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] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber. With me, as always, my good friend.

[00:35] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:37] John: And that's it.

[00:38] David: That's not true, John.

[00:39] John: What? Oh, no. Surprise guest star—I guess we can upgrade to frenemy of the show, Dave Baker.

[00:45] Dave Baker: Thank you for having me.

[00:47] John: It's good to have you back.

[00:48] David: Another twist in the surprising soap-operatic tale of Dave Baker and The Corner Box. Dave, back on the show—our archenemy, now-turned-frenemy. I like it.

[01:00] Dave: I wanted to hang out with you guys. I was just touring Eastern Europe as my DJ persona, DJ Khaled Jr. I tried, but when you're in Croatia, Internet access is just so difficult.

[01:13] John: Is he licensing it the way Gallagher did?

[01:16] Dave: No, I've been legally adopted by the Khaled family.

[01:19] John: Oh, like Gallagher's brother?

[01:21] Dave: Yes, exactly.

[01:24] David: So, is your music just taking DJ Khaled's songs, and then whenever he says “DJ Khaled” at the beginning of the song, you just insert a quick “Junior”?

[01:33] Dave: Yeah, they're all just remixes of his songs, and then I say “DJ Khaled Junior.”

[01:39] John: You should actually just play his song, throw the word “Junior” in, and then rap different lyrics over his lyrics.

[01:46] Dave: Dude, add “another one.” All I need to do.

[01:50] John: You know what? That's even better than AI.

[01:52] Dave: For some people, yeah, probably.

[01:53] David: All joking aside, Dave, it’s nice to have you back on the show. Welcome.

[01:56] Dave: Thank you.

[01:57] David: John, and I are always happy to have you here. We were talking about the fact, on the last episode, that you are on our text chain talking about the show. For whatever reason, that has become the chain where we talk about the text, and you're just on it. Chase was on the show last week. He's equating it to being on the family string, where you’re just getting all these random texts that you don't really want to get, but somehow, you've been brought in.

[02:25] Dave: Frankly, I find it very charming. I love seeing whatever weird 70s garbage you're reading, and John politely being like, “wow, that looks great. It […] that down,” and then obviously, never doing it.

[02:37] David: Dave’s getting really comfortable on his way back to The Corner Box. Real comfortable.

[02:41] Dave: I like that sh!t too, dude. I'm the one defending you against John. I'm like, “this weird Wally Wood thing looks cool. This West Coast Avengers issue I'd never heard of looks interesting. I, too, will try and track it down.”

[02:57] David: I was listening to the Rob Liefeld podcast, which I often do, because—massive fan. He was mentioning, just recently, the Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2, which is the second part of a Thanos and Warlock story, and I didn't realize that it started in Avengers Annual #7, and it finished in Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2, and I never actually put that together. So, this morning, I was on a chase to see if I could find a good copy of Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2. 1977, baby. Peak.

[03:32] Dave: Yeah, please see my previous statement about 70s garbage. Maybe you and I just talked about this at dinner that one time, but didn't we talk about Atlas, for a while. I feel like there was a whole thing where we were talking about all those Atlas publications.

[03:47] David: Yeah, I don’t remember that. […].

[03:49] Dave: It was a couple years ago, at this point. It was around the time all of the movie deal, where Akiva Goldsman was going to adapt all the Atlas books into a shared universe, and everyone was like, “that’s never happening.”

[04:00] David: I vaguely remember something like that. You know what did happen, though? The Nacelleverse happened. We've already talked about that ad nauseum, at this point. 

[04:10] Dave: I respect the ingenuity. I mean, I haven't personally read any of those books, but I'm excited that they're trying to do something.

[04:17] David: Yeah, I've read them, and you don't need to.

[04:20] Dave: Okay, fair enough.

[04:21] David: In 15 years, they'll be way more interesting, because it will be this weird time capsule of “what the heck were they thinking?

[04:27] Dave: What is it again? It's Sectaurs, Biker Mice from Mars, C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa.

[04:34] David: Power Lords.

[04:35] Dave: Oh, Power Lords. Right.

[04:37] David: The Great Garloo.

[04:38] John: You see something you recognize, and you almost are like, “oh, yeah, I’ve got to get that one. Wait a minute! No, I don't know what that is.” My whole knowledge of The Great Garloo is me not knowing what The Great Garloo is.

[04:49] Dave: I'm not going to lie, I have a soft spot for C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa. That show was not good, but the toys were fun, and I really love westerns and singing cowboys, in general. So, the idea that someone in the 90s was like, “you know what children want? More singing cowboys” is really interesting to me. I have not read any of those books. Maybe they're great. I don't know.

[05:15] David: I don't know if the C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa stuff is out yet. Is it?

[05:18] Dave: Oh, I have no idea.

[05:19] David: I don't think that one’s come out yet. I think that might be Year 2 of their big rollout plan.

[05:27] John: “Things are mooving up” is going to be their Year 2 slogan.

[05:32] David: All right, thanks, everybody. Sorry to see you go.

[05:38] John: I'm trying to help.

[05:39] David: Since we're reminiscing, I did want to reminisce about one more thing, John. I was listening to one of our episodes. I don't remember which one it was.

[05:45] John: Can you do that?

[05:49] David: It must be very hard, John, because there's only four people that have been able to figure out how to do it, and I was listening back on one of our episodes. I was talking about the marketing for Sugar Bomb, which is the new horny superhero book that I'm making, and I felt like I was being a little negative, because I was saying, “we were struggling a little bit. The launch of the marketing went super great, and then it fell off a cliff,” and I wanted to follow up with that to say that, because at the time, I was saying, “it’s fine. I'm used to that. It's Facebook marketing. You change stuff, and tweak stuff, and nothing’s set in stone. So, you can keep adjusting,” and over the last two weeks, we've just been making tiny little adjust, and it's crazy how just the smallest adjustments will completely transform a marketing campaign. We changed one image, we changed some headline language, and changed one little thing on the backend--and we have this VIP program, and it's only $1, and you get all kinds of cool stuff with it. Way more than $1’s worth of stuff, but it's just a way to get people excited about the book—we went from getting just a few leads in a week, to literally 6 times as many leads in a week. It exploded, and all we did was make some minor tweaks.

So, I wanted to call out the fact that everything's fine, we're doing great, and it was exactly what I thought it was going to be—just marketing tweaks, but it made me think about marketing, in general, and how important marketing is, for comic book, in particular. Man, if you're an indie creator, or even Marvel and DC, whoever you are—As much time as you put into the creation of the comic book, you almost have to put more time into the selling of that book, and if you're not willing to do that, maybe self-publishing is not for you, because you really have to spend time, energy, and effort to do that, and money to do it right, and get people's attention, in 2025. It's not an easy thing to do.

