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, and with me, as always, my good friend

[00:34] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:35] John: And you're here for the end of the multiverse. This is Episode 52 of Season 2. It all comes tumbling down. It's written across 2 pages, and our pictures are in each of the words, like [Dark] Moon Rise, Hell Hound Kill, the Nick Fury issue by James Steranko.p

[00:55] David: That might be too deep a cut, John.

[00:57] John: George Perez did an homage to that in Teen Titans.

[01:01] David: Did he really?

[01:02] John: Yeah.

[01:03] David: Oh, man, I missed out on that complete thing. I'm only a recent convert to Jim Steranko, but yes, John. You're right. It's the end of The Corner Box Multiverse. […] multiverse. We're shutting it down.

[01:14] John: Next season will be one episode, right? Everything will just be one episode that contains all 52 episodes.

[01:21] David: Contains all episodes. That's right. We’re ending Season 2, but don't fret, listeners. We are right back at it the very next week with a New #1, John. We’re doing it again.

[01:33] John: Like Batman.

[01:34] David: Yeah.

[01:35] John: We weren’t going to talk about Batman. That was a joke, everybody, but it is like Batman, because there is a Batman #1.

[01:41] David: The fourth one in the history of Batman. Batman #1 just came out.

[01:46] John: Is that true?

[01:47] David: So, we're catching up to Batman already, because this will be our third New #1 in as many years.

[01:53] John: Wow.

[01:54] David: One more, and we've caught up.

[01:55] John: It'd be awesome if Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton played us in the movies.

[02:02] David: Which one are you?

[02:03] John: You know what? I'm good, either way. I really like Michael Keaton, but Ben Affleck, that'd be pretty awesome. I actually don't have anything against those guys. Even Robert Pattinson, he makes interesting acting choices. I'd be all over that. That'd be okay. He's good looking. I'd be flattered.

[02:19] David: Christian Bale would have to go on one of his diets where he has to gain 50 pounds in order to be me, but I hear he's not doing that anymore, though, because it's not healthy for him.

[02:28] John: Oh, man. What if he played you, and then gained more weight, and played me, and then he loses a bunch of weight, and plays Dave.

[02:35] David: I don't think anybody can lose that much weight. Dave's description of himself in a podcast the other day, it's cracking me up, man--I was listening back. He had some pretty good self-owns. So, yeah, John. We're shutting down Season 2. We’ve got to restart this thing. We’ve got to gain some new listeners. We're back to the time-honored tradition of a New #1.

[02:58] John: Cool.

[02:59] David: It's the only thing we know how to do as comic book makers, John, in order to boost ratings.

[03:03] John: Yeah.

[03:04] David: So, I have a question for you. We didn't fully prepare. If you had to pick, do you remember anything from Season 2?

[03:12] John: No.

[03:13] David: You don't listen to what we do. You just do it, and then you're done. I listen, obsessively and often, to everything that we put together.

[03:19] John: Where would I do that? No, I'm just kidding.

[03:22] David: For our listeners, John is frantically searching The Corner Box online, to see, A, where to find the podcast, and B, if he can read some of the descriptions quickly, and say what are his favorite things.

[03:36] John: Oh, I'm sorry I don't remember everything from the past--

[03:40] David: 52 weeks.

[03:42] John: Right, yeah. We have 59 episodes in Season 1.

[03:46] David: We were ambitious there, John. There were a couple times where we had two in a week.

[03:51] John: Yeah.

[03:52] David: We have consistently produced this thing every single week for another year, John. Congratulations.

[03:58] John: Yeah.

[03:59] David: We did it. I'm super looking forward to Season 3 and what we're going to do. We've got some interesting plans. Can't wait to share them with everybody, but that is for another time, because we’ve got to keep the mystery alive.

[04:09] John: It was always fun having Kirt Burdick on. Those are always good. I can't believe that the Nextwave deep-dive was almost a year ago. That was in December. I genuinely thought that was way more recent. Some of these ones are surprising how long ago that was.

[04:28] David: We’ve got some good stuff. We talked to some really cool people this year.

[04:32] John: Davenport.

[04:33] David: Ben Percy was a highlight, for me, just because that man's voice is still in the back of my head. Wow. Incredible. Kirt Burdick is always a joy to have around. I feel like he understands me. He's the level of nerd that I totally appreciate. Jim McCann was great.

[04:49] John: Then Nicole Goux that we just had. Stephanie Williams—that was fun, to have her on.

[04:53] David: What a joy she was.

[04:54] John: Didn't realize she was at ComiCon until afterwards. During Comic-Con, I was showing up late, working on a comic that she was working on. Didn't say hi in person. We talked afterwards, and we were both like, “oh, yeah--- I didn't think about that.” Anyway, she got the better end of the deal, not having to see me.

[05:12] David: A real quick stat that I think is fun and interesting—Our most-listened-to episode of the whole year, John—what do you think it is?

[05:23] John: I know Jim's episode did do really well. Was it that one?

[05:26] David: It wasn't that one.

[05:27] John: Oh, then, I don't know.

[05:28] David: It was your deep dive on Dog Man.

[05:32] John: Oh, that's neat.

[05:34] David: Episode 7 of Season 2, the Dog Man Deep Dive. That one was a hit, John. People really liked that one. People came out in droves for that one.

[05:43] John: John Nee keeps making people listen to that. So, that might be it.

[05:47] David: Oh, really? It was really good. We did a good business on that one.

[05:53] John: I like that format a lot. I wanted it when Dave Baker did the Strange New Worlds—is that the right title? The John Byrne.

[06:00] David: Deep Dive on John Byrne.

[06:02] John: Yeah.

[06:03] David: Yeah, that was a good one.

