[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art and business of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.

[00:27] John Barber: Hello, and welcome to The Corner Box. I'm back. I'm John Barber. I wasn't here last week, but I'm here now. I know you were here. So, you were all wondering, “where was John?” And I was so disappointed that everybody's question wasn't, “but where's John?” And they talked about a bunch of other stuff, but anyway, one of those people who talked about other stuff’s with me now.

[00:45] David Hedgecock: Hey, John. It's David Hedgecock.

[00:48] John: I forgot your name. It's been so long. I can't remember back that far.

[00:51] David: As it turns out, John, Season 2 is all about the guests. It's all about bringing in other people to fill the space, so we can be lazy.

[00:58] John: Also, the same other people. I like that because it means you don't have to meet new people.

[01:02] David: Yeah, and that's always scary and just fraught with terror.

[01:06] John: Never works out.

[01:07] David: Never ever. So, it's working out all-round for Season 2. Also, guess what? I looked at our numbers, and we have a 4th listener. It's already working, John. As we're speaking, Episode 1 is out, and we’ve got 4 listeners now. It worked, John. Our new Number 1 ploy worked, just it always works in comic books. Further cements my belief in new Number 1s.

[01:31] John: Can we make everyone a Number 1?

[01:34] David: Oh. Every episode is Number 1?

[01:37] John: Yeah.

[01:38] David: No one's ever thought of that before, John. That's a brilliant idea. Well, that would mean, within a few weeks, we'd have an infinite number of listeners, which sounds good to me.

[01:50] John: That's right.

[01:51] David: We could take over the world if we have that many people listening.

[01:53] John: Yeah, we’d probably need to find other worlds.

[01:56] David: That's a good segue into what we're going to talk about today, John. Yeah, even though you didn't know it.

[02:00] John: All of that was good segues into what we're going to talk about.

[02:02] David: we're very relevant. It's like we've been doing this for a whole year, John. We're getting good.

[02:06] John: But this is our first episode.

[02:08] David: Oh, right. No, no, this is Episode 5 or 6 or 7.

[02:10] John: What? Wait, no, no.

[02:13] David: Yeah. I mean, sorry, legacy number. John, I haven't seen you a couple of weeks. How's it going?

[02:18] John: It's going good. I'm minutes away from getting a new dog. So, I think probably next time, there will be another dog.

[02:23] David: Snoring in the background?

[02:24] John: Snoring in the background, yes.

[02:26] David: Those last 30 episodes without the dog snoring in the background, I feel like it's not our best stuff. The dog was like every episode of a Star Trek show. It has that hum of the engine of the ship, and your old dog was that hum. It's needed.

[02:45] John: The new dog, I think, is going to look like a statue Batman would be standing on in a Scotty Young cover. Chubby little gargoyle.

[02:53] David: Nice. You're going for ugly/cute. Is it a pug?

[02:57] John: French bulldog.

[02:58] David: Oh, a French bulldog. Yeah, that thing’s definitely going to be snoring in the background. Those things have breathing problems like crazy. Not to set you up, but make sure you get dog insurance.

[03:07] John: We’ll get her some of those Breathe Right Strips.

[03:10] David: The nose strips? Alright. So, John, I'm doing good, too. I've been doing a deep dive on some Avengers comic reading, lately.

[03:21] John: Oh, cool.

[03:22] David: I think I mentioned it. I probably did mention it on a podcast. I've been reading the Squadron Supreme Omnibus.

[03:27] John: Oh, right. Yeah, you did. 

[03:28] David: I found it on eBay a month or two ago at a really good price. I think it was half off. Well worth the money, and I'm just having a great time reading it. Probably not coincidentally, but at the same time, I've been working on my Very Fine Plus to Very Fine, Very Fine Minus-ish collection of the Full Volume #1 of Avengers. So, Issue #1 to #402, around there. So, I'm down actually into, I think I just got under #145. So, I've got every single issue from #145 to #402 now, and then I've got a sporadic splattering of others. Now, it's starting to get expensive, though, John. I thought maybe Avengers was the least expensive of the big titles from back in the 70s, but it's also expensive.

