[00:00:00] Badr: Yoo Short Box Nation, welcome back to the podcast. How's everyone doing? Hope you're all in a good spirits and I hope you're ready for a damn good time on this episode. If you're new to the show, welcome. This is The Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about comic books and pop culture inspired by them.
[00:00:20] Badr: My name is Badr and this is episode three eighty six. It recently dawned on me that the last three episodes have all been interviews. And I mean, granted, it's been like some stellar interviews. I will say that it's been some awesome comic creators. We had the chance to bring on the show and you know, we were also planning on doing a deep dive into Zorro today and Pope Comics and how they've inspired superheroes and, and comics today.
[00:00:44] Badr: It was gonna be a really good episode. All of that was Cesar's idea and it was also voted on by our Patreon community. But Cesar had something come up and he called in. Yeah, I get he called in. He used a, he used a free, a floating floating PTO day, uh, two. Back to back episodes was too much fun for me.
[00:01:02] Badr: That was, I
[00:01:02] Ed: was, I was curious about that. There's no way he's doing two in a row.
[00:01:06] Badr: No way. Exactly. So see something come up. He couldn't join us today. We weren't gonna do the, we weren't going to do the Zoro episode. So I figured it was a perfect opportunity to do something a little more relaxed, right?
[00:01:17] Badr: We've been feeding you guys interviews and we were gonna do something deep dive, but I kind of wanted like just a fun episode. I wanted to catch up with all these headlines and comic news from this past month, which means that there's plenty to talk about today. We've got things to talk about. Damn right.
[00:01:31] Badr: We do. John Stewart, and since there's so much to cover, I got friends with me. All right. I brought in the big guns today. Joining me in the studio on Mike number two is a return of your favorite co-host. It's the Speciale Edmond Danza. What's up man? Ed, how you been man? I've been doing good. Good. How have you been enjoying the little break?
[00:01:48] Badr: It's been a minute since. No, I guess how that
[00:01:50] Ed: Cesar schedule, it's nice.
[00:01:54] Badr: Were on. That says our paternity leave without the child. I know you had it made, bro. Don't even have a kid. You had it made. All right. And joining us via phone all the way from the West coast. I'm talking LA Big Money over here. All right.
[00:02:05] Badr: He's a friend of the show and he's finally making his return after his short box debut almost two years ago. Wow. He's the founder of Cosmic Lion Productions, which is home of one of my favorite fanzines called the Wizard of Fan Magazine. He's also the host of the comic podcast. Can I whip it? Which I, I'm still gonna hold that aside from the short box.
[00:02:25] Badr: It's Rodney's second best name to Comic book podcast ever. I love it. And he's also the head honcho of the seminal online comic group. Cartoonist Kfa ringside seats. Short Box Nation. Let's go ahead and give it up for the return of Eli Schwab.
[00:02:40] Eli: What up, what up? Good morning from
the
[00:02:43] Badr: West Coast. Damn right, right.
[00:02:45] Badr: This is, this is a dedication, my man, Eli got early for you. It is, uh, what it's like 10 o'clock in the morning over there. Yeah, this is his Saturday morning cartoon right here. Alright. He's got a nice cup of coffee. The sun is beaming in. Beautiful. I can see everything on the wall. He's got some wicked art on the walls for the I love that Mobius Silver surfer in the back.
[00:03:02] Badr: Good look. Thanks, dude. What is that real quick? What is that? That rainbow multi-colored team and tea thing. Is that slash
[00:03:08] Eli: Yes. It's a Jim Ma food G Slay Ooh. Of some just insane, like, uh, graffiti styles, man. He's
[00:03:16] Badr: one of my favorites. Hell yeah. Hell yeah, man. That's la style for you right there. All right. I'm, I'm loving it so far.
[00:03:21] Badr: Uh, Eli h how you been, man? How's everything with Cosmic Line Productions? How's the podcast? How, how's the Ringside seats group and all that? It's all going
[00:03:28] Eli: great, man. Like, I'll tell you what Cosmic Line Productions has taken off like crazy. We got more and more books. I got on my whiteboard here. I got books lined up into next year.
[00:03:37] Eli: Wow. We just released a killer, uh, fan book by, uh, by Barry Tan. It's a, uh, kind of like a wizard or sorry, like a image homage on the, uh, Hollow foil stuff, hollow foil cover, uh, you know, it's got some amazing stuff like this Insane prophet pin up. Nice. It was showed off on a episode of Cartoonist Cafe, but, uh, Ooh.
[00:04:02] Eli: Barry Tan is the man. So we got new books coming out as always, and, uh, just killing
[00:04:07] Ed: it. That's just trying to That's a good, that's a good spot to have to get the kfa
[00:04:10] Eli: effect. That exactly has been happening. Oh yeah. Yeah. We've been lucky enough to get a few books hit with the Kfab effect and it's always
[00:04:18] Badr: helpful.
[00:04:18] Badr: And I'm also gonna go ahead and help you shamelessly plug Cosmic Line more than you've already done so far, and say, oh yeah. Uh, your comic series Space Nights that you guys put out by, uh, Kevin Anthony Catlan is fantastic and I can't wait for us to maybe talk about that a little more, um, whenever I hop on your show and vice versa.
[00:04:34] Badr: But yeah, man, big shouts, everything you got going on with Cosmic Lion.
[00:04:38] Eli: Thanks man. And of course, ghost Agents is another big one. Come man, we got come Treasure Edition out right now.
[00:04:42] Badr: He's not in LA for no for no reason. Right. My man knows how to sell, but he's doing big things, so hell yeah. Before we go any further, I wanna shout out everyone that has reached out so far and, and showed some love for last week's episode of Chris Pierce, a k a, the man behind one of the best Comic YouTube channels out there.
[00:05:00] Badr: I'm talking about comic tropes. I appreciate everyone that, that sent in some kind words that sent in compliments and just overall, uh, loved the episode as much as me and CES are, uh, enjoyed recording it and getting to talk to Chris. You know, we're both big fans of Comic Tropes and I'm glad to see that episode is doing so well.
[00:05:17] Badr: So check that out if you haven't already. And while we're on kudos and, and giving, you know, appreciation Flowers, I like to give a big shout out to our incredible sponsor, Gotham City Limit, Jacksonville's premiere location for comic books, collectibles, toys, and more. You'll hear from them later on in this episode.
[00:05:33] Badr: And of course, if we're gonna talk about the the Short Box family, there's, there's always time to shadow our friends and loyal supporters that make up our Patreon community. We love every single one of you guys, and we appreciate you guys for helping us keep the lights on. If you're listening and, and you're not part of the Short Box Elite by.
[00:05:50] Badr: I'm here to tell you, you're leaving valuable entertainment on the table, which is basically like, uh, which is the currency of, of podcasting. Entertainment, right? You could be maximizing your short box enjoyment by 10 folds. All right? I've, I've done all the math and, and I got scientists that can, uh, back that up.
[00:06:06] Badr: You're leaving money in entertainment on the table. If you become a patron subscriber, you can be enjoying the Short Box Podcast on a whole nother level. Here's how it works, all right? Essentially, you give us a tiny contribu. Of two or five bucks a month, you know the money that you're gonna forget about and probably waste on bad food.
[00:06:23] Badr: Yeah. Probably drugs anyways. Yeah.
[00:06:29] Badr: Ohm, sorry, that's not even the script. I went out, I went the script on that one. Well, I went off the script on that, like, oh, I'm asking is that you help us pay? Yeah. If you enjoy the show, help us pay some of these, uh, podcast bills. Put the
[00:06:41] Eli: bottle down for one day. Selfish Sons of bitches
[00:06:44] Badr: one day. That's all it takes.
[00:06:46] Badr: Exactly. Help us keep this thing running. All right. And in exchange, uh, you'll get a healthier liver, but you'll also get a ton of bonus content. You'll get access to unreleased episodes. You'll also be able to help us vote on episode topics so you'll have a hand and a say in the shows that we produce, and most importantly, you'll get that sweet, sweet, sweet dopamine.
[00:07:07] Badr: From being so damn charitable. Mm-hmm. And you'll have that righteous superiority complex for helping us provide content to listeners around the world on a regular basis. All right. Be the hero this community needs and sign up to become a short box. Pat Saint. Hey Saint. Yeah. The real Patreon saint over at patreon.com/the short box.
[00:07:28] Badr: Two of the hosts have children though. Yo, come on man. See, I didn't, I didn't even want to play the baby card. Okay, we'll wait for that. But I think we should be, we should actually. Yeah. You know, the stakes are higher. Yeah. Much higher, man. We got, we got families to provide. All right. And your $2 and $5 a month could at least put, I don't know, what are like some baby stuff.
[00:07:46] Badr: That's formula. Yeah. Formula, yeah. All right. Help us out, man. So babies drink, right? Yeah. All right. We can't keep guilty, not listeners. Give us money. All right. Help us out if you can. And if you want, we'd appreciate it. Let's go and get this episode started. If you're listening to the podcast version of the show, All the topics that we're gonna talk about today are timestamped enlisted in the show notes of the episode.
[00:08:06] Badr: So if you're looking to see if we covered anything in particular, or if you just wanted to jump around, go ahead and, uh, check out the, uh, the show notes and go from there. Ed, how about you go ahead and kick us off, man. What's the first thing on the agenda today? Oh,
man.
[00:08:17] Ed: Big, pretty, pretty significant news.
[00:08:21] Ed: Um, Amazon Studios has hired former Marvel, e I c, Joe Kada, who left the company not even a year ago. And basically he has been hired to develop movies and TV as a first look deal, but focusing on existing and new comic book ip. So this guy is, he's been in the game since the nineties. He started at Valiant Marvel, dc He was an artist.
[00:08:47] Ed: Then he moved into the office and like I said, he's been an executive producer on Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, uh, agents of Shield. So he's, he's has his foot into the. To the, uh, that side of the, uh, the business. So he ran his own company event comics for five years. So, like I said, three lines Marvel that kind of kept them going when comics were in the downside.
[00:09:10] Ed: Marvel Nights, the Max Line and the Ultimate Line, which a lot of, he can say he's like one of the architects of the M C U,
[00:09:17] Badr: you know, and real quick, you just went through this dude's entire, well, not even maybe his entire, but like a good chunk of his resume. Have you said his name yet? Have you said Joe Kasad?
[00:09:25] Badr: Joe Cassada. Did I? Okay. I wasn't sure Joe Cassada, that that's how long the, the list of a, the, uh, uh, his resume went was, I forgot you said his name in the beginning.
[00:09:36] Ed: Yeah, former, yeah, former E I C Joe Cassada. So that's a big get for, like I said, Netflix has Mark Malar, you know, so this is, they're kind of basically taking Marvels, one of their more successful EICs in recent history and hoping he can recreate that magic with, uh, Amazon.
[00:09:56] Eli: There's a lot that they can do. There's a lot of, yeah, I mean, this, I immediately made me think about Gral, which I'm a big fan of, and how there was that show that I know to be completely, almost, completely finished. Uh, and that they just dropped it Netflix, you know? And so this is making me think, okay, we got Palm oti, or sorry, you got Quesada.
