Welcome to The Corner Box with David Hedgecock and John Barber. With decades of experience in all aspects of comic book production, David, John, and their guests will give you an in-depth, and insightful look at the past, present, and future of the most exciting medium on the planet—comics—and everything related to it.

[00:24] David: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. My name is David, and with me, as always, is my very good friend and co-host

[00:31] John: John.

[00:33] David: John Barber.

[00:34] John: You didn't say your last name. I wasn't going to say mine. I thought we were keeping it secret.

[00:37] David: Yeah, maybe we should do that.

[00:38] John: In season 4, we should put the genie back in the bottle, and un-reveal our identities, so nobody knows who we are, and it'll make it a mystery again.

[00:47] David: Okay. I like that. Maybe our big 150th Issue Extravaganza.

[00:51] John: Is that now?

[00:52] David: We're going to legacy numbering, at some point, I'm sure, but I don't think we're there yet. Almost certainly, we will miss it.

[00:58] John: Well, nobody else is keeping track anyway. So, we're fine.

[01:01] David: Anyway, John, what are we here to do? We're not here to talk about that stuff. We're here to talk about comic books.

[01:06] John: Yeah. I think the big question probably everybody's been asking now--certainly I have--why? Fundamentally, when you get right down to it.

[01:15] David: I ask myself that a lot, every single day. It's very true, but I haven't applied that exact question to comic books, recently, at least. I've applied that to my life, to my politics, just about everything else, but not to my comic books. No, that's not true. John, I do have a why. I have a why for you, John.

[01:35] John: Is it Y: The Last Man Pocket Edition?

[01:37] David: No, but that is coming out, and I have considered reading it, because $10 for a big chunk of comic books is hard to say no to, and I haven't ever actually read the entire Y: The Last Man.

[01:48] John: Man, it's pretty good.

[01:49] David: I’ve read the first two or three volumes worth. I think I've read probably the first 30 issues. It was about a 60-issue run. Yeah, I feel like I read half of it, and then I just fell off. I don't know what happened.

[02:02] John: I don't know. I remember the ending being very emotional. Anyway, but that's not the why in question here, is it?

[02:07] David: The why that I have is, why the hell is Salvation Run #1 through #7 over $100 on eBay right now?

[02:16] John: They were talking about how that's the blueprint for Peacemaker, but also stuff going forward on some of the DCU stuff.

[02:24] David: Is that even true, or is that just a rumor that somebody made because they're sitting on 50 copies of Salvation Run #1 through #7? What is this speculation thing that's happening with some of these books? I don't get it, man. I randomly heard about Salvation Run. I'm sure it is in the zeitgeist, because James Gunn said that it's somehow associated with Peacemaker and some of the DCU movie universe moving forward, but I didn't get that piece of it. I just heard somebody talking about Salvation Run as a series, and I think it's Sean Chen. I like Sean Chen’s stuff, and I was like “I think I want to check that out.” So, I get on eBay to find it. I'm like, “what the heck is this?” And then after the fact, I found out the James Gunn piece. So, I thought I was going to be able to go pick up a nice little 7-issue run of comics for $15, and that ain't happening now. So, I don't know what Salvation Run's about, but I don't know that I ever will, because I ain't paying $100 for 7 issues worth of comic books.

[03:24] John: That's such a weird one, and when people started talking about it, I had to remind myself, was this the same Salvation Run? They must have reused that name, or something. I remember that coming out. It was one of the Final Crisis tie-in comics that had nothing to do with Final Crisis, because nobody knew what Final Crisis was about. So, they couldn't tie anything into it. It's got the most convoluted and weird backstory of any DC book I can think of. It was a George R.R. Martin pitch.

[03:50] David: Was it? Oh, I didn't know that.

[03:52] John: It was created by George RR Martin, and I'm looking it up on Wikipedia here--I didn't know this part--John Joseph Miller, but somehow, they wound up not doing it, or something. I mean, I don't think there was a problem with that. I think it just wound up not happening, and then selling the idea to DC, or something like that. I can't imagine a world where George R.R. Martin doesn't write the thing that everybody wants him to write. So, I don't really know what explanation could be there. So, yeah, I don't know what the backstory on that is, but then Bill Willingham comes in, but then he leaves three issues in, because he gets sick, and somebody else writes the last four issues of it. I like Sean Chen just fine, too. He's a super nice guy, and a very solid artist. I got to work with him a few times. I thought he and inker Sandu Florea, who I thought fit on him really well, did a really neat run with Chris Claremont on X-Men: The End, where it was Chris Claremont riffing on the Morrison X-Men that had recently concluded, and I don't know--it was just a weird little series, none of which explains why Salvation Run could possibly be worth $100.

[04:54] David: Yeah, it's not making any sense, man. I don't know why it costs that much, but I do know why I won't be reading it anytime soon. Maybe I'll try to find it on the app. That's a thing that's baked into me, John, as a longtime comic book buyer, is that whenever I hear about reading a comic book that I haven't read that I'm like, “I want to read that,” instead of automatically going to the DC comic book app, or the Marvel comic book app that literally has thousands of old comic books in it that I'm already paying for, essentially, I immediately go to eBay to buy the print copy of the thing, instead. I'm such a creature of habit that I'm so used to buying print that that's the first thing I do. It only literally just occurred to me, as we're talking about this, that maybe Salvation Run is in the DC app. I should probably just go look […].

[05:40] John: It certainly is, and it's in other collections, as well, I'm sure.

[05:43] David: Okay, well, there you go. There's my comic book why, John. What's your comic book why?

[05:47] John: My why is for a new Youngblood #1. Mason and I talked about it two episodes  ago. You weren't here yet. Have you read it yet?

[05:56] David: I read it in April.

[05:58] John: Oh, that's right.

[05:59] David: I've got Youngblood #1, Youngblood #2, and the Giant-Size Youngblood. I already have all three of those. I think only Youngblood #1 has come out in comic shops.

[06:07] John: Yeah. Very cool.

[06:08] David: I loved it. I thought it was great. It's exactly what I wanted in a Rob Liefeld comic book in 2025. I don't think you can expect much more from a Rob Liefeld comic book in 2025. The coloring is fantastic.

[06:21] John: It really is.

[06:22] David: Juan Manuel Rodriguez--last thing I worked with Juan on was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles meets—oh, God, I can't remember the name of the board game, which is awful, because that was--It was a board game--Black Death. Plague Death. Anyway, it was a mashup of those two, and those comic books, if you can find them online, go for $250 now, because they only made a very limited number, and it was only available at San Diego ComiCon last year, or the year before. So, anyway, he's a fantastic colorist. I think he's doing some heavy lifting on that stuff. I think Rob's drawing to that. I think Rob's drawing with the expectation that the colors are going to come in a certain way. So, anyway, I really like it. How about you?

