[00:00:00] Intro:

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.

[00:00:24] John:

Hello and welcome to the Corner Box. I'm one host, John Barber, and with me as always. But back from the clutches of the Death Star itself, David Hedgecock.

[00:00:36] David:

Hey everybody. Some people never get to go to Hawaii. I got to do an extended vacation in Hawaii. We'd been planning it for a while. I was able to do that, and thankfully it was an extended vacation because three-quarters of the time we were there, there was a once-in-a-century storm happening in Hawaii, so there was a lot of staring out from the condo window at the ocean in palm trees, basically sideways from the wind. So not the best timed, unfortunately. Trip, but had a great time.

[00:01:07] David:

Definitely not complaining. Had a good time. And here's the thing, John. So I was gone, you know, for a couple of weeks. I thought before I left, I'm like, okay, I can't be getting any comic books off of eBay. And while I'm away, I can't be buying a bunch of stuff because there's nobody at the house to, like, accept packages.

[00:01:24] John:

Oh.

[00:01:25] David:

Thankfully, I had somebody who could come in once a week to, like, kind of like check on everything. And I did not do a good job, John. There was a lot of comic book packages. It was like Christmas, John. It was a really, a really good reminder of just how bad of a fixation and an addiction I have, because I had a lot of packages waiting for me. And I guess you just gotta do what you gotta do, John, I don't know. I tried really hard and I did not succeed, but I'm very happy. I got tired of boxes, like I said, but one of the crown jewels of that was the new Rob Liefeld ashcan comic.

[00:02:00] David:

John, do you know what an ashcan comic is?

[00:02:02] John:

I've heard of them.

[00:02:02] David:

Okay, not everybody knows what those are.

[00:02:04] John:

Tell me more. What the hell is an ashcan?

[00:02:06] David:

Back in the day, back in the early days of comic book making, before everything was online, you know, you'd write and draw your own little comic books, and you just print them out on pieces of paper, regular pieces of paper, fold them in half and staple in the middle, and they'd call them ashcans or mini-comics. Creators would get together and create their comics and then mail them to each other. I was actually part of the United Fanzine Organization back in the day, which was one of those associations, and the idea was that you'd make, print out these little mini-comic books, maybe make 10, 20 copies, send them out to the people in your organization, and then they'd write little reviews, and those reviews would get posted in another little mini-comic that was kind of like the review zine.

[00:02:43] David:

So it was a good way before the internet existed to, like, share your work with like-minded people and get, you know, feedback on what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong, etc. But part of that was this culture of creating ashcans. You don't see them as much anymore. But in the early 90s, you saw them all the time, like the Image crew was making ashcans left and right. Basically, they were like black and white copies. Basically, they printed off like a laser printer on a regular piece of paper. You fold it in half and you staple it, you know? So you got like 10, 12, 20-page thing. And sometimes they'd make like a cardstock cover over it, you know, but it never, it's always black and white. Just standard printing. So I got the new ashcan comic from Rob Liefeld, his latest creation, John. It's Acrobats. The cover features four bats that are like humanoid bats. You know, it's signed, so I'm very excited about that.

[00:03:37] David:

And I'm going to open it up now. And I looked through it the other day. I'll check out the back. It's like a slick little like back cover. Oh yeah. Unfortunately, there's—it is very much just artwork, you know, just like it shows some rough sketches and then several pages of interiors. It shows the inks on one side and the inks and tones on the other side. There's no lettering. And there's a third color in this one, actually. So anytime there's blood, which every page has somebody getting massacred. So there's a lot of blood spatter. Some great stuff in here, man. There's a humanoid bat holding a giant Rob Liefeld gun, a la Cable, just blasting away on these human guys who are fully dressed in, like, tech ninja suits, reminiscent of the tech ninja suits that you see in the G.I. Joe: Deadgame. Very reminiscent of some of those suits. Here's a page of one of the Acrobats. Rather than using a big gun, throwing a hand grenade.