[07:52] Dave: Even when you are working with a publisher, they're not doing much. You, the individual, are the one that is moving the needle, 9 times out of 10.

[08:00] David: Comic book publishers still think it's 2001. The marketing that is done is, “well, I put together a press kit and sent it to all the online sites. I don't know what else to do,” and that's the end of the marketing, and that's not to denigrate the fine people working in the marketing departments of these different publishers, because I know that their budgets are nonexistent, if there's anything, but it is a damn tragedy that we're in 2025, and I'm not force-fed Marvel Facebook ads every 5 seconds of my existence. How is that not happening? It's 2025, people. The comic shops can't do it. You have to do it. These big publishers need to do it, and I'm just saying “Marvel,” but all the way down. All the Top 10 publishers should be doing completely different marketing styles than what we're seeing, and we're not seeing anything, is what we're not seeing. So, anyway, I'll get off my soapbox. I just wanted to follow up on that little thing, and John, I know you were maybe a little worried about how things are going, and I'm here to tell you that everything's great.

[09:10] John: I was afraid it was going to go tits up. I'm disappointed in myself […].

[09:15] David: Man, that's the second […].

[09:17] Dave: I could see your soul dying as you're like, “I've got to do this.”

[09:22] John: That is good. That is fascinating, and there's got to be a middle ground between not marketing and destroying the company that you're at, and I think that's a tough balance to find.

[09:37] David: Based on our experiences, John?

[09:39] John: Oh, I didn't necessarily mean my experience. In a legal sense, that's not necessarily what I was talking about.

[09:51] David: All right, that's probably too inside […], but savvy listeners are going to be able to put that together. Dave’s brain is smoking. He wants to figure this out so bad.

[10:02] Dave: Oh, I don't need to figure it out. I know. I'm just trying to […] myself, as well.

[10:05] John: Literally everything in the world, this is the thing you picked to do right now, Dave, is to be here.

[10:11] Dave: That's how much I love you guys.

[10:13] John: Sorry. Yeah. Well, thank you.

[10:16] David: That's the only thing I needed to get off my chest, John. I'm off my soapbox early this episode. We’ve got other important things to talk about, though.

[10:26] John: I had a weird thing I wanted to throw out. Usually, I'll be reading a book, an actual book that's printed, and I'll be listening to an audio book, at the same time—not literally at the same time. During the same day, of one of each. I don't usually do two audio books or two printed books, and read some comics, in between. What's happened recently is, random circumstances got me reading these two books that both tell a story out-of-order, in an attempt to mirror the experiences of the main character’s perceptions of reality, and the weird thing about it is, both of them have unusual connections to comics, and one of them really got me thinking about stuff. So, one of them is a book called The Shockwave Rider, by John Brunner, that came out in 1975, and it's a new wave science fiction book, usually listed as a proto-cyberpunk book. It's definitely a bridge one there. The comic connection there, you might know, or you'll remember, I think, when I say it--the Shockwave Rider is the shipping Nextwave, and clearly, this is a book Warren Ellis read very much, and that's who he’s naming it for. The other one is the 2003 Audrey Niffenegger book, The Time Traveler's Wife, which is about a guy displaced in time. It got made into a TV show and a movie. Do you guys know the connection that has with comics?

[11:43] Dave: Eric Bana played The Hulk? Isn't he in the movie?

[11:47] John: No. Maybe. No, it's about the book itself.

[11:49] Dave: Oh, okay, no.

[11:50] John: That’s a good one, though. Audrey Niffenegger is married to Eddie Campbell. Not only is she married to Eddie Campbell--this isn't the situation where the guy that co-created From Hell married the lady that created The Time Traveler's wife. She's Alec [MacGarry’s] wife. She's the woman that Eddie Campbell dates throughout all of the Alec comics that are autobiographical, almost all of which came out before she wrote her first book, the Time Traveler's Wife, which became a huge phenomenon, and sold way more copies than From Hell ever will. That's wild. I was trying to think of a time where you had somebody that you knew of as a fictional character in something, who then went on to do something really big, and there's probably some of the people the Hemingway analog was hanging out with in The Sun Also Rises, or that kind of stuff. You could maybe think of Judd Winnick, but Judd Winnick was on the real world because he was making comics, and he made comics based on his experiences in the real world, and that all seems too tied-together to really be the same thing, but I don't know. I just found it fascinating. It was a character that you would have known for decades, almost.

[12:56] David: I can't think of another instance like that. Certainly, the opposite is true. You just named one, Judd Winnick, but that is fascinating. That is cool. So, I guess that's why Eddie Campbell doesn't do much work anymore. His wife […].

[13:13] Dave: […] weird academia baseball comics. He puts out books. They're just books that a civilian probably is not particularly interested in.

[13:23] David: Oh, okay.

[13:24] John: Yeah, he had a book that Fantagraphics just put out. I can't remember the name of it. The subtitle was [The First Great Woman Cartoonist].

[13:33] Dave: He had that one, and then he had a book that he did maybe two or five years ago that was all about turn-of-the-century sports illustration and sports comics, and he went to all these weird, dingy libraries all across the US, and was like, “I need all the paper strips about the Cubs,” and he was like, “I'm doing a book.” I don't know why he has an American accent in this impersonation.

[14:00] David: It's good. I'm not going to question it. I like it. So, Eddie Campbell's just out there doing whatever the hell he wants, pulling a Travis Charest. Although, Travis doesn't really do anything.

[14:10] Dave: I think Travis is living the good life. Him and what's-his-face? Spider-verse, Legion of Super-Heroes. What the hell is that artist’s name?

[14:17] David: Brian Michael Bendis?

[14:19] Dave: No. He illustrated the Spider-verse crossover that Dan Slott wrote. He's amazing. The Magic Order. He's a huge superstar. Olivier Coipel.

[14:37] John: Oh, Coipel.

[14:38] Dave: Yeah. He is married to a French hotelier, or something, a person who runs or owns multiple hotels. So, their whole thing is, they just travel across Europe and drink wine, and live in these amazing hotels.

[14:55] David: Yeah, man. That's not bad. It's too bad, though, because Olivier Coipel is pretty freaking good, man. Travis, too. I wish those guys were putting out more content, but you can't really blame them, I guess. If they've got the ability to retire, why not?

[15:13] Dave: Yeah, they've done the thing.

[15:15] David: You know who I wish would come back? Stephen Platt. Who's he married to? I don't see him doing anything.

[15:21] Dave: Stephen Platt is a director now. He does a lot of stuff with Marvel. He's a superhero movie animatic builder. He transitioned into doing all of the early-era MCU movies. All of the animation, the digital storyboards that they would do to get directors’ approvals for the action scenes—he did all those. That's what he was doing.