[04:26] John: They made a film about those characters, and that might have helped raise the profile.

[04:31] David: A film of Squadron Supreme?

[04:33] John: You know what? Maybe. I don't know. Is that what's happening in Agnes All Along? Maybe. It might very well be.

[04:41] David: So, the Avengers stuff is getting a little more expensive. So, I'm reading these books as I'm getting them, as well. That's part of the experience. It's not just collecting them, but reading them, and enjoying them. So, I've been reading all these old books, and I thought it’d be a good time to talk a little bit about Avengers, mostly Squadron Supreme, and give people a little history on that, and then just talk about what all of these things mean, or how they're getting parsed, I guess, in 2024. So, we'll see. As you say, John, it's a little bloopy.

[05:13] John: So, I don't know if you know these following 2 facts about me. My first-ever Marvel credit was as Assistant Editor on Supreme Power, the Squadron Supreme reboot.

[05:25] David: Oh, really?

[05:27] John: And secondly, Avengers is the one Marvel comic that I, at a certain point, read all of. So, I read from Issue #1 up through around the end of the Hickman run. I'm sporadic after that. It actually got a little vague what the main Avengers comic was, at that point, with some of the various spinoffs and stuff, where it was very clear before. I haven't read all of West Coast Avengers, but I’ve read parts of it. I’ve read every mainline issue of Avengers, from one through whatever the end of Secret Wars was.

[05:58] David: Bendis’s New Avengers, or is that after Bendis?

[06:00] John: Yeah, I also read every single Avengers or Avengers-related comic in the Bendis era.

[06:06] David: You've read, at least, 600 issues worth of Avengers, is what I think you're saying, minimum.

[06:13] John: And I remember every one.

[06:16] David: You know what's crazy is, when I was a kid, if I read a book, any single issue of anything, I remembered it. I had a photographic memory of it, and I don't think it was because I was reading it over and over, and over, again, because I would read a Richie Rich or Hot Stuff comic book and toss it, but if I picked that book up a year later, I could tell you everything that happened in that story, page by page, and now, dear God, I can't remember what I read yesterday. What is that about? I hate that.

[06:47] John: Yeah, I think partially, it's literal brain physics, or the brain physical growing and stuff, that it's just able to take that stuff on more, and it places more importance on that stuff. Every once in a while, I'll remember a lyric from a song or something that I have not heard since 1990, but I can't remember albums that I listened to 50 times last year. 100% true with comics. Yes.

[07:14] David: So, that said, let's do a deep dive into what I do remember about Squadron Supreme. I did take some notes. So, hopefully this will be informative, as well as entertaining, John. Did you know, John, that the Squadron Supreme started out as a bad guy team, not a good guy team? Squadron Sinister. Yeah. So, Squadron Sinister makes a first appearance in Avengers #69, October 1969.

[07:40] John: Nice.

[07:41] David: Yeah. Avengers #69, October 1969, created by Roy Thomas, and Sal Buscema on the art, and basically, what Squadron Sinister and Squadron Supreme was, and I think Roy Thomas has even admitted this, it was just a way for him to put all the DC mainline superheroes of the Justice League into the Marvel Universe and have them come up against the Marvel Avengers without having to go through all the trouble of actually making that happen.

[08:15] John: Maybe you’re going to get to this. Wasn't there a crossover like that? Didn't DC do the same thing, at the same time, with Marvel characters?

[08:23] David: Oh, I was not aware of that.

[08:25] John: Roy Thomas is probably a lot to unpack now, in 2024, with all the Wolverine credit stuff and everything, but I've always liked Roy Thomas, as a writer and everything. The one time I met him, he was extremely nice, but that's also when the nerds took over, thoroughly took over, and Roy Thomas was a comic nerd, and I think it was, Paul Levitz must’ve been coming up at the same time, at DC. I'm pretty sure there was an unofficial crossover that same month, that there are analogues of the Marvel characters in the DC books. I don't think they really stuck around the way Squadron Supreme did.

