuse me.  Mike: He's just walking around with his Cape, sticking out from under the jacket. I would read that  comic.  Jessika: I would too. [00:49:00]  Mike: Anyway. So finally Lana decides to pull Jor-El, Superboy's dad from the past, in order to help her discover Superboys' secret identity. Instead of, I don't know, reuniting Jor-El with his son who he never got to see, but whatever. Okay. Jor-El gives you this device that's supposed to detect Kryptonians. It leads her to a closet where Krypto the Superdawg is Krypto shakes himself, and basically gives off a bunch of dust. Actually counteracts the flowers' hate pollen. And it turns out that Superboy and Lana's dad switched the mask with a dummy, once they realized what was going on and then her dad disguised himself as GRL and then everything just  goes back to normal and nothing matters. Jessika: Yeah, we're again, they have access to these devices that are like powerful and they like have instructions on the wall, but don't use them. Like he literally says to his daughter at one point like, oh, well stay away from the superstition side of things. It's quite dangerous. And she's like, oh, what's that?[00:50:00]  Let me check out this mask. So fricking ridiculous.  Mike: So then we get the second story, which is the Super Runt of Steel, which is about a criminal named Peewee Reagan, who we don't know who this dude is, but he shows up at this dilapidated house, he pays some amoral super scientist to grant him super powers. Peewee goes on a crime spree that even Superboy can't stop because Superboys' powers are weirdly fading for no real reason. Peewee flies away to a distant planet because he spotted treasure inside it. He gets to the planet, he wrecks a bunch of the alien robots that are there and then goes inside this vault that's full of space gems and minerals, and he winds up screaming in pain. Superboy finds out the scientist it turns out leached his powers and transfer them over to Peewee. And he's able to track the criminal to the aforementioned planet. And it turns out Peewee died because the vault also contained kryptonite and then Superboy [00:51:00] buries Peewee and flies away the end. Jessika: Because he somehow gets his powers back by just being around him. It was weird.  Mike: Everything about this issue just made me roll my eyes. And a lot of the stories from this era, if you go back and read a lot of these things, they had those kinds of surprise endings. That just feel so dumb these days. Like it was that weird, ironic twist. They're not really ironic because they don't really make a lot of sense.  Jessika: Yeah, they're just kind of like a left field thought.  Mike: Yeah, there's a lot that just doesn't work. And it's like if you go down this very specific logic train that these writers force you along, it's like, you know, the whole thing. Having Lana's dad disguise himself as Jor-El, like Superboy, just, knew that this was going to be the next step. You're like, all right. Well, I don't know, and then also, I'm sorry. But she's supposed to be calling all of these characters from history, all these spirits or people from history and then it's gods and fictitious characters like [00:52:00] Lancelot and Juliet and uh, whatever. Jessika: No, they were really contrived figures. I mean, even when they had real people in there, they weren't used to their purpose.  Mike: No, and it's one of those things where you read it and you're like, this is just, this is so dumb. Oh, it's Samson and Hercules. Okay. Whatever, why not? Random characters from the Bible and Greek mythology. Why not? Jessika: Dude, where do I even start on this issue though?  They had so many problems. The beginning, when the scientists negate the word of the locals as superstition, even though it actually did have dangerous poisonous properties to it. They're like, oh, it's just a myth.  Mike: Because there's a whole thing where one of the boroughs winds up attacking a guide and then when they sit there and say, oh, it must have like gotten near the hade flower and they're like, oh no, it just got bit by a fly. All right.  Jessika: Yeah. And the scientists are like, I mean, gosh, darn. How big of a [00:53:00] supremacist asshole do you have to be to not trust the people who live there to know anything about the plants that they have been living with their whole lives. I truly don't understand that.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Then the scientists were like, oh, woopsie, Daisy. I guess they were right. Chuckle, chuckle. Mike: This was also still a period in time where anyone who was not white, especially native populations were viewed with a healthy degree of just kind of, well, like you said, it like supremacy. Like if you go back and read those old Tintin books, woof.  Jessika: Oh,  yeah. I've read someof those in the original French and they're... Yeah.  Mike: Yeah. And if you go back and read those and then like up until really, I want to say the 70s or 80s was one thing started to get a little bit better, but even mainstream in the 60s were still pretty awful when it came to depicting people who weren't [00:54:00] white. Jessika: Yeah. There was that whole segregation thing. You know, just that.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah, I, it was really gross when the quote unquote historical women came to give her beauty advice so that she could do seduce Superboy, like that was so contrived and odd and sexist and strange,  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Or the part where Superboy is not only supposed to be earning money for an old person's home. He's also making agist jokes about the quote unquote old man that ends up beating him. Both him and his dog, a tug of war.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: But  then the comic itself is so obviously like they so obviously made it agistly clear that this man only be Superboy because he was Merlin, the wizard, which yikes guys,  I know people way older than me that could kick my ass at most anything. So that's pretty [00:55:00] ridiculous.  Mike: yeah.  Jessika: Oh. Or the fact that the little guys or men that are like smaller and stature or timid, they are constantly the ones that need quote, unquote saving by Superboy in these really odd, like vague ways. Like they need to get physical strength to be appreciated.  And it's super toxic.  Mike: Yeah. And I mean, that kind of hinges on the old ideas of masculinity as well. Jessika: Oh, and I'm sorry, why Lana's dad keeping again, keeping legit magic items where people can access them. It just, I can not get past that because they just have all this shit sitting around where people are like, oh, let me touch it. Mike: look, here's the thing, like gun control, wasn't a thing back then you think they're going to seriously guard supernatural weapons of destruction. Jessika: that is a valid point. That is so valid.  at least he wasn't mistreating his dog in this issue, I guess.  Mike: I guess. I don't know. He locked him in the closet for a few hours.  Jessika: Shit. That's right. [00:56:00] Nevermind. Fuck. So that wraps up our Superboy conversation.  Let's move on to our brain wrinkles. And this is the one thing comics are comics adjacent that's just been rattling around in your brain. Since the last time we talked.  Mike: Yeah. So I was going to talk about free comic book day and how I was originally pretty excited about it. But now, we're recording this a couple of weeks before free comic book day is going to happen. And we are still in the middle of a pandemic when we record this, the Delta strain has started to rear its ugly head and lead to cases spiking all over the place, including here in the Bay Area. So, As someone who has immunocompromised kids who are too young to get the vaccine still, we're not going to be able to participate. Um, so yeah, I don't know. I think I'm instead going to talk about The Suicide Squad and actually how I'm really [00:57:00] excited about that movie. And it's getting rave reviews and it's opening this week on HBO max and in theaters. And then, because people can't leave shit well, enough alone, David Ayer, the director of the original Suicide Squad movie talked about how this one is great, but then he proceeded to shit all over Warner Brothers and talked about how the version of just Suicide Squad that got released back in 2016, was not his version of the film and how it's terrible. And he wants, vindication now. And I just, I can't go through another Snyder Cut. I just, I don't  have… Jessika: Alright like, you know, at least, okay. At least it's not the Justice League.  At least it's Suicide Squad,  Mike: But like the Snyder Cut almost broke me. Jessika: No, I hear you. I already don't like, I already wasn't like on board and I had to watch like so much Justice League that weekend.  Mike: I remember.  Jessika: Then I had prequel films I had to [00:58:00] watch. No, I don't want to do this again. I don't. Mike: I can't.  I am happy to talk about Suicide Squad. And I'm pretty sure there'll be jazzed up to talk about it after this movie. But I just, I can't bring myself to care about these auteur directors who are just… when I was working in the video games industry, we had this term that we used for certain people who were on the development side, who were all about their vision and how, they wouldn't compromise anything. And we, we just refer to them as the genius babies, because they would have these ungodly meltdowns. I can't bring myself to just, I can't bring myself to care about another genius baby throwing a temper tantrum. Jessika: I don't want it.  Mike: How about you?  What is, uh, what is sitting in your head these days? Jessika: I've been thinking a lot about representation in the media, including comic books. [00:59:00] And that's partially because we've been reading all these old comics where we don't see a lot of different representation. Versus the comics that I'm drawn to, which are full of representation, because that's what I prefer to read. I want to see everyone and it's been really nice to read destiny, New York and some of these other recent comics that actually show different types of bodies, different skin tones, different sexualities and genders. But I think there's so much more that we need to do, and that can be done to add and continue to build upon that representation. Like just in general, it's 2021. And we're still shaming people for being a certain size and, you know, airbrushing people who are already considered to be the epitome of beauty in our society. Like what is it going to take for us to allow people to just exist as we are. I mean, you know, besides the whole capitalist bullshit [01:00:00] game, telling women, they need more and more products to achieve beauty. But aside from that, but it's giving me, it's definitely making me feel better to see all of the representation, but there, again, it just reminds me that we need more. Mike: I was gonna say, it's that reminder of we've come a long way, but we need to go further. Jessika: Yep. It is. It is. You had mentioned, your inability to go to free comics day. and I feel like there are probably a lot of people who had a really difficult time getting anywhere. To go to something like that, you know? And so thinking about accessibility in that way of, what about those readers? Like what are we doing about them? So you know, it's just something I think about I've worked at social services too. I mean, I'm just, I'm a bleeding heart, but we need people like me or else, I don't know, get rid of that. We don't need people like me. So that's, that's, what's been rattling for me. [01:01:00] It's just more of a continuous disappointed buzz in my brain that we don't respect all people.  Mike: Yeah. Well, we do on this podcast.  Jessika: So on that uplifting note, that's it for today, but stay tuned for another episode in two weeks and until then we'll see it in the stacks.  Mike: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us. So text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website. Jessika: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazier and Mike Thompson, written by Jessika Frazier and edited by Mike Thompson. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound, our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from premium beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who goes by. Look, mom draws on Instagram.[01:02:00]  Mike: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong. Please head over to Tencent takes.com or shoot an email to Tencent akes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter. The official podcast account is Tencenttakes. Jessika is Jessika with us, and Jessika is spelled with a K and I am Vansau: V A N S A U Jessika: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen.  Mike: Stay safe out there.  Jessika: And support your local comic shop  . 

Hop into your big rigs and get ready for a wild ride! In this episode, we're going to be talking about U.S. 1, Marvel's licensed series about a long-haul trucker who also happened to be a superhero.----more---- Episode 12 Transcript [00:00:00] Mike: If you're a middle-aged white guy, maybe trying to sit there and write about the troubles that indigenous people from other countries face, maybe don't do that. Just my ten cents. Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we hand-wave plot holes like it's nobody's business, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined by my cohost of chaos, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Well, hello.  Mike: Hello. Jessika: How are you doing?  Mike: Uh, I am doing a lot better now that I am not on jury duty anymore. So. Jessika: Woo.  Mike: I mean, don't get me wrong. It's a [00:01:00] civic duty that we should all be happy to perform, but it's really nice when you don't have to do it. Jessika: I've been on a jury before.  Mike: Was it, a cool case? Jessika: No, it was a disturbing, unsettling case, but it was still a civic case? It was just, Yeah. It was, it was not great. And I couldn't talk about it. So let's just say I, I took out a lot of my angst with a tennis racket against the wall. Not, not the racket itself, but hitting the ball against the wall a lot. Mike: Yeah,  Jessika: But, civic, duty, it is. So I was 19 at the time.  Mike: I think the last time I had to report for jury duty in person I was 25, give or take. Jessika: Mm.  Mike: And then I got dismissed because they asked me if I would believe a teenager's word over a cop, and at the time I was like, hell no. And these days. Jessika: Yeah. Different opinions now.  Mike: Yeah. [00:02:00] Tangent aside, the reason that we're here on this podcast is because we like to look at and talk about comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We like to look at the weirdest, silliest, strangest, and coolest moments, and examine how they have been woven into pop culture and history in general.  In this episode, we're hitting the open road of the Marvel Universe and looking at U.S. 1, a 1980s maxi-series about a superhero big rig trucker. But before we go down that road, what is one cool thing that you have read or watched lately? Jessika: So, I had a suggestion made to me by Lauren, from Outer Planes in Santa Rosa. Hey Lauren. And she told me about a comic that is set in the same universe as the Alice in Leatherland that I started reading and I've had on my pull list now.  Mike: Yeah, the one that you mentioned a couple episodes ago?  [00:03:00] Jessika: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so it was also from Black Mask and it's called Destiny, NY.  I'm on issue one, which is a veritable chonker,  it's absolutely awesome. There are two girls kissing in a closet within the first three pages, so you know I'm already in. And it's cool because it's set in a version of New York where magic exists, and follows a school for kids that have been told by one seer or another that they have a destiny or a prophecy to fulfill. And the students have different abilities and visual characteristics, like one has a third eye and she's supposed to like, see the greatest lie out of the truths or something like that. And she's like, but I don't even know what that is.  It's all super vague, like these poor kids. And I've grabbed the first five issues, and I will be tearing through these and no [00:04:00] time. I'm sure, cause it's already super fun.  Mike: Yeah, that sounds fantastic, to be completely honest. There was a book that I read about a year ago called Magic for Liars, which is a boarding school for magic users. And then the sister of, one of the faculty is called in to investigate a death, and it's really cool because she's not a magic user, but her sister who is part of the faculty is so it's, it was cool. I liked it a lot. Jessika: That's neat.  Mike: But yeah, that was a cool book.  Jessika: Nice.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Well, what about you? What you've been reading, watching, listening to?  Mike: All right. So I'm always mildly embarrassed to admit that I'm a Conan fan, mainly because I think so many people just associate them with Arnold Schwarzenegger and those middling to not-good movies that they made with him in the eighties. Um, yeah, but I really fell in love with his Comics back in 2005 or so,  when they were being done by Dark Horse and they were really, really good. They were these wonderfully dark, low fantasy stories that always seem to [00:05:00] balance like action and tragedy and comedy really well. And Marvel got the character back a couple of years ago, so they've been doing really cool work with them lately.  The new Conan series is really fun and feels really true to the original stories, but they've also displaced him through time, and now they've got them hanging out in the mainstream Marvel Universe via this series.  Jessika: Oh, interesting.  Mike: Yeah. And it's in the series called the Savage Avengers.  It's wild. It's written by Gerrry Duggan, who, he wrote, arguably the best Conan story that I've ever read in Conan 2099, which is they took that Spider-Man 2099 universe, and then they slapped him right in the middle of it.  Jessika: Oh.  Mike: It it's great, like the way that it was written was so perfect. And it's one of those books where anybody who sits there and even if they say they're not a Conan fan, I just say, you need to read this. It's wonderful.  But anyway, so Savage Avengers features him going on adventures with characters like Wolverine [00:06:00] Deadpool, the Punisher and Electra. It's so dumb, but it's so much fun. Like, early on in the series,  he gets a Venom- symbiate joined with them, but it's really weak. So it can only form weapons for him.  Jessika: Okay.  Mike: It's just it, it's great. It's an absolute guilty pleasure, and I refuse to apologize for this. So it was unfortunately not available in Marvel Unlimited, which is probably why I hadn't heard about it, but the back issues are all pretty cheap, and I grabbed a ton of them from Brian's comics on my last run, and I've just been having a blast reading them. We probably should do an episode actually, where we talk about the fact that Conan has been in comics for almost 50 years. And  Jessika: Oh.  Mike: He started at Marvel originally, and now he's back at Marvel, but there was a long hiatus. Jessika: Ooh. I want to hear that arc. Absolutely.  Mike:  All right. Moving right along.  So as tempting as it is to just dive right [00:07:00] into U.S. 1 the comic and its strangeness, I don't think we can talk about it without covering some background info first. So, have you ever heard the term trucking culture before? Jessika: I've absolutely heard of trucking culture, but I'm not too familiar with the intricacies.  My uncle drove a truck for years, but I think he's retired at this point.  Mike: Okay. I think it's something that a lot of people aren't really aware of, or they hear about it and then they start making jokes. Like, I got some glimpses of it when one of my photography gigs have me living on a tour bus for a few months. So, we would visit a lot of legit truck stops in the middle of nowhere. And I'm not talking gas stations, I'm talking full rest stops where restaurants served truckers before other patrons,  the bathrooms had shower stalls and all of the stores felt like kind of miniature Walmarts. They were just massive. And they had anything that you could think of you might need on a long road trip. [00:08:00] It's this side that, if you live in an urban environment folks, aren't really going to see or understand, and it's the staggeringly huge thing that most people never even seem to think about. But I mean, trucking is this major part of the United States and its industry  as noted in this factoid from the American trucking associations, if you would be so kind. Jessika: Nearly every good consumed in the U S is put on a truck at some point. As a result, the trucking industry hauled 72.5% of all freight transported in the United States in 2019, equaling to 11.84 billion tons. The trucking industry was a $791.7 billion industry in that same year representing 80.4% of the nation's freight bill.  Mike: Yeah. It's I was actually, I was really surprised actually to see that it was that much. I assumed that trains [00:09:00] and shipping were at least a little bit bigger. Jessika: No, because we don't here's the problem is that because of the auto industry in the United States, we stifled the ability to make all the train tracks necessary, to get the things to all the places we need. And now it's horrendously expensive to go on a train. Yeah. I don't know that people know that about the United States. So for our international listeners: you can't take trains here, it's very expensive.  Mike: Yeah. First of all, there's no real national rail system. And, and second, the rail system that does exist is prohibitively expensive, unless you are a not far distance commuter.  Like I took Amtrak for a couple, for about a year traveling between Sacramento and San Francisco a couple of times a week. And it was great. It was less expensive to do that a couple of times a week than it was to drive down. But [00:10:00] yeah, it's prohibitively expensive for most people.  Jessika: Yeah. And there are some cities in the United States that do have a decent transportation system. Portland has a decent one in New York, obviously that there are other places to Chicago, yeah.  But I mean, for the most part across country, especially because we're such a large country,  and we are of course expected to share things. California has to share everything. Listen to me, I sound so greedy. Mike: I know. Yeah. What does it, we have the, I think it's like it's top five or top 10 economies in the world. Jessika: We're the top sixth economy in the world by ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, So if we just dumped off everyone else, the rest of the states would be screwed. Actually a few would hold their own, but those middlin' states. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Suffering.  Mike: Well, as big as it is, the trucking industry, as we know it, [00:11:00] isn't even a hundred years old. Uh, yeah, so really, trucks were first used extensively by the military in WWI, and then trucking became prominent in the 1930s because of the increased construction on paved roads. So, it didn't take long after that, before truckers became a part of American pop culture. They started having songs and movies about them. And as noted by Shane Hamilton in his book, Trucking Country: the Road to America's Walmart Economy, there was this mythology that almost lionized truckers.  Jessika: Hmm.  Mike: If you would, uh, do us all the favor of reading out the section that I found that describes it pretty well. Jessika: The image of the respectable trucker circulated outside the world of Hollywood in the 1950s. As truckers became known as the Knights of the Road for helping stranded motorists, and using their blinkers and [00:12:00] headlights as courtesy signals. This image was further reinforced by the standard driver's uniform of the era: trim, neat pants and button shirt, and the chauffeur's cap. The masculine mythologies of trucking moved increasingly into a wider cultural world in the 1950s and 1960s. As the image of the truck driving man was reflected back to truckers by movies and music.  Mike: Yeah. So the 1970s were when trucking hit, it's kind of Zenith point and pop culture. They wound up being presented as kind of this modern version of cowboys, you know, wandering nomads who rebelled against the oppressive rule of law while still operating under their own kind of honor code. There were a ton of movies and songs during this decade that romanticized the trucker life. And a lot of these have since faded into obscurity, but this was the period when we got that song Convoy by CW McCall, which also inspired a movie with a very young shirtless Kris Kristofferson, um, [00:13:00] uh, Smokey in the Bandit came out in 1977 and it was the number three grossing movie of the year behind Star Wars. And there's also a really bad Chuck Norris action Flint called Breaker Breaker. Like it was a moment in pop culture. Jessika: Are you really going to say that a Chuck Norris movie was bad? What if he's right behind you?  Mike: I mean, yeah. Jessika: It's always a threat. Don't don't deny it.  Mike: Man. Remember when we all used to like Chuck Norris and we thought he was cool before we went off the deep end and it turned out he's just the worst. Remember those days? Jessika: Oh no. We have a nefarious character, nefarious character alert.  Mike: Yeah. What a shock.  Jessika: Oh, not on our podcast.  Mike: I know. All right. Well, okay. So the [00:14:00] eighties, this all started to change in the eighties when truckers started being portrayed more villainously, or at least poorly in media, like Thelma and Louise, you've seen Thelma and Louise, right?  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Yeah. You remember how there's that gross trucker who keeps on harassing them. Jessika: Yes.  Mike: Yeah. And, the eighties, it was starting to decline, but it wasn't quite there yet. The nineties was when it really picked up and we'll discuss that in a little bit,  Jessika: Hmm.  Mike: But at the time that this comic project started, big rig truckers were still on the high side of public opinion. So we've talked in previous episodes about how Marvel wound up undergoing a commercial Renaissance in the early eighties, under the guidance of Jim Shooter. Particularly, you know, with Saturday morning cartoons and all that stuff.  Jessika: Mm.  Mike: One of the major sources of the success came in the form of toy companies, partnering with the publisher for licensed comic adaptations and arguably, the biggest example of this kind of success came from [00:15:00] partnerships with Hasbro when Marvel created the characters and lore for both Transformers in G.I. Joe. So U.S. 1 was a comic that came about from another partnership, but this one was with a different toy company. It was called Tyco Toys and Tyco wanted to do a licensed comic based on their U.S. 1 brand of slot truck toys.  Jessika: Oh, so this was all based on the Tyco truck, even. truck even.  Mike: Yes, it's a little bit different than the standard Tyco truck, and we'll talk about that in a second, but you know, Tyco probably doesn't sound familiar to people that are younger than us these days, but they were a company that originally made model trains for hobbyists. And then they started making slot car toys in the 1960s, which are the cars that you press the trigger and they go around a track and you can build out the track how you want. So, by the eighties, this brand was the one that was dominating that particular section of the market, the slot car toy section. [00:16:00] And at this point, they decided to create some slot truck toys. It was branded U.S. 1 Electric Trucking, and it launched in 1981. And it was based on the earlier racing sets, but it had a couple of unique features. You could drive the trucks in both forward and reverse, and you could also have the trucks pick up and deliver loads of, and this is the quote, action accessories with that direct interaction from the person operating it. And the tagline was “you control the action”. So I've got this commercial that I found on YouTube, because YouTube has everything and it's actually really cute. You want to give it a shot? Jessika: Sure thing. [00:17:00] Oh, this is really exciting. Oh! That's actually a really fun.  Mike: Right. Jessika: No, that's super freaking fun. That is that's super fun.  Mike: Yeah. So Tyco came to Marvel and they said that they were interested in having a comic adaptation done. And, the comic wound up being written by Al Milgrim, who's actually, he's a pretty interesting dude in comic history, he worked as a writer, and editor and inker, and a penciler during his career. And he was particularly known for this long tenure editing Marvel Fanfare, where I think he edited it for like a decade.  Also the real reason that he's an industry legend though, is because Marvel actually fired him after he hid some messaging in a panel background where he was badmouthing Marvel Harris. The then recently departed editor in chief of Marvel. [00:18:00] Jessika: Oh, damn. That's cold.  Mike: Yeah, it was actually really funny and you can look it up, where he basically wrote some messages vertically on the spines of books in the background of a Spider-Man comic. And there's some weird happenstances about how, I think the editor caught them and had the wording removed. And then, through some error, that image got used instead and went to publish and yeah, it's, it's kind of amazing, but he was actually a full-time employee, which was really rare for one of the people who was actually creating the comics. And so it's this, you know, he was, he was actually fired by Marvel. Jessika: Wow. yeah, From what I've read, most of them were freelance, so that's actually super interesting.  Mike: Yeah.  It's an interesting story. And it's one I would love to talk to him about someday, which we'll discuss that later. I legit love that story about how Milgrim got, let go, because it's totally a move that I would pull. [00:19:00] And then the series was originally drawn by this other long-time Marvel artists named Herb Trimp.  he'd made a name for himself with the Incredible Hulk, and also he is known as the first artist to actually draw Wolverine for publication because he drew the, he drew the issue. John Romita came up with the character design in sketch, but he was the one who actually first drew him in a comic, which was cool. Jessika: That's super neat. Mike: Yeah. And so Trimp also, wasn't a stranger to projects like this. He had recently worked on G.I. Joe. He wound up penciling the first two issues, and then Frank Springer came in to finish out the series, and Springer was another reliable artist from Marvel and he had also been involved with G.I. Joe and Transformers. Milgrim actually has an essay at the end of the first issue called In the Driver's Seat, where he talks about the comics. And it starts with how Tyco asks for the common treatment and then goes into his first meeting with Jim Shooter about the projects. And I kind of love this description where he talks about how he wasn't [00:20:00] really sold on the idea originally. Jessika: Frankly, I wasn't sure. Nobody had ever done anything with trucks and comics before. When I voiced the concern to Jim, it was as if I had slapped his face and challenged him to a duel. Exactly! He exploded. Nobody has done it before. Maybe nobody thinks it can be done. There may even be a lot of resistance to the idea, but we can do it and do it well. I got caught up in the challenge, Jim and I did not fight a duel to the death, lucky for him. Instead, we began discussing the idea of a truck driving hero. We talked about the romance of driving a truck, the dedication of those self-sufficient loners who drive the big rigs, we got swept up in the notion, began to solidify the concept of a trucker with a mission, a goal, a quest.  Mike: Yeah, it's kind of charming to hear how enamored he got with the project during that first meeting. [00:21:00]  The essay also mentions that Marvel's animation division, which as we've also covered in that episode about Saturday morning cartoons, was a thing that they had, was working on what sounded like a TV show pitch. And there might be some toys and animated series in the future, but spoiler, that never happened. I'm curious, how would you summarize this comic series? Jessika: A lot happened. So a lot happened. This series was wild from start to finish. It starts with introductions to Ulysses Solomon Archer, or USA, and his brother, Jefferson, or Jeff after their parents who are truck drivers die in an accident, US and Jeff are raised by Wide Load,. Who's a woman, and Poppa, who are the owners of a truck stop named Shortstop. Mike: We need to stop this for a second. You need to, you need to acknowledge them by their full [00:22:00] names. Jessika: I'm sorry. Remind me what Poppa's name is.  Mike: Poppa Wheelie, and it's Wide Load Annie, and Wide Load Annie. Jessika: Okay. Let me re say that. Okay. Excuse me.  Mike: I'm sorry. It's just it's too good. Jessika: No, you're right. I'm not even going to cut any of this. I'm just going to leave it. No, you're right. I couldn't, you know what, honestly, because I couldn't remember what their full names were when I was writing this out. I was like, this is good enough. So, so yeah, they're the owners of a truck stop called Shortstop and US is this All-American blonde haired, white boy, who has it all going for him. He's literally good at everything without trying. And he's encouraged by Wide Load Annie and Poppa Wheelie to get a college education, even though he knows he wants to be a truck driver, just like his folks, and his adoptive parents and his big brother, Jeff, who he idolizes. [00:23:00] And Jeff is your classic, dark haired boy who just can't seem to keep up with US's successes, and also becomes a truck driver obviously, and seemingly mostly as a backup profession, which is kind of interesting how they they're both like encouraging and disparaging of truck drivers inparts. And I'm like, it's kind of strange. There's a give and take. I don't know what it is. I don't know if you felt that too.  Mike: It's the whole thing of, he is not good. Jefferson is billed as being not good at school, but US is. And so they're like, no, you have to go to college, you have to make something of yourself. And Poppa and Wide Load and Jefferson all support him and send him to school. And Jefferson is doing it via job in trucking. Yeah, they talked about how expensive colleges in those days. And I'm like, my dudes, it's 1980. You could literally go to college on a minimum wage job. And it talks about how also, I think he had scholarships and. Jessika: Cause he was good at [00:24:00] everything.  Mike: and he double majored in computer  Jessika: Electronics. Yeah, exactly.  Mike: Electrical engineering, I think. And then, and then. Jessika: Computer sciences. Yeah. Uh, Yeah. it was a whole thing.  Mike: It's a thing. Exactly. Jessika: So during a drive with a young US, Jeff's big rig is run off the road by a devilish figure he calls the high women just prior to driving off a cliff. The truck explodes and Us is gravely injured in such a way that he evidently needs a skull replacement? Mike: You know? Sure.  Jessika: Have you heard of that? Mike: No. Jessika: Usually with a skull replacement, you're going to be a lot worse off than just, like, gonna in a pop awake in a couple minutes after you put something metal back on there,  Mike: Yeah. It's, uh, I believe they worded it as, oh, is this experimental treatment and I'm like, what? Okay.  Jessika: Which already was so [00:25:00] sus.  Mike: Yeah. And they, basically replace his skull with it's, in this comic, it's implied that it's like just the top part of his skull that like, you know, protects the brain. Later comic appearances, it is very strongly hinted that they basically do a brain transplant into, or, that they basically just give him a metal skull of some kind. It's like, there's no bone to be seen, but. Jessika: Like a new head completely? Lord. Goodness gracious. Well, so after that, he vows to find his brother who he's like, I couldn't find him in the crash. It's like, bro, like you kind of couldn't look for him. You had a concussion, like you're not an expert in finding bodies in an explosion. I don't know how he just definitively was like, well I guess everybody else told him that, that he, the body was never found or whatever, [00:26:00] but. Mike: Yeah, that's true. Jessika: Yeah. So he decided he's gonna find his brother as well as the mysterious Highwayman that he yelled about right before. And he quickly finds out that he can pick up CB radio waves from his fancy new skullcap, and somehow has truck becomes self-aware and he can communicate directly with it? And it's making its own decisions. Inexplicably. It's not well explained, once again.  Mike: It's so truck originally, he builds a remote control into like a half dollar, so he can drive it really like, like a precision driver with his remote. But then later on, I think there's, it was like some kind of like a lightning strike or something or electrical overload that then allowed him to directly interface with the truck. And then the truck is also self-aware at times where it's providing narration for an entire issue. And we'll talk about that, too. Jessika: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. [00:27:00] It was the weirdest thing.  I was kinda on board with most of it. And then the truck was having its own inner monologue. And I was like, wait a second, guys.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Oh, goodness gracious. And then there's also a spy planted within the truck stop in the form of a mind-controlled waitress, Mary McGrill, which their names, all their names.  Mike: The alliteration and stuff and puns. It's great. Jessika: Exactly. It's so cheese. I love it. And she uses this wacky mind control whip, and there's drama about the truck stop being foreclosed upon and being sold to make condos. And, and then DUN DUN DUN! Jeff turns out to be the Highwayman! And they are aliens looking for the best person, read trucker, you know, of course on earth to be some kind of space ambassador? Mike: Yeah. It's not well explained.  [00:28:00] I think it had something to do with they wanted people to pilot their star ships,  because they were like accustomed to like long bouts of being on their own and stuff.  Jessika: Yeah, it was, it was a whole thing too. And then apparently all humans look alike to the aliens.  Mike: I thought that was funny as fuck. That was.  Jessika: I thought that was hysterical  Mike: Because the aliens are so weird looking. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. And so apparently they had been scoping US this whole time, cause he's like the golden child, but then they accidentally swooped Jeff instead, because they made a mistake and Jeff was just like, yeah, I'm going to go with it. So once they figured out their mistake, they felt really bad about wasting all of their time and effort on this, this putz. And so then they of course had to have a race to make sure who was the best one to be the space ambassador, whether it was [00:29:00] going to be US, who dun dun dun the aliens gave him the skullcap!  Mike: Yup.  Jessika: Or his brother who has been working with the alien tech and has, like, a time advantage and a training advantage. So it's of course, US wins. I mean, come on. So of course they just get sent up into space? And he gets to take the whole truck stop with him? And all of the people? Mike: Yup. Jessika: It's the Rapture? Mike: Yeah. And then the greedy bankers who are left behind, who are going to take the property that the truck stopped. I think they, they wind up getting dosed with some kind of radiation. Jessika: Yeah, the, they were going to build condos on the land and then it ended up being radioactive. And so the buyer ended up pulling out. Mike: Yeah, Jessika: Like right there, because that's how that works.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So yeah.  The end. That's it. Mike: Oh yeah. [00:30:00] And then the other thing is that for the first half of the series,  we are given to believe that the Highwayman is demonic in origin. Like they do a whole thing where,  he's got his own mind-controlled, big rig that runs them off the road or whatever. And, he's surrounded by devils when he's looking down triumphantly on the wreckage and there's, you know, it's the mythology of the open road where they're like, oh, he was this trucker who, apparently, couldn't keep up anymore with the younger truckers and their newer rigs. So we cut a deal with the devil and it was, I actually kind of dug it. It was ridiculous. And over the top, but it was great. And then it turns out it was just, I don't know, some disguise that he put on just the fuck with everybody. Jessika: He did the Scooby Doo unveiling where he pulled a rubber mask off of his face, and I about lost my mind.  Mike: Yeah. Okay. What was your overall impression of the series? Jessika: It was a fucking [00:31:00] wild ride, but it was fun. I liked that it was so random at times. It legitimately kept me guessing the whole way. The topics though, they were not subtle with the overbearing American patriotism and the overt disdain for neo-Nazis, which obviously I'm behind. Mike: I mean, whatever that was fine. Jessika: that was great when they dropped the, the neo-Nazis in Televiv. Mike: Oh God. Well, and the funniest part was they were, so  one of the  antagonists for us is Baron VonBlimp, who pilot, he, he looks like, he looks like kind of this weird aristocrat from like turn of the century, Europe. No, he's I think he even has a monocle. And then towards the end, when he shows up in his blimp, he drops out and he's got a bunch of Nazis with them and, you know, they've got the swastika, armbands and everything, and then it's revealed they're not actually Nazis and he's not even German. He just liked how the uniforms looked. And then the aliens are like, whatever we're [00:32:00] done with this. And they literally hand wave them away into Israel. And I was like, that's, that's just magnificent. Just chef's kiss. Jessika: Oh, yeah, I did actually really like that. So, so what about you? What did you think about this?  Mike: I mean, it's one of those comics where I never expected to enjoy it as much as I did, but there's something so silly and pure about this entire story. It feels like the kind of thing that a five or six year old kid would come up with while playing with their trucks, you know, like monsters and aliens and races against air ships. And then you hand wave away things when you want to change the narrative. And it  somehow kind of works actually. Like, I don't know how, but it kind of does.  I really loved, like I talked about, I love Baron VonBlimp, I thought he was just so weird.  And then I liked how the Shortstop is essentially the Mos Eisley Cantina, but it's got better coffee. [00:33:00] And it seemed like every time that we first visited the place, someone was getting thrown through a window, which was of. Jessika: Absolutely. There was always a fight scene. It reminded me of a saloon, like one of those old-timey saloons with  people getting thrown out double doors and things crashing.  Mike: Yeah. And then we talked about how US' his truck was self-aware, but, but I love the bit where Papa refers to it as a she and the trucks that there and says I'm not ashamed, but I'm secure enough in myself. That it's fine.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: I was like, that is weirdly topical through a 2021 lens, but this is also really good. And also every cover to this comic, it is a work of art.  Like, like the styles vary, but they're really cool looking and they're just really weird. Yeah, I mean, it was just, it was a blast. Were there any highlights for you, or any lowlights. Jessika: So I have to say my eyes just about rolled out of my [00:34:00] head, where the aliens showed up and needed chicken parts to make their ship work correctly. And the rivalry between the two female characters was pretty contrived. Mike:  I did like how  they were trying to sit there and spin it so you didn't know who was the sleeper agent? I thought that was kind of cool, but yeah, they were, you know, they were fighting over Us and that was dumb, but it's also, you know, it's the 1980s. What are you gonna do? Jessika: Exactly. Had to have some sort of, you know, forced love triangle of some nature. But I have to say I was oddly charmed at the editing notes from Ralph Macchio, all people? Mike: Uh, editor with the same name as the, yeah. Jessika: Oh, okay. All right. Wow. Goodness gracious. Cause I was like giving that guy a lot of credit.   Mike: Nope. Jessika: I did like that though. I did like the little comments, the little editing notes,  it was a little much [00:35:00] sometimes, but I love that he was throwing shade at the writers sometimes, or reminding the reader about the previous events or where you could read about them. And it was interesting how in depth they recapped each issue, but it must've been nice for the readers who weren't starting from issue one.  Mike: Yeah. And especially because it was a maxi series and then it started in mid 1983 and then it ended in late 1984. So, it went from monthly to bi-monthly, and it was not a big name comic in the first place, so it makes sense that they would sit there and provide that background for readers. And I also really appreciated that it was all the same characters over and over again, so that it wasn't doing anything crazy new, but at the same time, each of those issues you could pick up except for the last couple. Pretty easy to understand. Jessika: Yeah. I would say so.  Mike:  I mentioned earlier that  this was another licensed comic that was designed to help promote a toy line, but as [00:36:00] opposed to G.I. Joe and transformers, though, this wasn't nearly as successful. Comichron, which is a site that tracks sales data for comics doesn't have 1983 data in place yet, but the site comic book, historians has this incredible online community. And I actually wound up posting there and asking if anyone had any insight into how the comics sold and Al Milgrim himself wound up chiming in if you would be so kind.  Jessika: I'm sorry, what? That's cool as heck.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Wow.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Okay. Well, I got a, sorry, I got a little nervous. Oh sure. I think the first issue sold around 160,000 or so, not great for a first issue, but respectable. Marvel only contracted with the toy company to do a dozen issues. I'm sure the sales went downhill from there. Still think the book was some good silly fun though (I may be [00:37:00] biased).  Mike: Yeah, I was really stunned. This, the comic book historian group actually has a lot of amazing industry professionals involved in it. I've seen writers like Mark Wade chime in, the owner of Mile High Comics routinely posts about comic book history as well. They have a podcast and a YouTube series. They did a long series of interviews with Jim Shooter that was really cool, which actually, I think did a lot to kind of redeem his character a bit because a lot of people viewed him as a villain in the comic book and yeah.  Jessika: Oh.  Mike: But yeah, Milgrim was super cool to chime in on that. And I wound up talking to him briefly afterwards and he said, he'd be open to doing an interview with us at some point. So maybe there'll be a  Part two to the U.S. 1 episode.  Jessika: That's exciting.  Mike: Yeah.  The comic series ran for roughly a year and a half and it ended in October of 1984, the U.S. 1 toys were moderately more successful, they lasted until 86. And then after this trucking and pop culture continued to undergo this shift. [00:38:00] And it feels like the nineties, as I said, was when things really started to significantly change. We talked about Thelma and Louise. There was that Kurt Russell trucking movie called Breakdown, where the villains were truckers. And then. I mean, it's kind of still how they're portrayed these days  in media. I really don't think it helps that the FBI released this five-year study back in 2009 that linked long haul trucking to serial killers. Jessika: Oh. Wow.  Mike: Yeah. And it's one of those things where it's not saying all long haul truckers are a majority of long haul, truckers are serial killers, but that there are a number of serial killers who are long haul truckers. And it makes sense because there's a lack of supervision. And also you can pick someone up in one state, killed them in another and then drop them off, dump the body in a third. And also a lot of times the people that they pick up are people that no one really misses. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah.  Mike: On that high note.  [00:39:00] The funny thing is that this isn't where Ulysses S. Archer's story ends. So even though this was a licensed comic book for a company that was eventually acquired by Mattel,  it seems like Marvel still owns the rights to the characters themselves because Ulysses pops up every now and then he's usually like the supporting character but sometimes it's as to this one-off deep cut. So he appeared in a couple of issues of John Burns, Sensational She Hulk in the early nineties, he was supporting the She Hulk for a few issues. There was a brief cameo and the 2010 series new Avengers where he applied to be a babysitter for Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' daughter  Jessika: Oh, geez.  Mike: It was, it was actually pretty funny. He wound up helping out Rocket Raccoon in this backup story of a 2011 series called the Annihilaters, and then he also teamed up with Deadpool around the same time. And that's the issue where you see, it looks like he's actually got a fully replaced skull made out of metal. They, they, they do one of those like cross section cuts where you see [00:40:00] where you see underneath the scan, it looks like he's got just an all-metal skull. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Yeah. And then after that,  we haven't heard much about him in the Marvel Universe, but weirdly his brother Jefferson has appeared a bit too. So, he was listed as a character in the Dark Reign files, which was a who's who guide to various Marvel villains in 2009. And it actually retcon his story. Basically it claims that the highway man, after staying on earth wound up actually cutting a deal with Satan, in quotes, whoever that is. And then he wound up fighting against ghost writer. And then aside from the issue where Deadpool teamed up with his brother, he winds up fighting against Deadpool again in 2016 or so. Jessika: That's super random.  Mike: Yeah. And now we're in 2021 and it's been a few years since we've seen Ulysses and his friends show up. But I personally think that we're kind of overdue to have them come back like. Jessika: I [00:41:00] want to see Poppa Wheelie in something.  Mike: Right.  I would love to see him show up as a strong support character in one of those like heroes on the run stories where, whatever hero of the book is being pursued by,  the government or something like that. And then he basically winds up providing kind of a mobile base of operations or something like that. And then he helps them keep our heroes one step ahead of the law.  Jessika: Yeah. Like he floats down on the Shortstop, like space station or something. Yeah. That'd be cool as heck.  Mike: Yeah or something,  I mean, there's so many different ways you could go, you could have him come back to earth and he just winds up working as a trucker again, because that's what he really likes. He misses driving through the natural beauty of America, something like that. You know, I think there could be some really fun opportunities.  And I really hope that Marvel brings him back at some point, because he was just this really fun, weird character. And it was strange and it was silly, but it was also very sweet. So that is U.S. 1 in a nutshell, [00:42:00] what are your final thoughts on it? Jessika: I think it was a lot of fun. It was bananagrams, you know, all the way to the top, but  it was fun.  Mike: Yeah.   All right. It is now time for that part of the episode called Brain Wrinkles, which is when we like to discuss things that are Comics related that are just sticking in our head and won't get out. Do you mind if I go first?  Jessika: Oh, please do.  Mike: All right. I was going to talk about the recent news that Marvel's hired someone to direct Blade, but I'm actually way more excited about something else. There's this podcast called Comic Book Couples Counseling, which is this absolutely rad show. It's hosted by married couple, Brad and Lisa Gullickson, and they take relationships between comics characters, and then examine them through the lens of different self-help love gurus.   So they've been super supportive of us so far. Like they've actually retweeted [00:43:00] our stuff and their show is really fun. But, I was recently reading through a whole bunch of nineties Valiant comics that I managed to pick up from the Bat Cave in Santa Rosa when they have this blind box sale. And one of the series contained in these boxes is called the Second Life of Dr. Mirage. And it's one of the series that I collected when I was a kid it's about this married couple named Hwen Fong and Carmen Ruiz, who were his pair of psychologists. Hwen is this kind of like nebbish little guy, and Carmen is this bruiser, like, she's the bad-ass of the pair. There's this early scene where she winds up saving him from zombies because she's a master of Kappa Wera, which is, you know, it makes sense, cause she's from Brazil. And then in the first issue, they run a foul of Valiance resident necromancer named master dark and he kills Hwen, but then Hwen comes back as a ghost, sort of a ghost kind of a thing. Jessika: Hm.  Mike: But I was reading through the series and I was really struck how this was a superhero comic that actually focused on an [00:44:00] adult relationship and relationship issues that come along with the supernatural stuff, like early on Carmen has a pretty heartfelt talk with her undead husband about how difficult it is for her emotionally, because he's still with her, but she can't touch him. Jessika: Oh my god.  Mike: And anyway, so I wound up tweeting about it, cause I thought the couple would make a good topic for Comic Book Couples Counseling, and they wound up picking up all the back issues like that day. And they're going to do an episode about the characters. So I'm super excited to listen to this.  Jessika: Oh, that's super fun.  Mike: Yeah, Jessika: See, and I was going to talk about the same thing.  Mike: I'm sorry, I stole your thunder. Jessika: No, that's okay though. They're so good. So I'm that person who has to start from episode one, because. Mike: They've got a lot of episodes too. Jessika: They do they're back to 2018. So  I just went all the way back and it's so [00:45:00] fun though. I like to get that rapport. I like to make sure I have that parasocial, you know, relationship really hooked in there with all the podcasts I listen to. So, the first section that they did cause they always do kind of like a month at a time, focused on one set of characters. The first one was the relationship facets of Jean Gray and Scott Summers from the X-Men. And I love the X-Men. So, it was really neat to hear all of the different ways that they had a relationship and then they were comparing it to a book about relationships. It was very interesting. It was very topical, and I liked that they also are very sweet and introspective about their own relationship. Mike: It's really lovely.  Jessika: Yeah. And like what they can do, what they can take out of it to apply to their own marriage, which is it's so sweet. So thank you guys. You guys are great.  Mike: Yeah. Comic Book Couples Counseling, Brad and [00:46:00] Lisa, absolutely friends of the podcast.  Jessika: Absolutely.  Mike: And you know, if they ever want to come on here, they are more than welcome and we will talk about whatever they want to talk about.  Jessika: Open invitation. I'll even read a I'll even. I'm not in a couple, but I'll read a self-help book. Like if that's what it takes.  Mike:  All right. I think that's all from us. we'll be back in two weeks and until then, we'll see you in the stacks.  Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us, so text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website.  This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer and Mike Thompson written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson- Johnson of Bay Area Sound, our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan MacDonald, and was purchased with a standard license from PremiumBeat. Our banner graphics were [00:47:00] designed by Sarah Frank. You can find on Instagram as @lookmomdraws. Jessika: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com, or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter, the official podcast account is @tencenttakes. Jessika is @jessikawitha, and Jessika is spelled with a K, and Mike is @vansau, V A N S A U. Mike: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen. Jessika: Stay safe out there.  Mike: And support your local comic shop.

Hey, there, fellow heroes in a half-shell! This week, we're examining how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles evolved across approximately 30 years and four comic book series.  In this episode, we're looking at:  The original Mirage series TMNT Adventures from Archie Comics The short-lived Image Comics series from the 90s IDW's 2011 series ----more---- Episode 11 Transcript [00:00:00] Jessika: You're going to cut all this bullshit,  Mike: Oh yeah, of course.  Jessika: Okay.   Hello? Hello. Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we share hot and delicious slices of comic-flavored facts, one issue at a time. My name is Jessika Frazer and I am joined by my co-host, the man of mystery himself, Mike Thompson. Mike: Ooh. I like that.  Jessika: You're mysterious.  Mike: I'm really not.  Jessika: You're just a voice to these people.  Mike: That is true.  Jessika: Let this parasocial relationship happen for them. Mike: Fine.  Jessika: So, Mike, do you want to tell our listeners what this here podcast is about? Mike: This is payback for last week, isn't it?  Jessika: Certainly is. Mike: Yeah, [00:01:00] fine. So here at Ten Cent Takes, we like to talk about comics and we like to talk about how they are interwoven with history and pop culture. Sometimes our conversations are weird, sometimes they're funny, but hopefully they are always interesting. Come for the deep dives, stay for the swearing.  Jessika: Fuck yes. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Well, today we're going to be taking a deep dive into the comics of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, how they got their start, the people and the publishers involved, and some information and opinions about the different iterations of this beloved comic.  But before we go any further, we have corrections and announcements. Mike, you want to start us off? Mike: Yeah, sorry. So I realized after the episode about the ninja turtles movies that I said, Howard the Duck was done by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but it was George Lucas. Spielberg and Lucas worked together on some other major projects in the eighties, but not Howard the [00:02:00] Duck. You will be pleased to know that I was correct about Corey Feldman being a generally terrible human being. So, no apologies there.  Also, we are going to continue our giveaway raffle in exchange for sending us a screenshot of a review that you leave for us on Apple podcasts. It doesn't matter what the rating is, we love five stars, but we'll take anything. We will enter you into a drawing for a $25 gift certificate to NewKadia. If you can get your review in before August 5th, that will be roughly a month from when we first announced the giveaway, that would be great. And then we will contact the winner directly. just take a screenshot of your review, email it to tencenttakes@gmail.com, and that's all you have to do.  Jessika: Go get you some prizes. Mike: Yeah.   Jessika: All right. So good news, everyone. We now have both an Instagram and a Facebook account, so we will be posting episode updates and potentially bonus posts related to the [00:03:00] episode. So feel free to follow us. We're at Ten Cent Takes at both of those places. All right. So, Mike, do you want to mosey along to one cool thing that you have read or watched lately? Mike: Yeah, I guess I can be tempted to go that route. so I've been actually reading a lot of cool stuff lately. I actually just did a big run to Brian's Comics in Petaluma, and, and had a huge haul of stuff on my pull list, cause it had been about a month since I was there and I'd added some stuff to it. But, something I picked up just this week from Brian's is this new book called the Nice House on the Lake. It's published by DC under its mature Black Label imprint. And it's written by James Tynion IV  who he's also writing Something is Killing the Children, which I've at least told you about in the past. I don't know if I've talked about it here.  Jessika:  I've started reading it.  Mike: Yeah. I mean it's - Something is Killing the Children is also excellent. And this is his new [00:04:00] series and he's doing it with  Alvaro Martinez Bueno, who has recently been doing art for Detective Comics. And it's hard to describe without spoiling it, but the gist is that there is a group of people who are invited for a nice weekend at this mutual friends, insanely luxurious lake house. And it feels like we're kind of getting set up for a murder mystery, and then things take a turn for the terrifying in a really unexpected way. And I'm really excited to see where the series is gonna to go. But if you haven't read it, pick it up. It's great.  Jessika: You always tell me about the best horror comics, which is really cool. Mike: I mean, a lot of them come from Brian, to be honest.  Jessika: Thanks, Brian. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Absolutely friend of the podcast, Brian. Mike: Yeah, no. Brian is fantastic.  If you were in the North Bay, highly recommend going to check out Brian's Comics in Petaluma, it's an awesome little shop. And Brian is one of the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet.  Jessika: it's so cute. You have to go underground [00:05:00] kind of you like walk downstairs. It's not really underground, but it feels like it. Mike: Also, he has a really sweet dog who hangs out in the shop too.  Jessika: Yes. Mike: So that's what I've been consuming lately. What about you?  Jessika: I myself have been on quite the half-shell recently and just deep diving into turtles. And I have found the- I can barely contain my excitement. I have found the absolute best thing. Listen up turtle fans! There's a 24-hour Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle network that plays nothing but the animated into turtle series. Like, all of the animated series, even the old school ones. it's called Totally Turtles. I found it free with ads through Pluto TV on my fire stick. This is not an advertisement, I'm just really excited and I wanted to share it with everyone. And I'm hoping that they're turtle enthusiasts listening. It's such a blast. And despite the obnoxious children's commercials, which are horrendous and on repeat by the way, I feel so sorry for all of you parents.  Mike: So wait, so is this, can you select the episodes you want to watch or is it like [00:06:00] an actual TV channel?  Jessika: No, it's like an actual TV channel. I know. So it is streaming. They kind of do this weird marathon thing where they play back like a block of one show. So I haven't seen the OG comic come up yet, but I've seen like all of the other ones, so it's pretty neat.  Mike: I mean, there've been so many shows over the years.  I can only imagine how much content there is for them to broadcast.  Jessika: Yeah. They have like a whole like montage in there of all the different ones. And I was like, oh, oh, look at all these shows, all these turtle shows.  Mike: Yeah. I'll have to check that out. I, I keep meaning to rewatch the original animated movie mini series, whatever it was that they did for that led into the cartoon.  Jessika: Yeah, we used to have some movie that was probably  some merchandising schwag from some company, but it was like a pizza monster that they were fighting. Mike: That sounds really familiar, but I'm not sure. Jessika: And on VHS  Mike: Why. [00:07:00] Yeah. All right.  Jessika: It's like a yellow case. Yeah. I'm just saying I can see it.  So. So today we're going to be discussing the four main volumes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Comics. But before we get into it, I want to call out my resources, cause I had quite a few again for this episode, I'm sure you're sensing a theme here with me and research. So we have the Definitive History of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle documentary, turtlepediafandom.com, which is my best friend, Kevin Eastman's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Artobiography. See what he did there.  Mike: Yeah. I dig it. Jessika: Which that book, by the way, if you're a fan, Tom told me about this book, Tom Belland told me about this book and it is so good. And it goes through the first eight issues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it's by Kevin Eastman, so it talks about the process of it and this. Mockups sketches that they [00:08:00] did, like actual sketches from the comic. It's just, it's really neat and lots of little details about how they were making it and stuff. So, back to my resource, I just got so excited about that. I read an article from Indiana University Bloomington's E. Lingle Craig Preservation Lab Blog, and a couple episodes of the Ninja Turtle Power Hour podcast, which is really fun.  Mike: Yeah, that show's great.  Jessika: Yeah. Got a couple of tidbits from them. So, yeah, thanks guys.  Mike: Friend of the podcast as well. They are, they have been very supportive of us in our early days.  Jessika: Yeah. So that's, that's really fun. Now we've previously talked about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on this show. In episode one, Mike ran us briefly through the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles history, like the startup, and mention a couple of the iterations of the characters. And in episode nine, I covered the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live action films from the nineties. If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out those episodes for more [00:09:00] turtle-y goodness. During this episode, we'll be going further down the rabbit hole, looking at the history of the start of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Comics, more in depth and how they evolved over the years. As another little tease, we won't be covering the rest of the merchandising television or other related media in this episode, but stay tuned because I fully plan on doing an additional episode about the Turtles. While we'll be touching on the main volumes of comics from the overarching storyline, just know that there are micro issues and single character adventures along with a whole slew of other comics, crossovers, and pot lines that I simply don't have time to get into today, but just know that they are out there. And, if enough of you ask really, really nicely, maybe I'll cover some of those issues in a future episode. You won't have to ask very hard. Mike: You really won't.  Jessika: You won't. Mike: I don't think you guys understand how [00:10:00] excited Jessika was about this episode.  Jessika: excited. Like it will, he, it will show in my voice. My face is bright red, by the way, I am Scotch-Irish, my face is showing it. All right. before we get too solidly into our main. Mike, which of the Ninja Turtles is your favorite. And has that favorite changed at all over the years as you grew up? Mike: I think that all six year olds identify with Michelangelo when they first get into the Turtles, and I certainly was no exception. I've bounced around since. I think I'm probably closest to Rafael these days, mainly because I nurse a grudge like nobody's business.  Jessika: Oh, is Raphael petty? Mike: I'd like to think he is, He strikes me as the guy who would absolutely go and troll white supremacists on Facebook these days.  Jessika: I don't know anyone like that. Mike: No. [00:11:00] No.  Jessika: Oh, my goodness. Mike: Well, how about you? Which one did you identify with?  Jessika: Well, I also really liked Michelangelo. I mean, he was the party dude after all, and he's still pretty solidly my favorite is I can absolutely relate to being a huge ham. Hi, everyone. But I have such a greater appreciation for Donatello these days, because he really is the brains of the operation. And should he be sorted into a Hogwarts house, he would definitely be with me and Ravenclaw. Mike: Which turtle would be sorted into Hufflepuff. Do you think?  Jessika: Hufflepuff. I want to say that Michelangelo would be a Hufflepuff, cause he just he's just like so accepting of everyone. Mike: Yeah, I guess, Yeah. I guess Michelangelo would be a Hufflepuff. Leo would be a Griffindor. I don't think any of them would be Slytherin, so I think Raphael would also be Griffindor. Jessika: Not any of them probably, unless he was like, [00:12:00] Hmm, what if he was a little evil? He might be a Slytherin. Mike: Maybe. I don't know. Jessika: Because Slytherins don't have to be evil. I think they get a bad rap.  Mike: It's like ambitious or something like that.  Jessika: Yeah. I don't know. Raphael, Raphael might be ambitious. Mike: I mean, the first time that you met me and Sarah, Sarah had on a Slotherin t-shirt and I had on my Hufflepunk jacket.  Jessika: I had huge appreciation for both of those things. So. And I have to say too, that some of the more recent TV series have portrayed him in an even nerdier way, like Donatello, I mean. That I connect with even more, which is really fun. And, that's what I like best about these characters is that they really do have different relatable characteristics that makes their storylines just that much more compelling to a diverse audience, in my opinion. Mike: Yeah. 100%. Jessika: So, as Mike mentioned, in our first episode, the series was started by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Throughout high school, Eastman had been trying somewhat unsuccessfully to [00:13:00] break into the indie comics market, and had had several of his proposals turned down before being picked up by a small publishing company, Clay Geerd's Comix Wave while he was still in high school.  While he was still in high school, let me reiterate. After graduating, he moved to Portland, Maine to go to art school and founded a comic magazine called Scat with another person. After having more of his art rejected by local publishing company. One of the people at the company told him about Peter Laird with the belief that they had a lot in common. And indeed they did. They had very similar interests, shared a love of creating and of comic artist, Jack Kirby, and immediately started doing short stories together, each bringing different strengths and new ideas to their collective works. In fact, Jack Kirby would also be a future style inspiration for the turtles Comics. Interesting, huh? Mike: Yeah. That actually checks out based on how bombastic the [00:14:00] turtles series became because Kirby's art, I mean, Kirby was such an iconic artists that there's this whole style of. It's like an energy explosion, it's called the Kirby crackle, And it's those, those circles within energy beams that now it's just kind of a thing that you see in comics a lot of the time.  Jessika: Oh, that's interesting. Mike: And he also had that very, very sharp edged geometric shape to all of his drawings as well.  Jessika: Yeah. Oh wow. Mike: So yeah.  Jessika: So this friendship and interest in the creation of comics led them to form MiragevStudios, which was named after the idea that their quote unquote studio was just Laird's living room. So it was really a play on their lack of having a physical studio space.  Their goal was to be able to make their living doing the thing that they loved best, because at this point, making comics was still very much a side hobby while they both still worked full-time, Eastman stating that he had been cooking lobsters in Amherst to get by. One of their earliest comic [00:15:00] characters was Fugitoid, whom they would fold into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles storyline later down the line. Mike: That was the time-traveling robot, right?  Jessika: Yes.  Mike: I remember him. I had his action figure.  Jessika: That's cool. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were conceived during what is described as a casual night of brainstorming Eastman drew a ninja turtle, finding the idea of such a clunky and notoriously slow creature being a ninja, really fun. He thought to himself: Okay. So what if Bruce Lee was an animal? What's the stupidest animal Bruce Lee could be? And he's like, a turtle. Mike: Yeah, that checks out. So this was what, like the mid-eighties? Jessika: Yeah, they drew this in '83. Mike: I mean, martial arts and ninjas were such a thing in pop culture back then, too.  Jessika: They were. Mike: I just, I remember Chuck Norris had a really terrible ninja movie or two around then as well. And I just remember the eighties [00:16:00] and the early nineties still having this fascination.  Jessika: that was actually part of why they drew the turtles. Mike: Ah. Jessika: Was, it was a play on the fact that it was, it was a parody. It was a parody on the fact that so many people were doing ninja movies and a few other aspects were also parody, but we'll, we'll get into those later. Very astute, Mike. So, Laird drew up his own rendition after Eastman first drew up that first stupid looking turtle. Right. It wasn't even super looking, it was really cool. And with Eastman then drawing four turtles, all with different weapons and he wrote Ninja Turtles over the top. And Laird was like, you know what? Nah. And he added Teenage Mutant to the top of the ninja turtles. So they each had a hand in making the whole collective thing.  Mike: That's great.  Jessika: Yeah. And  the sketches together. You can see where both of their ideas formed the larger idea, which is super neat.  Mike: Mhmm, [00:17:00]  Jessika: So Mike, can you read this next section for me? It's an excerpt from Eastman's Artobiography regarding the sales of the first issue of the teenage mutant ninja turtles. Mike: Absolutely. Tired of rejection letters and inspired by the newest self-publishing movement, especially Davidson Cerberus comic, we pooled our money and borrowed some more from my uncle Quintin to come up with enough to print 3000 black and white comics we were sure would never sell. May 5th, 1984 we premiered the first issue at a local comic book convention. It was incredibly exciting, but I was back cooking lobsters in June. In early 1985, the sales for book two exceeded 15,000 copies. And by mid 1986, Turtles book number eight shipped more than 125,000 copies. I was drawing comics all day and supporting myself, the dream had come true.  Jessika: That's so cool. Mike: That's awesome.  Jessika: One of the things that they budgeted for were special drawing boards, which would update the black and white [00:18:00] comic to include shades of gray. This board is called Duoshade by Graphix. And because I'm a little Donny in my approach to, well, everything, I had to know how this worked. So I did a little digging. The artists would do the initial drawing and pen out the lines on a special pretreated board, then would go in with a paint brush and brush over the areas with a special developer that would reveal either a light or a darker tone hatching or pixelated pattern, depending on the developer used. This added an extra pop of shadowing without the effort of physically cross-hatching everything by hand. And because it was hatching instead of solid color, like paint, this fit the style of many different types of hands. The way this worked is through of course, science! You see the hatch lines or pixels are preprinted onto the special board using a chemical like silver nitrate that was subsequently blanched with a substance like mercuric chloride [00:19:00] to make it invisible to the naked eye. And two other chemicals are used to either reveal hatch or crosshatch marks, basically. One of the chemicals reveals one hatch causing the lighter shade, and the other revealed the crosshatching that was darker. And there are other chemicals that could be used in place of the ones I mentioned, and they don't seem to advertise the specific recipe ingredients for the updated formula, unsurprisingly. But this technique was invented in 1929 and was in use until 2009 when it was considered obsolete in the face of digital art and technology. Mike: That's so cool. I had no idea that this was a thing.  