[15:43] David: Interesting.

[15:45] John: I did the Art of Iron Man 2 book. There's one piece of illustration that was Stephen Platt. I don't think people at Marvel Comics knew that that's where he'd gone. They were definitely trying to get him. He was one of the white whales of people that everybody wanted back, but he's doing a cover of something. He's doing a Moon Knight cover.

[16:02] David: I did see a cover or two from him recently.

[16:04] Dave: I'm sure he's had a big second surge of awareness after all of the Kayfabe attention. His work was heavily featured in a lot of their episodes, when they were posting.

[16:16] David: Oh, really? You know who else was coming out of that? I mean, Stephen Platt wasn’t 100% out of Extreme Studios, but pretty much. Andy Park also, I think, became a big-time director.

[16:28] Dave: Yeah, he's one of the heads of the concept stuff for Marvel. It's him, Ryan Meinerding, and one other guy who I can't think of right now.

[16:36] David: It's crazy, because you look at early work of Jeff Matsuda, Andy Parks, and I mean, they're good, they're interesting, but you don't think they're going to become the dudes that they become, but they sure do, man. That Extreme Studios, man, that place was loaded with talent. There were so many great people coming out of that, in the comic book industry, and outside the comic book industry, still. I didn't know Stephen Platt was doing that, but it tracks.

[16:58] Dave: I mean, all those Image silos had their little cadre of people where you're like, “oh, that guy was there?” Even just people working in the mailroom, but Travis Charest is a perfect example, because his early work is just the hackiest Jim Lee clone.

[17:14] David: Darkstars. I'm all about it.

[17:16] Dave: I mean, me too, but it's hideous.

[17:18] David: It's not where he ends up.

[17:19] Dave: No, totally, and I mean, it's the same for Lee Bermejo. A lot of those dudes, it's like they got interested in art through comics, and then with talking to other artists, realized, “I’ve got to look at stuff that's not just George Perez, or whatever,” and then they went to a museum, and were like, “oh, wow.”

[17:42] David: “What is this?” I have to give you some flowers, John, and I don't give you enough flowers on the show. I wanted to give you a little flowers, because I was listening to one of our podcasts—one of the recent ones, and I have to say, I threw a question at you the other day, but you hadn't heard the question before. You did a 20-minute jam on my question, and it was the first time, and it was intelligent, it was insightful, it was interesting, and you just did that completely off-the-cuff, man, and I was like, “this is why I let John Barber stay on the show.”

[18:17] John: Hey, I appreciate it.

[18:21] David: No, it was really good.

[18:22] Dave: That's the real reason that David keeps me on the f*cking group thread with you guys, is because, any moment, he's going to push you out, and be like, “Dave, you’ve got to do the show with me now.”

[18:36] David: I mean, I would have done that already, but you became the enemy of the show. So, I couldn't. Foiled all my plans.

[18:44] Dave: But I'm back, baby. This is the babyface era again, right?

[18:47] David: It's interesting, this new storyline, that it follows exactly the John Cena storyline, almost exactly.

[18:53] Dave: Totally. We share so much commonality, as people.

[18:59] John: You guys have the same trainer, right?

[19:00] Dave: We do, yes. Esteban. He's amazing, dude.

[19:06] John: That's what I heard.

[19:08] David: Is John doing your workouts as well as his?

[19:13] Dave: No. Esteban is the trainer that helps John Cena, but he works out the back of his head, where he's losing all of his hair, and then for me, he works out my frail-ass noodle arms, to try and make me look like not a walking corpse of a Victorian boy trapped in an iron lung. So, it's really great what he does for us.

[19:37] John: Unsung heroes of comics.

[19:39] Dave: Yeah, pretty much. I've started to wear those giant oversized Jean shorts, like he used to, as well.

[19:49] David: If I saw you in that, I might not survive the ensuing laughter.

[19:54] Dave: Look, I’m nothing if not a clown for the pleasure of those around me, but the thing you're overlooking here is that you also might sh!t yourself to death, because you'd be so scared of my menacing and intimidating physical power. Yeah, I have that effect on men, women, and dogs under 6lbs.

[20:21] David: John, we were going to talk About some stuff today.

[20:23] John: Yeah.

[20:24] David: We discovered two things, John. One, we haven't done a Jim McCann bit, by the way. We completely forgot that we were supposed to be talking about Jim McCann every episode, and two, talking about movies is something that people want to hear us do.

[20:41] John: Oh, really?

[20:42] David: Yeah. We got 3 or 4 more downloads than normal on our movie discussion about Superman. Maybe we can save the Jim McCann bits for the end, just to keep people listening all the way to the end, because I think we figured out, last time, that's how we monetize this wonderful podcast that we're trying to do. Anyway. Fantastic Four, John. Did you see it?

[21:02] John: I did, yeah.

[21:03] David: You did? Dave, did you see it?

[21:04] Dave: I did.

[21:05] David: Everybody’s seen it. I saw it in one of those fancy movie theaters where they serve you food and drinks. I had a pizza, and I had some braised broccoli, a gin and tonic. It was nice.

[21:16] John: I think it's a hard one to not compare it to Superman, in that they came out very close together, they have some tonal similarities, everybody's drawing them together. It's also big comebacks for Marvel and DC, or big hopes at comebacks. My 10,000-ft view on it was that, where Superman seemed like a series of scenes arranged in an intentional order, in an attempt to convey an idea or feeling to an audience, Fantastic Four seemed like it was cobbled together from a different movie, where The Thing had a story arc, and presumably, Johnny Storm was interesting.

[21:54] David: Ouch. Shots fired, right out of the gate.

[21:59] John: I liked it. I had a good time watching it. I don't mean to say that I didn't enjoy it. Definitely, some things didn't add up, for me, and I had more problems with it coming out, and I didn't wholeheartedly love it, the way I loved Superman.

[22:11] David: The more I think about it, the slightly less that I like it, but I did enjoy it. It's unfair to compare it to Superman, because they're very different movies, I think, but I'll say this about Fantastic Four, overall. I thought it was a fine story. It is probably one of the better Marvel movies I've seen in a while. I think it was probably better than Thunderbolts, which I thought was pretty good. Definitely, better than the Captain America movie. So, this year, it's probably the best Marvel movie of the year, so far.

[22:40] John: I thought, “man, I've been seeing a lot of Marvel movies,” and I have not seen all of those. All right. Sorry, go ahead.

