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: Hello, and welcome to The Corner Box. I'm your host, David Hedgecock, doing my impersonation of my very good friend—

[00:35] John Barber: Oh—John Barber. I thought, “for once, David's doing a good job at the intro.” No, I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. That wasn't what I was thinking, at all.

[00:47] David: John, we're back for another week. I had a good week, but I always look forward to our time together here on these Fridays, where we chat about life and the meaning of everything.

[00:57] John: I thought you were going to say My Little Pony. I’m like, “all right, let's do it.”

[01:01] David: John, I have some questions for you—totally unprepared. You have not heard these questions. You don't know what they are, but I've been thinking, as I occasionally do. I have some questions for you. […] “I've worked with John for many years, and I’ve never actually asked you this first question.” So, a little bit of framework for you—I think I've said it on the podcast—Chase Marotz, the Editor-in-Chief of FunTimeGo—my little publishing house—Chase and I are the archive editors for Heroic Publishing. What that means is that we are basically in charge of the archiving and asset finding, and storing of every single Conan comic book and magazine that's ever been published, which is a massive task, is a lot of work, but boy, is it fun, because, man, we could see a ton of really cool stuff come through the door, and we're always finding new, interesting things. I just fell into this random 3-issue miniseries stuff that Marvel did, between ‘96 and 2000, where they did a bunch of 3-issue miniseries of Conan stuff, and it's Rafael Kayanan art, and it's Roy Thomas writing. It's not my favorite Roy Thomas Conan, of course, but the artwork’s great, and it's fun, and it's interesting to see Conan stuff being done in the mighty Marvel manner post—the Image boys leaving. So, it's an interesting little peek back into that era.

Anyway, that's just one of the many things we're doing on the Conan archive—just cataloging and finding all this material, and making sure it's stored properly, for the first time, not through anybody's fault. Conan's been published by three different publishers. Marvel had it for many years, and then it went to Dark Horse for another couple of decades. Then it went back to Marvel for just a handful of years. Now, it's at Titan. So, across all those publishers, and across 50 years, stuff is, of course, not going to be always perfectly preserved and stored, but a lot of it really is, and surprisingly well, from time to time, but in any case—we've had a really great working relationship with Heroic. We love working with those guys, and we love the project. So, they approached us recently, and they were like, “hey, we're going to do a little miniseries of a new comic book, a little 4-issue miniseries,” and they asked if we wanted to take it on for them.

[03:17] John: Oh, wow.

[03:18] David: So, we said yes, because of course, that sounds fun. Making new comics is always fun. So, we've been in the process of putting together the team for this licensed comic book. At some point, I'll say the name, but I don't think I should say it, yet. So, all of that to say—I've been in the process of putting together a new team for this new book, and it made me wonder—what is your process, John, for putting together a team on a book, for probably licensed property, just to give you a little bit of something to work from, but in your work at Marvel and IDW, how did you go about finding the team?

[03:58] John: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, when I was any good at that, I would try to pay attention to what was going on, in comics, and I'd be reading a lot of stuff. A lot of the stuff at Marvel was me reading a lot of Image books, and seeing what writers—sometimes artists, but usually writers—I had something interesting to say, an interesting perspective, and then also, would fit into the sort of comics that Marvel published. So, there's certain writers that are awesome, but I wasn't calling Chris Ware and trying to get through to Chris Ware to write a Marvel comic. It'd have to be a particular thing, but that's getting new creators. There's also a ton of people that were already around. There's a weird bit of alchemy to it. I don't know that I ever really had a process. When I had somebody on-board, I usually would try to listen to them. So, there's definitely people that Kelly Thompson recommended to put on to Jim, and I did. “Well, that sounds good. You work well with Meredith McLaren? Okay, well, let's see if we can get Meredith McLaren on that.” That kind of thing.

Sometimes, you know a little bit about what somebody’s interests are. Sometimes, you think you maybe want to see what they would do with something. I think there's times where you can cast things too perfectly, if that makes any sense. Ryan Reynolds in Green Lantern is an example of that, where he's a cocky, good-looking guy, playing a cocky, good-looking guy, and he's just super irritating, but Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool isn’t. There's a twist to it that works, and putting together comic books are kind of that, I think. You're trying to find somebody that might have something interesting to do with a thing, but not be so outside of the thing itself, that what they did would be something totally different. I would rather have somebody that was a good writer—that knew not very much about Wolverine—writing Wolverine, than somebody that knew everything about Wolverine, but wasn't a very good writer. I don't think that's a super interesting thing to say, but that part of, “okay, here's somebody that tells these sorts of stories, and they'd be good to fit in here, maybe.” I don't know. A lot of it's luck. I don't know. It's who's available.