Jessika: It's so neat. So, whenever you see like the pixelated comics and stuff, that's all that kind of board, I'm sure. Mike: That's a really slick, I mean it makes sense that it would be obsolete now because you can sit there and just do, you know, brushes and layer masks and things like that with comics, it's not that hard, but yeah, that's, wow.   Jessika: Science! Mike: That must've been such a time-saver for them.  Jessika: Oh yeah, [00:20:00] that definitely. They said literally it just took the stroke of a brush and you could give more depth and just shadowing to everything. Will you do me a favor and read this quote about this process that I found on the Indiana University Bloomington's E. Lingle Craig Preservation Lab Blog? Mike: Sure. This process is very far from magic, though it surely seem that way for artists. After dipping their brushes and clear liquid, the path of their brushstrokes immediately turned dark as it traveled across paper. The phenomenon was easy to overdo, leading to images with many toned areas that, when reproduced into small comics and magazine ads, turned out cluttered and unclear  artists, commended peers who knew when to stop.  Jessika: Yes. Gentle hand. And here, I'm going to send you a comparison. So, the top half of this, and we will post this on Instagram, the top half is just in inked, and the bottom half is the same couple of [00:21:00] frames that are also shaded with  the Duoshade graphics. Mike: Oh, wow. This is really slick.  Is this from the Artobiography? Jessika: Yeah, exactly. It's from the Artobiography. Mike: Okay. oh, okay. Yeah. So I recognize this, this is from the first issue of the original Mirage series.  Jessika: Sure is. Mike: And it's when they're in their rooftop battle with the Foot. And the original, like just kind of sketch or line art. It shows Donatello, and the rest of the turtles and a couple of panels getting into these battles and it's, it's fine. It's black and white. And then you look at the difference in terms of shading underneath this. And it's insane how much depth there is. Like they added entire skyline with this. It's crazy. It's also, I feel like it's a little bit over done on the bottom. Like with the shading like this, very clearly like the early days of the turtles, but it looks really cool, especially when you do the comparison.  Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. And I almost wonder how much, since they hadn't been producing very much,  I wonder how much they were using these boards, [00:22:00] know, beforehand. I wonder if this has maybe, like you said, the early days. Mike: I would be willing to bet that they were pretty new to this and, we're learning when to stop.  Jessika: Yeah. So, the turtles and their storyline were initially created as a parody, like we were talking about to some of the popular Comics of the time, especially Daredevil, with similarities and characters names, such as the Foot clan when Daredevil included the Hand.  Mike: Right.  Jessika: And in some of the situations, such as the highly unlikely way that the canister containing a radioactive solution flew out of the back of a truck, striking someone in the head hitting and subsequently breaking a glass aquarium containing four baby turtles who fall directly into a manhole where they're then covered in the radioactive liquid that leaked out of the container that broke upon hitting on the ground. This situation highlighted the unlikely way that Matt Murdoch got his powers to become Daredevil. When a radioactive substance fell out of a moving truck and blinded him as a child. So, very [00:23:00] much a play on that. There's also the funny correlation between Daredevil's mentor Stick and the turtles mentor being named Splinter. Mike: I never even thought about that before, but that's really funny. This is all stuff out of the Frank Miller, eighties run of Daredevil too, which he almost fetishized Asian cultures in certain ways and was very into ninjas and martial arts and noir, and you can see that later on in his other books like Sin City, but Daredevil, I feel was like, where that really got stuck.  Jessika: Yeah. And definitely with, the parody, that's exactly what they were going for. They were making fun of that whole aesthetic. Mike: Well, yeah, because, everything about the Miller books of Daredevil are so grim and gritty and wrought. I can't read them with a straight face, but that's just me. Jessika: So, Eastman and Laird, like you read in that quote, didn't necessarily think that the comic was going to go anywhere. So much so that they actually killed off their main villain, the [00:24:00] shredder in the first issue. Mike: I was going to talk about that.  Jessika: They killed him off. They just really didn't think that there was going to be an issue two.  I find it really interesting that a comic that was initially thought to be a one-off has turned into such a world-renowned and beloved franchise. Mike: Mmhm.  Jessika:  Fun fact for all of you out there. The first volumes of  the teenage mutant ninja turtles were in black and white with all of the turtles, sporting red bandanas when the covers were finally colorized after the boom in popularity of the series. The only way to really tell them apart where their respective weapons.  Mike: That was the same case with the original Ninja Turtles video game on Nintendo.  I remember getting this when I was a kid and I was sitting there going, oh, they, they have the same color bandanas, but we know who they all are because they all have different weapons, but they were all sporting red bandanas.  Jessika: Yeah, I think I might remember that because we had the Nintendo games, too. Mike: Yeah. Uh, they sucked, They were [00:25:00] really hard and I hated them. I felt like I was a really bad gamer because I couldn't beat it.  Jessika: No, honestly, in that, of course we're, unsurprisingly, we're in a Facebook group about the Ninja Turtles. Everybody that I've read talking about the games. It's like, oh, I never beat that game, I couldn't be that game. It was way too hard. It's, it's not just, you don't feel bad. So, we read the first few issues of the Mirage comics, the OG comics, which tell the origin story of the turtles and Splinter and their quest for vengeance, for the death of Splinters, former master and their ongoing rivalry with Shredder and his gang, the Foot Clan. What did you think about these first few issues? Mike: You know, I had never really read them all the way through before now, and it's really interesting when you're basically reading the first content ever created, when you're here at the point where you're 40 years later. It's kind of charming because there's so much exposition where they're setting everything up. [00:26:00] It's overly earnest. It's silly. it's also much more bloody and violent than you would expect. And the funny thing is, so I was reading this digitally via Hoopla and so they actually have the colorized versions now where, it's all been remastered and everything, but I remember, the giant two page spread where they're fighting the Foot on the rooftop and it's like real bloody. It's so strange to sit there and read all of this and have the knowledge of where they have gone with it since then. But at the same time, I can also understand why nobody in the eighties thought this was going to go anywhere. It's just, it's, for lack of a better term, it's just, it's silly.  Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And, It is a parody, but at the same time, it doesn't entirely feel like a parody, it feels a little bit overly earnest.  I never would have sat there and said, this is going to be the thing that every kid under the age of 10 is going to be interested in because, it's really violent. Like, they sit there and they straight up murder, some street punks who are, I think mugging someone. Was that what happened? [00:27:00] Like at the very end when the cops drive up and you see the bloody hands leftover and.  Jessika: Yeah, they were just street toughs. I agree. Mike: Yeah.  And also, it was weird to see recurring acts of basically domestic violence, because Hamata Yoshi's girlfriend is first beat up by Shredders older brother, and then Shredder vows vengeance after Yoshi kills Shredder's brother. And then Shredder shows up in New York and basically murders first Hamata Yoshi, and then his girlfriend or wife at that point. It's more than I would have expected.  Jessika: Yeah, well, and I love the convoluted storyline, cause I think they were having a laugh with that too. Everyone's on a quest for vengeance. Which is such a theme for the turtles. They're always going for some sort of vengeance because you know, of course that's their whole game.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: After this. So that's yeah, Mike: And then, like you said, shredder, when I read the first issue, he basically has a [00:28:00] thermite grenade, and gets knocked off the roof while holding it, and then they sit there and make a comment on, oh, well, I guess the shredder got shredded where they just find bits of his armor left. I was like, oh, that was a surprise.  Jessika: Yeah, exactly. And then they turned around and went, oh shit. Oh shit. We have to make an issue two. Mike: Yeah. Ups.  Jessika: Which, if you're playing it as a parody, it must be even funnier to have the person you just killed off, come back mysteriously. I found it really interesting that April started off as an assistant to a robotic engineer when she's most often portrayed as a reporter. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And she gave it, it comes back around, you know, she's she and other iterations. She becomes , a lab assistant again, or, something having to do with STEM. I also really, really liked the rough style of the comic and how the frames are very obviously hand drawn and hand lettered. Mike: Yeah. I like how, in some of the speech bubbles, you can [00:29:00] see the letters are squeezed a little bit more together at the end cause they just ran out of room.  Jessika: Well, and Eastman even said he was so glad to have somebody when they finally got big enough to have somebody come in and let her, because he's like, I'm so bad at spelling. It's like, I was never this person who spelled, and so there's one place because I'm just a Donatello. Hi, here I am. It's like, I saw the little, like, they meant to put “were”, but they put the little apostrophe in there and I was like. Mike: Oops,  Jessika: Eastman, that's adorable, but it's almost like having like  a finger print or a thumb print on some, like something handmade, like a handmade mug or something like that. That's the artists' imprint.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: And again, now that I know that this was written as a parody, I have a much better appreciation for the over-the-top twists and coincidences that led to the turtles' predicaments.  Also, can we please address the insult, slime puppy, that April shouts of bags? Mike: It. [00:30:00] So it reminds me a lot of, in the X-Men animated series, Wolverine keeps on busting out, I think it's like, piece of gutter trash, or something like that. And you're like, oh, that's, that's cute.  Mike: You're, you're trying guys. You're trying.  Jessika: At what point was that, the thing? That's the thing you're going to write down right now. Okay. Right. So, after the success of the 1987 animated TV series, the comic was getting a little too hot for just Eastman and Laird to handle on their own. And after a few issues, they hired freelance artists to help with creating the series while they took on more of a business side of things. It was really important for Eastman and layered that the artists involved had ownership and received royalties for their work. So, there ended up being a lot of issues, not only with continuity, but also with rights and the use of the comics and the storylines created. To this day, it's difficult, if not impossible, to find copies of [00:31:00] some of the comics created by these other artists, especially since some of the artists refused to sell the rights to their storylines or characters back to Mirage, and therefore those issues were unable to be reprinted. So bye, bye. One of the interesting partnerships of that time was with Archie, and that's how Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures was born. The first issue was on shelves and emblazoned with the Comics Code emblem, finally, in March of 1989. Wow, that was a big sigh. Mike: Anytime someone mentions the Comics Code Authority, I just, I feel like I need a good rainstorm to just stare at sadly.  Jessika: While I agree with you, you have to admit that it was a rite of passage. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: For, like getting into mainstream and having your your shit recognized, you know? So that must've been huge.  Mike: I mean, the comic [00:32:00] stores that I went to when I was a kid, they wouldn't put stuff out on the shelves. If it didn't have the comics code seal of approval. And then by the time I was like 11 or 12, because you started having more and more independent publishers that didn't adhere to it. Jessika: Exactly. No. I mean that's yeah, absolutely. Mike: Would you consider Teenager Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures? Would, would that be like, volume 1.5 almost? Jessika:  Yes. Yes I would.  So, now that the turtles were officially, family-friendly. Written and illustrated by Eastman layered and Steve Levine. These differed greatly to the original comics. In fact, they had the same style color, and kid-friendly vibe as the TV show, which makes a lot of sense because, well, Archie. Will you give us a rundown of these comics that we read and share your opinion with us? Mike: Yeah. So these seem to pick up immediately after that initial TV movie animated series thing, where [00:33:00] the turtles defeated Shredder and Krang, and then trapped them in Dimension X. Shredder gets sent back to earth by crying in the first issue and has to basically start from the ground up to get his revenge. There's a whole scene where he winds up in a park in town and some guys tried to mug him and then he basically intimidates them into giving him their money, and then he goes and takes over some, what was it Slash for Cash dojo, I think was the name of it.  Jessika: Yeah. It was like a name nobody would have had, which I have to say about those, those street toughs, Shredder's, like, oh, I must be a New York because I just got mugged.  Mike: That was great.  And then he takes the dojo over from the leader whose name is Smash, which I thought was great. And then he basically starts going about getting his revenge against the turtles, which is, he has these toughs from the gym dress up as the [00:34:00] turtles, and very obviously bad turtle costumes, and then commit robberies. And then there's a media smear campaign where everyone is like, well, we thought we, uh, we thought that we liked the turtles. We thought they were good guys, but I, I guess they're actually criminals. It's so simple and kind of charming. I couldn't even get mad, it was ridiculous, but I, I couldn't believe what a flashback this was.  It was nostalgia, personified, ya know.  It's very silly and very innocent and the jokes are corny and the art's pretty simple, but I really got a kick reading through it. I haven't watched the cartoon in a couple of decades, but I immediately knew where the comic's story was picking up.  The turtles, rely on slapstick gags rather than actual ninjitsu to defeat the criminals that they're encountering. Shredder and his crew are blundering morons, and there's this overall wholesome quality to the comic.  It's very kid-friendly, but I [00:35:00] didn't feel like I was being patronized while I read it, even though I'm almost 40 at this point.  Jessika: Yeah. It was, like you said, it was so nostalgia, like nostalgia alley, for sure. These are the turtles and April from my childhood. You know? Mike: Yeah, 100%. Jessika: These are the ones, the main characters were pretty closely based on the animated series while having the rest of the miscellaneous folks being like these goofy Archie type characters. Also, I really liked the way that they framed the TV shots to be shaped like the TVs. Like the frames of the comics were shaped, like the shape of a TV.  Mike: Yeah, that 4:3 ratio and all that.  Jessika: I really liked that. Yeah. With the rounded edges and everything. Mike: Yeah, it was cute. Jessika: You immediately understood that you were supposed to be seeing something on a screen. And it was light and it was frivolous, without the threat of any real danger.I call it a really decent kids comic.  Mike: I've read worse. Jessika: So volume two, moving right along, was written and illustrated by Jim Lawson and was introduced in 1993, amidst the [00:36:00] fan success of the first two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle live action films. This was also after a falling out between Eastman and Laird caused the duo to stop working together until just recently. Mike: Which you can actually see them come back together in the Netflix series, the Toys That Made Us.  Jessika: Yes. Yeah. Which I'm sure is going to play a large role in my next episode of this show. With this change came another: the comic was fully colored. In this series, the turtles part ways as they have no shared purpose after the defeat of the Foot Clan, they battle and defeat Baxter Stockman, who has placed his brain in a robotic body and deal with Triceratons, which are by far my favorite villains in the turtle verse. But despite the turtles as popularity, the series only lasted 13 issues. And a couple of years. Volume two ended with sad sales numbers, [00:37:00] and a literal flood in Mirage Studios, womp womp. In 1996, Image Comics published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles volume three, which was written by Gary Carlson and illustrated by Frank Foscoe. They published a total of 23 monthly issues and return the turtles back to their black and white roots, but did not include the duo-shading, which I found confusing. Mike: Mmhm, same. Jessika: This volume was kind of a trip. It was more intense and action packed, with even more plot twists. Also, they made the turtles much more battle-worn, with turtles missing appendages or in Donatello's case being forced to become a cyborg. And, because it was now being produced by Image, it allowed the turtles to do crossover issues with characters from the Savage Dragon series. Mike: I had those issues. I don't think I still have them anymore, but I remember, it was a big thing where the Savage Dragon basically [00:38:00] stood up his girlfriend, because he was, involved in some shenanigans with the turtles. I think she almost broke up with him at one point, because of that, in that one is.  Jessika: I almost said good for her, but then you said almost. Mike: Almost. Jessika: Now, the drama with this issue is that it's no longer considered canon in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle universe, mostly because Peter Laird hadn't been directly involved in making the storyline. So, another situation where they got a little precious about the material.  We also read the first few issues of this comic. What are your thoughts on the comic? What I just said? Anything. Mike: I gotta be honest if I were Peter Laird, I probably would have disowned this too. Cause it's really not that great. The art is just generally confusing because there is no sense of depth or shading. It starts you off right in the middle of a big battle. The turtles are getting shot, Splinter is kidnapped, they're being attacked by cyborgs for no real reason [00:39:00] that you can understand, Raphael if I remember, right, is disfigured pretty badly, there's a female ninja who shows up and she is nothing but T&A. And, if you look at the cover for the second issue, it's very male-gazey, where you see the back of a woman and it's really just her ass and legs while the turtles are facing the camera. And it's, everything about this feels like nineties extreme with a capital X. in all the worst ways. And it's funny because I was wondering if Eric Larson, who did the Savage Dragon was drawing this because the art style is very reminiscent of him, and he was also doing the covers. Tom Belland, our friend, I remember him telling me a story about how, at one point he was at Image Comics, and they were criticizing his art style, and he told them that they all draw women late 12 year old boys, because they're. Jessika: Because they do. Mike: They're all boobs and legs and not much else.  Jessika: I mean, I don't see a lie. Mike:  Yeah, [00:40:00] no lies detected my friend. It's I don't know. I, I really didn't want to read any more past the first issue either. It just, it felt very forgettable and dumb and shocking for the sake of being shocking, not for actually trying to do anything good storytelling-wise.  Jessika: Yeah, these were just, they were like, we were talking about, they were difficult to read, they were super frenzied. I didn't know where to look. And it took me a lot longer to read them because I was trying to hash out what was happening. Mike: It was visually confusing, which is kind of the kiss of death in a comic, like the fact that it lasted 23 issues is just mind numbing to me.  Jessika: Yeah. you know, you look at comics a lot of the time, the ones that I really connect with are the ones where you look at it and you can see the intended motion.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: I didn't get that at all here. I just felt like I was looking for the motion. It just wasn't there. Mike: Yeah, and even without that duo tone shading, they [00:41:00] didn't do anything, really in its place. Jessika: Yeah, it wasn't. Wasn't great.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: And you had mentioned the outfits, it just felt like it was set in a futuristic BDSM party.  Mike: A hundred percent. I mean, the first thing that we see is, uh, what's her name? Isn't Kimiko is that her  Jessika: Kimiko. Yeah. Mike: Yeah. And she shows up and basically, she looks like she is wearing a leather bondage version of Leelou's outfit from the Fifth Element. It is straps and spikes and it makes no sense whatsoever.  Jessika: And like, let's be real. Her boobs are too big for that. Like there's no way that that's containing anything, logistically. Mike: No. I mean it  her outfit is body paint, basically. Jessika: Yeah, really is. Mike: So Image Comics in the nineties, they were kind of leading  this artistic charge of just heinously unrealistic women. And as much as I [00:42:00] enjoyed the Savage Dragon and Eric Larson's various books, Tom, wasn't wrong, they drew women like 12 year olds did. Jessika:  Mmhmm. Mike: We can talk about this at some future point, but I'm sure there's an entire generation of kids who grew up reading comics in that era who developed body dysmorphia or just heinously unrealistic expectations for what people were supposed to look like in general.  Jessika: Yeah. Agreed. Well, what do you say we, uh, move on to volume four? Mike: Sure. Jessika: Volume four was first published in 2001, and was created by Peter Laird and Jim Lawson. There was a couple year hiatus in 2006 when Peter Laird stopped to work on the TMNT movie.  Aliens have landed and are taking up what they say is temporary residence on earth, which brings with it the added side-effect of normalizing weirdos on the street. So, the turtles are able to come out of hiding and enter more freely into society and other shenanigans with aliens that [00:43:00] may or may not be trustworthy, of course happen. Oh, and apparently the turtles are in their thirties. Same, bro, same.  What say ye about the IDW comics we read? Mike: I kind of dug them. It's one of those things where it feels like they are starting with the foundation that we all knew, and then they were growing it out in a different way. It's not bad, it felt kind of like a weird reboot, while also continuing a story that I wasn't overly familiar with. We opened with a rumble between the turtles and a gang that was led by another mutant animal. Jessika: It was a cat. Mike: Yeah. Did he have a name? I can't remember.  Jessika: It was Old Hob.  Mike: Ah. Jessika: He had an eye patch, Old Hob. Mike: Yeah. And, and he's clearly got history with Splinter, and after they defeat them, it's revealed that Raphael is split from the turtles and he's out wandering around and he ends up rescuing pretty randomly, he ends up busting into Casey [00:44:00] Jones' house to rescue a very young Casey from his abusive dad. We get back to April's original roots of her being a scientist, where she's working for Baxter Stockman's lab. And then also we find out that Krang is around, but he's shown only in shadow. I seriously got some Dr. Claw vibes from the way that they first introduced crane where he's only shown from the back. You only see the silhouette of his chair and then his hand on the phone.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: From the first issue on, you get the impression that they're taking familiar elements and then trying to. In a new way. And that was fine. I mean, my basic familiarity felt like the right starting point for where to go with it, but it, felt pretty cool and it felt like there was actually some pretty decent plot stuff that they were working with and they weren't trying to make it just all action. And also, I really appreciated that the women did not look like Playboy centerfolds.  Jessika: Yeah, that was helpful.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: It's hard to be a woman and read comics, I'm just like, [00:45:00] man, this isn't for me at all. Is it?  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Well, I'm pansexual, it's kinda for me, but yeah, I thought the series was fun. The illustration is great as well as the coloring. And the action sequences is really fly off the page and make the reader feel like the pictures really could have been moving. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Again. Like you said, I'm loving that April gets to be a scientist again. And I like that in this one, she was the one who actually named the turtles.  Mike: That was really cute.  Jessika: Yeah. She was like, I'm in art history. Mike: Yeah. Cause she was like, she was like an intern at the lab basically.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Or work study or whatever it is. Yeah. Jessika: And I think it's really cute that their personalities were already showing when they were baby turtles. Like Raphael was already agro.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: He's the feisty one. Further into it, Raphael gets carried away after the whole, like breaking of the canister thing. And he starts getting [00:46:00] carried away by a cat. And that's why they there's this mutant cat, but Splinter had had some psychotropics. And so he was a little bit more with it, went and fought the cat, but he got swept up into the bag with the other stuff and got carried off by the bad guys, the baddies, and Raphael was just on his own. So he didn't have the development that the other turtles did.  Mike: That's actually a really nice touch. Jessika: Yeah, it was super interesting. It's also interesting to me that the mutation and the growth was a lot quicker in this series. They really didn't turn into true teenagers because they haven't been alive for that long, they've only been alive for like, 15 months or something.  So finally, I just wanted to touch on the current series that is happening right now. And one that Mike mentioned in episode one, which is the Last Ronin.  Mike: Yes.  Jessika: Yes. And I'm very excited about this one, and it's absolutely one of the [00:47:00] items on my pull list with another one of our local shops, the Outer Planes in Santa Rosa, the first three issues are available now. And if you have Hoopla Mike and I have had luck finding it to borrow for free, they also have a director's cut for issue one, which has some extra fun sketchies with back, everyone. So just saying that's the one I read, cause I actually own issue one, but I did borrow it on Hoopla too, to see what the little bonuses were. Mike: Yeah. And we've mentioned this before, but Hoopla is an app that, basically they work with libraries across the country and will just let you check out digital content.  They limit it to a certain number of items per month. How many do you get. Jessika: I think it's like six or something. Mike: Yeah, I get eight. It's pretty low, but like insane. But in San Francisco it's like 21.  Jessika: Ah, okay. Mike: But it's still a really great way to scope out contents legally, you're not pirating it, which is great. And you know, you're also, supporting the libraries because they're working with it, but it's free to you. So, it makes me feel good whenever I can read [00:48:00] content that way. And they've got a truly amazing selection of comics and graphic novels and a huge catalog of Ninja Turtles content.  Jessika: Yeah. For those of you who are watching Netflix's is Sweet Tooth, that actually was a comic and that is on Hoopla as well. I checked it out and haven't started it yet. And then it checked itself back in, cause I waited too long. Whoops. Mike: If you get around to reading it, I would love to just hear your thoughts on it because.  Jessika: Absolutely. Mike: I read the first volume and I thought it was very good, but I couldn't bring myself to read anymore because I don't like reading about people being mean to kids. And. Jessika: Oh no.  Mike: And that's very much what it is, where , it's a guy who is kind of like a young teenager and he's very trusting and people keep abusing his trust or terrorizing him. Jessika: No. Mike: And I'm like, I think I don't want to read that.  Jessika: That's why I had to stop reading Lemony Snicket.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Yeah. I like read the first book and I was like, oh, sorry. This is really mean to children and I, my little empathetic heart is just crying. Mike: Yeah. I don't like cruelty to kids., I don't like [00:49:00] cruelty to animals, and I don't like cruelty to old people. Jessika:  Do you want to remind the listeners what the series is about and what you think so far? Mike: Sure. This is actually the comic that I'm most familiar with since I've been reading. As I said on Hoopla as the issues have been coming out. This is being billed as the final in quotes, Ninja Turtle story, which takes place in this dystopian, cyberpunk New York. That's now controlled by the Foot Clan. At some point in the past, the turtles were exterminated and only one of them survived. And now he's come back to town with kind of a bucket list of revenge. His identity is originally kept mystery, though it's really not that hard to figure out before the first issue reveals it on the final page. And the subsequent issues spin out both the world and the backstory. I've really been digging it so far. I'm sure that I am missing a lot of little details, because I'm not the most diehard fan of the Ninja Turtles. But, that said, I've been having a [00:50:00] lot of fun with it and I love the new character designs, and also I'm a sucker for anything cyberpunk.  Jessika: Yeah, I'm really, really enjoying this comic. The illustrations. Absolutely beautiful and colorful, even though it's set in dystopian society. They didn't go with the whole like grunge, everything is dark, which I really liked. Mike: Yeah. It's really cool.  Jessika: And I like the idea that the sole turtle is still being guided by this spirit or memory of his brothers, and that he still draws from the skills and strengths by, in a way, imagining what they would do or what advice they would give. So I thought that was really sweet and they did bring back elements of the original turtles. Like you said, like Stockman's robot mousers that have been upgraded, the Fugitoid and professor Honeycutt. You know, it was just like they're bringing in all of these other things.  It's yeah. It's, it's super interesting. Oh, and, did you notice, there's an Eastman and layered cameo  Mike: What? Jessika: In issue two. Mike: No, I totally missed this. Where is it? [00:51:00]  Jessika: So it's an issue two, and they're eating pizza and they're like, what was that? Could it have been…? Nah. Like when like a turtle is going by and they're like, that didn't happen.  Mike: That's great, I love it. Jessika: Yeah. It was like younger Eastman and Laird, so super fun. It's really sweet. So far. It's got a lot of depth to it. They have a lot of really meaningful conversations about mental health too, which I think is really. Mike: Yeah. they've handled PTSD and. Trauma and everything in. I'm not sure I want to use the word realistic, but in believable ways.  Jessika: Yeah. I would agree with that description. Yeah.  Now onto our Brain Wrinkles. Which is that one thing comics are comics-related that is currently captured within the crevices of our cerebra. Mike, why don't you start us off? Mike: Put me on the spot. [00:52:00] Yeah. So, there's been a bit of news the past couple of weeks about bisexuality being addressed and acknowledged in comics and comics related-media. So, last week on Loki, we had it revealed that Loki is canonically bisexual, which was, that was really nice.  Jessika: Pew pew pew pew pew! Mike: As someone who is bi, it's always really nice to see it acknowledged because you know, bi-erasure is a thing and it sucks. But this week, in fact, I think it was yesterday or Tuesday, Al Ewing, the writer that I talked about in, I believe the last episode or the episode before that he's the writer for We Only Find Them When They're Dead, he officially came out as being bisexual. He acknowledged that like he hasn't really been quiet about it, but he he's never exactly aade a formal statement or anything like that. And so he wrote a really, a really thoughtful blog post about all this and talking about how [00:53:00] often people that are within this group have to deal with imposter syndrome and, he put it really well where he said I've always looked at myself through a lens of self-hatred and self-loathing, and that's affected this. I wasn't enough in this category because I wasn't enough in any category.  My not being bi enough was just one more metric that I could hate myself on. And it really resonated with me becauseI spent a long time, not really sure how to feel about my sexuality. And then the other thing is that the queer community is not always the most welcoming of us.  Jessika: Yeah. I've had those situations as well, where, I'll be on an online dating site and I'm, I'm pansexual. I will, I will date anyone. Gender is not a thing to me. And it's not that it's not a thing, but you know what I mean? That's not a, that's not a metric by which I choose my partners. Mike: Right.  Jessika: But there were a lot of times where I would go onto somebody's profile. And when it would say no bi girls or [00:54:00] no bis or something like that. And it's just like, and actually I stopped listening to a podcast cause they started talking about the idea that women get nervous, that you're just going to cheat on them with a guy. Which is like, if I'm in a relationship with you and we're in a relationship, we're in a relationship, it doesn't matter what my orientation is. If I'm a cheater, I'm going to cheat on you, regardless of whether I'm like, you know, but I'm not, that's the thing you have to trust the person you're in a relationship with, and it doesn't have anything to do with their orientation.  Mike: Yeah. I've dated a few people who felt they couldn't trust me because I had dated the other gender and, those relationships didn't last. Jessika: Nope.  Mike: But yeah, that is what has been rattling around my noggin for the past couple of days. So, what about you?  Jessika: So, I wanted to circle back about the Corey Feldman concert I attended a few years back. And [00:55:00] as I had been previously speculating on whether it was the very same weird winged and lingerie-clad, ladies, Corey's Angels. And, friends, I am so sorry to report that I have some unfortunate news that it was in fact Corey's Angels. I will post pics, they're very blurry picks from this concert on Instagram. Also again, my apologies for being complicit in this bad cult situation. Mike: You know, I will say that after our episode and I was reliving how terrible Corey Feldman was. I found myself rewatching a couple of his music videos, and there's such trash, but I am a little ashamed that I gave him the one 10th of a half penny on YouTube. Jessika: I know. Right. And then you sent it to me. So you gave him two, technically. Mike: I know. I I, mean, it is pretty funny though. When you read the Vice articles that make fun of his parties, [00:56:00] though.  Jessika: Well, folks, that's it for this episode, be sure to join us again in two weeks for another riveting comic adventure. Mike: Thanks For listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us, so text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website.  Jessika: This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer and Mike Thompson written by Jessika Frazer and edited by Mike Thompson. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound, our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from Premium Beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who is on Instagram as @lookmomdraws. Mike: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com, [00:57:00] or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter, the official podcast is tencenttakes, Jessika is Jessikawitha, and Jessika has a K, not a C, and I am vansau, V A N S A U. Jessika: If you'd like to support us, be sure to subscribe, download, rate, and review wherever you listen. Mike: Stay safe out there.  Jessika: And support your local comic shop. 