[08:58] David: Yeah. That's fascinating. I've never heard that. I'm going to have to go down that rabbit hole next. Maybe our new listener, John, our 4th listener, will help us out with that and maybe shoot us an E-mail. I don't know how they would contact us via E-mail, but maybe they will. So, the Squadron Sinister first shows up in Avengers #69, and really all they are, is analogs of a bunch of DC characters. So, the main guy is Hyperion, and Hyperion is an analog Superman, with basically the same powers. Then you have Nighthawk, who is a Batman analog, and I love this one. Power Princess is Wonder Woman. Power Princess might not have been in this one. I'm sorry. In the original one, it's Spectrum, and Spectrum is an analog for a Green Lantern, and the other guy is the Whizzer. Talk about literally taking the piss.

[09:57] John: The Retaliators were the DC Avengers analogue from that unofficial pseudo-crossover. They never met, the two teams, but Whizzer a Golden Age character?

[10:09] David: From Marvel?

[10:10] John: Yeah, the Whizzer first appeared in USA Comics in 1941. Having dealt with some of this stuff, literally on Squadron Supreme comics, there are so many multiple versions of all of these characters in the Marvel Universe.

[10:22] David: Oh yeah.

[10:23] John: In the Marvel Universe, there is a guy who was born and lived his whole life in 616, named the Whizzer, who was a different guy than the Whizzer in Squadron Supreme, despite their name being the Whizzer.

[10:36] David: I think there's a third guy who lives his life, first as the Whizzer, and then becomes the Speed Demon, and he, too, is a different version of those other two. There are a lot of Squadron Supremers out there. So, Squadron Sinister shows up, and they are formed by the Grandmaster, who is one of the Elders of the Universe, and if you have read Ron Marz and Ron Lim’s old Silver Surfer run, you're well versed in the Elders of the Universe. I think they've come back recently. I mean, they're around all the time, but I feel like the Elders of the Universe showed up recently in something, in a meaningful way. I've also been rereading the Silver Surfer. So, maybe it's just that. The Steve Englehart Silver Surfer.

[11:19] John: I want to say they were in the series, G.O.D.S.

[11:22] David: Oh, okay. I haven't read that. I want to read that, though. I've heard good things about that. I guess, it wasn't that well received, though, because it only got 8 issues out, and then it feels like that was cancelled, that was not purposeful.

[11:35] John: I don't know. I read it and I have no idea. I think it would read a lot better in one sitting. Highly recommend that to keep track of the details on it, and also, you could check and see if the Elders of the Universe are in it. I can't remember which cosmic forces show up.

[11:51] David: That's on my very deep list, but maybe I’ll move it up to see if the Elders of the Universe are in there. So, anyway, Whizzer, John.

[11:57] John: I'm a Whizzer.

[12:00] David: Just Whizzing around. Whizzy whizz whizzy. It seems like, in the Squadron Sinister, and then even as it evolves into The Squadron Supreme, which we'll talk about that in a minute, I don't think there's a lot of reverence. They really are taking the piss of the DC characters, and the Squadron Sinister and the Squadron Supreme are never really treated with a lot of love. Not that they aren't well-crafted or that the stories aren't interesting, but it just feels like there's not a lot of love for those characters, when they're written. I have to assume it's because they're obviously being analogues to DC stuff. So, it's almost like Marvel's just beating up on them all the time. It seems like things never quite go right for the Squadron Supreme.

So, they show up, originally, as the Squadron Sinister, and Sal Buscema is the artist on that. Again, that's Avengers #69, and then the next time we see them, I think they go through a couple of little adventures. There's a quick thing with the Defenders, where Nighthawk actually becomes one of the Defenders, and Nighthawk, of all of them, seems to be treated more kindly than the rest, for some reason. I'm not sure why. Maybe because Batman is cool, no matter what universe he’s in, but the next time we see them, meaningfully in the Avengers book, is Avengers #85 and #86, and Roy Thomas brings it back as Squadron Supreme. This time, they’re redesigned by John Buscema, and then what we'd learn, which is fascinating to me, is that this is not actually the Squadron Sinister. It's not the same characters. It's an entirely different group of heroes, and what we learn is that the Grandmaster, the Elder, saw into this alternate universe, and saw the Squadron Supreme of this alternate universe, and then created his version of them as evil versions of them in the 616, in the main Avengers universe.