[06:04] John: That essay appeared in Halloween Boy. It appeared in another book. I don't know if trying to get some of this stuff out other places make sense, but stuff like the Dog Man one is the ones where you can go through and edit what we said into something that was more—I don't know—coherent, but thanks for listening, guys. There's not a better version coming somewhere else. You guys heard the real thing.

[06:23] David: Anything less is just a cheap imitation.

[06:25] John: That's right.

[06:26] David: For the listeners, I am the one responsible for creating the titles of every episode of the podcast, and I just want to give myself a shout-out for my favorite title of the year, but I can't take full credit for it, because really, your son is the one that created the title. Peanut Butter Has Three Potty Words.

[06:47] John: Yeah, I actually just scrolled past my note where I'd written that down on my phone yesterday. That was really funny.

[06:54] David: So, that was Season 2, Episode 40. That was a good episode, too. I enjoyed that episode, but in particular, the title of that one, I felt inspired.

[07:02] John: Here's a recent gem from my son.

[07:05] David: Fantastic.

[07:05] John: What do you think you see when you die? Probably, just black.

[07:14] David: Deep thoughts.

[07:15] John: Yeah, that's probably right. “Seems likely,” I said to him.

[07:22] David: Like the true atheist you are. So, I'm looking forward to Season 3. I have some ideas about what I want to do, at least at the beginning of Season 3. Do you have anything you want to share with the audience about what we’ve got coming up?

[07:39] John: More stuff like that. I mean, I don't want to steal the exact thing that you were saying, but deep dives, where things are a little more prepared. Tried that a little on the Archie one.

[07:47] David: Yeah, that was good.

[07:48] John: It's tough, because we both do stuff.

[07:52] David: Yeah. Listeners, you're going to be shocked to hear this, but this is not our full-time job. I know it sounds like it.

[07:59] John: Yeah, no, I went to—I don't know, maybe last Christmas—I was up at my in-laws’ house, and they're like, “did you tell Uncle John about the new thing?” And I'm racking my brain, trying to figure out what it is, and then I start explaining a likely thing that I was working on, in a way that might lead to some success in something, or make money, and they're like, “that sounds good, too. No, we meant the podcast,” and I'm like, “oh, yeah.” The last people that think somebody to put on a podcast is a measure of success. I don't even mean that in a negative way. I just mean, everybody out there, you can do a podcast. You can do that.

[08:41] David: Not to the level of quality and consistency that we're doing. We’re rarefied air, at this point. Come on.

[08:47] John: It isn't like, “you’ve got that TV show that's nationally syndicated.” It isn't a success on that kind of thing.

[08:58] David: Well, after three years, their expectations have been—the edges have been worn off a little bit.

[09:03] John: I think it's a combination of that, and then also not quite fully understanding the podcast technology.

[09:10] David: Fantastic.

[09:12] John: One follow-up I did want to make that just came out—geez, today. I'm sorry, I didn't even realize that that's where we're at on things—but the Archie Digest episode, the reformatted Archie Digests came out. Bought the Halloween one. Actually, it is a nicer format. The bigger size is nice. It's not obnoxiously big, but it's big enough that it shows the art a little better. It's a little more manga-sized than super tiny. Additional games seems to be one word search, not that half of it’s games, or something.

[09:42] David: When I finally hit the word search, I was like, “oh, that's fun.” I grabbed a pen and did it. I was totally into it. I had a really nice experience with it. After we talked about it on the podcast, I immediately went out to the Archie Comics website, and bought that Digest and a couple other things, because—I don't know—you inspired me with your conversation. They just came in, and I read the Halloween Digest already. I thought it was fine. I thought it was fun. It was exactly what I expected it to be.

[10:13] John: Yeah. What am I, a veteran Archie reader of five or six weeks? I have a different perspective on it than I did then.

[10:23] David: There was a surprising number of haunted mansion stories, in that all of the stories were haunted mansion stories.

[10:32] John: The one downside was that, yeah, a lot of the stories were pretty same-y in that Digest, and it didn’t totally blow me away by the craziness of the Halfway to Halloween Digest, which was the first one that I'd read, because that one was just out of control of different.

[10:48] David: I felt like, as I was reading, I was like, “man, I don't remember this as how John describing his reading experience.” The thing that was impressive, to me, was that there's probably, I don't know, 8, maybe 10, stories in that Halloween Digest, and one joke. It's a shocking number of stories with the same joke at the end—Same setup and same punchline. I was like, “wow, they want everybody to understand this joke.” I still enjoyed it, though. I still had fun with it. I guess, one joke's enough.

[11:26] John: I enjoyed it, too. One of the things that I have enjoyed this past year, and it's been, I think, reflected in The Corner Box, but also just in my general comic book reading, is I tried a bunch of stuff for the first time this year that I probably should have read before—Things that I should have checked out more. I've been slowly making my way through Tintin, which is one that I'd like to get, into at some point, when I finish. I absolutely love it, but I'm not rushing through it, and I'm enjoying just, every once in a while, being like, “I want to read a Tintin book tonight,” and just being able to pull out a new one, because I got a box with all of them in it.

Speaking of Tintin—I don't know if this is amusing or not—The thing that got me started on this is, I was buying something on eBay, and it was one of those Buy 2, Get a 3rd One for Free. So, I bought something, and I was like, “I can get a free Tintin book that'll come in there. I really would like to check this out, and try it.” I buy it. I'm like, “I've only read one Tintin book my whole life,” and I don't remember what it was. I remember buying it years ago. I don't really remember it very well, but okay. So, I buy this one, get it in, read it. I'm like, “this is really good.” I find out there's a—not quite as good as the best quality—but a nice quality boxset of them that's reasonably priced, and I'm like, “this might be just right for me. This is exactly what I need.” So, I buy that, even though it has a duplicate of the copy I already have. Then I look at my bookshelf, and I find the old Tintin that I had, which is also the same book that I'd bought before. I have 3 copies of Secret of the Unicorn.