Mike: No critical race theory isn't racism; though it's cute you think that. [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: Thank you so much for joining us for our Juneteenth episode. I'm joined by two scholars today to talk about critical race theory in education. Marvin Lynn is the dean of the College of Education at Portland State University with his Ph.D. from UCLA in social sciences and education. Adrienne Dixson is a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Champaign with her Ph.D. in multicultural education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Together, they are the editors of The Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education, an edited volume now in its second edition with contributors from many illustrious scholars in the field of critical race theory and critical race pedagogy. Thank you both for joining me on The Nazi Lies Podcast. Adrienne Dixson: Thank you. Mike: Okay. So, let's start out with the very basics: what is critical race theory and why is it here? Marvin Lynn: Well, I think about critical race theory as a subfield within the law that is very focused on how race and racism are represented within the legal structure but also within the application of law in the United States. And legal scholars have been very interested in kind of documenting that historically, but also looking at the ways in which the law is unfortunately limited when it comes to protecting particularly racially marginalized people such as African Americans and so there's lots of examples of that as well. So, that's how I would describe it. It's a body of scholarship that comes out of the law. Education scholars like myself and Adrienne have been drawing on this for many years, to try to think about how we talk about and theorize about schools and what happens in schools, particularly as it pertains to students of color and gaps in educational attainment and achievement for example. We look at classrooms; we look at curriculum; we look at policies both in higher education and in K-12 context, and we are trying to understand how race and racism are shaping all of those factors. There's a whole number of tenets that we could describe for you that sort of reflect the principles and the values of critical race theory. For example, this idea of the permanence of racism is an idea authored by Derrick Bell who many considered to be the father of critical race theory. And he argues that racism is a permanent feature of American society because of the way in which the society was structured and so on. I should say there is some disagreement about that within the field. There are other critical race theorists who are a little bit more hopeful than that. Another principle of critical race theory that you often hear about is intersectionality that comes out of Kimberlé Crenshaw's work, for example. And that's the idea that we have to understand the sort of unique ways in which folks of color are positioned within the racial hierarchy. So with black women, for example, are both gendered and raced, and those things cannot be separated as we consider their experiences with marginalization in our society. There are examples of court cases that have really gotten it wrong and have not been able to figure out how to really think about those things in tandem with each other, and Kimberlé Crenshaw writes about that problem. So, there are a number of other tenets that I could speak about, but those are two that I think probably people hear about the most. Mike: Dr. Dixson, do you have anything to add? Adrienne: I agree with what Marvin said for the most part, I think. I would want to kind of underscore in explaining what critical race theory is. For people who study discrimination or racism, it's an analytical or a theoretical frame. For most of us who identify as critical race theorists, it is more than a theoretical framework. It is a perspective on how race and racism, opportunity and inopportunity operate in the US that's grounded in a history of oppressing people of color. And that history is documented, so it's not theoretical; it's not something that is a figment of one's imagination; it is documented history. One of the things that we try to understand is that even in spite of interventions to address that history or redress that history, we still find ourselves with kind of chronic disparities that map onto race. And so what we endeavor to do is to try to understand, well, if the legal obstacles, the de jure obstacles to opportunity, to voting, to schooling, to buying homes, to employment, if the de jure obstacles are eradicated, what accounts for the underrepresentation or the lack of opportunity? And that's where, as critical race theorists, we look at kind of how these historical scripts that emanate from de jure discrimination, how the remnants of that have found their way into our modern day kind of policy making. So what are the kind of common sense, traditional, normal, if you will, rhetorics that we hold about people's ability and their capacity and their fit, their right, who deserves to be in, who deserves to be at an Ivy League, who deserves to be a dean, who deserves to be a professor, that kind of normality, if you will, or rhetorics about that are steeped in these histories of oppressing people of color, against white women, against people who have disabilities, against people who don't speak English as their first language, against people who identify differently from us, gender, sexuality, so we try to understand the persistence of oppressions and again, inequalities. Mike: Okay. So even though critical race theory hasn't had the public spotlight for very long, there's already quite a cornucopia of Nazi lies surrounding it. So browsing the neo-Nazi forum, Stormfront, yields reams of results. Apparently, the Nazis have folded the critical race theory into their whole cultural Marxism conspiracy theory. One poster on the forum describes critical race theory as, "Cultural Marxism applied to law to benefit blacks and browns," that's his exact quote, "while penalizing whites." The poster then goes on to lament that it is targeting white children and even white babies. (Not sure how.) I'm not interested in having you answer to that, but what I do want to talk about is why critical race theory belongs in the classroom. Adrienne: Yeah, well, again, I'll say it's a framing of trying to understand the persistence of inequalities. I don't know that– We've had colleagues who have tried to think and present multiple histories by centering kind of different experiences of people of color. So I think this kind of critical examination of race and racism in the US can be helpful. But I hasten to say that we're teaching critical race theory because it lends itself to this kind of hysteria, and I don't know that we've done enough thinking around what and if it's appropriate in a K-12 classroom. And by appropriate, I don't mean because kids can't handle it. I mean, how do we kind of structure curriculum in a way that maximizes the teaching and learning for kids through a critical race theory lens. So we haven't "tested" any of that, so I would say maybe it's an outlook on the US that one may be inclined to, but I don't know that it's in the classroom. And I'm not saying that it's not appropriate or it is appropriate, I just don't think we're there yet. Mike: Okay. Marvin, do you have anything to add? Marvin: Yeah, I would agree. I have been asked this question over and over and over again, particularly by conservative news outlets who want to claim that critical race theory is everywhere. And, you know, I watched a YouTube video today by Christopher Rufo, who really is the architect of this war against critical race theory. And it started with his friend Trump in the White House and in the executive ban last year, and it has continued with legislation all across the nation and kind of media attacks and school board wars and all kinds of things that are going on. And one of the things that he says is that critical race theory is synonymous with equity; it's synonymous with social justice; it's synonymous with a whole variety of terms and concepts and ideas that we've been using for a very long time in education that are not born of critical race theory. Teachers, for example, have been trying to do what James Banks refers to. James Banks is a multicultural education scholar. In fact, he's one of the progenitors of multicultural education, uses the term equity pedagogy. And when he talks about equity pedagogy, he talks about teachers attempting to draw on students' firsthand knowledge and experience, their culture, their language as a way in which to teach. That is not related to what Adrienne and I have been talking about, which is critical race theory. Which is again, it's grand theory that comes out of the law and that's been applied to education. No, I don't know that critical race theory could be taught in elementary schools. Can you teach children to critically interrogate issues of race and racism? Absolutely. And that is what multicultural education tries to do, is to get kids to think critically about race. Mike: And so before we go on to– Adrienne: And can I add though that what's getting promoted as critical race theory in the classroom is really just a presentation of the kind of multicultural history that we have. So what the white supremacists seem to be upset with is that we're talking about the multiple histories that make up the United States. People of color didn't just emerge in 2008 when Obama became president, right? People of color have been here. And by people of color, I mean, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx folks, Native Americans, American Indians, have been here. They've been here. And now we're talking about what does it mean for those groups that have been here, and what are their histories with the development of the United States, and the development of the United States has been contested. It hasn't been this great westward expansion and a celebration of the pioneers and people who have been here. Those histories have been again, complicated, contested, and if anything, that's what it seems to be, the pushback that people are wrongly attributing to critical race theory. Ron Takaki was talking about multiple histories decades ago. And he was not a critical race theorist. He was a historian. So again, the complication of American history is not the purview of critical race theory, and I think that's what people are misunderstanding. Marvin: Yeah. Anything that critiques inequality in America along any lines or perspective is now considered to be critical race theory. Mike: Yeah. So, I guess on that point, let's talk about some of the terms that are used in critical race theory. We've already covered intersectionality. Dr. Lynn, you described racial realism, which is the idea that racism is a permanent feature of the United States not an aberration from it. How about interest conversions? That was a big term that came up in your book a lot. Adrienne: Yeah. So that's a Derrick Bell term. And what he argued is that the interests of the elite when people who are disenfranchised, people of color who are disenfranchised, the poor, that our interests will never align with the interests of the elites. And so that interest convergence isn't a strategy. And so the Brown decision is an example of interest convergence, where there was a bigger interest by elites that in some ways seemed to align with the interests of people of color who wanted to eradicate de jure racial segregation. But the way that power works is that we won't see the kind of freedom and the relief that we hope for. And if we do, it'll be short term, and the Brown decision kind of encapsulates that. So interest convergence is an analytical frame. Again, it's a way of understanding why when an anti-discrimination or, we could say, anti-racist policy is introduced, why it doesn't do what we hope it will do. Because the kind of liberal wisdom is that if we align our interests or converge our interests with each other (we see this now with the Democrats and the Republicans) then we can somehow come up with a compromise. And what Derrick Bell was saying is that the interests of the elites are always incompatible with the needs of the disempowered, of the oppressed. And so it's not a viable strategy. It shouldn't be something that we argue for, and we will always be in the cycle of oppression and disadvantage if we try to align our interests in a way. Mike: Yeah. And just spell it out further, what were the interests that Bell specifically noted in the Brown vs. Board decision that the elite seemed to have? Adrienne: So in 1954, remember we were under the Red Scare, right? We were in a war for empire, right, who was going to be the superpower, was it going to be the US or was it going to be Russia? And was it going to be democracy or was it going to be communism? It was hard to sell democracy when you have consigned a whole group of people–and not just black people, Latinx people, Asian people, Native Americans–to second class citizenship. We're disenfranchised as a group, substandard everything from housing to schooling to unemployment. And so it was hard to sell democracy around the world when most of the world was black and brown. And so it was in our foreign interests to have something that– Bell would say that Brown was kind of performatory, it was political theater. So it appeared to the world that we had addressed our racial segregation issue when in fact we hadn't. Because the second Brown decision with all deliberate speed acquiesced to Southern whites who were incalcitrant. They were very clear about what they weren't going to do as related to racial segregation, and the court acquiesced to that. So that's the interest. There was the interest of black and brown people, because Latinx folks were a part of the suite of cases that made up the Brown decision, who wanted equal education. They didn't necessarily want to go to school with white people, but what they wanted was their fair share, what they put in by way of their taxes that they would get out. And in fact, what we found is that people of color were double taxed. They were not only paying their taxes, but they were paying more for less. So they were paying in what they were supposed to pay in terms of taxes, but they weren't getting it back, and it was being siphoned to support a dual system of education that advantaged whites. And so what black folks at least in the south won was their fair share. Give me what I put in. So I don't have to go to school with whites, when I put my money in, build schools for our kids. And that's what they sought. And Derrick Bell lamented his role in that. He has a piece called “Serving Two Masters.” And he wrote about how he and Marshall and the whole legal team were so wedded to undoing Jim Crow, which is a lofty idea. But it was on the backs of real people who were suffering in the South and suffering under a racial regime that was very violent. And so they knew the dangers of being forced to be around white folks. And they were under no illusions that just because the Supreme Court got rid of de jure racism they were somehow going to be safe. And we know that after the Brown decision, we entered an equally racially violent time for folks of color. And so they weren't agitating to be next to white folks, what they wanted was their fair share. And so he, Bell, talking about this serving two masters, was that he was on one hand trying to serve these lofty ideals and also thinking that he was serving the people and he wasn't. He was in fact ignoring the people and not serving them. And so his book Silent Covenants was his re-imagining of Brown. What would it have been like if he had actually listened to the people? That he was going to collect their testimony and add their names to the lawsuit so that the Brown decision could be the Brown decision. What if he had actually listened to them? And that the aim wasn't to eradicate racial segregation but to just beef up Plessy, to make it in fact separate and equal, what would we be like as a country if they had pursued that track? Mike: Yeah. So jumping back to racial realism, and for my anti-fascist listeners, it's racial realism not race realism, which is just another way of talking about biological determinism among fascists. We're talking about racial realism which is a CRT term. Can we explain that in terms of the Brown vs. Board decision? Because that was really well explained in the book. Marvin: Sure. I think it relates very well to what Adrienne was talking about in the sense that the structure of white supremacy is such that it doesn't really allow for anything that will work directly against it or break it down. And so these gains that Adrienne was talking about that communities of color can experience through policy and legislation and so on have to be sort of situated within the context of something that ultimately benefits whites. And that speaks to the sort of durability of the structure of white supremacy itself and the way in which it is maintained and its permanence. It makes allowances for shifts and changes, but as a structure, kind of always stays in place. So that's ultimately I think how I view it. Some people would talk about revolution. Bell doesn't talk explicitly about revolution in the way that Marxists talk about that, and so I think to equate critical race theory with Marxism is a misnomer. However, I do think that implicit in this idea of racial realism is the notion that if we are ever going to overcome it, or if it's ever going to change, that we do have to really look at the sort of political, social, economic deep structures of our society and really think about how folks are arrayed within that, and reconsider a whole range of institutional formations, as well as other types of structures that are designed to serve, uplift, and uphold in advance white supremacy, unfortunately to the detriment of folks of color. So again, implicit within the notion is the need for some kind of fundamental change or shift in the way our society is structured if we were going to move beyond racism as a structure. Adrienne: And I do want to say, Bell did have a critique of capitalism. Would he have called himself a neo-Marxist? I don't know, but he– CRT came, it was– CRT scholars initially conferenced with critical legal studies scholars because they were looking for a way of trying to again, understand how, in light of the anti-discrimination law, civil rights law, voting rights act, so on, we still had persistent inequality. And the critical legal studies was a neo-Marxist or Marxist group of scholars, and the class critique just wasn't enough. But Bell had a critique of capitalism, but I don't know that he necessarily would have called himself a Marxist per se, because they believe that there was a relationship between race and class, not just class only and not just race only. CRT has always been kind of interdisciplinary. And to Marvin's point about racial realism, I will say that I've heard people say that critical race theory doesn't have hope or that it's full of despair. And my reading of Bell is that it, this is the racial realism piece, that this is the history that we have in the US. We have a history of racism that remakes itself at every opportunity of great agitation by people of color. So with the reconstruction being one, the civil rights movement being another, I would say there are– Barack Obama's election, although I don't think he was revolutionary, was a major kind of point in our history, and here we are again in a moment of retrenchment and extreme racial hostility on the parts of whites in response to one event, and that was the election of Barack Obama. So again, so Bell would say, which is why he would argue for the permanence of racism, which I agree with, is that racism in the US is not going to go away. It'll show up in different forms. And so now it's showing up in restriction of voting rights, an attack on ideas, attack on teaching and learning. And so it remakes itself; it reforms itself, these formations that Marvin was talking about. Marvin: Yeah, I think I would say too that while critical race theorists, as Adrienne points out, have a critique of maybe what I would call like rampant or rabid capitalism, we are not Marxist because Marxists primarily believe that society is structured mainly according to class and that race for example is sort of, racism is an outcome of class warfare. I don't think most critical race theorists believe that. I think critical race theorists believe that racism is or white supremacy is what we would call the superstructure, so to speak if you want to speak in Marxist terms, and that everything else is connected to and related to that including class. Not to suggest that that capitalism isn't a powerful force and system in and of itself. It is. But that, I think we would argue that white supremacy is as powerful a force, which would be a big difference between critical race theorists and Marxists in terms of their thinking. And these forces reinforce each other, just like sexism and homophobia and Islamophobia, all of these -isms reinforce each other in different ways and support a system that is inherently unequal. Mike: Okay. So I guess more on the terminology, how about we talk about whiteness as property, and I guess first define what whiteness means in critical race theory, Marvin: People have described Cheryl Harris's work as being a critique of capitalism and may be in some ways because she is talking about the way in which white people shifted the notion of their relationship to property, that native people in this country had never viewed themselves as owners of the land, that the land is to be respected, the land is to be valued. They don't personally own it. So this idea of land ownership was a very sort of Western European idea. And unfortunately the way it was developed, the way it manifested itself, is that only a few people had ownership to land and had access to the power and the wealth that then came with land ownership. And those were essentially middle class white men. What Cheryl Harris is pointing out is that white people's skin color, their whiteness in and of itself, gave them access to capital, to land, to power. And so their white skin is valuable and is a form of property that could be valued. And George Lipsitz and other people talk about the same kind of concept of whiteness as something that is inherently valued by white people. E. B. Du Bois talks about whiteness or white skin as a psychological wage. He conducted research that sort of looked at the attitudes of white working class people and their racial attitudes in particular, and many would tell you that they would rather be a poor white person than to be a wealthy black person, because they understand inherently the value of white skin in a white supremacist racist society. So that is what in my view Cheryl Harris is talking about, is the assigned value to whiteness as a form of real property that if you compare the wealth of black people to white people, for example, you see significant difference. Melvin Oliver and [Thomas] Shapiro talked about that, and they've documented historically the wealth gaps between even black wealthy people and white wealthy people, for example. And so that's what she's talking about. It's not about trying to undermine capitalism per se, although yes, they use an inherit critique of the way in which capitalism has unfortunately further marginalized folks of color in this country through the assignment of property. Adrienne: Yeah. I would encourage people to read it because it's a really dope article, because one of the things that she talks about is that in the US property ownership was the way in which people were conferred the franchise. And your wealth was determined by how much property you owned, and that property were people literally and land, and that whiteness functions in that same way, that one can acquire wealth based on the value of their whiteness. And that there are rules with ownership of property. So you can trade it, I mean, you can give it to someone, you can withhold it. And so it was just really beautiful how she used the metaphor property ownership and the laws related to property ownership to talk about how whiteness functions as property in the US. So that was– Mike: Okay. Last one I want to talk about is counter storytelling. Adrienne: Yeah. So counter storytelling is speaking back to what we would say are kind of stock narratives or master narratives about a range of things. So just if we left it in education, kind of the stock narrative about– Mike: The achievement gap? Adrienne: –achievement, yes, is meritocracy. Or why education is so important in the US. Education is the great equalizer. And it's the great equalizer because everyone has the same opportunities. And if you work hard, you too will achieve academically, and then your life will change miraculously. You'll be wealthy, you'll be able to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's the stock narrative about education, public education. And what we endeavor to do as critical race theorists is to kind of turn that stock narrative on its head and to show, because with that stock narrative the reason why then we have fewer students of color graduating from high school, or we have disparities in high school graduation rates, we have disparities in discipline rates, we have disparities in college acceptance, is because there's a problem with students of color, as opposed to questioning that stock narrative and speaking back to it with the experiences of students of color, where we know that there are problems with testing, with students being disciplined more harshly, with schools not offering certain courses, or with restrictions to access for certain courses. So those are examples of possible counter stories, that it's countering the master narrative about the status quo. Marvin: And you know, Michael, one of the things about racism and white supremacy is that it intentionally frames or I'd say misframes folks of color. Intentionally, it puts us in what Adrienne talked about, Ronald Takaki calls an iron cage. And so the view of us and our experience is limited. And you see that on television. Look at the very limited number of depictions of black people and how we're generally depicted. I don't think I've ever seen a black education dean depicted on TV, something I've done for the last 10 years. Because in most people's eyes, they don't exist. And it's because the frame is narrow and limited, and it's from someone else's perspective. And so what Adrienne was talking about is that counter story gives us the chance to tell our own story from our own perspective, using our own voice. And it opens up all kinds of possibilities for us to explore that are heretofore unseen, unheard, invisible. And so the counter story is very important. I do want to say that, I think about Richard Delgado's work as well as Derrick Bell's work. If you read Derrick Bell's early work, Faces At The Bottom Of The Well, for example, is all a counter story. It's a counter narrative, a conversation between two fictionalized characters about race in America. Now the characters are fictionalized, but the issues that they talk about, the laws that they put out, everything is factual that they're discussing. And they're citing chapter and verse from certain legal cases and debating back and forth about them. It gives the writer an opportunity to use maybe a fictionalized character or composite characters, that are a combination of different real characters, to tell stories that are actually based in fact and based in reality. A lot of scholars of color you see in the handbook and in other publications are using the counter story as a way to tell stories about their experiences of trying to get tenure and promotion in higher education and what happens in those meeting rooms when white tenured faculty are considering our cases and how they talk about our work and how they frame it. And so it gives the author the freedom to be able to tell what sometimes are very personal stories in a way that creates, I guess, a little bit of distance because the characters are fictionalized, and it appears like it's a made up story, but in fact, it's very real. It's just that as a way to protect the identity of the actual individuals, there's a fictionalized element to at least who the characters are. Mike: So in the book, critical race theory is described not only as a theory to be taught but also a praxis to be applied in education. Marvin, I believe you take credit for coining the phrase "critical race pedagogy". What does that mean and what does it look like? Marvin: For me at the time, this was 1999, and I was finishing my doctorate program at UCLA. I had done some research with teachers of color in New York City where I did my masters. And what I realized is that their understandings about teaching as a profession, what it meant to teach black and brown kids, what it meant to teach in an urban school, and how one goes about teaching those kids in a way that values who they are, values their living histories and so on, that that story was beginning to be told in brilliant ways by people like Gloria Ladson-Billings and Jackie Irvine and many, many others. They were focused mainly on issues of culture. And I found teachers who were very, very interested in talking in very explicit ways about race and race in the classroom and trying to draw on some principles of critical race theory as a way to help kids understand who they are as racialized individuals, but how racism is functioning in every aspect of their lives. I didn't find the literature to really support that kind of pedagogical work in the classroom and so I found a nice connection between what these teachers were trying to articulate and critical race theory, which is really about giving voice to folks of color, but also centralizing race and racism and how it operates in our very lives, but also taking a global perspective on that too and thinking about how it functions and how it situates us more broadly. That was really my effort, to try to think about and be explicit about how teachers talk about and deal with issues of race and racism that really move beyond but also incorporate issues of culture and language and so on. Mike: Adrienne, do you have anything to add on critical race pedagogy, critical race theory as praxis. Adrienne: Yeah. I would say critical race theory as praxis is I think what I endeavor to do as a scholar in my work is to move beyond an article, move beyond a conference paper, move beyond just sitting at my desk to operationalize it. That means connecting on the ground with folks who are organizing against educational racism through school closings or the proliferation of charter schools. That's the kind of critical race praxis pieces that kind of make the work live beyond the page and to be a part of the organizing and the movement-making that folks are engaged in. Mike: Okay. Well, Dr. Lynn, Dr. Dixson, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast and giving the people an education in education. Again, the book is the Handbook of Critical Race Theory in Education out from Routledge, a very good book. I strongly recommend it. And thanks again for coming on the pod. Marvin: Thank you for having me. Adrienne: Thank you so much. Yeah, this was great. Thank you. [Theme song]

Mike Isaacson: Da j00z! [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOsLizards wearing human clothesHinduism's secret codesThese are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genesWarfare keeps the nation cleanWhiteness is an AIDS vaccineThese are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocideMuslim's rampant femicideShooting suspects named Sam HydeHiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the copsSecret service, special opsThey protect us, not sweatshopsThese are nazi lies Mike: At the core of nazi lies is antisemitism. Since the Second World War it has disguised itself in many guises–Rothschilds, Soros, Bildebergs, lizard people. At its core is an all-powerful entity controlling the masses and aiming to destroy the nation through the corruption of culture and politics, which remains at the heart of fascist conspiracy theory. One of the ur-texts of Jew hatred in the 21st century is David Duke's book “Jewish Supremacism,” which makes the claim that not only do Jews control the world, but that our religion teaches us to do so. Today, we're joined by Ben Siegel who has his master's in Religion, the Hebrew Bible, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies from the Claremont School of Theology. (Wow, that's a mouthful.) Welcome to The Nazi Lies Podcast, Ben. Ben Siegel: Thanks for having me Mike. I'm grateful for the opportunity to trash a Jew hater's biblical scholarship. Mike: [laughs] Very good. Okay, so before we get into Duke's book, let's talk a bit about how Judaism works, because it's very unlike Christianity. Can you give us a rundown of how Jewish law and Jewish morality works? Ben: Sure. I'll do my best. Now the Jewish legal system, known in Hebrew as halakha, is a comprehensive framework that informs the behaviors of religious, and also frequently secular, Jews. It takes as its starting point the written text, the Torah, the biblical books of Genesis through Deuteronomy, from which it derives 613 mitzvot, meaning laws or commandments, as authoritative God-given instruction on how to live an observant Jewish life. So from those texts, considered the written Torah, what's called the oral Torah is derived. This comprises successive centuries worth of interpretation of the written Torah by rabbis. The earliest of these is the Mishnah, which was compiled early in the second century of the common era, and the Gemara, rabbinical commentary on the Mishnah that was put together between the second and fifth centuries CE. These commentaries were collected to produce the Talmud. Now one in the Galilee region of Israel between 300 and 350 CE, known as the Jerusalem Talmud, and the second far more extensive Talmud compiled in Babylon in about 450 to 500 CE. This is the Babylonian Talmud. This is the one that people tend to cite most. It's really these long, extensive discourses weighing legal arguments on virtually every topic that was relevant to Jews during these periods, from personal and communal religious devotion to economic regulations to laws concerning marriage, dietary restrictions, relations with non-Jews; you name it. Now the Talmud is upheld to this day by most Jewish communities across the world as the basis for living an appropriate Jewish life in accordance with halakha and in accordance with God's will and vision for the world. Halakha informs Jewish ethics to a great deal as much as it undergirds legal and political concerns–a concern for ethical treatment of one's community and one's neighbors, stemming from the collective memory of slavery in Egypt, an ethics of solidarity, really, righteousness, compassion, and justice, in effect. Mike: Okay, so Duke takes aim at our self-description as the chosen people. This is commonly misinterpreted. What does it mean when the Jews say we are the chosen people? Ben: As the old saying goes, “How odd of God to choose the Jews.” So there's this notion that God selected the Israelites for a particular theological mission, to live according to His laws, and to be a light unto nations, inspiring other people through their example. But there's also this idea that the Jews chose God. That Abraham and his descendents embraced monotheism through a special and unique relationship with the deity. Chosenness in this sense isn't indicative of inherent ethnic or racial superiority, as Duke argues. I'd feel safe saying he's projecting his own white supremacist views onto the Jews here. Mike: You don't say. Ben: [laughs] Yeah, I do.  Mike: Okay, so another thing that David Duke derides is our holidays. Specifically, he describes Purim and Pesach as a celebration of the slaughter of gentiles, which I find absolutely laughable. Do you want to clear that one up? Ben: This would absolutely be hilarious if it weren't so malicious. Pesach celebrates the liberation of the Israelite people from slavery and oppression in Egypt. Recalling the ten plagues during the seder does recognize the suffering inflicted upon the Egyptians to make this happen. But this isn't a joyful moment. It's typically somber. The recitation of each plague is followed by dripping a drop of wine from our cups onto our plates to signify how we ourselves are diminished by the Egyptians' suffering. There's also a similarly warped misinterpretation of Purim going on here, where we celebrate the prevention of genocide against us. So in the Purim story, Haman had ordered the Jews put to death. The Megillah Esther makes it clear that the 70,000+ Persians killed at the end of the book are those sent by Haman to slaughter the Jews. And the Jews were only able to defend themselves because king Ahasuerus gives them permission to pick up swords. And to be frank, Mike, defense against genocide seems to a pretty legitimate cause for merrymaking.  Mike: Yeah, no, for sure. It's a really fun holiday if you've ever celebrated it, you know. It's a lot of dress up… I've heard it described as basically a combination of Halloween and New Years all wrapped into one. It's really fun.  Ben: Sure, if you like to drink and scream, Purim is the holiday for you. Mike: There you go. [laughs] Okay, so now let's get into the nitty gritty. So, David Duke cites a whole bunch of scriptures to make the Jews out to be haters of all things goyishe, or non-Jewish, with scriptural references that appear to justify unscrupulous behavior towards them. First of all, before we get into that, what does the word “goy” mean? Ben: Well it would be prudent to acknowledge that the term “goy” changes meaning slightly over time. In the biblical text, it means nation or people, not nation in the modern sense of Westphalian nation-states, but more as a homogenous ethnic identity. The Israelites were recognized as a goy here. Most notably, Exodus 19 where God promises Abraham that he will make his people “goy gadol,” a great people, Exodus 19:6. As we enter into the rabbinic period, where the Jews in the diaspora are negotiating Jewish identity as a minority population, goy predominantly takes on the meaning of non-Jew as a distinguishing marker. This interpretation of “goy” has persisted to this day, and is perhaps the most commonly recognized usage of the term. I have seen discussions among antisemites who misinterpret it as meaning “cattle,” based on connotations in Talmudic texts. But these texts offer a strict binary worldview where “Jew” is seen as akin to human, whereas non-Jews are aligned with animals. I think it's important to make the distinction that this framework is a legal one not necessarily a political one. Post exilic diaspora Jews did not have the kind of social power needed to foster political programs that affected the disenfranchisement of other groups typically associated with rhetorics of dehumanization.  Mike: Okay, so kind of on that point, Duke points to a number of decontextualized passages from Jewish scripture which describe gentiles in various negative ways: barbarians, animals, animal-fuckers. And I've got a few passages here which I've provided to you in advance. So there's Gemara Kiddushin 68a, Yebamoth (and correct me on any of these pronunciations) Yebamoth 98a, Baba Mezia 114a-b, Abodah Zarah 22a-b, and Baba Mezia 108b. Can you give us a little exegesis? Ben: I'd be happy to, but first I want to talk about how Duke sourced these texts. There's been some commentary on him plagiarizing Kevin McDonald who is an evolutionary psychologist working out of Cal State University-Long Beach. He uses the same arguments and the citations. But it also appears that Duke took many of the translations of these texts from a book by Elizabeth Dilling, who was a far-right political activist in the 1930s, noted antisemite, who went to Nazi Germany and spoke very highly of what she saw there. So with these translations that he's using, I think it's important that we take it with an enormous grain of salt, first of all. Mike: Right. Ben: But also the thing I've noticed most about non-Jews who rage against the Talmud is that they haven't read the damn thing. And frankly, I haven't read all of it either. It's an enormous body of text. And in that body of text there are, you know, rabbis disagreeing with each other. So one view may be held, and the exact opposite view is going to be upheld a line down. Just worth noting for when we're looking at these texts that are obviously cherry-picked. Mike: Right. Ben: The first one you mentioned, Kiddushin 68a, it's from a tractate that deals with rules pertaining to marriage and engagement laws. Now what Duke says about this is the Talmud denotes gentiles as animals. So here it's forbidding the betrothal of an Israelite to a Canaanite maidservant. One thing, there's no Canaanites in third century Persia at this time, so this is purely a hypothetical situation. But it's really this legal justification for not marrying non-Jews because of the potential for them to influence a Jew's worship in a negative way, so that they won't follow halakha. And there's definitely a discussion here of identifying them as like an animal, but it's not a similar dehumanization that we see in typical nazi rhetoric of like “Jews are cockroaches” or “Jews are vermin.” It's like, here is this category of thing that is not us, and we cannot mix with that. Does that make sense? Mike Yeah, I guess. Does the issue of her being a maidservant matter in a subordinate position to the person?  