[22:47] David: It seemed like they spent a little more money on the special effects this time. The special effects looked much more finished and detailed than I think I've seen in the last couple of movies, which was nice to see. So, there's going to be spoilers, everybody. Spoilers. When the Fantastic Four first fly off to see Galactus, and they go to his home, or his ship, the level of detail on Galactus’ ship, and on Galactus himself, was really nice. So, I was like, “okay, that's cool.” They make him feel like he's as big as he looks, because of all the extra little bits and pieces, and bobs, and that was what I was thinking, and after that, I was like, “I wonder if they used AI to generate a bunch of that stuff,” because it had that weird noodly effect, but it's just noodly for noodle sake. The hose doesn't necessarily attach to something for a purpose. It's just a hose that attaches to nothing, and I don't know if that's actually true. I didn't notice it as I was watching it, but after the fact, it felt like the sort of art that AI has been generating, where it's just a lot of stuff thrown, without a lot of thought being put behind why this stuff is being thrown at. I don't know if that's true or not. It's just a weird thought that came to me after the fact, but Galactus was pretty cool, overall.

My only complaint about his design was that the face was a little off, but I don't know. Maybe that's what that actor looked, but overall, the aesthetic of the movie, because I'm always all about the visuals, I thought it was really good. It’s got that nice late-50s/early-60s appeal to it, and it looked really cool, and I thought The Thing’s the best version of The Thing since Roger Corman's Fantastic Four.

[24:35] John: John Carpenter.

[24:36] David: I feel like John Carpenter is—Yeah, okay, as long as we're not saying it's better than John Carpenter, then I’m okay.

[24:43] John: […] the video game […] the sequel is better. I don't remember.

[24:49] David: That would have been great if Snake Plissken showed up to battle The Thing in that movie.

[24:57] John: If the next Avengers movie makes less than a billion dollars, we're getting sh!t like that.

[25:04] David: Okay, well, buckle up buttercup, because that's not happening. I guarantee it. If Superman can't make a billion, I don't know what's going to make a billion in superhero movies. So, visually, I thought it was actually well executed. What did you think, Dave? What was your initial impressions?

[25:24] Dave: I think I agree with both of you guys, in terms of, I liked aspects of it a lot. It felt like a movie that was 2.5 hours, cut down to an hour and a half. Even just the rhythm in scenes, it felt like they were chopping people off mid-sentence, sometimes. For me, it's the best Fantastic Four movie that's been made, but I don't know that it's the perfect Fantastic Four movie. It's just the best one, because look what you're comparing it to, but I really enjoyed the aesthetics of it. I loved the retro-futurist design aesthetics that David was talking about, and honestly, the whole movie, to me, is just that scene where Reed and Sue are arguing, and Reed says, “I have to do these things. That's who I am,” and Sue looks at him, and says, “and sometimes who you are hurts me.” You earned my money right there. That moment was so perfect and everything I love about the serialized soap opera of this stupid f*cking family of radioactive weirdos. I thought that was fantastic, and yeah, there's stuff in the movie that didn't work as well, for me, but that's not what I left remembering. I'd left remembering the, “and sometimes who you are hurts me.”

[26:39] David: That was a good moment.

[26:40] John: The thing that I thought was really weird about it, though, is that even in the last three pretty-terrible Fantastic Four movies, Johnny Storm was always great, and the actor playing him went on to become a superstar, and this is the one where I'm like, “Johnny didn't do anything.” Reed had so much depth to him, and Pedro Pascal was, I thought, fantastic as Reed. I don't know. Reed was really boring in the other movies, or terrible in Josh Trank one.

[27:07] David: To be really clear, before we move any further, the best Fantastic Four movie is Incredibles. That's the best Fantastic Four movie, but I do think that the amount of agency that Invisible Woman gets in this movie was pretty interesting. It was an interesting spin. If Doctor Doom's not going to be in the movie, then not having Reed center-stage is a really good idea, because anytime Doctor Doom's in the movie, Reed's going to be in the center stage, because it's their conflict. So, of course, Reed's going to be the focus point. So, having Sue Storm be the focus point for this particular storyline, I thought, was pretty interesting, but they really gave her a lot to do, and they didn't really give to anybody else much of anything to do, I thought.

[27:54] Dave: You can feel there was a notes-pass where someone was like, “this story is too Reed and Sue-centric. We have to give Johnny and Ben stuff to do,” but the stuff that Johnny gets to do feels wildly out of character. He codes and learns an alien language, and then sets a booby-trap for the Surfer, where there's giant 50-ft-tall monitors broadcasting a custom message in her home language.

[28:23] David: AI can do anything these days, Dave. I wasn't really buying that, either. The internal movie logic, though, it was consistent. Right out of the gate, they establish that Johnny is a bit of a brain.

[28:36] John: They tell you that. That's one of the things that bothered me about it. There’s that whole info-dump. Why didn't they have them actually do something instead of showing us a TV show about them doing something?

[28:46] Dave: And the answer is “because they did.” All of that stuff was deleted scenes that they had, and then the movie took too long, and they were like, “f*ck it. Make a montage,” and then also, Mark Gatiss, the f*cking Sherlock/Doctor Who/Dracula screenwriter is that weird host of the 60s talk show. It is so weird. What is he doing here?

[29:12] David: It was throwing me off for a minute. For a second, I thought it was Sean Penn. I was like, “What is Sean Penn doing in this movie?”

[29:17] Dave: Super weird.

[29:18] David: Who's the actor that plays the Mole Man? He's in Cobra Kai. The character has a similar feel as the character in Cobra Kai. I love that guy. He's really good, and I thought he did a great job as Mole Man, and that whole bit where he's like, “No, I want Reed to ask me.”

[29:33] Dave: Butter me up.

[29:35] David: Really, I love the pettiness.

[29:39] John: That didn't really work, for me. I thought they would […] him as though he was going to be this quirky, interesting guy, and everybody was reacting to him that way, but I just didn't get that feel from him, at all. He felt like Ryan Reynolds in If, where he plays a Willy Wonka-type quirky guy, except he's not quirky. He's just Ryan Reynolds from the cellphone commercials. This is supposed to be a weird, “can you believe that guy?” But it was just—I don't know. It just seemed all right. I don't know. The other thing I want to at least bring up—all of Sue’s stuff was about her either being a mom or somebody wanting to sleep with her. Her big speeches to the UN, or everybody out in the audience there, are about her being a mom. I mean, that's Mole Man's motivation for wanting to do anything she says. They don't explain it in the movie, but that's the backstory of Mole Man.

[30:28] Dave: I mean, look, I agree that a lot of it is that, but would you say everything is that? She is the one who founds the Future Foundation. She's the one that brokers the treaty with Subterranea, and her […] is communication, not that she's a mother.

[30:43] John: The Subterranea thing is directly related to Mole Man doing that. The other thing is just the thing they told us she did.