One of the ones that was really interesting, and this has come up in my work through doing a 3D version of Marvel Zombies at PUG-W, where I work, and I edited the original Marvel Zombies—although, putting it together, I see I was an assistant editor, at that point, but I was still the, maybe, lead person on that. So, Marvel Zombies—they showed up in Ultimate Fantastic Four. Greg Land and Mark Millar were doing those issues. They actually first appear in an Annual that Jae Lee drew, but that was written after the one that was written for Greg to draw. So, even though that appeared first, it was just a teaser, and at the same time, we were working on Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and Jae Lee was drawing that, but Richard Isanove was going to color them. Jae's usual colorist is his wife, June Chung, who is terrific, both as a person, from what I've ever encountered with her, and as a colorist, and it was like, “she usually only colors Jae,” and I was like, “well, she's going to be out of work. We just hired Jae. He's going to have somebody else coloring his stuff for the foreseeable future,” and we worked on Dark Tower for years. So, it was like, “she colors this really dark style. So, she'd be good for Marvel Zombies.” So, she was actually the first person we put in place to be on the Marvel Zombies series, was colorist, June Chung, and then it was like, “Well, who would be good to do a book that, who has an irreverent take on superheroes?” And came up with Garth Ennis. So, we called Garth, and Garth wanted nothing to do with it. I think, later on, he would go back and write a short story somewhere.

[07:53] David: He did do a zombie book, eventually. Crossed is the most brutal, horrific—

[07:58] John: Oh, yeah. […] It wasn’t the zombies half of the equation that he didn't like. He's not a big superhero fan.

[08:06] David: Oh, it's the superhero side. Okay.

[08:08] John: Garth, at that point, was part of the regular after-work-getting-together crew. So, I spent plenty of nights drinking with Garth—with other people, not just him and me, but he was around. It wasn't, “this is an unfriendly conversation.” It was just, “no, that's not for me,” and they’re like, “oh, man. Who could write both superhero stuff and zombie stuff?”

[08:29] David: Gee, I wonder.

[08:31] John: “What we really need is somebody like Robert Kirkman. Wait a minute!” So, then we put him on. It was really the same thing with the art. I was like, “man, you know what’d be cool? Greg draws the really realistic stuff. So, let's not try to go that way. Somebody that could do a lot of shadows. We can really use a Sean Phillips-type,” and somebody was like, “well, why don't you ask Sean Phillips?” Chris Allo, who was the talent manager, at the time, had been talking to Arthur Suydam, who'd been big in the 70s. He did a series called Cholly & Flytrap. It was in Heavy Metal and Epic Illustrated. He was just generally one of the ‘70s Heavy Metal Magazine crew, and he'd been talking to Chris recently, and I think Chris had the idea that he'd be good to do these homage covers we talked about. I knew his stuff from an Epic Comics Cholly & Flytrap limited series that I got when I was in high school, or junior high, or something. I knew him from that, and I’m like, “that'd be cool.” Those covers turned out be super iconic. Every once in a while, there'd be a controversy about things that he'd swiped from other places, but that's its own story.

[09:33] David: That's interesting, how you frame some of that, in that, when you're working at Marvel, and you say, “man, we need somebody like Robert Kirkman.” Well, if you're working at Marvel, you can get Robert Kirkman. If you're working at FunTimeGo or at PUG-W, you’ve got to get somebody that's like Robert Kirkman.

[09:50] John: Here's the thing. At that time, Walking Dead was a very successful indie comic, and Invincible was a very successful indie comic, and Robert wasn't having—and never did have, outside of Marvel Zombies—wasn't really having a breakthrough moment at Marvel. This is before he didn't want to go that route, which is a great move for him, but he'd done a 5-week 2099 event. He wrote, as everybody remembers and talks about, the issues of Captain America, before Ed Brubaker came on. He was just on for four issues, or something, but it was a bunch of stuff that wasn't super clicking. I think he was doing Marvel Team-Up, at the time. It wasn't the biggest book. He was as big as you could get writing Image Comics, at that time, but this is during the Jim Valentino era of Image Comics—not any disrespect Jim Valentino, but it was pre-Saga. It was pre-Walking Dead super blowing up—Extremely successful, and he didn't really need Marvel, at that point, but he still wanted Marvel. Definitely, Marvel can't call up Robert Kirkman and ask him to do a series that now.

[10:52] David: Well, yeah, now. In general, if you're working at Marvel, if you need J. Scott Campbell to do a cover, then you can get J. Scott Campbell to do a cover. If you want Alex Ross to do a cover, then you just get Alex Ross to do a cover. It's near-impossible to do, if you don't work for Marvel or DC, to get guys of that caliber, and it's not a money issue either, because you can—and I have—you can double their rate, and still, they'll say no. I've quadrupled the rate for guys Alex Ross, and still, they said no, and it's just because they've got a finite amount of time, they know where their bread is buttered, and they also, I think, in the aftermarket, can probably realize even greater than four times on whatever they're doing, and I think they factor that into what they're doing, I'm assuming. I don't know, but those guys just aren't attainable, but at Marvel, it is. So, that's interesting. I've never experienced that.