Ben: Some rabbis argue yes; some rabbis argue no. But really it's more that who she is, based on this identity, is making the betrothal ineffective. It's not considered valid. Mike: Okay, so like– Ben: Yeah. Mike: Go ahead. Ben: No, go right ahead. Mike: Okay, yeah continuing right along, let's go to Yebamoth 98a? Ben: Yeah, Yebamoth deals with rules of yibbum. This is what's commonly known as levarite marriage, where the brother of a man who died without children is permitted and encouraged to marry the widow. What Duke has this translated as is that all gentile children are animals. It doesn't say anything of the sort here. It's saying that the children of gentiles don't have a father. They don't have a patrilege. Like the offspring of a male gentile is considered no more related to him than the offspring of donkeys or horses. It's just a way of saying that the rabbis don't care who the kid's dad is. It's like, they couldn't be bothered. Mike: I see. Ben: They're not interested in the patrilege of non-Jews. They're really more concerned with Jewish family ties. Mike: Okay, so moving along, there's two passages from Baba Metzia, one is 114a-b and one is 108b. Ben: Mmhmm. Baba Metzia discusses civil matters. That is property, law of usury, other issues such as lost property and damages done to it. So the issue here is again, categorizing– Duke takes issue with the categorizing of goyim as non-human. And again, it comes down to the same thing. It's less that they are not recognized as human, and more that it is an issue of ritual purity because they don't adhere to the same religious standards. Therefore, they necessarily can't contaminate certain Jewish sacred spaces. Mike: That's probably– Ben: And– Mike: Go ahead. Ben: Yeah, sorry go ahead. Mike: I was gonna say, it's probably also worth noting that like many Jews, I would venture even to say most Jews, probably don't follow a lot of these laws. [laughs] Ben: Yeah, many of them aren't even aware of them. You know, you can spend your entire life studying these texts and maybe come across it once. You know, there are thousands of these tractates. Mike: And last in this category was Abodah Zarah 22a-b. Ben: Mmhmm. [laughs] This one's funny. Duke says gentiles prefer sex with cows. What the text is actually saying is that the animal of a Jew is more appealing to gentiles than their own wives. [laughs] So, I don't know if this intentionally, you know, throwing some shade gentiles and their own marriage relations, but it seems more in keeping with a concern that's held by the Talmudic sages of how do you ensure that an animal that you are sacrificing is ritually pure. That means it has no blemishes; it is handicapped in any way; but very importantly, that it has not had any sexual relations with anybody. So Abodah Zarah, literally meaning “foreign worship” or “strange service,” it deals with how to live with people who don't adhere to the same religious convictions. And the concern of beastiality is kind of a big, overarching theme in this text to the point that there are many discussions of concern about whether or not you can purchase a sacrificial animal from a goy. Some rabbis say no; some say yes. Interestingly enough, there is one narrative in the text, where a goy named Dama– The rabbis go to him, and purchase a red heifer which is like a really big omen in the bible. It's like huge. That's like primo sacrifice. And he is upheld as a righteous goy and as someone who would never shtup his cow. So what's really interesting here is that you've got these two different voices in the text that are both preserved as authoritative. One, there is the concern that the goy will engage in beastiality. The other is this one goy Dama who is upheld as an example of righteousness in regards to being able to buy, you know, a sacrificial animal for him. Of course, Duke isn't going to look at this text because it doesn't serve his overall purpose as vilifying the Jewish people as anti-goy. Mike: And before we continue, I want to inform our listeners that shtup is a Yiddish word for “having sex with.” Ben: Yeah, literally it means “push,” but yeah, it means sex. Mike: Alright so, Duke also makes the claim that there are different laws that Jews follow when it comes to dealing with the goyim. So he specifically points to Gittin 57a, Abadoh Zarah 67b, Sanhendrin 52b, Sanhedrin 105a-b and 106a-b. Can you explain what's going on in those passages? Ben: Sure, so my understanding of his gripe with Gittin 57a is what is the punishment for Jesus in the next world, saying that he will be boiled in excrement. He's going to be punished in boiling poop, and that anyone who mocks the word of the sages will be sentenced to boiling excrement. This was his sin, as he mocked the words of the sages. And the Gemara comments come and see the difference between these sinners of Israel and the prophets of the nations of the world as Balaam, who was a prophet, wished Israel harm whereas Jesus the Nazarene, who was a Jewish sinner, sought their wellbeing. So there is this, kind of– There's some antagonism towards Jesus in the text because of its function as– Jesus's function and Christianity's function as a counter-claim to the inheritance of Abraham and of Isaac and Jacob. So there's some theological competition going on here. Mike: And what about Abodah Zarah 67b? Ben: Mmhmm. “The halakha from the case of gentiles that require purging. Vessels that gentiles used for cooking that the Torah requires that one purge through fire and ritually purify before they may be used by Jews.” You know, he seems to be indicating that– Duke seems to be indicating that the text is saying that goyim are dirty. But this isn't an argument for, like, hygienic cleaning. The ancient Israelites and Talmudic sages didn't have a germ theory of disease. What they're talking about is purifying these vessels for religious purposes, specifically. They have to be rededicated for their sacred use because they may have come in contact with forbidden food, with non-kosher food. Mike: Right, so this is about the laws of kashrut, right? Ben: Yeah, precisely. And again this is Abodah Zarah which is all about how do we do our religion properly with all of these other influences around us. Mike: Right, okay so Sanhendrin 52b. Ben: Yeah, this is another Jesus one. So Duke says that the person being punished in this text is Jesus, and he sees this as an anti-Jesus text. But the text doesn't mention Jesus whatsoever. It's a general rule for capital punishment by strangulation which is outlined in Leviticus. So this is one of your big nazi lies. He doesn't mention– They don't mention Jesus here. Mike: Is this one of the ones where he mentions Balaam or something? Ben: I believe so. Mike: Okay, can you talk about who Balaam is, because Duke misidentifies him as Jesus. Ben: Yeah he does that a lot. So in the book of Numbers, Balaam is a prophetic figure, identified in the text as a false prophet, who goes to send a curse against the Israelite people, and he is himself cursed for it and put to death. So he's kind of like this figure of those who would seek the destruction the Jewish people. He's a big bad. Mike: Right, and since he's in the book of Numbers which is the Torah, right? Ben: Yeah. Mike: Yeah, I mean, that would mean that this is, like, well before Jesus's time, right? Ben: Absolutely. Mike: Like there's no way this would have been Jesus. Ben: For sure. Granted, there are certain Christian interpreters of the text who see Hebrew bible references to Jesus throughout. Mike: Right. Ben: So they kind of see Jesus as foreshadowed in so much. Mike: Alright so, moving on, Sanhendrin 105a-b? Ben: So this one's interesting because it says that Balaam was a diviner by using his penis. [both laugh] And he's one who engaged in beastiality with his donkey. So what Duke takes to be a condemnation of Jesus, because he's misidentified Jesus with Balaam, is really kind of like textbook Talmudic condemnation of a big bad goy. Now here's a guy who sought the destruction of the Jewish people. In the book of Numbers he's got this talking donkey who prevents him– who tries to stop him from going forward with his mission. And we know that he was bad because, according to the Talmud, he had sex with his donkey. There's this major preoccupation with bestiality in the Talmud, and it is weird as hell. But it's there, and we've got to deal with it. [laughs] Mike: Okay, and Sanhendrin 106a-b. Ben: Again, this one's not about Jesus, but rather about Balaam who has been misidentified with Jesus. I think this is– this kind of misidentification is just indicative of Duke not doing his homework. My understanding is that he took these from Dilling, and he never fact-checked to see if, you know, this is what the text says or this is what the text identifies. You know, this is bad scholarship on his part which is probably to be expected from this guy who defrauded his own his own white supremacist organization and has a fake degree. Mike: Right, and he even says in the book that he's not doing anything original, that it's just collected from other sources. Ben: Right. Mike: Well, since we're on the subject of Jesus, we may as well go with the rest of the passages that I have here. So Sanhendrin 90a. I'm kind of skipping around here. Ben: Yeah this one's all about prohibition against idol worship. And you said this one is Jesus-related? Mike: That's what he said, yeah. About Christianity and Jesus, yeah. Ben: I don't find much to do with Jesus in this text. Jesus isn't mentioned in this one. It's primarily about idol worship and people who prophesize with regards to it. Maybe he's trying to say that, like, the preoccupation with idol worship is a condemnation of Christianity, but I'm just not seeing where he's getting Jesus out of this. Mike: Okay then, on that same subject Shabbat 116a. Ben: Yeah, holy books in Babylonian temples. Now is this the one where he says a goy can't read the text? Mike: It might be, yeah. Or a Christian can't read the text. Ben: Yeah, oh no, this is a really particular one. Again this one is just– There's a lot of rhetorical violence against those who do the religion improperly or don't treat the sacred texts as they should. You know, these are practices and artifacts that are very important to the Jewish people, so they hold them in very high regard. Mike: So I guess moving along, Duke refers to a number of passages in the Bible that he takes to mean that Jews are preoccupied with racial integrity. (Projection much?) He points specifically to Sanhendrin 59a, Deuteronomy 7:2-6, Ezra 9:1-2 and 9:12, Leviticus 20:24, and Nehemiah 13:3. So what do these passages say and what do they actually mean? Ben: With Sanhedrin 59a, which Sanhedrin primarily deals with criminal law, it says that “A gentile who engages in Torah study is liable to receive the death penalty. As it is stated: ‘Moses commanded us a law, an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.'” This is from Deuteronomy 33:4. “Indicating that it is an inheritance for us, and not for them.” So there is one sage, a rabbi Yokhanon who is arguing that goyim who study Torah, you know, they're liable to be put to death. You know, they expose themselves to capital punishment. He's arguing this because they view the Torah with such high esteem; it is their most sacred text. They want to preserve it. Now this text is followed a line or two down by a counterargument. It says, “You have therefore learned that even a gentile who engages Torah study is considered like a high priest.” So you've got one argument saying that a goy who studies Torah is liable to be put to death, and another that says that they have an incredible status, that studying Torah gives them very high regard. But this again is one of those instances where Duke does not consider that might undermine his central thesis that Jews are bad, are always bad, and will always be bad. Mike: Okay, so what about the Deuteronomy passages? Ben: Deuteronomy is fascinating. We could do a whole discussion of that book in and of itself because it is–Deuteronomy in Greek means “second law”–but it is kind of a later law code that is arguably the result of a very kind of reactionary sect of Israelite theology that does not see coexistence with people who don't worship YHWH as possible. And rhetorically, what they are saying is when the Israelites get to the promised land, they are to commit genocide against the peoples of the land. Don't intermarry with them because that could lead to apostasy, that could lead to illicit worship. You know, their daughters will lead you to serve other gods. The sense here is that Israel is a holy people, God has chosen them to be special unto him, and if they allow this foreign influence to affect them, that will be undermined. Mike: Okay, and what about the Ezra text? Ezra 9:1-2 and 9:12. Ben: Yeah, there's some scholarship to indicate that Ezra and Nehemiah represent one scholarly tradition. So after the Babylonian empire was defeated by the Persian empire, the Persians allowed the community of Israelites that had been taken into exile, the golah community, to return to the land, to rebuild the temple, and to reestablish rule. So one of the concerns of the returning community is this very specific idea that the reason they were exiled in the first place is because God is punishing them for worshipping other gods. And that sense also undergirds the theology of the book of Deuteronomy. So their solution is that, to prevent that from ever happening again, they have to divorce from the non-Israelite wives that they had married that might lead them into temptation. Now this is the view of the returning community, not the community that had stayed in the land of Israel during that time. So these would have been the intelligentsia, the priestly class, the aristocracy, skilled laborers, so it's not a normative view, but it kind of becomes normative because it becomes the dominant voice of the text, if that makes any sense. But they are saying that for the sake not just of religious purity but also to establish power for themselves, you know, the returning community has a claim to power in the land, not just because they have, you know, they have a connection to it where they are before the exile, but they are supported by the Persian imperial power. They're making this new claim of identity and religiosity to assert that power. Mike: Okay and what about Leviticus 20:24? Ben: “You shall inherit their land” (“Them” being the Canaanites.) “that I will give unto you to possess it, a land that flows with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God that separated you from other people.” So this is God telling the Israelites that they will be given the promised land because God has chosen them, has separated them. The word “kodesh,” to be holy, also means separate. So it's really a theological category, not an ethnic one. You know, the Israelites are separate from these people and are given the land because of their adherence to the covenant at Sinai, not because they are of a particular ethnic or racial background. Mike: Okay, so we talked a little bit about kind of the somewhat genocidal tendencies I guess. And so David Duke talks about massacres perpetrated by Jews in the bible. He points to Deuteronomy 20:10-18, Isaiah 34:2-3. and Joshua 6:21 and 10:28-41. And when I mentioned Joshua to you, you kind of rolled your eyes at it. Ben: Yeah. Mike: So I guess let's start with Joshua then. Ben: Yeah, I do. Good. Joshua's a fascinating text. Scholars pretty much agree that it has no, or little to no, basis in historical fact. You know, one of these is that, these texts Joshua 6:21, is the destruction of the city of Jericho which according to archeological records happened several hundred years prior to when this narrative is supposed to have taken place. But what's being discussed here in 21 is the devotion of the city to the Lord, the destruction of every living thing in it. So, you know, this is absolutely a genocidal text. It's a purification of the land by the sword and by flame. So typically in war in the ancient near east, you could take slaves, you could take cattle as war booty. But what is being done here is the destruction of all of that, saying that everything belongs to God, and as such it must be destroyed and sacrificed unto him. But it's also seen as a kind of justice because here are these, for lack of a better word, pagans who stand in the way of the Israelite mission, and who may also tempt the Israelites to turn away from the path of God. So it's absolutely this violent, theologically motivated holy war, genocidal slaughter, maintained in the text. And I do think it's important to wrestle with these notions. You know, whether or not it actually happened, it's still– It's there, and it informs a great deal of thinking. It informed the colonization of the New World, whereby settlers from Europe saw themselves as Israelites and the indigenous people here as Canaanites. Robert Allen Warrior is an indigenous scholar who's done a lot of work on this. But then, the Joshua narrative also informed many of the early Zionists, and they saw themselves as, as Rachel Haverlock called the Joshua generation. Like, Ben Gurion assembled a number of different people to do bible studies on the book of Joshua. It is a text of settler colonialism and can be used to justify that kind of political programme. Mike: Okay so back to Deutero– Ben: If that's what you're trying to do, Joshua is a good place to pull from. Mike: Okay so back to Deuteronomy, 20:10-18. What's being said in there? Ben: “When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open its gates, all the people shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage in battle, lay siege to the city.” And the ban, or kherem, is in effect there. So destroy, destroy, destroy, and leave nothing because everything is for God. It's the same scenario– In this instance, the people in the land are given the opportunity to surrender, otherwise they are subject to the sword. It's very similar to the kind of warfare described in other texts from the ancient near east, whether they're Assyrian or Babylonian. So it's not uncommon to see this kind of siege warfare described, and it's not necessarily unique to the Israelite people. Mike: Right, I mean, yeah, I mean that was one of the things that happened to the Israelite people, at least in engaging the Romans, right? Ben: Yeah, precisely. Mike: Okay, what about Isaiah 34:2-3? Ben: This one's interesting because it's not actually a narrative of slaughter. It's a prophetic oracle delivered against the people of Edom, the Edomites, for betraying the Israelites to the Babylonians and assisting in their imperial endeavors. It's saying that, you know, you will be destroyed. You know, the corpses of your people will lay in the street. So it's not an actual thing that happened. It's part of a type of prophetic literature called oracles against the nations where the prophet of a particular book will condemn a specific people on God's behalf. Keep in mind that the prophets aren't really seen as their own agents. They're the agents of God; they speak God's word. So God through Isaiah is saying, here's what's going to happen to you because of your betrayal. Mike:  Okay, so this next part is probably going to need a trigger warning or something. So there's some really strange passages that he cites about rape and virginity that I honestly haven't looked at because by the time I got to these passages I was just tired of him being wrong every time I checked the passages he cited. So he cites Kethuboth 11b, Sanhedrin 55b and 69a-b, Yebamoth 57b, 58a, and 60b. So let's start with Kethuboth. Ben: Right, yeah, so here he's– The issue is Bath Sheeba, when she gave birth to Solomon, whether or not she was six years old, or whether or not she was an earlier age. It's not saying that six-year-olds are appropriate– or that six is an appropriate age for sexual relations with a girl. It's arguing at what age a child can conceive. Like when is conception possible? And it's saying that because Bath Sheeba gave birth to Solomon when she was six, it's somewhere around that time. Yeah, this whole discourse is really gnarly.  Mike: Okay, so what about Sanhendrin 55b? Ben: So here it's about a girl who is three years and one day whose father has arranged for her to be married, and betrothal is through intercourse. It's concerning the legal status of the intercourse with her, if it's like full-fledged sex. Really here the text is examining forbidden sexual acts that cause ritual impurity and calamity. And prior to this specific quotation is a broader context of unwitting beastiality, like beastiality that you didn't know you did. It's not justifying sex with minors; it says that the act renders the man ritually impure and liable to be put to death. Lucky for the child, I guess lucky, is that they're exempt from execution because they're a minor. Small condolence I guess. Mike: Okay so it's basically saying the opposite of what David Duke said. Ben: Yeah. Mike: Okay, what about 69a-b? Ben: I mean, this is probably a discussion of the legal ramifications of this act. Mike: Yeah this is actually, this says exactly what you were talking about earlier. So “A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabitated with her, she becomes his.” Blah blah blah. Ben: Yeah, because it's Yebamoth– It's Yebamoth, right? Mike: No this is Sanhendrin. Ben: Oh Sanhendrin. So this is, yeah, criminal law. So this is the liability of criminal punishment, but also these rabbis debated everything. What is the likelihood that a three-year-old is going to be married to someone who then dies and then has to be– Again they have the option to be married to their brother so that the dead brother's lineage doesn't end. They're really negotiating, like, every possible eventuality that might happen just in case. You know, all of these are hypothetical situations. And, you know, they're gross. Some of them are just really fucked up. Mike: [laughs] Yeah Jews like to talk about a lot of weird hypotheticals. Alright so now onto the Yebamoth one. So 57b. Ben: Yeah, Yebamoth 57b. This one I've got, “A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired by marriage in coition.” So yeah, the sex act is technically allowed. It's not condoning it. But because three-year-old girls cannot become pregnant, it's still technically forbidden because it's a waste of seed in non-procreative sex. So it's saying that she can't conceive via sexual intercourse, so it's really forbidden because sex in this worldview is not for pleasure; it's purely for procreation. So if you are wasting sperm engaging in this sex act, it's a bad thing. Not going to lie, this one's fucked up. Mike: Yeah, what about 58a? Ben: Um, doesn't say anything about minors. Mike: Really? Ben: Just, yeah, I didn't see anything about minors in this one. Mike: What about rape? Ben: Most likely. Let me just take a closer look. Mike: Or virginity or something? Ben: Yeah, do you have a quote on this one? Mike: Not sure. I mean, I don't have quotes on any of these because again I stopped looking at them. Ben: Yeah, and a lot of it is just like– It's kind of he said, she said. I don't know. I don't take David Duke's reading of these in good faith, and I don't think we can. Mike: This is a weird passage. There's something about “Through betrothal alone a woman is not entitled to eat.” This is so strange. Ben: I mean I would lie if I said that I understood the majority of Talmudic literature. Mike: Right. Ben: You know, people can spend seven years reading this entire work all the way through. The law of tamurah. Mike: Yeah, and, I mean, even– David Duke doesn't even necessarily quote these passages. He just references them. And I guess, like you said, he probably pulls them from other sources without reading them. Ben: Yeah, I– With this, I can't even tell, like, what he's arguing. Like, what is the– What issue is he taking here? Mike: Yeah, I would suggest that our listeners read this passage and try to figure out what the fuck David Duke has a problem with. Ben: Yeah exactly. Yeah [sarcastically] read David Duke's book. You'll have fun. Mike: Yeah, no don't read David Duke's book, but you can read the Talmud, that's pretty good. Ben: Spend seven years reading the whole thing. You can do it, a daf a day. Mike: Alright, do you have any notes on Yebamoth 60b? Ben: So this is where the Gemara cites another ruling related to who is considered a virgin. And it's not condoning sex with a three-year-old. It says that in the event of that happening, she remains a virgin because her hymen grows back. Like if it's through a sex act with an adult man or if her hymen is ruptured by wood. You know, she's still considered a virgin because it grows back. I don't know if that's medically true. Mike: Yeah, I was– Ben: Sounds like bullshit, but the issue here is virginity as it relates to being able to determine paternity in the long run. Mike: Okay, alright, so Judaism has changed a lot since these texts were written. So what can we say about the ethos of Judaism now as it relates to these texts? Ben: Right, obviously most Jews aren't concerned with the majority of the issues we've addressed here today. You know, they don't spend a lot of time thinking about beastiality, thank goodness. But I think if there is a single Jewish ethos, it's an affirmation of being the people of Israel, literally meaning “to wrestle with God,” Yis-ra-el. Engagement in argument over Torah are so central to our people's identity that even secular atheist Jews still contend with these issues. So as many different types of Jews as there are and how many different ways they approach the text, there still profoundly, proudly participating in a longstanding tradition that's engaging with and arguing with the tradition. I think that's the modern Jewish ethos, and it's much the same as the ancient but adapted to the current context: How do we live a good life?  Mike: Word, well Ben Siegel, thank you so much for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast and taking the time to do the tedious work of debunking David fucking Duke. [both laugh] You can catch Ben on Twitter and Facebook at Anarcho-Judaism. Ben: Mike it has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. [Theme song]

Mike C-Roc Ciorrocco is the CEO of People Building, Inc., and the powerhouse behind the "What Are You Made Of?" movement. He is a performance coach, author, dynamic public speaker, visionary, and thought leader. He has been featured by Yahoo! Finance as one of the Top Business Leaders to Follow in 2020 and is on a mission to build people. He is driven to inspire others and he measures his success on how he is able to help others achieve greatness. C-Roc had a fire lit in him at an early age. That fire has ignited him with a fierce desire to compel people to see the greatness inside themselves using past life events to fuel their fire. Past hardships can be a powerful gravitational force that keeps you down and forces you to think small. To get out of orbit you need Rocket Fuel. Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco shows you how to convert past adversity into ROCKET FUEL to break free from the negative pull of pain and despair. In his new book, C-Roc offers life-changing lessons in personal transformation by asking yourself What Are You Made Of? This powerful question will ignite within you a thrust to greatness! Learn how to overcome painful past obstacles and achieve a fulfilling life where you're in command of your future. If you're ready to shoot for the stars, C-Roc says, "Thrust is a must!" Strap in and get ready for the ride of your life. Mike's latest book: https://amzn.to/3wwkTX5 CEO - People Building, Inc. C-Roc's Website: https://www.mikecroc.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeycroc/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikeciorrocco YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGWHuKojqZfcXmvGCAi_t1Q LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ciorrocco/ Email: info@peoplebuildinginc.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, welcome, everybody. Today, my guest is Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco. I'm really excited to have this talk with him and I know you're going to enjoy this. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Mike: Thank you, Joe. I'd like to start every interview that I go on with gratitude and just really express that to you for allowing me to come on and share with you. And thank you to your audience for listening and showing up. Joe: Absolutely, man, I love that gratitudes a huge thing in my life, so I'm right there with you. I appreciate it. I think it's important that everyone has their back story makes up sort of what they've become in life. You know, it doesn't define who they become. But there is something about what has happened throughout your life leading up to where you are now that has molded this person that you've become. And I Mike: Right. Joe: Am interested in that. And and I always start with this, just like you always start. What is it? What are you made of? Right. That's what you Mike: They Joe: Start Mike: Had to turn your head sideways, I love Joe: perfect! Mike: It, you know, now, you know, I came from a broken home. I don't remember my parents together, Joe. I grew up around a lot of broken people, alcoholics, drug addicts, people suffering from anxiety, depression. My grandmother committed suicide after taking too much anti anxiety or depression medication. You know, a lot of things I went through as a kid just watching just destruction. And, you know, I think that decisions we make and Focus's that we have either go towards living and surviving or destruction. And I was seeing the destruction part and I wasn't OK with that. And I didn't want to accept that. So I would always try to help people switch around even from a young age. I was just not OK with what I was seeing. And, you know, my mom when I was three or four years old, I just remember her always telling me that I inspired her and I was going to be a leader. And I think subconsciously, subconsciously, she was doing that because she knew what was going on in the family and knew that I was gonna have to deal with some things. And so I had that programmed into me. So I was always just looking for people to help, looking for people to show them a better way and not buying into what they were telling themselves. And so, you know, that's just something I experienced at a young age. And really when it came down, what lit my fire and what I made of, I would say, is rocket fuel. Because when I was eight, my mom was moving on to her third marriage and I wasn't really up for going into another man's house and learned another man's rules Joe: Hmm. Mike: And but decided to give my dad a try who was moving on to his second marriage. And at that time, you know. I broke my mom's heart by doing that. I didn't know that at the time, but she told me later on that, you know, she cried herself to sleep at night when I left and I was our first child, you know, and when I moved to my dad's, everything seemed fine at first. But after three years, you know, during that three years, there was a lot of conflict. You know, there's a when you had step parents into the mix, any time that stuff happens. The kid is the only link between the past relationship and so a lot gets taken out on the children and anybody that's been in a broken home that dealt with child support, custody battles every other weekend, things that parents jealous, things like just everybody that's been through that knows what I'm talking about. And so a lot of that time they're in from eight to 11 hours, experience a lot of emotional, psychological abuse threats, things like that that were really probably not directed towards me, but came my way. And at nine years old, I would sleep with my baseball bat a lot of nights Joe: Wow. Mike: Because I was scared. And no kid should have to go through that, through that, of course. But that's what went into making me look. I went through these things. I went through court, child psychologists, to see if I was mature enough that at a young age to figure out who I wanted to live with, like all that kind of stuff Joe: Make Mike: And. Joe: Your own decisions, all of that, that crazy. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: And seeing parents fight Joe: Yeah. Mike: And, you know, just just not not happy environment, and so that's what went into me. But the thing is, is that I was always on the right side of the track. Thank God. I was always looking at how can I be better not being accepting of it. Let me look at the bright side of things. Let me look at, OK, what is this doing and how can I take advantage of using this to a better life? So one weekend I was coming home from my mom's house Joe: And Mike: And Joe: So Mike: I Joe: I don't mean to interrupt. Was this Mike: Noticed Joe: All Mike: For. Joe: In Maryland or all back on the East Coast or. Mike: This is in Pennsylvania, outside of Philly. Joe: Ok, cool. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. Mike: So so my mom was living in Maryland, and you know what, I got to about 10, some 10 years old, give or take. I was coming home from my mom's house one day, one weekend after being there and my stomach was in knots. I was anxious. I don't want to go back. And my mom was saying something was wrong. She questioned me and I told her, you know, when you go through abuse, anybody that's been through abuse, you can probably relate to this. That one you don't just like to share because you're afraid that people won't believe you, too. You kind of you're so accustomed to going through it, you're not sure how bad it really is. Somebody on the outside would be like, holy cow, you're dealing with that really. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But as you're going through it, you just think it's ordinary. Another thing, maybe you're embarrassed that you let it go on for that long. And then the weirdest thing is that you're actually concerned with your abuser. You're like, what will happen if I share this to them? Joe: At. Mike: You know, just a weird thing. So I finally came came to the realization that I need to share that my mom said, you know, I'm going to get you out of there. I'm going to file court papers. You don't need to be going through that. That's not ordinary. You need to, you know, in a better situation, she said. But if you do if I do this, you need to stick to your guns. You've got to be like really, really firm because they're going to try to talk you out of it. And in life, when you believe in something, you've got to stick to your guns, man, because people will have agendas and they're going to try to talk you out of it, move one way or the other. And at the end of the day. If you do that, you're not going to live the life you want to live, so she reminded me that, you know, 10 years old, you know, filling my head with great stuff, you know, and I went back home that day and waited and waited weeks went by and waited for those court papers to be delivered. You know, I just knew it was going to happen. And I didn't tell my dad about it, of course. And then finally, one day I come home from school and the tension in the house, you could feel it like it was something was up. And I knew what the deal Joe: Mm Mike: Was. Joe: Hmm. Mike: I had to feel the first. I thought I did something wrong. You know, I'm looking around like, what did I do today? He had his papers in his hand. My dad did. And I knew, like, oh, here we go. And he told me to go to my room. Now, my dad was my hero. He had a successful masonry business, very hard worker, big forearms, rough hands. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, you tell he's a hard worker and he always cared a wad of hundred dollar bills in his pocket. And I thought that was the coolest thing and had a rubber band around Joe: So Mike: It Joe: Did Mike: And. Joe: My partner, it's so buddy. Mike: Yeah, yeah, it must be the last thing Joe: Yeah, and. Mike: He would always show me the money, and I thought it was a cool hundred dollar bills, Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, so he came back in front of me and I didn't get into the discussion with him because my mom said, stick to your guns. So he proceeded to tell me how my mom would have guys coming in and out. Why would you want to go there? You have it made here. You have everything you need. They're poor. They don't have anything. You know, my mom was I mean, we look at the houses. Twenty five, thirty thousand. Our house broken down cars in the driveway. You know, we went on vacation to the Jersey Shore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But we stayed in a rundown motel, one room for kids, two adults, and we were I just remember just the other day, we were actually able to bring some friends with us sometimes, which just makes it like just I don't even remember how that worked. And we would take black trash bags as a suitcase. So, you know, share my story. By the way, back in the day, I was kind of embarrassed by that. I just didn't like to share that, you know. Joe: Yep. Mike: But I started to realize that the more you share your story, the more impact you can have and the more people that can relate to it and maybe change your life for two Joe: Yep, Mike: Or millions, Joe: Yep. Mike: You know. So I started sharing that. But just to wrap it up real quick, so when I did confirm that my dad took that wad of hundred dollar bills out of his pocket, peeled one off, crumpled it up and threw it at me and said, if that's the case and you want to move there, you're going to need this when you're living on the street with your mother one day. And I remember that 30 some years I lived off that spark that was lit right there because I'm stubborn, my shirt that I think is, say, Joe: And. Mike: Stubborn, perversely unyielding, it's a good thing when it's on the right thing. But, you know, I was like, I'm not going to let that happen. And so 30 some years, I was driving off that spark until two years ago. I really subconsciously I was doing that. I really realized two years ago, wait a minute here, there's something magical that's going on. My life keeps going on its upward trajectory. No matter what happens, no matter screw ups, let downs, disappointments, what is happening here and what I found, which I wrote in my book that's coming out Monday, May 3rd on Amazon Rocket Fuel, I was taken everything that would stop normal human beings or slow them down, store it in my fuel tank instead of my truck, would weigh you down and converted it into rocket fuel for my future to become unstoppable. And I found that and I realized, wait a minute, this is not just a concept. This is an this is a law. If you do this, you really are unstoppable to live in the life of your dreams until you're plucked from this planet. So that's why I decided to write this book that Grant Carter wrote the foreword because it was so powerful. I got to get this message out to people. So that's a little bit about the story. There's you know, that's the short version, actually. Joe: No, that's all good. That's exactly what I wanted, the only piece that I still need to figure out is what did you do? How did you figure out what you wanted to do in life in that middle section of where people go to college or they get a job? Or what Mike: Yeah. Joe: Did you do during that time? Mike: Well, I played football and I didn't drink any alcohol or party all through high school, I played football, baseball wrestled, but football was my love Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: And I just I always thought about I want to go to Ohio State, play football, because I just love their team. I watched them play Michigan all the time growing up. And I never grew tall enough, never grew fast enough Joe: I feel your pain. Mike: That. Yeah. So five, six and three quarters, you got to be really, really fast if you're five, six Joe: Yeah. Mike: And three quarters. So I decided to go to Division three. I played football in college study business. But when I got to college, Joe, I lost my focus and I started chasing girls and party in which I never did before. And it was like Disney World first, you Joe: Yeah, Mike: Know what I mean? Joe: Yeah. Mike: And I just lost, man, I four, five, six, seven years in that range. I was just it's all I cared about was parties where the girls at and I need to be around people. And so that's that's the lead up to that. And then eventually I met my wife, who just the commitment to my wife straighten me up. And I was off to the races. I think that my thing with my wife right now, I joke with her all the time, is I have to outsource. I have to earn her spending on Amazon and deliveries to the house. So it's constantly like this. The other day she's like, I look I go up in the kitchen and there's a piece of decking, like the composite decking. Joe: Oh, you know Mike: We Joe: That Mike: Have Joe: That's Mike: A wood Joe: Going Mike: Deck. Joe: To be redone. Mike: And I'm like, I already told you, oh, not right now. It seems like I already had somebody come over measured Joe: Oh, Mike: On my car and drive back down into the cave. Joe: That's Mike: I call this my studio, my cave. I got to go make some money now. Joe: That's so Mike: A Joe: Funny. Mike: Great motivator. Joe: That is awesome. All right. Well, that's where and was college. Mike: Salisbury University in Maryland. Joe: Ok, and then ever since you've stayed in Maryland, Mike: Yeah, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: Now Mike: Moved Joe: You're Mike: To Joe: In Mike: Connecticut Joe: Ocean City, Mike: For a period of time, Joe: Yep, Mike: But we moved to Ocean City Joe: Yep. Mike: Now. Yep. Joe: Which is beautiful. I love it there. OK, cool. Yeah. And I'm Mike: Thank Joe: On the East Mike: You. Joe: Coast. I'm originally from New Mike: A Joe: York. Mike: Cool, Joe: So. Mike: Cool. Joe: So this leads right into the question that since you're going to do the decking, are you still doing. Are you still in the mortgage business because that's your. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. OK. Mike: Yeah, we have a have a division that I run with three best friends, they take care of the day to day operations Joe: Yep. Mike: And it's a large division under our nation's lending. And we run it like our own business. And it's great people, great culture. It's just phenomenal. Joe: And Mike: So. Joe: You've been doing that quite a long time, right? I've saw Mike: Yet. Joe: You've gotten rated as number number one in Yahoo! Finance are right. I mean, you have. Mike: Yeah, so 2006, I got into it and started as a loan officer and just went from two employees and started a branch and vision and two employees up to 40. Joe: Wow, that's incredible. OK, cool. So when did you make this shift of and you talk about this in one of your videos about sharing your story and you share. You also mentioned it when you were giving your story, how important that is. And when did you make this when did you allow yourself to say, OK, I have this business and I have great partners and people to run this business? When did you decide to at least start your company now with what you're doing with your podcast, in your book and everything? What was the trigger for that? Mike: Yes, so early, twenty, nineteen, my stepfather, George, she took over from my dad when I was 11. He was a great guy and he passed away in twenty eighteen and a heart attack suddenly. And I wrote about this in the book, the story about how he found out and everything. It's it's you know, but but at the end of the day, he had a passion when he was passionate about something like football, baseball, hunting, fishing. He would get up and just go nuts, like deep voice, like everybody couldn't, like, really understand him. He was like so passionate, like they would be taken aback by him. And when he passed away, you know, a couple of weeks after he passed away, I had this passion or energy, something spirit come inside of me. Like, I just felt different. And I realized that I wasn't playing a big enough game in life. You know, I was doing well in the business and the mortgages and all that. But it just that's not the game that I was designed for. I was playing small and I started to realize, wait a minute, I need to open myself up to other opportunities, because if I just focus here, this is where I'm going to stay. And I was having truths that I was telling myself and beliefs that I was telling myself is that this is it for me. This is I'm stuck, you know, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: I don't necessarily love the mortgage business. It's great and all that. But the end of the day, I just had a bigger, bigger calling. And so I started trying to figure out, OK, how can I get known in this calling of building people? Because that's what I actually do at the mortgage business. It wasn't the mortgage business. It was I was building people. I was helping develop people. And so I said, how can I get known more in a bigger, bigger scale mystate instead of just my town? Then I was like, that's not big enough. I'll come up short. How about the country and then the globe? And then I was like, you know, what? If I start really expanding my mind, I'm like, if there's aliens, which I've never seen one, but if there is, let me see if I can get aliens to know who I am and really go for that and then come up a little short and I'll be all right. And that's the way I started thinking about things and started trying to impact and share my story with tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people. How can I do that? And I started to obsess about that. And that's when the podcast came. The book idea came and and I just started networking like an animal and going on. You know, I've done three hundred interviews in the last year. Joe: Oh, that's crazy. Mike: So just really lean into it and that's how it all started, and then now I'm into tech, into the tech world where I'm developing a tech product. I co-founded the company. And also we have other we're creating a tech portfolio of other co-founders, non tech entrepreneurs that have ideas that think that they can never do it. They usually go to the grave with those Joe: Mm Mike: Things. Joe: Hmm. Mike: We're bringing them into the world and giving them the resources they need to actually co-found their companies and creating unstoppable people. Because my mission, Joe, is all people are unstoppable to live in the life of their dreams. And so everything I do, I filter through that mission. Joe: It's so cool, man, and it's so funny because you hit it right on the head with with the same thing with me, it's like you don't have a successful business. But I know it's not my calling. It's not what I was put here to do. And and everything that I do should be so much more impactful and so much bigger. And I've had this I had the conversation with David Meltzer. And at the same Mike: Yeah. Joe: Time, he brings you back in focus and he's like, yeah, but you should know that you you have everything you need. You just got to get out of your own way. It's not a matter that you should focus on wanting more. You have it all. You're just Mike: Yep. Joe: You're literally getting in your own way of getting it done. Mike: Yeah, and that's the thing, it's the truths that we tell ourselves we're living an illusion, we let the illusions that we have based on our beliefs and past experiences, and we let that affect us and limit us and block us. And really, at the end of the day, you know, we'd rather explain our life instead of actually intervening in it. We'd like to explain with excuses, you know, and justify things and, you know, at the end of the day, man, we just tell ourselves what we can tell ourselves that helps us survive. And to me, that's not good enough, because you're going to always come up a little short, so why not thrive and really go after it? And, you know, there's not everybody that's going to be able to do what we do. So why don't we take it up a notch and get get really abundance, like go after abundance so that we can help other people and distribute this information to other people. So that's the kind of things that I started thinking. I started hanging around people that coach and mentor me the right way, thinking big, you know, also, you know, still like Dave Meltzer talks about, you've got to be happy now. It's not like later, Joe: Yeah, Mike: So. Joe: Yeah, so I don't want to go down the current path, I follow him, I love the stuff that he does. I know that it fits the mold for a lot of people that are in the real estate world. And but Mike: Yeah. Joe: I also know that he's doing a lot of other things. But how he wrote the foreword to your book, which is amazing, how how much did he influence you making this jump to doing what you're doing now? Mike: So when George died, my stepfather, my brother was read in the next room and he said, Mike, you've got to read this book, this guy sounds just like you. I'll take a look at it. I started I saw Grant before and like pictures, but I thought he was like a real estate. Joe: Yep, Mike: I thought he trained realtors, Joe: Yep, Mike: I wasn't even sure, Joe: Yep. Mike: Right, so I read the book and I'm like, holy cow, this guy speaking to me, he's going through similar situations that I've been Joe: Yeah. Mike: Through. Like, I can totally relate. And I but but the big thing was about it was I've always had this big think, but I got cocooned for a while by people that I surround myself with that were broken thinkers, broken mindset, people, people that didn't fit my culture, but they produce. So I kept them around and people that quit on me. And I let that affect me personally. And I got into this situation where I was invalidated, me myself. I felt invalidated on being the animal that I actually am. And so when I was reading that book, I'm like, wait a minute, this this shows me something. I'm not the crazy one. Those people are the crazy ones. I have an animal. So I did unleash it. So I was able to unleash the beast and that's what it did for me. And then I just immersed myself in this content, hung around with all these people, build relationships inside his company, because I just want to be around those types of people. Joe: Yep. Mike: Great, great friendships. Like I said, Jerry Glantz, a friend of mine, I just you know, I'm proud to have them in my in my circle. And so when when I wrote the book, the book actually came from an idea that I got while I was interviewing grad on my podcast about I asked him the question, what would it take to get into outer space? Not like literally, but figuratively speaking, getting away from all the gravity and negative suppressors of people and things that can mess with you. When can you get that amount of money or that amount of whatever it is? And he said people aren't ready for that discussion. He said that's just something the answer doesn't people don't like the answer to that question and I'm like, well, what would it take? You know? And I started thinking about rocket fuel. Rocket fuel is what it would take. Take it all that stuff, converting it and fuel your way up there. And then once you do that, you remove all that stuff out of your way. There's nothing to stop you and you become unstoppable and indestructible. And that's the thought that started going through my head and I started obsessing about it. I'm like, I got to write this. So when I did that, I'm like the only person that would make sense to be writing the forward for this book is Grant. I don't know if he does afterwards. I don't know if he charged me. I don't know anything. I'm going to make it happen, though. And that's what I started thinking all the time. I just dwelled on it, wrote it down and. Book is almost done, and I made a phone call and there are some details that went into doing that and I just got done and his name is on the cover of the book is for Written Joe: Yeah, Mike: By Grant. Joe: Yeah. Mike: So that adds to credibility that I may not have had before, but the content in the book is just so powerful, man. It's just I actually can be honest with you about something like like I'm always honest, but like just totally transparent. I read that book over and over again during the editing process. Right. And I got so sick of it and because I've read it so much, but then I haven't read it in a while and I went back and my team, we go through in the morning and we'll pick a passage to read out of it just to see what what we come upon. And I don't even remember writing some of the stuff. I'm just like, wow, this is like this is really good stuff. Joe: That's cool, Mike: So it's a weird Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's a weird mind game when you're writing a book and then to see the actual finished product. It's a good time. Joe: That's really cool, yeah, I look forward to reading it, I it's, you know, just talking with you, I can tell we're in sync on a lot of this stuff. You're ahead of me because you wrote a book and I haven't done it yet, but I know that it's a good process to go through. Where did you figure out where you wanted to start in the book in regards to your life? Mike: So, you know, I started share my story that I share with you and I have other parts of my life in there, too, that are just crazy, blew people's minds. But I really what I did was I started writing in my phone while I was on airplanes and I would just write ideas in my phone and and I would write stories that happen in my life. And then my podcast, we transcribe the podcast episodes, the first few that were a monologue style, and we just created a framework. And then it doesn't look anything like it started. That's how I got started with it and just started, you know, what kind of what went into me, what am I made of? And I just went into that and started sharing it. And then the lessons that broke off from each of those things, because, you know, a lot of people have been through there's people that have been through a lot more than I have. But my story is pretty crazy. Like there's some stuff that happened to me that nobody could imagine going through. But I'm still here, brother, and I'm still going hard. Joe: I hear you. I see that and you brought up a good point and one of the videos that I watch where you said people discount their story, right? They don't think, why would anybody care? It's not that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Special. Well, when were you able to actually take your own thoughts as part of your own story and make that switch where you said, wait a second, you know, what I've gone through is important. If it can help one person in the world, that's value enough. I mean, when did you or did you not ever doubt that your story was powerful? Mike: No, so I would I never shared it and I saw Pete Vargas share his story on the 10x growth conference stage in twenty nineteen, I'm sitting there watching and this is the first big stage, I think, that Pete was on. He was nervous and scared and his face, you could tell, is sweating and he would tell you this. I'm friends with Joe: Mm Mike: Him, so Joe: Hmm. Mike: It's not something I'm talking about. Joe: Yeah, no, no. Mike: But I thought to myself, I'm watching that. I don't know who he was at that time, but he was telling a story about his father and he was like really connecting with me and the relationship and how he grew up in a rough spot. And then they came back together and how it all worked out. And I'm like, wow, this is just like powerful. I felt like everybody else disappeared in the place and it was just him talking to me. And I'm like, I need to learn how to do that. And if he can do it, I know I could do it. That's what went through my head. And I told the guys I was with when we got in the car afterwards, I'm like, I'm going to be on that stage. I'm going to share my story one day and I know I can do it. And so then I started sharing the story of one person, two people, five people. And they were like, that's all. I really can relate to that. Then I said, Well, shit, I need to go to ten million people Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: If I could do it and how can I do that? And that's when I started obsessing about getting known and sharing that story. And, you know, I was able to talk to Pete after that and actually learn from him how to share your story. And but I shared that that that story about seeing him in the audience and how everybody just disappeared and how he connected with me. And so it's pretty powerful stuff, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Man. Joe: That's really powerful, but that's got to be a little eerie to just be sitting there Mike: The. Joe: And all of a sudden it's just like a movie where everything around you blurs out and it's just Mike: Yeah. Joe: The two of you. Yeah, Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's incredible. Something real light like question I have for you. The logo is it is a logo. And I'm going to take a guess and I'm probably going to be wrong. And you're going to say, well, nice try, Joe, but does it have anything to do with the Lynch? Mike: So the sirocco, the blue. Joe: Yeah. Mike: Yeah, so it's just upside down, see, and in two hours that are, you know, for Cerak and then it just has a little dude in there holding up the world, if you can see him. That's what it has now. It doesn't. I Joe: Ok, Mike: Didn't see that. So linchpin, Joe: Only because Mike: Huh? Joe: When I read some stuff from you talking about, you know, in some of the verbiage that I read about you and on your website, you mention Mike: Yeah. Joe: The word linchpin. I can't remember the context, but it was. Mike: Yeah, no, you know what, I. Joe: And then when I looked at a picture of a lynchpin, I was like, wait, it is Mike: I Joe: Round. Mike: Got to Joe: And Mike: See what a picture of a linchpin Joe: You Mike: Looks like Joe: See Mike: Because Joe: Now Mike: Because, Joe: I have Mike: You know, Joe: You thinking. Mike: Like that's. Yeah, I got to look at this because maybe maybe, yeah, maybe it does, Joe: The. Mike: So I didn't design the logo myself I had professionally done, and maybe he had that in mind as well. Joe: Only because it's mean you could kind of say it a little bit. I don't know. Mike: Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying, Joe: Right, Mike: Yeah, Joe: It's Mike: No, Joe: Round Mike: I didn't Joe: With Mike: Have Joe: The Mike: That. Joe: With the thing through it, and I'm thinking, OK, well, maybe it's kind Mike: Yeah. Joe: Of hinting towards it and and I Mike: Now, Joe: Said, Mike: It was really just the sea Joe: Yeah. Mike: And the two hour and holding up the world and helping lift up the Joe: That's Mike: World, Joe: Cool, Mike: That's what Joe: That's even cooler, so you can Mike: The. Joe: Throw my idea right out the window, Mike: Now, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: I Mike: Like that, I like that. Joe: Do I do some upfront investigation of the person I'm talking to in the life and all of that stuff. And I saw that, you know, because you're doing your mortgages. And I saw that Jennifer is in real estate and I don't Mike: Yeah. Joe: Know if she still is, but. Mike: Yes, yes. Joe: So that's a really cool synergy between the two of you, first of all, I think that probably works really well. But just for the people in the audience who had a great relationship with their significant other, how important has that been in the balance of your life, especially what you went through as a young, you know, a young man being able to have that support in and you found the love of your life and it's you know, there's that whole synergy there between you. Mike: Yeah, I mean, it's it's everything, I mean, like I said, I made a joke about trying to earn her spending with that, but then on the day she does a great job, she did she was a stay at home mom for a while until our youngest was in school. And then I said, you know what? I'm going to try to you know, we've got to figure out something because I'm giving deals away Joe: Uh huh, Mike: To people. Joe: Yep. Mike: And, you know, it would be great if you get a license and she ended up doing it. And she's just the type that if she gets into something, she goes hard with it. And she did great the first two years, just fantastic. I didn't even realize how much money she made last year until I saw ten ninety nine. I'm like, wow, you did great. But she's just phenomenal and aligns well with our business. Obviously I don't do mortgages much anymore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: I don't do it all. I just I work on the business maybe an hour a day. My team runs the day to day. They do a fantastic job. And so but it aligns well, obviously in a lot of our people, their spouse got their real estate license, too, because it aligns so well. Joe: Mm hmm. Yeah. Mike: So, yeah, but but at the end of the day, we are you know, I'm very clear with what I'm trying to do, my dreams. And she is clear on the fact of her dreams and the fact that she's willing to support me and run through fire for me. And Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's just a great feeling because I can't do it without her, obviously. Joe: Yep, yep, I just wanted to sort of bring that up, because I think it's important I have the same sort of relationship with Joel Mike: And Joe: And Mike: It's Joe: My significant Mike: Awesome. Joe: Other. So it's Mike: Yeah. Joe: To me, it's super important. And with what happened with covid, you know, a lot of things just stopped. Right. And Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: Changes were made. And so she got furloughed from doing her day to day job and has not been brought back. But she's always had this dream of doing photography. And so now I basically have said to her, you are not going back and you are going to from this point forward until whenever the world ends for you, you're going to follow your dream. So I Mike: Awesome. Joe: Think it's important. Right. And to Mike: Yeah. Joe: Support each other and it's nice to see that you have that same relationship. Mike: Yeah, so, so, so important that it aligns I mean, so much conflict comes from just not being aligned with the mission, Joe: Yep, Mike: You know, Joe: Yep. Mike: And I think that people need to realize that their personal dream, their mission, I call it their purpose, their mission. It's it's more important than anything when it comes down to it really is. Joe: Yeah. Mike: And that's why it's so important to share that with your partner, to make sure that they're on the same page with you. Joe: So let's talk about that. I'm sure I'm probably older than you at this point, but we're Mike: Yeah, Joe: At Mike: Definitely, definitely. Now Joe: The. Mike: I'm 40, I'm 40 for some, I'm Joe: Oh, Mike: A Joe: My gosh, I'm so Mike: Young Joe: Old, Mike: Pup, Joe: I can't. Mike: But I am going on 18 years of marriage. This May so. Joe: Congratulations, that's awesome, yeah, Mike: Thank Joe: Joel Mike: You. Joe: And Mike: Thank Joe: I Mike: You. Joe: Are 20, I think, at this point. Mike: Ok, cool, congrats. Joe: Yeah, I turned fifty nine this past February, so, Mike: Oh, man, I Joe: You know. Mike: Can't tell. I really can't Joe: Yeah, Mike: Tell. Joe: Well thank Mike: Maybe Joe: You. Mike: That's why that's why you shave your head, because that way you can't see any Joe: That's Mike: Gray hairs. Joe: Exactly, exactly right. They got my eyebrows Mike: Hey, Joe: Are still dark, Mike: Look, I'm with you the way the. Joe: So do you ever look at where you are now and you look back and go? I mean, and I think we've talked about this with some of the great people, like, you know, we can bring up David Meltzer again because he's just he's like one of my mentors. I love the guy at the Mike: Is Joe: Death. Mike: Awesome. Joe: You know, what is what's the saying? Something like the the teacher. The teacher appears when the student is ready, Mike: Yeah. Joe: Right? Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah, teachers. Joe: Yep. Mike: Yep, exactly. Joe: And it's the same thing with life. Like things come when the time is right. And some people would argue against that. Some people would say whatever. But you just started on this path now, right. Something flipped when you're 40, when your stepfather passed away, it said there's you know, and you might have felt that your whole life because you people like you and I always were pulled towards something. Right. We're entrepreneurs. We've always worked towards a greater goal of whatever. Do you ever look back and go, God, I wish I had started this sooner? Or is it like, no, it's this is the time. This is the right time. It's happening now. You know, I'm interested in what your thought process is on that. Mike: Well, I'm curious, asking the question, you must have felt some kind of feeling about that in the past, maybe. Joe: I constantly go like I had, I chased another dream up until this point, and that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Dream didn't happen for me and I openly admit all the time that I didn't put in the work to make that dream happen. I'm Mike: The. Joe: I'm a trained you know, I went to college for music. So my whole life has been surrounded by music. And one day I was going to tour the world and be this famous drummer for and I always use the example because I love his music. John Mayer. Mike: Yeah. Joe: That never happened for me because I know now I can look myself in the mirror and go, You didn't put in the work. You didn't put in the Mike: Yeah, Joe: Tent. Mike: The commitment, Joe: Yeah. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: Didn't do the ten thousand hours. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: You would rather had gone down to the college campus bar and had a bunch of beers and chicken wings with your buddies Mike: Yep. Joe: Instead of going back into the practice room and spending another four hours at night. So I am fine with I get it now, but now Mike: Yeah. Joe: I'm trying to take like the rest of my life and make it amazing and live much Mike: Yeah. Joe: Bigger. And so I am at the stage right now doing that change, shifting Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: My my frame of mind. I know the world is abundant. I know that everything you know, I just have to look towards the good of everything. And the more I focus on the good and the abundance and the gratitude, more of it just keeps coming in. In the last two months, it's been incredible for me. And so and it's I always was the oh, woe is me. Like I work my ass off. Why am I not getting that? Why am I not Mike: Yep, Joe: Doing that? So Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's why I asked you this question Mike: Yeah, Joe: When that, Mike: Yeah. Joe: You know, was the shift with your with Mike: Yeah. Joe: Your father, your stepfather passing away and you just saying when you said you felt it in your heart, you were like, I need to do something bigger. Was that the pivotal point for this? Mike: Yes, it was, and I did look back and be like, man, I cannot believe when I started finding out things and becoming aware of things, I cannot believe I didn't start this sooner. I didn't know that. Like, I just felt like I had wasted I went through a period of time where I felt like I wasted time and time is so valuable. And I said, you know what? I don't know how much longer I have on this planet, but you know what, at this point, the window keeps shrinking. I got to pick up my urgency. I got to move faster. I got to demand more and be louder and be more impactful and be just more intense than I would have had to if I started a long time ago, that's all. And so at first I did look back and with some regret. But then I quickly got out of that and said, OK, what have we got to do to get this done in the window that I do have left? So, yeah, I definitely and that was the pivotal, pivotal point, of course, working towards it my whole life, not knowing it. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, there's a story in the Bible and they made a movie about it with Steve Carell about Noah's Ark. You know, it was told over some years he took to build this big arc and he didn't really know why he was doing it, he was just being told to do it by God. If you believe in God, Joe: Hmm. Mike: Which I do, or if it's intuition or whatever. And he got these animals and people were laughing at him and discouraging them and he just kept doing it anyway and building a ship in a place where there's never rain. Joe: All right. Mike: And did it make sense, it didn't seem to make sense at the moment, but he kept doing it and he kept being committed and doing it and doing it and doing it before you know it. The rain came, washed everybody away, and he survived with all the animals that he had and his family. And so I look at that lesson and I started to see this now. I started to see that the things when I'm committed and obeyed to my purpose, my mission, and I filter things through that, whether it's the people I hang out with, my actions, my words, my thoughts, my environment, when I start to filter through that mission. I'm obeying what I'm supposed to be doing and things just magically work out and I start to see opportunities everywhere, but when I don't do that, they're missing. And so you don't need to know what the end game is necessarily. You should be shooting for something, but just be looking for the opportunities. As long as you're obeying your mission and filtering everything through your purpose or mission or whatever you want to call it. Joe: Yeah. All right, well, that makes me feel good that I'm not the only one that had some regrets, so thank Mike: The. Joe: You for being vulnerable and saying that because I definitely have gone through it and I have like I said, I'm older than you. So I think, you know, think, Mike: None of us are alone, Joe. None of us are, you Joe: Ok. Mike: Know, I've anything that you go through, there's somebody else out there experiencing it for sure. Joe: Right, and I think that's what you're a lot of what you talk about is it's so important to share your story because it literally could help one person, which would be a huge help. You never know where they are in their state of mind. And if it lifts them, that's awesome. But imagine being able to help tens of thousands of millions of billions of people. Right. So I understand that's what the goal is for people like us who want to do that. So I I wish you the best of luck in doing that. And and same Mike: Thanks. Joe: With myself. Mike: Yeah, Joe: They've Mike: You, Joe: Got Mike: Too. Joe: To get it done. Mike: That's right, Joe: Ok, Mike: That's right. Joe: So you said something earlier about the book, which is the name of the book is Rocket Fuel. And you said it's May, May 3rd. Mike: Yeah, May 3rd, Monday, May 3rd, it's coming out on Amazon, and, you know, it should be a best seller based on we have we presold it. So I'm thinking that it's not going to have a problem being a best seller, number one best seller. Joe: Yep. Mike: What we shall see. But I'm going to do a bunch of lives that day, Instagram and Facebook lives, and just have some fun with it Joe: Cool. Mike: And celebrate. Joe: Ok, cool, so let's talk about it a little bit. Mike: Sure. Joe: You said something earlier that I thought was really cool, which was taking you said something about taking whatever comes in and not putting in it in the trunk, but putting it in the fuel tank and making rocket fuel. So explain Mike: Yep, Joe: That again Mike: Very Joe: To me, because Mike: Good. Joe: I I loved Mike: Yeah. Joe: It when you said I was like and I didn't even write it down. Mike: Yeah. Joe: I was like, no, that's got to go up here in my brain. So I would love to Mike: Well, Joe: Hear that again. Mike: Well, when you want something in life and things come your way to stop it or slow you down, if you remove a one thing, obviously that's going to help. But removing is not good enough for me. So I take all that stuff. Haters, people that discourage me laughed at me. What I'm trying to do, screw ups of my own people trying to screw me, all that stuff I just stored in my fuel tank. And usually people put it in their trunk and that weighs them down. You know, most people quit on their dreams because other people are talking Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: About them and saying, no, you're not the same. Why are you doing that? In all kinds of different things? I take all that and say, you know what, like here's an example, by the way, I stored in my tank, my fuel tank, to convert it into rocket fuel rather than my trunk, where it weighs me down. And some of the people closest to me, you know, like some of my business partners and friends and they know who they are. I talk to them about it. And I said, you know what? You keep saying the stuff like, hey, why don't you go do your podcast? Hey, you know, just this stupid digs like that, right? At the end of the day, they're trying to get at me, but they're really just talking about themselves, reflecting upon themselves and the fact that they should be doing that and they're not. And so I know that. And I tell people, you know, you want to say that, great, you're not going to achieve what you think you're going to achieve because all you're doing is giving me more fuel and I'm going to push it even harder. So when somebody says that to me, I'll do it on purpose, where I'll push harder and then I'll show it up in their face a little bit more to about. They're seeing so many posts on Instagram, I'll make sure I send it to them in a direct message, because that way it shuts them Joe: Yeah, Mike: Up Joe: Yeah, Mike: For Joe: It's weird, I don't Mike: Not Joe: Understand, Mike: Being. Joe: I don't understand, like people want to bring you down to their level, right? We deal with that all the time. And and social media has done so much to expose those people. And I just don't understand why they can't be happy for you. But they. Mike: Well, they can't because so I've already realized this in my mind now I know this, it's not them personally, it's their mind. And what it's happening is they just the subconscious mind just justifies where you are. It's trying to justify the truths that you told yourself and when something comes in to threaten that. You have to basically there there things fire off to protect their subconscious beliefs, and so it's not really them personally that's doing it and that's why you can't take it personal. You need to understand it. And then when they're doing it, you need to lay it out to them and let them know, hey, listen, I know what's going on here. I get it. You're where you are and you're trying to justify where you are. And you're saying this stuff to me. I don't take it personal, by the way. I use it as fuel. So thank you. And if you want to say more, continue to give me fuel. Great. But I would rather be able to help you. On break the like, just open up your truths and change them, change your beliefs. And expand your mind and see what you can achieve instead of worrying about what I'm doing and that's the way I handle it, I don't really get fired up or angry or take it personal. It's just a situation where they're going through it. And I think we've all been through it Zoom. I think I'm more understanding of it, Joe: Yeah. Mike: But I will not. But if they don't listen to me when I talk about that, I will not spend time with them because I'm not going to spend time with people that don't align with the mission. Joe: Totally agree. So the book Rocket Fuel coming out May 3rd on Amazon, who is this book for? Mike: Specifically, this is for people that have gone through things in life. And they feel like they keep getting held back or slowed down by things are stopped and they're just they're just done with it. They're they're at the point right now where they've had enough. They're getting sick of where they are and they want to do something about it. And they are looking for that breakthrough that that that superpower, because really it is it's like John Maxwell, House leadership, because this thing is so powerful. And I validated it so, so thoroughly that it's a law, it's the Rockefeller law. And so it's for people that are just sick and tired of being where they are. And they want to advance. They want to have a better life, life of their dreams. And I believe, like I said, my mission is all people are unstoppable to live in a life of their dreams. And so that's what's for. Joe: Yeah, and I saw that it seems like part of the focus is about past pains and obstacles and how you you basically help with the book to to change, take people and turn it around and say, you know, like you're saying, use those things as rocket fuel to get you to the next level. So don't lean on them. Don't have them in the trunk, don't have them as baggage, but instead take what you've learned, take what has happened and convert it to rocket fuel by doing whatever you talk about in the book. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Right. Mike: Yeah, the magic, the magic, here's the magic, right? The magic is when you have something happen and you get that feeling in your chest, that's where it hits me, by the way, like something Joe: Hmm. Mike: Bad happens and like this speed to which you can recognize that and convert it and look for opportunity. That's when you master the Rockefeller law. That's what it's all about, the longer time it takes, the more doubt creeps in, Joe: Yeah. Mike: A more negative energy creeps in, the more victimhood creeps in. And the missed opportunities happened during that period. So you want to shrink that window to as little as short as possible because we all feel it. We're all going to still feel it when something bad happens at first, but recognize it as fast as possible and start to look for the opportunity, not play the victim role, take responsibility for everything. Joe: Yeah, that's great. OK, I want to honor the time we have that we so we're going to do an hour or so. I want to just go through this real quick. So you have your own podcast, which is what are you made of? Which is on the wall behind you, where you interview. I assume, you know, other entrepreneurs and people that have amazing stories to tell and share. You release one week, twice a week with a human. Mike: Well, it started out once a week and then I had so many that I was doing, I had to do two weeks. Right now we're on a two week schedule. Joe: Ok. Mike: So, yeah, I just load up. I go hard, man. Like, if I see somebody I want to show, I go after him like an animal. I get them on the show and I don't care how many I've already had in the can. I just still just keep loading them up Joe: That's awesome. Mike: And uh. Yeah. So. Joe: Ok, cool. Besides that, you are you do some performance coaching, correct? You do some coaching in general, you Mike: Yeah. Joe: Are doing some speaking. You're going to continue to to build that Mike: Yeah. Joe: That part of your career. You're going to be on stage with Grant one of these days. Mike: Well, yeah, but so the coaching part, I want to do, the coaching part of switching that into, you know, I still have a couple of clients, but really focusing on the tech side of things and developing these entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs into this tech world and using my specialty performance and business coaching and what have you into that, not getting paid directly for it. But but from the companies that I'm developing, Joe: Yeah. Mike: I'm really focused on that. And then I was on a 10x growth stage this past March. Joe: Oh, congratulations. Mike: Let me tell you, it took me two years to step on that stage. Joe: Hey, Mike: Thank you. Joe: That's awesome. The tech thing is it is there more that you can tell us about it or a way that people can find out about it or a. Mike: Yes, so the best thing to do, really, I mean, if you if you message me and follow me on Instagram, you're going to see all kinds of stuff coming out here very shortly on it. But I have a tech product called Blueprinted. It's being printed. This is my the one I co-founded. And this product basically, I looked at digital training and video training and I saw, like, how ineffective Joe: Mm Mike: It was Joe: Hmm. Mike: And the fact that only 20 percent of people actually complete the courses. So that means the people that are marketing these courses that are good at marketing are making money without concern for the Joe: Correct, Mike: Success Joe: Yeah. Mike: Of their student, their clients. And I thought that was an ethical problem. And I looked at why people get bored. They don't finish it, they get distracted, they don't retain the information. Or when they get done, they're like, what's the next step? Like, what am I supposed to do? Where do I put that Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Where where do I take that and how long do I do that? And so I thought to myself, what if there's a way to have a project management based software technology that has a marketplace where people that have had success can come in and algorithmically step by step, put the success steps to what they've done, whatever vertical, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Build that blueprint in our platform and then sell it on the marketplace to to people that want to know how to be successful in that area. So it could be anything from a business to a podcast to digital marketing agency, whatever it is. Because if you look if you're going to build a house, you wouldn't want to watch a YouTube video. And on building that house, Joe: All Mike: You'd want the blueprints. Joe: Right. Mike: So this is a market disrupter, industry disrupter. And I can also see another industry being created from this, like there's web designers when websites came out. Well, there's going to be a lot of people that don't want to build their own blueprints. They want to take the content and give it to somebody and have them do the blueprint for Joe: Mm Mike: Them. Joe: Hmm. Mike: So there's going to be a whole industry just on blueprints. And so, yeah, this is a phenomenal thing. And it's coming out hopefully in the next 60 days, give or take. And I'm just fired up to get it in people's hands, man. Joe: That's great, man. You got a lot of irons in the fire. I like Mike: Yeah, Joe: It. Mike: But Joe: That's Mike: Thank Joe: Awesome. Mike: You. Joe: All right. So I want everybody to go and check out your podcast. The book is released on May 3rd called Rocket Fuel. Get in touch with you on on any of the social media. What's the best way to get in touch with you Mike: Instagram, Joe: On. Mike: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, either one, but Instagram, it's Michy Cerak. Joe: Like you see rock on Instagram. Mike: Yep. Joe: Perfect. All right, man, this is a pleasure for me. I love talking Mike: Metohija. Joe: To another person Mike: Yeah, buddy. Joe: And it was great. And I really wish you a ton of luck with the book. I'll make sure when this episode gets released, I'll have a cover of the book. This will also go like you do on your podcast, will go to the YouTube channel so people will Mike: Thank you Joe: Be able to Mike: To. Joe: See it. I'll put the link to the Amazon in there. Anything else I can do to help? Let me know. But it was a real pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate Mike: Well, Joe: Your time Mike: Thank Joe: And. Mike: You. Thank you, Joe, I appreciate it was a great interview. Great questions and I really enjoyed it. Joe: Thank you, ma'am. You take care. Good luck with the book. Good luck with the podcast. Good luck with the tech software and Mike: Thank Joe: Everything Mike: You. Joe: Else. And just have an amazing year. Mike: Thank you, you, too, bye. Joe: Thank you.

