Podcast appearances and mentions of mike stay

Jon had a little too much caffeine and vented about trendy workout videos. Mike and Jon also talk about home schooled students vs. public educated students and ended the podcast discussing the inclusion environment that everyone is seeing in today's corporate world. ******************************************************************************** Follow Jon & Mike below: Jon and Mike on Instagram @curiositywithjonandmike Follow Jon and Mike on Facebook @curiositywithjonandmike Subscribe to Jon and Mike's YouTube channel for more content: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbXt...

Episode 102 - 22 Things to do at Disney in 2022! 22 Things to do at Disney in 2022! Hey everyone, I'm Mike, she's Sophie, and that's Brenda, and we're On the Road with Mickey! This is episode 102 for December 27, 2021, and our feature topic is 22 Things to do at Disney in 2022! Looking ahead to next year, first, Happy New Year! We hope you all have a great, prosperous, and safe new year! We are looking at 22 things that we want to do at Disney in 2022! Have a listen, and let us know in the comments what you think! Here's the rundown of what we talked about: Update from Last Week:We asked the question, are you Team Lights or are you Team Projection when it comes to the decorations on Cinderella Castle. Well, when in doubt, do a poll! We put the poll up in our Facebook Group, and friends, it wasn't even close! By nearly a 3:1 ratio, the winner is Team Lights! So, for those of you who voted like I did (Team Projection) – well, we know that we're right, don't we? ;)Cheddar from the Big CheeseSophie: Over at Animal Kingdom, Lola, one of the white rhinos there, gave birth to a healthy and adorable female calf in early November, and the Disney Parks Blog released information and pictures about her recently. She is the third white rhino born at Animal Kingdom park in the past 13 months, and the 13th white rhino born at Walt Disney World Resort!Brenda: Are you going to be at Walt Disney World anytime between December 22nd and 31st? If so, one special occurrence is that Mickey's Once Upon a Christmastime Parade, which had only been performed during the Very Merriest After Hours Party, is now being shown twice daily at the Magic Kingdom during these days! Looks like the times are generally at Noon and 3:45PM or 3:30PM depending on the day.Mike: An alternative to the Mears Connect service bringing guests from Orlando International Airport to Walt Disney World was just announced! It is called The Sunshine Flyer, will be starting on February 1, 2022, and the buses are themed like trains! Prices are $17 per adult, $12.50 per child each way. Mike: Bonus cheddar! Re-opening on March 31, 2022, Disney's All Star Sports Resort! This means that come March 31, all of the Disney resorts will be open for the first time since 2020!Connect with us! Here's how: Facebook: https://facebook.ontheroadwithmickey.comFacebook Group: https://facebookgroup.ontheroadwithmickey.comYouTube: On the Road with Mickey (Don't forget to subscribe, like the videos, and comment!)Instagram: On the Road with MickeyEmail: info@ontheroadwithmickey.comPhone Voicemail: 919-799-8390Feature Topic: 22 Things to do at Disney in 2022!1. Mike: Witness in person the Candlelight Processional2. Mike: Take in the Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party3. Mike: Meetup with friends and family4. Mike: Have an On the Road with Mickey meetup in the parks with listeners.5. Mike: Take in the Flower & Garden Festival6. Mike: Stay at a new resort7. Mike: Eat at at least one restaurant we've never been to before8. Mike: Record an episode of On the Road with Mickey on location9. Sophie: Solo trip to Disney10. Brenda: Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind!11. Sophie: Eat around the World at the Food & Wine Festival12. Brenda: Meet friend in person at WDW!13. Sophie: Meetup with BCOM14. Brenda: Seeing the new Walt Statue at Epcot15. Sophie: Stay at a new resort - Boardwalk Inn16. Brenda: Sail on the Disney Wish!17. Sophie: Go back to MNSSHP18. Brenda: Disney with Luna!19. Sophie: Go to Jellyrolls and Atlantic Dance Hall20. Brenda: Ride the WDW Railroad 21. Sophie: Experience Fantasmic!22. Brenda: Epcot 40th BirthdayThis Day in Disney History for December 201937 - Walt Disney appears on the cover of Time magazine.http://thisdayindisneyhistory.homestead.com/Dec27.htmlDisney Who's Who CharacterGaston from Beauty and the BeastA little bit of Walt“But now, looking back, I have satisfaction, even pleasure, in tracing the effects those newspaper-delivery days had on my mature life.

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

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  . 

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. 