[00:04:36] David:

So I'm very excited to have this as long-time listeners know, massive fan of Rob Liefeld. But to be fair, I was a little underwhelmed because there's just no lettering and there's no, like, explanation of what it is. I was a little bummed that there wasn't like at least an inside back cover like explanation of what the Acrobats are. I'm getting some, like, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle vibes from it, but I don't know. I don't know much else. Rob Liefeld does it again. I'm very, I'm very happy to have this. And, oh, credit to, I guess Seth Damoose, who handled the tones on the book. Seth's been doing some other stuff with Rob Liefeld. He did a Badrock ash mini-comic ashcan, like six months ago. There was a full, like, issue of Badrock that apparently is just done. And that Seth Damoose drew. That was the highlight of the mounds and mounds of packages that came our way.

[00:05:30] John:

Well, excellent.

[00:05:31] John:

It looks cool. It's weird.

[00:05:32] David:

Here's, here's how bad it was, John. Even though I was like, I was in Hawaii and I'm like, okay, I can't, I can't be buying stuff because I can't be shipping it to the house, right? Because I'm not going to be there. So instead I said, oh, you know what? I can still have stuff sent to the office, my my work office, because people there could just pick it up, right. And so I might have done that a couple times too. So not only when I got home did I have a Christmas-level amount of packages, but then I got to the office and I had more packages. And I'm 100% sure I have a problem now.

[00:06:07] John:

Yeah, I guess it's fair to blame you for spreading that onto me. But back when we started this podcast, I wasn't really super active on buying a bunch of crap that seems really important right at that moment. I mean, The Light and Darkness War for $12.

[00:06:22] John:

I mean, yeah, right? Right. There's a couple habits I'm currently doing with comics that I didn't at different times have not done. One of them is going to the comic book store every week and buying comics, and then sitting there with a big stack of new comics and reading them. And I will be honest, I am not very good at doing that on Wednesday evenings. I usually do that on the weekend now. They used to definitely be a Wednesday night thing, but like my time to sit down and read something doesn't start until like ten at night at best. Sometimes I'm just not in the mood to sit there and read it, or I think I'm not in the mood anyway. But I love that because it was just like, that was an experience I really enjoyed doing. And I went for a while. You know, I was buying more paperbacks, not buying as many new comics and stuff, even when I was like buying a lot of comics, I kind of moved away from buying a lot of like, new comics.

[00:07:06] John:

I like it, it's not the most efficient way of doing it. Like, waiting for the paperback is gonna provide a better reading experience. Like, empirically, I like being able to sit there and read, you know, an issue of Phantom of the Opera and then read an issue of, you know, Batman and some new number one that I just picked up. I haven't heard anything about it. I don't know if it's going to be good or not. You know, I really like that. And then like, buying a bunch of nonsense either on a Kickstarter or eBay. Some nonsense is very good. I'm not trying to insult you if I've supported your Kickstarter. I genuinely like this stuff, don't get me wrong. But it's like when I was a kid and like you, you'd order something in the mail and it would take like, you know, 6 or 8 weeks or whatever. And it would feel like not only like an eternity, but just like your life would be completely different by that point when you're eight or whatever, right? Then the G.I. Joe figure with your name on the file card shows up or whatever, right? Yeah, it was just cool to get that package and be like, oh, I can't wait.

[00:08:00] John:

And, I like that with the eBay and Kickstarters. I never know when I'm gonna walk to the mailbox and somebody, shoved in to the point that it's nearly impossible to take out from the front of the mailbox what was loaded into the, the back side of it by the by the mail carrier of some comic book or something. You know, I don't know. It's great.

[00:08:18] David:

Yeah, I totally agree. I will say that the podcast, hopefully this does this for some listeners, but I do think that the podcast has inspired me to try stuff that I wouldn't normally try. Without the podcast, I would hesitate, but with the podcast I go, and this is not a real thing because I don't actually do this. But I tell myself, oh well, I'll read it and then I'll talk about it on the podcast. So that's how I justify, like, like a lot of my ridiculous purchases. Do we ever actually talk about any of these things on the podcast? Almost never. That's my excuse.

[00:08:49] David:

The podcast has certainly done that for me to even more than than before. We're not here to talk about any of that. We've got our first regular segment. We've got a segment, John. We've been doing this for three years. We've got a segment now: "What John and David Read Last Week," I think that's what we're calling it. Hit the yelling, Ed, hit it.

[00:09:09] Intro:

Here's what John and David read this week!

[00:09:13] David:

Yeah!

[00:09:14] John:

All right.

[00:09:15] David:

All right, John, you want to go first? I'm very excited about what I have this week.

