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.

[00:28] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, David Hedgecock, and with me, as always, is my very good friend

[00:35] John Barber: John Barber.

[00:36] David: John Barber.

[00:38] John: We finally got these intros down.

[00:42] David: Well, it's better when I start, because I don't have the opportunity to miss the point.

[00:46] John: Yeah, but I'm barely paying attention, and I still did okay.

[00:50] David: You still did better than me.

[00:52] John: That's not what I meant.

[00:53] David: You’re always paying attention, John. Don't try to fool the listeners. They should know that you work incredibly hard at your craft—this podcast craft that we have been honing over the course of the last—almost two years, John. We're actually only a few months away from 2 years of doing this podcast.

[01:09] John: That's amazing.

[01:11] David: John, we have been doing this podcast—every single week, we’ve put out a new episode. We have not missed a single week. We're like the DC 52 of podcasting. Remember, they put out a comic book every single week, for a whole year? What was that called? Was that DC52 or 52, or something like that. It was 52, right?

[01:31] John: Yeah.

[01:32] David: Something incredibly memorable like that.

[01:34] John: Yeah, well, no, just regular 52.

[01:36] David: Before the New 52. 

[01:38] John: Right.

[01:39] David: Anyway, we’re that.

[01:40] John: We are.

[01:41] David: Boom.

[01:43] David: I'm speaking to you, John, behind closed doors today. Usually, I have a door or two open. It's starting spring here in sunny San Diego—warming up a little bit—but I have the doors closed, because a giant hive of bees decided to start creating its hive on the glass door right outside my office.

[02:04] John: Okay.

[02:05] David: I don't know what to do about that, and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to get out of this office today, but if you hear screaming, call a beehive specialist, I guess. I don't know.

[02:16] John: I was reading a book about what to do with beehives. It's called The House [at] Pooh Corner, by A.A. Milne. What I guess you should do is dress up like a storm cloud.

[02:28] David: There you go. Were you reading that for your own pleasure, or were you reading that to one of your fine children?

[02:36] John: No, I was reading that with […]. That was a while back, actually.

[02:40] David: That's a good one.

[02:42] John: I exaggerated, for the sake of comedy, the recency of that.

[02:46] David: John, we should talk about some comic books. We've already lost half of our listenership. There's only two people left behind. We’ve got to get into this comic book thing before we lose everybody. I think we should start with your stuff, because it's much more topical and relevant, and then we can get to my stuff, that is absolutely irrelevant—talking about comic books from, at least, a decade ago. Not all of them are, actually, but a lot of them are.

[03:10] John: Free Comic Book Day—it happened recently, as we're recording this. Did you do anything for Free Comic Book Day?

[03:14] David: I did. I was at Disneyland with my son and some of his friends for Free Comic Book Day. So, it was my son's birthday weekend. So, I did not participate in Free Comic Book Day the way I normally do. I did, however, see a few comic books when I came off the Guardians of the Galaxy ride, and I did look at them. All of Disneyland now, when you get off the ride, you are funneled into a store. When I was younger, when I was a kid—back in the old days—they didn't do stuff like that. You got off the ride, and you just went out into the walkway, and you walked wherever you were going to walk, but now, of course, they have to funnel you through a store. It's very interesting, because I think it works, because my son and his friends—that's all they've ever known. You go to a store after you go to the ride. So, we would go into these stores, and I'm ready to just walk right through the store and go on my way, go to the next ride, or do whatever we're going to do, but all four of them would stop, every time, and peruse the store, and look at everything, before we were able to go on, and it's like, “wow, this is a different generation. They're being trained to do things a very specific way, and it's working.” I have to admit, the consumerism is strong in the next generation.

[04:33] John: I guess it was Star Tours that must have made that the regular thing that you started to do. Although, I don't think that was every ride, for a while, now that I say that.

[04:40] David: It's every ride now, but the Guardians of Galaxy ride had comic books at the end of it. It's the only ride that does have comic books, even though there's other Marvel rides there, like the Spider-Man ride, and some other ones. It's the only one that has any comic books in it, but here's the thing—I happened to be in Disneyland in January of this year. I went with some other friends, because Disneyland, for us, it's kind of expensive, but it's not a huge ordeal for living in San Diego. It's 90 minutes away. You can literally wake up in the morning, drive up there, spend the entire day at the park, and drive home that night, and have an entire day at Disneyland. So, anyway, we were up there in January, and when I got off the ride at Guardians of the Galaxy last time, there was comic books there, and then this time, there’s comic books there, and John, I'm fairly 100% certain, it was the exact same comic books that were there in January, not even just like they restocked with the same issues. No. The exact same copies. I don't think they had sold a single comic book between January and May. I’m pretty sure there was dust on those comic books. Very depressing, John. Very depressing.

[05:53] John: Yeah, that's one of the things where it's like, “yeah, I want to be team comics, and everything,” but I do get why, when people are like, “why don't they sell comics at whatever place?” I get why you don't, because there's a lot of places where people don't want to buy comic books. I don't want to go to a movie theater and buy comic books. I don't want to be at Disneyland, and be like, “oh, I want to buy a single issue of Spider-Man.” I get how that doesn't happen. I think […] books there. I'm more disappointed that, I think, Disneyland's gotten rid of a lot of just book-books, where I have been in situations where I've wanted to go home with the kids and get them a book about the things that they've seen at Disneyland, but man, a single issue—what are you going to do with that at Disneyland? It's going to get wrecked.

[06:40] David: I don't know [if] everyone else had the same thought, or just was like, “comic books?” Because the comic books—I don't know. It was just like, “This is why you don't do that.” Everything else in the store turned over at least three or four times in the five months I had been away, and not a single comic book had turned over.

[06:56] John: Yeah, there have been times where it's been held out as a Holy Grail of things. We had Transformers comics at Universal Studios. It was nice to have, but it's not like it impacted our numbers. I don't think that's a secret. That's just my recollection, anyway, but it isn't as big a thing as you’d hope it was going to be, if you don't think about it too hard, I guess. I don't know.