So, they're calling it the 712 universe. In all the reading, Earth-712 is where the Squadron Supreme, the good version of the Squadron, they're calling it the 712 universe, and it seems like they're calling it the 712 universe in those books, but I don't remember reading that in the material that I was reading through. Did they already have Earth designations that early on?

[14:23] John: No, that came from Alan Moore’s Captain Britain run.

[14:29] David: Right. So, that's later. That's the 80s. Okay, so this is just retroactively attaching them to the Earth-712. Okay.

[14:39] John: Not to spoil anything, I bet Mark Gruenwald's involvement with the characters spurs on some hardcore continuity to it.

[14:45] David: For sure. So, anyway, we see them in Avengers #85/#86. There's a big brouhaha, the Avengers immediately start fighting the Squadron Supreme, because they think they're the Squadron Sinister bad guys from the last time, have a little fight, which is great, classic hero against hero battle, and then they team up and defeat the villain, and John, do you remember who the villain is for that one?

[15:08] John: Not at all, no.

[15:09] David: It's a nine-year-old child.

[15:13] John: It’s the idea of Batman rolling up his sleeves, like, “this one’s going to be easy. If there's one thing I'm good at,” says Batman's.

[15:20] David: “It’s killing kids.” I love that this is our new running joke, getting kids murdered. They battle a bunch of people, but all these people are being controlled by Brain-Child, who is basically just a preteen kid with a giant head, because his brain is so big that it can't contain it. It's the leader situation, and the reason why he's trying to take over the world is because he basically wants everybody to get mad at each other and then just destroy the planet, so that he can basically die, and the reason that he wants to die is because he’s not treated like a normal kid, because he's got this giant brain, and people make fun of him .

[16:02] John: Joking aside, that's a classic Marvel villain motivation. Could’ve […] differently and he could have been a hero.

[16:08] David: It's rather tragic guy. So, this poor kid, the Brain-Child, who's literally a global threat, and the reason is because he's sad because he's got such a big head. So, basically, they do some hocus pocus and shrink his head back down to normal size, and he forgets that he was ever the Brain-Child, and he just goes off with some new parents, and that's the end of the Brain-Child. That's how the story ends. Everybody wins, John. Everybody wins. They're out of The Avengers. They go into their own thing. They get a 12-issue maxiseries by Mark Gruenwald. There's a couple of other things in there. There's some stuff with Thor. Hyperion shows up a couple of times. There's that Defenders thing that I talked about. I think that's in there, and then they do the Squadron Supreme 12-issue maxiseries, by Mark Gruenwald, and I can't remember who the artist was for that. I didn’t write it down. Gruenwald writes it.

[17:10] John: I’ve got it right here. This isn't the one that's cool. John Buscema, Paul Ryan, Bob Hall, and Paul Neary.

[17:18] David: Okay. So, it's a group.

[17:19] John: […] different times.

[17:21] David: I have to just rely on notes, because I've actually never read this book. It's the next in the big omnibus that I’m reading. I'm just about to start to read this. So, this is just on my notes. So, I don't really have a lot. I don't want to go into too much detail, but basically the Squadron Supreme decides to create a utopia on their world, and the way to do that is to take over the government. So, Squadron Supreme basically takes over the government, takes over the planet, reveal themselves as the superheroes that they are, and just go about basically becoming this militant regime that controls everybody because they know what's best, and some superheroes sign on, and some, like Nighthawk, are like, “yeah, I don't want to have anything to do with that,” and bow out, but it is pretty fascinating that this is a story that's being done in #85/#86 Squadron Supreme, and it's got a lot of really interesting story hooks that you see a lot of now. In the 2020s, you're seeing a lot of these exact story conceits, where the heroes taking over, basically taking control, and ultimately finding out, “are we the baddies?”