[07:10] John: Yeah, no, I enjoyed it. There's a certain story that a lot of Rob Liefeld comics have--not a lot. Several of them have this structure to it, and it's so loosely a structure. I'm not trying to say that he repeats it, but it's that thing where a bunch of people are trying to get in somewhere, and they have to fight a bunch of guys, and then they get to the end, and they find the thing. I basically just described the story, fundamentally. It's one of those things, it's got characters, and then they do a thing, and then it either happens, or doesn't, but that's the Mike Mignola issue of X-Force. It's Bloodstrike #1, and then this one is like a rollercoaster, except just the down part. That particular story is just a pure rush straight ahead into that. That's exactly what I want from the minutes I'm going to spend with that comic. It's a lot of fun. That made it sound like I'm talking about it being super disposable. That's not what I meant, but I just meant the time I spend with that comic, I want a rollercoaster ride, crashing into a bunch of stuff.

[08:04] David: I thought you delivered. I just got Issue #2 a week or two ago in the mail, and I haven't read it yet. So, I need to sit down and read both of them again.

[08:13] John: The follow-up to a previous episode, where I mentioned that Metal Hurlant had gone bankrupt, they apparently are still sending out the next issue. I got a notification that it was in the mail. So, the very--

[08:23] David: Issue #3?

[08:24] John: Yes.

[08:25] David: How long was the subscription that you purchased?

[08:27] John: I don't remember. Don't tell them that, because they could use that to their advantage in our relationship, but I guess I'd have to go look. I forget. I think it was 3 or 4 issues. I can't remember. I don't know what the situation there is. […], and gone over to IDW, and is editing Ninja Turtles. I don't know who's--

[08:45] David: One of the Heavy Metal guys already is working at IDW?

[08:47] John: Jake Thomas. He was the editor of the English new magazine, but he's editing the Ninja Turtles now.

[08:56] David: Oh, okay. I haven't been paying too much attention to the IDW news lately, I guess. So, John, I fell into a rabbit hole of Garth Ennis and John McCrea's Hitman.

[09:10] John: Yeah.

[09:11] David: I remember hearing good things about it, when it was coming out, but I don't think it was ever a really great seller. It must have been a solid seller, because it got 60 issues. So, I sat down and read it. It was weirdly the easiest read. I literally read 60 issues worth of comic books in probably a week, and that's on top of the other stuff I was reading. So, super breezy read, but I don't think I need to read any Garth Ennis for a while, because I feel like I really got my fill with that. It was very Garth Ennis. That is the most Garth Ennis of Garth Ennis books. He's got this real disdain for superhero stuff, and the story of Hitman-- the character, Tommy Monaghan, has superpowers. He can see through walls, he's got x-ray vision, and he can read minds, to a certain degree, and he gets these powers from the Bloodline story. Do you remember Bloodline? DC's Annuals event one year was called Bloodlines. I think Art Adams did the designs for all the monsters in that series, the annuals. So, somehow, this is where the Hitman character got his superpowers from, the Bloodlines story.

So, anyway, he's a hitman with these superpowers. He doesn't really use them that much, which is very similar to Preacher, where he's got this superpower, he doesn't really use it that much. He's got this power, but he's got a disdain for using the power, does stuff without using it. It's not really a thing, despite the fact, in Preacher, at least, it's the most powerful thing ever, and he's got a moral code, which is ambiguous, because he's killing people, but he's only killing people who are sh!tty bad guys. I don't know. It's all very much Garth Ennis. There's this code of honor, but he's still a badass and a complicated character, in that way, and there's this disdain for superheroes, even though it's steeped in superhero stuff--begrudgingly steeped in it.

The thing that's super funny is that, during Hitman, he's in Gotham City, the main character. The stories are all set in Gotham City, and in the first few issues, he comes in contact with Batman for one issue. I think, in that early part of the series, he also comes in contact with Superman for an issue. Batman is just there, and then gone. Hitman gives Superman a little bit of his personal philosophy, and Superman misunderstands what Tommy Monaghan's saying, and is like, “oh, yeah. That's real insightful.”

[11:52] John: Doesn't he […] Superman, or something?

[11:54] David: Yeah. I can't remember. It's something like that, but Superman likes Hitman after the fact, because he thinks that he said some insightful, meaningful things, but he was spouting nonsense, and Superman just misinterpreted, or interpreted in a way that made it work. There's the random characters that are in there, for comedic effect, but also are taken seriously, every once in a while. He's got those random characters. It's very Garth Ennis. It's all the stuff that he does in every single thing that he does. It's all really entertaining. I enjoy it, but I was just like, “this is exactly like Hitman. This is exactly like The Boys. This is exactly like Pilgrim.” It just kept coming back. I've seen this a couple times. So, I think I enjoyed it. I don't think I liked John McCrea's art. It was painful, at times, to see his stuff. Is he a British guy? Is he doing a lot of work in England?

[12:58] John: So, he and Garth got started together. I don't know if it was literally their first comic. One of the first things that Garth did is this series called Troubled Souls that was about the IRA/Irish situation in England. John McCrea and Garth are both from Ireland, I mean, and then they did a sequel to it that got a little goofier, called For A Few Troubles More, and that eventually metamorphoses into the comic, Dicks, that came out. Those are the same characters, but by that point, it's a slapstick comedy with them just being goofy and doing ridiculous stuff. It gets through the tough guy characters from Troubled Souls, and spins them off into this comedy series. I think they were making that at the same time they were making Hitman. Hitman, I think more than anything else, more than any of the Garth stuff was--I guess maybe aside from Preacher, except Preacher's level of execution was so high--It's one of those, Garth hanging out with his friends, his drinking buddies, spinning stuff off, and making them laugh.

[13:57] David: It's interesting that you said that, because it's a fine book. Like I said, I blew through all […] issues. It's an easy, breezy read. I did enjoy reading it. I don't really have too many bad things to say about it, except that I got a version of that with Preacher. To your point, the level of craft was so much higher on that book than on this one. This one does feel--exactly like you say, it’s like everyone's taking a summer vacation, but they’ve got to keep working and keep paying the bills.

[14:31] John: You know what I think it's like? It's the Garth Ennis equivalent of the Adam Sandler movies on Netflix, where every once in a while, you might hit one that you just like, if you like Adam Sandler, in general. Otherwise, it’s like somebody paying Adam Sandler to hang out with his friends and make each other laugh, and you're invited to come hang out with them, if that’s what you like.

[14:50] David: That does feel like what it was.

[14:53] John: I think it's one that you have to take at that level, and I don't know--it's funny, though, I never finished it. I got the same thing. I remember buying every issue of that as it was coming out. I just started reading Hellblazer when those guys left, and then they started to go to Preacher. So, I started reading it again. I can't remember if I told the story in here before, but I bought Issue #1 of Hellblazer, drifted away, and then came back, and I was reading it at the end of the Jamie Delano run, and then that was weird, because it was interrupted with a Neil Gaiman issue and a Grant Morrison issue that David Lloyd drew, and all this stuff, and then finally, Jamie Delano is leaving, and the new story was going to be that John Constantine gets lung cancer, and I'm like, “what is this PC garbage?” I'm not saying he should smoke. I definitely like not having Wolverine with a cigarette in his mouth, and all that stuff, but it's John Constantine. You don't want to have it be about lung cancer. “Who is this Garth Ennis that I've never heard of? Who's this guy? I'm not going to read this.” So, then several years later, I found out I was fairly incorrect on that, and went back, and read it. The things I remember about it are there being an issue that was a crossover, the Final Night crossover, where it's just the guys in the bar, hanging out, thinking the world's going to end. That's one of the places where Garth’s […] shines, and that stuff.