[07:19] David: I mean, on paper, you’d think that that's going to work. There's 30,000 people coming off of that ride and walking through that store every day, and 5% of those people are going to want to read a comic book about the characters they just saw on the ride. It's Guardians of the Galaxy comic books. They've got the right material there. They don't have a Spider-Man comic book there, or if they do, it's Spider-Man with Rocket Raccoon, or something. They've got the right product in front of you, in terms of the story, or the characters being presented. You were correct in assuming that they were floppies—saddle stitch comic books—because they were, and they certainly should have more digest-size things for $10 kind of thing. They needed to have those instead, but in general, they have the right idea, and the idea behind that—wow, if you can capture 5/10% of 30,000 people, and you're doing that every single day, my God, you could sell a million copies in six months, and that's just not the reality. The reality is, you sell .1 copy per five months, apparently, but nothing sells 1,000,000 copies of anything these days, John, except—

[08:38] John: Except, well, yeah, I hear one did. The story floating around is that Bad Idea, comic book publisher, finally put out a book to the direct market. They've been selling to comic book stores, directly. This is them putting out an actual comic book. It's a $2 #0 issue for a new series called Planet Death, written by Derek Kolstad, who's the creator of John Wick, and co-written by Robert Venditti, art by Tomás Giorello, who I'm not familiar with—

[09:05] David: The great Tomás Giorello. What? You’re not familiar with Tomás?

[09:08] John: No.

[09:09] David: Oh, dude. Tomás did a Winterworld story with me back in the day, and I'm the one that paired him with Diego Rodriguez, the colorist, who he worked with for a long time. I don't think he's working with Diego on Planet Death. Tomás is one of my guys, man. I love that guy. His art’s incredible. He did a bunch of work on Conan, over at Dark Horse, for a time, too, and I think the last couple of years, though, he's been pretty exclusive. I think he was doing some Valiant stuff, maybe X-O Manowar. So, he got in with the Valiant crew, and then some of the Valiant crew turned into Bad Idea, and he went with that part of the crew. So, I think he's been with Bad Idea for a couple of years now. I don't think he's doing much else. That's probably a good reason why you're not familiar, or you don't remember, because he's kind of been in this weird Bad Idea Publishing/Underground thing that they've been doing. Bad Idea is the most confusing comic book publisher, ever. I don't think they have a plan. If they do, is the most convoluted, confusing plan of all time. Nothing they do makes sense. I like a lot of their stuff, and everything Tomás draws, I absolutely buy, if I can find it, but I can't even find it, most of the time.

[10:20] John: Friends of the former employee there gave me a bunch of their comics, and they're universally of high quality. Some of them, very good. Some of them, just very solid. This actually isn't a hit piece. I'm not setting this up to be a hit piece.

[10:34] David: Every time they announce an artist on one of their books, without fail, I'm like, “man, if I was going to start a comic publishing company, that's the artist I would use, too.” Their artistic taste over there is impeccable, as far as I'm concerned. There's not a single art choice over there, on any of the books I've seen them do.

[10:54] John: Yeah, I think that was a thing that was, I think, really true with Valiant, as well. They were really good at money-balling creators, too, getting the ones that were maybe undervalued, and then sometimes getting some some key players, here and there, but anyway, did you read Planet Death? Have you seen it?

[11:10] David: No, I haven't seen it. I’ve got to get to the store and grab one. I do want to get one, and I figured there's plenty of copies out there.

[11:16] John: Yeah. Supposedly, the best-selling single-issue since WildC.A.T.S. I have no idea what the deal was to sell it. I think we talked about it.

[11:22] David: I looked it up. Credit to Rich Johnson over at Bleeding Cool. So, they were selling the book—$1.99 cover price—they were selling the book to retailers in bundles of 25, for $7.50, and that was the most expensive version. If you bought larger quantities, then it went down, and it was available on Free Comic Book Day. So, essentially, what Bad Idea did was, they made a Free Comic Book Day book, that #0, that retailers could charge for, and it cost them less to buy that book than it did for them to buy any of the Free Comic Book Day books that they were giving away. For people that don't know what Free Comic Book Day is, Free Comic Book Day is always the first weekend of May—

[12:11] John: Yeah, it was always, and it still usually is, timed with a Marvel movie release.

[12:16] David: Yeah, some big Marvel movie release, and that.

[12:18] John: […] started with Spider-Man, or something.

[12:21] David: And the cool thing about Free Comic Book Day is that you can be anywhere in North America—maybe anywhere in the world, for that matter—anywhere in North America, though, any comic book store, on Free Comic Book Day, you can go into the store, and they will give you free comic books, and that is amazing, and fantastic, and people really need to understand and know that, but those free comic books, they're free to you—free as a customer—you going into the store, they are free to you, and the specific comic books—not every comic book is free.

[12:50] John: What?

[12:51] David: Should probably clarify—specific comic books—but it's not free to the retailer, to the store—they have to actually pay for those books. Now, they pay very little for them. They're basically buying them at an incredibly reduced cost, but they're still paying for them, in order to give them to you for free. So, each comic book that they're giving away, historically, it's costing the retailer somewhere between 18-25¢, depending on the level of order, what they're getting, and which publisher they're ordering from. Publishers have different costs that they attach to this thing. So, It's certainly not a money-making thing for the publishers, either, and it's definitely not a money-making thing, in terms of the comic book itself, for the comic book store, but anecdotally, at least—I don't know the details of this—Free Comic Book Day, what you see online, is that it's the best day every comic book store has. Lots of people go in, you get a couple of free comics, but then you buy something that you wanted to pick up, or you just get yourself statue, a Pop! vinyl figure, a trade paperback of Mark Millar's latest nonsense. So, you spend some money in the store. So, it's usually a really good day for the stores, to sell lots of stuff, in addition to giving some stuff away.

[14:05] John: You know what I got? Steranko’s History of Comics, Vol. 1.

[14:10] David: No, you didn't.