[18:29] John: It’s fascinating. It occupies a weird place in history. It's Marvel's answer to Watchmen, but it started coming out before Watchmen. I don't mean to read too much into my own interpretations of it and pretend that that's what was going through Mark Gruenwald’s head, but I know that Mark Gruenwald always considered this his important work. This is the biggie that he did. I’m sure, the Captain America run, too. You could see the growth of this mature type of comic that Alan Moore was doing in Swamp Thing and the British stuff, V for Vendetta and Miracleman, or Marvelman, I don't think it started coming out as Miracle man yet, and maybe what Frank Miller was doing on Daredevil and dealing with new topics for the 80s, really pushing what the 70s had done.

It's not like Watchman doesn't feel like it's from the 80s, or Dark Knight: Returns doesn't feel like it's from the 80s. They do. They definitely do, but they have their own visual language that was apart from what a mainstream comic was, at that point. If you picked up an issued of Justice League, it doesn't look like Watchmen. It doesn't read like Watchmen. The pacing isn't like Watchmen, but if you pick up an issue of Avengers, it reads like Squadron Supreme. It is definitely in the Marvel milieu. It's a bunch of good, but B-level, pencillers. It was nobody that blew out of there. I mean, Paul Neary is great. I don't mean that as an insult to anybody, but just at that time, none of them were Dave Gibbons. None of them were Frank Miller or David Lloyd, or something, where they were unique stylists or something. It very much looks like a Marvel comic. Four people pencil it, and it basically all looks like a cohesive work. It's interesting because Mark Gruenwald was such a Marvel guy, such a Marvel continuity guy. To see him working on that type of comic is an interesting artifact from that era, and yeah, like you said, I mean, that prefigures the authority. I mean, this was what the authority was.

[20:24] David: It's a fascinating piece, in that it’s such a precursor for so many things that happen later-on, and it becomes more and more obvious, just in some of the reading that I was doing, how influential the Squadron Supreme basically is, without ever themselves being truly recognized, in any meaningful way, by fandom, I guess. So, it feels like there's almost this underground cult of personality that's just within the creative community that the fan-based community just never fully sees, because the creative community’s use of those characters is always to mess with them hard and not treat them very well. There's all kinds of different characters that are introduced in the 12-issue maxiseries. There's Tom Thumb, who's basically the Atom, in a way, but I don't think he can get that small. He's just more like a Puck character, is the impression that I get. There's Blue Eagle, who's Hawkman. The Golden Archer shows up.

[21:25] John: He's a McDonald's analog, right?

[21:27] David: Yeah, and in the series, he’s got a couple of names. He's the Golden Archer, and then they just randomly named him Black Archer during the series, for some reason. I don't know. Power Princess shows up, and Hyperion, and Nighthawk, and Blur, Doctor Spectrum there again, but I think it's a different Doctor Spectrum. I don't know. I've got to read this thing. I'm anxious to read it. So, I'll leave it at that, but Mark Gruenwald is definitely the architect of the Squadron Supreme maxiseries, and he eventually pulls many of those characters. The ones that survive the maxiseries. There's a lot of death in this one, too. The ones that survive the maxiseries go on. He pulls them into the Marvel 616, the regular Marvel Universe, somehow. I’m eager to find out how he does that, and like everything else that Mark Gruenwald did, it ends up in Quasar. One way or another, Mark Gruenwald pulled anything that he had created, and the New Universe stuff, or this stuff, it all shows up in Quasar, and he gets it all into the main Marvel Universe. He eventually gets everything he's ever done into the main Marvel Universe. So, this is another example of that.

From there, Squadron Supreme takes on its own life, and we don't really see it that often in the Avengers from there. You get a couple of one-shots, and then J. Michael Straczynski. You edited this. You could probably tell me more about it. Supreme Power, but with Gary Frank art, which I loved that book, because I'm just a massive Gary Frank fan. So, I remember when that book came out. I had no association with Squadron Supreme, at that time, but I really liked Supreme Power. I thought that was a fun book, but I was there for the Gary Frank art.

[23:04] John: I think Straczynski is one of those artists, or one of those writers, who really depends on the artist, in terms of which books of his I completely enjoy. I don't mean the quality of the artist. I just mean, the artist being the right fit for the book, and stuff. His Thor, I thought, was terrific, with Coipel drawing it, and then his Supreme Power is one of my other favorites. Do you know the story, though, of the Squadron Supreme paperback?