Mike: I assure you there are fascists in the US. [Theme song] Nazi SS UFOs Lizards wearing human clothes Hinduism's secret codes These are nazi lies Race and IQ are in genes Warfare keeps the nation clean Whiteness is an AIDS vaccine These are nazi lies Hollow earth, white genocide Muslim's rampant femicide Shooting suspects named Sam Hyde Hiter lived and no Jews died Army, navy, and the cops Secret service, special ops They protect us, not sweatshops These are nazi lies Mike: One of the more pernicious lies I hear about US fascism is that it doesn't exist, particularly in the present day. So I'm here today with journalist and sociologist Dr. Spencer Sunshine, PhD from CUNY's Grad School. Spencer has written for Colorlines, Truthout, and The Daily Beast and has an organizing guide out through PopMob called 40 Ways to Fight Fascists: Street-Legal Tactics for Community Activists. Thanks for coming on the pod. Spencer Sunshine: Thanks for having me on the show, Mike. Mike: Of course! So Spencer's here to talk about the American Nazi Party; its successor, the National Socialist White People's Party; and its remnants today. So let's start with a brief history of US fascism before the American Nazi Party. Spencer: Sure, so fascism as an actual political current is about 100 years old in the United States. The first Nazi group, or Nazi cell, in the United States formed in 1922 by German expats in the Bronx. And there were probably earlier groups that were Italian Fascist groups. Like many radical political traditions that started in Europe, in the United States these were first brought to the country by immigrants from Europe. If we look further than that, if we use fascism as a broader term involving any organized white supremacist groups, of course we'd easily go back to the 1860s and the Ku Klux Klan and similarly styled far right groups go back in the United States well before that. So fascism is a longstanding political tradition in our country. It's a century old. The fact that people can't acknowledge this shows something interesting about the psyche of the United States where people just can't admit that there are radical political movements here, or that such a noxious political movement such as fascism could take fairly, what looks like permanent roots in our country. Mike: Okay, so let's talk about the American Nazi Party itself. How was it founded? What did it do? Spencer: So before the war there were two groups that were pro-Nazi. There was the German American Bund, who were tied to the Nazi Party in various ways; and an American group called the Silver Shirts. As you may imagine, during the war, nazism became taboo in the country. A lot of the leaders were arrested. After the war it took quite a while for, what then became neo-nazism, neo-nazi groups to establish themselves. There was a group called the National States Rights Party who mostly recruited from Klan members and were the core organizers for nazis, but they did not say on the– On the outside of the package it did not say that; although on the inside it was. So the American Nazi Party was sort of special because it was the first group to openly declare itself a nazi group and to, the phrase they used was, “raise the swastika,” to actually appear in public. You know, at the time they used the old stormtrooper uniforms, these brown uniforms with a swastika armband. You rarely see it these days, but this was pretty common through the early 90s for nazi groups to do this. So the American Nazi Party was founded in 1959. There was a precursor group in 1958 by George Lincoln Rockwell. He had done advertising; was very good. And came from a vaudeville family. This is a really crazy story, but Bob Hope was actually at his christening. He used these advertising techniques to form this group. It was designed to get media attention, and the idea was for him that conservatives could never become radical enough and could never really attract the people they needed. So by using this imagery, he could attract the kinds of people that he wanted, and he could use the presence of nazis– He used to say, “No one can ignore nazis marching in the streets.” –use this public image to gain media attention which he could then use as a recruiting tool. The party was never very big. It continued through the 60s. They did a lot of– It was almost an agitprop kind of project. The kind of murders that we associate with the nazi movement these days– They had punch ups at rallies and stuff. But the kind of violence and murders that we associate with neo-nazism these days did not come until later, which is an interesting thing. He was assassinated by a fellow party member in 1967. Right before then he had changed his organizing strategy. He had a very successful rally in Marquette Park, Chicago, which was actually against Martin Luther King's plan to desegregate. It was some of his late marches doing housing desegregation in Chicago. It was in an Eastern European neighborhood, a lot of Eastern European immigrants who were resisting Black Chicagoans from moving into their neighborhood. Thousands of people came to this rally. He then changed his tack a bit. He renamed the party the National Socialist White People's Party which is a mouthful, and we'll call it the NSWPP from now on. And he renamed the party newspaper to White Power which is the slogan we know today that he coined. So it was a move from being an antisemitic nazi party to kind of being an aggressive white nationalist party because it was the first time that he had drawn a lot of grassroots support. He was assassinated. He was replaced by his subordinate Matt Koehl. At first it was three people. It was Robert Lloyd, Koehl, and William Pierce (Who's important. He later formed his own party called the National Alliance. Mike: We'll talk about them in a bit. Spencer: And he wrote a very influential book called The Turner Diaries. These three that ran the party for a while, and then, what's a nazi party without a führer? Or tin pot führer at least? Kicks the other two out. And runs the party until his death a few years ago. In 1983 the party became called New Order and actually degenerated into a Hitler-worshipping, almost private Hitler-worshipping cult. It still exists. Koehl died a few years ago and was replaced by his subordinate Martin Kerr. Mike: So before we talk about the remnants today, I want to talk about some of the splinter groups that formed in the 70s. I'm thinking the second NSLF, the National Alliance that you mentioned, the NSPA, the NSWWP. Spencer: A mouthful of alphabet soup. Mike: Yes. Spencer: So the importance of Koehl taking control is that Rockwell was a very charismatic guy. A lot of his followers really adored him. They ended up fetishizing him almost as a god-like figure. The way they had– Some of them, you know, praised him the way they had Adolf Hitler before him. In the post-war period, people had started almost worshipping and sometimes literally worshipping Hitler and made altars to him and treated him as a kind of demigod. So Koehl did not have charisma and acted in ways that alienated most of his party membership. Over the years, especially between 1973 and 1974, a lot of the party members left; the active units, they called them units the chapters, left and formed their own groups. And this became very important because this is what laid the groundwork for there to be a decentralized neo-nazi movement in the United States, the kind of which we see today. So it laid the epistemological foundation for it because before there had been a single party, a single organization with chapters. Now there were all these separate groups that had different relationships with them and that could pursue different strategies. And they did pursue different strategies. So the first big split was in 1970 when William Pierce is kicked out. This takes a little while for the real splintering to happen. So the first group I'll talk about is the National Socialist Liberation Front because their influence can be felt today on the alt-right, on the terrorist wing of the neo-nazis today. It was originally the name was used in the late 60s as a college student group that William Pierce actually ran that was associated with the party. They were trying to take off the energy of the New Left. You know, there were a lot of liberation fronts was a popular name for armed new left groups. This was an attempt to recruit college students. It only got one good organizer which we can talk about later which was David Duke. It was never an independent entity. The name was revived in 1974 when, probably the best organizer in the United States, Joseph Tommasi, who was based in Los Angeles, was suspended by the party, and he founded his own group. They used the NSLF name. Mike: Can you talk about why he was suspended? Spencer: He was– There's a lot of discussion about this. Accusations that he was– Some of it was cultural clashes within the nazis. He was pulling off the counterculture. He had long hair. They didn't like to dress in uniform. They wore like fatigues and stuff. He was accused of bringing his girlfriends over to the party headquarters. Koehl was making all of the party members (They had bought their own headquarters. This was a time they still had physical headquarters was an emphasis.) sell their headquarters. They made all the chapters sell their headquarters buildings and give the proceeds to Koehl which angered a lot of people and caused a lot of these splits because the people themselves had bought them, and they just thought he was trying to enrich himself which he probably was. He was basically shutting the party down and making a cult around himself and taking all the money. But there was a very interesting– What probably really prompted it is– It's attached to the Watergate scandal. Someone in the C.R.E.E.P. (The group, the Nixon support group that got involved in Watergate, it was an acronym for them.) hired Tommasi's nazis to help get another far right, a little more moderate, party on the ballot in California to pull votes away from Republicans. This was the American Independent Party. It has a funny history. It comes out of the George Wallace campaigns earlier. Then later, I think Cliven Bundy from the Bundy ranch actually joined. Remnants of the party exist today and have attracted people from the militia movement. [Spencer's correction to this story: https://twitter.com/transform6789/status/1388206831630180362?s=19] Anyway, these nazis were hired by Republicans to get another far right party on the ballot to pull votes away in a certain election. I forget the details now. I'm sorry. The party– Koehl was angry that he had made this deal. This made the newspapers. It made the New York Times and stuff. This angered the party that he had done this without their permission. And they took money from it. So that may have been– A lot of more serious people think that was the actual reason for the initial suspension. And then there was a break when Tommasi formed his own group. The NSLF was important because they openly advocated armed resistance and bombings and such and did do a few of these, although rather moderate in Los Angeles. This was a break from the parent party which always stressed legality. While there had been violent currents in it, they were really kept kind of under the rug, and it was just a sort of wing of the party of certain people including William Pierce. And then Tommasi didn't last long, though. He was killed in a scuffle with members of the former party at his former headquarters. He accosted one and the guy had this kid, an 18-year-old, and he shot him. Tommasi again, another charismatic organizer, founded this group, but didn't last long. That group however did continue it had four different leaders and continued until 1986. James Mason, who we'll talk about later, joined that group after Tommasi's passing. Mike: Okay so that's the NSLF. What about the National Alliance? Spencer: The National Alliance is a group founded by William Pierce after he got kicked out of the NSWPP. He was flirting with Willis Carto, another major nazi leader who became, amongst other things, the main popularizer of Holocaust denial in America. They had a falling out. Carto had a falling out with everyone. Pierce founded– The group was originally the National Youth Alliance, then became the National Alliance. It was a membership based group. They tried to recruit professionals. Pierce had been an engineering professor out in Oregon before he joined the party. He was very articulate. He did not have the sort of crass approach, you know. He produced more sophisticated propaganda as well as sort of more interesting theoretical documents. So they continued. The remnants of the group exists today. They had up to a thousand members. They ended up having a huge group property out in West Virginia. It was the headquarters building. He lived there. He wrote a book in the 70s called The Turner Diaries which is a really badly written book. It's a fantasy novel about how some white supremacists will form a terrorist movement, and they will help promote a race war, through terrorism will promote a race war in America. And you know this will end up in the Day of the Rope where the white supremacists kill people of color and Jews and create a white ethnostate. It's a tremendously popular book around the world. It's sold up to a half a million copies. You can still get it today. It still inspires people today. So Pierce's group, they didn't do a lot of public actions especially till later in life.  Although, their probably biggest rally was in 2002. It was a supposedly pro-Palestine rally in Washington, D.C., that blamed Israel for 9/11, and hundreds of people came to it. They tended to shy away from this stuff. But it was the biggest group, and the most serious group, in the United States for many years. After Pierce died, of course they tried to continue the group and everyone broke up into squabbling. One of the main organizers who's come out of it who's still active today is Billy Roper who's part of the Shield Wall project in Arkansas. I think there's one chapter left. The headquarters of the party still exists. There's been a bunch of legal fights with everyone engaged in lawsuits and various other physical conflicts with each other, and the group has sort of degenerated. So that's the second one, that's the National Alliance. Mike: Okay, so let's talk about–you actually mentioned this on Twitter kind of the other day–the NSPA. Spencer: The NSPA actually was another one of the early splinters that left in 1970. Led by a fellow named Michael Collin. [The name is actually Frank Collin -Mike] They were based in Chicago. They had seen or taken part in Rockwell's popular organizing in Marquette Park in the 60s, and they didn't understand why the party wouldn't follow up with that. And that's what they wanted to do. Again, there was a fighting over the headquarters building. They split off formed their own group. A very small group until they started having rallies in Marquette Park that were still resisting desegregation and attracted community support. Basically, no one wanted to side with this white community that did not want Black people to move in, and they became their champions. And part of the– The thing here is that people in the neighborhood, there were a lot of like Ukrainian immigrants, people who had been from countries that were occupied by the Nazis, who were pro-Nazi. A lot of the areas the Nazis occupied people, you know what I mean, supported them. There were a lot of people, basically, with collaborationist backgrounds, and they didn't have a problem with this. And the nazis championed their cause. And they would hold large rallies in Marquette Park. Some of them attracted thousands of people. They became most famous for the Skokie incident which apparently is being forgotten today by younger people. but was known to everybody in the United States of a certain age. The Chicago city tried to stop them from having their Marquette rallies by putting a bunch of legal barriers. They had to have a huge insurance– Had to take insurance out to do it that was unaffordable. So to get around this they threatened a march in Skokie, Illinois, which was a largely Jewish suburb, wealthy suburb. A lot of Holocaust survivors lived there. Skokie resisted them through legal means. Eventually the case went to the Supreme Court. It was in the national news for like a year or so. It started in 1977. Went to the Supreme Court. The ACLU championed it. The ACLU had been defending nazis before this but this became what they're famous for. Their most famous case. The Supreme Court upheld that local cities could not put unreasonable blocks such as insurance requirements on political groups from marching including nazis. They couldn't stop them from using particular symbols or something. They attempted to ban that. So everyone knew there were neo-nazis in America. It also made the NSPA briefly the most important nazi group, neo-nazi group in America, because at this point there was all these splinter factions from the NSWPP and were all vying to be the most important group or to set up, or attract other groups to them, or to lead coalitions of them. There were different formulations of this. They all had, you know, weird relationships with each other as they were doing this. So the NSPA, because of this lawsuit and the attention it got, became the most popular of these groups, and certainly the most well known of these groups briefly. It eclipsed even the parent party for a while. So that was probably the high point of attention of neo-nazism in America in the 70s. Although, throughout the decade, nazis would consistently make the newspapers. They were a very small movement; had maybe a thousand people in the movement in the US. It became, unlike in the 60s, newspapers, the media started to really love them. So there's tons of coverage of various nazi splinter groups in the various cities for all of their actions. There's a documentary film called California Reich. You can watch it on YouTube. We'll talk about it in a minute. It's about a group in California and such. There was lots of stuff like that. These two things weren't outliers. Mike: Okay, so– Spencer: So Collin– Oh there's a funny ending to it. Collin and his people, they started running for alderman and like city council in Chicago. Some of them did quite well, got like 16% of the vote. But quickly the party started to wane in popularity. Collin's subordinates wanted to get rid of him, so they rifled through his desk and found child porn of him with young teenage boys. They turn him in to the police. He was arrested for child molestation. It also came out his father was a Jewish man who had been in a concentration camp. So there was some real deep stuff going on here. Even though he was a successful organizer, right, against the odds. He went to jail. He was replaced by Harold Covington. We can talk about Covington if we want. He's important in the Greensboro Massacre and then died only a few years ago. Remained an organizer. And then Covington was replaced by someone else and the party frittered away. But yeah, there was a real plot twist in that one after Skokie. Mike: Okay, do you want to talk about the NSWWP? Spencer: Sure, so this was a group– This was the California leader Allen Vincent. He, like everyone else, broke off of the parent party. Founded– He was important cause he was– He wasn't a charismatic organizer, but he could attract followers, and he really liked to get in street fights just as a person. He was a good, stable organizer unlike a lot of these people. Did a lot of crazy rallies in San Francisco. So of course there were fights at his events. At one point he opened a bookstore I believe in the Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco on the same block as a synagogue that a bunch of survivors went to. His bookstore was quickly burned down. He worked with James Mason. Worked with him for a while between 1978 and 1980. Was the editor of his paper The Stormer. Briefly, after the NSPA star faded, his group became a national group. This lasted a few years and it faded away like many of these other groups. So he was well known for the documentary California Reich was filmed about his group while it was still a chapter of the NSWPP before he broke away and became the NSWWP, just to totally confuse anybody about these acronyms. Mike: The National Socialist White– Spencer: White Workers Party. The original group is the National Socialist White People's Party. His group is the National Socialist White Workers Party. Although you might think they're more of an anticapitalist group from the parent party that wasn't true. He lived quite a while through the late 90s. He popped back up in the late 90s, met Jeff Shoep who at the time was running the National Socialist Movement, and became his mentor for a brief period of time. Then he passed away. Mike: Now let's talk about the groups that exist today or the various remnants of it today. So I was going to start with Don Black and Stormfront. Spencer: So Don Black was originally in the National Socialist Youth Movement. It was sort of part of the parent party for people who were under eighteen. There were all these names of these other groups, so people didn't– Their membership card didn't say American Nazi Party or NSWPP. You know he left like many other people. Many neo-nazis, almost all neo-nazis from the 70s were in the party at least at first. That was everybody's entre into this world. So he had been involved in the Dominica debacle. This was in 1981. A group of white supremacists were hired to invade the Caribbean island of Dominica and overthrow the government. They'd made a deal with the– The leader had been deposed and they were going to allow the white supremacists to keep a base there. They were turned in, of course, by somebody, and they all went to jail including Don Black. Later however, he founded Stormfront. It was an early– It wasn't the first at all, but it became the first very popular neo-nazi website. The important thing, it had all these forums where people could have discussions. And it was publicly available, so it was easy for reporters, especially, to go look at the discussions and be able to quote from them which became very important for its visibility. And this was the biggest neo-nazi or white nationalist website really until The Daily Stormer I believe in 2016-2017. So now it's a bit– If you look at it, it's clearly a web 1.0 website and looks a little old school. But it's still the main popular site throughout the 90s and the 00s. And it's still I think for people who are probably gen X and older who are white supremacists, it's still the place that they hang out at. So it had a very important place in the– You know, nazis and other white nationalists have always had a hard time because they were locked out–especially before social media in the last few years even–they were locked out of mainstream platforms. And they need to have alternative platforms. Nazis are actually early adopters to the bbs. The first Nazi or white supremacist bbs opened in 1983. It was actually founded by a former member of Hitler Youth that moved to the United States. And so they were very early adapters to this technology because it was a way for them to get around the media block out. I mean even if they printed newspapers, they couldn't sell them at newsstands. You know even these weird tankie communist sects could sell their newspapers at least some newsstands. Mike: Right. Okay so next up, I guess his story intersects with Don Black's story. We'll talk about occasional political candidate, former Klan leader, former NSLF member David Duke. Spencer: So Duke was a member of the original college student NSLF. He essentially took it over. He was at a party conference in the early 70s, and at this conference, they said NSLF will be– The group itself is changing its name to the White Student Alliance and Duke will be the leader. And this is interesting because it shows Duke's evolution from an outright neo-nazi– He went to school in Louisiana and would go do these free speech– There was a free speech zone, and he would go sell the NSLF newspaper and give neo-nazi speeches. It was a big– You know, he was very well known on campus for this and attracted a lot of attention. There's pictures of him in a Nazi uniform demonstrating against one of the lefty Jewish lawyers Kunstler who had gone to speak at his school. He had a sign that said “Gas the Chicago Seven” who was this left leaning, it was this left leaning political trial in the late 60s. So he took over this new group, and the group kept evolving. So it's originally the National Socialist Liberation Front; then it's the White Student Alliance; then it's the White Youth Alliance; and then it's the Nationalist Party. And then he forms a Ku Klux Klan group or joins one, it's a little vague, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. And this is important because it shows his evolution from a nazi to a kind of white nationalist youth organizer– to a white nationalist student organizer to a white nationalist youth organizer to just a white nationalist organizer. So each time the pool is rippling out, and he's trying to find the right formula that attracts the most people, from very niche to much broader. He becomes– So he forms this newfangled Klan group that doesn't wear hoods, and he's very good with media. This was sort of a new thing to have somebody appear in media who was dressed nice and could talk well, wasn't trying to– You know, Rockwell had waved swastikas in people's faces and was trying to infuriate them, and Duke was doing exactly the opposite. Became very successful. Was very young. He was still in his twenties. He was running one of the more successful Klan groups. One of the things he's remembered for today, he started a Klan Border Watch on the California border to attempt to patrol for illegal immigrants. There he was working with Tom Metzger who later became popular for other things as well as Louis Beam. These were two white supremacist leaders in the 80's who promoted armed struggle. Were the most militant leaders. Started out in Duke's Klan. And as well as Don Black. And I believe Duke married Black's ex-wife. They were all entangled in these ways. So after the Klan stuff he starts running for office in Louisiana and does quite well. And at one point is elected state representative in Louisiana in 1989. This is sort of the high point of the wave of conservatism that goes along with Reagan's reign of power from 1980 to 88, which continues with Bush I to 92. There becomes a revival of popular mainstream American racism. And sort of white flight that had started is very ensconced. There's all these racial conflicts in the late 80s and early 90s like Howard Beach and the Hasidic Jewish and Black riots in Crown Heights. So there's an incredible amount of violent racial tension in the country at the time, and so he's sort of taking advantage of this. He runs for other offices, does quite well, but can't get elected again. And then he's mostly well known for this, and it's the slow burn for the next few decades. He was at Charlottesville which was an interesting moment. To me, this was a sort of handing of the torch from from him to Richard Spencer as the mainstream white nationalist leader. That's how I saw what went on. Although, you know, they didn't actually rally at Charlottesville. The rally itself was dispersed by the police before it began. There was no speeches or ceremony which he could do this, although there was some speeches in a park later. Mike: Let's talk about the National Socialist Movement. Spencer: Yes. The NSM was yet another splinter party. It was formed in 1975 by people who again had come out of the NSWPP. Robert Brannan was its leader. They were sort of going in different directions at the same time. Some of the elements, which included James Mason as well as a guy named Greg Hurls, wanted a more pro-armed struggle line. They were very close to the NSLF. Brannan wanted a more sort of traditional thing, what was called the “uniform and demonstrate” which meant that they would get people in nazi uniforms and hold a rally in public and attract a lot of media attention. People would come and protest and that would just spur that. One of the things they did–they were based in Ohio, southern Ohio–they used to hold a “Free Rudolph Hess” rally I think for over a dozen years in Cincinnati. He was a Nazi leader. He had parachuted to Britain with the intent of creating a peace deal with the British in the early 40s I believe, and then remained imprisoned until his death. I think he committed suicide in the– I think he died in the late 80s early 90s. He lived a long time in Spandau Prison. So this group had some popularity in the early-mid 70s. There was of course splintering of this as Mason left it and went to work with Allen Vincent's group.  And it remained a tiny group with one or two units until the 90s when the then-leader, second leader Clifford Harrington, recruited a teenager named Jeff Shoep. Harrington wasn't a great organizer, but he did, unlike some people, understood there was a revival in neo-nazism in the 80s and 90s through the skinhead thing and wanted to recruit nazi skinheads. Got Shoep to take the party over for him, and then Shoep grew it into the leading neo-nazi party in the United States. It had dozens of chapters in the 00s in particular. I think around 2006 was its height which is a very unusual time for it to be successful. Partly they were pulling from the rest of the movement. The National Alliance collapsed, and other groups in the movement collapsed and they were able to sort of steal their local units and absorb them. But that group still exists today. They were at Charlottesville. They make the news. They just were in the news. There was a rally in Arizona. They're the main group, if you want a nazi group that's going to go and march in uniforms or use nazi symbols–instead of the old brownshirt uniforms, they use black uniforms–and put swastikas on a flag to get attention, that's the group that will do that. So they are on their fourth leader now, Burt Colucci I believe, who like many of them just got arrested. A number of the members have murdered people over the years. A lot of people who– They're sort of the least together group. Yeah they're the kind of group that if you have some sort of countercultural affiliation, if you're not interested in being a professional organizer that you might want to join, if you're a biker, if you're like a skinhead, and if its important for you to have a card saying you belong to a nazi party and you want to yell at people in public that you're a nazi and beat your chest about that and talk about how much you love Adolf Hitler, this is the group for you. It's not a sophisticated organizing project. Mike: Alright, so you have a book in the works about this next one. Let's talk about James Mason, Universal Order, and Siege. Spencer: So I've been working on this book for a while. One day it will be done. James Mason was a teenage member of the American Nazi Party in the 1960s although he never met Rockwell. His mentor in the party was William Pierce. So he met Pierce when he was I believe sixteen years old. Pierce let Mason, who was having a hard time at home, run away from home and stay with him at the party headquarters. Taught him how to– Or got him to learn how to use a printing press which was important before computers. A lot of groups would physically produce their own newspapers themselves with their own printing presses. This helped him out since it was very difficult for nazis to find a printer that would print their publications. So he was in the American Nazi Party. He was in it as it became the NSWPP. He hung around for a while and didn't leave until later. But then he ended up starting to join these other splinter groups while staying in the party. He left in 76. By that time he had already helped form the NSM, and he had also joined secretly the NSLF. This was after Tommasi died, so under the second leader. And he was a supporter of the National Alliance. So at one point, he's a super insider who's like a member of four different neo-nazi parties. And he's always wrangling in the mid 70s as the different groups try to create– try to become the lead group or create an alliance of different groups to overtake the NSWPP. What unites them is that they all hate Koehl who's that leader. They can't do it, as I said before. The NSPA become the leader for a moment because of the Skokie incident. Mason fought with everyone. He did this thing you see from some activists who are sort of sectarian, is they get more and more theoretically specific and crankier and crankier; they fall out with more and more people until they run a project that's really just them and whoever is helping them directly. So he has a falling out with the NSM, and he joins Allen Vincent's group. Runs his newspaper, but he doesn't really like Vincent because he's not radical enough. Mason is deciding more and more that it's hopeless to do public organizing. He comes up with some very strange ideas, not just that nazis should engage in guerilla warfare, but at the time there starts to be these nazi serial killers. Nazis start doing these multiple murders, like Joseph Paul Franklin are serial killers. He killed up to 22 people. He was another former NSWPP member. Roved around he country as a sniper killing mixed race and other couples– Mixed race couples and others, Black people, Jews. And other people just start butchering people, either just doing these random murders or doing workplace massacres. One of the first of them was in New Rochelle by Fred Cowan in New Rochelle, New York. It's just north of New York City in 1977. And there's a lot of serial killers at this time. It's the height for serial killers in America. And so Mason comes up with this theory that not just is guerilla warfare good but these racially based murders are good by nazis and by others. And that the nazis can use them as an attempt to destabilize the system–he starts calling it the system–because nazis can never work through legal means to build a party that will be able to take over the system. He's like every time we try to do this, we get shut down. We either get shut down in the streets, or the courts shut us down, or just shut out of the media. That had been Rockwell's strategy was to attract media attention and build an organization. He's like, “We can't do any of that. We really don't need organization. We need mass chaos to disrupt the system, and only after the system is disrupted will nazis have a chance to take power. He eventually later on starts to praise armed radical left and Black nationalist groups who are coming into conflict with the system, which he doesn't in the 70s but he starts doing it in the 80s. So he has a falling out with Vincent. The NSLF, this is revived under its third leader in 1980, becomes public again. It had actually been absorbed into Allen Vincent's group and then it comes back out as a separate group. He restarts Siege. It's originally the NSLF newspaper. It's sort of their theoretical paper. But it's just him running it, and he's developing these ideas about how murder can be used to forward the nazi cause. Then he comes into contact with Charles Manson. Starts to promote that Manson should be the new nazi guru, just like George Lincoln Rockwell had been, just like Adolf Hitler had been. Portrays him as this spiritual racist figure. Manson had carved a swastika in his head in prison and was sympathetic. He mentions– A lot of people don't know he was extremely racist and antisemitic. This creates yet another tiff between James Mason and the people he's working with. The leader of the party at that point, the fourth leader Karl Hand, who by the way is a big fan of yours. Can I tell a story on your podcast? Mike: Yeah. Spencer: So do you know about the interest of Karl Hand in you? Mike: No. Spencer: Oh you don't? So I actually wrote– As part of this book, I'm writing people who were involved in this movement. And Karl Hand lives upstate, runs a party called the Racial Nationalist Party of America, and he was based for a long time in upstate New York. He is obsessed with you, Mike. After your appearance on Tucker Carlson, he wanted to have a fight with you. Like some sort of, go into a boxing ring, and have a fight. He's an older man now, he's in his 70s. And so I wrote him, and he sent back a whole packet of literature and it included a flier about you with a description of his attempts to contact you and arrange a fist fight with you. Mike: Huh… Spencer:  So you have a fan. You have a fan. I think he said he wrote to the school you were teaching at. Anyways you have a fan in this generation of neo-nazis. And so, anyway, Hand and Mason had a falling out. In what must have been unique in the anals of– the annals? I don't know. You can see I read a lot and don't know how to say certain words. In the history of American neo-nazism, they had an amicable split. Hand actually gave Mason some money to continue Siege. So after 1982 until 1986 Siege is just run by James Mason. It's a very small. It's like a newsletter. He printed it himself. It was six pages long. There was almost no graphics in it. It had a sort of red– It doesn't– Although Mason was a talented graphic designer, I think, it was very plain. It was mostly text. It had a red banner that was it. He ran it off on his own mimeograph machine. Made like 75 copies of it. So this small newsletter that was running 75 copies will become quite influential in retrospect. He ran this till 1986. After the split with the NSLF in 1982, Mason started saying it was published by the Universal Order which directly said that Charles Manson was their spiritual leader. Although, he didn't talk about Manson that much. He never describes what Manson's supposed to do other than, they're not just a neo-nazi group. It's neo-nazism and more. It was a kind of really spiritual national socialism. Although, he's never specific about what that means. But he clearly has been enchanted by Charles Manson and essentially become a follower of him. So this sort of peters out. He becomes more and more cynical. He even gives up that these random murders are going to do anything. He doesn't think that the system will be able to be destabilized, but he does advocate–and this is what's influential today– He says, “Either you can drop out and wait through the apocalypse,” you know that's coming. He becomes convinced that the whole system is going to crumble. And this sort of pessimism is very popular in the 80s across the political spectrum. Partly driven by the Cold War and the survivalist movement. But he says, “You can hide out and wait for the end to come, and then live through it, and we'll have our chance. Or if you're going to go be a terrorist, do it with style. Do it in a way– Don't just kill somebody and be killed. Do it in a way that has panache, and that will inspire people, and that's done well. Plan it well. Don't just freak out and shoot somebody and be killed by the police.” And this philosophy is what becomes popular with Atomwaffen remnants and others today. Like these are your two options. I think it was called “Total attack or total drop out.” By 1986, he's pretty burned out, and that's the end of it. Basically in short order, his book becomes– His newsletters become found by people in the industrial music scene, by Boyd Rice, who's this industrial musician, who's still alive today, and that denies all of this stuff that happened. He recruits several other people. He's in contact with Adam Parfrey, who founded Feral House Press which is still around today; [Michael] Moynihan, who was an industrial and then neo-folk musician; and Nicholas Schreck, a Satanist who's married to Anton LaVey's daughter Zeena. They all work to promote James Mason. They start publishing him in various things. Moynihan takes the newsletters and turns them into a book.which he publishes. It's an anthology of the newsletters. He publishes them himself called Siege in 1993. It becomes a cult classic. It's promoted by this network of people. Basically it's part of the punk rock and assorted underground music and cultural scene, there was a real right wing edge to it, part of which is a predecessor to the alt-right. People like Jim Goad who was the direct inspiration for people like Gavin McInnes of the Proud Boys. There's a lot of nazi imagery circulating, so actual nazis can function in the scene, and it's never clear who's using nazi imagery ironically, or with some interest in nazism but they're not an actual nazi, and who's an actual nazi. It's very unclear, and in this confusion, they can hide, circulate their things, and get some attention. And they do get attention with this book. It gets– There are interviews and it's covered in the alternative weekly newspapers, which were very popular at the time since the internet wasn't what it is now, many which had circulation in tens of thousands in different cities. So they were able to use this network to popularize James Mason's ideas. The book goes out of print. Gets reprinted in 2003 by a fellow in Montana. And he keeps it in circulation, and then it gets picked up with the alt-right, with the Iron March platform which is a discussion board that all these contemporary terrorists, alt-right terrorist groups, neo-nazi terrorist groups come out of, Atomwaffen and others come out of. And they reprint the book yet again. It continues to be circulated as a pro-terrorism cult classic. Mike: So do you think there are any other individuals or groups worth mentioning? Spencer: There are like scattered ones. There's a guy named Rocky Suhayda, I believe is his name who runs a group called the American Nazi Party. It used to get a lot of attention because he was good at using social media and various internet media. So people could always quote him and say the American Nazi Party says X or Y. Although, he was just a random NSWPP member. Art Jones came out of the party while he was in Chicago, and he's a sort of perennial candidate there. But in 2016, the Republicans failed to run someone against him in the primary. It was in a heavily Democratic district. And so in lieu of that he became the Republican candidate for– I forget what it was, US rep or something. And he's a nazi, a Holocaust denier. And so this was all in the news, you know “How is a Holocaust denier the Republican candidate?” This had been– This was a strategy that Nazis developed in the 70s. They would run for offices. Until the late 70s, it was a much more kind of benign movement in a way, not ideologically, but in their tactics, they had not moved into this murderous terrorism phase until a little later on. And so he continues that kind of– It's actually a toolbox of tactics that go back into the 60s: doing things that are kind of publicity stunts to get attention, one of which is running for office. So briefly Jones got in the press. He was in the press again. He tried to run again in 2020, but the Republicans finally like, they put somebody up. I mean, this is the problem, parties have limited resources. If you're putting someone up just to defeat somebody else in the primary even though you know you won't win in the general, that's a waste of your resources. It shows how nazis and other white supremacists can sort of drain resources from the mainstream in an attempt to just not let them get a foothold in the various places that they're trying to– In the various little cracks they're trying to stick their fingers in. Mike: And you mentioned Harold Covington. Do you want to talk about him too? Spencer: Sure. Covington died a couple years ago but had some influence even on the alt-right. He was again a member of the NSWPP. He had taken over the NSPA from Collin after he'd gotten Collin arrested for being a child molester and exposed him as of Jewish descent. Ran that party for a bit. He was also– Some members of his party–he was in North Carolina–took part in the Greensboro massacre in 1979 where a joint group of nazis and Klansmen had killed communists who unwisely held a “Death to the Klan” march but were not prepared for what they had prodded. He ran for attorney general around the same time in North Carolina, state attorney general, and got 40% of the vote. There are a few other instances like this where neo-nazis were able to get a huge amount of votes around this time period. This is around the period where Duke's– Well Duke's elected later, I guess. So he goes to this– He does all this crazy stuff. He goes to Africa to fight in Rhodesia. He was this contentious fellow. Had falling outs with everyone. Moves to the Pacific Northwest, and becomes the last of this old guard of people who are advocating the states in the Pacific Northwest, which are overwhelmingly white, break off from the rest of the country and form a white ethnostate. His last group was called the Northwest Front which I believe still exists today. And they would both advocate this idea, try to get involved in the various– There's a regionalist/independence movement called Cascadia that wants to break some of that area off, but it wants a kind of lefty leaning, ecological state or regionalist entity, and so he tried to give that a specifically racist cast. So this created, again, a lot of these groups in the Cascadian movement, whatever you think about it (There's a lot of kooks.) they had to move and take their resources just to fight the white nationalists within their ranks, to make sure the white na– Because it was popular. You go to Portland; you see people with Cascadian flags on their porches and stuff. There's a sort of intuitive popularity for it there. So they then had to redirect resources to fight against these people, to show that they weren't racist. It might have been good in a way because it forces groups to commit to an anti-racist stance. The presence of white nationalists sometimes does shape up these majority groups to affirm anti-racism. So maybe there is a silver lining to that. Mike: Dr. Sunshine, thank you again for coming on The Nazi Lies Podcast. You can keep up to date with Dr. Sunshine's writings through his newsletter the Sonnenschein Update which you can find on his website. And you can donate to his Patreon. It's also on his website, spencersunshine.com. This has been real fun. Hope we can have you back again for a book release. Spencer: Yeah, it was great chatting with you as always, Mike. [Theme song]

I was going to write a description, but then I got... Happy 4/20!!!