[30:48] Dave: Communicating throughout the whole movie with everybody, to the degree that the scene I was just talking about, where she's like, “and who you are hurts me” is her finding this emotional bridge to communicate with Reed. Everything about her is communication, not being a mother, but here's the problem. The story is about having a child. So, the ways that she’s communicating usually involve a child. Therefore, it has this motherhood architecture under it. It is a subtle difference, but it's a f*cking Marvel movie. So, they're not going to handle it all that well. You are right, but also, I think--

[31:28] John: You make sense.

[31:29] Dave: It's slightly different, but also, it is the same thing.

[31:32] David: I think you explained it well, Dave. That's how I would say it. That's how I would have said it. A little bit of a difference there, because she does go before the UN, she does create the Foundation, which I actually thought was interesting—just the fact that they threw out the idea of the concept of the first Foundation, which is a hardcore Jonathan Hickman thing, and through that, they broker that deal with the Mole Man. So, the Mole Man’s willing to listen to Sue Storm, because of the deal she helped broker to essentially save Subterranea, not because he's hot for her. That’s how I took it. Also, he's hot for her.

[32:09] Dave: He's hot for her. So, that's what I'm saying. The Marvel jokiness and poppiness of the universe, they have to give characters these big, silly ideas that also sometimes undercut the more nuanced thing that they're trying to find an equilibrium.

[32:29] David: So, this is first appearance of Silver Surfer and Galactus, in the movie format. So, I went back and read Fantastic Four Issues #48-50.

[32:38] John: I came home and did that, exactly.

[32:40] David: Same. So, that's the original. For our non-comic historians out there, the Fantastic Four #48/49/50 are the original appearance of Silver Surfer and Galactus. Man, I forgot about Galactus being in that god-awful Christmas green and red when he first shows up.

[33:04] Dave: Oh, hey. I didn't see you there.

[33:07] David: John just busted out an 18-by-24-inch artist edition of Fantastic Four. Of course, you have that.

[33:13] John: Straight-up regular Marvel coloring.

[33:15] David: Oh, it's just the comic, oversized?

[33:19] Dave: And look how terrible those digital recolors are. Jesus.

[33:24] David: No, that's fine. Do they keep him in the Christmas costume in issue #48?

[33:30] John: Yeah.

[33:31] David: Fantastic. Look at that. Look at that giant G on his chest. So, when Galactus first appears in the comic books, he's all red, with green highlights, and green accents, and there's a giant G on his chest. They pulled that back really quick. In the very next issue, it’s completely dialed back and totally different. Thank goodness, but anyway, it doesn't follow the original storyline, hardly at all, because I was like, “what are the comparisons?” And man, there's not really much comparison, at all. It’s not really the same story. I was thinking maybe you could draw some conclusions, like, “they got this from this,” and it's not really that, at all. Alicia Masters isn't anywhere. 

[34:18] John: Which is weird because Natasha Lyonne is, in a character that is not defined, in any way, and doesn't do anything, and in a sub-plot that goes absolutely nowhere.

[34:27] David: I'm starting to think that you didn't like this movie, John. You said you liked it, but I feel like that might’ve been a lie.

[34:32] John: The biggest thing that bothered me was that, when I saw Superman, I was like, “man, I can't believe Hawk Girl was so integral to the story that was being told there,” and in a movie called Fantastic Four, two of them are not integral to the story, in any meaningful way. Maybe you could argue that they needed Johnny for something, but the thing I love the most about it, and this is exactly what you were talking about—there being a different story, though—I think the idea of Galactus needing Franklin Richards to replace Galactus is a great Fantastic Four story. That’s a great idea. I don't know if it's been in a comic already, but I just thought it was terrific, because in the comics, Franklin eventually has these incredible powers. He creates the Heroes Reborn Universe, notably, for David. Sorry—for both of us. I'm just kidding. I thought all that added up really nice, in a general Fantastic Four sense, which is something you don't usually see in movies. I don't think Superman had that. I mean, the plot of Superman is the same as the Superman VS Batman. It was just handled better. It's just a generic Superman story. Lex Luthor does something to get at Superman, and that's pretty much how all his movies are. They're about the greatest hits. That doesn't usually bother me, but it's a really cool idea to have this as a great Fantastic Four tale.

[35:54] David: It was definitely the biggest swing in the movie, in terms of changing basic core concept stuff. That was a big swing. It really does play into the theme of family, especially when the whole concept of, “do we give up our child for the good of all of humanity?” and Sue Storm’s response to that being, “No, we don't quit. We're going to figure this out. We're not sacrificing my kid. We're not sacrificing anyone. We're going to figure this out,” which was cool, interesting, fun. I liked that. When I was looking at the comic books, though, just to get back to them really quick, one of the things that you get in the comic book version of things, that I don't think fully played across, and it should have, was Alicia Masters imbues the Silver Surfer with humanity once again, reminds Silver Surfer of his humanity. I thought that was a really important part of that whole storyline. That is a very important part of Silver Surfer, and of Galactus, and their relationship, because Silver Surfer chooses his humanity over his service to Galactus, and Galactus punishes him by binding him to Earth, from that time on. We didn't get that piece in the movie. So, I think what the movie was trying to do was using Johnny Storm as the analog for that, but I didn't feel like we got that moment of Johnny Storm reminding the Silver Surfer, Shalla-Bal, of her humanity. I don't feel like we fully got that moment. I know the language thing, and the translation thing was, I think, supposed to be that piece. It didn't come across the same way. It was more intimate in the comic book, which is a weird thing to say. It feels like the more intimate version of that would have been the movie version, and we didn't get that, and I was a little disappointed there. That was the only throughline that I thought maybe should have really come through, and it wasn't fully realized in the movie, and I was a little disappointed in that.

[37:57] John: I don't think that's fully realized in the comic, either. I mean, I love those issues, joking aside about the flaws and reproduction being on there, and this book is too heavy and unwieldy, this giant thing I have. Man, that is a cool way to read that story, because everything is just so big, and the Kirby stuff’s so big. There's this cosmic grandeur to it, but that really does happen really quick. Silver Surfer’s going around, destroying worlds, shows up on Earth, meets one person who's like, “hey, there's something to humanity.”

[38:27] David: Yeah, “don't be a d!ck.”

[38:30] John: But I totally agree with you. I think that that would be something that you could really spin out into a wider story. Here's the thing that absolutely didn't happen, but you talking about how much you liked Norrin Radd, the Silver Surfer, had me thinking about this, and imagining, what if Silver Surfer being a woman was a postproduction thing? Because they could do that. They could have just done all of that after the movie was filmed. Then, Johnny has this huge story arc, where he claims, without evidence, that he's a real ladies man, and then he falls in love with the neutered Silver dude when he shows up, and that part of his humanity awakens Norrin Radd’s humanity. That would have been a story arc for Johnny.