[00:09:18] John:

Sure. I got a weird one. I got one that was hanging around for a while for me. I don't know if this is how most of the readers get their comics, but sometimes Chris Ryall stops working at IDW, and then you start working there and you move into his office and he's left a bunch of stuff.

[00:09:34] David:

I think that's how a lot of people get their comics.

[00:09:36] John:

It's happened a couple of times, so like, it has to have happened to more than just me now.

[00:09:40] David:

But a couple times while we were there, I think, yes.

[00:09:42] John:

As always, whenever there's something that I've got, hanging out from Chris's office. Chris, if you're listening and you need it back, let me know. He just lives down the street. I got this comic called Title. It's written like it's title number one, but it's like Title issue one. You know, this is just issue one of a series called Title. Oversized, like eight and a half by 11, black and white from 1972. That's before I was born. The 1972 was a weirdly one of my favorite years in pop culture. David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust came out in 1972. Lou Reed's Transformer came out in '72. Michael Moorcock's first Elric full length novel, Elric of Melnibone, came out, the movie Cabaret, which is awesome, came out. So I just happened to run into stuff. I'm like, ooh, 72 that, you know, I don't know, something about a bunch of stuff from that that year resonates with me.

[00:10:31] John:

So I waited about eight years before cracking this open to see if this was another one that did. Fantastic. This is a comic published in in, April 1972, according to the cover by a college student at some college named Al Milgrom.

[00:10:49] David:

Oh, Al Milgrom. Fantastic.

[00:10:53] John:

Yeah. This is Al Milgrom. Going to be an editor and penciling—one of the rare kind of penciler editors. He drew, Kitty Pryde, Wolverine, and, a bunch of stuff edited, Epic and Marvel.

[00:11:05] David:

Didn't Al ink a bunch of stuff?

[00:11:07] John:

Oh, yeah. Inked a lot.

[00:11:07] David:

Inked over stuff. Al Milgrom, as an editor, had some very good artistic choices. Like, he made some really good calls in in some of the books that he edited. Yeah. Like he put together some serious, seriously nice teams and I think—did Al Milgrom edit Micronauts? I think he liked. I feel like he did, which, you know, he discovered essentially Michael Golden, right, with Micronauts. So as an editor, I feel like clearly he's an artist.

[00:11:33] David:

He's coming from the artistic side of things because he's got a really good eye for for art. Anyway, sorry. Go ahead.

[00:11:38] John:

University of Michigan, by the way. Yeah. Well, hang on to your hat here. So, yeah. So this is all done by by either fellow students or people from the Ann Arbor area that, Al Milgrom's friends with all, none of whom are professionals. They're all just doing these these fanzines. And that's what they call this is like a fanzine, I think now, you know, like shortly after that, that wouldn't be the case, you know, like like this is pre-direct market. So this is kind of like what you were talking about like circulating that stuff around I guess I don't know exactly where you know. Yeah.

[00:12:10] David:

No I think it's it's all sort of similar to what I was already just—wow. What great synergy John. It's like we planned it and we definitely did not.

[00:12:18] John:

We did not, no. This is a like of a quality that you would see the set of comic bookstore next to like Cerebus or Elfquest or Star stuff and just a handful of years.

[00:12:27] John:

So it's got a story by Mark Warden and Mark Cohen, who are both University of Michigan students on the humor magazine. Not familiar with them. I don't know who they are.

[00:12:37] David:

Doesn't ring a bell.

[00:12:38] John:

Let me tell you. That's the last time I'm going to say those words. Starts off with a story by Mike Vosburg.

[00:12:43] David:

Nice.

[00:12:43] John:

Written and drawn at a little, science fiction story. Now, Milgrom, who's an art major. At the time, he Al Milgrom, he draws the next story. The lettering on most of these is by a guy who's doing fine jobs. He plans to work for the pros if he can. Tom Orzechowski in, I don't know, like five years. The lettering Uncanny X-Men and later lettered Spawn.

[00:13:12] David:

Yeah. Wow. That's wild.

[00:13:14] John:

Oh, and there's another one that that you mentioned, Al Milgrom as inker. He did. He inked this other one by another guy who's very who almost had this story published, but it didn't quite happen. So he's pretty close to getting into breaking in: Jim Starlin.

[00:13:29] David:

Really?