[14:11] John: Yeah.

[14:12] David: Is it a good copy?

[14:13] John: Yeah, it's pretty solid. I mean, it's not mint. It's not a 9.5, or something.

[14:17] David: Man, for $25, that's a good deal, dude.

[14:20] John: Here's the funny thing. I've had Vol. 2 for 25 years, and I realized, I've never even seen Vol. 1. You can go online. I'm sure it's not the—

[14:29] David: You can get them on eBay, but not for $25. They're expensive. So, I want to get a good one, but I really want those.

[14:36] John: Yeah. Want to sit down, and read 50 11x17 pages of Jim Steranko talking about the history of comics? I am ready to do that, but I haven't read it.

[14:48] David: I'm jealous. I really want that. I'm going to steal your copies.

[14:51] John: You're welcome to borrow it. Anyway, Planet Death. This is the other thing I wanted to talk about, was DC's All-In Free Comic Book Day Special Flipbook. It's got two stories. One is Dan Slott and Rafael Albuquerque doing Superman, and the other one is the Absolute Universe, by Jeff Lemire and Giuseppe Camuncoli. I just read the Summer of Superman Special, their relaunching of Superman books, the refocusing on—So, spoiler alerts on this. I just wanted to walk through my weird life of puzzling through this stuff. I was like, “Dan Slott writing Superman. That's cool,” and that book, I think it was co-written by Dan Slott, Mark Waid, and Phillip Kennedy Johnson, maybe?

[15:39] David: This is for the Summer Special, that you’re talking about right now?

[15:42] John: Yeah. It was one of those introduction comics. Here's the setup. I wasn't particularly super wild about the comic, but the setup, I thought, was pretty fun, where it's—what's their name?—Lana Lang is marrying John Henry Irons, Steel, and then this creature shows up, and there's more to the story than this. What I found really charming about it is that Steel puts on his costume, and jumps in there, and his Steel’s niece puts on her costume, and jumps in there, Superman flies in, and then Lois Lane has superpowers, and she jumps right into this. It's just this fun Silver Age-ish story. I'm like, “that's kind of a nice take on Superman.” It's all these people that just have these powers, and doing good stuff. Alright. Then it ends with Booster Gold, chained up, somewhere, looking for help. Alright. I guess, Booster Gold's kind of a Superman character. That's fine. So, about a week or two later, I am reading this Free Comic Book Day Special. The idea of Dan Slott writing Superman seems really exciting, to me, and I think it might build up, in my head, that it's going to be better than it would be, and it just seemed like a very nice, perfectly fine “Here's hitting some of the cool key points in Superman. He's really great. He does a lot of nice things,” and it came off, to me, maybe a little bit warmed over, of “Oh yeah, that's that scene an All-Star Superman that's really good,” or that kind of stuff, as opposed to Slott on Spider-Man, where I just thought he was great. I love Slott on Spider-Man. I think he just writes Peter Parker really well, and in no way terrible, Raphael Albuquerque's art’s terrific, really nice.

The funny thing that ties in with that end story is, there's this little “previously in the universe,” that explains the origins of the Absolute Universe, and what happened to create it. We've talked about the Absolute books a lot, and that's why I'm bringing this up, but I never actually knew that stuff. I knew it had something to do with Darkseid. So, it turns out, nobody remembers who Booster Gold is, after all of this, and that's what that comic was. So, explain the ending to a different comic, just reading this history. Now I understand what that was about. He is the psycho pirate to this Crisis on Infinite Earths. He's the one person who remembers things, but nobody knows who he is. Alright. Okay, that's fine. The Absolute side on this—I like Jeff Lemire a lot. I like Giuseppe Camuncoli a whole lot. I think he's terrific. I got to work with him a bunch in the past, and I've always thought he was a good artist, but the thing that was disappointing about that side, to me, on this one, is that there was this part of it flattening out the Absolute Universe, where one of the things I really like about it is how distinct all these comics are, how distinct Absolute Batman is, and especially Absolute Wonder Woman, and by this point, they've both had fill-in artists, or guest artists, on it, and they both handled it pretty well, especially Wonder Woman. I thought it was just a really nice 2-issue arc that just fits in really well to have a different artist on it. I thought it was really well done.

Then seeing all the characters going to show up together, they're describing who they are—It's the alien, the dark guy, and then the warrior, and I'm like, “I never even thought of Wonder Woman that way, from that series.” That wasn't the thought I had. I guess that's the way I should be thinking about this. The story, setting this up, though, is that the guy, who's clearly Absolute Mirror Master, starts appearing, and starts piecing together all the stuff that’s going on in the world, with these superheroes. You haven't read this one either, right? Yeah. So, he goes up to this wall, where he has all of these Post-It notes, and stuff, on it, linking all of these things together, and then I was like, “oh, man.” That's the thing from 52 that you were just talking about—‘All the things are connected’ scene. That's just a riff on that. That's one of the things I really liked about the Absolute books. Absolute Batman would reflect directly on moments from Dark Knight Returns, but it would lightly invert them. So, there was a, “it turns out it's Commissioner Gordon saying that, instead of Batman,” or whatever. It wasn't flipping the whole paradigm of what Batman is, or anything, but it was different takes on things.

Wonder Woman was even more of that, where I thought that the whole idea of pulling her out of Paradise and putting her in Hell made the character shine more, in a way, and I think from now on, there's going to be no way that, when you're talking about Wonder Woman, you don't mention Hayden Sherman and Kelly Thompson in the same breath as George Pérez, and whatever your other favorite Wonder Womans are. I think that's going to be a version of Wonder Woman that just is locked on to that character, I suspect. “This is exactly 52. Okay. All right,” and then you turn the page, and he meets—Again, spoiler alert—but he meets the Mirror Master from the regular DC Universe, who's like, “you show me yours, and I'll show you mine,” talking about universes, and it took 15 years for the Ultimate Universe to do that, and it destroyed the Ultimate Universe, like everybody thought it would. It renders it irrelevant, to some degree, when that happens. That's the part that was disturbing, to me, is “am I reading these things for a completely different reason than DC, or anybody, is making them?” I don't mean, to sell comics. I mean, is this not a version where I can just get my own special Wonder Woman?