[11:56] John: So, I was working on newuniversal with Warren Ellis and Salvador Larroca, and Warren's computer crashed, and he lost a bunch of scripts that he was working on. We'd solicited a bunch of issues of newuniversal that were, all of a sudden, gone, and it was going to be a lot to recover from. In absolute terms, it was more recoverable from than “there never actually was another issue of newuniversal,” but at the time, it was like, “okay, why don't we buy a couple of months.” I was a fan of Kieron Gillen from reading Phonogram, and that was what Kieron was known for, at that point. He did Phonogram and he did a short story in CBGB’s Anthology that [Boom!] had put out. So, I'd emailed Kieron. It was a weird email, too. I was like, “usually, Phonogram isn't the sort of thing I, or here's the thing that I don't about the way you set it up, but I really liked the way it came across.” Phonogram was set in the present-day, a 90s music John Constantine, where it's this guy who's the coolest guy in the world, and it's all about him being into Brit pop bands from the 90s, and the universe is all built around “that's the coolest thing you could be,” and that's the thing I usually don't like.

So, I phrased it that. I’m like, “Kieron, I don't know about that.” I really liked Phonogram. I thought he pulled that off. It was one of the things that I d. I’m like, “I'm coming in, not really liking the way this is starting, but he totally won me over.” It was one of those kinds of things. Warren and I started talking about who we could put on to this newuniversal thing, and I was like, “well, I really Kieron Gillen.” He's, “I Kieron a lot, too,” because a lot of these people were on The Engine forum. It wasn't the original Warren Ellis forums, but it was one he had later. He was like, “why don’t we put on Si Spurrier?” I’m like, “Oh, that's cool. There's another guy who I think it'd be good, named Jonathan Hickman, who I think would be really good to write one of these,” and Hickman, at that point, his Marvel work was the Living Mummies story that he wrote and drew for me in Legion of Monsters. Nightly News, I think, had just wrapped, maybe.

[13:53] David: Oh, okay. Was Nightly News his first book?

[13:56] John: Yeah.

[13:57] David: It was.

[13:57] John: Yep. So, then Warren and I were like, “what if we called”—can't even remember how this came about—but part of newuniversal was set in the year 1959, and I was like, “we should definitely do one set in 1959.” […] “Kieron would definitely do that, because it's named after a Sisters of Mercy song,” and I’m like, “yes, it is, and I could sing it.” I’m like, “oh, yeah. Absolutely. it never was in 1959.”

[14:27] David: I’m tearing up, John.

[14:29] John: So, we built it around that. So, stuff that built up, but again, those guys, at that point—totally gettable. They were looking for the thing that was going to get them out. Kirkman was further along than that, but he wasn't rich.

[14:46] David: So, how much of that is about budget—the economics of the thing?

[14:51] John: Yeah, I mean, that definitely does come up. I mean, at that point, I think not none of it, because most of those people didn't even have Marvel rates. Kirkman, obviously, did. I think Kirkman might have even had a contract, at that point. That definitely becomes an issue. I can't remember if we talked about this, back on the Nextwave episode. That's why there wasn't a Nextwave #13, because that comic was super expensive to make. Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen, they were very valued by Marvel. So, they were getting very good rates, and you can only support that if the book is selling a certain amount. Civil War could support Mark Millar’s rate, but that's why Mark Millar wasn't writing Marvel Zombies—because there was no way that was going to sell as much as Ultimate Fantastic Four. It did. It actually outsold Ultimate Fantastic Four, but nobody thought it would. None of us were […]

[15:35] David: For Marvel Zombies, as example, you walked in, you had a budget. There were people who had done some forecasting to say, “we think we're going to sell about this much of this. So, we have to budget that appropriately,” and that did affect just some of your decision making, you think?

[15:49] John: Absolutely. There isn't a world where you're at Marvel and you're putting together a spin-off of a comic that, I mean, really, Marvel is barely letting happen, because this is super […] making fun of the Marvel characters. It's a miracle that that thing ever existed, but yeah, there's no world where you're getting J. Michael Straczynski and David Finch to do that—people who were really huge at Marvel, at that time. They're not going to pay for a painted Alex Ross cover for that, even if you […]. He would also probably pick projects based on stuff he s, more than almost anybody from everything.

[16:22] David: Yeah, absolutely.

[16:23] John: If you were trying to get him for Gatchaman, he’d be on-board. 