[00:13:30] John:

Yeah.

[00:13:30] David:

No wonder Ryall had that on his shelf.

[00:13:35] John:

Like there isn't. None of this is, like, you know, earth shattering good or anything.

[00:13:38] David:

But yeah, this is like it's freshman effort level stuff.

[00:13:43] John:

I mean, if you saw it, you'd be like, oh, yeah, this is professional caliber. This is Jim Starlin. Like a couple years before he's doing...

[00:13:49] David:

Better than Breed volume one.

[00:13:50] John:

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. Of course the inking man it's the it's the Al Milgrom inking.

[00:13:54] David:

Oh there you go. Yeah. The Al Milgrom inking. Is there any Jim Starlin like seeds of where he's going. Like in terms of the story. Did he write the story in it. Yeah he did.

[00:14:03] John:

Oddly it's a barbarian story. So it's like a Conan type guy. The guy's name is D'rok. D-apostrophe-R-O-K, which is almost exactly "dork" in popular comics. I'm gonna make a guess. I don't think either one of those influenced the other one in terms of the name.

[00:14:20] David:

So it's a wild postulation. Yes.

[00:14:24] John:

There's like, you know, crazy splash pages, you know, with, with like, cosmic.

[00:14:30] David:

Yeah.

[00:14:30] John:

That kind of going on.

[00:14:31] David:

Yeah. Some cosmic stuff. John's holding up pages from it, showing some of the Jim Starlin work.

[00:14:36] John:

You do already have basically like Gilgamesh-slash-Breed, that kind of body type already already showing up just yeah straight up barbarian story. But it's it's kind of it's a boy in the dog, a boy and his dog, like the Harlan Ellison riff, you know, like, not meant to spoil the ending, but the barbarian finds his girlfriend, murdered and goes off on his rampage. Like, "why are you so mad about her? What do you care about Joan?" You know, she's just some some harlot. He was like, "no, Joan was my horse that they also murdered." So he actually didn't care about the girl the whole time. He was just killing him because they killed his horse.

[00:15:11] David:

Wow. Welcome to 1972.

[00:15:14] John:

Yeah, yeah. Yes, that is what that is. Yeah, yeah, that's the, Jesus. Yeah. I think A Boy and His Dog might have even been... yeah. Like, if it wasn't '72, it was real close to that. Which has a similar ending. If you haven't read it.

[00:15:26] David:

Do you think John Wick stole from from this magazine? Jim Starlin inspired another movie franchise. Not just. Not just the Avengers: Infinity War stuff. Also the entire John Wick franchise, man.

[00:15:39] John:

That would be funny. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm gonna say? Yeah, I'm gonna say probably.

[00:15:42] David:

The John Wick guys were like, "yeah, it's a horse. But what if it was a dog?"

[00:15:46] John:

Yeah. What if somebody else killed a wife? Like, I don't know, cancer?

[00:15:51] David:

I just got multiple copies of that book sitting around their table while they're riffing on it. I don't want to make fun of John Wick. That movie franchise is like it was the perfect movie franchise for me.

[00:16:03] David:

I can't love a movie franchise more than I love John Wick. I don't know if we've talked about this on the podcast, John, but it is shocking to me. It really is truly shocking to me. How many movies are in my top ten all-time favorite movies that Keanu Reeves is starring in? It just—are interesting. Like, it never has anything to do with Keanu Reeves, as far as I can tell. But he knows how to pick a movie that I want to watch.

[00:16:27] John:

Yeah, well, like, I'm glad that the world totally came around to Keanu Reeves. It's almost hard to imagine this. There was a time where, like, people would just, like, make fun of Keanu Reeves. Like pre-Matrix, you know, he's the Bill and Ted guy and he's real stiff in all of his movies. And he he always sounds like he's, you know, Bill and Ted and stuff. And then at some point it comes out he's just like a super awesome guy in real life.

[00:16:49] John:

And that seems to win people over. But I liked him in Johnny Mnemonic like, I thought he, like, kind of nailed that, that character, even though I don't like the movie very much. But like when he was in The Matrix, I'm like, oh, that's awesome. The hottest take I have is that I like his performance in Dracula. I think, you know, Winona Ryder are delightful in that movie.

[00:17:08] David:

Yeah, it was a pretty hot take. Yeah. Like he's.