Now, the other thing that's really funny about that is that Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro, I believe, they made a Tintin movie some years ago, a CG or motion capture Tintin movie, which I've not seen, which I then, just in the last couple of days, found out was Secret of the Unicorn. I’ve got 3 copies of Secret of the Unicorn, none of which is related to the fact that that was the movie. That wasn't a thing I knew. It's a good one, if anybody needs a copy.

[13:23] David: Yeah, see, that's what you do, John. You become a prophet of Tintin, and distribute those to whatever young, unsuspecting—find one of those little libraries—what are they called? The little do-it-yourself libraries.

[13:38] John: Yeah, leave a book.

[13:39] David: Throw them in there. Spielberg directed it, and Peter Jackson--

[13:43] John: Peter Jackson. I'm sorry. Guillermo del Toro was going to direct The Hobbit movies, and that's what I got confused by.

[13:48] David: Oh, I didn't know that. Really?

[13:50] John: Yeah, they set it up that he was going to direct it, and then—I haven't actually seen The Hobbit movies—but the apparently, just the nightmare of that being 10 years of your life.

[13:59] David: He went and made Pacific Rim instead.

[14:01] John: Yeah. Man, I'm looking forward to that Frankenstein movie. I love Guillermo del Torro.

[14:05] David: I'm looking forward to it, too. Pacific Rim's probably—it might be in my top five all-time favorite movies. Love that.

[14:10] John: I really like it. I don't even know if it's in my top five Guillermo del Torro movies.

[14:15] David: Oh, really?

[14:16] John: I don't mean that as an insult. I just mean there's other stuff that I like. There's nothing wrong with Pacific Rim.

[14:22] David: Man, no, it's right up my alley, man. It's robots fighting giant monsters. Sign me the hell up. I'm there.

[14:29] John: Yeah, but speaking of that, I read the first Mazinger Z comic.

[14:34] David: Oh, you did?

[14:35] John: Yeah.

[14:35] David: Okay, before you get into it, I want to hear this, but just randomly, Go Nagai is the manga creator for that, right?

[14:43] John: Oh, yeah.

[14:44] David: I think it’s Go Nagai. Okay, so, John, I've been doing this weird deep dive on this thing called V-Cinema. I don't know if I've talked about this on the podcast, but do you know what V-Cinema is, John?

[14:57] John: Yeah, I think you explained it to me one time, but go ahead.

[14:59] David: Okay. So, basically, in the 90s, the Japanese movie industry was falling apart, essentially, but the VHS was just coming online in the early 90s. So, movie rentals, and things like that, like Blockbuster, that whole thing became a phenomenon in Japan, and it saved the Japanese movie industry, because what happened was, all these super-duper-low-budget movies started getting made by all these avant-garde directors and creators, and some of them turned into really big-time big deals, but they were making all these 30-minute or one-hour videos, and then throwing direct to the videotape market and the rental market, completely skipping the theater and cinema. So, they're all these super-low-budget movies, and they're usually gore/slash/softcore pervy stuff, but all done with—I don't know—just a creative joy and verve, and intensity that's charming in its sloppiness and its awfulness. That's right up my alley, and it was called V-Cinema. So, I've been doing a deep dive on my private Facebook group. Every Friday, I've given them a movie so bad, it's good. So, I make a movie recommendation every week, and the last couple of weeks, I've been doing V-Cinema movies, and the one that I just recommended was directed by Go Nagai.

[16:21] John: Really?

[16:22] David: Yes. It's called Kekko Kamen, and it's the weirdest movie ever, because basically, it's a superhero movie, but the heroine, whenever she transforms into the superhero, she's completely naked, except for a red scarf that's around her neck. She just runs around naked, doing karate against all these bad guys, and Go Nagai is the director of the movie. It's 100% him. It was the weirdest, wildest, funniest, dumbest, horniest thing I've ever seen.

[16:56] John: It's live action?

[16:58] David: Yeah, live action.

[16:59] John: What's it called again?

[17:01] David: It's called Kekko Kamen. It's from 1991. Here, I'll read you the review that I wrote for it, since we're talking about it. All right. “Kekko Kamen is pure, unfiltered Japanese cult chaos, ripped straight from the twisted mind of legendary manga creator, Go Nagai, the man who brought us Cutie Honey, Devilman, and clearly decided there was no boundaries left to break. Part superhero parody, part softcore fever dream, Kekko Kamen is a V-Cinema gin that walks the tightrope between absurdity and exploitation, wearing nothing but a red scarf, boots, and a mask. Yes, the titular heroine is completely naked, except for her signature accessories, and yes, she defeats evil with high kicks, flying attacks, and a signature move that, well, let's say, leaves nothing to the imagination,” and it goes on. Anyway, there you go. So, Go Nagai and Mazinger Z.

[17:56] John: Yeah.

[17:59] David: Sorry, I totally derailed that, but that was too coincidental for me not to at least mention the fact that he's made a movie that was the weirdest, strangest, most hilarious thing I've ever seen.

[18:11] John: Yeah, that's really interesting. All right. I did not know that.

[18:17] David: Yeah, how could you?

[18:18] John: I'm surprised that that's not a work that's ever been translated into English, especially given how big Go Nagai is, and how much he influenced, how many people came out of his studio, and stuff. This is what you should go check out. Don't read Mazinger Z.

[18:36] David: No, I definitely don't recommend. Again, this is my bad movie of the week recommendation. It's so bad that it's good, but definitely, you’ve got to have a certain mindset before you go into these things, but what I'm saying is that these bad movie reviews that I've been doing, I've been giving them to people for over a year, and it's only now that I'm like, “okay, I think you guys are ready for this.” So, you can't just jump into the deep end, John. You’ve got to wade into the shallow end and learn how to swim before you just jump right into the Go Nagai Kekko Kamen stuff. You can't just go straight there. You’ve got to ease your way into that stuff. He’s an incredible artist.