Alright, everybody. Gather round. It's time we talked about how Marvel tried to get right with Jesus. Twice.  ----more---- Episode 7 Transcription [00:00:00] Mike: is there anything more offensive than lazy comic books?   Welcome to Tencent takes the podcast where we apologize for comic books ends one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined as always by my co-host, the celebrated comedian, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Hello. Hello. Mike: How are you doing? Jessika: Oh, I'm pretty good, wild week, but I mean, we have comics to go with. Mike: Comics make everything better. Jessika: It's true. Mike: If you're new to the show, the purpose of this podcast is to look at comics 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 [00:01:00] woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we’re venturing out of our fool's paradise and checking out how Marvel tried to get right with Jesus through not one, but two runs of Christian comics. Jessika: Gawd, you almost wished they had stopped.  Mike: It’s a ride. Jessika: It's such a ride. Mike: Before we get started though, Jess, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched lately? Jessika: Well, I am very excited about what I'm about to share. And I was recently at my local comic shop and grabbed the first copy and started a subscription for the comic Alice in Leatherland by Iolanda Zanfardino and Elisa Romboli and published through Black Mask Entertainment. Mike: Oh, Black Mask is awesome. They're a smaller imprint, but they were super supportive of local shops when the lockdown happened. Jessika: Oh, that's lovely. I'm really glad I supported them then. Mike: Yeah. I, if I remember right, Brian’s, our [00:02:00] local shop in Petaluma, they did a deal where Brian's was talking about it, and basically they had, if you did a direct order from them, they would split the revenue 50, 50, as long as you provided the name of the local shop. Jessika: Oh, that's so nice. Mike: Yeah, they're rad. I really liked them a lot. Jessika: I already really liked this comic. I mean, I'm one issue in.  Mike: Yeah. I haven't heard of it. Jessika: Oh, it's amazing. It's queer. You know, I love me some queer content. It's emotional. The animation style right now is monochromatic and detailed. So I'm interested to see if the color vibe continues that way, or if it goes in another direction, kind of, as the story continues. Mike: Okay. Jessika: The storyline seems like it's going to take us on a really fun sex and kink positive adventure, and I'm excited to see what the next issue brings us. Mike: That sounds really cool. Jessika: Yeah. What about you? Mike: Well, I have not been reading new comics, it’s kind of the opposite of [00:03:00] that. I finally got my old comic collection from my parents' house and I've been digging through it for the past couple of days.  Jessika: Nice.  Mike: Yeah, it's, it's a time capsule.  And it's also, it's, it's a lot of fun to see what I was reading and also cringe a little bit, but also see that in some cases I had really good taste and that collection is appreciated better than some people's stock portfolios, I’m sure. So that was kind of cool to find the first appearance of Bain in the middle of the box. Jessika: Oh, that's cool. So you curated that collection, it wasn't like things that were kind of given to you or was it a combination? Mike: It was a little bit of both. But I mean, I started, I started really collecting comics when I was about nine or 10, and so it was, it was several long boxes. So, you know, the first appearance of He-Man was in there as well. And then, one of the things  that I actively collected was a comic series called X, and it was from Dark Horse in the early 1990s. So. [00:04:00] Dark Horse was using this in a couple of other books to launch their shared superhero universe. And X was this really interesting  take on a Batman kind of figure. He was this character who would mark criminals with an X. If you crossed him, you'd receive a slash across your face as a warning, or you'd be marked for death with a full X. So. Jessika: Damn. Mike: Yeah.  A large part part of the character is the mystery around him and his abilities and the writers weren't afraid to let it stay a mystery for the most part. It's very much one of those, you know, grim and gritty nineties books, but it's also pretty good on the reread. It doesn't quite age as well as, as I would hope it would. But for the most part, it's really fun. Jessika: That's great. It's always nice. When things meet your expectations, most of the way. Mike: Most of the way. Jessika: On the reread.  Mike: I'm not embarrassed to like 80% of what came across. Jessika: I dig that. [00:05:00]  Mike:  Well, after our last episode, I found myself thinking of weird Christian comics that I've come across and I realized I actually have some in my collection. So I started digging, and then I wound up digging some more, and it turns out Marvel had two different runs of very different comics for Christian audiences. And this is a first for us, we’re going to do this as a two-part episode. So we're going to talk about the first run tonight, but we're also going to talk around some of the background with Marvel and religion. Jessika: I'm so excited for this. You have no idea. I've been thinking about it all week as I've been reading these again, bananagrams comics, but like bananagrams in a totally different way than the last ones we read. Mike: It's a very mixed bag this time around. Jessika: Ooh, scary mixed. Mike: Yeah, Marvel and the Bible never really had a strong relationship, although ,they've done some flirtation every now and then.  Back [00:06:00] in 1953 Atlas, which is the publisher that would become Marvel eventually, they had a short-lived series called Bible Tales for Young Folk, which adapted iconic stories from the Bible for younger readers, but it only ran for five issues. So I'm gonna put that in a little bit of perspective: comics circulation in the 1950s was still incredibly high, partially due to the fact that televisions weren't as commonplace as they would be by the end of the decade.  Do you remember when our first episode I mentioned,  that only 9% of us households had TVs at the start of the decade versus 90% by the end? Jessika: Yes. Yeah, I do remember that. Mike: Yeah. So I came across an article that actually talks about the average comic sales per month in 1959. What do you think that number was like what the average circulation of comic books, the entire market. Jessika: 1959. Well, gosh, they had comics that they were  sending through the army and everything. Gawd, it had to have been in the millions. Mike: Yeah, 26 million. [00:07:00] Jessika: Wow, wow wow wow. Mike: So it was, it was pretty substantial, and the fact that a comic series based on the Bible only sold well enough to last five issues during that insane circulation period is pretty telling about what kids were and weren't interested in reading. But anyway, overt at Christian iconography and characters generally haven't appeared in Marvel's books too often. Certain characters like Daredevil and Nightcrawler are strongly defined by their respective Christianities, but it's generally just treated as faith. It's not identified as the quote true religion. And Marvel's actually made a good point in recent years of setting up a complex Pantheon of gods, so it makes it seem like there's no wrong religion to follow.  Side note though, one of my favorite comic details is that Dr. Doom had a recent confrontation with Dracula and he revealed he had splinters of the true cross in his armor as a vampire deterrent. I thought that was just chef's [00:08:00] kiss. Jessika: Oh, wow. Mike: It was great.  Jesus himself never really appeared in mainstream Marvel books though. There's been occasional messages or sometimes you'll see the  iconography or occasionally there'll be cameos as well. But honestly, the most notable appearance that I'm aware of was in the 1970s with Ghost Rider.  In the 1970s Ghost Rider comic, when a mysterious character only identified as a friend shows up to save Ghost Rider on occasion.  It was very clearly meant to be Jesus, but this character was eventually retconned to be an illusion created by the demon Maphisto. This is one of those things that's just, it's so weird, I want to take a moment to focus on it. So writer, Tony Isabella, who is actually the guy who created Black Lightning, which I know you've been reading a bit of lately. Jessika: Yeah! Mike:  So he explained how this character came to be in an interview a while [00:09:00] ago with Comics Buyer's Guide. Would you like to read what he said out loud for our audience? Jessika: Certainly Mike: Alright.  Jessika: Getting prior approval from editor, Roy Thomas, as I would from later editors, Len Wein and Marv Wolfman. I introduced “the Friend” into the series. It looked sort of like a hippie Jesus Christ. And that's exactly who He was, though I never actually called Him that. It allowed me to address the disparity that had long bothered me about the Marvel Universe. So we had no end of Hells and Satan surrogates in our comics, we had nothing of heaven. After two years, I had written a story wherein, couched in  mildly settled term, Blaze accepted Jesus as his savior and freed himself from Satan's power forever. Had I remained on Ghost Rider which was my intent at the time the titles [00:10:00] religious elements would have faded into the background.  Blaze would be a Christian, but he'd express this in a way you led his life. Unfortunately, an assistant editor took offense at my story. The issue was ready to go and the printer, when he pulled it back and ripped it to pieces, he had some of the art redrawn and a lot of the copy rewritten to change the ending of a story two years in the making.  The friend was revealed to be not Jesus, but a demon in disguise.  To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrongheaded actions I've ever seen from an editor. Mike: Someone's still got feelings about this. Jessika: Feelings, Mike: All capitals. Jessika: Salty.  Mike: That assistant editor that he's talking about has been later identified as Jim Shooter, who eventually became Marvel's Editor-In-Chief in 1978. Shooter's kind of an interesting guy. He's [00:11:00] hailed as the person who really righted Marvel’s ship after a lot of prolonged instability. So during his tenure, there were a lot of acclaimed runs and storylines, like all those Saturday morning cartoons we talked about in our first episode, those all happened under his watch. So, you know, you can't say that he didn't do a good job, but a number of major industry figures have also gone on record to state that he forced a lot of editorial decisions on people working for him.  Interestingly, though, Shooter actually gave a video interview last year where he actually addressed Isabella's description. He said he was concerned about the Jesus' storyline, because it would have quote, basically established the Marvel universe as a Christian universe and that all of the religions were false and he felt that would have alienated other readers. Jessika: That's kinda how I feel about it. Mike: Aye. I can't say I disagree with them, but I can also see Isabella’s [00:12:00] point. Um, I don't know what the right answer would have been, but it's an interesting moment of comic history. Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. Mike:  Now the funny thing is that the first comics that we're going to talk about actually were published by Marvel when it was running under shooter's guidance. So two of these were co-written by Roy Gasnick. Gasnick himself is also a pretty fascinating guy.  He basically spent the entirety of his adult life in the Franciscan order. He wound up serving as the Director of Communications for the Franciscan Province of the East Coast Holy Name Province, which was headquartered in New York. And he worked there for 18 years and he dealt a lot with the media. He was also a big believer in civil rights, and apparently he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. Not what I would have expected. Jessika: No, like the whole end of that, I was like, oh, oh, oh, okay. All right.  Mike: Yeah.  And granted I'm reading largely obituaries about them. And so they're going to [00:13:00] paint them in a good light, but to recap, his public image is that he was a dude who devoted himself to the church for basically his entire life.  He wrote best-selling comic books and he fought for others' rights. So kind of interesting.  It sounds like the proverbial cool priest that everybody wants to be. Jessika: it's that priest you call uncle? No, don't do that. Mike: No. Jessika: There were one of the comics that did that. Mike: Yeah. Yep. Jessika: I didn't like it. It was, it was really creepy. I was like, no, you took it too far. Mike: Yeah, it was the Pope Mike: Yeah, it's, it's really awkward because it's the Pope and you're just like, oh, oh, I don't know a Catholic priest who wants young men to call him uncle, I don't know how I feel about that. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: okay. So Gasnick wrote the first comic that we're going to talk about, which is Francis Brother of the Universe. This is a book that came out in [00:14:00] 1980 and it was actually published in order to celebrate  the saint’s 800th birthday. It would have been 1981 or 82. His actual birthday has been lost to history, they just know it was really late in one year or really early in the other year, Jessika: Hmm. Mike: But  effectively, it tells the life story of Saint Francis, which has definitely taken on a mythological quality  since he reformed the church about 800 years ago. Jessika, would you do me a favor and describe the cover of this comic? Because it is a trip. Jessika: It is a trip. Okay. So it is first of all, at the very top in the box that would usually have the comics code, the little emblem, it actually has Francis himself with like a Wolf. It says 75 cent one first issue, Marvel Comics Group Francis, [00:15:00] Brother of the Universe, his complete life story, and okay guys, this is exciting. It is an exciting cover. So first you see a guy on horseback, medieval guy on horseback and it's white horse, and he's got a sword in the air and it's cutting through the text at the top and there's fighting behind him in a big cloud. And then there, then you see bald Francis. We're going to talk about why is he bald? Okay. It's like, why do you have to do that? Like, just get rid of the whole thing. I dunno. Anyway, so bald Francis, and then you've got, you know, another guy, I think it was also Francis. I think this is all Francis. Mike: That, that, is young Francis.  Jessika: Young Francis on a table with a cup he's like screaming into, you know, a crowd.  Mike: Hosting a party at a Tavern like you do. Jessika: That's right. Yeah. Hosting a, yeah he was a big [00:16:00] party hoster that's right. And then you've gone him with the Pope when he's the monk or he's with some other type of religious leader of some sort. And then he's got his back to  the viewer and his arms are outstretched and there's light coming down onto him. It looks like he's about to be beamed up into heaven. There's doves behind him. Mike: It should be noted that this is a wraparound cover, too. Jessika: It is a wraparound. I'm sorry. I, yeah, I'm describing the back now. Oh, and then there’s. Mike: It is a work of art man. Jessika: It is a work of art. It's really pretty, it's very colorful. It's all very eye catching.  There's more fighting.  There's, a sultan or a king and then there's Francis singing at the bottom is he is just singing his little merry heart out.  It is, it's a fun cover. Mike: Yeah. And it, it does a really nice job of being very visually attractive, and it also showcases  a lot of the big moments from the comic itself. [00:17:00] Jessika: Yeah. Agreed. Mike: Yeah. So the book’s origin is another one of those examples of the power in asking that we talked about during the Highlander episode. So the way this happened was Jean Pelc, who was Marvel's representative in Japan in the seventies,  he was a devoted Catholic and  he was regularly attending mass at the Franciscan Chapel center. And according to the forward in the comic. He was having coffee with two friars who asked him, why don't you do a book on St. Francis and reportedly Pelc thought about it for about a minute and then said, yeah, sure. Why not? Jessika: I thought that was funny. Mike: I thought it was great.  So as I mentioned, the comic story was overseen by Gasnick. He basically kind of oversaw the dialogue and the general story, but he didn't write the script. The comic script was written by Mary Jo Duffy, who had recently been reading Marvel Star Wars series in the seventies. [00:18:00] And then it was illustrated by Eisner Hall of Fame member, John Buscema, who is a legend in the industry, but he's one of those pencilers who basically became a patron Saint for other comic professionals. So, Buschema’s involvement feels especially relevant in this case, because this is a medieval comic. And one of the comics that he really worked on a lot was Conant the Barbarian. So he was really very much in his element. And you can tell because the art in this book is great. Jessika: Oh, it's amazing. Mike: Yeah. Marvel clearly believed in this book and they put some serious talent behind it. What was your overall reaction or impression of the comic? I'm curious. Jessika: I feel like this is the type of religious comic that kids won't get embarrassed over liking. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: It's got adventure, it's colorful, and those cheeks could cut glass. I was im, I was [00:19:00] impressed. Mike: Yeah, Jessika: There were, of course the subversive, like white supremacists tones when they were talking about the good people and all the floating heads were Caucasian. So thanks for that, everyone. Mike: Yeah. Which I mean, Not great, but also it was the seventies. And also they're talking about medieval Europe, which was not the most racially sensitive environments. Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, that is true. But also loving that a lot of these guys low-key operated, like co-leaders like St. Francis even got a whole acapella group together to hang out with his cult. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Sounds pretty rad until the leader gets the incurable stigmata. That seems like it would be a real bummer. Mike: Yeah. He and he clearly has untreated PTSD, like, you know, from his time where he was held in the dungeon for a couple of years.  Um, you know, and like that's the whole thing is that he's, he's a prisoner of [00:20:00] war. And then he starts hearing voices. Jessika: Mm, mm, Mike: Like, you know, and granted it's, you know, this is Catholic propaganda, so it's presenting it as, oh no, he heard the divine call and he answered and he gave up everything and blah, blah, blah.  I'm with you. I personally, I really dug it. So the funny thing is that when I was 11, I came across a copy of this and the kid's school room for Sunday school. And I really fell in love with it. Like, I basically just didn't want to actually pay attention to Sunday school and they were doing all  the actual religious study activities. And so I would just sit in the corner and read this, and they couldn't really get mad at me because I was reading about a religious leader who the church was named after. So. Hmm. But you know, it felt like a fantasy comic more than anything else. And when I re-read it, this week, I was struck by both the art and the storytelling being as good as they were like, yes, it’s, as I said, it's [00:21:00] Catholic propaganda, but it's good propaganda. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: So. According to Gasnick's obituary, this comic was actually the best-selling single issue in Marvel history at the time. And, you know, clearly that record has been shattered a few times since then.  It apparently moved more than a million issues, which in 1980 was like, unheard of. I couldn't find a resource to fact check this though, because all the sites that track comic sales numbers don't seem to go that far back, or at least they don't yet, but it was clearly popular enough to spawn a couple of other related comics that I've seen referred to on the web as the Saint series.  That's where we're going to go next. Following the success of Francis brother of the Universe, Marvel launched Pope John Paul II's biographical comic, which it's a thing. Jessika: It happened. Mike: Yeah. So this was, again, one of those books where Marvel really put some talent behind it. They had art [00:22:00] by John, I’m going to butcher his last name, Tartaglione, I believe.  But he was known for doing historically accurate work with his art. And then the book was written by Steven Grant who went on to write the first Punisher series for Marvel in the eighties. Jessika: Hmm. Mike:  And then he would go on to write Dark Horse’s 1990 series, X.  Full circle, baby. Jessika: Here we are. Mike: Yeah. Would you be willing to provide a quick summary of the book? Jessika: Oh, certainly. I like the evil laugh too, that’s just perfect. So this follows the life and spiritual journey of Pope John Paul II. And, it does this very Tarantino's thing where it starts with the assassination attempt against his life. And it goes back to earlier in his life to tell the story of how he got to that point, [00:23:00] which oddly enough, involves a lot of hiding theater from Nazis. True, true. It then discusses how he gained interest in the church, how he rose through the ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and eventually was selected as Pope, which leads us back to his assassination attempt from which he recovers. Mike: And then that's where the book ends because his assassination attempt had only happened a year or two prior. But the funny thing is that it doesn't start with the assassination attempt. I thought it did, too, until I was reading up on it. So that's where it's weird. So the comic opens at his 1979 visits to Yankee stadium.  