[23:28] David: No.

[23:29] John: The first printing of it contains Mark Gruenwald's ashes.

[23:32] David: Oh, that's right. Yes, I did know that. Actually, I didn't know it was the Squadron Supreme traded paperback.

[23:39] John: I believe so.

[23:40] David: Is that the only thing that it was in? I thought he put it in an issue of Captain America. I thought his ashes were […] Captain America.

[23:46] John: Maybe it's like that […].

[23:47] David: Could be all of Them like.

[23:48] John: Yeah, it could be […].

[23:50] David: Everything that came out that month.

[23:51] John: […] just accepted it as reality. I don't know.

[23:53] David: No, I think that's real. I think that's a real thing. I just didn't realize that it was Squadron Supreme trade paperback where it happened.

[23:58] John: That's what I thought. Correct me if I'm wrong. I might be wrong.

[24:03] David: I feel like I'm ascribing a lot of Godlike powers to our new listener, John. So, I think he's going to know this, and hopefully, he'll E-mail us.

[24:10] John: I hope it’s Tom Brevoort. He would know.

[24:14] David: You think our new listener is Tom Brevoort? I think you're right.

[24:16] John: Well, I'm saying, it would solve a lot of problems.

[24:18] David: Yeah. No, I think it is. I think it is, too. So, that's a little bit about Squadron Supreme. I’m anxious to read more about them in their own series and finish off that omnibus. I thought I'd just do a little talk about them, and then going back to my Avengers collecting, because I'm working on this collection. I've been working on it a little bit more the last couple of months. It's a lot of going to the comic bookstore. I don't know. Is this how other people do it? It's a lot of going to the comic bookstore and hanging out, and looking through back issue bins, and finding a copy of, I don't know, Avengers #98, and getting super excited, and looking at it closely, and going, “oh, man. This is a really good copy,” and then flipping it over, and seeing the price, and putting it back. There's a lot of that. So, anyway, I was like, “thank God that Marvel discontinued that book at Issue #402,” because I don't feel compelled to get any more. I have 0 compulsion to get anything outside of Volume 1, and I was like, “what a sad thing that,” not through anybody's fault, I guess, but “what a sad thing that there isn't a #403 and #404,” and that got me thinking about, but in a way, there is, and maybe some collectors will buy into this, where Marvel has done the legacy numbering. Do you know what this is, John?

[25:40] John: Yes, I do.

[25:41] David: Well, I'm saying that because maybe our readers or our listeners don't know.

[25:45] John: As the guy who shipped, back-to-back, oh God, I'm going to get this wrong, but it was Issue #50, then the following month, Issue [#200] of X-Factor. Yeah, I'm familiar with the legacy number.

[25:59] David: Nice. So, Marvel discontinues these books, because they needed a New Number 1, John. They needed that bump. All joking aside, even though we've been joking about this a lot, all joking aside, a New Number 1, especially back when they first started doing it, that really worked. That was a massive sales bump. With big launches, I think it still continues to work.

[26:21] John: Oddly enough, this is something that I was actually just thinking about, because you talked about reading Detective Comics #27 recently, in one of the oversized reprints from the 70s, and DC just put out this version of Detective Comics #27 that is the actual proportions of a Golden Age comic. The actual size, and it's made to look all old and emptied up, and I was reading that. I've read the comic not too long ago, because DC put out another version of it that just reprinted all the pages, within the last 3 or 4 years, but I was thinking about that. It's amazing that this is just the 27th issue of a comic. There was a 26th the month before. There was a 28th the next month. Introduces some character called Batman, and then today, you can still buy the next consecutive issue of that comic, but they did renumber at one point during New 52. Nothing has that unbroken track record. There's no American comic that has an unbroken track record beyond, I mean, I think at this point, Savage Dragon or Spawn. Beyond Spawn, probably. You could buy every issue of Spawn.

[27:26] David: Gosh, I guess you're right.

[27:28] John: Some of them came out of order because of weird stuff.