[19:15] John: Some of that stuff is so just bonkers. If you sit there and describe it, it maybe isn't that bonkers, but the way it plays out on the page—it's the same thing I enjoy about the best of weird American and European comics from the 70s. There was really something in that time period, where things weren't as formalized as they'd be in the stuff that I really grew up with.

[19:39] David: It's called cocaine.

[19:40] John: Yeah, but I mean, a lot of the stuff was—they were showing Mazinger Z was part of the Shogun Warriors when I was a little kid. It was Great Mazinger, and then Tranzor Z was syndicated, and I just remember that being the worst show. I just remember it being a terrible show. I couldn't wrap my head around why it was so bad. This should have been good, but the comic was a lot of fun. It was bonkers. You cut over to the villain talking to these people, and it's hard to get the staging. I don't understand where everybody's standing, because there's this guy talking, and then there's this girl talking, but I can't figure out where they are, in relation to each other. Then you turn the page. No, same person, vertically hermaphroditic, male on one side, female on the other, and then—and this is one of my favorite things to say on the show—Nobody mentions it. It does not come up in the comic. Nobody says anything, pro or con, about it, which in a lot of ways, great. It's really forward-thinking.

[20:41] David: Very progressive.

[20:42] John: Yeah. “I'm battling you, not out of anything about your sexual identity. It's that you're sending zombie robots to kill me. That's the only beef I have with you.” That's what I think I've been trying to do a lot more lately, and running into some stuff. It's fun to find new things in the past, as well as new things in the present. I don't mean this in any deep, meaningful way. I just feel like it gets harder. When you're 15, or something, it's all new and exciting, as soon as you find something. I remember hearing about Jim Steranko, and then reading Jim Steranko. That stuff was hard to find for the five years around where I was reading comics, when I was a kid. It wasn't really hard to find, except you didn't have eBay. You couldn't go on there. You would have had to have found the stuff at the store you were at, or whatever. That stuff was harder to find, but with more stuff reprinted, all the stuff's out here, but no, there still are veins to unpack and get into.

[21:36] David: I'm feeling like it's infinite right now. I don't know. I feel like I've always had a pretty broad taste in my comic books, but—I don't know—maybe they've expanded even further, because I'm just enjoying reading any old comic book these days. Archie Halloween Special, I'm like, “yeah, I'm spending part of my Saturday doing this. I'm totally happy with it.”

[21:56] John: Yeah.

[22:00] David: That reminds me of another one that I fell into, talking about old comics, and trying, sampling, and discovering. I've always loved this guy's stuff, but I've never really searched it out. Richard Corben.

[22:12] John: Yeah, that's actually another one. I read the first volume of Den not too long ago. Yeah, okay.

[22:17] David: You did?

[22:18] John: Yeah.

[22:19] David: Well, that's where I'm going. I didn't pick up Den, but I picked up Grim Wit. It was a two-Issue thing that he did. It was earlier in his career, and I think Grim Wit #2 is the first appearance of Den.

[22:34] John: Oh, okay.

[22:35] David: Man, he has some weird stuff, man, but Richard Corben's art is so good, man. He is a fantastic artist, and I don't know how he does what he does. It's this weird, almost airbrushed look to what he's doing, but I don't know if that's what he's doing, and he's had that quality pretty much his whole career. So, it's not like he was, or is, using modern tools or techniques. I mean, he might be now, but he's always had the ability to do this really cool modeling effect with his art, that's very different from what anybody else is doing, especially early in his career. No one else was doing it the way he was doing it, and I can see now, in 2025, how people could mimic his style, in some ways, but it's still an incredibly unique, interesting style, and man, that guy can draw. Man, he's good. One of my new obsessions is trying to find old Richard Corben stuff, but it's expensive and hard to get.

[23:36] John: Yeah. During my big European Heavy Metal world, it butts into that. He did a lot of stuff—he did a little bit of stuff in Metal Hurlant, which is weird, because he's American, but he did a lot of stuff in Heavy Metal. So, you saw some of that stuff appearing there, or relatively a lot. The first thing I ever saw by him was the stuff he did on Ninja Turtles, because Kevin Eastman was such a big fan of him. He drew a cover of a later printing of one of the Ninja Turtles issues, but then he drew the first color Ninja Turtles story, which was an insert in a Ninja Turtles comic. So, it was 4 pages maybe.

[24:17] David: Wow, really?

[24:18] John: Yeah.

[24:19] David: That's so cool.

[24:20] John: Yeah. I called him one time, to ask him to do a story in the Legion of Monsters series that they […]. That was the one that Jonathan Hickman's first Marvel work was in, and Skottie Young's first writing at Marvel was there. A bunch of other good stuff in there, and I was like, “hey, do you want to draw a Man-Thing story?” And he said, “no,” and hung up. It was a Charlie Huston Man-Thing story, and Klaus Janson ended up drawing it.

[24:50] David: Did you say Charlie Huston, or did you just say Man-Thing story?

[24:53] John: Both.

[24:53] David: Okay.

[24:56] John: I don't remember.

[24:57] David: Because I mean, I could see how, if somebody called me up and was like, “hey, you want to draw a Man-Thing story?” I'd be like, “yeah, funny,” and then hang up, because Man-Thing's got more than one.

[25:09] John: Yes, okay. Well, I didn't just--

[25:12] David: Cold call him.

[25:15] John: I bought the Dark Horse hardcover of Den, which is probably a nice way to read it, but I'm jealous of your going through and seeing the stuff in the early forms, because this is all re-lettered, and stuff, to make it more readable. The art reproduction is really nice, and it's probably the best way to do it. Some of the other stuff was shoddy, and maybe not the legacy that you want, if you created this stuff, and 50 years later, you're still dealing with the mistakes that happened in lettering on something.