[16:25] David: Dynamite Comics got him, I think, in my mind, famously, for all those rehashed heroes that they did—the old public domain heroes that they did—and he did a ton of work for that, and it’s, “man, he must really love this stuff, because there's no other way that that makes sense for him to be doing,” in my mind, except for that he must have a real love for it. John, I don't think people who aren't working in the industry, really, fully follow that. So, I just wanted to see what your process was. My process is—I do think that I oftentimes start from the art side of things, especially if it's based on an existing property, where we have visual components that we can look at. I always think about the art first and where that would go, and then closely after that, I try to find a writer who I think will match that style. I've always been trained on the budget-first aspect. I'm always looking at, “I can spend this much money on a writer. I can spend this much money on an artist, and if I really want this other artist who costs more, that means I might have to try to find a writer who is hungry, that maybe doesn't have as much polish, that would be willing to come in at a slightly lower rate, so I can afford the artists that I want.” The money informs my decision-making a lot more, I think, than, it sounds, you.

[17:49] John: The difference in philosophy that I think goes on there is that the way Marvel would look at those books is that, fundamentally, some books are going to sell better than other books, and the ones that sell better are going to have the higher-paid writers and artists on them, in order to make them sell even better, and to justify those prices. So, a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that way. If you were to go in and be, “I got David Finch. We’re going to pair him with this brand-new writer, Kieron Gillen, because David Finch is expensive, and Kieron is coming in at base rates, because this is his first thing at Marvel,” that would never fly. They would just be, “no, you're putting him with the best writer we have.” That doesn't mean that Kieron isn't the best writer, but the person that is in that position of the best available writer, or Finch comes in and he's, “Man, I really want to work with this Kieron Gillen guy. We have this great idea,” or whatever—that's a different story. I'm not saying that there'd be worlds where that doesn't happen. I can’t remember if we said this, in the Nextwave one, but when Nick Lowe called Stuart Immonen to ask him to be on Nextwave, he was like, “Stuart, I've got a great comic for you,” and Stuart's immediate thing was like, “great, as long as Warren Ellis isn't writing it.”

[18:59] David: Yeah. It's hilarious. Nick Lowe’s, “well, here's the thing, Stuart. Look, he's got three scripts in the can. He's really into this one.”

[19:13] John: Imagine that. Do you remember, in Tim Burton’s Planet 9 from Outer Space, when Ed Wood’s on the phone, and he’s talking to the producer, and he goes, “worst movie you ever saw, you say? Well, the next one will be better.” That's Nick Lowe's attitude on that.

[19:34] David: I love it.

[19:35] John: At IDW, I think, institutionally, the way everybody looked at those books was more what you were saying—“here's the absolute budget we're going to spend on this. Putting a big, expensive artist on it doesn't move it to another tier of where we think it's going to sell. We think it's still going to sell in the same area that it sold in. So, you have to make up that money somewhere else,” and it's different when somebody's coming to you with “here's—I don't know what Heroic pays—$28,000 a page”—probably something that.

[20:08] David: The going rates.

[20:09] John: That's a joke. If they're coming to you—there are projects that I work on, where the outside vendor comes to us with “here's the budget on this project. Put it together,” and you definitely are trying to rob Peter to pay Paul, and look at “I can get so-and-so artist. That'd mean I can get this person on the cover, and that, this, that.” From my end, on that project, even if the comic is actually coming out somewhere, it’s “I don't get more if it sells more. The budget is the budget.” I get exactly what you're saying. Then that's the thing you have to do. Sorry. That was a big rambling way to get back to—Marvel would look at artists raising the profile of the book, raising the profile of the writer that could be on the book, and the profile of the amount of money coming into it, but that isn't inherently the way you have to look at those things.

[20:58] David: Well, yeah. I think that my approach is more, in terms of just discussing a little bit more about the budget, is “look, if my budget is that I can't get the big names and put them together on a thing,” because for really valid reasons, even with big names and big talent on it, the chances of it blowing up is risky. The chances are low. So, to the point of the budget itself, whatever it is, you're not going to throw a big writer and a big artist on Darkhawk. They're not going to do that, unless there's some bigger picture about Darkhawk that we're all trying to go towards, but if it's a relatively unknown property, and you know “it's probably going to come in around this, no matter what we do,” then the approach is, “well, the budget. It is what it is, but now it's finding those diamonds in the rough.” It's, “now we're going to find some guys that are red-hot talent. You can just see it oozing out of their pores, the talent, but maybe they don't know how to hit deadlines yet, or they're not totally up-to-speed on the business operations of things. So, well, I'll eat that bullet, because it's going to be worth it. If I can train this guy up and get him to a spot where he's delivering, this book's going to sing, and if it's singing, man, it does have a better chance of performing even better.” Sometimes, books just do great, and you’re like, “I don't know why that happened,” and sometimes you think it's going to do great, and it doesn't, but it's always fun.