[00:10:18] Eli: I get
[00:10:18] Ed: a sense too, I
[00:10:19] Eli: always think of them too as like a team Palm and Quesada, you know? Yeah. They're, they're just in my head from the nineties as like this, like ultimate team. And again, that's good because he's huge at Marvel and he's, and so they have that connection already. Yeah. Uh, that like working connection and if they can get that Grandle thing picked up, if they got, if they're gonna do this whole thing like this, sh this article says that they are gonna helm a Silk Spider Society show too.
[00:10:43] Eli: Yeah. They got
[00:10:44] Ed: that side thing with. The, the non M C U properties,
[00:10:47] Badr: they can, that was new to me. I, I didn't know there was a Marvel link between Prime Video and, and Sony, uh, maybe it's very obvious and I'm, I'm just new to this, but, uh, I didn't know that there was that slight connection with Sony. So, I mean, you know, I didn't, speaking of Spiderman adjacent projects at, right now, Sony's got Soak Spider Society and then a Spider-Man Noir series currently in the works.
[00:11:09] Badr: So I, I guess that time, maybe those will be available on Prime Video. Maybe get that
[00:11:13] Ed: for the link more Be series. We all been won
[00:11:14] Badr: after that movie. I'm so surprised. I, I, I believe the Craven movie is So there's a Craven movie coming out.
[00:11:21] Ed: That's
[00:11:21] Eli: right. Yeah. It's done right? I think so. Yeah. I also saw a hilarious meme that said that.
[00:11:27] Eli: Uh, it still beat Shazam too. Like more morbius still beat Shazam too at the box episode.
[00:11:33] Badr: Oh, wow. Interesting. I mean, it's morbid time. Yeah. Leave it up to Sony. I kind of, um, respect Sony's complete faith in their project. Or maybe like, just this like sense of like frugalness of like, we just spent the money, we're fucking putting it out.
[00:11:46] Badr: Yeah, let's put it out. Meanwhile, DC like spent, like, look at all these
[00:11:49] Ed: memes. Put it out
[00:11:49] Badr: again. No, no, no. Well that, but also, uh, uh, they. You know, we spent however much we spent on that Bat Woman movie and it said we'd rather take the tax or return. Right. Yeah.
[00:12:00] Eli: That's crazy, man.
[00:12:02] Ed: Well, yeah, it seems like they're going lean in that one direction.
[00:12:05] Ed: It's, it's crazy. But do we want, are we gonna get that Ash series from event that Superhero Fireman? You guys remember him? Oh
[00:12:12] Eli: man. Oh, that's, that's a Joe Kba thing. Yeah, he is.
[00:12:14] Badr: Yeah. Interesting. You think he'll try to, uh, you think Joe Kasad will try to be, he's gonna resurrect Ash,
[00:12:18] Ed: the Superhero Fireman.
[00:12:20] Ed: Does that sound good? Does it sound like a good idea? The world needs it right now, dude.
[00:12:23] Badr: The world needs it. That wouldn't be the craziest thing.
[00:12:27] Ed: Right? Or the valiant stuff is kind of, you know, that kind of petered out with bloodshot. I mean, they can give that a good XO man award. There's a lot there they could work on.
[00:12:36] Ed: Ninja Jack, he worked on Ninja Jack back in the day.
[00:12:39] Badr: Damn. That'd be kind of, damn, that'd be cool if, uh, Quesada decides. Beef up or, or bring valiant into like, you know, this prestige when it comes to live action, like to amplify what they've already kind of built on. I think that'd be cool. Especially like
[00:12:52] Ed: there's hanging around, there's like a valiant title comes out every six
[00:12:55] Badr: months or so.
[00:12:56] Badr: So did you guys, uh, catch in This Gives Moto article about, about this piece of news? Did you guys catch I I'm interpreting this as shade being thrown at like Disney studios or the MCU u I don't know if you guys interpret it the same way, but uh, in the article, uh, Joe Kasad in response to like this news and him getting this, uh, this deal, he says quote, what it was also clear is that they're creating a collaborative environment and unique mythology methodology that I'm surprised no one has yet thought to implement, but I'm certain will be quickly.
[00:13:27] Badr: So keywords being, uh, Amazon Prime video is creating a collaborative environment, unique methodology. You know, it's like, is that, yo, is that a shot at M C U? Talking about like, how some people view, um, like Kevin Fey's, like reign of like, being really tight about creative control. It's like a template you use.
[00:13:43] Badr: I mean, am I looking too deep into it? Are these subliminals? You could be veiled. Chop. All right. Yeah, sure. Too much rap, right? I'm always, I'm always looking for beef. Beef or maybe there isn't beef, so. All right. A question for you guys then. Um, cuz I was, I, I needed a quick recap as far as like what live action comic adaptation, live action and comic adaptations, um, prime Studios has created and ones that come to mind up.
[00:14:08] Badr: Tick the rip tick, invincible, uh, which might be my favorite dude. Paper. Girls. Boys. Boys. Yeah. Yeah, boys. Um, doom Patrol. I always thought those were just strictly HBO O Max, but I guess maybe Prime helped, prime Studios helped with maybe the, um, or Amazon Studios maybe helped to develop them. Is that why didn't show up?
[00:14:27] Badr: I'm not sure. I didn't know that either. Yeah. Weird. Like, it sounds like, uh, paper Girls has been your favorite release through Amazon Studios. Dude, I loved
[00:14:35] Eli: it. You know, I always heard of that book and you always see it at the, at the, you know, the big trade came out, I think around that same time, the giant Omni Thebus.
[00:14:43] Eli: But like, I had never read it. And so I'm a big Jason Manzuk fan, so as soon as I saw he was in it, I was like, I'm gonna check this out, man. I love time travel, I love all this stuff. And so I watched it and man, I chugged that shit so fast and it made me go out, not really go out, I guess I used, um, Comicology Unlimited and I chugged that entire series like in a week.
[00:15:05] Eli: You know? That's a lot of books, man. And I was so psyched on it. And then I was like pissed to hear man, Zuki like on podcast being like, it's canceled. It's canceled. I'm like, what? Come on man. It was so good. There's so much they could do with that book, dude. And
[00:15:19] Ed: that's such a bad move. I, in my opinion, to like, where they'll drop a show, like, Netflix has done this a lot, prime, but the show's not even out in a month.
[00:15:28] Ed: And they say it's not getting renewed. So right for me that like basically is so counterintuitive that basically cuts off a lot of people. Well I'm not, why, who the fuck am I gonna invest? I'm, you're
[00:15:37] Eli: shooting it in the foot man before it even gets out. It's
[00:15:40] Ed: like, let it, let it breathe. Cuz like that cowboy beebo thing was like two days out and it's like, ah,
[00:15:44] Eli: not ruin.
[00:15:44] Eli: And the comic didn't even come out and then they like canceled that or something. And
[00:15:48] Ed: yeah, the comic came out like it was, the comic's actually pretty good too, and I didn't mind the show, but I'm not as hardcore as some folks. But yeah, it was like they had this all lined up and it's just, yep, it's done.
[00:15:59] Ed: That
[00:15:59] Eli: sucks when they do that, for some reason they just don't have, for lack of a better term, the balls to like go, because I didn't even think they marketed paper girls very hard. I like barely saw anything about
[00:16:09] Ed: it. I didn't even know about it until I saw, cuz I listened to a lot of, I liked Manzuk as well, so I just heard about it.
[00:16:15] Ed: Like whatever shows he was on, like comedy Bang bang or something. It's like, oh, there's a Paper girl series. That's cool. That's where I'm
[00:16:21] Eli: at too. Comedy
[00:16:21] Badr: bang, bang. Regardless, I'm gonna stay positive and optimistic that Joe Cassada can get the job done. You know? Um, I'm hoping that he brings you something fresh to Amazon Studios.
[00:16:31] Badr: He, you know, finds some comic property to, to bring to the live action world or even animated. Maybe he'll, he'll dive more into animated. And
[00:16:38] Ed: what you get with a guy like that too is like, you'll get someone who's actually gonna promote this stuff. Yeah. You know, cuz he's gonna be at every convention. He's, he does interviews all left, right.
[00:16:47] Ed: He'll continue to do that. So we'll know something's gonna drop, you know, among the sea of shit. They just dump on us week to week.
[00:16:53] Badr: So, but you guys got me excited about a, a possible, like seeing some valiant properties, uh, given like the, the, the small screen ninja treatment Ninja
[00:17:02] Ed: did diesel returns.
[00:17:06] Badr: All right. Thanks for kicking us off with some, some hopeful news. Ed. I'll say that. Hopeful news. I wanna highlight this week's, uh, Disney layoffs. The first wave of Disney layoffs, uh, happened this week. Um, and it claimed Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Pearl Utter. So he's one of the bigger names, uh, that, you know, got the boot I got kicked out of the company.
[00:17:29] Badr: He was, uh, Marvel Entertainment's chairman. Uh, so Marvel Entertainment, you know, being a part of Disney, but specifically focusing on customer facing products. Things like comic books, toys and, and licensing around, around the world. A lot of friends in the comic podcast space and, and the comic industry and in general, you know, had a lot to say about this.
[00:17:51] Badr: Um, and who doesn't really have a lot to say about Ike Pearl Utter considering his, his background and, you know, some of the prior headlines he's made on his own to get everyone spun up. Disney ceo, Bob Iker, you know, he came back to, uh, be c e o maybe just a couple months ago or last year. He's, he's got this big initiative to, you know, save the, the company money.
[00:18:12] Badr: Uh, he's, he's got this massive quote, strategic realignment strategy for the company. And a part of that is, you know, unfortunately, you know, if you're a worker at Disney, this is pretty sad news, but massive layoffs, I think close to, they're planning close to 7,000 layoffs as part of this strategic realignment for the company.
[00:18:30] Badr: They announced these layoffs, like it was a tour as well, right? Yeah. Coming to a city in department near you, but one of these bigger names to get, uh, uh, men
[00:18:39] Ed: in season four round of layoffs, right?
[00:18:43] Badr: Yeah. So, Isaac Ike Perlmutter was just one of the, like I said, it's one of the, the casualties in the first round, maybe one of the more bigger names, uh, to get the boot.
[00:18:53] Badr: This dude's been in the news for, you know, not so great things, uh, at, during his run as chairman of Marvel Entertainment. For starters, he's tried to seat his own friends on, on the Disney board. He tries like behind the door or closed door deals to get friends on the board, which doesn't sound crazy, right?
[00:19:12] Badr: It sounds like run of the mill corporate, you know, bad guy stuff. But considering the circles that Ike Pro Mutter runs with and you know, his own politic. Um, it's caused some headaches for people, uh, but he's also clashed with Kevin Figi, right? Beloved Kevin Figge, uh, is a guy that you don't really imagine having much beef or many enemies, or I guess it depends on, on who you're asking, but, you know, might be some people very upset with Kevin Fig's, uh, run of M C U lately.
[00:19:42] Badr: But regardless, uh, Ike Pro Utter and Kevin Figi have clashed a few times to the point that Ike Pro Utter has even tried to get Kevin Fgi fired back in 2015. And Bob Iger, the c e O of Disney had to step in, uh, to stop this from happening. And then there's also numerous stories of him just being, uh, Ike pro utter, just being very cheap and going overboard and cutting corners and, you know, every way that he can to save money, which once again, doesn't sound too crazy for a businessman.