[25:44] David: Right. I mean, this definitely had an indie/DIY publishing feel to it, as you did back in the mid/late-70s, but very good, very competent, and like I said, who cares? He could draw the hell out of anything. So, I was just there for that.

[25:59] John: His coloring, in addition to the weird, “I don't know how he did it,” parts of it, because there is a lot of that, I'm totally with you—when he does the black and white stuff, you can see how it goes, or something where it's just black and white with normal comic book coloring, or something, you can see the magic. I don't mean to say the magic goes away, in any way, but it isn't that awe-inspiring, “how in the world did you do this?” Especially imagining what that must have been like, in the early/mid-70s—whenever this was—but the color choices he uses are out of control. It's so oversaturated, weird, and cool. Just, really great.

[26:37] David: Yeah, but some of it, you're like, “how is this working so well?” For sure. It's a very small slice, but I would have already gotten more, but I’ve got to save my pennies to afford some of the older Richard Corben stuff, unfortunately, or I just haven't figured out what vein to mine yet, for that stuff.

[26:59] John: Yeah, it's weird. It's right on that border of being prohibitively expensive, but not actually yet, but enough that if you buy three of them-- 

[27:08] David: I’ve got to wait a month or two before I buy more, yeah.

[27:11] John: You can buy two of these giant hardcovers for the price of one issue of Grim Wit, I think, and that adds up.

[27:18] David: Yeah.

[27:18] John: Again, old men talking about prices.

[27:20] David: Did it again.

[27:21] John: Didn't mean to do that.

[27:26] David: What else were we going to talk about, John?

[27:27] John: You had a story about Kickstarter.

[27:33] David: Yeah. So, check this out. We launched the latest Kickstarter, Sugar Bomb, and it's doing really well. Thanks to everybody from the show who’s supported, and appreciate it.

[27:42] John: I'm going. I get it.

[27:46] David: So, anyway, we launched Sugar Bomb, and there's this thing that's happened in our last campaign and this campaign, and I don't understand—well, I understand, but it's a really crappy thing, and I want to call it out, because I want other people to be aware that this is a thing that ne'er-do-wells might do. So, if you ever plan on doing a Kickstarter, pay attention, because this seems to be a new thing that's happening. So, what happens is, we launch a campaign, and somewhere within the first three or four days, we will get one or two really big buys. In our current campaign, there's a $400 offer. You get all this cool stuff. It's $400. Very expensive. It's really meant for the people who are hardcore fans, who really want to dive in, and really get the full experience. So, we have several of the people that have bought that, but what we have to do now, because we learned this on the last campaign, is that whenever we see some of these bigger buys, we have to go in, and actually verify the person that's pledging, because what happens is, these jerks will go in, and pledge at the high-dollar amount, and then wait for you to get in the middle of your campaign, or something, or get hit a stretch goal, and then they'll email you, private message you on Kickstarter, and say, “hey, if you don't do X, Y, or Z, then I'm going to pull my pledge, and you're going to lose all that money, the algorithm will lose you,” and things like that.

The last campaign, it was a meaningful amount of money. It was $2,000 worth of pledges that they had done. I thought we were just doing good, and we were doing good, but $2,000 less good than what I thought. So, if you're running a campaign, be careful. When you get the larger pledges, people pledging, make sure you're checking the people that are pledging, and that they're not trying to scam you, basically. Thankfully, we know what to look for now. So, we've already had one on the Sugar Bomb campaign that we had to get rid of, and of course, we reported them to Kickstarter, and Kickstarter has been pretty good about pretty quickly jumping on it and taking care of that stuff, but it does lend a sense of false success to other people looking at the campaign, and not that anybody's looking at it that closely, but if you get on a campaign in the morning, and they're at $12,500, and you come back a few hours later, and it's at $11,500, you're like, “what the heck's happening? It's going the wrong way,” and right now, the reason for that sort of thing happening on campaigns, I think, is because of this scam that's happening, and they were asking for our email contacts. It was real crude and mean what they were trying to pull off, and I feel bad for anybody that actually fell for the scam. I have a hard time thinking anybody did, but I don't know. People out there might have fell for it. We did not.

[30:32] John: What were they trying to get from you?

[30:34] David: They were trying to get our email database. That was just the first blush. They were saying we had to share all of our email campaign with them, and—I don't know—pay them a certain amount of money, or something. I can't remember what it was, but it was some email capture scam, along with who knows what hacking that they were going to try to do off of that. It was real nasty.

[30:59] John: That's awful. That's really--When we were doing the first Signa campaign, I was surprised to realize you could go down. There were times—I didn't know that was—"we're doing great--oh, we're not doing this good,” but I don't think we had that scam happen. I think that was just people--

[31:14] David: That just happens. Some people's situation changes from week to week. So, it's understandable, and some people think they want it, and then they look into it a little bit deeper and change their mind. It's all understandable, and I think some people come in, and they want to see, “how far is this thing going to go? How many stretch goals are going to happen? What am I going to get out of this by the end of it?” And then if it doesn't hit a certain number of things, then maybe they pull out. I don't blame anybody for whatever reasons they have. That's fine with me, but what I don't appreciate is trying to be taken advantage of, and people trying to scam me or anybody else trying. It’s a lot of hard work putting these campaigns on, and having a fun time, and trying to do it in a way that other people are having a good time, not just reading the book, at the end of the day, because I know they're going to like that.

I know the book that we made is really great, and they're going to love it, but I want them to have fun during the campaign, too. It’s like, “Let's have a good time. Let's have a little party.” So, these party crashers that try to ruin it, try to pee in the punch, it's not okay. That was my little cautionary tale for everybody. That was all I wanted to talk about. Everything else on campaign, even that part—thankfully, like I said, we caught it almost immediately, because now we know what to look for. So, we caught it almost immediately, and got rid of them right away. So, it was barely even a blip on the radar, to be honest, because we got rid of it so fast. So, we're doing really good. Again, really appreciative to everybody coming out and doing it. Sugar Bomb: Portal Potty. We are live through September 29th.