[00:17:11] John:

Yeah, he's goofy, but that is the character he's playing in that movie. If he was more savvy, he wouldn't walk into the room full of vampire ladies, you know? Like like he.

[00:17:21] David:

Yeah. Good point. Man. I forgot he was even in that one. That was not in my top ten, so.

[00:17:25] John:

Beat.

[00:17:25] David:

That. I don't think I could top that one. John, that's a golden oldie from way back when. What's the title of that thing again?

[00:17:31] John:

Is called Title.

[00:17:32] David:

It's just Title. It's just. I didn't mean it for that to be a joke. No, but it's it's interesting because it's Title with a colon and then number one, so it does look like like number one is the subtitle of Title.

[00:17:44] John:

Yeah. Like the. That kind of makes sense.

[00:17:46] David:

Yeah. It's clear that it's just Title. Yeah, yeah.

[00:17:48] John:

It's just trying to be clever.

[00:17:50] David:

Yeah. Yeah. That's fascinating man. That's a fascinating one. Is it a magazine size? It looks like it's bigger than comic book.

[00:17:55] John:

Yeah, yeah, it's like it's eight and a half by 11 or so, like magazine.

[00:17:58] David:

And it looks like it's kind of professionally printed to, like, it's like, look slick. Yeah. I wonder if they got a grant or something like. Or the university like that, you know, to, to to print it. Because I would think that a bunch of college kids can't afford to print something that nice and that slick in 1972, because that's not cheap, man.

[00:18:13] David:

It's printing in 1972 was a very different beast than printing in 2026. You know, like you had to get you take shots of things and there was. Yeah, yeah, all kinds of like like everything was basically paced up. Like everything was manually manipulated for covers and things like lettering and all that stuff. All the design elements were handmade essentially, and pasted together, and then you had to take photos of that stuff. Wow. So that's pretty cool. Mine is not as cool, but I do think it's interesting. I actually stumbled on this. I think there was a little controversy around this book, I guess about a year ago. This time I don't even know how I got to it, but Marvel Knights: The World to Come. Oh, okay. Which came out, I think it launched last summer. Okay. And it's a Marvel Knights book from 2025, written by Christopher Priest, who I really enjoy his writer, some of Christopher Priest's stuff I really, really like. He's a little hit and miss with me, but when I like him, I really like him.

[00:19:11] David:

And when I don't like him, I'm just like, "oh, he's okay." I just, you know, was my favorite. The artist is Joe Quesada with Colors by Richard Isanove. And so I was kind of excited because, like, I love Joe Quesada as art. I've always enjoyed his art, and the story is basically is touted as sort of like the future of the Marvel Universe. And the story is focused on Black Panther. Really, it's a Black Panther story. And they even mentioned editorial. I think Nick Lowe is the editor in the back of the editorial in the first issue, Nick Lowe even kind of says, like, "hey, you don't have to read the old Black Panther series that Christopher Priest wrote, but it's probably going to help." Right. And I think it's more of a, "hey, you really need to go read the Black Panther miniseries or series that Christopher Priest wrote in order for this to make any sense at all to you." There's five issues that are available on the Marvel app.

[00:20:03] David:

And I actually thought it was a five-issue series. So I'm like, oh, I'm going to just dive in, get a nice, you know, trade paperback, reads complete story and jump back out. It's not five issues long. It's I don't know if you know, if the issue six is out yet, but there's more. There's clearly more issues. Oh, and it's not even out. So okay.

[00:20:20] John:

Sounds great. I don't believe it's out. If there is, I miss. Yeah.

[00:20:24] David:

Have you read this, John? Yeah, yeah.

[00:20:26] David:

Okay. And do you remember it?

[00:20:27] John:

Oh, yeah.

[00:20:28] David:

Oh, okay. I think the new issue: Issue five just came out in the app as well. So it is a Black Panther story. It's sort of set in a future where Black Panther is T'Challa, the Black Panther is older, and he's got a adopted son who happens to be white. And his adopted son essentially defeats T'Challa in a contest to see who will be the king and takes over Wakanda and essentially sort of almost kills T'Challa, the Black Panther, and sort of shuns him and forces him away.