[16:09] David: It's pretty funny, because it's set in Gotham, and it's clear that there's a mandate that they have to acknowledge these big events that are happening in the Batman books, because No Man's Land happens, one other big event happens, and Final Night, all these things are happening. What was the earthquake? What was that one?

[16:26] John: I think that was No Man's Land. I only know that from reading Hitman, and maybe I was reading one other DC comic, at that time.

[16:33] David: That's funny. The Hitman part of it, largely, just ignores it. It acknowledges that it's happening, and then they just go right into whatever story they were going to do anyway, with maybe some window dressing around what the No Man's Land stuff is. Just enough I remember that this particular arc is part of No Man's Land, but not in a way that's really impeding, in any way, shape, or form, on the story he's trying to tell. He's still just doing what he was going to do. He's just fitting in some dialogue and some background art to make it all work together, but it's done in a pretty clever and fun way, and I like the way the characters reactions to it feel real. These are toughs. They're not the smartest guys on the planet. They're not dumb, but they're not the smartest dudes on the planet. They're hitmen. They're killers for hire, and they spend most of their time drinking in a bar, with other killers for hire, and the bar is owned by a former killer for hire, and that's their attitude, and that's their outlook on things.

So, when these big events happen, it's like, “ho-hum. It's Tuesday also.” So, I liked it for that. Anyway, it was an enjoyable read. It gets a little serious at the end. The final 8 issues or so, you can tell they clearly had enough heads-up, and were allowed to wrap things up the way that they wanted to. Spoiler--it ends with probably the hitman dying, because it's a buddy cop story. It's focused on Tommy Monaghan, but his best friend is in it all the time, and they both end up probably dead at the end, but it's not 100%, and they're doing something very heroic, and something that they know they're probably going to die when they go in to do the thing that they're going to do. It's a very fun, cool send off, and the heroism is not overstated. It's not like they're saving the world, or anything like that. They're literally saving one woman who is pregnant, and she's just in a bad spot, and bad people are coming after her, and they just think that's unfair, and they're not going to stand for it. It stays true to its roots throughout the whole thing. Fun read.

[18:53] John: It might have even been their call to end it, at that point, but I think they went over to Marvel, the two of them, and they did a couple books with Axel Alonso over at Marvel, who had just started there, at that point.

[19:04] David: Oh, okay. Interesting.

[19:06] John: The other thing that I remember being really funny about that, in terms of a crossover, was the DC One Million storyline, where Grant Morrison brings everybody to where Issue #1,000,000 of the comic would be, however many thousands of years that is in the future. I think those characters just showed up in History of the DC Universe, or DC K.O. recently. Anyway, there's this--I don't know if controversy is the right thing--but there were definitely some people whose feathers were ruffled at DC, because Morrison, for one month, I guess, delivered plots to every single writer for their comic book, which then jumped to Issue #1,000,000, and tied into the DC One Million story. So, it's this interesting, weird crossover, where it's a 5-issue series, but then there's 30 or 40 other comics in there that all actually fit together, because it's Grant Morrison, and he's building this thing, and it all fits together, 90% of the time, because it's Grant Morrison. There's still 10% of it, that either somebody didn't follow what was supposed to happen, and nobody changed anything, or it just was never going to come together anyway, but there's some people who got really mad that “who's this guy coming in, and telling us what to do?” I mean, Grant Morrison was a well-known writer, but everybody else is of his generation. It wasn't like he was somebody that people writing comics grew up reading, or whatever. This might even be in the omnibus, or something. His plot to Garth for Hitman #1,000,000 was “take the piss.”

[20:29] David: Fantastic. Yeah, I don't know what else to do. Speaking of Grant Morrison, John.

[20:36] John: How about that? I was going to say that, too. What was yours?

[20:39] David: I've listened to two interviews in the past week with Grant Morrison. One on Off Panel, and one with Comic Book Couples Counseling. I have not ever been a huge Grant Morrison guy. I think my favorite Grant Morrison stuff is probably New X-Men, but in general, he's just too smart for me. It's over my head, a lot of the stuff he does, and also, he brings into his work a lot of history, and I don't know--I feel like I have to do work, I have to read other stuff to know the reference that he's getting, to make the stuff that he's doing in the moment more meaningful, and I have trouble reading his stuff, on the surface. I feel like I know there's stuff underneath that he's doing, and I'm not smart enough to know what it is, and I'm too lazy to go research it. It's this odd disconnect with me and Grant Morrison. His JLA stuff I thought was really good, and I think I appreciated that more, because I actually recognized that he was just doing old Greek and Roman god mythology-type stuff, which I knew already, and it felt like he was just telling those old stories and using JLA.

So, it made more--I don't know--I felt like I got the context a little bit easier, I didn't have to do a lot of research, but anyway, I listened to two interviews with him, and I was like, “man, why is Grant Morrison doing 2 interviews in the same week? What is going on?”

[22:00] John: He wrote a comic book.

[22:01] David: Yeah. Not just a comic book, John. The comic book of the moment, right?

[22:05] John: I think so, yeah.

[22:06] David: I haven't read it, yet. So, I'm trying to prime you to tell us about it.

[22:09] John: Yeah, okay. It's the DC half of the Deadpool/Batman crossovers. I don't have anything really bad to say about the Marvel one. I thought it was a solid, funny story. Greg Capullo's art is terrific. I mean, he's great. It was good. The backup stories were okay. They didn't really live up to the talent involved, but you're doing these little backup stories, and how good is it going to be? But man, did I like this comic, Batman/Deadpool. I just loved the Morrison story. The backup stories are getting uneven. Just a ton of good talent. Sometimes, you're going to wind up with what you're going to wind up in 4-8 pages of crossover stuff. The lead story was terrific. I hadn't seen a new Morrison comic in so long.

[22:59] David: It's been a while.

[23:00] John: Not knowing, is it going to come back, and do I have to reconsider even liking some of the old stuff, or something? Is it just going to be him going through the motions? Morrison was one of the only people--and Simonson's the other guy that we talk about here as being extremely good for an extremely long time, without just getting into self-parody or repetition, or something, and remembering that when Morrison was writing Batman, at Marvel, the competition's biggest comic was Morrison writing Batman, and he'd been writing DC comics since Crisis, since 1986--since I was a child, and a lot of the writers from that time period are still very good, but it's going to be “okay, you're going to put them off on the side, and they'll do something for the fans that grew up with that stuff, and want their comics like they were when they grew up.”