I always enjoy it. I feel putting the talent together on books is really scratching the creative itch, for me. Trying to put that puzzle together, and trying to make sure that the pieces all fit really well, and that the end result of all those pieces together produces this beautiful picture, is such a satisfying thing to do. So, I'm having a good time with this new project. It is a challenge, just because of the relatively unknown nature of the property, but we've got some fantastic people attached to it, and I'm very excited to get working on it.

Anyway, John, that was just my first question of three questions I had for you. I didn't know we were going to go that long. This one probably won't take as long. So, a couple weeks ago—I don't think we mentioned it on the show, but I was thinking about it—I saw Heritage Auction posted a very famous Batman cover, drawn by Jock. It’s from Detective Comics #880, I think—something that. I think it was a Detective Comics book. It was published around 2011. So, not even 15 years old. This cover is not even 15 years old.

[23:33] John: But it's the bats one, right?

[23:34] David: Yeah, it's the Joker being rendered in bats. It's a pretty famous cover. If you just Google Jock Batman cover, the first image that'll come up is that. It's the face of the Joker, and it's done in a way that it looks it's bats flying at you, but they form the illusion of the Joker's face in the bats. What a great piece that is. I mean, it's stunningly good. So imaginative and well conceived, and Jock's a great artist. So, it's no surprise that he came up with something that, but that cover, that's not even 15-years-old, John, sold at auction for $288,000. Guess how much Jock got of that.

[24:20] John: Probably not a whole lot.

[24:22] David: Zero, because he had sold it right after he did it, to somebody. Probably got a decent chunk, maybe $5/6/7,000 for it, maybe—I'm guessing. I'm guessing a Batman cover probably goes for around that, maybe less, in 2011. That particular investment turned into a $288,000 return in 14 years. What is your spin on all of that? How does that make you feel, when you hear that, and what do we do with that, as an industry?

[24:57] John: I mean, the thing I've always thought about that is—that is indicative of a lot of people around our age that grew up with comics in the 80s, that were not encouraged to give up comics, that went on to become Damon Lindelof, or went on to become rich people. Nobody was doing that in the 1970s. I don't know. I'm sure there were a few people that were huge comic book art collectors in the 1970s that were rich, but not a significant number, and now there is a very significant number, and that stuff also feeds on itself. Then other people that don't really have any interest in the stuff start seeing the stuff as good investments. I think it's absurd, and it's—I don't know. My uncle, my father-in-law's brother, saw him—

[25:47] David: Uncle-in-law, I guess.

[25:49] John: He was like, “I was at this Indian Casino, and you're not going to believe what they had as a big prize in this thing. It was a copy of the first Superman. You're not going to believe how much it is,” and I’m like, “I mean, I don't know. Double-digit millions,” and he was like, “they said it's worth $400,000, or something”—something that's way less than Action Comics #1 goes for, but it was a 3.0 slabbed Action Comics #1. I mean, he was correct about what it was, and he was correct about the value, but I don't think there are any 9s. I don't know what the highest one is.

[26:24] David: There's an 8.5 out there that just auctioned in the last 12 or 18 months.

[26:28] John: And it went for double-digit millions.

[26:32] David: No, it was somewhere between 4 to 6 million.

[26:34] John: Okay, all right. Significantly more than the less-than-a-million-dollars, but when I was a kid, I very distinctly remember a copy of that selling for $30,000, and me being, “man, you can get a really good car for the amount that Action Comic goes for. That's amazing. What an amount of money,” but that is not the same relative value as it was. I would never, in a million years, pay $30,000 for a comic book. I don't know what that would do to my marriage.

[27:09] David: Yeah, don't find out.

[27:11] John: That isn't a thing that is utterly impossible to imagine, compared to spending $6 million on a comic book. Okay, at that point, it might as well be a billion. I'm no further or closer to it. It's tricky with selling the original art. That's a lot of money. Jock deserves more of that. I don't mean to say he doesn't, but people wouldn't be buying original art for investment purposes if they couldn't invest in it, and if they couldn't invest in it, you wouldn't have these prices on the stuff. I don't know. I don't spend a whole lot of time thinking about that.

[27:45] David: I don't either. It's just such a shocking amount of money for a cover that's not even 15 years old. I get it. That image is pretty iconic, but it's only in the comic book. It's not it's been used in other places, for other media. It's very much a comic-centric cover.

[28:05] John: It’s been t-shirts. It's been stickers. I mean, it’s been out in the world, for sure. It’s a cover that people who aren't in comics know what it is.