[32:47] John: What were your highlights for this past year?

[32:49] David: I don't know if there was any one specific moment. I really liked the guests that we had this year. I feel like we got a little bit out of our comfort zone, here and there, which I thought was really cool, talking to people that we don't necessarily know that well, or that we haven't really talked that much to. So, I really enjoyed that. I enjoyed, for sure, the deep dives. It was fun having Chase Marotz and Dave Baker pop in and out, from time to time. I really enjoyed having those guys on. Kirt was always fun to have on, but I think overall, the thing that I'll take away from Season 2 is, with this season, we got comfortable doing the podcast, which made it more fun, for me. I don't know. I think we do a pretty good job of trying to be entertaining, and giving the listeners a reason to check in with us, and listen to us, but I think we hit a certain level—at least, I hit a certain level of comfort, talking on a podcast, period. So, it's made it—I don't know—more fun, and a little more easy, I guess. I think that is my big takeaway from Season 2, is that I'm enjoying it more now than I did when we started, and I think we're better now than when we started. I like to think that. Hopefully, other people agree.

[34:06] John: Yeah, I hope so, too. Boom. See, that was perfect. That was good podcasting right there. Sorry. That was awesome.

[34:14] David: One thing that I'd like to work on in the future is our transitions, John.

[34:22] John: Speaking of transitions, we're in a transitory time, in the period of the comic book industry. Things are shifting. This time last year, there was still Diamond. This time last year, did we make predictions?

[34:36] David: We did make predictions, but I think we did them in around December, but yeah, you made a prediction, and the very next week, it came true.

[34:45] John: That's right. Okay.

[34:46] David: Be careful with your predictions, John, because you're making massive shifts within the industry with your Nostradamus-like predations.

[34:54] John: You know me. I think it's going to be interesting to see where things go in the next year, what changes come for direct market comics, comics in general. We were talking about this before, and we'll get into this more later on, but I think we're on a transition point, content-wise, not just in terms of distributors, and stuff like that, but I think there's a pivot point going on, on what comics look like, and stuff.

[35:19] David: Yeah. I think the audience has already changed. I think, for better or worse, the Big 2, Marvel and DC, are finally—I actually don't think they've woken up to that change, but I think they're going to be forced to wake up to it, or someone, somewhere will realize it, and I'm interested. We're going to talk about this in depth at the beginning of Season 3, but I'm with you, John. It's an interesting time. I think the good news is that, for comic books, I think we're in a better space, as we wrap up Season 2, than where we started in Season 2. The Diamond stuff is still sorting itself out, but the dust is settled, in terms of where new comic books are coming from. That solves a lot of problems for a lot of people—retailers, in particular. I think there's still a lot of stuff still-to-be-determined, but at least we seem to be moving in the right direction.

As an example for what needs to be determined, I think retailers are realizing things like, “where do I get Pokémon cards now?” There's a struggle there, for retailers, because they had a one-stop shop for a lot of this stuff, for decades, because of Diamond, and Diamond was willing to service all these small, individual accounts, and I think other distributors are just not set-up in that way. They're used to distributing to large chains, retail chains—Target, for example. So, they're just not built to accommodate or prioritize smaller accounts, which is the majority of comic bookshops. They're independently owned, it's a one-of-one, and the size of their orders are not these big bulk orders for things. So, the comic piece of it has been resolved with Penguin Random House, Lunar, and—I'm forgetting one. Is there another one of those, or two big ones, right?

[37:09] John: I think so, yeah.

[37:11] David: That piece, but there's all this other stuff, like Pop! Vinyl and Pokémon cards, and Magic the Gathering cards, and Dungeons & Dragons books, and all the extra stuff that you see in a comic bookstore these days. Where is that stuff getting supplied from now? So, I think there's still concerns around that, but overall, I think a lot of the dust is starting to settle, and the other piece of that is that, as we close Season 2 and look forward to Season 3, I think that DC is on fire right now, and that is going to absolutely help the industry, 100%. DC seems to be hitting on all cylinders. Their $9.99 Collections are doing great. Absolute Batman remains the big dog in the industry, and doing really well. They seem to be just producing hit after hit, and Marvel's not what it has been in the past, but it's still Marvel. So, I think once Marvel hopefully gets back in the saddle, we're really going to be in a good space, collectively, as an industry.

[38:10] John: When you were talking about your favorite artists, I was surprised by the number of big Marvel artists that you had on that list.

[38:15] David: I was, too. I was shocked at that, to be honest. The list is being revised right now, to be honest. I've been working on it a little, bit here and there. We're going to have some big surprises coming up, in that next list, John.

[38:29] John: All right. Excellent.

[38:30] David: Yeah.

[38:31] John: It's funny that DC traded on Batman. They swapped Sex Criminals creators as the writer of Batman. From Chip Zdarsky to--

[38:42] David: I didn't think about that. That’s right.

[38:44] John: With the same artist drawing it.

[38:46] David: Same artist.

[38:47] John: Yeah. That's fun. That's cool. I liked the new #1. I missed Chip's run. No offense to Chip Zdarsky, who I like a lot, but I read the first #1, and I thought it was really fun. I didn't know how it was going to go, to be honest. Did you read it?