[21:00] David: So, the way the Absolute Universe got set up was through Darkseid, right? Some wavy hand—

[21:10] John: Yeah, something […].

[21:11] David: “Darkseid did this” kind of thing, which in a way, directly connects the regular DCU to the Absolute DCU, and the whole time, the red flag in my head has been, “Oh, no. They're going to do this DC All-In thing, and they're going to tie it into Absolute, and they're going to do some big crossover, where Darkseid comes back and impacts both universes, and then it's just another, as you say, multiverse crossover, which they've done a billion times, and it immediately and totally renders the Absolute Universe ineffectual, and we've seen multiverse after multiverse, after multiverse, in DC, the thing that was kind of interesting about Absolute is that somehow, to your point, I think, it was set apart from that sort of thing, and if it's just going to be another multiverse story, with Darkseid as the big bad—I mean, I'm not saying that that couldn't be fun, but it does certainly take the bloom off the rose, for me, as well, if that's what's happening, and it sounds like that's exactly what they're going to do.

[22:24] John: Yeah. One of the things I liked about this is, there was this back story, but I didn't know it, and I didn't feel like I needed to know it. As much as I like Ultimate Spider-Man, or I think also, Ultimate X-Men has not that much to do with the rest of the Ultimate Universe, but it's really cool—and as much as I like Ultimates, and any other books in that world, that are more connected to the main story of the Ultimate Universe—that there is a main story in the Ultimate Universe was kind of detrimental, to me, especially when it's one that is “here’s what you have to know. There used to be a different Ultimate Universe. Reed Richards from that became a bad guy, and made the universe not happen, and then it did happen, and now […].”

[23:11] David: Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there.

[23:14] John: Yeah.

[23:14] David: I do the conceit of the ticking time bomb in the Ultimate Universe. I love myself a good ticking time bomb story, and the fact that the entire line is counting down to the two-year return of The Maker, and all the baddies, and you know The Maker is going to come back, in a big way. I don't know. I'm sort of in for that storyline, in a way, and maybe we'll get something like that with the Absolute Universe stuff. I think I need to be a little more careful about poo-pooing it, because I'm not totally poo-pooing that idea. I think that could be fun, if that's what they're doing. It could be something totally different. That just seems like the obvious, low-hanging fruit there. I think it could be fun, and it'd be interesting, but it does sort of change what the Absolute Universe is, to me, as well. I agree. It would lose some of the impact.

[24:00] John: It's the thing that you knew, going into the Ultimate Universe, that it has this story, and that story is still self-contained within the Ultimate Universe, even though the back story of it is complicated, and other things, but you don't really need to know too much more than “The Maker, who's an Alternate Universe Reed Richards, made everybody not be superheroes, but then they're superheroes anyway.”

[24:22] David: It's not the most difficult thing to describe.

[24:25] John: To bring this back to Planet Death—What I was getting at with Planet Death is that I kind of bought Planet Death on a real whim. I’m like, “oh, man. I don't know if I'm that into this.” I've fully enjoyed it, and the book purports to be a cross between Image comics and European science fiction graphic novels, and it's like, “well, that sounds it's up my alley,” and it was. It was just a lot of two-page spreads. It's not the deepest story, in that sense, or the thing that I was like, “Oh, my God. I had never thought of this science fiction concept before.” There wasn't that, but it was just a really well-executed version of it. The art’s incredible. Dave Stewart does the coloring, and it's beautiful. The weird thing with it, though, is that it's printed on newsprint, and the editorial in it talks about how much they really wanted to do that. They love that feel of old newsprint, but I do feel like that is crossing some streams that didn't cross, where neither image nor European graphic novels have that aesthetic, and it it looks fine. It just feels super weird. I mean, literally, the feeling, the sense of touch, is strange.

[25:28] David: Is it a matte finish or is it a gloss finish?

[25:32] John: Oh, it's totally matte, and it’s all soft cover.

[25:35] David: It's old-school paper?

[25:38] John: Yeah.

[25:39] David: Oh, it's a soft cover, too?

[25:41] John: Yeah, that's the weirdest part. If it even had a glossy cover, it would’ve felt better.

[25:45] David: Right. Oh, that's interesting.

[25:48] John: I'm going to say this as though this were a reference that everybody had. Did you ever see, when Image did newsstand distribution, in 1992 or so, and you could get WildC.A.T.S on the newsstand, and it was a different print of it, and it was printed on newsprint?

[26:03] David: I don't think I saw those. The only thing that I saw that would be close to that would be the Walmart 3-packs. I got some of those.

[26:09] John: Oh, that might be the same thing.

[26:11] David: That might have been the same thing? Okay. Yeah, I vaguely remember picking up a couple of Walmart 3-packs, and there was a Youngblood comic, and I don't remember what else was in it, but I was getting it because there was Youngblood, even though I’d already bought it 4 times.

[26:23] John: Your opportunities continue, to this day.

[26:26] David: I literally did just buy another copy of Youngblood #1–Two of them, in fact, because they had two different covers, and there's a second print coming, and I'm going to get that one, too. I am. It's 33 years later, and I'm still buying that damn comic book. You're right. What is wrong with me, John?

[26:43] John: […] back to those kids today, and the way they've been conditioned to just buy stuff.

[26:48] David: Oh, man. I've got a problem.

[26:51] John: I don't know […] was pleasantly surprised by Planet Death. Kind of disappointed by the comic that I thought I was really going to like.