[00:20:09] Badr: But I read a story in a New York Times article. Where they mentioned he was, had installed like 20 plus cameras in, in the office to watch workers' productivity. And I'm not sure which office or department, I don't know if it was like Marvel Comics, editorial office or another part of the business, but that's pretty crazy.
[00:20:28] Badr: Right. And then Ike has also notably pushed back against efforts for diversity in the M C U. Bob Iger himself in his, uh, memoir, in his book, wrote how Ike Prol. Just made it difficult and was putting up roadblocks in the way, in the way for movies like Black Panther and, and Captain Marvel. And then there was that whole fiasco of Black Widow where um, I think he said something to the effect of, you know, a, a woman led superhero just wouldn't sell or resonate or it wouldn't work, or something like that.
[00:20:58] Badr: He's made it difficult for, you know, diversity and, you know, these movies to be made. And fortunately these movies did get made and, you know, proved them wrong. It's
[00:21:08] Ed: the old white guy. That's just what happens.
[00:21:10] Badr: That's just, and are you saying I could have just like, you know, saved a ton of wording, just saying hashtag old, old white dude, old white dude stuck in the times, right?
[00:21:19] Badr: Yeah, it's so long story short, a lot of people had reason to cheer, cheer on the fact that Ike Pro Motor got the boot from Marvel Entertainment. Uh, due to these cutoffs, there's gonna be a lot more layoffs in the coming months, which will be sad. Um, you know, that sucks to hear that so many people will be losing their jobs, but at the moment, you know, a lot of comic fans on Twitter and such are seeing that as a positive.
[00:21:42] Badr: Outside of having impacts to people's jobs, it has already impacted, uh, certain release schedules for M C U, uh, phase five Disney plus content, specifically shows like Agatha Echo and Ironheart. I believe these were all on track to be released sometime this, or, or next year or even the next two years. I think they had like a solid date for all of these.
[00:22:04] Badr: But if you go to check the release dates, now they're all tbd. On the brighter side, I do believe that we'll con that we'll still see Secret Wars, low key season two and maybe even what if season two this year? Um, I think those are unfazed by these layoffs, but the rest of the M C U, uh, Disney Plus, uh, schedule at least, um, is kind of up in the air at the moment.
[00:22:25] Badr: But if you dig deeper into the, the article, there is a line in there where they mentioned that Disney fired Ike Perlmutter with the reason. His department was kind of redundant. And that division of Marvel slash Disney focuses on consumer products. So things like comic book publishing, uh, toy business, uh, internationally at that.
[00:22:47] Badr: And he, and, you know, licensing, so the consumer facing products. And then obviously Marvel Studios handles things like the TV and, and the movie properties. I don't know. It raises some questions about the future of Marvel Entertainment and if it'll have any impact to the comic publishing side. Like I said, I think this piece of news in this development is still too early to make any solid predictions.
[00:23:07] Badr: Obviously all speculation at this point, but it does feel like another, you know, ripple in, in the comic industry's changing LA landscape. A a lot of change has happened in less than five years. No longer is Diamond the soul monopoly, or even like the only option for retailers and publishers to get their books in, in stores.
[00:23:26] Badr: And then you've got traditional comic companies either being bought up or, or merging with other companies. You got new players like whatnot, publishing, entering the game. Uh, and, and the list goes on. It's, it's just an interesting time for the comic industry to say the very least. And if we're looking at just.
[00:23:42] Badr: The changes going on in Marvel comics. We're seeing them lose big name creators as they, you know, as they go on to independent, uh, comics themselves. Like big name writers like Jason Aaron and Donnie Kates, who are staples to, uh, Marvel Flagship titles like Avengers and Hulk and Thor, respectively have either announced a hiatus or recently finished, you know, their, like Jason, Aaron just finished his, his Avengers run, so he's kind of taken a step back.
[00:24:09] Badr: I think Donnie, Kate's, uh, his. Run he was writing Hulk. That's kind of been put on hiatus as well for the foreseeable future. All signs kind of point to them just wanting to go the independent route and working on uh, their own titles. We're seeing that a lot just within the big two. As a creator
[00:24:26] Eli: myself too, I can only see where they, where they want to do that.
[00:24:29] Eli: It's like, you know, I could work every day super hard tirelessly and not own any of the things I'm creating. Have no right to do anything with them after they leave my head to the paper and then I never own or see anything about again. Yeah, sure, the paycheck's probably better, but at this point I have a certain notoriety.
[00:24:48] Eli: Jason, Aaron destroyed that Avengers run, so now he can go and make whatever he sees fit, he can create it, he can get all the money or, or whatever. You know, he can feel that creative control and then do what he wants with it. You. Yeah,
[00:25:03] Ed: Southern bastards, please come back. Like
[00:25:06] Eli: it's amazing. And so, especially someone like Donnie Kates too, who kind of seems to be able to do both, you know?
[00:25:11] Eli: Cuz isn't he still doing Marvel titles? And he's got Vanish and he is got his whole publishing company on his own. So he's found this intermediate kind of position where he's able to like, you know, bust things out on both sides. It is this uber creative dude who seems like he
[00:25:27] Ed: can't stop. He wants to do giant swords with every company.
[00:25:30] Ed: Oh, absolutely. Powerful swords.
[00:25:32] Badr: He loves swords, man. All right, enough speculation. We'll see how everything pans out for Disney, for, for Marvel Entertainment. And it's an employees in, in the coming months. I'm sure we'll see, uh, more headlines, more news come outta this, but let's inject some much needed levity and positivity into this conversation.
[00:25:50] Badr: Eli, you put me onto something just the other day and I know you've been hyped to talk about this and in shine a spotlight on this, what you got for us today. What's your topic?
[00:25:59] Eli: Yesterday, Bauder and I seemed to have some fun via chat, via, uh, text with this amazing heritage auction stuff. Now this is like a focus more, less on the creative side and more on this like the collectibility of this entire world that we love so much.
[00:26:17] Eli: You know, like I, I'm not saying that I'm a big slab dude. I don't lo, I don't really like slabs. I've got a couple slabs. I'm not gonna lie that the collectibility. Is something that always grabs me right down in the, you know, Jack Kirby's testicles kind of thing. Like, it's like it grabs me there. You know, like that's where like, I feel the collectibility factor is a huge thing.
[00:26:44] Eli: It's definitely something that's passed down from my dad. This is something like we do together to the point where one day he's like, oh man, I was bidding on this, uh, Sergio a's original thing, and I lost, I'm so pissed. And I was like, dad, I just won that for you. And he's like, what the hell? You know? So like,
[00:27:01] Ed: we could have saved so much money.
[00:27:02] Ed: I don't know. It was you. I,
[00:27:04] Eli: that's exactly what you're like, damn. Like we can never do this again. Seriously, like a couple thousand dollars that we like messed each other with. Oh man,
Todd,
[00:27:12] Badr: what is going on? When a father and son undercut each other, what type of family is that? There's no foundation. Dammit.
[00:27:19] Eli: I know. I was like, we need this communication father And mom calls me the next day being like, Eli, your dad has enough comics he doesn't need be, don't let him bid anymore. You didn't hear that dad? Dammit. Anyway, like, so there was a huge one, uh, yesterday and I think there's one, uh, today. Today is April 1st.
[00:27:37] Eli: I don't know if you want to timestamp on it, but yesterday at the end of April or end of March and today and then tomorrow I think is another big one. And uh, what really drew me to it, I'm a huge turtles guy, and Kevin Eastman, he put, he puts things in there like from his. Obviously vast basement. I mean, I, I think about these dude's basements and I'm like, you're sitting on millions of dollars.
[00:28:00] Eli: Mm-hmm. And you have no idea. It's insane. Like, so Kevin Eastman is seemingly liquidating his basement and he put up all this amazing shit, man. It's amazing to me. The same with other people. I love like Matt Wagner. He is like, oh, I just found these like devil by the deed color plates. And he's like, putting 'em up for sale.
[00:28:17] Eli: You know, there's these comic book creators, like, you gotta, you gotta sell your closet junk. I'm a big fan of, I made a thousand dollars off my old t-shirts. You know, you like, you never know what's in your
[00:28:28] Badr: closet, man. Oh dude. Don't even get me started on the retro t-shirt market. Comic creators spring cleaning is vastly different than ours, right?
[00:28:36] Badr: Yes. They're cleaning out thousands. You know, I'm cleaning out a free donation, you know, of old
[00:28:41] Ed: clothes. There was that one, was it Todd McFarland? Like maybe last year or so. He is like, just found like a page from like amazing Spider-Man 300 in his closet. It's like, oh, there's 20 grand right there for you.
[00:28:51] Eli: Yeah. He's someone that kills in the heritage auction market too. And, and you know, some of it's not so great because it's like these creators don't see that money. You know, and so that's tough. And then you'll get the thing where it's like, oh, this was bought from Jack Kirby from an art dealer, and Jack got paid like 50 bucks for it.
[00:29:09] Eli: Yeah. And now it's sold for like $50,000.
[00:29:11] Ed: I think it depends on the gallery, cuz I've heard that there's some galleries. It's, it's a very small minority mind you, but they will, like, if they sell something of high value, they will cut like a little something for the original artist, which is cool. That's good to hear.
[00:29:25] Ed: But that's like, so that's in the minority. Minority.
[00:29:28] Eli: Yeah. And, and like for me, I'm saying like, I'm not as big into the, the, the s slapped books. Like that to me is like my collectible in jail. Yeah. It's like I can't touch it. I can't do a hundred percent of the things I love about this thing. You know, I've got a couple over there, it's fine.
[00:29:46] Eli: But original art to me is like, I own a piece of. This thing, like I, it's bones, it's blood, it's body, you know, like I love these things and the ultimate way to collect this thing is to own the original art. You know? Like I have these pages and they didn't cost me much. They're from the Mighty Meat Animals, you know, Archie books from when I was a Oh cool.
[00:30:11] Eli: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like I own these pages now and it's like this direct line, not only to my childhood, but to like the creator itself. And it's like the ultimate thing from this book that I love so much, you know? So it's like when I see these heritage oxens and I see these original art pieces, like, cuz yesterday Butter, there were so many things in, there're like, You know, peanut strips and Wally Wood Daredevil and Oh wow.
[00:30:37] Eli: You know, other turtles covers like, you know, there was a couple Mirage pages, but there was a bunch of covers from I D W. That's what I picked up is this like, full color, all four turtles. Kevin Eastman piece that I thought went for like, way less than it should have, which is probably why I won it. But like, you know, it's, it's just amazing to see all these things and know that like, that the, the focus is being put on the, like blood and guts of this amazing thing we love so much, you
[00:31:07] Badr: know.
[00:31:07] Badr: Well said Eli. Well said Eli. Be careful of, of the table bumps. Oh shit man. I, I was all animated there. All good. No, you're just excited. All good. Um, I'm gonna go ahead and add some more context to, to what Eli's sharing cuz he's got me hyped and he got me hyped yesterday. Um, yeah, so currently right now Heritage Auctions, which is one of the.