[23:53] David: They want more Ron Lim Silver Surfer.

[23:56] John: Right, and Morrison is reinventing Batman, and doing these narrative techniques that nobody else is doing, and that everybody else is ripping off, especially when Quitely’s on there. The Frank Quitely Batman and Robin issues were incredible, and Multiversity had so much stuff going on, even after that, and he was just so good and so cutting-edge for so long. You look at somebody for 30 years as being on the bleeding edge of what mainstream comics are producing.

[24:25] David: He's in his 60s, or maybe even early 70s now.

[24:29] John: Yeah. I think he started pretty young, though, but again, even then, even when he came in, he's the guy that introduced--what was it? The guy that remembered Crisis happened.

[24:41] David: Booster Gold?

[24:42] John: No, originally--the original Crisis. He was […] was following up on that story in Animal Man. […] Animal Man eventually turned into, but he'd done stuff in England by then. He had already written Zenith at 2000 A.D., and it was great to see him back on Batman, riffing on stuff that came after him.

[25:02] David: Oh, okay. That's cool.

[25:04] John: I hadn't pieced together, though--spoilers or anything--of who the villain of the piece is, but it's one of those things that totally fits together, that it's--hold your ears if you don't want to know--Cassandra Nova, the character he created in New X-Men, who was also the main villain in the last Deadpool movie.

[25:19] David: Right.

[25:20] John: That all totally goes together. There's actually another layer to it, where it involves the Grant Morrison character from Animal Man, because in Animal Man, Buddy Baker meets Grant Morrison. That character later gets killed off in Suicide Squad. They reveal that he's a villain called The Writer, and he gets killed in an issue of Suicide Squad. This comic picks it up from there, directly--

[25:44] David: This is what I'm talking about. See? I wouldn't have picked up any of this. I wouldn't know any of this. So, it would all be flying over my head, and I would know just enough that stuff’s flying over my head, but I wouldn't know enough to know what it was. That sounds amazing, though.

[25:57] John: Yeah. I was actually thinking about this afterwards. Morrison is one of those writers that--there's an adage that one thing should happen in every panel, and there's the reality that one consecutive action can happen in a panel. You can't have somebody pull a gun out, reload it, and fire off two shots, like a lot of TV scripters will give you, but Morrison and Tom Scioli are the two people I would always go to as being “no, look, you can effectively put three important things in every panel,” but Morrison is at the whim of the artist on a lot of that stuff, where if it's Frank Quitely--Quitely is going to add two more things to put on there. So, there'll be five things going on in the panel instead, but there's some other artists that just don't. I remember puzzling through some issues of New X-Men. I don't even mean to pull this in because of the politics, or anything, because I thought he did a great job with Geoff Johns later on, but the Ethan Van Sciver issues of New X-Men were, I thought, difficult to read, in the sense that I didn't think what was being written was actually drawn. There'd be one of those three things, but the script would keep going, as though two other things had happened.

[27:00] David: It's interesting you say that, John, because in his interview on Off Panel, he was talking about Dan Mora, and how much he enjoyed working with Dan Mora for the exact reason that you're talking about. Morrison says, explicitly, that he writes for things to be happening in the background, and specific expressions, and specific things are in the background going on, and it's not always communicated, depending on the artist he's working with, but Dan Mora, he says, completely gets it.

[27:31] John: I mean, it was breathtaking, at times. It was really extraordinary how he’d do that. The stuff was lively and fun, like Dan Mora’s stuff is, but it conveyed all of these complicated bits, and just had a lot of atmosphere. There's so much dialogue in some of it, not overwhelmingly, but you can see why people have trouble doing this, and I was actually thinking of somebody, like Garth Ennis, that was the opposite of that, where Garth writes a thing in a panel. It's very clear, very simple, boom, boom, boom, and I think that's why you can breeze through 60 issues.

[27:58] David: For sure.

[27:59] John: Brian Vaughan's the same way. It's cinematic, in the way they tell the stories. It lets the emotions get through easily, and you can follow the story, and the story carries it, not fully the technique of it, but Morrison's so invested in comics, as a technique, and as a structure, the way Alan Moore is. There's not that many writers that I think are really doing that. Bendis maybe, too, in a different way, or Chaykin. Certain people are very much about the structure of comics, and the way that stuff works, not just the pacing or the rhythms of it. Well, Bendis is all about the rhythms. Anyway, I'm sorry, I'm going off target here, but Dan Mora, man, he nailed it. He's really good, but this is like, “oh, yeah. He's really good. This is good stuff.” So, this is where we finally get a lot of the jokes about--Batman goes, “are you a death stroke?” He's like, “no.” “You're not Slade Wilson?” “No, I'm not Slade Wilson.”

[28:57] David: Hilarious.

[28:58] John: It's a funny, goofy superhero thing on top of all that, but it's also fairly challenging, and there's a lot going on, a lot of bits. I enjoyed it.

[29:07] David: Yeah, that sounds great. I didn't realize that there might be some complications in getting these crossover projects on the digital apps. So, I've been waiting for them to come on the apps, but you pointed out to me earlier that I might be waiting a long time. So, I think I'm going to have to go out and get this one, because I've been hearing a lot of things, and the interviews with Grant Morrison did their job. They definitely made me more interested. I was already interested, but they definitely made me more interested in picking these up than I think I would have been otherwise.

[29:33] John: Yeah. It's all in the aim of making a fun superhero crossover. I don't mean to say that it's homework to read this thing. It's just Batman/Deadpool, riffing and fighting, and doing stuff.

[29:45] David: I feel like Grant Morrison—Like I said, I like him okay. I feel like he understands the moment. He's not going to try to give me Invisibles when it's Deadpool/Batman. He's going to give me JLA. He's going to give us a blockbuster movie. He's not going to try to do Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or whatever. He's not going to do that with this.

[30:04] John: You can see that, at some point, Grant Morrison learned that he shouldn't have written the second arc of Invisibles. It seemed designed to shed readers. I think it's terrific. I don't mean it's a bad arc. It had one of four dehanced covers, where the covers were grocery store material, and it was just random-seeming symbols on it. So, there are four basically identical covers on terrible paper, and then the story about the Marquis de Sade, and all that. No, maybe you shouldn't be trying to throw off the readers, and should be […]. I do also want to throw out there, Tom Taylor writes--what's the name? The guy that drew Nightwing when Tom Taylor was writing Nightwing. […] They wrote a Nightwing Laura Kenny story that's really good, but it's got a great line, where Dick Grayson says something like, “what a small world. My brother used to be a child assassin, too.” It's a nice bit that Tom Taylor would do where he says his character's reacting pretty reasonably to the world they're in. For me, the Nightwing run had a lot of moments of “oh, man, why wouldn't you just call all your superhero friends?” and then Dick Grayson calls all the superhero friends. One other thing I have about this issue that I was--

[31:17] David: Yeah, you really liked this one.