[00:21:04] David:

Or T'Challa actually escapes like it looks like maybe he's not meant for this long for this world. And T'Challa sort of escapes. And I remember there vaguely being some controversy around that, like the ending of the first issue is sort of like this sort of, it's meant, I think, to be sort of controversial where, you know, you've got the the king of Wakanda is now, you know, this, this white guy. It's not super relevant to like, the story overall. As far as I can tell. It's just it's just the son of, you know, the adopted son of T'Challa. And that's really the focus that's really like all it is. But the story with issue one, the story is so incredibly full of itself. It is so incredibly pretentious and in a way, like I'm kind of like, okay, but it feels like Christopher Priest and Joe Quesada were like, "hey, it's Christopher Priest and Joe Quesada, trust us." Right. But the issue itself does not do that.

[00:21:59] David:

The issue itself does not bring you to any trust or any real interest in the story itself. It just it's not very good. Like it's kind of confusing. There's too many players and it's really like, I don't know how else to put it, but it feels pretentious, like it's like, "trust us, it will get—we'll get there" kind of kind of thing. But there's no active like involvement within the story itself that makes you think that it's really just... well, I know Christopher Priest and Joe Quesada are talented creators, so I guess I just have to trust they're going to get there, you know? But the good news is that I got to read like, those all five issues kind of in one sitting, because if I had bought that first issue, I would not. I probably wouldn't have bought another one because I was like, "I don't really know what's going on. There's not really any meat on this bone and I'm not that interested." After five issues, I was like, okay, well, I guess they can be a little pretentious because by the end of the fifth issue, I'm like, okay, I see, like the world building this.

[00:22:55] David:

It's a very aggressive world building. There's a lot of world building and there's a lot of not showing. It's not showing a lot of the world building. It's just like kind of insinuating on it. And so for the first couple of issues, that insinuation is, oh God, it's like "start showing me something, damn it. Like, stop pretending that I'm supposed to know something that you haven't shown me yet." You know, by the fifth issue it starts coming together. And it really does feel like it's meant to be like this big story arc that was from the original Black Panther run, and they've carved it out into this sort of its own thing. But after five issues, I started to appreciate it. I started to understand a little bit of what was going on, and it took me a while. It took them a while to get there, but they got me there and I enjoyed it. Overall, I'm glad that I read it and I'm definitely going to read the rest of it.

[00:23:44] David:

I don't know how many issues it is though. I think there might be one more, but it feels like there should be more than one more.

[00:23:48] John:

The nature of that story is such that it could be somewhere between one and the 50. Yeah, like I actually I read the first issue and I actually liked the first issue quite a bit. If you haven't read it. Like the thing about it I think, is, is all that stuff that you said, none of that is told in that order, like none of that stuff happened... is that you that you explained these things? Yeah, right. You're flashing around in time, which is what the Black Panther did at first. Like that. Like the like the Priest Black Panther, like it did that when you when you read it and it was that very... it felt I thought at the time very like Quentin Tarantino, you know, the very Pulp Fiction kind of thing where like, you're going to have a title card and jump back, you know, on time and then then stories will overlap and things will start to make sense.

[00:24:29] John:

I think that became like the signature style of Black Panther during during the Priest's run. So yeah, I could see them kind of coming back and doing that like it is real oblique.

[00:24:40] David:

It's a tough read to penetrate even the... there's even like text in the back that the first issue felt like a slog. I was like, "oh my God, is this almost done?" Like, this is because it's like almost like a scholarly paper that Priest sort of put together a faux scholarly paper that sort of explaining, like time periods and talking about religion and like in a very scholastic manner, as if it's a section of a master's thesis, you know, based on somebody trying to get their doctorate, you know, in religion or something. And so the first 2 or 3 issues of those, there's like three pages. It's just like heavy, like text that is really academic, but it's not real. And so it's just like, why am I having to slog through this academic paper? That's not real, but it pays off.

[00:25:24] David:

By the time I get to the fourth, I'm like, okay, I actually kind of... it is still rather academic and kind of sloggy, but I really like it. Like for that, like it's almost like Christopher Priest is just writing. He's so—I don't know what else to say other than like, it just feels so pretentious. Like he but he but he's clearly, like, just so dialed in on this thing. Like like he seems to be thinking about this particular story. His approach to it does seem to be like, really heavily academic and thorough and researched, and the themes that he's not necessarily showing on the surface of the story are certainly underpinned underneath. And I think that's the thing, by issue five that I finally was able to sort of see and start to grasp is the the underpinned themes of world politics and religion and some of these other things, and they start finally coalescing into something after, you know, several issues worth of reading in my head, I'm not the smartest guy in the world.