[00:31:28] Badr: I think they claim to be the world's largest collectibles auctioneer, which I, I, I won't debate that. They probably are. Yes. They seem to have a lot of stuff. Yeah. They're, they are in the middle at the time of this recording into Eli's point. You know, they're, um, you know, it's April 1st when we're recording this, which sidebar has been an interesting day of trying to read comic headlines and news.
[00:31:46] Badr: Jeez. And you're like, fuck, it's April Fool's jokes son. My bitch keeps happening. Anyways, Harris's Auctions is in the middle of this massive four day comic and comic art signature auction, and yesterday was the, I believe, Shit. I think it was the third. No, no. Yeah, it was the third day. Um, the first day made headlines, um, because they set a record for selling the, uh, uh, copy of Detective Comics.
[00:32:11] Badr: Number 27. So the first appearance of Batman for a record tying 1.74 million, uh, yeah, $1.74 million. Just a couple, I think less than two years ago. No, I'm sorry, in less than three years. This is the second time they've, you know, you know, made this, this record. They've already sold a copy of number 27. The interesting thing about this most recent one is that, uh, it was, it, it was, it's a c g C graded book.
[00:32:38] Badr: So it's like, like Eli's been saying, it's been slab and the condition has been ranked as a 6.0, which is less than what the previous one, and I don't have that information pulled up right now. But the previous one was a much higher graded, and it sold for, I, I believe, the same amount or, or something similar.
[00:32:53] Badr: So even this lesser graded copy still pulled in, still managed to tie for the record of highest selling, uh, you know, a copy of this book. Now. This one
[00:33:02] Eli: says it's got Bob Kane left A Message, written Ink on his first page to his buddy Robert Crestal. Thanks for those ideas, bill Sucker.
[00:33:14] Badr: Still too soon? It's too soon.
[00:33:15] Badr: Too soon. Sorry. That sucks here. Oh, god. Ouch. Um, recipes, bill Finger man, we, we appreciate your goddamn contributions, which I, I think kind of plays into Eli's points about like the guts and bones, right? Like to have, even though you won't be able to see, right? It's a slab book. You'll probably never be able to see that fucking message.
[00:33:32] Badr: Yeah. These ones, I
[00:33:33] Eli: think, uh, I changed my tune on, you know, I don't want to own Detective comics unsat. Sure.
[00:33:39] Badr: But the first day of this four day auction, in less than two hours, they, and just selling through 45 items of the entire lot. They were already at 7.5 million and two hours and only through 45.
[00:33:52] Badr: Items. Right. Which is crazy. So they sold, uh, detective Comics number 27 for 1.74 million apparent. There are only 75 copies known to exist in any condition, and only 14 graded higher than the one offered in this auction. So there's only 14 that are graded higher than 6.0. And the 6.0 graded comic is, it's not meant, it's kind of, you know, it's definitely got like shows of where, and I don't know the full specifics, but it's kind of a, it's not a beat up copy, but it's not a, you know, it's not a perfect copy.
[00:34:23] Ed: Yeah. You gotta understand, just at the time that's like comics were, it's like disposable entertainment. It was like a newspaper. You were using them for a toilet paper. You would read it and just like, roll it up and toss in the corner or throw it away.
[00:34:34] Eli: Exactly. You didn't really throw it in your back pocket with your slingshot.
[00:34:38] Eli: Now I just saw a trailer for this crazy movie too, about this father who was like, selling Superman. Selling Superman. Yeah, that looks insane, man. His wife was like, I was so pissed. He chose his comics over me. I, I dumped him and his kids are like, There's a million dollars in this short box, and then it is like a, a closet full of
[00:34:58] Badr: short boxes, which, uh, to tie all that together.
[00:35:00] Badr: So, um, this first day auction, right, so Detective comic number 27 sells, I think in the same, uh, um, auction or in the same lot. Uh, you also had Detective Comics number 33. So that's the first comic book to tell Batman's origin story that sold for 288,000. And then you had a CGC graded 8.0 copy of Batman number one that's sold for 1.1 million.
[00:35:23] Badr: And I believe it's, it was only the, I think it's either Batman number one or the Detective Comics, one of those. Was part of this collection, which Eli referenced. Um, it belonged to this, uh, deceased guy that owned over 300,000 books. They were all hidden in this, I guess this addict and his son recently found his collection in 2020, and he's going through the process of like grading them and, you know, getting a estimate.
[00:35:48] Badr: And they're making a documentary about all of that called Selling Superman. Um, and some of these books that sold in the first day of this auction were part of that collection. So they're, they have like this special ribbon on the cgc, uh, uh, label to let you know, like, Hey, this is part of this collection, man.
[00:36:03] Badr: Yeah, I, I can see why Eli's so hype. And to add to this yesterday, you know, I'm, I'm. Last minute and big shout, Eli. I respect the too, man. I appreciate you hopping on last minute. I, I texted Eli last minute when Cesar had to bail. I was like, Eli, I need you for tomorrow's show. Let's make this shit happen.
[00:36:19] Badr: What's the topic you wanna discuss? He was like, bro, you gotta check out. They're doing a, a, a, a live auction right now on Harris' Auctions. Check it out. And I won't lie, I was like, eh, I, that's not really my thing. I can't afford none of that. What's the point? Me even like, feeling bad about my financial situation, right.
[00:36:35] Badr: And I sell on whatnot. So I'm like, it can't be that much. I was fucking wrong, ed. That shit was awesome. It was day two of this massive four day comic and comic art auction, and they were So you're comparing this to what not. Oh man, I like a fool, dude. I was just being lazy. I was just looking for excuse not to have to like arms unfolded.
[00:36:56] Badr: I as good as what, not like a fooler, I admit I was fucking foolish thinking that this wasn't gonna be pristine and professional. It was awesome. They had a a, a professional auctioneer. Yeah. They don't always have that, these books. And dude, it was just like, it, it was like watching a heist movie. Before, like the spy or, or protagonist does the big steal, right?
[00:37:21] Badr: Like he's, he's in the auction house and he's got like, you know, his buddy auctioning and his buddy's like, I don't know if we can afford this, Rick, you gotta get us outta here. Quick 5 million. Dude. It was just like that, the auctioneer was so good, can get a 5,000. 5,000. And when I went in, dude and they had so much personality, like I was like, damn, I could be leveling up my what not.
[00:37:39] Badr: Shows in such a big way. They, they were inserting jokes, quips, they were knowledgeable about the books. Um, I think the, uh, the auction, I, I sat through like an hour and a half of that auction and some of the highlights of what I seen sell. And, and Eli, feel free to jump in. So there was a, a first appearance of Ghost Writer.
[00:37:57] Badr: Not the actual page, but like a page from the comic of his first appearance, uh, with Art by Mark plu. It was Marvel Spotlight number five pug story. Page 10. Ghost Writer's first appear. Original art from 1972, it sold for $40,800 you had a peach. Wow. And then you had more updated and a more recent comic art.
[00:38:18] Badr: For example, there was a peach, Mamoko Strange Academy, number one magic variant that sold for 19,200. Whoa. Right. That book is maybe, I don't know, it's, it's definitely less than five years old. Right. She hasn't been around that long. But to Eli's point, it is awesome to see original comic art being treated with this reverence.
[00:38:37] Badr: Her
[00:38:37] Ed: cover rates just went up. Oh, for sure.
[00:38:39] Badr: For that. Oh shit. Big time. But I think it's only gonna bring more attention to, you know, uh, treating comic books and especially like comic art as like, serious, not only serious investments, but I think there's gonna be a certain air of like, you know, prestige to it.
[00:38:53] Badr: You know, if it could bring in this much money into like pages that you. Yeah, I don't know. Some of these pages are like, what it's sold for how much? And it doesn't even have the main character on it. Yeah. It's like nons splash pages. Yeah, absolutely. You could tell like the people bidding are like, you know, passionate that like, you know, see it for, for the artistic merit that it is, it's like
[00:39:12] Ed: a, it's like a document, a historical document
[00:39:15] Badr: too.
[00:39:15] Badr: Well said. Well said. Uh, I was really surprised to see, um, the variety of things you saw in this, um, in, in the auction was awesome. So you had like pages from Marvel Comics. You had like a Jim Starlin Superman, uh, uh, cover. That one sold for like 11, 11 5.
[00:39:31] Eli: Um, that Jim Starlin, like Magus pinup thing was insane too.
[00:39:36] Badr: Yeah. Uh, they had two, they had several Charles Schultz, Charles Schultz peanut strips as well. The highest selling one that I, I stayed or got to see was a Charles. Peanut Sunday Comic Strip featuring World War I flying a Snoopy. Uh, and this was our, from 1981, so not even like the oldest peanut strip. Oh, wow.
[00:39:55] Badr: And that one sold for 50,000. Whew. Now, keep in mind all of these prices, I'm, I'm naming for the most part, include the 20% Buyer's Premium on top of the sold price. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:40:05] Eli: It's crazy. Honestly, they sold, like, there was a page from the In Cal too, uh, Mobius. And, and that's like 16,800. Like, honestly, I, I think that's low for that.
[00:40:16] Eli: Like, I've seen him at Cons for like 20,025, especially
[00:40:20] Ed: since he's no longer with us. You know, that usually adds a good amount of money to the price.
[00:40:27] Eli: Thousand. Yeah, dude, it's live right now. Sorry, I don't know if you just heard it pop in.
[00:40:32] Badr: Eli doesn't talk the rest of the show. You just hear him angry bidding.
[00:40:35] Badr: Oh my
[00:40:36] Eli: God. What'd I say about this shit, man?
[00:40:38] Ed: Not again.
[00:40:40] Eli: Oh man. Yeah, these are all slabs though. It's funny.
[00:40:43] Badr: Long story short. Comic book Art is one hell of an industry right now. Uh, uh, yeah, comic book, art selling and just auctioning is, is pretty impressive to see. If you've never, uh, watched a live auction o of like, you know, comic art and original stuff, I highly recommend checking out one of these hairs, auctions ones.
[00:41:02] Badr: Unfortunately, like I said, by the time this episode airs, this four day extravagant that they got going on is gonna end, but they do this, I mean, they are regularly in the news. Like they are always making headlines like, you know, Batman number one sells for record breaking, so it'll only be a matter of time before they come across another big lot.
[00:41:19] Ed: I think it's the same slip, but they usually keep those up and they say what it's sold
[00:41:23] Eli: for. Right? Right. Yeah. You can price stuff out. You can see what past auctions went for. Well, you can still check it out. What's. And another thing I'll say too, man, and, and I feel like a lot of people like at cons, these might be a table you pass by, which is the table that's just like scattered with original art.
[00:41:39] Eli: You might not check it out cuz you're looking for those short boxes, the long boxes, whatever you want. But I, I would urge everyone to take a second and look through some of those tables because, and, and just think about your favorite comic. Think about something you read as a kid or whatever, you know, and go look for something because like one of the crown jewels of my collection at this point is a page from Generation X number one.
[00:42:02] Eli: The first introduction of sync in that book, you know, it's like page nine. Chris Ella, Chris Patello.
[00:42:08] Ed: Oh, so you got it before they had to change the name, right?