[31:18] John: I did. I've been thinking about it since I read it. So, I can't remember who made this observation, and if it was a private observation, or if this is something in interviews, but somebody was describing the prototypical Marvel story as that the bad guys are representative of problems that a hero has to face, and the Marvel hero overcomes these problems, but then at the end, they’ve still got the problem that they started with, where it's Peter Parker defeats Doc Ock, but he still can't get a date with Liz. It's that downbeat ending. It could be lighthearted like that, or the one that I always remember when I say stuff like that is when Ralph Macchio and I talking about Wolverine: Enemy of the State, the Mark Millar/John Romita Jr story, where at the end of it, Wolverine kills the bad guy, all the heroes, like Northstar and Elektra, come back to life, and they're messed up. Everything's going to be okay, but these stories started when this friend of Wolverine hired him to find his son, and at the end of the story, the son's still dead, and Wolverine still feels like he didn't succeed.

It's a classic Marvel ending like that, whereas the DC stories are all about how awesome their characters are, and it's funny when you think about all these things. What's Kingdom Come about? It's about how awesome Superman and Batman, and Wonder Woman are. That one just struck. Marvel's isn't about how awesome Reed Richards is. It's about how magical the universe is, but that's not what the Marvel Universe is about. So, this comic leans into that, and it's so funny to see writers pulling the Marvel characters into that, and giving them those stories, where that Laura Kenny story is about how awesome it is to be Laura Kenny. That's never been a story.

[33:04] David: Never happened, yeah.

[33:05] John: That really comes through on all of the pieces. It ends with the characters just being like, “yeah, we are cool,” in an affirming way.

[33:15] David: Right. That's funny. That's interesting. That's totally true, though. That is one of the distinct differences between the two universes, and I think that going all the way back--well, largely going back, at least into the 70s, where DC has these established superheroes who are god-like. They're always going to persevere. They've got a set code that they're following, and they're doing things in specific ways, and the stories are about how awesome they are, and Marvel, from its start, is about failure, about living in the real world, and also having the superpower, which is largely inconvenient. It doesn't turn you into a god-like being that everyone thinks is cool. It turns you into Spider-Man, who literally everyone hates, and there's a daily newspaper dedicated to pointing out what a sh!t you are. I think that's always been why Marvel has been more popular in fandom, is because you can just relate to that more. You just relate to those characters more in real-world problems. It does seem nice to actually see those characters get a taste of it.

[34:25] John: It's pleasant. It's nice.

[34:32] David: So, man, we talked about something old, something new, but now I want to go back to old stuff. I am not done talking about this Garth Ennis trip that I've been on. Like I said, I was reading the Hitman, read it all, and it had me thinking about other Garth Ennis books, because it's so much a Garth Ennis book. Have you ever read Just a Pilgrim?

[34:51] John: Yes.

[34:52] David: Just a Pilgrim was by a now-defunct publisher, Black Bull Comics, which back in the late-90s, early 2000s was Wizard Magazine's comic book imprint, if I remember that right, and Just a Pilgrim was probably the only book that came out of Black Bull Comics of any note. I don't remember what else came out from them, but I just remember the only thing that ever really got on my radar, in any meaningful way, was Just a Pilgrim, and it was by Garth Ennis, who wrote it. Carlos Ezquerra was the artist, and Carlos Ezquerra is fantastic on this book. He's a Spanish artist, I think, but he worked largely in the 2000 A.D. progs really for most of his career. So, he's done stuff in the States, but it's not as much stuff in the States as one would probably hope. So, the first time I was ever exposed to Carlos Ezquerra was Just a Pilgrim, because I've never been a Judge Dredd guy. So, I just missed all that. Carlos Ezquerra is responsible for some really big, really important Dredd storylines. I mean, he designed the original character himself, actually.

[36:06] John: Oh, yeah. Strontium Dog.

[36:09] David: Right. Yeah.

[36:10] John: […] that line in space, “where were you when Johnny Alpha died?”

[36:16] David: Yeah, that unforgettable line that everybody knows what you're talking about right now, John.

[36:21] John: He was absolutely integral to 2000 A.D., as much as John Wagner and Alan Grant.

[36:28] David: Alan Grant.

[36:29] John: […], yeah.

[36:30] David: So, he drew the Judge Dredd Necropolis storyline, a bunch of stuff. I actually, at some point, really want to go back in and read his Judge Dredd stories. I'm sure they've been collected in some way, shape, or form. So, I went off of Garth Ennis, and I went on to Carlos Ezquerra, and Carlos Ezquerra, I found out, did a 6-issue miniseries called The Stainless Steel Rat, based on the novels of the same name. Back in the day, I loved those novels so much. Harry Harrison is the creator and author of all The Stainless Steel Rats. There's 10 or 12 Stainless Steel Rat stories, and they've been collected in various ways, but the Stainless Steel Rat comic books also were in the progs over in 2000 A.D., but they eventually recolored and reprinted the Stainless Steel Rat comic books that Carlos Ezquerra drew in the mid-80s. Eagle Comics published the Stainless Steel Rat books as their own separate thing in a 6-issue limited series, and they did it, John, on that old--do you remember Baxter paper being a big deal?

[37:38] John: Yes. Oh, it's hard for me not to talk about that. Yeah.

[37:42] David: So, I picked up the Stainless Steel Rat comic books, the 6-issue miniseries, and I got some primo copies, man, but part of the reason I think that they’re primo is, that Baxter paper was--they were not messing around with that paper. That was some legit paper, man. It is bright white, still. This book was printed in 1985. I'm reading it in 2025, and the paper is bright white and crisp, just a pristine comic book, still, after 40 years, man. That Baxter paper was no joke. They weren't messing around.

So, anyway, I read that 6-issue series, and this is earlier Carlos Ezquerra. I think Carlos Ezquerra has been around since the mid-70s, but this is still, relatively speaking, early in his career, still, and man, some gorgeous work in here. He does some fantastic stuff. I really enjoyed it. If you get a chance to pick that up, The Stainless Steel Rat 6-issue miniseries that Eagle Comics produced--I think it's been collected a couple of times, too. I think there's a hardcover--Well, yeah, there's a hardcover edition that came out in 2021. That might be a better version, because I think they added some fun little extras into it, but some fantastic […], and Carlos Ezquerra, man, that guy's no joke. I'm definitely going down a rabbit hole on that guy's work, at some point, here soon. I just wish so much of it hadn’t been on Judge Dredd. I'll probably start with Strontium Dog, which is one of his creator-owned things that he did with--Was that Alan Grant that he did it with, or was it John Wagner that he did it with?

[39:06] John: All three of them. It's not creator-owned. It's 2000 A.D.

[39:10] David: Oh, it's a 2000 A.D. thing? Oh, okay. Well, he created it, or co-created it, but 2000 A.D. owned it. Okay.

[39:17] John: Yeah, which like Judge Dredd, it was one of the early 2000 A.D.s characters.

[39:23] David: Okay. I think he drew all of the Strontium Dog stuff.