[39:11] David: Yeah, I don't think it would have to go that far. I think it could just be a bromance, without causing controversy, or whatever, because everyone's always so upset about every goddamn thing.

[39:24] John: If it had been, we see him going out there and not having emotional connections with the people he's with, but we only see him having emotional connections with the people he's with, because he's only with Reed, Sue, Johnny, and HERBIE, and he clearly loves them all. They're really well-adjusted. They get along real well. I did like the Silver Surfer in this, and one of the things that I really loved was that they didn't go into “it's a guy that has a flat board that he stands on, and it looks like a surfboard.” She is surfing, and I love that. That is the cool leaning into the goofy.

[40:04] Dave: 100%.

[40:05] John: One of the silliest things in the Marvel Universe.

[40:08] Dave: But it looks awesome, though. When she's surfing the f*cking debris outside of the black hole, or when they're in the faster-than-light warp bubbles, and she's doing this thing, and willing herself to stay, that might be my favorite shot in the movie, where Johhny’s just fired the laser thing […] into the shuttle, or whatever, and it's looping around, and there's that one super-quick shot, where it's just a reaction of her grimacing and willing herself to stay stationary on the edge of the warp bubble. Amazing.

[40:43] John: That's a great sequence. I love that, and that has my favorite moment in the movie, when Sue’s having a baby, and the Silver Surfer is coming after them, and she says, “Johnny, kill her.” That's the part where I'm like, “Yeah, that's exactly Sue Storm, mother,” Like any parent, “they’re coming after my baby that I'm about to have.”

[41:05] David: That was a great scene. I wish we had a little bit more of that. It did feel a little weirdly light on the action. It did feel like they yadda-yadda’d some action that they could have shown. It was a little frustrating.

[41:20] John: Friend of the show, Mason, keeps rightly going on about, they put on headsets and took all the calls. That was the best use of the Fantastic Four's time was to be the ones answering the phone?

[41:31] Dave: Yeah.

[41:32] David: Yeah.

[41:34] Dave: There's a lot of, “really?” Their plan for luring Galactus to the teleportation pad is to put baby Franklin there, and then as he's walking up, somebody’s just going to run up, switch the baby carriage with another one, and run away.

[41:51] David: No, they pepper spray his eyes first. It’s totally […].

[41:54] Dave: That is not fun goofy. That's just “we ran out of time on the script, and we don't have a better idea.”

[42:01] David: And when it was happening in the movie in real-time, as I'm watching, I'm like, “they're not going to actually just do that, are they?” And then they just do that, and I'm like, “Oh, man. That was a Reed Richard-level plan right there. It's elaborate.”

[42:17] Dave: Yeah, it's ridiculous.

[42:18] David: “Okay, guys, look. I'm the genius here, and I've got a really good idea. Galactus is going to walk up, the baby's going to be there, but then right before, we're going to pepper spray him in the eyes and swap them out, really quick. He'll never know.” This God-being coming down from the heavens. He's only able to use his eyesight to perceive anything happening around him. You know what the other thing that the comic book had that I liked, that I wish that the movie had? And I think this is true of Galactus, in general. Galactus has OP. He is super overpowered, whenever we see him, but in the original incarnation of Galactus, he has to come down to Earth, and he's standing on top of a building, he's pulling all of these machines and stuff down from his stuff in outer space, and reforming it on this building, on the Baxter Building, or whatever it is, and it takes time for him to put this machine together, and then the machine is not as they describe it in the comic book. The machine that he's putting together isn't going to immediately destroy the entire planet. First, it'll suck the oceans up. Then, it's going to do ZX, and then, ultimately, it will suck the molten lava from the core of the Earth, and that will destroy the planet, but even in that, we see that the planet is still roughly intact, and I thought, “Oh, wow. That's a cool version of Galactus. That's a cool story. The whole world’s standing there, watching this guy put this machine together that's going to literally do destroy all of humanity, and there's nothing that anybody can do about it. You're just forced to stand there, and watch it happen over the course of time. I thought, “wow, that's really cool.”

I like that idea of this ominous presence that everyone's staring at, and no one can figure out what to do about it. I liked that concept, as opposed to the one that we have, which is “Galactus shows up, and five seconds later, everything is destroyed.” I like that slow methodology. The comic book really does speak to Galactus as just a force of nature. It's much more of this force of nature in the comic book, whereas in the movie, and in other iterations of Galactus, even in comic books, it's more of—I don't know how to how to describe it other than to say that I like the plotting nature of his approach in the comic book, and there's this sense of impending doom, that you're just watching, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's like watching a hurricane come, and you can't stop the hurricane. It's going to go. You have to try to get away from it, or hide underneath the ground, or whatever you're going to do, but you can't stop the hurricane, and that was how he's portrayed in that original iteration of Galactus in the comic book, and I don't feel like we get that version as much anymore, which is a bummer.

[45:19] Dave: Other than in 2007 Rise of Silver Surfer, where he's literally a hurricane in space.

[45:27] David: Look, man. Warren Ellis can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned, in comic books. So, I'm not going to get mad at the Galactus cloud storm stuff.

[45:35] Dave: That makes one of us, because Warren Ellis definitely can do things wrong.

[45:40] David: In comics. I had that clarifying note, in comics.

[45:47] Dave: He's an interesting guy, because I feel like some of his stuff really works, and to me, some of his stuff is very much “I had a day to write this, and I wrote it in a day, and I did the best I could, but it was a day.” I'm just saying, he's really interesting, because the gap between those two things is so noticeable. There’re some people where they're always working at their B-game, and their work is never bad, but it never gets to the upper echelon, and some people, where you've got their A+ stuff, and then their C work, and with him, it’s Super A+ and D+ work.

[46:24] David: Have you ever tried to read the Warren Ellis Thor comic books?

[46:27] Dave: No.

[46:28] David: With Mike Deodato on the art.

[46:30] Dave: Are they good?

[46:31] David: No, they are miserable. I think that was the point where I was like, “I hate Mike Deodato. I will never read his stuff ever again,” but Warren Ellis didn't do him any favors.

[46:42] John: I feel like that was one where just everything must have gone wrong in that. That's early in Warren Ellis’s career, and he’s not able to call any shots on this stuff, and it feels […].

[46:50] Dave: That's during the peak Thor as Fabio, with 45 abs, and tons of hair, and everything.

[46:58] John: Yeah. He had a weird costume in there. Didn't he have a new costume?

[47:01] Dave: He's got a halter top thing, his belly is exposed, right?

[47:04] David: Yeah, I think it was something like that. I don't know. It was peak Mike Deodato. I don't know. I think, at that point, Mike Deodato was doing 17 comic books a month. He had a studio of 30 different people working for him, and all of it was miserable for me. I couldn't stand any of it.