[28:14] David: Oh, okay. I honestly didn't know that. It makes sense that they use it for those things, but I see more Jack Kirby stuff in my everyday life than any other artist, basically, and I don't think I've ever seen that Jock cover on anything, and Jack Kirby’s stuff doesn't go for $288,000–stuff I've seen on t-shirts, and I think Jock’s attitude—he had an interview on, I saw a little bit, I think it was Bleeding Cool that posted it, where he was just saying, “I didn't get anything from that, but it is what it is. I sold it, and the next guy sold it for more.” His attitude, I think, is the correct attitude. I've heard Rob Liefeld say similar things, where he cheers on the fact that people get huge numbers for his art that he sold for a couple $100. I mean, famously, in the last few months, one of his Deadpool pages, I think—or maybe it was a Deadpool cover—the New Mutants #98 cover, I think, went for, almost $1M. He certainly didn't sell it for that, but he was excited and happy that it went for that price. So, I think the artist’s attitude, in general, is correct for that, but just, me, as a civilian, as non-comic book guy, it's so frustrating to see the guy who made it, the guy who created it, is not the guy who's getting the really big win from it. It's frustrating, a little bit.

So, I don't think there's anything to fix, or there's anything inherently wrong with the system, or how these people—whoever sold that piece for $288,000, good job, man. You made a great investment. You turned that around into something really meaningful for yourself, and you should be congratulated, and congratulations for that reward. Nobody's doing anything wrong. It's just so frustrating, man. Man, the comic book creative community is just always pooped on, and it’s so frustrating

[30:09] John: And I do hope that Jock was compensated for all the uses that they made of that cover.

[30:13] David: Probably not, John. Probably not.

[30:16] John: That's where I think there's a real injustice, and I'm speculating, in a general sense. I have no idea if DC was wise about it, like, “this guy made a cover that we can make into t-shirts. We ought to compensate him for that, because then he'll make another t-shirt for us.” This probably wasn't the only good Jock cover, and this might be the best Jock cover. This is a—I don't know—million-in-one idea. It's a […].

[30:44] David: It really is.

[30:45] John: And that was one that, instantly, it was. As soon as you saw that, you're like, “This is one of the best Batman covers of all time,” and I'm sure Jock, at that point, is like, “well, this is never going to get bigger than that. I’d better sell.”

[30:58] David: Right. Exactly.

[31:03] John: Even if he was maximizing his profits at selling it, it sure would have seemed like, right then was the time to go.

[31:08] David: Yeah, again, nobody's fault. Nobody did anything wrong, nobody anything stupid, even—him selling that cover, just as you say. So, anyway, I just wondered what your take was on it. It’s such a crazy amount of money for a piece of art that's not even that old. That's the thing that was really shocking, to me. I don't think there's any other piece, that's not even 15 years old, that's going for something like that. There's no way. It's got to be the most expensive modern, post-2010 piece of original art. That's got to be a record-breaker, easily. I'm sure there's stuff from the 90s, and 30 years ago, that's probably commanding that. I'm sure some of the Jim Lee stuff has commanded that. Well, I just talked about Rob Liefeld’s piece. That's a little over 30 years old. My last thing, John, is something that I know you wanted to talk about. The Superman movie.

[32:01] John: Oh, yeah.

[32:02] David: John, you said you saw it today.

[32:04] John: I did see it. Literally, got home, I dropped my daughter off at camp, went to the movie theater, did some work on my phone, if John Nee, or who are people that I owe things to, Angel Hernández, or Eduardo Alpuente are listening to this right now. I'm just kidding. I went to the movie theater and watched the movie, came back, and then had time to shower, and get on the call, and even that was only because you happened to be late, otherwise you could probably smell me from there.

[32:33] David: So, your hair is just wet. I thought it was just extra greasy today.

[32:36] John: No, it is wet.

[32:39] David: So, what did you think?

[32:40] John: I loved it. I enjoyed every minute of that movie. I thought it was great. I was really hoping it was going to be good, and I was looking forward to it, and it was much better than I thought it was going to be. Excellently put together. There are a zillion characters in there, but they all do something, and they all have a thing to contribute to the overall story, and it isn't just about, “I bet Hawkgirl will be cool the next time we see her.” It was, “here's what Hawkgirl does here. Okay. That's cool. That's an interesting role.”

[33:08] David: Oh, that's cool.

[33:09] John: Yeah, I didn't expect to come out of it being like, “Guy Gardner was fantastic.” Man, they nailed every facet of Guy Gardner in this thing. That's spectacular. He's a jerk, but he's a hero, and all that comes through in there. By far, the best Lois Lane movie. Lois Lane actually has a lot to do, a lot of screen time, a lot of very active stuff that's in there, and that and Krypto really formed the heart of the movie, along with Superman.

[33:39] David: Nice. I'm a little surprised to hear you have such a positive reaction to it. I know you were looking forward to it, but that sounds great. I'm excited. So, I'm going to watch it, probably, this weekend. I'm holding off till the weekend, because not all of us can just take off of work anytime they want to.