[39:27] John: My line about Johnny Alpha dying might have spoiled the conclusion of the story. I think they've gone back and done more Strontium Dogs since then, but it all fits. It's all within the confines of the time established by the original series. It's just side stories, or whatever, I think.

[39:44] David: Didn't he not draw the last story, because they were killing him off, and Ezquerra was like, “no, I don't want to have anything to do with that?” He didn't want to do that. I think that happened. I think somebody else came in and drew the Death of Strontium Dog storyline, because he refused to do it, but then I think they then came back and did more stories with Strontium Dog after the fact, and probably, Ezquerra drew those two. So, I really like his work. Reintroduced myself to it.

[40:10] John: I think he didn't get his respect in the US for a while, because he was a guy that wasn't Brian Boland that was drawing Judge Dredd, and even in the UK, he was the guy that wasn't Mike McMahon who was drawing Judge Dredd, but he was this stalwart guy who created it, and just did great work through his whole career. It had a lot of the European feel to it. Makes sense, but you’ve got a little bit of the Moebius feel from the time. You can see him bringing in some of that stuff, from the contemporary stuff. Another artist who draws a lot of details in his stuff, that I've had a revelation about, or just a thing where I feel like I want to be like, “I'm sorry I was wrong before,” is somebody that came up in my head when we were talking with Mason, in the last two episodes, about our favorite runs, and we were talking about the Hulk run. Man, I love that Hulk run, too, and man, I'm with you that there's just this great artist, great artist, great artist, and Dale Keown doing his best stuff, I think. Gary Frank probably isn't doing his best stuff, but I love the way Gary Frank's stuff looks in that so much. I can't remember who--Mark Farmer inking him--It gave a different feel than what Liam Sharp, or than what he is now. Oops, I gave it away.

Then Liam Sharp came on, and that was the one point in that run that I did not like, and I don't know if you remember the Liam Sharp run of Hulk, but it was during our mutually beloved Heroes Reborn. Incredible Hulk wasn't one of the Heroes Reborn titles, but Hulk was one of the Heroes Reborn characters. So, they had this weird split where Bruce Banner went to the Heroes Reborn Universe, but the Hulk stayed in the Marvel Universe. So, there was a year of Hulk stories that were probably not the direction Peter David would have tried to go. The one thing that Peter David and Garth Ennis have in common in life is that both of them, if they were doing crossover issues, would just write their own storylines, and try to give the minimum amount of time to the crossover. So, there's a year of that, and then Liam Sharp in there, and he's drawing all these lines, and I just remember it being stilted and awkward, and I didn't like it. I didn't think it was a good fit for the Hulk. I think Angel Medina came on right after that, too. This is all off the top of my head. I'm not looking this up. So, I can't remember, but I always felt that way about Liam Sharp's stuff.

I mean, I got to talk to him and meet him, because he was one of the founders of Madefire, and we did a bunch of stuff with Madefire. Livio Ramondelli and I did an original comic for them fairly early on. Delightful guy. I was like, “oh, man. He seems like a really nice guy. I'm sorry I don't like his art more,” and then he did a Grant Morrison Green Lantern, and I don't think I ever finished reading that. Someone on this podcast might have my copies of them, because maybe you borrowed them one time. I don't remember. Did that happen?

[42:59] David: I don’t remember borrowing those from you, but maybe I did.

[43:02] John: That was during our competition year of which one of us got the comps. They're like, “why would they put him on there? That's so stiff and awkward.” I hadn't thought about him too much, and then he did a Savage Sword of Conan backup story last year. I was just like, “oh, sh!t. this is really nice. This is really good.” There's a ton of detail. That's not necessarily my jam, the way it is. I feel like sometimes that's maybe shorthand for somebody doing a good job, and Liam Sharp was the poster child of what that meant, but no, this is really well done and really cool, and then a couple weeks ago, I'm in the comic bookstore, and there's a new Savage Sword of Conan, and I'm like, “do I have this one? My God, that's the one that Liam Sharp did. That was good. Wait a minute. No, Liam Sharp did the lead story in this one.” So, I got that, and I'm like, “man, this is phenomenal.” I love it.” There's one other issue of the Savage Sword of Conan this year that I thought was just incredible. It's the Robert De La Torre/Roy Thomas issue. So good.

[44:06] David: Yes.

[44:07] John: So beautiful. The art's wonderful, and it's like, “man, here's this magazine that has two of my favorite issues of the year, two of my favorite standalone stories.” Incredible, and then this week, Liam Sharp is doing a new Spawn: The Dark Ages series, which I, again, in my not being interested, didn't realize he was the original artist of Spawn: The Dark Ages. Secondly, there's a thing called Spawn: The Dark Ages. It's about a knight that becomes a Spawn.

[44:35] David: Is it a knight? For some reason, I thought it was a Viking.

[44:38] John: I don't know. It's not Medieval Spawn. To be, I believe, incredibly legally clear, it is a distinctly legally separate character than Medieval Spawn.

[44:51] David: Okay. For reasons.

[44:53] John: Yeah. Neil Gaiman absolutely didn't create Spawn: The Dark Ages, just to get that out of the way. So, I picked it up, or maybe I even saw something about it first. So, I knew that it was coming out. I'm keeping my eye out for it, but it's in color, and I'm like, “man, that's too bad, because that black and white art is gorgeous. I wonder who they got to color him. Well, they got this guy named Liam Sharp to color it.” So, he's writing, drawing, and coloring this thing, and the art, I think, there's a little bit less detail, because the art, he's covering it in the coloring, which is gorgeous. What a delight. I take it all back, man. He's great. I'm going to not miss any Liam Sharp comics from now on. I hope I've got some more stuff I can go back and pick up, and learn what I missed, because I totally love it.

[45:41] David: I'm working in the Conan office. The FunTimeGo team is handling the Conan archive. So, we get the pleasure of seeing stuff, sometimes before anybody else, and the editor for Savage Sword of Conan, Chris, sent some pages over to me and Chase a while back, some of the stuff that Liam was doing on the one that just came out, and I was like, “holy moly, dude.” There hasn't been a lot of guys that are built specifically to draw Conan, and he is one of them, man. It was so gorgeous. I couldn't agree more with you, and it's funny that you mentioned the Green Lantern, because after I saw that art that Chris shared with me on that Savage Sword of Conan stuff, I was like, “oh, man. What's the last thing he did?” I don't know what it was, but I remembered that he had done Green Lantern with Grant Morrison. So, I'm on Issue #8 of the Grant Morrison run right now, and I'm really enjoying it. It's a really good storyline, and I feel like people were talking about that run a little bit, but not as much as--I don't know. Maybe it gets weird in the second half of the run, but right now, it's 8 issues in, and I'm really liking it. I'm really enjoying it. I think I'm mostly understanding what's going on.