[26:58] David: Well, here's the thing about the Planet Death thing—I ran some numbers on this. If they were selling these things—They report that they sold 820,000 units through distributors to comic bookstores, and then printed another 80,000 copies for damages, and things like that, and they were selling them at $7.50 for every 25 units. So, if you broke that down, basically, they sold 36,000 units of that 25-book bundle, and 36,000 units at $7.50, that's nothing to sneeze at, man. That's a lot of money. That's $250,000 they pulled in. I assure you, it did not cost them $250,000 to print 900,000 copies of that book. They're probably getting 3¢ on the dollar for those, I bet. What is that? Let's see. It probably cost them anywhere between $25-35,000 to print 900,000 copies, and they made $250. Your creative costs are another—Let's go crazy and say another $15,000 for your creative costs. They made a nice chunk of change off that book. I don't understand them as a publisher, but they did okay, and their Kickstarters, by the way, do pretty well, too. Some of their Kickstarters has done close to half a million, I think. I like their model, though. There's nothing about the Bad Idea guys that I don't like. I like that they're confusing. I like that they make these incredible books, and they're hard to find. It's kind of fun, as a consumer. As a business model, I don't know how that's working for them, but it I think it might be. I don't know. It's interesting. I'm sure that this one, in particular, though—the reason they went to the direct market is that this is some play to Hollywood. They're trying to set things up, to sell that company, at this point. That's why they're doing this. Do you remember, back in the day, that Cowboys Vs Aliens, John?

[28:46] John: Certainly do, yeah.

[28:47] David: And how they gummed-up the numbers to get that movie made? I think that's what this is.

[28:55] John: Yeah, that's exactly what I assumed it was, in a very cynical way, but again, the quality in the comic is there.

[29:03] David: Tomás Giorello, dude, I'm there for everything that guy does. I love his work. I think he's amazing. It’s just because I haven't been able to get to the comic bookstore in the last week and a half that I haven't got that already. I'm definitely going to pick one up. What I did go to the comic bookstore, and get, though, John, is a bunch of old comic books, and then I read them, and that's what I want to talk about this week.

[29:30] John: All right, let's hear it.

[29:33] David: All right. Well, this one's for you, John, because we did a podcast a while back, where you did a in-depth review of Buck Rogers. Not any of the stuff that I think most people are familiar with, but the actual original prose version of Buck Rogers, and it was fascinating, to me, and I hope people go back, and listen to that episode, because you did a great job of laying it all out, and I was fascinated by it, and I think at some point along the way, you’ve mentioned that Howard Chaykin had done a four-issue miniseries, 10-15 years ago. I found that miniseries, and I bought the hell out of it, and then I read it. So, I wanted to talk a little bit about that series. I think you read it, because I think you're the one that recommended it to me.

[30:13] John: I've actually read it a couple times. I've got the paperback of it. […] couple years ago.

[30:16] David: Oh, nice. I didn't know anything about it, going into it, other than Howard Chaykin did it, and that you liked it, and we had talked about the original prose version of Buck Rogers, and it was a little shocking, to me, to read the comic book, because it definitely is pulling from the original source material, not from any of the other iterations of Buck Rogers. It's not Buck Rogers, the TV show, that some people might remember, or even the vast majority of the strips that people would remember. So, it was wild to see Chaykin go all the way back to the original source material. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a pretty fun read. Chaykin is just a really good artist, man. That guy is really nails, and he's not a bad storyteller, either. So, I wanted to talk about it, but here was my thing. Can you do that book in 2025? Can you do the exact same book that he did in 2013? Can you do that in 2025? It is racist, it is misogynistic, but it is done in a way that I think it creates conversation. Those things are not looked on as idyllic or correct, or right. It is viewed upon by Buck Rogers himself as—He's actually the misogynist in the group, but he sees the racism that some of the other characters are imbued with, and he finds it repulsive, and then his own misogyny, he is attempting to correct, because he recognizes that that's not how people are, in the day and age that he's now living in, as opposed to the day and age he was living in, when he was born. For me, it was shining a light on those issues, and bringing them up, not in a judgmental way, but just saying, “hey, this is a thing, and this is how maybe you could talk about it,” and I really thought that it was kind of bold of Chaykin to just really dive into that material, because I know that—and the only reason I understood where he was coming from, or why he was choosing this, because I think that's in the original material, as well, based on what you had told me, which was all really fascinating.

[32:231] John: Yeah, the original material is racist—doesn't acknowledge it. This does acknowledge it, and that's the interesting thing about that comic. It's not one of my Top 10 Chaykin comics. I like it just fine, but it's not—

[32:49] David: It’s Chaykin doing licensed comics.

[32:51] John: Which is okay, because he's done some in there that I think are—The Shadow probably would be one of my Top 10 Chaykin—Blackhawk maybe would be, too. There's a Chaykin-ness to anything Chaykin does, that happens regardless of whether or not it's his character, or not. Most of the time, his characters are Left-leaning Russian Jews, even if it's Batman. He writes himself into the characters. I remember several years ago, reading some of the Chaykin stuff, even, I think, maybe some of the Marvel stuff, and being like, “if the blogosphere—not the blogosphere—whatever it was—I guess it was the Twittersphere, at that point it—was actually reading this stuff, they would be going after him, they would just be attacking him,” and then that did happen. They actually did start reading some of the stuff that he was putting out an Image. Chaykin’s a lot to take, for anybody, I think. So, if you aren't on board with where he's coming from on things, it can be super grating, I think, and be super offensive, and super unpleasant, I guess. I think he genuinely comes from a moral place on these things, in a kind of real way, and not in a performative way, and that's interesting, and there are things that he’s said that I do not morally agree with. I don't want to put this as “I fully endorse everything Howard Chaykin has ever said or done,” but he is one of my favorite comic creators. That, I'll say, for sure.