[39:01] David: I haven't read it yet. I feel like I only have so much room for Batman in my life. He's just not my favorite character. When there's a really great, kickass creative team, I'll eventually jump on board, but it's not a destination book, for me, typically. That being said, I am going to start buying a Batman book, Batman and Robin, starting with Issue #25, because our friend—not necessarily a friend of the show yet—but our friend, Fico Ossio, is the new regular artist on Batman and Robin, starting with Issue #25. So, I'm 100% going to be picking that up. I'm really excited to see Fico on that book. I think he's definitely deserving of a bigger spotlight, and this is certainly going to shine a bigger spotlight on things for him, and his art—I don't know if you've seen any of his stuff lately—but he's really tearing it up. I don't know if he's quite leveled up again, but he's getting close, man. It seems like every year, that guy gets infinitely better, and he started from an amazing spot. Also, he can do 3 pages a day when he has to. He's the Dan Mora of DC Comics.

[40:10] John: New comics talk, if you’ve got a second for that. Have you been catching up with Imperial, the Marvel--

[40:15] David: I am reading it on the app. So, I think only the first issue has come out. I'm 100% on board for it.

[40:22] John: I really like the art on it, yeah.

[40:24] David: Yeah. Well, I like half of the art on it. The other half is just okay, but the Iban Coello stuff I really like. I don't think the other artist is up to snuff, compared to him, and I think it's an odd choice to combine them, because it's not a good mix of artists, but I enjoyed Imperial. I'm 100% on board for Marvel sci-fi stuff. Going way back, I love Marvel sci-fi. So, anytime they want to get off the planet, and do stuff in outer space, I'm probably going to be there for it.

[40:58] John: Yeah, I have mixed feelings about it. I'm usually a big Hickman fan. I’m not trying to slam anybody. I like G.O.D.S. quite a bit. I'm behind now on Ultimate Spider-Man, but I very much like Ultimate Spider-Man. There's a twist as to who's behind it, that goes from a character that I don't really care that much about, or know that much about, to characters that I abjectly don't care about, and it's weird for me to find myself in that position. I don't feel like Hickman’s stuff is usually dependent on me coming out and being like, “I really like that.” I don't want to give anything away, but “that's not my favorite character,” and it's not like it was a--

[41:36] David: Spoilers, everybody. Just spoil it. It's fine.

[41:38] John: The Grandmaster was making a deal with Maximus of the Inhumans. Then he betrays Maximus, but then Maximus brings in Black Bolt, and takes out the Grandmaster. I don't care what any of those guys have planned. If history suggests anything to me, their plan is going to be something really forgettable that I'm not going to remember in a few years. The other thing, though, that got me on this, and this gets me every time, but Black Bolt shows up. Do you know what he does?

[42:09] David: Nothing.

[42:10] John: He says something, and then boom! But that's the only thing he can do. I don't know. Inhumans are such a weird batch of characters, where I think they're so great in their original appearance, when they are set up to be the ultimate in-laws to Johnny Storm trying to date Crystal, and Black Bolt can destroy everything with a single word, and the uncle that can find the weakness and destroy it, and Medusa doesn't really count, because she was already a villain in Fantastic Four. So, she's in there. It’s not like her hair power is specifically a great metaphor for in-laws, but she's cool. That's all fine. When they separate from that, there's the only one thing Black Bolt can do, and he does it every time—Says something really quietly, but it's really loud and destructive.

[42:57] David: Man, when I was 11-years-old, though, and my only exposure to Black Bolt, at that time was the Marvel Handguide. So, you just read the little blurb, the bio on Black Bolt. I'm like, “whoa, this guy's incredible, man. He just whispers, and he's going to destroy everything. He can't even speak, he's so powerful.” I love that.

[43:19] John: Oh, it's a great idea. It's just the practice of it. I was scratching my head about Zatanna again, when there was an announcement that there definitely will be an Absolute Zatanna. I’ve got nothing against Zatanna. That's cool. I just don't get why DC pushes Zatanna with high-end--

[43:35] David: Stop trying to make Zatanna a thing, DC.

[43:38] John: Well, I mean, again, it's fine, but it's just such a—I don't know. It's as though the character was way bigger than the character's profile really is, and I feel the same way with Black Bolt. When we were kids, we didn't see Black Bolt in there, because they did an Inhumans series, it didn't do very well, and they shelved them, and they're off, and maybe they appear in there. I get why, when Marvel made the real move to make Inhumans be the big thing, was because Fox had the rights to X-Men. So, you could make Inhumans your mutants, but people have been trying to make Inhumans work for half a century. At some point, maybe they are better off just being these background characters that aren't the time-movers. I don't know. I mean, what if Black Bolt wins? Does that impact Spider-Man? I don't even know what he's trying to win—him being in charge of the Shi'ar instead of Deathbird, or whoever's in charge of the Shi'ar now? I don't know. Maybe I've engaged enough to think about that stuff, and that's my problem with it, and that's good that it's a stupid fanboy problem, and not some fundamental—it's down to so much minutia that I have to be into it, to some degree, to be even caring about it. I don't know.

[44:46] David: It's tough with the Marvel Galactic stuff, because none of it is really that popular. The only reason any of it is popular, in any level, is because there was a movie made, called Guardians of the Galaxy, and it was wildly popular, but that movie is wildly popular because James Gunn was the director and handled those movies. There's nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy that was inherently interesting to Marvel Comics readers, for the large majority of its existence, and outside of Guardians of the Galaxy, which I would argue is the most popular thing of Galactic Marvel, what is there? There's the Nova Corps that nobody cares about. No matter how many times they try to shove a Nova comic book in our face, nobody wants it. So, I don't know. I think it's best served as, to your point, a secondary thing. I think we, as readers—ultimately, you can't relate to people flying around in space, shooting lasers at each other, and meeting aliens, because that's not the human experience. It's not what you and I experience on a day-to-day basis. You know what we do understand? Having girlfriend problems, and that's Spider-Man, right? Spider-Man's got some girlfriend problems. I totally understand that. I 100% relate to that, but I cannot relate to being a space cop. I don't know what that's about. I don't know what the planet Thanagar looks like, or care. I know I just mixed worlds, but you know what I mean.