Liam's artwork is insanely inventive. I don't know, man. Anytime you throw your characters out into space, and they're meeting alien races, and riding around on ships, and landing on space stations, and alternate planets, all that stuff has to be invented. They're not designed. So, Liam Sharp is just sitting there, just design after design, just crazy cool, interesting alien, and architect, and he's just going off, and I'm really enjoying that, too. I couldn't agree more. Your trajectory on Liam Sharp, I think, is almost exactly my trajectory on Liam Sharp. I was excited about him on Incredible Hulk, but then the reality of that was not what I wanted it to be. I fell off, and then I've always felt like I should like his stuff, but it's only been recently where I'm like, “I think I finally get it,” but I think also, his stuff, especially right now, somehow after having as long a career as he's had, he's leveled up. He's really throwing it down right now.

[47:58] John: The other character that is legally distinct in Spawn: The Dark Ages is that the main hero guy is not Conan, despite maybe some superficial resemblances to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Frank Frazetta paintings. It's a different guy, but obviously, that's part of the fun of it. It's a Celtic warrior, but he looks like Conan. His storytelling is so neat. The pages are just packed full of detail, and you just lose yourself in the world that he's building there, the fantasy stuff.

[48:28] David: You're talking about the Spawn book right now. That's insane, dude.

[48:31] John: So, this is all one continuous drawing. The top half of it is the same background, but it's broken up into these different panels, as the character moves. The last one, despite it being a continuous drawing, is a different location that still blends in with the previous stuff, and you get to the other sequences, and it's different stuff. He's just doing different structures to the different scenes in it, and stuff.

[48:51] David: Oh, yeah. That's 100% Conan, too. For a minute, I thought you were holding up a Conan comic book. Okay, that doesn't look like it.

[48:58] John: Until you get to this gentleman.

[49:02] David: That's pretty cool. That looks neat. I can't remember the last time I picked up a Spawn book, but maybe I will. Maybe I'll check it out.

[49:08] John: I have no idea what it has to do with the original Spawn: The Dark Ages. Maybe I’ll want to check that out now, but definitely, you can pick it up and follow it without having read a bunch of Spawn stuff recently.

[49:19] David: Last bit for our listeners before we sign off for the day, this oversized episode. As we're talking right now, it's before Thanksgiving. There is a Kickstarter right now going on for a comic book called Swat Kats, and it is supposed to be, basically, the continuing saga of the Swat Kats, and it's picking up right where the end of the animated series left off.

[49:42] John: David, I don't mean to cut you off, but let me cut you off. The only people I'm interested in are the original creators of Swat Kats coming in and telling that story. So, David, I don't think I'm interested in this thing you're talking about.

[49:54] David: Well, you're lucky, because it's the original creators.

[49:57] John: What?

[49:58] David: Yes. Shocking. The guys that created the animated series are the guys that are involved in the comic book. I don't know to what level. I did pledge to it, but I didn't pay that much attention, but anyway, it has made $500,000, John. $500,000 for a Swat Kat comic book, and that is a shocking amount of money to me, man. There's no version of Swat Kats in the comic bookshops direct market that does $500,000 of anything, and they did it on Kickstarter in less than three weeks. It's insane. That is insane, and I just want to put this in perspective, because I preach Kickstarter quite a bit, but I was like, “okay, that is crazy.” Who even knows what Swat Kats is? Did it even get two seasons of an animated series? I don't even know, but it's an early-mid-90s cartoon. I remember it. I think I was probably aged out by that point. So, maybe it's not just for me. It could not have been that big. It could not have been a property that was huge, in any way, shape, or form.

So, to do $500,000, for me, that's insane. That's unprecedented. The direct market version of that would never do that number, ever, and I was like, “okay, well, is that wrong thinking? Am I being an old head and I just don't know what the big thing” tentpoles were in this particular era that Swat Kats is part of? Which I think is the mid-90s era. So, I was like, “is there any comparison?” And there is a comparison, in my mind, which is Street Sharks. Do you remember Street Sharks, the animated series?

[51:41] John: Friend of the show, Street Sharks? Stephanie Williams writing.

[51:45] David: That's right. That's actually why I knew it, because I picked that book up. I haven't gotten my copies yet, but I've been pre-ordering that book, because Stephanie's writing it. Anyway, there is a Street Sharks comic book, and I think they're relatively in the same timeframe. I feel like they probably have the same level of notoriety or awareness. The public awareness of both of those is probably around the same. So, I was like, “okay, well, what is Street Sharks doing?” It's not even on the sales charts, John. You can't even find it, which means it's doing thousands of dollars of business, probably not 10s of thousands of dollars of business.

[52:20] John: Right.

[52:21] David: And the only difference--I mean, I guess there's two differences. One, the creators of Swat Kats are involved, and I'm sure that is meaningful, especially when you put that on Kickstarter, and the average Joe on the street who's got some awareness of Swat Kats is like, “I remember that show. I really loved it. They're going to tell new stories, and it's just going to be in a comic book, but it's by the same guys? Sure, I'll check that out.” That just doesn't happen in a comic bookstore, though. Is there any comic book publisher in 2025 that's not taking their licensed properties to Kickstarter first? You're foolish.

[52:54] John: One of the reasons I want to talk about that, that came up at my work, too, talking about this. We've got a Kickstarter closing that didn't do $500,000. Still might.

[53:04] David: No, it's not over yet, John.

[53:05] John: But it's not super […].

[53:06] David: You’ve got my money already. I can't give you any more money than I already gave you.

[53:09] John: Yes, you can, actually. That's actually not true, David, but then there's also the Jem and the Holograms one that Boom!'s putting out, which I'm weirdly fascinated by, and that leads me down two different roads of what I'm thinking of. This is going to come back to Swat Kats. I'm sorry. Jem and the Holograms is reprinting the series that we did at IDW. It seems like it's doing okay, but based on the number of add-ons they wanted to have, and the number of bonus things you get when it hits certain dollar values.

[53:38] David: Stretch goals.

[53:39] John: Stretch goals. That's the word. Thank you. In terms of the number of stretch goals they have listed, they don't seem to have hit all of those, where I would expect them to have wanted to be. Some of the tiers are limited, but they're not filled up, but it's still doing okay. It's a six-figure.

[53:53] David: Almost at $100,000. It's definitely doing--

[53:57] John: For nothing but pre-existing material.

[54:00] David: Doing just fine.

[54:01] John: The thing I was trying to wrap my head around, and I can't remember if I brought this up on this show, and I apologize if I did. I spend a lot of money on comics, I think, compared to other people I know. I spend way too much money on comics.

[54:14] David: I'm going to digress for just--sorry, I’ve got to interrupt. The other day, I was legitimately sitting down to try to figure out if I've made more money in comic books over the last 20 years, or if I've spent more money in comics. I have worked professionally in comic books for a long time. I made my living in comic books, for the most part, for almost 20 years, and I think I may have spent more money on comics than I've made. Sorry, go back to what you were saying.