[00:42:12] Eli: No, it's J no, gen X always
[00:42:13] Ed: stayed. Oh, I'm thinking Gen third Heat had to change. The Jen 13 had to change. Yeah,
[00:42:17] Eli: that's right. That's right. Okay. Yeah.
[00:42:18] Eli: So, you know, and that was like, that was my favorite comic as a kid. Chris Micella was like my favorite, you know? And like, so having that, again, like I said, the connection to that book of my youth that I love, I look at it every day and it's just like, you know, it, it, it, it fills the love and fuels, you know what, and as an artist and creator, I can get in there now and see like, you know, paste stubs.
[00:42:43] Eli: I can see what's covered up. I can see, yeah, the use of white out, you know, I, I, you know, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I have a Sam Keith, uh, Marvel Comics presents page too. And this thing is like insane where there's like layers of cutout stuff, there's like photocopied images, there's layers of ink and whiteout and ink and all this stuff.
[00:43:03] Eli: And it's like, it's just amazing to see, to learn from and to like, you know, help yourself in your own creative endeavors. It's be, it's absolutely beautiful.
[00:43:13] Ed: Well
[00:43:13] Badr: said. Well said. I love that. Yeah, prints are cool, but ain't nothing like getting the original. Piece of art that, you know, your favorite artist put his blood, sweat, tears, and even coffee stain on.
[00:43:24] Badr: Right. You know? Absolutely. Man. Imagine owning a piece of like OG Jack Kirby. Oh yeah. Fantastic. Cigarettes with the C and Burns. It's a piece of history, man. Come on. Awesome topic, Eli. Thank you. Ed, you have something to share about DC and a trailer for this massive company-wide, uh, reboot they got going on, right?
[00:43:45] Badr: I
[00:43:46] Ed: thought this was pretty funny. This I just saw pop up maybe a day or two ago. Um, well, DC is new, has a new trailer promoting the dawn of dc It's like DC trailer promoting comics. I'm like, no shit. So that it was basically like this 32nd video that they're going to, um, put on H b o Max. I guess I need something on there since they're taking everything else off.
[00:44:09] Ed: And, um, a e w wrestling. So it's gonna air. This little, these, this little like video basically like a motion? Yeah. Motion comics, video. I was like expecting something more. And it's like, uh, art by Jeff Spokes featuring the usual cast of characters, the, the main seven, you know, Batman, Superman, wonder Woman, the usual suspects on a DC thing.
[00:44:29] Ed: So, but the, the timing of this is, is funny to me because the Donna DC started, we're in April guys, Donna DC started in January. So their timing is, and then it's not gonna air on H B O Max and a W till May. So it premiered and MegaCon this, which is going on this weekend currently. And they're not gonna start really promoting got, you know, go figure DC promoting comic books until May of this year.
[00:44:58] Ed: So this is like another. Kind of like, we kind of can time it like the Olympics, like every four years we get another reboot, soft reboot, basically an excuse to put out a num, a bunch of number ones to sell. So it's basically like two and it, and the, the phrase, the language they use is so like, definitely done in a, in a boardroom, like a corporate boardroom.
[00:45:19] Ed: So as they refer to it, it's a, it's a line wide multi-event narrative compose of over 20 individual comic book titles. That's their selling phrase. I'm like, so comics
[00:45:33] Eli: and
[00:45:34] Ed: it's like forging the future one hero at a time. So it was like 20 new titles, I'm sure 15 of them being Batman related. It's a year basically year long.
[00:45:44] Ed: This is gonna be 2023. Everything they're trying to do a refresh with, you know, along with the movie side with James Gunn. And I know he wants to unify the two, the more symbiotic I guess. But it's just the timing of this is funny and the, the video is just so like, Generic to me, it's almost, it's, I've seen Kickstarter campaign videos better than this
[00:46:04] Badr: video.
[00:46:05] Badr: I give them an a for effort execution. Leads must, should be desired. A little pat. Oh, that's nice.
[00:46:10] Ed: That's sweet. You know, your heart as a, as a southerner, you'd say, oh, bless your
[00:46:13] Badr: heart. Yeah, exactly. Bless your heart. Yeah. Your heart's in the right place. Little too late. Well, I guess, you know, whatever. It's still got a couple, it's supposed to be a year long thing.
[00:46:22] Badr: So I, I guess, you know, something they should have done middle of the year, years ago. I agree. I agree. But I think the positives is the fact that, you know, they're at least giving this a shot. They're putting it this on, uh, a channels that I think would, uh, where the audience is, right? Hbo, O max. A e w tv. I think if you like wrestling, you're, you, you know, there's a lot of, uh, overlap there.
[00:46:42] Badr: There's another toxic fan group
[00:46:44] Ed: that bring into the,
[00:46:45] Badr: bring into the folder. But it got me thinking like, imagine. Know, they, they get their feet underneath them and they really start leaning in on pumping these trailers out, like perfecting them, getting them better. A little more like cinematic. Um, cuz to your point, it does feel very generic.
[00:47:01] Badr: It's like, okay, they just need to get this shit out quick. Let's just do a, a, you know, a motion comic style trailer. Maybe
[00:47:07] Ed: it'll be in time for the trades, the first set of trades. I don't know, I don't know if that's the timing. Yeah.
[00:47:12] Badr: But imagine them playing like this kind of trailer in like in a theater, in like in IMAX on the huge screen right before, you know, like a shaza where Aquaman plays and in, in like a comic retailer, maybe the Super
[00:47:24] Ed: Bowl.
[00:47:25] Ed: Hmm. That would've been a good spot. A lot of people.
[00:47:28] Badr: But imagine them playing it in like theaters and having like a iconic shop retailer there to like sign people up or take pre-orders. I think that, I mean, that's like super idealistic, but I think, you know, I, like I said, I give an a for effort. It don't look, it's not terrible and I, it
[00:47:43] Eli: just feels like, you know, the focus of this isn't us.
[00:47:46] Eli: Like, it's not like seasoned. That's true readers. That's true. That's true. And, and I can get, if like the biggest complaint that people have about comics is like, where do I begin? It's at number, you know, 350. Like I don't know where to start. So it's like when they're targeting a new reader, they're like, here's all these new number ones.
[00:48:03] Eli: You don't have to know anything more than you already know about Batman and, and, and Superman, you know? So it's like you can hop right in. I guess it's like a valiant effort. Not to use the, a pun there, but like, you know, it's like it's better than a valiant definitely.
[00:48:17] Ed: It's better than
[00:48:18] Eli: nothing. It's better than what Val, we, it's
[00:48:19] Badr: better than a, it's better than nothing.
[00:48:21] Badr: And you know, I, I think we've definitely all talked about like, you know, the things they could be trying and, and should be doing to promote comics. And so better than nothing, I, I give them an a for effort for sure.
[00:48:32] Ed: Dawn of dc better than nothing,
[00:48:41] Badr: you know, if they really want to impress me, if they wanna impress, because Eli's point, this is definitely for like, you know, your beginner readers, your, your comic curious newbies, people that go watch these movies and, and you know, you want to capitalize on them being interested in like, you know, of the moment.
[00:48:56] Badr: But if they wanna get a season, You know, reader and collector like, like myself and, and you guys, I wanna see them to have like fucking Spike Le, right. A comic book trailer. Right. Like, oh, it's gotta be the comics man. It's gotta be the
[00:49:08] Ed: comics. Like those old Levi commercials. Just fucking
[00:49:11] Badr: shoot it straight, straight with Rob Lee Field.
[00:49:12] Badr: Yeah. I want this shit to feel like cinematic. I want some fucking ac dc playing like in the back. Right. Just something like get my blood pumping. Like fuck Yeah. Like
[00:49:21] Ed: comic books or even Jim. Jim Lee and Spike Lee. The Lee Brothers dude,
[00:49:26] Badr: none of the campaign waiting to happen all
[00:49:28] Ed: Remember when he used to wear the Malcolm X hat?
[00:49:30] Ed: Yes. Because he thought it was X-Men. Is that the story? That's what we joke. I don't know. I'm, it seems kind of like that's a short mic. Disingenuous. Yeah, that's a short mics
[00:49:42] Badr: all Jim Lee is wearing that accent cuz he thought it was Xmen. All right. Uh, speaking of comics, making their way onto, uh, the small screen, um, I've got, I've got one for you guys here.
[00:49:56] Badr: I, I think that might have been a terrible segue, but fuck it. TM N t last Ronan is becoming a video game. All right. This one was announced, I think outta all the news. This one was probably announced. The, um, uh, the, what is it? This is probably the oldest piece of news out of all the stuff we, we've brought up so far.
[00:50:12] Badr: Uh, but last Ron, it man, it, it got announced as be, uh, that they're doing a video game version of that. Um, I, I found this Polygon article that did a good job of breaking down everything, but, uh, everything you really need to know was in that headline, uh, the graphic novel that came out in 2020, the last run in which I think it's safe to say, like, really put, not saying that the, the co team and t comics, um, were, were lack luster or, or dying.
[00:50:35] Badr: But cuz I know like it's got a passionate fan base. Yeah. But I feel like last Ron and put that shit, you know, that. That felt like a moment. Yeah. You know, like in 2020, I think that book ended up on a lot of people's like favorite. I think we've talked about it very highly. Unfortunately.
[00:50:49] Ed: It had a lot of weird delays through the whole thing.
[00:50:51] Ed: So a lot. Yeah. And it's original
[00:50:53] Eli: artist, uh, left and
[00:50:55] Ed: stuff. Yeah. And it's like, and but they are doing the, uh, kind of the prequel series now is your dlc.
[00:51:04] Badr: Exactly. It kind of brought new life to the, and, and a new focus, I think, and a new energy to, uh, the T M N T, uh, comics and whatnot. So, uh, due to the popularity of that.
[00:51:13] Badr: And I think what's also impressive too is that it's so recent, right? Yeah. Like it's only a. Maybe a three year old book or, or whatnot, maybe even less than three years, but it's already getting a, a video game based on the popularity, based on the feedback and and things like
[00:51:26] Ed: that. Yeah. They already have figures.
[00:51:27] Ed: I mean, target has last Ron in action. Yeah,
[00:51:30] Eli: they do. And, and we don't get figures like just based on comics, especially for turtles. I guess. I'm a huge turtles collector, so like to get these comics, comic based figs is like insane.
[00:51:40] Badr: And those figs look badass, by the way. I, I own one or two of them and I gotta say you got the, I love
[00:51:45] Ed: those, the universal Monster crossovers.
[00:51:47] Ed: Have you, did you get those? They're cool. Yeah, I've, I've gotten all
[00:51:50] Eli: those. They just put out a Casey for the last, uh, what's Casey?
[00:51:55] Ed: I can't remember now. I saw Leonardo's, the Invisible Man just came out, I think. And then Raphael
[00:52:00] Badr: is, uh, Frank Frankenstein. That one looks cool as far as his video game adaptation.
[00:52:04] Badr: Um, they interviewed someone by the name of Doug Rosen. He's a senior Vice President for games in Emerging Media at Paramount Global. So the company that owns the rights of, of team n t. And he, uh, had a lot to share about the video game adaptation. Um, he's saying that it's gonna be darker, more mature, so it's gonna be pretty faithful to the tone of, of Las Ronan.