And it spends so much time there.  When we're not being shown his life. That it feels like the assassination attempt also took place there,  Jessika: Oh, I that's. I did think that you're right. Mike: Yeah, but like, that's the thing is he wasn't actually shot until two years later in ’81 when he was back at the Vatican and it's very vaguely shown [00:24:00] and that's only one page after everyone is leaving the stadium. So the first time I read it, I thought he basically got shot at the stadium as well, because it's super vague. They only show you that one kind of like small frame where you see a gun being held high. You don't even, it's just a hand holding a gun and that's it. And I mean, I get it. You don't want to show the Pope getting shot in a Pope propaganda comic, but it was one of the things that was actually pretty brutal, in real life. Like, he got shot multiple times and lost a lot of blood and they didn't know if he was gonna make it.  Jessika: Oh yeah.  Mike: And then later on, he went on to basically forgive and become friends with his would-be assassin. Jessika: Oh, wow. Mike: It's very strange, but it, but it feels like a very Catholic turn the other cheek kind of story.  Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Honestly, as I was writing all my notes on this episode, I thought that he had been shot at Yankee stadium. And then I had to go back and [00:25:00] reread that section specifically. And it’s not obvious unless you pay very close attention to the dialogue. Jessika: There, this has to be spring, like a whole generation’s worth of kids thinking that the Pope was shot in America.  Mike: Well, especially now because we're so like gun fetish oriented or what is it? Ammo-sexual. That's the word that I keep on hearing. We're we're a nation of ammo-sexuals. Jessika: I am tickled by that. Mike: Yeah. You can thank Sarah for that one. Jessika: Oh, she's amazing. Mike: Yeah. I don't know why she's with me, but I'm not complaining. Um, so how did you feel about this comic? Jessika: I think they did a good job making a continually captivating storyline, especially as biographies go, all things considered. It was funny because I was picking up some super queer vibes from him. The whole, like, not just the whole [00:26:00] theater thing, cause that's, that's a generalization I don't follow necessarily, but it's just, it was that whole, like having his actor friend move in with him so they could continue practicing their craft, as it was.  I'm just like, man, I've heard that before.  And yes, we hear you loud and clear. Mike: Well, and I mean, you know, like it portrays his younger life and he is shown as a, being an alter boy and very devoted to the church. And then, and this is for anyone who is not familiar with the life of Pope John Paul, he became really interested in theater after his brother died. And he went and visited his brother's friends who were a theater troupe. And so he got super into theater and there's a note about how a priest really wanted him to join the priesthood, and they were like, oh no, he's like, he, yeah, he's a great orator and all that, and he's got a wonderful presence, but he's going to be an actor. And the priest was apparently heartbroken, but yeah, like, anyway, sorry.  So side tangent over. [00:27:00] Jessika: No, that's okay. I was also irritated. So at the end of the comic, they made a big deal about how a woman was also shot when he was, and that he was going to go visit her before he went back. He even said, when I, before we go back to Rome, that's what it said in the thing.  So I don't know what happened. I don't know what the whole thing was with that, because I specifically wrote back to Rome, but they never said her name nor did they actually show him going to see her, and that, definitely rude. Mike: yeah. And I mean that whole, for something that got billing on the cover,  it's featured very little in the comic, so. Jessika: What about, how did, how did this rub you? Mike:  I dug it. I didn't dig it as much as Francis Brother of the Universe, to be honest but overall,  if you're going to do a biography as a comic, you could definitely have a worst subject. It felt pretty exciting. [00:28:00] He lived a pretty interesting life,  growing up between two world wars and in Poland.  Parts of it, like the bit where  he joined the secret seminary in Poland during World War II felt almost like something out of a spy story, more than anything else. And it also felt like the comic wasn't afraid to poke a little fun at him, like when he volunteered to clean out the toilets that the Nazis had ruined. So, I kind of appreciated that it wasn't taking him as seriously as I felt it could have.  A lot of biographies would be like, no,  you can't show him in any way  that makes him seem less than saintly, which we'll get to, we'll get to that in our next comic. But, I, I, appreciated the moments of levity as well.  The book itself, though, it does a pretty good job of making him seem like a good guy who just happened to be called to greatness, I felt.  The only parts where I really got bored [00:29:00] were the bits with the unnamed journalist who provides the framing narration while he's waiting for the Pope to speak at Yankee stadium. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: First of all, this is the first guy we see, he's the one who's the narrator and he doesn't even get a name. And then, I kind of laughed at how he opens the comic, stating the Pope is my beat, and then later on states that the Yankee stadium speaking event is the only time he sees the Pope in person. Jessika: Yeah. I noticed that too. I thought that was weird. Mike: It was really weird. And I mean,  Jessika: It was inconsistent. Mike:  It felt like the editor should have given it one more pass and they could have sat there and it, I mean, honestly, if they just said this was the last time I saw him in person or something like that, it would have been fine. Jessika: Yeah. Mike:  And then, like I said, I was a little surprised at how little the assassination attempt was featured since it's literally called out on the cover, like whatever.  Oh, fine. [00:30:00] Jessika: Yeah, I you're visibly watching your face. You're visibly mad about it. Mike: I'm sorry, if you're going to promise me in assassination attempt, I want to see an assassination attempt. Don't tease me. Jessika: Oh my gosh. How will you ever get over this? Mike: Uh God.  It was a solid B, B+ equal to what I feel was kind of  an A-, A comic book,  or spiritual sequel, if you will see what I did there.  So the last of these Marvel Saint series comics is mother Teresa, and that's another official biography of a major Catholic figure.  This one obviously focuses on mother Theresa, who was enjoying a huge amount of publicity in the 1980s. I grew up, throughout the eighties and I often heard her [00:31:00] and Gandhi mentioned together as people who made the world a better place. And I'm not sure, honestly, if that was because they both operated out of India and they both won the Nobel peace prize, but I feel like that sums up how the Western world perceived or , what was your awareness of her when you were growing up? Jessika: Pretty much the same level of you'd always see her in these kind of photo-ops of  helping children out of cars and stuff. Mike: Yeah.  The other thing is that we grew up, like, I, I feel like she's one of those people who was always old in terms of her media appearances. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: You know?  So the book came out in 1984 and that was just five years after she'd received the Nobel peace prize, and this was when she was really, really big. Like these days, this is viewed as an incredibly problematic figure based on things she said about poverty and suffering. And then there were some serious ethical and financial weirdness that [00:32:00] went on with her missions.  But the public just wasn't aware of that stuff back then, and so given her amount of celebrity, it makes sense that they would have turned to her because she was a really relevant figure in the world back then. And then again, because they'd had so much success with Francis and Pope John Paul, they committed some serious talent to this comic. So Gasnick actually came back and he wrote the overall story for this, but the script was done by David Michelinie. So miscellaneous had earned a lot of acclaim for his runs on Ironman and he co-created characters like venom and carnage and Scott Lang, who's also known as ant man. Yeah, so  legit people. And then the art was once again handled by, John Tartaglione. So they committed some serious stuff to it, but, I feel like you're on the same wavelength as me where you weren't as impressed this time around. Jessika: No, no. I was like [00:33:00] snooze Fest, Mother Teresa. Mike: Yeah. Jessika:  She didn't have any facet. She's like Superman. She was just a good person, all the way around. It's not like she had any trouble with that, I guess. Not like the normal folk. Mike: I felt like she was more of a prop than a character in the story. Jessika: I see that. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Yeah. I had a hard time paying attention to it, to be honest with you. Mike: no, that's fair. It took me about three times as long to read this book. Jessika: It's true. And the other thing that was, of course this is going to bother me. I was of course getting some serious pro-colonialism vibes from the whole Jesus and the white men know best, here I go on a mission trip. Aye. You don’t need to convert everyone. Not everyone has to believe the same thing as you, it's just not necessary. And I'm really bothered by the mindset that we all need to be on the same page about these [00:34:00] spiritual and philosophical questions, because we just never will be. Mike: Right. And that was actually a huge thing. That was one of the big controversies about Mother Teresa is that she would do these kinds of deathbed conversions. And it seems like they weren't always to be honest, consensual.  Like you, I wasn't all that amazed.  The biography of the Pope was really interesting and exciting, but this book story was a framed by some mediocre white journalists who are just going around the world and interviewing people who know her because she won't give them the time of day at the beginning of the book, which I actually kind of enjoyed. Jessika: I did like that, actually. Mike:  But that's the thing is you're seeing the memories of other people.  And like you said, it feels very much like Superman where there's no flaws whatsoever and it's just, oh, she's always been selfless. Oh, she grew up in hardship. Oh, she's always wanted to make the world a better place, but you keep on hearing that story over and over again. And there's no real action. It's also a lot of really dull exposition where [00:35:00] you know, where people are telling her about all the good things she's doing and then how they're going to help her out. And  the impact that she had on the world.  It's undeniable.  I'm just not sure that her life makes for an interesting comic book.  Maybe it's just the way the book was done since she doesn't really feel like a main character in her own story. Also the fact that they're basically using the same framing device that they did in the last one, and Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Those narrators play a much bigger role in the Mother Theresa comic, because they're clearly trying to make it interesting and hold the reader's attention.  I did learn that this book won the Catholic press associations award for best book of the year in the youth category in 1984, which yeah. Jessika: What? Who was judging that? Mike: I feel like that kind of says more about the availability of Catholic kid-friendly books at the time. Jessika: Yeah.  And the youths weren't judging that contest. Mike: No, like, no. I mentioned earlier, I'm [00:36:00] not sure how well these other comic books sold, but there is an obituary for Tartaglione that claimed the Pope John Paul biography actually sold millions of copies. And it's the same thing with the Francis Brother of the Universe one, because it clearly did well enough that they wanted to make this Pope John Paul comic. And then there's  an online archive for Gasnick that's hosted by a Catholic organization and they actually show all the different languages that the comic was printed into. Now.  I really want to get a copy of the Japanese one now, because it came with  a really beautiful book cover.  It's lovely. And plus, it's just kind of a cool artifact, you know. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: But, I don't know  how well the Mother Theresa books sold, because , there are numerous articles providing circumstantial evidence, talking about how well Francis and Pope John Paul sold. And then they'll say, oh, and then there was also this Mother Teresa comic. There's no further information. So, I [00:37:00] get the impression it maybe didn't do as well as everybody wanted it to. Jessika: Oh, big dreams, Mother Teresa. Mike: I know, to be honest though, my impression is that the Catholic church didn't really have any other figures with this much name recognition, like St. Francis is a pretty major character, even outside of Catholicism. My parents' church was named after Saint Francis and they were Episcopalian, and Pope John Paul and Mother Teresa had that kind of international rockstar, celebrity, that few others could even dream about in an age when viral fame wasn't really a thing. Jessika: Agreed. Mike: So yeah, it seems like everyone kind of looked at these books overall its wins and then they decided to walk away from the table while they were still ahead, which, is kind of the opposite of what happened in 1992, but we're going to talk about that next episode. [00:38:00] Jessika: Ooh. Mike: I'm going to leave it on a cliffhanger moment, but, what are your final thoughts?  How do you feel about these eighties Catholic comics? Jessika: I mean, so far it's kind of a mixed bag. The Francis Brother of the Universe, I thought that was, it was fun. I enjoyed reading that one. You know, I, I even enjoyed reading the majority of the Pope John Paul II. And then we got to mother Teresa and literally I fell asleep and like, yeah, I do a lot of my reading in the evening, Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: I'm a night owl it's it was not the time. Mike: Yeah. Comic books shouldn't want you to sleep. Jessika: No, it was the content. So. Mike: Yeah.  I think I've got that nostalgia factor a little bit too with the Francis book. So there's one of these books that I still absolutely love. And it's got this [00:39:00] very soft spot in my soul, if you will.  And the Pope John Paul comic, I agree. It's mostly fun. It's not flawlessly there's no part of the Frances book that I sat there and really skipped through. It was all interesting. And then Mother Teresa, I. I'm not exactly thrilled that it's part of my collection now.  But at the same time, I feel like I can't get rid of it because it's, you know, part of that trilogy, that holy Trinity of Saints comics, if you will, sorry, all the religious puns keep on coming out tonight. Jessika: Well, I was just thinking about the fact that I don't even think it's that I think . You're worried about throwing away Mother Theresa don't lie to me. Mike: Yeah. I feel like I, what happens when you piss off a Catholic Saint? I don't know. Jessika: She's going to be staring at you from the trash can. Like, why did you do this to me? Mike: Oh, she already looks like a goblin. That'll be scary enough.  [00:40:00]  So now is the part of the episode where we discuss our brain wrinkles, which are the one thing comics or comics adjacent that has been on our mind lately. I've been talking for a spell. So why don't you go first. Jessika: Okay. So I've actually been really irritated about something comics related. Mike: Ooh. Jessika: Aye. You're shocked. I'm sure I've never heard about irritated about anything in this world. Mike: What you, no, go on. Jessika: What, what? So, I collect this six inch Marvel Avengers action figures by Hasbro. They're just the really simple ones, really only the arms and the head kind of moves and the arms kind of move one way. They're cheap. They're just like what, five, six bucks at the checkouts stand. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And I collect them because I action pose them in my hanging plant garden in all my macrame. So they're just in all my plants, just flying around, but [00:41:00] what irritates me, I'm convinced that they just don't make the female characters in their widespread kids toys series. Mike: Oh, they don’t.  That's. Jessika: It pisses me off and they make some of the antagonists even.  I have Thantos and I can't get the Scarlet Witch or Black Widow? It just bothers me so much. It's hard enough to get the female characters in any kind of movie of their own or any kind of thing of their own. I was really happy the Scarlet Witch, getting a spotlight. And I'm glad that Black Widow is getting one too, but it's just  you could say leaving the best for last, but you just kind of forgot didn't you? Mike: Yeah, that actually reminds me a little bit of the cartoon Young Justice. So they had two seasons of that show and then it got canceled and apparently it got canceled because the core audience for it wound up being [00:42:00] young women.  And as a result, they weren't buying the action figure toys that were being marketed because they were all male action figures. Eventually they wound up bringing it back for DC Universe and then HBO Max, it's a great cartoon, but I just remember getting so irritated where I was like, really, instead of actually trying to make toys that would appeal to the audience, you just canceled this fucking show. All right. Jessika: That's so annoying and it, you know, it really bothers me that we always assume that boys won't play with action figures of girls. Mike: Yeah. It's dumb. Jessika: And yeah. And we absolutely need to quit. Assuming the girls won't play with action figures at all.  Because they will. Mike: I'm actually, I'm really surprised that they're not making female character action figures now. Like it's like the last couple of years, I feel like that's been flipped, but I guess it's still a [00:43:00] thing. Jessika: Yeah. It's it's just. *sad noises* Mike: I'm sorry.  Jessika: No, it's okay. It's okay. It just makes me want to write like angry letters and, you know, cause I want action figures too, goddammit. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Well, what about you? What's sticking deep in your brain? Mike:  It's going back to that collection that I got from my parents' house. So part of that collection, one of the other cool things that was included is the 2002 Taskmaster mini series from Marvel, which sent me down a rabbit hole of Marvel Unlimited because you know, they've got all the back issues on there.  Taskmaster is a villain who's also become a bit of an antihero. He's been around Marvel for a while. He's this mercenary who usually uses his power of photographic reflexes to mimic the moves of other heroes. And he's had three dedicated mini series so far and they're all really good. Like they're really fun, and [00:44:00] each one tells a very different story and they all explore his character in really interesting ways. And the last two series have been really funny, which means I'm kind of bummed about how generic he looks and all the promo stuff that they've put out for Black Widow the movie. Like he's a dude who wears a cape with a hood and has pirate boots and is just bristling with weapons.  And that is not what we're getting. Jessika: I love that though. Mike: Oh yeah. It's super over the top and theatrical.  His whole thing is that he has a mask that looks like a realistic skull, as opposed to that helmet, that's got kind of a vague skull motif. Jessika: Yeah, that's way scarier. Mike:  It is, but at the same time, he hangs out a lot with Deadpool.  And so there's that zaniness to him as well. And instead we're getting this kind of, I don't know, mute generic [00:45:00] bad-ass character and all the trailers who looks like he has some cool flashy moves, but it doesn't really seem to go much beyond that. I don't know, like it might surprise us, but who knows, but it's also made me realize how forgettable most of the villains in the MCU are. And I wish Marvel would just give us more characters, like Loki who make repeated appearances and then develop some real depth and then evolve into something more than what they are when they first appear. Jessika: Yeah, it'd be nice to see. Mike: Yeah. Well with that, I think it's time to wrap things up. We'll be back in two weeks, where we will continue the story of Marvel's foray into Christian comics, and until then we'll see you in the stacks. Jessika: Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us; text transcriptions of each of our published episodes [00:46:00] 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, while our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from PremiumBeat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who goes on Instagram by cut_thistles. 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 [00:47:00] N S A U. Mike: Stay safe out there. Jessika: And support your local comic shop.