[54:44] John: The minimum buy-in to get a print edition of all of the comics is $220. That's the low end. The high-end tier is, I believe, $750 to get all the comics without getting the absolute crazy one, where you get 3 different versions of the same thing for $1,500, but there is a $1,500 one that no one has backed, but 750, there's 8 backers on that. David, let me bring up to you how much I like Jem and the Holograms. I like Jem and the Holograms enough that that was an 80s cartoon TV show that I made be a comic book. I got to IDW, and I said, “we should do Jem and the Holograms,” and Hasbro's like, “no, we shouldn't do Jem and the Holograms.” “I think we should,” and I kept at it until we got a comic book of it. I made there be a Jem and the Holograms comic book.

[55:38] David: Yeah, you did.

[55:39] John: No one else wanted that. Oh, no, that's not true. Sophie Campbell wanted it. Kelly Thompson wanted it. I wouldn't quite spend $750 on Jem hardcovers. I would never do that. I'm nowhere near that. I just feel like I spend a lot on this, and this is a particular thing that I cared a lot about, and I know I've got the paperbacks of them. I got them for free, except for one that I accidentally got rid of, and had to buy a copy of.

[56:07] David: I've done that so many times. So dumb.

[56:11] John: But I did that. There's a lot of stuff I edited that I do not have copies of, or I don't know where my copies are, but I can't not have a complete run of Jem and the Holograms, but I was looking at Swat Kats. I'm like, “yeah, Swat Kats, $40 for a hardcover of that. That's about you'd pay for a hardcover of it. Maybe it's a little bit more. That seems reasonable, if I like Swat Kats,” but it's so weird to see what can hit on Kickstarter like that. There are a lot of questions I have, like was this so big? I know David Mariotte was really excited about doing Street Sharks, back when I was still at IDW. The idea had come up. He was really into it, and there's definitely a slight generational shift of, I don't think the people that are 10 or 15 years younger than us got as overserved with stuff from their childhoods as we did. Once Dreamwave got Transformers, and Devil's Due got G.I. Joe, there was just a steady stream of stuff from our era, from then on, and every once in a while, you'd find something else, and ThunderCats is really successful in the direct market, and that's much bigger than Swat Kats. It's vaguely analogous, but not really.

[57:22] David: He-Man, I guess, maybe is.

[57:25] John: Yeah, but both He-Man and ThunderCats, I mean, you can go into Target right now, and buy He-Man toys, and ThunderCats had a bunch of reboots. There were at least two other TV series with it. There was a Hey Vern, It's Ernest! Ernest P. Worrell. There was an Ernest graphic novel that Kickstarted last year, that did an extraordinary amount of money for something that would be like, “why would this exist?” Ernest Saves Christmas, terrific Christmas movie. My interest level in Ernest without Jim Varney is not super high, but I guess there's enough people that want that one thing. That ties in with the thing that I was thinking, back when we were doing the Back to the Future comics, and I loved writing those comics with Bob Gale. I love the run that we did. I love Bob, and that first issue sold really well, and people wanted a Back to the Future comic. They didn't want 50 Back to the Future comics, and neither is that a thing. People want a Swat Kats thing. People, especially of that age, are probably really open to buying a comic book of something, regardless of whether or not they're comic book readers. So, they see a comic book, and they get a link to it. I guess, it all adds up, but I don't know how you can do that math beforehand. Jorge Corona is doing the art. He's terrific, and coming out from Transformers, a super-hot artist.

[58:43] David: Great choice for an artist. He must love Swat Kats. I don't know how they got him otherwise.

[58:48] John: Well, maybe they paid him $400,000 and still made a ton of money on this Kickstarter.

[58:57] David: Yeah, no problem. So, there's 4,400 people with still a week to go, which means they're going to get another big chunk of people before this thing's done, but right now, there are 4,400 people, and they're at $500,000. So, the average pledge for this thing is $115 per person. That's what people are buying, and with the low end of the thing being $40. So, people are all-in. There's definitely a hunger for this. 4,000 people on a Kickstarter is a pretty good number, too. By comparison, Jem and the Holograms doesn't even have 500 followers, and it's at $100,000, but yeah, I think you're right, John, on the Jem and the Holograms one, compared to the Swat Kat one.

Swat Kats is priced right, and Jem and the Holograms is not priced right, because I was also interested in Jem and the Holograms. I didn't have as much direct work editorial influence on that as you did, for obvious reasons, but I was still really proud of what we did with that series, and that was certainly an important book, at the time, not just because of the sales--The sales were good, too--but for all the other reasons that it was important. So, I wanted one, too, and then I looked at those prices. That's not priced right. That's inappropriate. So, I think they're probably suffering a little bit from that, but who knows?

[60:12] John: It's the same thing with the Transformers or G.I. Joe ones. Those do have these huge numbers, and people do buy them.

[60:18] David: I think it's the perceived value, though, because with those G.I. Joe and Transformers ones, they're giving you 400-page omnibi, massive tomes. The math is different for the customer, I think.

[60:30] John: Yeah.

[60:30] David: I also think that the people that buy G.I. Joe, there's 1000 people on this planet that will spend any amount of money on G.I. Joe. So, when you give them something like this, that hits their nostalgia real hard, and they're all hardcore collectors, it doesn't matter what the price is. They're going to buy it, and I suspect there's something like that with Transformers, but I think Transformers maybe is also a 20/20 property. Transformers is still a living property that's still doing new stuff.

[60:59] John: Yeah.

[61:00] David: Maybe nothing right in this moment, but there's recent stuff, whereas G.I. Joe's, there was some releases 15 years ago now, at this point, that weren't really well received. When Kickstarter hits a home run, man, it hits a home run, and something like Swat Kats, I don't see that surviving in the direct market. If this was 2010, Swat Kats doesn't do anything, and here we are, and it's doing massive numbers, and they're doing all kinds of add-ons and stretch goals, and having a good old time with it, and well put together. Hats off to whoever put this Kickstarter campaign together, because I think it's a good one, and certainly, the creative team being the original guys, and Jorge Corona, it's got a lot of really cool stuff going for it.

[61:42] John: Yeah. Just scrolling through all of the things, it's appealing, the whole way.

[61:46] David: I don't know that they have a 3D comic book, though, John, and we've got one over on them on that, for sure.

[61:52] John: Nice.

[61:53] David: It's got a Neal Adams cover on it. It's crazy. I don't know how they got that. It's a pretty good Neal Adams cover. It must be from a long time ago. It must be a thing that they had done a long time ago, for the animated series, or something.

Thanks, everybody, for listening. I hope you had a fun time with that. Go out and read Batman/Deadpool. Go out and pick up yourself some Garth Ennis or Carlos Ezquerra comic books, and if you've got some time, hopefully you check out the Swat Kats. It looks really good. I totally pledged to that one.

[62:21] John: Thanks a lot, everybody.

[62:22] David: Podcasters out there, everybody that are taking time off during these holiday seasons, but we are not them. We are going to be powering through the entire holidays. You're going to get us every Tuesday, like always. We're not missing a beat, man. We are dedicated to your entertainment.

[62:37] John: No turkeys. Just winning podcasts. Bye.

This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. Join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.