[00:26:22] David:

You gotta beat me over the head with this stuff a couple of times before it starts clicking with me, but it finally does click. And so I and I had a greater appreciation for that.

[00:26:34] John:

A writer one time, and I don't want to say who it was he was describing Grant Morrison's writing is like whenever he reads Grant Morrison, he always feels like there's a page or two missing. And if there was ever been an additional page or two, it would have totally worked. But there's like a couple leaps that he makes that the reader doesn't necessarily make. I sort of feel the same way about Christopher Priest on a lot of his stuff. He wrote a story in the Superman-Spider-Man, the the DC one that just came out, and I was sort of thinking about that and sort of the same, the same way that, like, you don't know what's going on, you don't know where you are, what's happening. Events start occurring and you have to kind of piece them together. Everything is there by the time you get to the end.

[00:27:11] John:

But like your tolerance for getting to the end is really dependent on your level of like buy-in in the beginning. And how much to the moments that are there or resonating with you. And it worked better in The World to Come for me than it did. Like whatever me was like an eight-page story. It's not that big a deal. The part where I'm like, oh, well, in the future, what's and you know, a Priest and Quesada doing it? Okay, I'm, I want to see what these guys are going to do here. And it's really I think it's really dependent on how much that carries you into it for you to enjoy the story or not. Like you said, it almost isn't telling you the stuff that is going to drive you to want to know the rest of the story is just letting you know there is stuff that's going to make you want to know the rest of the story, once you get through it.

[00:27:52] David:

The way to describe it. Yes, that's exactly what I'm trying to say.

[00:27:56] David:

Like there's there's some really cool moments in this thing, but I have to really dig to get to them. You know, I think I would recommend it. I don't know that I would have gone past the first issue if I was just buying it off the rack. I don't know that I would have, but it was in the app. It was easy for me to get to it. And so I put that first issue down like, okay, I'm just going to read one. There's they're all here. I'm just going to read read the next one and see what happens. And I'm glad I did because I did enjoy it. Overall, I thought Joe Quesada, his work in this was not like my favorite Joe Quesada, that he was using photo reference for backgrounds and some of the vehicles and things like that. And it was a little too obvious for me. Like I was like, okay, I'm pretty sure I saw that shot in 1977 Life magazine. There was a little bit of that sort of turned me off from his art.

[00:28:44] David:

I didn't think it was like the best Joe Quesada art, basically. But, you know, the dude doesn't draw interiors that often, so I'm sure there's a little bit of needing to shake the rust off. He was the editor in chief or whatever. He was at Marvel for 25 years. He wasn't drawing a lot of comic books, so it's still certainly of a of a high quality. Anybody would be happy to have him on a, on a title because of the photo reference stuff because it felt like he was taking some shortcuts, certainly because he's probably trying to hit whatever deadline he's trying to hit. It wasn't like my favorite.

[00:29:15] John:

Yeah, I think this was supposed to come out for one of the anniversaries, like a key anniversary of Marvel Knights.

[00:29:20] David:

Oh, yeah.

[00:29:21] John:

Joe's probably really hard on himself as an artist, and I don't know where this is going to go exactly. But there's something interesting about Joe that he was one of the only times you had a absolute top tier, a-level artist who then became editor in chief of the biggest comic book company and led that comic book company to become a much bigger comic book company than it was when he started.

[00:29:46] John:

Like, there's a number of things that are weird about that. I have to imagine if you're Joe. Well, one of them is just you're picking these top artists on and putting them on on the books, and I wonder how much you'd ever like him comparing himself to that. Okay, Finch is going on to New Avengers. How would I do New Avengers? I can't remember if he and Bendis never did anything together where like Brian wrote it and Joe drew it. But like, those guys worked together a lot, and he worked on a lot of Brian Michael Bendis scripts in an editorial capacity. I mean, or, you know, at retreats... became a big stories and stuff with them. There has to be some part of you, I would imagine, if you're that that level of artist of like, what would I do if I was on New Avengers and would I have been able to do that? Joe is not an ego monster. You know, I mean, he's not somebody that's going to be like, yeah, I would do that better.