[27:33] David: That's right. Savage Dragon, Spawn. Yeah, there's a couple of Image comic books, I guess, and that would be it.

[27:40] John: I mean, everything else, at some point, had to revert to the legacy numbering, like you were talking about.

[27:43] David: Yeah. So, Marvel's first idea around the legacy numbering thing was like, “oh, we're at a New Number 1, but this is almost Issue #500 of Avengers, and we should really also have a 500th Issue of Avengers, because that's a big deal, and we can sell more copies if we call it Issue #500.” So, then they would revert the book back to its original numbering, for a time, right?

[28:07] John: Yeah.

[28:08] David: And then when that sales bump wore off, they would then just cancel the book and relaunch it with a New Number 1. What they've done, though, is now I think it's actually a pretty good solution to it. I think they've actually, over time, over the last several years, figured out a way to make it all work for everybody, and I think it's okay, for me, which is to have whatever the new story arc is, whatever the season is. Right now, for Avengers, the Avengers started got a New Number 1 in 2023, and it's up to Issue #21, but there's this thing called legacy numbering, and it's right underneath the #21 on the cover, and that number is #769 or, that number keeps coming up today. So, I think that's actually a pretty good solution, because basically, every single copy of Avengers, in a way, you can account for it. You have to do some math and do some research online to actually get there, but if they had come up with that solution immediately upon whenever the New Number 1 relaunch had been, I think it would have been actually really great, but they're there now, and I actually think it's nice to have that. Does it compel me to collect anything past the first Volume, Issue #402? Absolutely not, but I like that, for the really truly hardcore guys, there is a path to success, in terms of collecting every issue.

[29:38] John: That actually is exactly the same phenomenon as why, when I said that, “I've read every Avengers issue, up through a certain point,” because at that point, there were just 3 New Number 1 Avengers, and many of them laid claim on being the main Avengers book. X-Men’s had that for a long time, too. Is Uncanny the main X-Men book? It wasn't when Grant Morrison was writing the other one, or Jim Lee was drawing the other one. That is interesting, and I do think part of that is the legacy of Gruenwald, in a big way. Gruenwald had an influence over a generation of Marvel editors, in terms of how much he loved and cared about the Marvel characters. That was a true and genuine thing that he had, and that I think Tom Brevoort continues to have, and Ralph Macchio, when he was there, continued to have.

I think Tom was probably one of the people that was really keeping track of when they got close to a big number. Some of that was probably as much of somebody that likes Avengers, who was editing Avengers, as much as it was a corporate mandate to try to get a big number. Also, other times, guys like me would try to add up a bunch of numbers to get to 150, so we could do a special issue of X-Factor and not have the book be cancelled. So, when you run into questions like, “does that one X-Factor limited series count?” Well, it does, if it adds up to a round number. If it doesn't, it does not count, but I think a lot of the Avengers numbering is a lot more genuine than that.

[30:58] David: Yeah. To be real clear, I tried to dive into some of the other legacy numbering, especially the X-Men universe, and I think it's a hot mess. Apparently, Hickman didn't want legacy numbering on his books. So, it got pulled off. Also, there is no Uncanny X-Men during the Hickman stuff. So, which one was Uncanny X-Men, and which one wasn't?  So, they're ascribing certain things to Uncanny X-Men in the legacy numbering. I don't know. It's exactly what you say. Whatever the editors need in the moment is what it is, but the Avengers stuff is a little bit cleaner, and the only real weird thing in the Avengers run, that Marvel has incorporated, for some reason, is there was a 10-issue limited series of Avengers: No Road Home, and for some reason, in the legacy numbering, they dropped that into the middle of the 2018 Avengers series. So, Avengers Issue #1 through #17, from the 2018 series, is legacy #691 to legacy #707, but then it cuts into Avengers: No Road Home #1 through #10, which is legacy #708 to #717, and then it comes back to the Avengers 2018 series, which is still going this whole time, in Issue #18. So, the very next Issue is #18 through #66, which is legacy #718 to #766.