[33:54] John: My only chance to see it for a little while.

[33:57] David: One question, and I don't want you to spoil anything, for me or for the listeners, but is it what I thought? Is it the Bwa-Ha-Ha era of the of the Justice League-ish? Is that where they're leaning into things?

[34:09] John: You can 100% tell where James Gunn—when he came up reading comics. The same thing with Suicide Squad.

[34:16] David: Oh, okay.

[34:17] John: Similar to that. He was definitely, DC Comics, ‘86/’87. So, it's that Guy Gardner. They're funny, but it's Guardians of the Galaxy kind of funny, where it doesn't take away from the drama of it. It's not a straight-up comedy with those characters.

[34:32] David: Oh, okay.

[34:33] John: There's a lot of other homages to it. Musically, and some of the title sequences stuff, definitely homages the Christopher Reeve movies. There's other stuff that I won't spoil. There's many easter eggs. There's one I'm trying to figure out. Again, I don't want to spoil anything, but it's so far in the background that if you don't know what it is—it's a fun actor to see come in and just be a newscaster, or something, but a lot of times, you'll see the newscasters, it'll be GBS Broadcasting, which is the Galaxy Broadcasting System, and whatever—those kind of easter eggs, but on the other side of things—this isn't a spoiler, that at some point, it becomes important that the yellow sun fuels Superman—they set that up in the movie. If you didn't know that, somehow, about Superman, they don't expect you to do that, and they don't just say it in dialog. They reiterate it in dialog, but they set up “here's the thing that fixes Superman.” So, then later on, it's all smart stuff like that, where it knows you know what Superman is, but it isn't reliant on all of these references to other things, and all that stuff. It really does pull from—I mean, Mr. Terrific is from a much later era, and he plays a much bigger role than Guy Gardner or Hawkgirl, or some of the other characters that are in it.

[35:53] David: Visually, he looks the Geoff Johns JSA.

[35:57] John: Yeah, […] that character. It plays him maybe 30 degrees different than the way I always read the Geoff Johns character, but I don't think you're coming in and being like, “what did they do to my Mr. Terrific?”

[36:09] David: That's cool.

[36:10] John: There’ll probably be a lot more Mr. Terrific fans coming out of that movie than there were going in. He's fun, and he and Superman have a fun dynamic.

[36:17] David: That's great.

[36:18] John: I thought that Superman himself was terrific. Krypto is delightful. A very realistic take on a dog that has superpowers, without it being horrific, without turning it into Cujo.

[36:33] David: Realism in my dog superpowers is what I've always hoped for, John.

[36:37] John: He's not like Krypto in the Silver Age comics, where he has little thought bubbles, and he thinks like a human. He's a dog.

[36:49] David: All right, John. Well, that's the end of my questions, but I do have one comment for you now, which is an invitation to comment, as well. I'm very excited for Superman. I can't wait to see it, even more so now that you've given it the thumbs up—the 99% Green Tomato—How's that tomato? Rotten Tomato? Anyway. Vine ripe. Is that how they do it? But what I'm less and less excited for, which initially I was very excited for, is Fantastic Four, and here's why. I just saw a shot of the Silver Surfer. I don't know what the actress's name that's playing Silver Surfer, but I saw an image of her as the Silver Surfer. I could not have the light dimmed further in my excitement, after seeing an image of her as the Silver Surfer, and it's not that anything is wrong with it, John. I guess I'm being that guy, but man, I'm so frustrated that it's not my Silver Surfer, John, and then when I saw the image, I'm like, “it looks wrong to my eye. It's not Silver Surfer, and stop telling me it is,” and it looks like somebody got painted with silver body paint, and I'm going to go see the damn movie, I'm sure, but I'm very frustrated. I really wanted Norrin Radd, not Shalla-Bal.

[38:13] John: Yeah. Well, all right. I don't know. Actually, they had the trailer, the most recent trailer for Silver Surfer, before Superman. I actually hadn't seen that trailer. When she started talking in the theater, it was pretty cool, I thought. I was hearing the effects on the voice, and her being, “I am a herald of your doom, and a herald of Galactus,” or whatever she says. Whoa, that's pretty cool, and then, seeing the hints of Galactus that you see. How into Silver Surfer are you?

[38:46] David: I'm pretty into Silver Surfer. It's one of my all-time favorite characters. I'm sure that plays part of it, and again, I'm probably going to go see it, and other stuff that I've seen about it looks really cool. I like the choice of being this […] 60s era look and feel to things. I think that's a really interesting and fun choice, just to pull it out of a current time and drop it in this nebulous timeframe. I like that. So, the esthetic of it looks really cool. It's just—I don't know—I know it's such a small thing, but it's not a small thing, for me. It's a really big, very important thing, to me. I want Norrin Radd, and I feel like it's Death by 1,000 cuts, in a way. I'm worried that if you're not following that, then what else are you changing? I feel like I'm every other fanboy right now, but I'm not usually like this, but I am, on this one. I am firm on my desire for Norrin Radd to be the Silver Surfer, and no one else.