[00:52:25] Badr: Uh, it's gonna be a single character game, and he likened it to, um, God war. That was kind of like the big, kind of catchy part of the headline is that this, supposedly this, uh, last Ronan game is gonna be a, you know, a third person action role playing game. Similar to like the God of war titles. They, they want.
[00:52:45] Badr: Definitely stay faithful to like that more grittier, darker, mature tone that last Ron to introduce, which I think played a big part in his popularity. The fact that we basically kind of got, you know, the Dark Knight returns for T M N T. Um, I know that was like a big appeal to me was like the tone in, in how serious it was.
[00:53:01] Ed: You get to see like an older, like April and then they have know that Casey. Yeah, dude. I mean come on case,
[00:53:07] Badr: post apo, post apocalyptic, fucking a robot. Futuristic stories are like just cash grabs from I, I'm a sucker. I love that for those,
[00:53:15] Eli: right. Well, and you get to see the scene too where each turtle dies, you know, and it's like, RAF is like old and like, you know, it's just crazy to see.
[00:53:24] Eli: It's not what, you know, I'm not like, can't wait to see these guys die, you know? But like, it's just crazy to see. You're like, what?
[00:53:32] Badr: I'm about to call pee on your As. Would
[00:53:35] Ed: it be cool if you could even like play in those flashbacks? Oh
[00:53:38] Badr: yeah. Or
[00:53:39] Eli: like the Kevin Eastman art comes up, like there was a wee game I think where they used like Jim Lawson art, like for sways and stuff.
[00:53:45] Eli: It was really.
[00:53:46] Badr: Of course this one is like years off from even, you know, seeing anything substantial. They, they even, they didn't even name the studio, uh, in the article at all. So no studio has been named, no release date, no trailers, no nothing other than like those very high concepts that were shared. But the good news, uh, I guess there's a little bit of good news cuz they do have one new team n t game coming out in the very near future to coincide if the new animated, uh, movie, the, uh, TM N t Mutant Mayhem, they're releasing like a, a Roblox, uh, I dunno if it's a DLC or, or just a Roblox style game of mutant mayhem.
[00:54:20] Badr: But that's supposed to be coming out, um, you know, in time for the movie. Yeah. Outside of like the, the Ike Pearl Utter and the Marvel Entertainment. I think this last run in one is gonna be, uh, one that I, I kind of keep track of very closely. Yeah, that'll. But that was your last headline we'll be talking about today.
[00:54:36] Badr: Listeners, obviously we didn't get to everything that happened this past month. There's still, you know, a lot of headlines that we skipped over. And honestly, by the time this episode airs, I'm sure that, you know, some of the things we have already talked about will either be outdated or even like updated.
[00:54:49] Badr: It might be further developments, uh, to some of the things that we have discussed already. So we'll keep an eye out on those things and we'll, and we'll report back if there's anything new or significant to talk about. Like I said, I definitely wanna pay close attention to what's going on with Disney and in Marvel Entertainment and hopefully, you know, we'll see a last Ronan trailer by, you know, end of year.
[00:55:08] Badr: It'd be awesome. You know what, that's my Christmas gift. I want, I just want a trailer for this last Ronan God award game. The pro thing, the cut scene. Yeah, exactly. A little teaser, you know. All right. I think it's now a perfect time to shift gears into our next topic and look to the future of comics overall.
[00:55:25] Badr: Let's take a look at what new titles will be hitting shops next month. Let's go ahead and grab a fist full of comics.
[00:55:33] Badr: You can either have a mouth full of tea or a fist full of comics.
[00:55:41] Badr: Fist Full of comics is a segment dedicated to helping all you comic curious newbies and loyal Wednesday warriors. Find the best new comics, find the best new starting points and creative teams that this wide world of comics has to offer and to help us accomplish that goal. We've called on our friend Ben Kingsbury, the owner of Jacksonville's premier comic shop, Gotham City.
[00:56:02] Badr: He's here to, he's here to take us to the limit when it comes to our comic shopping experience. He's got a list of his top three recommendations when it comes to comic books coming out soon that are worthy of your time and attention. Let's go ahead and get the music going and kick things off. The first one he's got on his list caters to anyone like me that has been eagerly looking forward to the new season of peacemaker, or really just any peacemaker content to fill that, that huge void that John Cena and his crew has left.
[00:56:32] Badr: All right, if you're craving for peacemaker, comics, or content in general, this one's for you. All right, here's Ben to kick us off. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Here's three comics you should add to your comic. Short Box asap. I'm Ben k representing Gotham City Limit in Jacksonville, Florida.
[00:56:50] Badr: Let's take it to the limit. First up, DC Comics presents Peacemaker, tries hard number one of a six-part series. I think James Gunn's vision of having a cohesive comic at Entertainment D C U is brilliant and that can confirm the new Peacemaker Comic is written in the hilarious style of the Hit TV show.
[00:57:08] Badr: This is an easy must add for any fan of said show. Plus. Here's one spoiler from the first issue. Destro Ben, man. He just left it at that mic drop moment right there. Peacemaker tries hard. Number one comes out May 2nd. All right, next up on the list isn't just a solid choice for anyone looking for something more on the scary slash horror side of comics, but in true Ben fashion, He's managed to make this next recommendation a classic GI Joe.
[00:57:38] Badr: The more you know kind of moment. All right, you're gonna learn something new. All right, I won't spoil it. Here's Ben. One of the truly underrated sides to collecting and reading comics is the additional vocabulary you run into if you do indeed read the stories. I often read comics as a kid with a dictionary next to me and I credit comics from my love of reading to this day.
[00:57:59] Badr: So why the vocab diatribe? Well only press presents Lamentation number one to lament. Had to look that one up. To express grief or to regret deeply a comic written from the mind's eye of master storyteller. Culin Bun comes a theater experience you're apparently going to regret going to, based on that title.
[00:58:21] Badr: Theater Horror Alley This way. There you go. Who? Who says that you don't learn, you know, some new vo vocab? You know, here on this show, not only do you learn how to not pronounce it, if you listen to me pronouncing certain words, then you got Ben teaching you, you know, new definitions. All right. Once again, that was lamentation number one.
[00:58:38] Badr: That comes out May 3rd through ONI Press. And last but not least, right, this last comic on on Ben's list. It's very appropriate considering our present company and his love of the web slinger. Here's Ben one more time to take us home with his last recommendation. Amazing. Spider-Man, whom I love comes out so often.
[00:59:00] Badr: It can feel like filler stories, seemingly always waiting for the next big event to happen. Well, amazing. Spider-Man number 25 has promised to be the most shocking Spider-Man story in 50 years. They warn Your heart isn't ready for this. And while I have no insider information, I fear a certain redhead is headed for doom.
[00:59:27] Badr: Well, another week is come and gone and I'm still Ben Kay representing Gotham City Limit in Jacksonville. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility and always take it to the limit. All right, so, uh, that was amazing. Spiderman number 25 that comes out May 10th. And once again, to recap our, uh, our options for today.
[00:59:48] Badr: We got peacemaker tries hard number one, limitation number one, and amazing Spiderman number 25, Eli Ed. Of those three options we got, which one are you most interested in? Which one is more than likely going to land on your poll list? Eli, how about you first?
[01:00:04] Eli: I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna go through here.
[01:00:05] Eli: Like, unfortunately for me, peacemaker hasn't crossed my path. I haven't seen the show other than the suicide squad movie, so I probably won't be picking that one. Uh, but you know, maybe in the future, once I see the show, amazing Spna, it's already in there. It's already in, it's already in the pool list and I'm gonna read it, you know, so that's nothing new.
[01:00:28] Eli: Lamentation. Now that seems cool. I knew that word because it's one of the title cards from Clerks, and I did a English project about that in high school where I looked up all the words, so I knew that one. It just looks different. It looks new, you know, it's like a fresh story. We need to support these types of stories in comics.
[01:00:47] Eli: We can't always be buying amazing spna, you know, shout out to my boy Manis. That's what he always calls it. He's my co-host on, can I whip it Anyway, but lamentation seems interesting to me. It seems like a different story. I love reading, like kind of gothic horror stuff. So I'm gonna choose lament.
[01:01:03] Badr: Man, and look at this.
[01:01:05] Badr: Well-read dude over here. I know the word lamentation. I did an English project. We get it. Eli, you're smart, right? It's still based on
[01:01:12] Eli: comics that
[01:01:13] Ed: like, that hurts, you know?
[01:01:15] Badr: I gotcha. I'm messing up with you all. Ed, what about you man? What's your pick?
[01:01:18] Ed: Oh, Lamentations, easily, uh, out of the two I like because you
[01:01:22] Badr: guys just like saying the word lamentation, nothing words.
[01:01:24] Badr: It's part of it.
[01:01:25] Ed: I like Colin Bunn, and I'm not, I do like superhero stuff, of course, but I'm just not as into it. I like the, the weirder horror kind of stranger stuff. So, and I like Colin Bunn. He's a great writer. So like, so that's, I'm definitely picking
[01:01:40] Badr: that one up. Okay, fair enough. I'm gonna be the odd man out and say, uh, peacemaker tries hard number.
[01:01:45] Badr: Uh, for the main reason. Yeah. Outside of I really did enjoy the show. And if this is kind of in the same vein and tone as the show, then yeah, I'm, I'm right there. But, but beyond that, it's because Kyle Starks is writing it and I've been reading, um, I hate this place. Yeah. Or I fuck this place if you, if you get the unedited uh, covers and it's great, man.
[01:02:05] Badr: So I'm, uh, Kyle Starks is just on my radar right now and, you know, I've got a lot of appreciation of what he's doing. And this cover by Chris Anka is pretty badass. Yes. So they've, they've got me by the cover. They've got me by a writer that I'm really interested in and a character that, you know, is kind of on my mind.
[01:02:22] Badr: So I'm a go peacemaker, tries hard number one, but I think solid, solid picks all around. I don't think we could have gone wrong picking any of those three listeners. There's your list. Big shoutouts to Ben. Once again, big shoutouts to the whole Gotham City limit team. If any of those pique your interest, go ahead and hit up your local comic shops.
[01:02:39] Badr: Get your pre-orders in now. And remember, even if you don't live in Jack's, you can still take it to the limit. You can shop for comics, collectibles, and exclusive variant covers by going to gotham city limit.com. And that pretty much wraps us up for this segment. Eli, I gotta give you a big shout outs as well, man.
[01:02:57] Badr: And thank you so much for your assistance today. Like I said, you hopped on, you're willing to hop on last minute while you were fucking, uh, clashing for your dad on the heritage auction and to come on the show, you taught me a little, you know, taught me something new. You got me onto something new, uh, and you've been great overall, man.
[01:03:12] Badr: So, um, yeah, ma'am, I'm gonna have links to your socials. I'm gonna have links to, can I flip it? Podcast and Cosmic Lion. Any show notes for anyone interested in giving you a follow, but would you like to plug anything you wanna do? Any shameless plugs? Absolutely. I'll
[01:03:24] Eli: always shamelessly plug. Um, well first I do have another, I have a third podcast that I've been doing that's, um, uh, called The Devil in Detail, which is a grendell read through comic.