So, if you're reading the 2018 Avengers series, Issue #17 has legacy numbering on it that says Issue #707, and Issue #18, the next month, has legacy numbering on it that's Issue #718. There was probably not even legacy numbering on those, at the time, but that would be what it would have looked like if they did, and that's stupid, John. That's dumb.

[32:42] John: I've been checking the statistics right now. We're back down to two listeners.

[32:46] David: Yeah, I know that was a lot of nerdy stuff.

[32:49] John: All that stuff gets pretty messy. I mean, I was thinking, Usagi Yojimbo also has legacy numbering, and that one's really clear. Every limited series gets a New Number 1, but here's where it is in the unbroken run of Stan Sakai drawing and writing Usagi Yojimbo. It does get complicated when you get a lot of those-- Sorry, my kids were yelling, and I completely don't know what I was saying.

[33:13] David: That's good.

[33:14] John: They're excited about the dog, folks.

[33:16] David: I know. It's going to be great. I can't wait for you to have another snoring dog back there. I think that's all I’ve got, John. I’m just enjoying my Avengers reading and my Avengers collecting right now. I'm really having a good time with it. So, I thought we could talk a little bit about it.

[33:33] John: Man, I love that stuff. I, very young, stopped being a guy who was reading a comic just to read that comic, and started following creators. Not super young, but I mean, I hit stuff like Independent Comics, and then the Image stuff hit, with me young enough that the creators were always really forefront, to me, from a young age. I mean, always. I was certainly reading X-Men, whoever was writing it, but then at a certain point, I was like, “well, I want to read anything Chris Claremont writes,” or whatever. It was interesting to go in and just read the whole series, because some of it's really good, some good I think is really underrated, and then some of it is not. Some of it is not very good. There's a couple runs in specific issues that are just abysmal. So, it's interesting to read that stuff.

[34:19] David: We'll have to talk about some of those, sometime, I think. I know which ones you're talking about. I remember.

[34:23] John: Yeah. Well, if we’ve both read […], we should do an Avengers ranking. Our Top 5 Avengers runs.

[34:29] David: Oh, okay. That'll motivate me to read the first 150, like you said, previously. I've got an app. So, I could start reading those. By the way, I have a full confession, before we jump off. The Star Trek: New Visions books, John, that I read. I read the first seven issues of that book. Well, John, I was in a rush. I only had a couple of days. So, I got on a pirate site to read those. I felt bad that I did that. So, what I did the next day, and I didn't bring it up in the last podcast, but I'll bring it up now, what I did next day is I got to eBay, and I bought all seven of those stupid books off of eBay. I didn't want to do that. I don't want to do that. So, I bought them after the fact. That's okay, right?

[35:16] John: David, you have owned them all. At IDW, when they came out, you got them all, at one point.

[35:23] David: There's no way I kept that.

[35:25] John: No, no, I understand that.

[35:27] David: No, I felt like I needed to.

[35:28] John: It was very honorable, I guess.

[35:29] David: I felt like I needed to do it. I want people to buy their books, one way or another. I think you’ve got to pay for the experience, but anyway, they're coming. So, if you want the first seven issues of Star Trek: New Visions, they're all yours, buddy. I'm going to be giving them away, as quickly as possible. I don't think I need them in my collection, but I've got them. So, if any of the listeners out there want to e-mail us.

[35:51] John: I'm trying to stay out of it.

[35:52] David: To get the Star Trek: New Vision. It was actually entertaining. It was entertaining, but I just don't need them. I don’t have enough room.

[36:00] John: I'm midway through the John Byrne’s Generations Omnibus. It’s late period John Byrne.

[36:06] David: Alright, John. Well, thanks for indulging me. Thanks, everybody, for listening in and indulging me, as well. If you get a chance, go read some Squadron Supreme. Definitely, the original incarnations of them in The Avengers is really fun and interesting, and entertaining, and I'm excited to read some more of it.

[36:20] John: And if you're a mad scientist, and you're able to clone from ashes embedded in ink, give it a shot. I mean, what could go wrong?

[36:29] David: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Alright, thanks, everybody. Bye.

[36:33] John: Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates and links at www.thecornerbox.club and we’ll be back next week with more from David and John, here at The Corner Box.