[34:26] David: In general, I agree with you. What I would say is that, speaking about Buck Rogers, and the 25th Century miniseries, specifically, I felt like the discussion was around an observation of racism and sexism, without it being overbearing. It wasn't getting in the way of the story, or slowing the story down. It was a thing that was happening with these characters, through these characters, and that was the nature of those characters, and it wasn't making any strong judgments, one way or another, about it. It was just pointing it out. I think it was pointed out as something to be changed or removed, like racism […] something that it shouldn't be, and through Buck Rogers’ observations himself, and as his character is observing those things, and having those thoughts, that's part of his story, because he's the stranger in a strange land. So, he's the outside observer, seeing how things are, and then internalizing those things, and trying to affect change where he thinks it's necessary, outwardly, and trying to affect change, internally, where he thinks that it's necessary. So, I really liked that part of it. I didn't feel like he was hitting me over the head with any of that, and I really liked it. Now, he did hit you over the head with a message, and that message is “kill all the rich people.” With that message, he was very preachy, John. He very much is like, “eat the rich, man.” He's like, “let's eliminate all the rich people. Let's get rid of all of them. That class of people needs go away, and needs go away hard.” I feel like he's absolutely advocating for the elimination of anybody that has a lot of money. It was real painfully clear that that's what he wanted everybody to take away from this four-issue miniseries. “Man, F the rich. If you learn one thing from me, Howard Chaykin, I want you to know that rich people are no good, and we’ve got get rid of them. Class warfare, right now.” So, yes, John, he is preachy, and maybe if you're not coming from the right headspace, it's hard to take, but for me, I can get behind that.

[36:46] John: One of the things of dealing with anything like a character like Buck Rogers is, when you're doing a Buck Rogers comic in more-or-less today—10 years ago, or whatever—but you're doing a 21st Century version of this character from 1920, or whatever, do you make the character the way a hero should be now? How do you deal with the parts of it that that aren't okay now? He jumped headlong into it, and is like, “in the future, this is a race war between the white people and the Chinese people.” Is that the breakdown of it?

[37:21] David: Sort of. There's definitely racial divides along many lines—all of them are artificial, according to Buck Rogers, and essentially, they are created by the ruling class, which is the alien race that has taking taking over a certain racial population, I think, but I don't know if he talks about the alien part of it, or if that's just what you brought into the story for me. So, the whole time, I was thinking about that.

[37:56] John: Oh, interesting.

[37:57] David: I don't know which came first, or if it's even in this four-issue miniseries.

[38:02] John: I don't think Chaykin—I think most of the time, when comics decide to do something about racism, they're like, “we should treat everybody equally,” or whatever, and I don't think that that's the level that Chaykin thinks about the stuff. I'm sure, yes, that’s a given. The reason we have racism isn't because people look at each other, and think, “oh, you're different. I don't like you.” It's because there's hundreds of years of entrenched power, creating a structure that makes that happen, in order to keep the power entrenched with the people who have the power, and that's where he's coming from with it, which is exactly what you said. So, I think, some of the stuff could come off as really abrasive, in that way of “the most left-wing, the most progressive guy from the 1920s is going to be your racist grandfather today.” There's just no way around that. They did that with The Shadow, as well. Yeah, the Shadow is this sexist jerk. He's from the 30s. What would he be?

[39:06] David: Right.

[39:07] John: There's a handful of people that maybe weren't, but you're not approaching the problems from the same direction that we were. I think that's always a problem, when you think about somebody in any different time is, we're on the opposite side of some of the problems that they're dealing with, and I think Chaykin is well-read and smart, and thinks about that stuff, and puts it in comics—and puts it in Buck Rogers comics. The thing I always think about, if you've got Buck Rogers, and you're like, “I want to do a Buck Rogers comic. Let's get Chaykin. All right, where we going with this buck Rogers comic?” and it's that. Did you read the follow up to it? No, I'm kidding, because of course, there wasn't one.

[39:49] David: Yeah, I was like, “what? There was more?” I mean, he definitely thinks there's going to be more. It's a complete story, but there's definitely “see you next time.” There is definitely a little bit of that. Is Hermes Press even around anymore, though? It's not, right? 

[40:08] John: They would do Buck Rogers reprints, and stuff. I'm actually not sure. I'm not positive.

[40:12] David: Yeah. So, I probably should have done this in the beginning, John, but let me lay out this story, for people who haven't read it, or they're maybe not super familiar with Buck Rogers. I hope everyone goes back—we never do this—but I hope people go back, and listen to the Buck Rogers episode, where you really laid out the prose really well, because if you listen to that episode, and then read this miniseries, it really is a satisfying meal. So, here's the high-pitch concept that I put together. Howard Chaykin’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century isn't your grandpas space opera. In this short but savage four-issue series—actually, it is your grandpa's space opera. It's not your dad's space opera, though—in this short but savage four-issue series, Chaykin revives the iconic pulp hero, with a sharp tongue, a brutal edge, and that trademark Chaykin swagger. This Buck is snarky, cynical, doesn't care much for the future, and ultimately, the result is just a really beautifully illustrated, politically charged, and very unapologetic, pulpy return-to-origin of the Buck Rogers character.

[41:13] John: Did you write that?

[41:14] David: Yeah, I did. I had a little help.

[41:16] John: Okay. It’s yours. I thought it was the back of the book, or something.

[41:20] David: Buck Rogers, if you're not familiar, he falls into suspended animation, early in the 21st Century, and then he wakes up, 500 years later, and the world's been radically transformed. There's war and ecological ruin, totalitarian control, there's hovercrafts, and ray guns—Chaykin just doesn't try to explain it all, and goes straight to the punching, in the book. It's really fun. He's part of a rebel group, and Wilma Deering's there, and she's in charge of this rebel group, there's a ruling regime, of Pan Asian origin, that was introduced in the original 1929 Armageddon 2419 AD novella. That's what you're getting into. So, I think it's recommended. We've probably made it more heavy than it really is. It is a fairly light, breezy read. There's plenty of action, and Chaykin really does keep the plot moving, and the characterization’s all happening, while fists are swinging, for the most part. So, I enjoyed it. I definitely was glad I picked it up, and I think I wish there was a bit more, because I would have liked to see a little bit more of it, but I definitely understand why we didn't get more of that.

All right, John. So, the next book that I wanted to talk about, that I think also, maybe you—or maybe our archenemy, Dave Baker, suggested this one—The Power Fantasy. So, The Power Fantasy, by Kieron Gillen and Casper Wijngaard. Is that how you say that—Wijngaard?