[01:03:36] Eli: Um, me and my dude, Ben Groff, another amazing comic book creator. And, um, we are about 105 issues in, we've done the full cycle and we're into Grendel Tales now. It's getting insane. Um, so we're doing the Dave Cooper, uh, Grandle Tales with Susan Vagan. Absolutely beautiful book. I think we were talking about it, about her.
[01:03:55] Eli: Um, cosmic Line Productions, again is coming out with new books. Oh man, I'm actually a little behind cuz I'm supposed to, uh, have a rollout today of a new book. So I'll give you guys Ayy arcane number three, the final part of, uh, the trilogy of arcane of, of the first, um, uh, the first arc is, uh, gonna drop on Cosmic Line Productions today.
[01:04:21] Eli: Basically, if I can get my act together. We also have the Treasury Edition of Ghost Agents Oversized, printed on newsprint.
[01:04:30] Badr: Got that, that looks good. Glorious smell. Is that on, uh, the Cosmic Lion website?
[01:04:34] Eli: It's on the Cosmic Lion website. It's 30 bucks. Comes with a free sticker, uh, as everything pretty much on Cosmic Lion does.
[01:04:41] Eli: We got space nights. Uh, which is killing it. Kevin, Anthony Kalan, our, uh, our Wounder Kin who's like 26 year old, 26 years old, and he's just absolutely destroying it. Uh, we got Tales from the Wolf, um, by Tony Wolf, who's a New York Times published artist, uh, who's got the like slice of life books. Um, wizard too.
[01:05:01] Eli: I still have some copies of that. Weird myths from Oza, uh, out in Turkey. There's just like a whole galaxy of cosmic line books at your fingertips. Cosmic line
[01:05:12] Badr: productions.com. All right, listeners, you heard the man, you're like, all right. He doesn't just talk about comics, but he be about it all right? He really be about it.
[01:05:20] Badr: And um, yeah, he was fantastic. Co-host. I'll have links to all of that. Any show notes going to support our, our guy. All right. It support independent comic creators, man. They do great work. Absolutely. And if you're watching on the YouTube, this is where we say goodbye. This is also where I recommend you hop over to Spotify, apple Podcast.
[01:05:36] Badr: Or wherever you get your podcast to hear the rest of the show. If you're already there, don't go nowhere. All right. Next up, we're gonna announce a podcast exclusive comment giveaway for our most loyal listeners. First, I'm gonna play some music from our longest running music contributor. All right. I'm talking about Mecca The Marvelous.
[01:05:53] Badr: He's been providing dope beats and music for this show for years now, and he still finds time to drop full projects of his own, like the one that recently came out called Jane Doe. I'm gonna play you a small teaser of one of my favorite songs off the project. It's called. Yeah, it's called Relax, which you should kick back and relax while you enjoy and will be right back.
[01:06:13] Badr: All right. You see what I did that right? Yeah. Was that good? That was pretty good. Was that a DC Dawn, don, DC effort? We'll be right back folks.
[01:06:35] Badr: Look,
[01:06:36] Eli: I'm another shot. And
[01:06:42] Badr: to myself that I, cause its hurting me. Love
[01:06:48] Eli: worthy me. At the times of my breath I break down and how this happened to me, I'm, and
[01:06:54] Badr: I'm go,
[01:06:56] Eli: but this leg can't smoke. Got
[01:06:58] Badr: the strong. Yo. The music you just heard was a small snippet of a song by Mecca, the Marvelous called Relapse Off his new project Dan Jane Doe.
[01:07:07] Badr: Available everywhere you stream music. So Spotify, apple Music, and all those good places. Show your support. Go stream the album, run those numbers up. It's the very least we could all do, considering all the music he's blessed us with throughout the years. I've literally had it on repeat for the last 48 hours is pretty damn good.
[01:07:24] Badr: Go and check that out. All right, so we don't have any emails to read this week. Hopefully I'm not missing one from anyone. My apologies if so, but I think we're clear as far as emails go. But last week's episode with Chris from Comic Tropes reminded me that I have yet to. Or formally congratulate our homies over at the Oblivion Bar Podcast for the release of their variant cover of Murder Road Number one.
[01:07:49] Badr: They've got an exclusive variant cover that was done by Christian Ward. Uh, it was a partnership they did with whatnot to get their own exclusive variant. Amazing Art by Christian Ward. Um, and it's a big deal I think, you know, for, for a comic podcast to be able to collaborate with a platform like whatnot and get their own branded variant cover, I mean, their logo, it's awesome, is on the back of the comic for God's sake.
[01:08:10] Badr: I mean, imagine a, a short box one right there, you know, it got my wheels turning is what I'll say. But I don't wanna steal spotlight from Chris and Arian over at Blue. Absolutely happy
[01:08:19] Ed: Jeff Lair did
[01:08:20] Badr: not draw it, that that would be my preferred artist. That's who I would have should do draw Artist spite Ashley.
[01:08:27] Badr: Yeah, that'd be great. You know, actually that would've been my bargaining chip chip to get Ashley back on the show and, uh, make her to leave maternity leave early. It's like, come back on the show or I get Jeff Lemer to do our van tour. I kid, I kid, but I, I bring that up to say, you know, obviously I was happy to support, you know, the initiative and I.
[01:08:47] Badr: I thought I picked up just one or two, but I actually ended up buying four copies of this exclusive, uh, cover. So I'm here to spread the wealth with some of you loyal listeners that have made it this far in the episode, right? If, if you're still listening and you're like, yo, I'm here for, I'm here until the, I'm, again, every single second of this free episode, then you know, this is for you.
[01:09:08] Badr: All right? And here's all you need to do to possibly get yourself one of these, uh, a copy of one of these comics here. I want you to tell us the most you've ever spent on a single comic or comic related art. You know, uh, Eli's topic and segment has got me thinking about like, my own expenditures with like, comic books and, you know, what I've spent throughout the years at conventions and, and with artists and things like that.
[01:09:33] Badr: So, I wanna hear from you guys, like, what's the most expensive, you know, what's the most amount of money you've dropped on, on a single comic book or maybe a collection or a, a comic related art? Do you got like a cool commission piece that you got done from your favorite comic artist or a. Or a limited print or a key issue first appearance or whatever, you know, write us a short response to that prompt and email it to us at these short bikes jacks.com.
[01:09:56] Badr: Or you could DM us on Instagram. Just let me know as part of this, uh, giveaway and we'll read it in our next episode. So what works hand in hand, right? You get a chance to win one of these, uh, uh, copies of this comic and we get content, right? You get to be a part of the show in a way. We'll pick one or two, uh, people to win some comics.
[01:10:12] Badr: Like I said, I got not only these, um, Phantom Road Oblivion Bar podcast exclusives, but actually got a couple of Gotham City limit exclusive comics to give away as well. You'll get your choice. So write us a prompt once again telling us about the most money you've ever spent on a single comic or comic related art piece.
[01:10:30] Badr: And do you recall like the most expensive uh, uh, comic thing you've ever bought was, if I
[01:10:34] Ed: remember I got this limited edition, um, Senco poster, like a print. Oh, nice. Who knows, like a hundred bucks or something like that. Okay. But yeah, I don't, I'd have to look cuz I've. It's in that range. I haven't gone too.
[01:10:48] Ed: I I'm, I'm broke, bro. That's about as much as I, but it's around that probably a hundred,
[01:10:55] Badr: $120 mark. Yeah, I was trying to think of it myself, and it might have been like maybe a commission I got done, you know, um, like just a, a, a head sketch and it was probably around like that a hundred dollars range. Um, I'm, I think by the time, uh, we record again, I'll, I'll probably have an exact number, but I'm trying to think of like, the most expensive comic I bought, but I'm also very cheap and anything that gets into like the hundredth range, I'm like, I don't know if I need it that much.
[01:11:20] Badr: So I'm curious to hear what our listeners got to say. I, I know one or two are very serious into the comic collecting and, and art buying, uh, market. So we'll see what responses we get. And while we wait for that, let's go ahead and slide into our final. And let's talk about the best entertainment options, comics and noncoms that we've been enjoying since the last time we talked.
[01:11:42] Badr: It's Time for Champion Season.
[01:11:48] Eli: It's time. It's time Champion Champion
[01:11:51] Badr: Season. Champion season is the part of the show where we highlight everything else that has consumed our free time, which includes the movies, TV series, books, video games, and other entertainment options. We'd personally recommend to friends just like you. Ed, how about you gotta do the honors man.
[01:12:10] Badr: Kick us off. What are you gonna champion today? Got one.
[01:12:12] Ed: I got a big stack of stuff I need to read, but what I did pick up and finally look through is actually one of Ben's picks is The Forged. Oh hell yeah. From Image Comics. It is a Can I flip through that? Yeah, go for it. It is awesome cuz a it, it pops out of the shelf cuz it's eight and a half by 11.
[01:12:29] Ed: It's like a magazine format. Um, it's Greg Rucka. Eric Troutman are the writers. Mike Henderson is doing the, the pendant and inks and Nolan Woodward's doing the colors. Adriana Meyer doing the letters, but it's a beautiful comic. This is a very impressive looking book. Yeah. It's a space opera pui, space opera star, kind of in that Star Wars.
[01:12:50] Ed: And
[01:12:50] Badr: it feels good in the hand too. It feels like I'm holding like, yeah, like a fucking Empire Magazine or something.
[01:12:56] Ed: It's good. It's almost, it's almost like a, like something heavy metal with printout or something. But, uh, it's really cool. Like I said, it's a, you kind of, this first issue does a little world building.
[01:13:06] Ed: So you have this empress that kind of rules the galaxy, but you don't see her yet. And, uh, almost like the emperor in Star Wars. But they have these bio-engineered soldiers, kind of these Amazonian, kind of the muscle called the Forged who's on the cover. And then you have the Cassandras, which are the, uh, sexy space witches as they, I think they call them that on the.
[01:13:28] Ed: Oh yeah, a cabal of sensuous space witches. So they'd even do the old kind of like, uh, pulp taglines at the, at the beginning. Um, but it's kind of like a, they're trying to find a down ship, but kind of gives you the, uh, kinda just sets up the story, sets up the characters. It is a little spicy if that upsets you.
[01:13:50] Ed: Uh, nothing crazy, but, you know, if you in kind of think of a heavy metal ma, even a slightly below heavy metal magazine. So there is some, uh, spiciness to it, but like I said, beautiful book, uh, really like the character design, like the art, the coloring is beautiful. The whole package is just awesome. I hope they keep it in this magazine format.
[01:14:12] Ed: But yeah, it's definitely, it's a, it's a big, a big hit for, I know still early in the year, but this is definitely a standout damn.
[01:14:19] Badr: Well said. Well said. Look at that. Ben took you to the limit. Yeah. All right. One and done. I like it. All right. I've got, uh, I've got three technique. 2, 2, 3. All right. First one is a manga, uh, it's called Master Keaton.