"March" Movie Madness part 3 (of 3)! For our final Justice League movie discussion, we go outside the DCEU and discuss two movies dealing with Wonder Woman's origins in very different ways.  Professor Marston and the Wonder Women tells the story of Wonder Woman's creation and also looks at the unconventional lives of her creators. Meanwhile, the 2009 animated film provides a more modern take with an all-star vocal cast.  Join us as we go down the rabbit hole that is Wonder Woman's history and discuss kink, polyamory, and BDSM. And -per usual- we swear a lot, too. Have questions/comments/concerns? Hit us up: tencenttakes@gmail.com ----more----   Jessika: I hope you realize what extremely heavy California accents we have. I hope you understand when the feedback comes in, that will be part of it! Hello and welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we correct your comic misconceptions. One issue at a time. My name is Jessika Frazier and I am joined by my cohost, the royal robot, Mike Thompson. Mike: That's right. All my circuits are platinum or I don't know. Gold, gold plated, something. Jessika: Oh, gold plated. You've got like diamond and crusted things. They also serve a purpose being one of the sharpest items or Mike: Yeah I it. Thank you for that intro. Jessika: Of course. 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. Now, today we're discussing the final installment of our "March" movie madness. Now I'm throwing heavy quotes around March movie madness because it is actually April. Mike: It's almost tax day at this point. Jessika: It's almost tax day. So we bled out a little bit, but we're trying to do these bi-weekly we got a little ahead of ourselves because we got so excited just to be talking about these things that we did a few more than we really anticipated in March, I would say to our listeners benefit. Mike: Yeah, sure. I concur. Jessika: So we are doing a deep dive into Wonder Woman's origins today. Now I'm not just talking about the origins of the character, but also of their creator and the reasons and motivations that drove this comic into existence. I'm excited about this. Mike: I am too. These movies were really pleasant surprises for different reasons. Jessika: I will agree with that wholeheartedly. Now, before we get into that, though. We love to do that whole one cool thing you've read or watched lately. And Mike, let's go ahead and start with you. Mike: Yeah. So I've been consuming a lot of Star Trek lately. I really enjoy the franchise in general, but I have this deep abiding passion for Deep Space Nine because my great uncle who was essentially my grandfather when I was growing up , we used to watch the show together every Sunday when we would go over to their house for dinner. So like, that was just this wonderful bonding activity with this guy who used to be a dive bomber in World War II and his very nerdy little 11-year-old nephew. I have these very treasured memories and I have the entire series on DVD of Deep Space Nine, which I will be buried with by the way. But both the entire series and the recent documentary about the show is on Amazon Prime. So I've been rewatching all of that, and I've been actually rereading some of the comics and then last week Star Trek Legends came out on a Apple Arcade and... it's fine. It's nothing special, but it's a fun distraction if you're a Trekkie who wants to just mash it up all the various characters from the different series together. So I currently have a away team with characters from the Next Generation and then Discovery and then the original series all together. And it's dumb, but it's fun. But this has led me down this rabbit hole, and I think that we should probably wind up doing an episode on Star Trek history in comics and how it actually helped shape the MCU as we know it. Jessika: I would love that. That sounds like so much fun. And I love Star Trek as well. I used to watch Star Trek with my dad. We were a Next Gen family. So I, you know, next gen and Riker jumping over chairs is like near and dear to my heart. Mike: I'm really bummed that that is not an animation and Star Trek Legends. It really makes me so grumpy. Jessika: What a miss. Such a missed opportunity Mike: What about you? What have you been reading or watching lately? Jessika: So I've been casually reading through a reprint of Giant-Size X-Men from 1975, and I say casually just kind of every once in a while I'll pick it up and I'll read through a few pages and be like, "Oh that was fun." And kind of put it back down again between whatever I'm doing. So of course you know they're they're retro comics and you know things are going to... it's me: Things are going to rub me the wrong way about some of the retro comics. Mike: A comic that's almost 40 years old possibly having some problematic elements to it? Go on. Jessika: Yeah no I try to set aside a lot of that but it is quite difficult with my very outspoken mind of mine. But one scene that really bothered me was from Storm's introduction. Professor X seeks out Storm in her native Kenya where she's legitimately saving the countryside by using her weather powers to get rid of drought. Mike: Right Jessika: But Professor X has the audacity to show up and say, "nah listen: Like I know you're helping quote unquote helping people here but I also need your help. And I'm much more important, let's be real. It's just a whole bag of yikes. Mike: Yeah I mean what year did giant size X-Men come out? Was that 75? Jessika: It was 75. Mhm. Mike: Yeah... That was the same year that we got Lois Lane turning black for a literal white savior piece of journalism. Racial sensitivity was not really a thing back then Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. And I and I do try to put myself into that mindset It's just so cringey though in this day and age to see things like that Mike: Yeah. Jessika: What I do like about it that everybody is so salty to one another. Like so salty. They're so sassy to one another. Every other page has just a roast battle between the members of the X-Men where they're like "yeah, One Eye" like Mike: I think I read a reprint of that when I was like 12 or 13 but I haven't re-read it at all recently. So I'll have to go back and check that out Jessika: I'll throw it your way. You can borrow it. It's fun. Well let's get into the meat of our episode and this was definitely a meaty topic. And I know I told you a little bit earlier I love me a good rabbit hole. Love jumping just right into them right off the top I read –more like I listened to but I mean it was a lot of time spent– three different audio books on the topic. Mike: Yeah no that's awesome I'm so excited to hear about all of Jessika: this. And the hard part then was whittling down what information I really wanted to give you. I highly recommend all of these resources and I really want to just throw them out at the top We will also throw them into the show notes. But I highly recommend -if you're interested in this topic- go read more about this because I'm not even touching the surface of these books. They are amazing. So the first one that I read was it was actually an article from smithsonian.com titled "the surprising origin story of Wonder Woman" by Jill LePore which led me to Jill LePore's larger book or I would say more extended book called The Secret History of Wonder Woman. It was also read by the author, so if you're a book on tape person, highly recommend listening to it. She's one of those people who really keeps your attention and she doesn't have that kind of drowsy lilt that some people do while they're reading, So I definitely I was able to stay really focused on it. And the last one was Wonder Woman Psychology by Trina Robbins and that had a couple of different narrators but that one was also very interesting and talked about all of the different aspects of the time and the different parts of psychology and gets more into because you know spoiler alert the author was a psychologist It does get deeper into that whole aspect of the reasons behind the comic in that way. Mike: That's a really cool and I'm really excited to hear everything that you learned because this is a topic that I had a vague awareness of but I have tried to stay as in the dark as possible for this episode because I'm really excited to learn from you about this Jessika: Let's all go on a learning journey together, Folks. What do you say. Mike: Yeah. Hop on the magic school bus kids. Jessika: Here we go. Mike: We're going to hang out with Goth Miss Frizzle. Jessika: Oh my gosh I know I'm wearing all black today and I have high bun. Very McGonigal right now. Mr Porter Um so Diana Prince is the secret identity of Wonder Woman but did you know that the creator of Wonder Woman had a secret identity himself? Well, today we're going to be discussing the creator of Wonder Woman, Charles Milton... or should I say William Moulton Marston. Marston's name, like his stories, were an amalgamation of fact and fiction his middle name mixed with that If max gains one of the co-founders of All-Star Comics and later DC, which stands for Detective Comics -fun fact: I didn't know that- where Wonder Woman made her debut. But Marston was hiding more than just a name. He had an entire life that he kept hidden from the world. William Moulton Marston was born in Massachusetts in May of 1893 to Frederick William Marston and Annie Marston. They bestowed upon him his mother's maiden name molten as a middle name, and as I've mentioned the last name he later uses as his nom du plume. By all accounts he seemed to have a easy childhood though I did hear reports that he was in the military for a stint I should say acting as a psychologist... I believe that was after his Harvard education, though He was accepted to Harvard for his advanced education and he eventually graduated and became a professor of psychology. While attending Harvard, Marston had many interests. One of them being the intelligent and motivated Elizabeth Holloway, whom he would later marry and who had been taking courses in one of the lesser quote unquote lesser universities that you know allowed women at that time. Mike: That was pretty standard at the time, right? Higher education for women was a new thing that was very looked down upon? Jessika: Oh it was incredibly new. This was the early 1900s. We're talking before 1910. That area. Women didn't have the right to vote yet which we definitely will get into. Didn't have the right to vote until 1920. That was a good few years before that point So the schools had the male schools would have a sister school basically or a lesser school . And for Harvard that was Radcliffe, which is where Holloway went And this was considered again the sister school But of course didn't have the same name and you didn't get the same degree .You still graduated from Radcliffe and women really didn't have the option to go down that actual Harvard route, which of course didn't give them an edge at all No edge Thanks a lot. Mike: Yeah what did you use a degree for back then? Jessika: I mean, nothing. What are you going to do with this degree in your home, in the kitchen? The oven doesn't need you to have a degree. It's just so gross. Mike: It's not a masters in baking roasts, Linda Jessika: And how they wished it were. You would think. Harvard acted like that. It was rough. She did however finish her education and become an lawyer with her degree being issued from Radcliffe despite petitioning multiple times to get a Harvard degree, since she was taking the same classes, they were the same classes. Mike: With the same professors, too, right? Jessika: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The class just had women in it instead of men That was the only difference. During college she and Marston were inseparable. One of the biographies I read stated that there was this rule that a woman could not walk or ride unaccompanied with a man However Holloway thought that was a completely stupid rule and just didn't follow it, which I love. She's like, "fuck that." Mike: That's so good. Jessika: And everything else I read about her said "fuck the rules, I do what I want." Which is so amazing for a woman in the early 1900s. I mean it's kind of an interesting concept right now let alone the 1900s. Mike: Yeah... we still have all of these societal norms that women are not supposed to go against. Jessika: Yeah. So Marston varied interests also included a search for "the truth." Quote unquote the truth. This was partially inspire Now part of what he invented I should say was inspired by an observation by Holloway that when she got mad or excited her blood pressure seemed to climb. And from that Marston created the earliest version of what we now know as the lie detector test or polygraph. The test is we know it now measures more than just blood pressure which was really the only thing he was checking on. Blood pressure in and of itself isn't going to tell you everything that you quote unquote need to know for a lie detector to be effective. That being said it's also mostly an admissible as we know it now in the US court of laws depending on the place and both parties have to agree to have it be accepted into the court case which I found I didn't know that. Yeah! Mike: I knew that growing up lie detector tests were considered to be kind of this infallible thing. And then it was like well you know you can sort of get around it by all these old wives tales of like you know you put a tack in your shoe and you press your toe against it and the pain messes up the results. And then later on I found out that they're not really great, they're not really admissible anymore but I didn't know that because I know that a lot of law enforcement still loves to rely on it. Jessika: Yeah and I think about the if you think about when you're nervous you can have a lot of different reasons for being nervous. Not because you're lying, necessarily. You could be a bad test taker and then you suddenly look like a guilty party It could be as that. Mike: I'm just thinking about all the times that I had to give public speeches. Either class presentations or later on when I was a journalist and I was moderating panels. Every time my pulse would be through the roof. Jessika: Same. Now can you imagine being somebody who is of an oppressed or a minority population who's being put into a situation where they have people of power who have them in a room and they have control and that is a really scary thing. Mike: Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare scenario. Jessika: I can imagine my heart rate going up in that situation, so having that be the measure doesn't seem like the best of ideas In my opinion. That being said, it does seem to be admissible in the court of Steve Wilkos and other daytime television shows. Mike, tell me the truth: Do you or have you ever watched those daytime shows like Maury or Jerry Springer or Steve Wilkos? Mike: Yeah, so... Not only did I watch Maury during the daytime when I was just working on stuff at school and I wanted something on in the background, but I was a staff photographer for a newspaper during a celebrity golf tournament and Maury Povich was one of the celebrity golfers. He was really nice I wound up chatting with him for a minute while he was waiting for his turn at golf. I really feel like I missed an opportunity to have him record saying that I was not the father because that was the big thing that he was doing back then was all those paternity tests. Jessika: You say that like he's not still doing that. Mike: I don't know, does he still have show? I don't have TV anymore Jessika: I think so. You know, I really just catch clips. What I'll do is if I'm working and I have to be paying attention to my work -or if I if it's not something mindless like entering data or something- I like to listen to podcasts if I can actually pay attention but if I can't I'll just put on -and I don't watch it but I'll just- put on rotating clips through Facebook or something just go through Facebook watch and just whatever comes up next comes up. And every once in a while we'll get one of those Steve Wilkos and I hear "STEEEEVE" and I'm like, "Oh here we go." And it's always it's always a lie detector test, still to this day. Mike: Was Steve the guy who got