[42:53] John: That's how I say it.

[42:54] David: There's a ‘J’ in there. I don't know what to do with that ‘J,’ and lettering by Clayton Cowles. So, I got the first trade paperback volume of this. It collects, I think, the first 5 issues, and it's good, John. I liked it. I thought it was pretty good. Here's the premise of The Power Fantasy. The term “superpower” is redefined. It refers more to individuals possessing destructive capabilities, equivalent to a major world power’s nuclear arsenal. That's more along the lines of where Kieron Gillen is going with this. The book focuses on six of these beings, who have these superpowers, and whose existence has shaped an alternate history, from 1945 to, I think roughly, around 1999/2000. Their presence maintains a precarious global balance, with the understanding that any conflict among them could lead to worldwide annihilation. So, it's like “what if America and Russia were human beings,” instead of America with its vast nuclear […]. So, I thought it was really good. I definitely think that there's a thing in comic books, these days, John, that bothers me, and Power Fantasy has a lot of it in there, but they pull it off in a way that it doesn't bother me when they did it, which is superheroes sitting around, drinking coffee.

[44:13] John: Right.

[44:14] David: I don't want you to sit around and drink coffee, while you're doing character development, or plot development. I want you to be running, or flying, or punching. Superhero books are action books. I want to feel the energy. I want to feel the kineticism, and we don't seem to be getting as much of that as I want, these days, and this is exactly that. This book is exactly that. It's a bunch of superpower beings, sitting around, and creating Machiavellian plots that get exposed over time, and drinking coffee, and talking to each other. It's like, “damn it. Why do I like this?” But I really liked it. That version of a superhero story, which seems to be more popular, I think Kieron Gillen has done the best version of that, but I have to say—it's very frustrating for me to see a person who is that skilled, artistically—wow. Fantastic artist—not getting to cut loose a little bit more than what they've done, so far, in this book. I'm only 5 issues into it. I got the first trade paperback, but I am looking forward to more, John. I think it's a good story. I'm interested in it. I'm definitely going to trade wait this one, though. I don't think I feel the need to jump in and do it monthly. There's not enough meat on the bone, per 20 pages worth of material, for me to really think that I need to do that, but I liked that. I'm going to keep doing it, even though it's the opposite oof what I think I want right now.

[45:46] John: The funny thing with that—I actually don't know, but I probably have said it—I was the first person who hired Kieron to work at Marvel. He was writing a comic called Phonogram, that Jamie McKelvie was drawing, and the first e-mail I sent to Kieron was very similar to what you just said. I was like, “I hate it when books have the protagonist be set up to be the coolest guy in the world,” where it's that self-insert character, where they have some weird thing—pick a thing that you really like—really into tennis, and they're in a world where knowing a lot about tennis is the thing that makes them the awesomest, and Phonogram is totally that. It's basically John Constantine, but he's a 90s musicologist. He knows a lot about about 90s music, but it worked for me. I thought that worked really well, too. I think part of it is that it really foregrounds that. It isn't that you're getting this in lieu of the superhero fight that could be happening. It's that, “if there were a superhero fight, billions of people would die, and there can't be a superhero fight.” That's the thesis of this. It's kind of “everybody is Johnny Bates in Miracleman.” One of the later issues has a graph of how many people estimated, per hour, each of the superpowered characters would be able to kill, and I think three of them are at 6 billion people per hour.

[47:10] David: I don't know if I saw that.

[47:11] John: It's one of the newer issues.

[47:13] David: Okay. That's awesome.

[47:14] John: That's definitely where it's going with that. Kieron, he has the essays in the back—I don't if they're in the paperback—He has essays in the back of each of the issues that really go into some of the philosophy—he's somebody that really thinks about the stuff that he does. I mean, similarly to Chaykin, I guess. They're not operating on instinct, where there's a lot of artists, I think, do do that, and they're very good, but they're just like, “I drew this, because it felt right” or “I wrote this, because it seemed good,” but Kieron's very analytical about it, and I think that's really what they're going for.

[47:48] David: Those pieces aren't in the trade paperback. I think it's just the story. I don't recall seeing any prose pieces like that.

[47:54] John: That's fine. I mean, you don't need those, to be honest. You got what was getting sent, and you can find his process blogs, or whatever, I'm sure, and find all that stuff out.

[48:06] David: I'm frustratingly on board for this one. I was entertained. I definitely recommend it, even though I'm going to trade wait this, and Caspar Wijngaard, man—the artwork—that person is so good. I think that is actually part of why I like this piece, is that it's just nice. It's really nice to look at. Just the ordinary cafe scene is just like, “wow, that's a great opening, establishing shot, from a really cool angle, and everything is rendered all the way through, and thought all the way through.” It looks a real lived-in space. So, some really beautiful art.

[48:46] John: I made the mistake of reading it—I think I read the first couple of issues of this right after I read Jamie McKelvie's new comic at DSTLRY, or current comic at DSTLRY, One for Sorrow, and his art on that is amazing. I think he's always been good, but any stiffness that has ever been in there is gone, and it's just these characters, emoting and acting really well, and I think that him and Kieron—they were such a good partnership on Young Avengers, Phonogram, Wicked + The Divine, and Jamie is one of those artists that can carry the kind of writing that you're talking about, where it's very quiet, but you're getting a lot out of the characters, and I think a lot of other artists can't do that kind of thing. Steve Dillon could do that on Preacher. The stuff he lived for drawing was the stuff where people are just talking. So, I think when I saw Caspar’s stuff, that was the break, where I was thinking the way you were thinking, the way you're talking about it, that I want to see Jamie McKelvie writing people, sitting there, talking, or drawing people, sitting there, talking, because he draws it so well, and Casper Weinberger—Caspar Wijngaard—I do not want Casper Weinberger drawing comics—There's part of me that's like, “I kind of want to see him drawing something really dynamic, and big, and explosive,” and maybe that works to the comic’s advantage, even, that you have that tension of wanting that thing that would, in the context of the story, destroy the world.