[47:21] Dave: Yeah, well, now he's just tracing artificial intelligence-generated imagery. So, you can re-experience all that again.

[47:30] David: Dave might still be an enemy of the show, John. He's trying to get us thrown into court with all the slander he's throwing around.

[47:39] Dave: It’s not slander. I think Expecting the Unexpected, the new Ronda Rousey comic, where it's Mike Deodato just tracing generative AI images, is going to be winning Eisners this coming week. I do. Artists, Writers, and Artisans is a company that sounds like it's a union for subway workers, but turns out, they publish comics. It's pretty impressive. It really is. That Bill Jemas guy, and Axel Alonso. […]. I knew it didn't sound right. They're just doing the Lord's f*cking work, man. That saying from the f*cking Dark Knight, “you either live long enough to become the villain,” or whatever that f*cking thing is—that's those guys, man. Axel Alonso used to make good books, dude. Flinch, that f*cking Vertigo miniseries back in the day, that sh!t was great, and now he got fired from Marvel under f*cking mysterious circumstances, and they hired a guy who's got some interesting pieces of his past that they would much rather, and Axel’s just out here being like, “let's do a shared universe of Wizard of Oz.” Amazing.

[48:54] John: Axel's not at AWA anymore.

[48:56] Dave: Oh, he left? He's not there anymore? Oh, good for him. I'm glad he escaped. So, now it's just Bill Jemas driving the ship, huh?

[49:05] John: Yes.

[49:06] Dave: Are you okay, John? Is Bill Jemas in your house right now?

[49:10] John: No.

[49:13] Dave: Do you have four books coming out next year, with Artists, Writers, and Artisans?

[49:17] John: I owe my career to Bill Jemas. Bill was the guy who interviewed me at Marvel, and brought me in.

[49:22] Dave: So, it's clouded your vision.

[49:24] John: It's key to us that we've never worked together, but we've always had a very friendly relationship, and I had wanted nothing to do with it. It wasn’t like a job offer came up, but the subject came up, and AWA was not something I wanted, but to Axel’s credit, some of the books there are pretty solid and there are some cool […].

[49:40] Dave: The only ones that I care about are this Wizard of Oz universe and […]. Those are the only two that really have a voice that are […] enticing.

[49:54] David: Baker comes on the show once a year and just spits fire the entire time.

[49:58] Dave: No, I'm serious. I think Midjourney comics, traced by a guy well past his prime, is the future of […]. I'm saying, I think this is the way it’s going to go.

[50:13] David: The dystopian future that we're all deserving of?

[50:18] Dave: I think it's going to be amazing. I think Mike Deodato, Greg, and a bunch of those guys are going to get together, and be like, “f*ck it. Let's trace some […]--

[50:26] David: I mean, why trace it? Why not just ask AI to create outlines of everything, and then you don't have to do anything?

[50:32] Dave: You should bring that up at our next meeting.

[50:35] David: Okay, I'm there. I’ve got a bunch of great ideas around that. Dave, we didn't even know you were going to be on until you were just on the show, but tell us about your latest Halloween Boy. I just got my copy. I was going to read it last weekend, but I got distracted by a bunch of other stuff, and wasn't able to. Now, I wish I had, but tell us about your new book.

[51:01] Dave: Oh, yeah, sure. My new book is Halloween Boy Vol.7. This is Part 2. John just rage quit the call. Part 2 of the second arc, Evolve or Die. I've drawn up to Issue #11, but I haven't published those, yet. They'll come out over the next couple of months, or year, or so.

[51:22] David: You're finished through Issue #11?

[51:23] Dave: Yeah, I'm mid--

[51:24] David: Each one is around 48 pages, right?

[51:27] Dave: Yeah, it shifts from issue to issue, but they're somewhere between 35 and 50 pages each time.

[51:34] David: Man, you are flying.

[51:36] Dave: Yeah. In fact, I make them quicker than I feel like I can put them out, because when you're self-publishing these things, there's only a limited bandwidth of the amount that people will consume at a certain pace. So, that's why I have to parse out how many I publish per X number of months, or whatever. I don't know if I could do it monthly, but I would love to do it monthly. I think that'd be really fun. I don't think I could do it monthly. I'm close, though.

[52:03] David: Is that the internal goal, for you?

[52:05] Dave: I don't know. I wanted to make it all, and then set it up at a publisher, and then have that publisher publish it monthly, but because the issues are not a set number of pages, that proved a little difficult. So, now I'm just doing a collection through Oni, which I'm very excited about. That will come out in, I think, March. They've told me the date. I just don't remember what it is.

[52:31] David: Is it collecting the first story arc?

[52:34] Dave: Yeah, it's collecting Last of the Halloween Boys, the first arc, and then Evolve or Die will come out whenever they want to put that out. It'll probably be a little bit, because they’re probably going to want to space it out, and then the toy comes out, supposedly early-September/late-August.

[52:49] David: I saw that prototype that you were holding your hand. You were holding it like the one ring.

[52:53] Dave: Oh, my god, dude. He looks so good.

[52:55] David: Yeah, it looks really cool. Can't wait to get mine.

[52:57] Dave: It looks so good. It's very gratifying. Before I was a comic book artist, I wanted to be a toy designer. That's what I thought I was going to be, and I would make custom figures, as a kid, and I went to weird child sculpting classes. I was really into it. It, ultimately, just proved to be one of those things where I was like, “I don't know anybody in this industry. I can't just do this myself. It's so expensive.” So, when I was probably 13/14, I realized, “why do I want to be the guy making toys of other people's characters? I want to be the guy who makes the characters that gets toys,” and now, 475 years later, here I am. I may look like a combination between Ebenezer Scrooge and Gollum from Lord of the Rings, but trust me, I'm actually a real-life boy, not the Ghost of Christmas Future trapped in the body of a back-issue diver. I'm pretty excited about this toy.

[53:56] David: Yeah, I'm excited too, man. I can't wait to get my copy. So, back to the comic book. Give us the big one-sentence pitch, and then tell us about this new story arc that you're working on.

[54:06] Dave: Well, David, Halloween Boy is an action-adventure comic, centering on a character that thinks of himself as the Patron Saint of the impossible, the eponymous Halloween Boy. Each issue of the first arc is a one-and-done storyline recontextualizing classic pulp tropes from the 1930s for a modern-day indie comics twist. Each issue sees the Patron Saint of the impossible taking up somebody's no-win scenario. So, somebody shows up to the floating skull-shaped island that he lives on, and says, “hey, man. I need your help with XYZ,” and he goes, “that's solvable. You can totally do that by yourself. Oh, that is a f*cking death wish. Let's f*cking do it.” So, then they go on all these adventures. Over the course of the first arc, there is a mystery that unlocks about the true nature of his origins. This person literally only has the name, Halloween Boy. He was raised on this floating skull-shaped island in lower orbit, by an army of supercomputers that he thought was training him to be this Patron Saint of the impossible, to help people in no-win scenarios, and that was going to be his life’s calling, and he was doing all of this as a means of one day earning the love of the father figure that had abandoned him on this rock in outer space. Maybe, he figures out that that person wasn't actually a good guy. Maybe, that guy was sh!tty. Maybe, there's a weird dark past in a secret Illuminati-style organization that's been pulling the strings this whole time, and maybe Halloween Boy is going to have a little bit “Luke, I am your father” showdown. Hmm. Who knows?