his own show sprung off of like spun off of Jerry Springer? Jessika: "sprung off Springer." Correct. Yes. Mike: My roommate and I in college loved to watch Jerry Springer at night because it was the trashiest shit and we not stop. It was like a train wreck, you couldn't look away. Which I think was generally the appeal of Jerry Springer. But it's hard to resolve that because every interview I've seen with the guy he seems like a really pleasant down to earth human being. And then I'm like but you put the trashiest shit on television and it is demonstrable the effect that you had on daytime talk shows for a long time and still to this day in certain ways but for a while everybody was aping that. Anyway, this was a tangent. Jessika: That's okay It was exactly the tangent I wanted. Mike: Maury seemed like a lovely person for all two minutes that I interacted with him, and I hope that Jerry Springer is the person that he seems to be during interviews. Jessika: Same. Well, speaking of life drama, Marston had plenty. Mike: Oh, do tell. Jessika: Yeah. He was already married to his wife the aforementioned Elizabeth -who for consistency I'm going to continue calling Holloway though she did take his name when they got married. Marston, working as a professor at Tufts which is another university, fell in love with one of his students, Olive Byrne, in 1925 and advised his wife that Byrne could either move in or Marston was leaving. Mike: Oh. Jessika: Yeah. That was what the history said So we'll talk through the movie later Mike: Yeah, 'cuz my only familiarity with this so far is what I saw in the movie. *uggggh* Jessika: That was my reaction I now I did my research prior to watching the movie for this exact reason. So I watched the movie last night. It's super fresh. Mike: Yeah I watched it yesterday afternoon and then I watched the other one which we'll get into so it was the origins of Wonder Woman and then Wonder Woman a little bit more modern incarnation. Jessika: Perfect. Yeah. Byrne interestingly enough was the niece of Margaret Sanger. Have you heard that name before Mike: Yeah. She was like one of the early women's rights crusaders. Jessika: Yeah Yup Yup She was a renowned women's rights and birth control activist along with her sister Ethel Byrne opened the first birth control clinic in the United States which is so cool Mike: Yeah, that's awesome. Jessika: Both however were arrested for the illegal distribution of contraception and Ethel Byrne almost died during a hunger strike while she was in jail. Mike: I remember reading about that like in one of my one of my history classes. I mean, that checks out. Jessika: It was bad news bears. So I didn't write this down but I'm just remembering but I did read or listened to sources that said that multiple women were arrested and went on hunger strike and they were forced feeding them It was just it was bad news. The whole thing was just bad. So this obviously was during a time when women were still fighting for the right to vote as I'd mentioned earlier. And the idea of feminism was just a twinkle of a notion. So Byrne Holloway and Marston all three lived together for years as a throuple. Super interestingly they made up a backstory for all of as a widowed relative and both Holloway and Byrne were raising Marston's children. Byrne's Children were always told that their father had passed away and did not find out about the truth of their father's identity until after his death. Mike: Wow. So he fathered children with both women, correct? Jessika: He did. Yeah He fathered I believe two with Byrne and three with Holloway. They all live together in a house and again they managed to keep it secret enough that even their children didn't know. In the same house It's so wild to me Like how you and Mike: Insane to me. Jessika: You fathered children with this woman and they didn't know. No one knew. I can't fathom that honestly. Especially in a time when everybody was up at everybody else's business. Mike: Oh yeah. It's not like we had Netflix. You needed to do invent your own drama. Jessika: You look out Mike: the window. Before Marston died because he died fairly young as I remember it. So that was the whole thing in the movie is that they got out as being in a throuple to their neighbors. Nothing? Jessika: Never happened. They didn't get in trouble at the school. They didn't get in trouble with the neighbors. None of that. It was seamless. Mike: That actually makes me really happy. Jessika: Me too Mike: I love the idea of it sounds like a relatively healthy family. Jessika: I Mike: don't know. Maybe? Jessika: Y'know from what I was hearing because we're still in 1910 we're still in the 1920s I guess at this point it's still is like Marston is Papa Marston he's still man of the house. So I don't know especially when you're looking at this whole -how it was phrased and this is just a couple of sources- but just as far as how it's phrased in this I don't know that Holloway really had a choice other than "well I could be stuck here with" I don't know if she had children at that point "I could maybe be stuck as a single mother in the 1920s or I could allow this other woman to come into my house" but what's great about that is Byrne was able to just stay home and raise the kids. So Holloway was still able to go out and have a career. Yeah She still went out and had a career And so that's where it's I have a hard time saying definitively black and white Marston was a feminist as we would call him now. Probably not. But he definitely had the leanings of that. And he definitely was far advanced for his time Mike: sure I can only imagine. Was he still teaching during this time or was he doing something else? Jessika: He did so many things. He did so many things and I'll actually get into that a little bit further. But it was such a it did seem like a good situation for everyone. Marston had multiple professional interests And Marston believed not only in equality for women, but even further he believed that society should be matriarchal... which is where he goes a little bit more like a Ooh he just kind of swings off you know Cause he's like, "no no no no we should go in the exact 180. There's no middle ground here Women should rule society." Sure right now we live with men. Let's flip it over on its head and see how it goes I guess? But would settle for equality. Mike: Speaking as a mediocre white dude I'm totally fine with this plan. Jessika: Great Let's put it into effect. Who could I call? Papa Joe? I'll bring Mike: it up at the next meeting at the next mediocre white dude club meeting Jessika: I knew you guys had meetings. The gays definitely have meetings Well yeah You know you know you know I'm like well like I'm excluding you from the LGBT community That's rude of me and my Mike: apologies. The rest of them already do already. It's fine. Jessika: To Touché. We did have that conversation earlier. Biphobia. It's a real problem Mike: Yeah It's fun. Jessika: Yeah we were talking about Marston and his wild matriarchal ideas. And his idea was that women were more thoughtful empathetic and level headed when making decisions and would be better suited to positions of leadership. And Marston is quoted as saying -and if you want us to read this quote for me: Mike: okay! " Frankly Wonder Woman is a psychological propaganda for the new type of woman who, I believe, should rule the world." Jessika: So you can kind of see where he was going with that. Obviously she's powerful, she's more powerful than most of the men that she comes across. And he really was trying to flip that on its head with this character. Mike: Yeah. There was nothing like her before that Jessika: No. Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. However Marston's entry into the entertainment business didn't start with feminine power of Wonder Woman but instead with the film industry and again this is early film we're talking. He was in the silent film era and then moved talkies. Mike: Golden Age. Jessika: The Golden Age. And there he wrote screenplays and later acted as the consulting psychologist for universal pictures which I didn't even know That was a thing Having a consulting psychologist makes a lot of sense Mike: Yeah it does I just had no idea that was even a role that existed back then. Jessika: Yeah I know. And back then even I know. And at this point he'd already been published, having written dozens of magazine articles and a novel about his opinions Let's just call them or his findings about psychology at the time. And it is called a novel So just keep that in mind. It's called "Emotions of People" I believe. And they do mention it briefly in the film I didn't read it. I'm sure I could jump around and do I just didn't want to get into 1920s garbage which to He was then asked in 1941 to be the consulting psychologist for DC by Maxwell Charles Gaines who was more or less the creator of comics as we know them. At the time Gaines was under fire for content that folks deemed at the time to be risque. So he hired Marston to take off some of the heat by approving the content that was going out. With Marston on the team the largest complaints that they received was the aggressive masculinity that seemed to be the theme of all of the comic books. Yeah I know. You would think that we live in this society that values men so much you would think that we'd be able to just carry on with that you one form. Mike: Yeah Especially during that era which was right when we were getting into World War II and we were going hard for those traditional masculine values Jessika: Yup we want strong men who can go out there and die, I mean fight, for us. Yes. Marston suggested that the best way to counter that idea with the critics was to create a female superhero. Now Gaines accepted the idea but told Marston he had to write the strip himself. So he did. And with the help of illustrator Harry G Peter, Wonder Woman was in essence born. She was fierce, she was strong, she had a lasso that was that made others obey. It wasn't a truth thing that we now know it as the lasso of truth It was an obedient situation. Everybody who was lassoed had to obey her. So it was more of a dominance situation, which we will absolutely get to. And it makes a little bit more sense. Although there again with his lie detector the truth also makes sense. Either way, it tracks but it was obedience. Mike: Yeah you don't say. Jessika: One of her most important qualities was that she didn't kill. That was her empathy. That was that piece of her that was more feminine than some of those other comic book characters, those typical comic book characters Mike: Yeah. Even in the early days I know Batman killed people originally. He was like a goon and I think Superman did too in his early run. I think, can't remember for sure. Jessika: I believe so And then they when they got the comics code? When it was stricter with the comics code that's when they kind of moved into less actual killing from what I was reading I believe. Mike: You know I don't know for certain but it may have been before that because they were just they're such popular characters for kids. But I'm not entirely certain but I know that the early appearances are pretty brutal. I remember Batman hanging a dude from his plane. Jessika: Well I mean Superman came out in 1939 so yeah it's early. I'm going to send you a picture Mike: Okay. Jessika: And so this is the first introduction to Wonder Woman which was seen on the cover of sensation comics Will you please describe the cover? Mike: Yeah .So it is Sensation Comics Number One, the best of the DC magazines. You see Wonder Woman I'm not sure if the sun is really enlarged or if she is just jumping in front of something that's yellow to kind of add a little color to it but she is being shot at by a bunch of what appear to be mobsters somewhere in Washington DC because the capital is there and... is that is that the Lincoln Memorial? I can't tell what other building is that has the flag. Jessika: Apparently they're right across the street from each other. Not real life. This is scale. Mike: It looks like a vaguely government building I can't tell. Jessika: Yeah supposed to be something like that Mike: But it says "featuring the sensational new adventure strip character Wonder Woman!" You got to get that exclamation point in. She's kind of jacked like even back then which I kind of love. She is wearing a truly unflattering pair of boots that are only going up to mid calf as opposed to what we know now where they're just above the knee and armored and bad-ass. But it's the outfit that actually she's still sort of rocking the day where she's got the kind of red bustier with the gold eagle on it and then she's got the bulletproof bracelets and then she's got what I can only describe it as the bottom part of a sun dress kind of skirt where it's like very flowy? As opposed to that that gladiatorial skirt that she has now. But it's very identifiably Wonder Woman. Jessika: Yeah. And it goes back and forth between this was her first debut but it wasn't her first issue. first issue she was wearing more of what people were calling underpants of this same pattern. And that's what more used to. Yeah We're used to those like little booty shorts that she's rocking. So, right off the bat: Mike if you were a critic, in 1942 what would your main complaint about this be? Just based on the cover? Mike: I don't know. They were really concerned about the violence that was being marketed towards kids so probably the gunfire. Probably the fact that she was showing too much skin. Jessika: it. She wasn't clothed enough .Oh, they didn't care about the gunfire. That was not what was that was not the problem. Gasp. The drama was that Wonder Woman was wearing far too few clothes for Puritan America. Mike: Jesus Christ. And that's actually super tame Jessika: It's really tame. When you think about other superheroes that we have nowadays especially: You've got these massive boobs that are up to her neck and this little waist and like wearing a thong. But this is so covered Mike: Yeah. A lot of modern comics have these very almost suggestive poses. Do you remember when the Avengers came out and and all of the dudes had very action-oriented poses and then Black Widow was turned so that we could see her butt? She had Jessika: her like her arm up so that you could see her boob line. Mike: Yeah. And it's a really action oriented pose and it's very matter of fact there is nothing sexualized about that, kinda love. Jessika: Marston made it a point for her to be doing action and for her to be doing sports and for her to be doing things that were very active because women weren't given that as a role. So he really wanted to present that as another facet of, "Hey, this can also be feminine. Yeah I thought so, too. And while a slight costume adjustment seemed easy enough to deal with some critics also had qualms with other aspects of the comic. Namely, the depiction of women especially our heroine being tied or chained up or left in other positions of containment. Now, Marston's intention behind this seemed to be twofold in my opinion. Part one feminism and part two I also think he was just in kinky motherfucker. Which is great. Like, that's fine no kink shame. But we're going to briefly discuss both. So part one feminism. Marston was a supporter of women's rights, as we said. He was a supporter of the right to vote and the ability to have access to contraceptives. He'd been a supporter of these movements in his own right and was particularly struck by the female suffragettes who would chain themselves to a location in protest. Chains seem to him to be the very image brought to life of how society chains down and stifles women from succeeding. Either chaining them to their family before they're wed, chaining them to their new husband, or chaining them to pregnancies that they either cannot afford or don't want. In each of these portrayals of Wonder Woman being tied down there is always the moment that she's able to break free from her restraints in triumph which is just a perfect metaphor for the modern woman being able to break free from the societal chains that still bind her. And this hope that women will be able to eventually free themselves for good. In everything I've read, you had women suffragettes chaining themselves to places in protest. Same thing with the contraceptive movement. That was a huge metaphor for both of those movements, so it would make sense that if you are portraying a feminist during that era that that might be a theme. And I think people who maybe didn't support or were unfamiliar with the movements might have something to say negatively against the imagery, especially if they didn't understand Mike: We had a lot of people back then who were really pushing for propriety and basically you can't let immoral elements affect the children. They always fucking latch on to like "think of the children. Protect the children." Fuck off. Jessika: We still do that shit. This is just like pizza gate all over again. Mike: Yeah Jessika: Pizza gate before pizza gate. Little did they know. But part two: the kink factor. Marston had a whole dominance theory that I think tells a lot more about him than it does to the human experience In general I'm not going to get deep into the theory because we both have lives but it pertains to dominance and submission at the very minimum. Mike: You don't say. Jessika: Yo I know right. Mike: What. Shock. Jessika: At this point it's pretty well established that individuals have different drives and things that excite them. But I think that Marston was looking at the world from a place of, oh I like this So everybody is like this." Which just isn't the case for everybody. Mike: Right. But that's also like a very stereotypical kind of dude attitude. Jessika: Yeah. This is my worldview and so it must be everybody's. Absolutely. Again, he's some Harvard bro. Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Jessika: You're able to just go to Harvard in 1925 like Mike: NBD. I'm Jessika: gonna Mike: to be living near there soon. Oh God. I'm going to Jessika: be visiting you soon. I've got the people there. You're fine. We'll get you there. We'll get you there. But my impression is that he assumed that everyone else was a little kinky like him. Also it needs to be stated that again in interviewing Marson's children they never saw toys, ropes, anything that he had mentioned in the comics or that were the things that were being taken as this great offense, they didn't see any of those things. So it was this was also a complete surprise to them nothing related to bondage. Mike: Yeah that's wild man. I just I think about the fact that my partner has stories about how when everyone was out of the house she would just snoop around when she was growing up. And I remember doing that too And kids get into shit. Jessika: We also grew up in the age in the era of the latchkey child, though. My parents would just and not for long periods of time it's not like they would go out of town or something. But they'd leave us and say "don't answer the door. You're not home. Don't answer the phone. We'll call and ring twice and then hang up and then call back If we want to talk to you know whatever there was a code. But there again we lived in a different time even this many years I mean it just we sound like old people every time we have this conversation. Mike: You know someone pointed out that if Back To The Future was taking place today Marty McFly would be going back to like 91. Jessika: Don't do this to me. Mike: We're old, Jess. Jessika: We're Mike: practically Jessika: this Okay Mike. This is going to seem like such a non-sequitur But have you ever had to do a DISC personality assessment for any of your offices jobs? Mike: I don't think so. The name isn't familiar but describe this to me. Jessika: Basically it's like any of those other stupid employee personality tests where they try to like "what part of the team are you? How can we use your strengths?" I'm a supervisor so I've had to go through all this crap. And it's cool. It's a cool concept but it's also like mind numbing if it's not your wheelhouse. Mike: No. So I've never taken anything like this no. Jessika: Okay So yeah you basically answered a bunch of questions about what you would do in a situation. And it's kind of one of those no wrong answers kind of tests. And then they put you into one of four different categories. So I have had to do this before and and other ones like it but I honestly can't remember what I scored and I'm not going to get into a long-winded lecture on the topic either but suffice it to say that part of that is dominance That's the D and part of it is compliance which is the C. Mike: So was this something Marston came up with? Jessika: Yeah. Marston came up with and it's we still use version of this today which is so interesting. So far he's got lie detector, check. We still kind of use it today. Steve Wilkos does. And then now he's got the DISC which I definitely have taken. Now, it doesn't look the same. The categories are not the same as when he first created them. So less kink forward I would say. But you still have those two that are vibing you know. And for those of you are you unfamiliar with the kink scene: Power dynamics in play can sometimes come in the form of having one dominant and one submissive partner. But again not everybody functions in that way. Ultimately, wonder Woman was allowed to continue as she was. Delighting readers even to this day though of course the writing has changed hands multiple times meaning that her true meaning was sometimes lost to those who were in charge of telling her story. For example once Wonder Woman entered the Justice League she was immediately made to be the secretary. And there were many times that she was relegated to staying behind because she just had so much to take care of and "oh little old me couldn't get involved in having lifting" bullshit. God damn. She's so fucking strong. She has powers and Batman doesn't. Why the fuck does he get to go on missions? Why the fuck Isn't Batman the secretary? That's my question. Oh he has money my own his Mike: power that he's rich. Jessika: God damn. Yeah. Thanks for that Ben Affleck. We know. Still like him as Batman. Mike: Yeah. I'll die on that hill he was good. Jessika: Yeah Yeah He was good There was also a point where she lost her powers completely though did gain them back, those were times that Wonder Woman didn't necessarily feel like the fierce warrior she truly is. Mike: Yeah, actually, Brian's comics -our local comic shop- the first time I went in there they had the all-new Wonder Woman issue where it's like this iconic cover where it's her tearing up I think the original version of her and it's like get ready for the all new Wonder Woman I think that's when they de-powered her. I think. I'm not certain I'm really bummed that I didn't pick that up when it was there. Jessika: The idea behind that apparently was supposed to be that would make her more human and relatable but that's not you're just taking away the things that make her a stronger character for people that look up to her. Mike: Yeah I'm sorry. Did you were you able to hear my eyes rolling out of their Jessika: I did actually Yeah no that was a really palpable eye-roll. well Marston passed away at the age of 53 of cancer So very young like you were saying. Yeah. Holloway and Byrne continue living together until they both went into the hospital around the same time in 1990. When Byrne passed away, in a different room in the same hospital at the age of 86. Mike: I Jessika: got teary writing this so I'm probably going to get teary reading it. Upon hearing the news of burns passing Holloway sang a poem by Tennyson in her hospital room. So everything I've read alludes to the idea that Holloway and Byrne were also in a relationship with each other not just the man with all of them that they did have there were women who were kind of rotating in the house. It wasn't just these two there were other women who at different periods of time lived in the house undetected by the way can we just give it up for the Marston Family. Mike: Like. How? Jessika: That's what I'm saying. I don't know, money? And the dude had his little hands in everything so he probably just knew a bunch of people I don't know How do you get away with things as a guy I literally can't even imagine. Mike: This is my friend who's coming over to assist with this thing? The question is were they just coming into visit or were they living there for periods of Jessika: time? They were living there for a parts. Yes I know me too. I know. Okay let's run through: You have a widowed relative. You could be bringing in a nanny. You could be bringing in another person who works in the house et cetera et cetera. You could be bringing in a cousin or another type of relative. I'm sure you could excuse up the yin yang. Mike: Yeah I mean you can come up with excuses but if they're like living with you for any amount of time there are those moments of small intimacies that other people will pick up on. I don't know I mean were the kids just dumb? I don't know like how that requires some serious commitment to acting I feel. Jessika: Yeah. Oh yeah. Mike: So much fucking effort. Jessika: I was just going to say that. Can you imagine? I can't. Mike: No. Jessika: The mental strain alone. Mike: Like I have one partner, I have step-kids, and I have pets and that's like that's kind of the extent of my bandwidth. Jessika: Oh okay So I am non-monogamous or Poly, polyamorous. So I do have multiple partners although I they're what I would consider like secondary partners or partners that I don't I don't live with them, I don't necessarily see them on a super regular basis but I still maintain a relationship with them. And I still consider them partners. To whatever you know effect that is. But it is a lot of work and it's so much communication and you can just tell that Marston had to have been really communicative and that whole family had to have been really communicative. Mike: They must have been. Jessika: Or else how. Mike: At the same time like that era men weren't necessarily expected to be super communicative or show a lot of emotion or be the one to provide nurturing experiences with the kids. So maybe they just didn't get a lot of exposure to the kids and were really just exposed to their mothers and the motherly figures. I mean, this is all completely uninformed speculation so don't take anything that I'm saying with even a grain of salt like this. Jessika: Oh no. Absolutely at any rate Holloway passed away in 1993 at the ripe age of 100. Mike: Oh wow. So there was a little bit Jessika: of an age difference. Around Yeah there was there was yeah. Sounds like about a little bit less than 20 years. About 14 years. But if you think about it she was in college. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: He was her teacher and they were already married. He went to I want to say that he started college like prior to 1910. And they met and she moved into the house in 1925. So that's a good 15. Mike: He would have been about he would have been about 17 and 1910 right? Based on it like he was 1893 he said? Jessika: Yes yes. Yeah. And it sounds like Holloway was born the same year. Mike: Yeah and I got to say the love story between Holloway and Byrne sounds like something straight out of a movie. Which we're about to get into. But we all want to have that partner who is with us till the bitter end and then they sing a poem in our memory. Like goddamn. Jessika: It's just so beautiful. Yeah. They had it when they live together in the house, they had adjoining rooms and this is where it's like how did your kids not know because Marston would sleep in both. How did he like literally how did they not know? No it's wild to me. And then when they were older, byrne and Holloway lived in a little two bedroom place in Tampa together. This cute place apparently. So let's talk about our reactions here. We did also watch Professor Marston and the Wonder Women which I think it's worth a watch in my just off the bat. Mike: Yeah. I really liked it a lot and it was a movie that totally flew under the radar for me when it came out. I was vaguely aware of it but I really did not know much about it before we talked about what movies we wanted to do and March being women's month it seemed like a natural conclusion after the DCEU. Jessika: Yeah. Absolutely. That train wreck. I'm sorry. Mike: I was Jessika: of We did. We did enjoy one of the movies and we enjoyed aspects of of them. I trailed off my brain wouldn't let me do it It's like no that sentence Mike: I mean we kind of enjoyed parts of the Snyder cut Jessika: We did We liked it better Mike: than I don't like we're still Jessika: bitching about the Snyder Cut Mike: Look at Jessika: this Mike: back Jessika: Goddammit. We've literally can't get away from it Zach Snyder, hit us up.. No don't. You're not going to like what you hear I'm going to get to eat It adds Zach Snyder is going to be like Mike: I want the Snyder cut of Professor Marston in the Women which will be just scenes of Luke Evans with the Women in the background and don't do anything else. Jessika: And there's no dialogue in this one at all. It's just it's just heavy looks. Mike: It's just all the scenes from that sorority scene just over and just dark, scenes. Jessika: Definitely talk about that. Oh. What did you think about the film overall. Mike: Like I said, I overall really enjoyed it. I had heard about this movie a little bit. I remember my weightlifting partner at the time was telling me about how she and her wife had gone and enjoyed it and she thought that I would really like it. And I was like, "yeah okay cool." And then it just I didn't get around to seeing it while it was out in it's very limited run in theaters. And then I don't think it ever came to any streaming platform when I was aware of it. I was really surprised by actually how much I did enjoy it. I thought it was a shockingly sweet love story and I was expecting something much more judgmental or scandalous I was really expecting a much more judgy story about the Marstons and Byrne raising an entire family as a throuple. Jessika: was too. Mike: I was wondering if the relationship was ever outed and if they ever did break up like they did in the movie because that felt kind of forced and it felt very Hollywood and I was like "all right, whatever. This is dumb." At the end where they're on their knees submitting to Byrne." Jessika: Spot on That was made up There was none of that. Mike: I still think the most offensive thing about that movie was that they tried to make me think that someone who looked like Luke Evans was responsible for Wonder Woman's creation. I love Luke Evans I think he's really a fun actor and I was really glad to see him in a real role as opposed to I saw Dracula untold in theaters. I saw I'm Oh man I I didn't see Beauty and The Beast in theaters but I've since seen it. He's one of those actors where I feel like he just needs to be given good roles. He's like Kiana Reeves where I feel like he's often typecast and just thrust into stuff that aren't really any good but he was really good in this. That said: I've seen that man shirtless so many times and I don't know a single comic creator with abs like that. On the flip side, I went into this trying to keep myself as unaware a lot of the history of Marston but I do know what he looked like in his forties and that was like a dude in his seventies. Jessika: Did you watch all at the end of the film they had all the pictures. Yeah And you're just like, "oh. Oh." Like because Byrne and Holloway also not looking like who they cast. Not even a little bit, not even at all. Mike: Okay this is mean. But I'm like yes you look like the type of people who would be in a throuple. Jessika: No. Okay, fair enough And especially here's you know what it reminded me of it reminded me of those pictures that I used to see from that era where the Women especially with those two they looked like the type who would dress up as men and go to the clubs. Mike: Absolutely Jessika: I get that. It's just a vibe I get and maybe it's just my gaydar Like my pansexual gaydar is Mike: going But I mean that's the ongoing lie that Hollywood loves to tell us is that truly sexy people are in throuples all the time. No they're fucking not. I'm bI And I was dating here in the Bay area and I would occasionally get hit on by people looking for a third and