[46:17] John: Yeah. That is where it gets funny. It comes back to the Legion of Superheroes stuff that we were talking about a few weeks ago, I think, to a big degree, but a lot of the foundational stuff in the Marvel cosmology had a basis in some meaning of things. I think the Jim Starlin stuff is really different than the stuff now. That was pure 70s acid rock, “this guy has to confront death, and death is his own brother,” or “this guy’s true love is literal death,” and it's mythologies. It's this grand scale Bizarro stuff that's really interesting, but when it gets turned into something reasonable, that makes some logical sense, in relation to other things, where Wakanda is a space power, and stuff—Not that Wakanda being a space power isn't interesting—I mean, when instead of it being grand cosmic metaphors for things, it's just other nations, but the nations are in space, instead of on Earth, or on whatever planet. Weirdly, I think that becomes more abstract. Like you said, it becomes less relatable. You can relate to Adam Warlock, in that weird-ass, “I'm high. I'm tripping on acid, thinking I'm the center of the universe, and that I've just uncovered the secret to life.” I think it's relatable, in that way, but Jason of Spartax was assassinated, and what does that mean? I don't know.

[47:48] David: Yeah. I'm already out on J’son of Spartax. I'm out.

[47:54] John: I think a lot of this goes into Hickman's overall, sprawling, lifetime storytelling of Marvel, that this is where the Avengers stuff led to, was Earth being a cosmic power in the Marvel Universe, and there's really interesting stuff there, but yeah. I don't know. Hulkling and Wiccan are kings of space.

[48:17] David: Yeah, I'm with you on that. I totally get it.

[48:20] John: But I do like the idea of big, sprawling, weird space epics, the way that Kirby or Starlin, or those guys.

[48:25] David: Yeah, there's something to the grand epic line. The Thanos storyline, the Infinity Gems, and stuff, that was the culmination of a bunch of Silver Surfer stories, where Silver Surfer was the key element for that. Ron Lim and those guys were building up to the Infinity Gauntlet. When that was over, that was it. It moved on to more sci-fi adventures with Silver Surfer. So, maybe the Galactic stuff is just better on that scale, and you can't do that scale all the time, because then it's not that scale. Does that make sense? You can't have this big, epic, grand, galactic space battle thing happening every single issue, infinitely. You can do it for three or four issues, but then you can't do it anymore, because the grandeur gets lost in the repetitiveness or the sameness, or the familiarity of it. I don't know where we were going with this, but I get you.

[49:20] John: Yeah, and I think when you go back to the first Annihilation, that was the beginning of the modern version of these characters, and I think there was something really there. I think that was really interesting, unique story that was aware of all the stuff I was talking about, and then I feel like there's almost an assumption, and I don't know if this is really the case, because of the people involved—I don't know that they're actually assuming this—but it feels almost like an assumption that, “well, now you totally care about this. So, the stakes are self-evident.” In a regular Marvel crossover, you know that Norman Osborne taking over at the end of whatever that was, Secret Invasion, or whatever, “that's going to have these effects.” Whereas—I don't know—Black Bolt and Maximus taking over—I don't know what that means. It doesn't mean anything, and you're right. Everything's always turned up to 11, because that was the cool thing about Annihilation. What if there was this huge cosmic story that Marvel had to deal with, in a world where Marvel was really focused on Luke Cage being an Avenger, and the real street-level stuff? “There are a couple of characters with massive powers. Here's the stuff going on, where it's just these god-level powers, but they're still ordinary people,” and I feel like that's drifted away, having that center to it.

[50:34] David: In this new piece.

[50:35] John: Yeah. I mean, I think the new piece is just part of the tapestry that's grown out of it. That's just where the whole thing went. I don't mean to say that Imperial made that turn, and people seem to really be enjoying it. So, maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I get the impression people are into the crossovers, and stuff.

[50:54] David: I'm definitely going to keep reading, but right now, I think I've only read the first issue, and honestly, I'm not sure there's any more on the digital app yet. If it has, I haven't checked it out yet. I've been reading a ton of comic books. I keep going down these rabbit holes. It's so easy to go down a rabbit hole on that Marvel app, because you're reading Fantastic Four #48 through #50, because of a movie, and now I'm on Fantastic Four #63, because I've just kept reading. I've read a whole year's worth of comic books in one sitting.

[51:26] John: Yeah. There's definitely some stuff where I was reading it in the app and then shifted over to reading more stuff on paper. So, that means I just left these comics going, and I need to go see how these things turned out. That's the thing I'm really bad at, in comics. There's a ton of times where I've been super into a series, and just not read the end of it. I mean, from the time I was 8, until present day. I don't know.

[51:48] David: I think there's something to not wanting something to end, because I will do that with TV shows sometimes, where I won't watch the last episode, because when I watch the last episode, that's it. I don't have any more to watch, and I know it, but if I still have one more episode to watch, I’ve still got one more to watch. It's not over yet. It's extending the pleasure of that experience, and then at a certain point, you've waited too long, and you forgot.

[52:14] John: Yeah. I never watched the last half season of Mad Men. I very much watched everything, up to that point. It's not like it's even that long. Anyway.

[52:24] David: John, well, I think we did a good business. I hope everyone enjoyed Season 2 of The Corner Box. We’ve got another season in the can, John. Two full seasons, every single week. We have not missed one. Congratulations. It's quite a feat.

[52:39] John: Yeah, I don't like throwing the word hero around, but…

[52:43] David: Yeah, we are heroes, and if we are able to complete Season 3, I think Legendary is probably the thing that we'll probably be having to apply to ourselves, in some way, shape, or form, but hero, for now.

[52:58] John: At the very least, on our tombstones. All right. Thanks for listening.

[53:03] David: We'll see you next week for a New #1.

[53:06] John: Thanks a lot, everybody. See you there. Bye.

[53:08] David: 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.