On this week's episode, Sean, Courtney, and Josh discuss Mike Morhaime's retirement, Google+ shutting down, Overcooked 2, and more! This Week in 8BA: Tales of Jemmora and Game NightQuest Log: Playing with Class - MonksThe 8-bit Adventures podcast is a weekly podcast about the 8-bit Adventures comic, and various geeky topics of the week!You can support 8-bit Adventures by becoming a patron over at http://www.patreon.com/8bitAdventures. Thank you for your support!Our theme is 1UP (Instrumental) by Professor Shyguy. You can check out the awesome work he does over at http://www.professorshyguy.bandcamp.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EPISODE WAS RECORDED PRIOR TO THE GOLDEN GLOBES AWARDS. OUR GLOBES SHOW RECAP WILL BE COMING LATER IN THE WEEK. ***This Episode has a Spoiler Section.*** The first (55) minutes is spoiler FREE for our Lady Bird Oscar Sprint Profile. Then we dance to our spoiler music and give the movie a full review in our spoiler section. Lady Bird Oscar Sprint Profile: Non-Spoiler Section: Cast & Crew Greta Gerwig Bio - 1:25 Some Performance Review/Sursheh (Saoirse) Ronan Bio - 9:11 Laurie Metcalf Bio - 29:07 Movie Specs - 32:01 Production Profile/Most of the Performance Review - 36:22 Final Non-Spoiler Thoughts - 51:34 Spoiler Music - 54:48 Spoiler Section: Beautiful, But Cringe Worthy Moments- 55:50 Best/Worst/Oscar Reel Scenes - 58:02 Major Plotlines & Favorite Moments - 1:02:14 Final Grades - 1:16:27 This is our Oscar Sprint Profile of Greta Gerwig's Golden Globe winning Best Comedy or Musical, Lady Bird. The film stars globe best actress winner Saoirse Ronan, Oscar favorite Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, and some guy named Timothee Chalamet. Mike No. 1 serenades you to DMB's Crash, and we dive right into the cast & crew bio/filmographies right off the top. We bio Greta Gerwig from Sacramento to NY, from mumblecore to Mike Leigh, from actor to director. If you wanna learn more about Greta Gerwig for this Oscar Season, we give you her backstory and share a ton of her production stories, directorial techniques, and quotes from her promotional tour on her movie making process. We also bio Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf. Then we cover the movie specs, awards season update, and as I said, we have a ton of making-of information. Our non-spoiler review dives into the production values and performances. We debate how good the Laurie Metcalf performance is compared to Allison Janney as we know they'll duke it out throughout the rest of award season. We gush over some of the film's finer details and how a movie like this has unearthed repressed emotions and forgotten memories from our own lives. Our spoiler music plays, and we break down the carry-overs from our non-spoiler review, which feature the beautiful cringe induced moments from the movie. Then we highlight a whole bunch of Lady Bird's best, worst, and Oscar Reel scenes, we review the major plotlines, and we're amazed how Gerwig weaponizes earlier dialogue in future scenes. Then we give our final grades. We will be LIVE Tweeting during these upcoming award shows, including this Thursday's 23rd Critic's Choice Awards on The CW at 8pm EST. Also stay tuned for our upcoming review of the Golden Globes and more Oscar Sprint Profiles coming at you a few times a week for the rest of January. Please help us spread the word about our podcast. Maybe tell a few friends, leave us a review on iTunes, or just give us a few clicks on social media. Contact us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. We're always happy to hear from you, and when we can, we'll share your thoughts on the podcast. Thank you for all your support thus far. These are early days, but we're thrilled to have earned some loyal listeners, and it's been fun to hear your feedback. Thank you thank you thank you. Finally, don't forget the montra. When reality sucks, watch movies with us.

***This Episode Has a Spoiler Section*** The first (53) mins of the I, Tonya Oscar Sprint Profile are spoiler-FREE, the final (27) mins spoil you rotten. MMO Social Media Shout Outs - 2:00 I, Tonya OSP NON-SPOILER SECTION Production Profile - 6:48 Margot Robbie Bio - 15:09 Allison Janney Bio - 20:33 Specs (Critics, B.O. Release Awards, Projections) - 28:28 (hey look! The same number twice!) Expectations/Production Values/Performance Reviews - 35:59 Freestyle skate/Spoiler Warning Music - 53:01 SPOILER FILLED SECTION Best/Worst Scenes - 54:08 Major Plotlines - 1:02:12 Final Grades - 1:17:55 TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT US AND WE'LL BAKE YOU COOKIES - 1:19:53 The Mikes of Oscar begin the episode with some MMO Social Media Shout Outs, where we read a few of your messages and tweets. Thank you for those, and as always, feel free to chat with us online. It's always fun to talk movies and we will always do our best to respond timely. Speaking of... this is our Oscar Sprint Profile for the Margot Robbie/ Tonya Harding (anti?) bio-pic: I, Tonya. The story is based on true events, which are still shadowed in mystery and scandal even 24 years later. So of course, the backstory of how the film got made is a weird one in its own right. The profile includes bio/filmographies of Margot Robbie and Allison Janney. Then we fill you in on all of the other essential specs on the film including premiere and release info, early box office, critical and audience reception, an award season update, and of course, Mike No. 1 sings like Scott Stapp. (You haven't heard that name in awhile either, huh? Tonya Harding and now, yes, Scott Stapp.) Metta is the word of the pod, and we discuss all of the stories within the story about the story for you throughout this review. We dive right into the Oscar race and can't help but talk about the performances of Robbie and Janney and how they stack up with the rest of the field to bookend this non-spoiler review. The robust classic rock soundtrack, ultra 80s and 90s costumes and production design, the visual effects, and fast action editing are all highlights of our review of the production values. Then we do a non-spoiler review of the performances by the leads and supporting cast. We finish with a debate on whether or not the movie is too metta. Our spoiler filled review hits on the best, worst, and some more of the oscar reel scenes, we review the major plotlines and sequences in the film, and we add some addendum information about where Tonya Harding is now. We wrestle with the scenes of domestic violence, tout the change in Point of View throughout the film as a unique storytelling device, discuss the unreliable narration, and we analyze the character study as Mike No 1 points out the blame game aspect to the subjective storytelling as a possible negative. We finish with our takes on what we believe and question about the true story. The movie has a muddied take on it, but we do our research and try to read between the lines for you all. Please tell a few friends about our podcast. Follow, subscribe, review, retweet, and like us with a few clicks or a few moments online if you can. We do appreciate all your feedback and support. Do stay tuned to our show for the next few months. We're gonna continue our series of Oscar Sprint Profiles as we review and preview all of the major contenders for the Academy Awards. We're having a blast recording and releasing these episodes. So as we always say… when reality sucks, watch movies with us.

***There is a Spoiler Section for The Shape of Water.*** The first (49) minutes is spoiler-free, we sing and dance to the spoiler music, and then the final (28) is the full review treatment of and full of spoilers. The Shape of Water Non-Spoiler Review Production Profile - 2:43 Guillermo Del Toro Filmography - 7:40 Sally Hawkins Mini-Bio - 14:02 Box Office/Awards Bio - 18:45 Production Values - 30:50 Performances Review - 39:19 Spoilers Music - 48:32 Best/Worst Scenes Beginning - 50:00 Debate about Mermen - 55:14 Fight - Under the Table with Lower Extremities Make Up Sex - HIT PAUSE/Off Air/Under the Table With Lower Extremities Oscar Reel Scenes (and more debate/fighting) - 1:03:41 Final Thoughts - 1:11:07 We Forget to Give Our Final Grades - So Look at the Bottom of these Show Notes. We Apologize for Nothing. If you want to tear Mike 1 a new, umm, One? for his bigotry against Mer-People, please call 555-1234. Or if that phone number from every movie doesn't exist, and/or if it is a direct line to Tommy Wiseau's apartment, do instead contact us on social media: FaceBook - Mike, Mike, and Oscar Instagram - MikeMikeAndOscar Twitter - MMandOscar Email: mikemikeandoscar@gmail.com Our Production Profile covers the filmography of The Shape of Water writer/director, Guillermo Del Toro and offers a miniature bio of Sally Hawkins, unofficial queen of Britannia. Mike No. 1 does his best impression of an auctioneer as he lists off all of the awards, and Also Mike showcases a shocking lack of knowledge for games of video. The Non-Spoiler Review discusses the production values and flushes out the water from all the pleasant looking shapes. We gush over the irresistible and undeniable talent of the supporting cast and the film's lead, Sally Hawkins. Our Spoiler Section might be one of our better debates and conversations in the history of our podcast. We cover the best, worst, and Oscar-reel scenes, we have the epic Mer-People vs Fish debate, and although we forget to give our final grades, we both somehow give it a B/86 - B+/87 at this point. Stay tuned for further Oscar Sprint Profiles and coverage of the Award Season to hear where we eventually land on this movie in comparison to the rest of the field. We do suspect that our feelings will evolve with future re-watches and consideration. Please contact us on social media and weigh in on our debate with a metaphorical swipe to the right or left regarding Doug Jones' amphibian man. Do follow, subscribe, message, review, repost, retweet and share to help us spread the word about our podcast. Our few clicks or a few minutes of your time to repost our stuff on your social media could do wonders to help us. As always, thanks for listening. Do stay tuned for more Oscar Sprint Profiles coming at you every few weekdays from now until the Oscar Nominations come out (and maybe a week or so afterward). We'll cover some of the other award shows along the way, and then we'll start to break down each and every category for Oscar and the Mikes big night in early March. Reality can suck. Do watch movies with us.

In this episode series, I interviewed Mike Ethridge. Mike Ethridge, attorney from Charleston, SC, champion of wellness for lawyers, begins our discussion on creating your own happiness and how to deal with unease/frustration in the workplace. Topics covered: How creating a sense of community within the workplace can both bolster personal happiness and create a better sense of communal well-being. Understanding the importance of "Grass-roots" movements and the need to start small.   Questions? Comments? Email Jeena! hello@jeenacho.com. You can also connect with Jeena on Twitter: @Jeena_Cho For more information, visit: jeenacho.com Order The Anxious Lawyer book — Available in hardcover, Kindle and Audible Find Your Ease: Retreat for Lawyers I'm creating a retreat that will provide a perfect gift of relaxation and rejuvenation with an intimate group of lawyers. Interested? Please complete this form: https://jeena3.typeform.com/to/VXfIXq MINDFUL PAUSE: Bite-Sized Practices for Cultivating More Joy and Focus 5-week program. Spend just 6 minutes everyday to practice mindfulness and meditation. Decrease stress/anxiety, increase focus and concentration. Interested? Please complete this form: https://jeena3.typeform.com/to/gLlo7b Sponsor: Spotlight Branding provides internet marketing services exclusively for solo & small law firms. Unlike most internet marketing firms, they do NOT focus on SEO. Instead, they specialize in branding their clients as trusted, credible experts, increasing referrals, and ultimately driving growth. For our listeners, Spotlight Branding is offering a complimentary website review. Go to: SpotlightBranding.com/trl Check out this episode! Transcript Jeena: This is the Resilient Lawyer Podcast, meaningful, in-depth conversations with lawyers, entrepreneurs, and agents of change. The Resilient Lawyer is inspired by those in the legal profession living with authenticity and courage. This podcast is about ordinary people making an extraordinary difference. I'm your host, Jeena Cho. On this week's show, we have Mike Ethridge back on the show. Mike, welcome back. Mike: Thanks, Jeena. It's good to be back. Jeena: Today we're going to talk about wellness in the workplace, specifically places where the lawyers work. I guess to start off, Mike, can you explain what do you mean when you say wellness? Does that mean running? Does that mean exercising? What does that mean? Mike: Well, it's an awfully big term and those of us that have been working with lawyers and in the legal arena around wellness or well-being, struggle with how big that umbrella is and everything that's underneath it. I think it's important for it to remain a pretty expansive concept force. Yes, it does involve exercise and nutrition and good sleep, physical well-being, but it also involves relationships and how we find meaning in our life, mindfulness work, things that enable us emotionally, psychologically, spiritually to be more present to our life and more present to our work. Those concepts, I think, are very much impartial of each other. I get a little frustrated when I hear people talk about wellness or well-being and they divide it into different categories as if physical well-being is something separate and distinct from mental or emotional well-being and I don't think that's true at all. When I talk about this, one of the things I will say is that you decide you're never going to eat chocolate cake again for the rest of your life and you're going to take the stairs wherever you go no matter how tall the building. But you can still find yourself waking up at 3 o'clock in the morning, worried about that answer that you might not have filed or those request to admit that might need to be responded to and trying to survive all for 4, 5 hours of sleep. Physically you are not well but that has a lot to do with your obsession with work and some issues going on with you emotionally. I think it's a mistake to try to separate them. When we talk about wellness or well-being… And I'm really starting to use the word well-being more because I feel like that's a better word for us. It's pretty expansive in scope. Jeena: Yeah. Mike: It needs to be, by necessity. Jeena: So we know it just mean sort of the absence of illness because that's the other thing I find with some lawyers. They'll say “Well, I'm healthy. I'm not sick, therefore, I'm well and I'm perfectly fine.” Well, we need something more comprehensive than that. Mike: That's exactly right. That's a great point. And I think that is a mistake. I think our culture is oriented so much toward treating illness that we define things like well-being in exactly the terms you just used which is absence -- absence of illness or infirmity when well-being is really something that's a bit different. It's the ability to thrive. Really be in your life and really thrive. And so, I think, that is a subtle but really important shift in terms of how we think about wellness. Jeena: Yeah. I think about it as all of the sets of practices that we do want an ongoing regular basis so that we can be our best selves. That's the other interesting thing is that some people think about wellness or well-being as something that they do on occasion. I go on vacation twice a year and that's how I'm caring for my wellness, well-being. Like, no, you have to do it on a regular ongoing basis. It's not so much about how hard you exercise or think it's really… It's like meditation. You could meditate once a month and it's probably not going to have that great of an impact. But if you meditate for even two or three minutes a day, you'll really start to see the benefits. Mike: Right. There's this group called The Energy Project. I don't know if you're familiar with that group or their work. But they talk about how to improve... basically engagement with employees and improve firm's function. They talk about it in the concept of energy and they really base it on what's the fundamental principle of the universe which is to really function at your best, you have to balance energy expenditure with energy renewal. That's so basic and so obvious and it's rather remarkable to me that we structure our firms and work life as if that fundamental law of the universe doesn't exist. Whereas if we're going to perform really at our best and bring our best to this work that we do, there has to be space in our life to be reenergized. We have to make space to exercise, to rest, to just push the pause button and that needs to be a constant fixture or constantly present in our work life daily. But that's not the work ethic or work dynamic of the traditional law firm in this country. You go there early, you try to stay later than everybody else, you work on the weekends, you're available by cell phone or whatever when you're not at work. There's not this institutional structuring of opportunities for you to rest and recharge and get that renewal of energy that's necessary for you to really be the lawyer that the firm and your clients need you to be. Jeena: Yeah. Maybe we can talk about this from a top-down approach and maybe we can talk about it from bottom up. I guess let's start here. What's the business case for why managing partners at a law firm should even care about wellness or well-being? Don't you just want your attorneys to maximize their billing and bill as many hours as possible? If you give them an hour off to go take a meditation class, or go to yoga, or have some sort of a social function where people are authentically connecting with each other, you're taking valuable, billable time away from the attorneys. Mike: Well, as you put your finger on… I think the crux of the issue as it relates to firm management and firm operation and what firm struggle with, one of the difficulties, I think, we have as a professional right now is that we define our productivity in terms of billable hours. The reasons why we need to do that… I understand that and I have a practice that is very much oriented toward the billable hours. It's not this demonic thing but it really does create a problem if that becomes truly the measure of productivity simply having hours that you spend on something. That is, I think, antithetical to what essentially we're about as a profession. Our most valuable commodity is not time but it's attention. I could spend four, five hours trying to write a brief and I'm having a hard time focusing because I'm tired or I'm worried about something else. What actually happens is I write two pages, or I sit down for 45 minutes and I'm really focused and I crank the whole thing out. Well, I'm able to bring all of my attention to the endeavor in that second event but, economically, I don't make nearly as much money for the firm as if I'm sitting around distracted for four hours. When you think about it that way, it's a really rather absurd way to think about servicing your clients. But we live in a billable hour world so we have to understand where we are. But, I think, we need to begin with understanding that what we're really about as lawyers is providing a certain level of service to our client which involves economy and efficiency and wisdom and for us to really value the skill and the preciseness of our craft much more than how long it takes us to do it and how much money you'd get from it. I think, again, shifting what we want to try to produce and what we want our result to be for our client away from X number of billable hours is the first step and that is a very high first step to take because, I think, so many law firms are built around this billable hour model and the billable hours are the widgets and we need to crank out a lot of widgets to create the revenue to pay the salaries and to give these folks jobs and to keep the machine running. Jeena: Yeah, and, of course, that's how lawyers are often measured is by their billable hour and that seems like that's probably the most important metrics in terms of when they're deciding who's going to get the bonuses or who's going to stay or go. Every single billable hour is created equal but it's not because sometimes, just like you're saying, you can spend 45 minutes and knock out this really great brief or come up with some brilliant idea to help your client and then it may only take you 10 minutes but somehow that 10-minute is valued equally as if you just spent 10 minutes halfway distracted and halfway focused. I think talking about our billable, or how we generate income, is a whole another conversation about alternative billings and all of that good stuff. Mike: Well, it is and we don't need to go down that road now but I do think we need… that is something that lawyers certainly need to explore for reasons we're talking about. The other part of the equation when you think about billable hours, that way of thinking that billable hours are our widgets, we need to generate as many billable hours as possible to increase our revenue and that becomes a primary measure of value for the lawyers that work in our firm. That is incredibly shortsighted. It may be true for some limited period of time but overall… I mean after awhile, a client is not going to stay with the law firm that churns the files or that prioritizes billing hours over getting results and early resolutions. Ultimately, you are going to be measured on how well you do your work for clients and the measure's going to be the book of business that you have and how many clients decide that they want you to be their lawyer because you're able to deliver the kind of results that they're looking for which frequently means moving a case quickly towards some kind of resolution. Jeena: Yeah. It's interesting because I recently met someone that works at Google and, of course, Google is radically different than big law firms in general. But they were talking about how… Not only are the productivity of every employee at Google closely monitor but also how happy they are. And there's a direct correlation between happiness and, I guess, tied to that well-being, and how productive people are. But in law firms, it almost feels like there's a sense that if you're a happy lawyer then you can't be the best lawyer possible. It's almost like the more miserable you are, the better attorney you're presumed to be. There's almost this natural culture where you sit around and talk about how hard you work, and how long you stayed at the office, and how many all-nighters you pulled. When you start to talk about, oh, there's actually a correlation between happiness and how good of an employee or partner you can be, lawyers frown upon that. Why do you think that is? Why are we so backward thinking despite all the science and all the evidence that's contrary? Mike: That's a great question. As you were asking that I was thinking “I'm going to ask Jeena why she thinks that Google is different from law firms.” What you're saying really is true. I can't tell you how many times I've been in the kitchen and you're standing around the coffee pot or the water cooler and everybody are engaging in this my-life-sucks-worse-than-yours kind of back and forth. That's really present in law firms. It's, I think, fascinating when we go outside the legal profession, we go to companies like Google and other companies too. Think about Google. They have all kinds of metrics that they will use to measure productivity. So metrics are not… that's not the cause of the problem. Businesses all over the world have metrics that use to measure how well the folks that are working there are doing. But they are businesses that even with those metrics, they have very happy employees really engaged in their work. I think the difference with law firms is that we quite really value and meaning with those metrics and with the productivity so that become, you know, you are how many hours you bill and how much money you make or able to make is directly related to that. That is a different way of thinking from an organization that says we are about something bigger than making money and something bigger than ourselves. We're about really being a meaningful organization in our community and in this world and for the people that work here. Now, to be what we want to be, we have to have a certain amount of fuel. We've got to make a certain amount of money because it takes a lot of fuel to build this thing and fly this plane. The revenue we generate is that… and we need to be good stewards of that and the way we do that is by measuring. So we're careful about how we measure and we're going to talk a lot about what that looks like. But this is not about how many hours we work and how many dollars we make, it's about really becoming the kind of organization, the kind of firm, the kind of business that we feel like this community and this planet needs. Jeena: Yeah. Mike: Law firms really never quite get there because they don't begin by asking itself that question which is what are our real values and what do we want to be, how do we see ourselves as a firm or as a business. If you don't have consensus on the answers to those questions by default, the value is going to be how much money you make. Jeena: For the law firms out there that kind of buy into this idea that the well-being and the happiness of the people that work within the organization is going to have a positive net benefit towards how well they'll be able to service their client, where do you start? Because it also feels kind of overwhelming because we started by talking about a definition of wellness and well-being and we specifically talked about that is all-encompassing. What are some suggestions you have for how to implement some type of wellness or well-being programs? Mike: Well, ideally it starts at the top. Ideally, you have firm management, the equity partners, the owners of the firm who really do buy into this idea that the well-being and the engagement of the lawyers and the people who work in the firm is really what it's all about and really will drive the productivity and the profit. That is a difficult thing to achieve because that, again, culturally is just not, I think, what we've been about as a profession. I think many of us grew up in a culture that was a lot different than that and thought about productivity more in terms of what we've been talking about which is billable hours. But, ideally, you have for managers that begin to think about the importance of engagement and well-being and the relationship between that and the productivity. Then they can, from there, explore what does that look like in terms of how we run this firm and what we offer to people and make available for the people that work here and partner with them to promote well-being? That I think, like I said, is rarely the case so more realistically there'll be somebody… It might be a staff person, it might be a young lawyer who says “There's something wrong with this culture and I want to do things differently.” The real challenge for them is how can they begin to introduce these ideas into the firm and begin to start creating a change in culture, maybe a little more underground than the partners they can get on. Jeena: Yeah. I'm friends with the guy that started the Intel Mindfulness Program and I thought that was really interesting because that was really one of those instances where the effort started from the bottom up so no one at top said “Oh, we need a mindfulness program at Intel.” Intel tends to also be a little bit about more traditional tech company and he is a meditator himself and this is something that he values in his life personally. He just decided “You know what, I am just going to reserve a conference room on every Wednesday from 12:00 to 12:30. I'm going to just send out an email to my little group of people that I work with and just invite people to come for a short guided meditation.” He said “At first one or two people showed up and then it continues to grow. And then the manager started to see the impact that that short practice was having.” So then the manager started to adopt the idea in the program and it spread to other departments. And then finally, the upper managers at Intel really saw the value of offering such a program and gave them budget to be able to really roll this program out and now it's a companywide program. I think it kind of actually happen both ways but what I think that's really important is for the attorneys to actually embrace these practices in their own lives because I think so often there's this feeling like “Do as I say, not as I do.” Like “I'm not going to go to the gym, I'm not going to go to yoga, I'm not going to meditate but I heard this is a good idea for everybody else. So I want everybody else to do this.” That really seems to work. I think that saying “Be the change you want to see in the world” is so true in this context. Mike: It's true. Jeena: Often I'll get these emails from young associates in these big law firms and they are just miserable. They'll tell me things like “I work with this partner and he's so not receptive to these type of ideas. I want the firm to change.” I'll say “Well, the only thing you can change is yourself. I think we also sort of underestimate the value of changing yourself and the ripple effect that that can have. Mike: You're absolutely right. And I think that the model that you talk about with your friend at Intel is precisely the model that I would hope lawyers and staff and law firms would start to embrace. It begins with, you just said, living these changes and living this way of prioritizing well-being. And deciding that you want to try to do that in some way, in the context of your work, not being attached to any idea that management is going to somehow buy into this or that you're going to one day maybe totally transform the culture. You might not. It doesn't matter. What really matters is this practice in a way of life that is meaningful to you and are there places and ways there in the office where you can begin to engage in that and share it with others and invite others to do it with you? I love this idea, reserving a conference room and having meditation. There are all kinds of things that you can do. You can organize just a walk to lunch one day a week. A lot of law firms, particularly in larger law firms, will have empty offices. You can approach the office manager and just ask for permission to transform one of these empty offices into a stress-free zone and bring and lamps and candles and just have it a place where people can go and relax. Create wellness challenges just inside your office, organize monthly get-togethers or something. All kinds of things. We could sit here and brainstorm about what's available. That really cost much of anything and one person could do it and get a handful of people there at the office and then see what happens. I think, inevitably, what happened at Intel does happen. I think that people began to see that there is value in this and there's a certain kind of enthusiasm and engagement by the people that are participating that's very helpful for the organization and then there's an openness to it. The other thing, I think, that happens is you can begin to create some of these practices in your office and then when the firm managers are out at conferences or conventions and they begin to hear other firms doing similar things, there's just an openness to it that started to develop because you're trying to do it at your office as well. That's how the change is going to happen, I think. It's going to be this grassroots. Jeena: How important do you think it is to measure the impact of this type of programs? Do you think it's a good idea to have a survey or questionnaire that people that are participating can fill out? Mike: That's a great question because I have… For a long time, I just thought it was not important that you measure that. That the measure is your experience of it and you're deciding that it's meaningful and people, they're deciding it's meaningful or not. But it was just to get bogged down and measuring something that really can't be measured. You can't measure thriving, you can't measure happiness. That, to me, seems to be a waste of time. However, I have changed is how I think about. And a lot of that had come from my meeting Anne Bradford who is doing a lot of work around… I think she has a book that's going to be published by the ABA called Rules of Engagement. She's done a lot of writing on this idea of how can firms create engagement in the workplace. What Anne -- she's a scientist. She's a lawyer who's going back to school. But she is all about measuring everything. The more that I talk to Anne about this, I began to understand it's so important that this… what we're talking about which is how can we begin to take better care of ourselves and thrive as a profession is too important for it to be something that just… We do it because we think it's a good idea. We really need to measure it so we can articulate its values to the profession. And lawyers, they're going to listen when it's evidence-based and fact-based. Now, I'm not a scientist. Anne is much better person to answer the question. I think about how you measure. But I think it's really important that be measured and that we be able to demonstrate that there are tangible things that happen to people and to firms who consciously choose to promote and prioritize well-being. Jeena: Yeah. And, I guess, this is also a sort of a personal decision but I tend to measure everything. So I have an app and I measure exactly how long I meditate for every single day. Then after I meditate, I will spend 30 seconds just jotting down what the experience was like. And it's interesting to have a little bit of data because then I can look back at the end of the year and say “Okay, like how many hours did I spend meditating?” And when I was able to meditate for, let's say, 30 days in a row, was there some measurable impact than if I didn't meditate regularly for 30 days. Think having a little bit of a metrics, not in, I think, your point about not getting bogged down by it is a good one and, of course, because we're lawyers, we could probably debate which metrics is the most appropriate one to use for 10 months and create sub-committees to decide on that. I think action over planning perhaps is too much planning. Mike: No. I think if there's real value in doing some of that measuring -- and I come from it very differently and from a very different place than you do and trying to measure it somehow diminish or cheapen the event. And I wanted it to be, I guess, pure. Meditation is a good example. But having said that, there's real truth to this notion that what we measure grows and increases. And I have this app, I think it's called Habit or something like that, where I have it on my phone and so everyday… I don't measure how long I meditate but the fact that I measure whether or not I meditate or workout or whether eat a low carb diet. It is remarkable how much more consistently I will do those things just because I'm going go on the phone and click whether I do it or not. It's just the act of measuring it has so much to do with my ability to come back to it day after day after day and keep the practice going. I think what you're talking about is important. Just, for a long time, I just never thought it was that important but we're going to understand it really is. We have all kinds of things with our phones and their… There are easy ways to measure a lot of the stuff just without any effort. Jeena: Also, lawyers are kind of good at doing homework. So having an app on your phone and it reminds you “Hey, remember, you're going to walk for 10 minutes today” or do whatever, little doses. Also, it's a good way to not cheat yourself. I think there's this tendency if you just say “Oh, well, I'll do it when I get around to doing it” then it's really easy to not do it because you already have 48 other things on your to-do list and exercise or well-being practices, well, typically end up on the bottom of the list. Maybe that's another question that we can chat about just very briefly is how do you prioritize these wellness or well-being practices when there's so many other things on your to-do list? How do you say this is more important than caring for others, or doing my work, or maybe not more important but as important? Mike: I think that question is going to be answered differently by different people. I can talk about what, for me, how I do that. We'll say that it is really hard and, in a lot of times, it feels almost next to impossible once my work day begins to hit a pause button and go do some self care. I just get thrown into, or jump into, dive into whatever my work may holds. And I'm on the phone, I'm on conference calls, I'm in depositions, or mediations, but I'm just kind of there and it's hard… I've tried, a lot of times, just step away for a couple of hours at lunch and come back and sometimes I'll do that. But, for me, the way I prioritize it is carving out a section of my day that I know is going to be committed to that kind of self care. For me, that's early morning. I get up about 5 o'clock and I'll go work out. I'll come back and I'll meditate. I'll have coffee, I'll have my breakfast. I'm conscious about how that morning is structured and how I move into my work. That works the best but there also seasons in my life where it might not be mornings, it might be in the evenings or something else. But the morning, carving it out in the morning, for me, is what is may the biggest difference in terms of having it available and being able to engage in it every day. We're so programmed in this culture that Monday morning, you go to work and you work all day long. If you stop during the middle of the day, then you're being lazy. We'll try to, on days where I'm not in deposition or hearing or something like that, but I have the ability to pause there… I will try to stop and intentionally set up a lunch with somebody and reconnect with somebody that I need to work with. When I was downtown I would stop and I'd walk over to the water or go to the art museum. Really just once or twice a week try to do something to just reenergize myself. But those are things that are pretty much inserted into my day on a week by week basis. It's hard to really create or structure a day around those kinds of events when you do what we do for a living. We don't always get to choose how our days unfold in the practice. Jeena: Yeah, definitely. We're at about a 35-minute mark. Is there anything else related to this topic you want to chat about? Mike: There's one other point that I was going to make in this…I think the need for law firms to address this issue with wellbeing is vital for us as a profession. There was a study that was done not too long ago… I think it might have been done by the ABA, I can't remember. Anne Bradford cites it in her work. But it identified an association in a private law firm is being the most miserable job in America. There's such dissatisfaction, particularly among young lawyers in our profession, the level of attrition that we're seeing with lawyers, the amount of distress -- and we've talked about that here. I know you've talked about it in another podcast, the level of distress that the lawyers experience. We need to begin to come to come to grips with how we prioritize taking care of ourselves. And if we're going to do that as a profession, I believe that has to begin to happen at the firm institutional level in addition to what we're doing individually. Jeena: Yeah, so true. Mike, thank you so much for joining me on another episode of the Resilient Lawyer Podcast. Mike: Thank you, Jeena.   Closing Thanks for joining us on the Resilient Lawyer Podcast. If you'd like to build a more profitable and purpose driven law practice, learn more about us at startherehq.com. If you've enjoyed the show, please tell a friend. It's really the best way to grow the show. To leave us a review on iTunes, search for the Resilient Lawyer and give us your honest feedback. It goes a long way to help with our visibility when you do that so we really appreciate it. As always, we'd love to hear from you and you can drop us an email anytime at hi@startherehq.com. Thanks and look forward to seeing you next week.