[01:14:32] Badr: It's created by, uh, Nico, Nico, Iris Salwa. Hopefully I'm saying that right. But it's the same guy that, uh, uh, created Pluto, uh, which is one of my favorite mangas of all time. The best way I could describe, describe Master Keaton. It's kind of slice of life. There's not a lot, a lot of like, um, you know, there's not a, it's not sci-fi, it's not, you know, in that vein of anything.
[01:14:54] Badr: It's like, you know, kind of grounded. It's basically Indiana Jones meets MacGyver in a more pacifist, uh, uh, viewpoint. The story is centered on the main character, Taichi Harra Keaton. Uh, he is the son of a Japanese zoologist and an English noble woman, and he's an insurance investigator, educated archeology, and he is a former member of the British Secret Service, which I think is the S Sas.
[01:15:18] Badr: So he's got that going for him. So like by day, he's like a teacher teaching archeology. And then by night he's, uh, an, uh, insurance investigator investigating like murders, art theft, um, just all these different, uh, um, uh, cases that takes him around the world. And he's like, he's brilliant. He's not like a gungho superhero neither.
[01:15:39] Badr: Like he's very calm, very relaxed. He doesn't say much. He's very analytical and he rarely ever uses his fist actually in the entire volume one. He doesn't throw one punch. He was a survivalist trainer in the, uh, British Special Army, but he's also like a book smart nerd and stuff. So he is always figuring out his way outta things by using his brain, by like using, you know, building shit around him, like grabbing tape and a piece of wood.
[01:16:04] Badr: Huh. And it is the most fun you'll ever have learning about archeology, survival skills like the Bible and, and, and all this. Like, they cover such a wide range of topics because you could literally just insert him into any kind of like, story, oh, a uh, art heist, you know, um, a story, a fucking murder story, right?
[01:16:21] Badr: Like he, the adventures are really fun. Um, a lot of variety in it, very well drawn. Um, that, that is one thing about Arisa I will say, is the fact that a lot of his outside of like Pluto, his range is so good. He can draw like the robots and the monsters, and then you've got this story where everyone is just a regular person.
[01:16:41] Badr: Like it's just grounded in real life type shit, right? Uh, I think he really shines when he's like, drawing detailed archeology and like statues and, and all this. And the fact that you're like learning real life stuff is, is a lot of fun. So Master Keaton is the name of it. There's 12 volumes in total. The sad thing though, is.
[01:16:59] Badr: None of his comics are available digital. So you can't buy this like on Comicology or down, you know, get a digital version, you know, legally at that. Like, it's all meant to be bought in print in the ton bonds. So like, and, and that goes for all of his stuff. Uh, uh, Pluto, uh, master Keaton, uh, monster. Um, all of his stuff are print only, so it's a little challenging in that regard, but it's also kind of fun to go hunt some of these books down.
[01:17:24] Badr: So he is like a
[01:17:25] Ed: no punch ma'am,
[01:17:27] Badr: huh? Yeah. Eh, better than nothing. No. Better than nothing. That's gonna be a new one. I gotta isolate that. That's a new catch phrase. Yeah, that's a new catchphrase. All right. And then my next champion is kinda like a two in one. And that's just, uh, recent movies. I, I renewed my AMC Stubbs program membership, so I've just been watching like all these, you know, free movies.
[01:17:46] Badr: It's like, you know, cause I'm paying like 25 bucks a month and I get like three mo. I know it's, I don't know what the fuck has gotten into me, but I think because all of the, it's, it's like the summer blockbuster time, right? So there's always a movie in theater. And I get like three tickets a week, which is overkill.
[01:18:02] Badr: I'm not watching three fucking movies a week, but I have been watching like all like the big stuff. So yeah, that's deal three. No, not at all. It definitely pays for itself cuz you also get a fuck ton of points. Like $1 spent at like, the concession is like five points. So you start building back your points in, in all this, you got a lot of rewards.
[01:18:20] Badr: So yeah, I will say st uh, there, there's a little bit of sticker shock for this program, but you do get your money's worth. But I say all that to say Creed three and John Wick four have been my favorite movies so far and they are excellent. Like additions to the larger franchise, you would think by like the third installment of Creed or John Wick Ford.
[01:18:40] Badr: You're like, what? What, what's, what else can you do with these franchises? Yeah, dude, I gotta say both of them. Super fun. Um, creed three had a lot of heart. I love the story, I love the dynamic between Jonathan Majors and, um, Michael B. Jordan had some great chemistry on screen and then John Wick four. It's like h where do they come up with these ideas?
[01:19:01] Badr: They just managed to push the envelope even further. Have you watched any of these yet? I've watched
[01:19:05] Ed: all of 'em. I haven't watched the fourth one yet.
[01:19:07] Badr: Okay. All right. Dude, you're, man, I'm telling you, that shit was like, I've heard nothing. Watching a live action video game. It was awesome. And who's it, who's in it?
[01:19:16] Badr: The end? Donny y. Yeah. Oh my God. Fucking steals the show. Right? And that's no, that's no discredit to, uh uh, Keanu Reeves. He still does the damn thing as, as the title character. But Donna Yen comes through and you're like, wow, wow. Give this guy a spinoff. Mm-hmm. Give this guy a spinoff. Well,
[01:19:34] Ed: they're doing a.
[01:19:36] Ed: Aren't they doing a small ballerina one? Just like talking about the, uh, like in the seventies about the hotel?
[01:19:41] Badr: Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. There's, there's two confirms. Spinoff, one about the, um, the Continental Oh, wow. Continental. And then, uh, one about a, um, the, you remember in, at the third one when John has to go back to like the ballet school?
[01:19:52] Badr: Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're doing one about a ballerina, like a badass ballerina, uh, outta that school. So, but yeah, man, as far as movies go, Cree three and John Wick four have been stellar. I'm actually, like, when I left John Wick four, I was already planning the next one. I was actually like, fuck it. I might use one of these, fuck, another free ticket, you know, to come back in and watch it.
[01:20:10] Badr: So yeah, Cree three, John Wick four, get my stamp of approval. Master Keaton the manga. Also worth checking out if you just want to switch up, you know, add something different to your, to your reading cue. If you're reading a bunch of sci-fi extraterrestrial and, you know, uh, superhero stuff. I think it's such a really fun, interesting, well grounded thing.
[01:20:27] Badr: And
[01:20:27] Ed: that's the good thing about manga in general is just, I mean, we always say there's something for everybody and comics that, but there is. Everything is, is, is a manga. It
[01:20:36] Badr: seems like manga to me. I, if you enjoy in, uh, image where image does such a good job of, you know, offering you so many, Jo, it's like, you know, image to me is a company of genres.
[01:20:46] Badr: What genre do you like? And we probably have a comic for it. That's how I feel about manga, right? Like, you can't really hone, you can't really, uh, uh, pigeonhole, manga into one genre or thing. It's way more than, you know, Naruto. It's much more than Dragonology. It's much more than all of these huge franchises that we've come to know.
[01:21:04] Badr: Like Manga really does encompass so many different genres, and I think Chris, uh, uh, Chris from Comic Trope said it best in the last episode. It's really like when it comes to manga, if you have a certain genre or topic that you like, hobby, in hobby, entertainment, hobby or hobby, yeah. In some cases then there's probably a manga for it and master.
[01:21:24] Badr: Um, yo, I don't know shit about archeology. Uh, don't dump me in the forest and expect me to survive longer than the day, but it's been so much fun, man. The, the characters are so likable. So those are my champions, and I think of my picks on the table. It's time to wrap this thing up, man. That is it for our episode.
[01:21:42] Badr: Short Box Nation. It is your turn to chime in if you got a worthwhile champion pick. If you got a, uh, a headline or article that maybe we missed that you want to go to bring up, or if you want to enter in that contest that we got going on and tell us about your most expensive comic, uh, comic book, you bought our art piece right into the show, we would love to hear from you guys right into our email at these short box jackson gmail.com or hit us up on Instagram or Twitter and, uh, yeah, be a part of a next week's show.
[01:22:09] Badr: Ed, do we have any like major, uh, uh, takeaways or like parting words to, to give the listen. I have one and I wonder if you'd agree, but I wanna hear, do you got anything that comes to mind? Well go for it. It's a stupid one. I mean, it's not a good life lesson. Oh. But I think I will be adding, uh, Kirby crackles to my list of, uh, uh, verbiage when it comes to your testicles.
[01:22:30] Badr: It's a testicle. Yeah. That What's that? Very, yeah. I call it his K What'd he said? Down to my, uh, Jack
[01:22:35] Ed: Kirby's. Yeah. I was like, I was almost offput. I'm like, dude,
[01:22:40] Badr: talk about the king like that. Oh my Kirby crackles.
[01:22:47] Ed: We're writing the crackles.
[01:22:48] Badr: Oh my God. I'm so immature. That's so that's ready. Very funny. Yeah.
[01:22:52] Badr: Have you made it this far? Thank you for tuning in for so long. Oh, my Kirby Crackle.
[01:22:57] Ed: You know, I was like, say Eli. Yeah. He's a, he.
[01:22:59] Badr: He's legit. Oh, no, for sure, man. Like, you wanna to talk about someone that talks to talk and walks to walk. Yeah. Um, he is definitely somebody to, to, it's like three
[01:23:08] Ed: podcasts. A
[01:23:08] Badr: publisher is like Jesus.
[01:23:10] Badr: Yeah. Way to make me feel like a lazy piece of shit, you know? Thanks. Thank you. Nah, good time. All right. There you have a short box Nation. Thank you for hanging out. If you made it this far, I, I think it's safe to say you enjoyed this episode. So I'm gonna ask you for one small favor and that's to help us spread the word.
[01:23:28] Badr: You can do that a few ways. For starters, you can share this episode with a friend that you know loves comics as much as we do. That's always great. Share the well, and if you're feeling, uh, extra generous, maybe take 10 seconds to leave us a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It won't cost you a thing. It won't even cost you a penny.
[01:23:46] Badr: It'll cost you maybe 10 seconds to say some nice words, but that'll mean a lot to us as well. Next week, what do I got planned for next week? Actually, I, I might drop some more, uh, um, interviews from Collective Khan. I've got a batch of interviews with Billy West, John DiMaggio and Jim Cummings. So a, a, a giant voice actors, uh, episode that I think I'm gonna drop next week for you guys.
[01:24:10] Badr: So you've got that to look forward to. And then I think after that, ed, we'll probably do that Z episode cuz c should, um, c might have some time in his very busy schedule come back. So we'll probably do the, uh, Zora episode after that. So we got a lot for you to, uh, look forward to and to enjoy. We got you covered, but if you want more content, if you want bonus content, if those episodes aren't enough.
[01:24:31] Badr: If you don't feel like waiting a week for a new episode from us, me and Drew are recording a previous episode. We're gonna be flipping through this month's previous catalog to find all the cool comics, toys, and merch Hinton shops soon. That'll be a bonus episode that'll live exclusively on our Patreon.
[01:24:48] Badr: So if you want access to that, if you wanna vote on episode topics, if you want rewards for being a listener and a follower of the short box, go to patreon.com/the short box. Sign up and become a patron saint of the show. In the meantime, take care of yourselves. Go read your comic books, continue to make mine in your short box, and we'll talk to you next week.
[01:25:09] Badr: Peace.