they never looked like that. Jessika: And in my experience and opinion if you go at it with the wrong attitude you're not necessarily going to get what you want out of it. And it's not going to be a genuine feeling relationship. Mike: Which I mean like that's relationships in general. Like Yeah I feel like a huge thing of any successful relationship is communications. Stay tuned listeners for our next podcast about relationships and relationship advice And I don't know I don't know where I was going with that. Jessika: Oh I was like we have a new podcast. We're four episodes into this podcast and Mike's like folks we have a new podcast. You know what I like I like your gusto. I like a motivated you Mike: I did have two quibbles about the movie. Getting back on topic. First we earlier mentioned there was no acknowledgement about the problematic nature of how Marston and Byrne's relationship began. Where he was her professor and she was his student. The movie was very fuzzy with time it was very fluid that way. So it wasn't really explained if she was still his student when the relationship began or if she was his research assistant but there was that power imbalance and their dynamic and that was deeply uncomfortable for me because it wasn't addressed. They just kinda hand waved it away. Fine. Whatever. For the movie, fine. Jessika: same way about that. Yeah It just it's gross and to your point there is a power dynamic that I was thinking about. If you are trying to please somebody who has some sort of control over you, whatever that looks like, if it's somebody who has your grades or your future career or your education or even your job... you know this could be at a job setting. If that person has power over you you're less inclined to say "no" to them. And that automatically puts you at a disadvantage. Mike: It was something that I noticed and I was a little frustrated that it wasn't addressed better. The second was that it didn't feel like we actually got enough time with Wonder Woman. The comics and the character felt more like a framing device but a framing device that we didn't really get a lot of payoff on, considering the title of the movie. I thought the scenes where he was actually in the comic office and there was a bit where they're like "Oh well, they're upset about the bondage. And they're like I feel like there's twice as much. And then he just is like I put in three times as much and he keeps walking. And and Oliver Platt was so great and I wanted more of him. For a movie that has Wonder Woman or Wonder Women in the title I just I wanted a little bit more time and acknowledgement. It felt like much more attention was paid just to their relationship with like the first two thirds of the movie. And then he goes with hat in hand to Oliver Platt's character at... was it all-star Comics? Was Jessika: that it? Mike: Yeah. I mix up all the publishers because they've all merged and come together at various. So yeah he It just it it was And especially cause you were like no he got hired to like do this to get them out of hot water now I'm like that makes much more sense. Jessika: Yeah He Mike: Considering the importance that we're led to believe that Wonder Woman will be to his story, I mean she's there. Like they do a number of things where they keep teasing us with Wonder Woman but we never really get that payoff. What about you like Jessika: I did my research on the topic prior to watching the film. So this will be mostly on what the film did or didn't do correctly kind of history with my own opinion of course sprinkled in as you'd expect from So to your point most of the drama seems to have been fabricated There's no indication that any issues with Radcliffe, like trying to boot him for indecency or with the neighbors regarding their relationship, and again even their children didn't know until after Marston's passing about their relationship. And I didn't read anything about them having split up at any point. And again I think that was just added for a forceful Hollywood dramatics play, since we're on the topic of dominance. And there again Marston was already working for Gaines when he created the idea of Wonder Woman and it was in direct relation to the voice of the critics. So he was answering the critics here. So it didn't necessarily seem like as big of a you did this thing and now we're going to make you pay. It was like well okay Right. The sections with Connie Britton -love her by the way, want more in my life just in general- and their back and forth minus all the people drama was actually pretty accurate as far as capturing the concerns of the day and what was being argued in the lobby against Wonder Woman. And then also pretty accurate in what his counterpoints were in relation to the to the comic itself. Mike: Yeah And I thought that was a smart choice to kind of make her the voice of the critics. Jessika: Yeah. That being said his relationship didn't come up at any point in this again because nobody knew about it until after the fact. So it's not like she would have been like what about those things you were indecent. Well, no that that didn't happen. That was all for dramatics. Overall I really liked it. So, again, me as a pansexual: love a good queer film and also being polyamorous or non-monogamous it was so nice seeing that to your point represented so positively, and without judgment. That was so surprising to me I really thought that there was going to be some sort of aspect from the point of view of the viewer to not want them to succeed. But the whole time you really do you're rooting for them. Mike: If you're a fan of history in comic books I think this is a great movie to go check out. My final thought is that reminded me a lot of Kinsey. Did you ever see that? It had Liam Neeson and Laura Linney in it and it's all about Kinsey, the guy created the Kinsey scale of sexuality. Jessika: Oh okay I'll have to check it out Mike: It's great. This kind of reminded me the same way where it's mostly true. It's not quite all there because they have to tszuj it up for the audiences. Jessika: Yeah, yeah. Well, let's move on to our other film that we watched which was Wonder Woman from 2009. And that was the animated origin story of Wonder Woman Do you want to give an overview of the film for us? Mike: Yeah, sure. This is one of the original DC Universe Animated Original Movies which were at the time this came out in 2009 they were still in their infancy. They'd only done three before. This one is loosely based on George Perez's acclaimed 1980s storyline called "Gods and Monsters" and it's written by Gail Simone and Michael Jelenic. Gail Simone has gotten her own amount of acclaim for writing Wonder Woman as well. The film introduces us to the Amazons who win a war against Ares and then they're granted the Island of Themiscyra and immortality in exchange for acting as Ares' jailer by the gods. Diana is later sculpted from clay and given life by the gods. This is kind of in direct opposition to the current mythos of Zeus being her deadbeat dad and then Diana lives on the Island for thousands of years until pretty much the modern day when two key events happen. Steve Trevor crashes on the Island by happenstance and then Ares stages of jailbreak. And Diana has to take Steve back to the United States and he helps her and request to stop the god of war. Jessika: And actually pretty similar to where they tried to go with the original Wonder Woman. So this was absolutely not a cartoon for children. Mike: Nooooo. Jessika: blood spattered backgrounds, fairly graphic death scenes, and three beheadings three beheadings. We're talking the head flying off and falling dramatically at someone's feet kind of beheading. And that being said I didn't particularly mind the violent nature of the animation as a movie for adults as I feel that it was done in a way that felt true to the battle and the struggle of what was happening in the storyline and it didn't feel overly gross in its depictions or its animations like just enough to give the definite impression that violence was occurring. That makes sense Ares is a super violent guy and he affects everyone around him into violence themself so that it did make sense in that way. So things I liked is that it it seemed to me like a fairly good representation of Wonder Woman's origin story as it was originally told by Marston based on what I was reading. Mike: Yeah it it felt like a very classic take on Wonder Woman's origin. And it was very familiar to someone who grew up nominally aware of her origins and reading her mini comics with her action figure and stuff like that. Jessika: One main difference was that the movie was set in seemingly present day America. Since at one point Wonder Woman ends up fighting in a mall, the fighter planes that Steve and company were flying looked modern for 2009. Marston's Wonder Woman was originally set in World War Two of course whereas the 2018 live action film with Gal Gadot was set in World War One. So we've just jumped around. Again DC is definitely not consistent. Mike: It's comic books. And DC's own in- comics timeline has been drastically reworked several times just in our lifetime. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. And this time period change it definitely affects the vibe and political climate of American society at that time in the cartoon we're not presented with a particular war or a reason for fighting we're evidently just supposed to understand that the world of men is in constant battle every moment. Whereas in the original comic and Wonder Woman film Both took place during large global wars where it wouldn't be a far leap to present the god of war as the cause of those events. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Jessika: Now things I didn't like cause apparently I veered into not liking and then we're continuing down that road. For someone that wasn't raised in a patriarchal society, Diana's internalized misogyny is staggering. At one point she says to Steve, "you're starting to sound like a woman" when he's discussing having feelings for her and later says to Ares, "how can you expect to beat Zeus If you can't even beat a girl." The fuck that? Mike: Which kind of goes against everything else that she does in the movie. Jessika: Yeah it directly against it. Yeah, so that was irritating. And then not only that, the president, because apparently they're in Washington DC, the president is told that they were saved by a group of armored supermodels. Which I had to rewind it and write that line down grossed. Out It's such a condescending and reductive statement to make about individuals that just saved your lives while you apparently slept through the whole situation, Mr President. And it drives home the point that even in heroism, women's worth is still viewed only in her attractiveness. Mike: Yeah there was a lot of that. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. They also have Diana do quite a bit of killing with absolutely no thought whatsoever which is not in the original character at all. That doesn't feel very Diana. Mike: I mean, no. But at the same time I don't particularly have a problem with it but yeah Jessika: Yeah. So that was me. What about you? Were you at with that? Mike: I think I had a slightly more positive take on the movie. I mean it sounds like you still enjoyed it, right? Jessika: Oh, I liked it. I still liked it. Yeah. Mike: Part of it is just I viewed it at the time when it first came out and this was one of the first animated original movies. And it was the first one that I remember enjoying. So I think that it's definitely tinted my perspective a little bit. Jessika: You had a nostalgia factor that I didn't I hadn't seen it prior. Mike: I remember seeing the reviews for it and I was like, "Oh this looks really cool. The others that were released before that they were all, well two of the three were just straight adaptations of other you know quote unquote iconic stories So there is Superman: Doomsday which was the death and life of Superman and I did not give a shit about that movie. It was really I felt flat. Then there was Justice League: The New Frontier which is based on a really acclaimed mini series. And then there was Batman Gotham Knight which was -if I remember right- it was several different animated shorts and different animated styles. And none of them really did it for me. But the DC Animated Universe, which was helmed by Bruce Timm, so that's like the original Batman animated series from the nineties as well as the Superman series and then Justice League and then Batman Beyond or vice versa and then Justice League Unlimited, those were all incredible. And I knew that eventually we would get to the same point with the animated movies and Wonder Woman felt like that home run that I knew they'd eventually hit. So I really enjoyed the film overall and even watching it yesterday afternoon I had a blast, you know, even a decade later. I think its strongest element is that the movie clearly has zero fucks to give. That battle between the Amazons and Ares is incredibly violent and it's obvious from the first 30 seconds in that this is going to be a RIDE. And it doesn't shy away from some really tough narrative elements like where Hippolyta actually in that battle It's revealed that she kills Thrax, the son of Ares. Thrax is her child who is very heavily implied the product of rape by Jessika: Ares. Mike: Also the vocal cast is just incredible. This was 2009 Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Virginia Madsen, Rosario Dawson, Alfred Molina, and then Oliver Platt. They were really well-regarded actors at the time and they're still pretty big and side note Oliver Platt was in both of the movies that we watched for this Jessika: episode. I literally thought of that when you said that. Mike: he fucking steals every scene he's in. He was just this delightful villainous Hades and he's kinda gross but he's also just wonderfully sinister. I really dug that and I also really dug how it felt like a pretty faithful adaptation of the origin while still feeling fresh and fast. Like this movie is not long. That kind of leads into something that I didn't like was that It's a very short movie. It's barely over an hour long. I feel like we needed a director's cut or something because of the lines could have been fleshed out a little bit more like this is something Look Jessika: who wants director's cut now. Mike: Release the Simone cut or something, I don't know. I feel like there were a couple of sub plot lines that were kind of just glossed over. Like I mentioned Thrax is actually Diana's half-brother. I feel like maybe there might've been something more there. Maybe there wasn't, who knows. But it just it felt like something that I would have liked a little more room to breathe. And that's said, it was pretty solid. That said there were some problematic elements. Like Steve was so gross and so cringy Jessika: He kept calling her Angel and I just wanted to punch him in the jaw. Mike: Which, I mean, so that's like a thing from the comics and his other earlier incarnations but this time around it just felt gross. It felt like "babe" and you know blech. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah. He just he rolled in and was like "Oh naked ladies I'm in right place for me." Mike: And the problem is that Nathan Fillion was just too good at making him a sleazebag. Jessika: Which, love Nathan Fillion. Mike: I do too. Like, okay dude, we get it. He's kind of a gross misogynist. We don't need him to hit on Diana for the fifth time in as many minutes. Etta Candy viewing Diana as competition was also dumb. Candy's always been one of her best friends and I still think that her incarnation in the original movie was pitch perfect. And then her being this skinny little supermodel who's trying to flirt with Steve was dumb. You mentioned the other problematic misogynistic elements that I noted. the only other thing, and this wasn't an actual problem, was that I didn't realize how much better Wonder woman's costume is these days rather than the super swimsuit that we had for so long. It's funny because growing up with it, I never thought about it. And then really only in the last five years or so we've gotten a much more a