That's the first arc, and then the second arc picks up with a couple of years later, Halloween Boy and the assorted supporting cast of characters that is now very large, because I've never killed a character I could use again. It's like, “that guy might be useful. Let's not kill him. Let's just […].”

[56:04] David: There are dozens of characters you've introduced. There's a double-page spread in the first story arc that's just got 30 characters on it, just on that one page.

[56:14] Dave: Yeah, totally. I love giant, weird casts, because I think, you guys know this, as direct market hound dogs, like myself, there's a weird thing, where you just love seeing Tigra in the back of an Avengers gatefold, where you're like, “Tigra, she’s still out there doing it.” It's just fun when, “Death Head II is still a guy.” I love that. That's so fun. So, a lot of the stuff I make is about that, where there's all these weird supporting characters that are mouthpieces for different people in my life, but maybe they're a giant Frankenstein head with four arms and legs. So, this new arc basically sets up—one of the things that I don't particularly like about long-running superhero narratives, is that, and I love superhero stuff—you guys know—but one of the things I don't love so much is that, because of the requirements of a monthly schedule, superheroes can't be proactive. They can either have a fascist turn, and then be proactive and cure the world's problems, or they can be reactive, and try and stop people from doing evil things, but it's very difficult to have a story arc where somebody takes on an idea, and tries to actually fix it, because you can't fix it, because you need the continuing conflict every month to tell stories about. I don't have to have that problem, because the only one making these comics about this dumb guy with these giant ears is me, which is probably a weird thing, if you haven't seen the design of Halloween Boy. He has a mask, a cowl, with large triangle ears off the sides, but anyway.

[57:55] David: Batman-esque.

[57:59] Dave: Very Phantom-esque. Spring-heeled Jack is where the design influence actually comes from, which is a Victorian urban folklore about a man who would be seen in graveyards, and when confronted by local groundskeepers, he would jump 15ft in the air, and propel himself over the walls of cemeteries, and he was drawn in a lot of these Victorian magazines with this weird cowl with these ear things, but the current arc, the second arc, Evolve or Die, is basically a Halloween Boy being tired of being reactive. They go to this planet, they have to stop a jewel heist, ostensibly, and then when they're leaving, he's like, “sure, we stopped this ancient relic from being stolen, but this is so sh!tty, that there's this slum, there's all these people here that can't afford to eat, and have nowhere to live. This is horrible. These people need resources,” but there's no way of getting them resources, because there's an embargo on traffic in and out of this planetary system. So, he decides, “you know what I’m going to do? I'm going to illegally, and against multiple interplanetary treaties, build a network of, ostensibly, Stargates—they call them Bissell Gates, but they're f*cking Stargates—and I'm going to build them on this network of planets on the outer rim, and we're going to just bring relief aid and free trade to these regions that are controlled by fascistic dictators.” So, this new arc is basically Halloween Boy and his crew of people traveling from planet to planet, dealing with whatever the Socioeconomic, militaristic problems are on the planet that are preventing them from installing a gate, and then installing a gate, and trying to create a network of resources to flow through this corrupt and/or underprivileged area.

[59:51] David: It's going to go really well for Halloween Boy and his crew, I can tell.

[59:54] Dave: It's going to be so good. Everything's going to be great, and everyone's going to have a great time.

[59:59] David: It's going to be nothing but rainbows and unicorns.

[60:02] Dave: Yeah, pretty much. There's definitely not a bunch of pages of him just crying, because I feel like the only thing I draw more than Halloween Boy smiling and snarling, is crying. He's just pulling the f*cking cowl off, and weeping.

[60:13] David: Well, you write and draw what you know, Dave.

[60:16] Dave: Oh, of course. 100%. I mean, tragically, there's not as much of a market for “Halloween Boy jerks off.”

[60:23] David: All right, John. It's time for us to go. I think we've done a good business there.

[60:29] John: Perhaps, the title […].

[60:30] David: Apparently, Dave needs to go do some other business. So, we need to-- Dave, thank you for that. I am a big fan. Proudly, own every issue. I can't wait for the next one. I can't wait to dig into the one I've got. Feeling, like I said, a little guilty that I haven't read it, so far, but it is the next thing on my list. Literally, the very next book that I'm going to read. That Fantastic Four #48-50 just got in the way, just a little bit.

[60:56] Dave: I literally turned in the trade paperback collection illustration today.

[61:03] David: Did you get Alex Ross to do the cover for you, or something?

[61:05] Dave: I did. Weirdly, though, Alex Ross draws sh!tty now, and it looks kind of like my work, but it's signed by Alex Ross. So, I don't know.

[61:17] David: I wonder what would happen if you actually did that, signed your name “Alex Ross.”

[61:21] Dave: Yeah. “My name is Alex Ross.”

[61:24] John: You find a guy named Alan Moore, and find a guy named Alex Ross, and just put out the comic.

[61:28] Dave: Yeah. I mean, they do that in movies all the time. Have you seen any of those? Quentin Tarantino's dad and Al Pacino's dad starred in movies together. I'm not even joking. It's a real thing.

[61:39] John: What?

[61:39] Dave: Yeah, and Frank Stallone is in them, too. They're crime movies, and you can put on the masthead, “Tarantino, Pacino, Stallone.”

[61:48] John: Yeah. Well, it's like they did with the last Fantastic Four movie, where that wasn't Michael Jordan.

[61:52] Dave: Yeah, I know. What the f*ck? That wasn’t Michael Jordan.

[62:00] David: All right. Thanks for coming, everybody. This has been another fascinating episode of The Corner Box. Sorry, we don't actually have a Jim McCann bit for you.

[62:11] John: Probably a sandwich.

[62:12] David: His favorite sandwich is probably a sandwich? Is that what you’re saying?

[62:17] John: Maybe what he had for lunch. It could’ve been a sandwich.

[62:19] David: Probably a sandwich, or burrito, or a burger. One of those three things. So, there you go. There's your Jim McCann tidbit for the week, and we'll see y’all next time, here on The Corner Box. Why is everyone shaking their heads? Okay, thanks, everybody. Bye.

[62:37] 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.