[39:47] John: I'm interested to see how it goes. I don't know. I'm interested in a new take on that, if there is anything. I don't think there will be. I think it's going to be just the Norrin Radd story.

[39:53] David: I think if Marvel was coming off of five more mega blockbuster hits, wildly entertaining—blah, blah, blah—maybe I would be having a different reaction, but I feel like they keep making these little changes that they think are little changes, but that are meaningful and significant for a lot of the hardcore audience that they originally were really cultivating and championing, at least, seemingly. So, I'm very trepidatious. I'm probably still going to go see it, but that latest image I just saw, I was just like, “aw, man.” I didn't quite throw up a little bit in my mouth, but it was close.

[40:30] John: I will say, the one problem that I have with it is, and I think other people have pointed this out online, that not only doesn't it look better than the Silver Surfer in the shitty Fantastic Four movie from several years ago—that I actually never saw. So, maybe it's great. I don't know—It looks fuzzier. The effect doesn't look as good as that metal effect. That comes into one of those weird things. Nobody talks about how Black Panther, the movie, had the worst CG rhinos of any Marvel movie.

[41:02] David: Yeah, you're right. I forget about that.

[41:04] John: Remember that needed about another two weeks before it came out, […]. I thoroughly enjoyed Black Panther.

[41:11] David: The rhinos are important. Well, if they had spent a couple extra weeks rendering the rhinos, it would’ve been great.

[41:16] John: But the rhinos didn't have bows in their hair. So, you know they're male rhinos. So, you're okay with it.

[41:22] David: Brutal. It's a Norrin Radd thing. I want to be real clear.

[41:28] John: I'm sorry. That was following up on a joke I made a while back. It was going to be a running gag, but then you just opened the door to that, man.

[41:38] David: I need to be honest with the audience. I'm being very judgmental.

[41:44] David: All joking aside, because I did make that joke there, there are definitely things—Silver Surfer isn’t one of them, for me—but there are things that I could see, if they changed any big part of it like, I would also have trepidation, or I wouldn't like seeing that, I’m certain.

[42:02] David: Yeah. It's just frustrating. There's a level of frustration. I shouldn't have a level of frustration around a stupid Marvel movie. I think we did a good business today, John. You have educated and informed me, in ways that I didn't think was possible. What a joy to speak with you about the business of comic books and the inherent fun attached to said medium. All right. Well, hope everybody got a little something out of that. We had something completely different prepared for today.

[42:39] John: We did. I actually gathered all this stuff together, and I have […]

[42:46] David: For the first time, I brought the actual books to make sure that I had them with me. I did a whole thing, too. Well, they'll just have to sit next to my desk until next week, when we do a thing.

[42:56] John: They were from last week, too. We did it twice.

[42:59] David: Oh, yeah. We’ve just got too much to talk about, John. We're very topical. We're very up-to-the-minute on everything that's going on. So, we’ve got to talk about the things. We’ve got to keep the public informed. All right. Well, thanks everybody for listening. We will see you again next week. Maybe we'll have Jim McCann on again, just because it seems like he's the thing that change the needle for us, John. The Jim McCann interview was very popular.

[43:22] John: Tell your friends, Jim McCann is definitely on the next episode. Don't tell Jim.

[43:26] David: Yeah. Maybe we can get Jim to do a little intro, or something, so we can just say, “Jim’s on the podcast again.”

[43:32] John: This is funny. This is much harder than actually just asking if Jim would be on again. We should find somebody else named Jim McCann. Okay, here's a fact about Jim McCann. So, Jim McCann fans, you’d better be listening. […] about Jim McCann that didn't come up on that. William Katt—You know who that is?

[43:51] David: William Katt?

[43:52] John: He played Ralph Hinkley, The Greatest American Hero on The Greatest American Hero TV show.

[43:56] David: Yes, okay.

[43:58] John: Also played a character named Jim McCann, named after Jim McCann, by Jeff Loeb, in the TV show, Heroes.

[44:09] David: Wow. How did that not come up? That seems a very important piece of information that we should have had, while Jim was on the show. So, that's what we're going to do. We're going to do a Jim McCann tidbit every single episode. This is your Jim McCann tidbit for the week of July 17.

[44:29] John: That'd be a McCann’d-something—a McCann[…]. Something that's relevant.

[44:36] David: It's getting worse. We’ve got to go. Thanks, everybody. Bye. See you next time. Like and subscribe. 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.