Please tune in as I welcome our newest guest straight from the West coast baby! He gets real about dating in Cali vs TX. Also I get a little sneaky on some texts

Beginning with a set of interactive rewrite rules, Greg Meredith discusses his work with Mike Stay to derive a proof theory that exhibits a Curry-Howard style correspondence. Specifically, it enjoys a cut-elimination property that mirrors the notion of compute in the rewrite rules. Isaac DeFrain and Christian Williams join the conversation. Visit the blog for […]

Beginning with a set of interactive rewrite rules, Greg Meredith discusses his work with Mike Stay to derive a proof theory that exhibits a Curry-Howard style correspondence.

Greg Meredith and Mike Stay discuss updates to their latest paper, “Name-free combinators for concurrency.” Christian Williams joins the conversation.

Greg Meredith and Mike Stay discuss updates to their latest paper, "Name-free combinators for concurrency."

Tonight we talk about Naughty N' New Orleans, Mike Stay of Execution from his Bone Marrow Biopsy, Flying Southwest & just about anything else you can think of lol wrapped up in 60+ minutes of politically incorrect, socially unacceptable and yet funny as hell! See you at 10PM EST WARNING: This program contains strong sexual content. No one under the age of 18 is permitted to listen to or download this program in any manner. The host, performers, and guests are all over the age of 18. Rebroadcasting of this program and any use of its name and or representations is prohibited without written consent of its owners. All commentary on this program by its hosts and or guest is the sole opinions of the hosts and guests and does not reflect the opinions of its owners, agents or representatives. Tonight’s Show is sponsored in part by the following: Airtight Lifestyle – the ultimate lifestyle site for like-minded Swingers. Join FREE at www.airtightlifestyle.com use referral code ASNUndergroundShow ASN Lifestyle Boutique: www.asnlifestyleboutique.com (Lifestyle Adult Sex store) Partners ID: https://swingersjewelry.net/?ref=3 (Lifestyle Jewelry) CBD Living Water: http://www.cbdlivingwater.com/?wpam_id=120 (The future of water is here Now!) WildCat Brothel Ranch: https://www.wildcatbrothel.com/ (Let your desires run wild at the WildCat) Follow us: ASN Radio: https://www.asnundergroundshow.com twitter: @UndShowMS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ASNundergroundShow/ Instagram: @asnundergroundshow Book Us: To book the ASN Underground Show with Mike & Sheri Call Dante Rusciolelli at Golden Artists Entertainment, LLC - 818-635-7910 or email Dante: dante@goldenartistsentertainment.com Website: https://www.goldenartistsentertainment.com/

Tonight we talk about Naughty N' New Orleans, Mike Stay of Execution from his Bone Marrow Biopsy, Flying Southwest & just about anything else you can think of lol wrapped up in 60+ minutes of politically incorrect, socially unacceptable and yet funny as hell! See you at 10PM EST WARNING: This program contains strong sexual content. No one under the age of 18 is permitted to listen to or download this program in any manner. The host, performers, and guests are all over the age of 18. Rebroadcasting of this program and any use of its name and or representations is prohibited without written consent of its owners. All commentary on this program by its hosts and or guest is the sole opinions of the hosts and guests and does not reflect the opinions of its owners, agents or representatives. Tonight’s Show is sponsored in part by the following: Airtight Lifestyle – the ultimate lifestyle site for like-minded Swingers. Join FREE at www.airtightlifestyle.com use referral code ASNUndergroundShow ASN Lifestyle Boutique: www.asnlifestyleboutique.com (Lifestyle Adult Sex store) Partners ID: https://swingersjewelry.net/?ref=3 (Lifestyle Jewelry) CBD Living Water: http://www.cbdlivingwater.com/?wpam_id=120 (The future of water is here Now!) WildCat Brothel Ranch: https://www.wildcatbrothel.com/ (Let your desires run wild at the WildCat) Follow us: ASN Radio: https://www.asnundergroundshow.com twitter: @UndShowMS Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ASNundergroundShow/ Instagram: @asnundergroundshow Book Us: To book the ASN Underground Show with Mike & Sheri Call Dante Rusciolelli at Golden Artists Entertainment, LLC - 818-635-7910 or email Dante: dante@goldenartistsentertainment.com Website: https://www.goldenartistsentertainment.com/

Мой новый трек!Надеюсь вам понравится! Очень жду вашей поддержки! Mike Stay with me @ Mike Prado (Клубная Волна Project)