[50:16] David: Oh, yeah. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah, I think that actually does work. You're right. So, I’ve got one more for you, John, and then we should probably wrap it up. This one's going back to the past again. This is one from 2017. Image Comics put out a book called Reborn, written by Mark Millar, and drawn by Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion on the inks, Fco Plascencia on the colors, Nate Piekos lettering.

[50:42] John: There were some periods where I wasn't reading a lot of comics, as may have come up on this podcast, and this must have come in there, because the thing that was really hilarious about it was, this thing—we hinted about this last week—here's a comic by probably the biggest comic book writer of the 21st Century, wrote Civil War, and also somebody I worked with a whole lot, and Greg Capullo, one of the biggest names in comics—it was such a huge thing when he did the Wolverine comic instead of doing the Batman comic, and they teamed up together, and they did a comic that, “no, I haven't read that, but I read the Howard Chaykin Buck Rogers series from Hermes.”

[51:25] David: Yeah. So, this is Greg Capullo coming off of Batman, I think. I think he took a break from Batman to do this book. That's how big he was in that moment, and Millar was as big as he's always been. I think Millar's light has dimmed quite a bit, over the last couple of years, but at that moment, still a big deal. So, here's the basic premise of the story:

What happens when you die? In Reborn, the answer isn't Heaven or Hell. It's a savage mythic realm where you're reborn as a younger, stronger version of yourself, and then plunged straight into an epic war of good and evil. So, the story follows Bonnie Black. In our world, she's an elderly woman, who dies in a hospital bed, of old age, essentially, only to awaken in a vibrant battlefield of Adystria, a sword and sorcery afterlife, where people reunited with those they loved or hated in their real life, but Bonnie's beloved husband, who she had lost many years before, isn't in this new fantasy world that she's in. Instead, she finds herself wielding a sword, riding a giant dog, and being heralded as the Chosen One who is destined to save this fantasy world from chaos. It’s a little bit of Lord of the Rings, there's some Heavy Metal in there, with a dash of Pixar’s Soul movie, and all through that Mark Millar lens of bold, brash, and unafraid to swing for the emotional fences. Greg Capullo’s art is as good as it's ever been. I think it’s probably some of his career-best work here. It's just full of monsters and dragons, and tech knights, and fantasy landscapes, and just tons of battle action, raw kinetic energy, some great facial expressions. Bonnie’s design and her look is just—all of it's really, instantly iconic and recognizable. The colors are fantastic.

This is the same team that was with Greg Capullo on Batman, I believe. Jonathan Glapion's inking is top-notch, and I think, at its core, Reborn is about reclamation of identity, of love, of unfinished business. It's spiritual, but it's not religious. It's not preachy, in that way. I think it does a pretty good job of doing all that, without being too saccharine, and, again, it's mixed in within these bloody skirmishes, and villainous betrayals, and otherworldly monsters. It's a good pulp fantasy story, on top of the pathos. Very dense world-building, and an interesting read. I enjoyed it. I don't think I need to go back to that world. It felt like it was the beginning of something, when it finished. It was a six-issue series. It's a satisfying, complete story, but it felt like it was meant to be the beginning of something, not the end of something, when it finished, but I don't feel like I need to go back there, but I did enjoy it, while I was there. There were moments where I felt like Millar got a little heavy-handed, in terms of—I don't know—some stuff was just like, “come on, man. You don't have to force feed it to me like that,” but I do think that that's a piece of why I think Millar is so popular, and that is that he does do exactly that. He doesn't assume anything when he's writing comic book stories. He assumes that everyone is the dumbest person in the room, that he's talking to, and he talks to them, accordingly, and I think part of his success is that he's not wrong. We don't know anything about this world that's in his head, not in ours. So, he does a good job of explaining all that, for all of us not living in his head, but it felt a little heavy-handed, at times, for me, in this one. I always feel that way about his work. So, that's it, John. That's Reborn, by Mark Millar, Greg Capullo, and friends.

[55:30] John: I might even have a digital copy of that somewhere.

[55:35] David: So funny.

[55:36] John: Feel ridiculous—

[55:40] David: It's all right. We all go through those phases. Neither one of us is in one of those phases, yet, though, so far, since the beginning of this podcast. I think the podcast is helping us enjoy comic books.

[55:50] John: Yeah, I certainly am in a better place than I was when I started the podcast. So, I’ve got no complaints there. I feel better when I'm reading comic books. I feel better when I'm reading new comic books, and we don’t always talk about those, but I do like reading the stuff that’s out there currently, and complain about my Free DC Comic that wasn't quite—I don't know.

[56:12] David: How dare you poo-poo a free comic book. How dare you. We were talking about this off-camera, but there's lots of stuff that I'm enjoying right now. This is what I wanted to talk about this time. I feel there's so many people talking about the stuff that's happening right now, so often—not that we don't do that—but I do enjoy that we're shining a spotlight—I don't see a lot of people shining a spotlight on the other stuff, all the time, in a way that I feel like we do.

[56:41] John: Yeah. I don’t know.

[56:43] David: I don't actually listen to any other podcasts anymore. So, what do I know?

[56:47] John: You know what? That's what I bet they're doing.

[56:49] David: Yeah. Whatever they're doing, it's not as good as what we’re doing.

[56:53] John: No. Well, obviously. If they were, they'd be here, and they'd be us.

[56:57] David: That's right. Thanks for coming, everybody. I hope you all enjoyed that tour around the comic book universe with us. We'll see you back next week, because we're here every week, like clockwork—like the 52 of DC. I can't remember what year it was.

[57:12] John: I believe, 1952.

[57:14] David: 1952. Okay. That would be great. All right. See you all next time on The Corner Box, everybody. Like and subscribe, and tell a friend. We would love to have more than 4 listeners. I feel like we deserve one more—maybe two. All right. Thanks. Bye.

[57:27] 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.