[00:30:33] John:

You know, that's not where he would be. But he is giving like artistic notes to these guys that are like fantastic artists, you know, and his peers. Except now he's the boss. And then now he's not. And he's doing his own comic. They're kind of going back to where this all started for him in terms of Marvel stuff. So yeah, it's interesting. One thing that was fun to see in there actually was Nick Lowe edited it with Nancy Deizier, who is Joe's wife, but she was one of the original editors at Marvel Knights when they came over. And then when Marvel Knights became part of Marvel itself instead of a separate company, that was him and Jimmy Palmiotti and Nancy. Marvel had a policy, has a policy that like, you can't be married to your supervisor. Right.

[00:31:12] David:

Right.

[00:31:12] John:

So Nancy had to stop editing comics. Oh, wow. So. And she's a great editor, and it's great to see her, like, even even on this. Everybody there knows each other, and I think...

[00:31:22] John:

I have to imagine that was all positive. And everybody said it was cool to see your name on there. Yeah.

[00:31:25] David:

Like I said, it was a little uneven at first, but it got me there, and I'm glad I read it. And I'll definitely like however many more issues there are. I'm on board for the rest. This is definitely like a read-in-the-app for me, but I still recommended. That's it. John. That's our, "What John and David Read Last Week," or whatever we call it. Yay! We did it! So, John, I learned something exciting recently. Super super excited. There's a new Groo mini-series that's coming out.

[00:31:56] John:

You know, it's funny, I was talking to, our mutual friend Brendan Cahill yesterday. He was using somebody when he was doing some covers for Justin Eisinger at IDW. And I was like, oh, you know, Justin's working at Stan Sakai, re-editing the Yojimbo stuff. Brendan is like, "man, I can't believe Stan Sakai is still making the Usagi Yojimbo every month."

[00:32:17] John:

I'm like, well, you know, it's like maybe ten times a year, but here's what you're really not going to believe if you don't know that he's still lettering Groo. What am I? Yeah. The new issue came out last week. Yeah.

[00:32:28] David:

Yeah. I'm really excited to get my copy out. As you know, I get all my comics from Challengers Comics in Chicago, so I have to ship my books to me. And they only ship them, like, once a month. I've got a big stack of stuff coming my way, by the way. You know, I had all these comic books that came, you know, from eBay. So I had paused my order from Challengers Comics. So there's another like 50 comic books that are coming my way now. Like I thought it's a real problem. John, I need to stop. I need to slow down. I have so many books to read right now, I'm not even kidding. Like, I have to pause, like, seriously put my phone away because I've got too much to read right now.

[00:33:03] David:

Yeah. Anyway, I'm very excited for this new Groo number one. I'm glad that you read it because I'm interested to hear your take on it, but I saw some preview pages of it and I'm really excited for the Carrie Strachan colors. The previews that I saw looked great. Like she seems to... I know she's been coloring Groo for the last few mini-series. Tom Luth rest in peace... retired from coloring and then passed away soon after. So Carrie's been doing it for a couple of years now, I think, man, it feels like she's really come into her own with this particular mini-series. And man, Aragonés is rock solid. His art is rock solid. It looks just as good as it ever has. It's evolved, you know, it's changed, but it is still rock solid. I think he's like 86 years old and he's still just nailing it. I mean, just incredible. Very excited for it. I'm so glad we're getting more Groo. So I hope everybody goes out and picks this one up.

[00:34:00] David:

It looks like it's going to be a fun one, but one thing I noticed from the previews, John, and I have to ask you this question since you've read the first issue. So kind of spoilers everybody. Like if you don't want to have your first issue of Groo spoiled... John in the in the preview pages, Rufferto is on a boat with Groo and it sinks. That is new. I don't know if that's ever happened before. One of the things about Groo, if you never... Groo is anytime Groo gets on a boat, he sinks it, and it's just one of the like... he sinks in in a million different ways. It's always played for laughs, and everything for Groo is pretty playful laughs. But the counter to that is that Groo's loyal dog, Rufferto... anytime Groo's dog is with him on the ship, the boat does not sink. It is a very hard rule and in fact they even play with it where Groo and Rufferto will get on a boat together and then Rufferto will step off the boat for some reason and then Groo sinks the boat.

[00:34:57] David:

So this is the first time I have ever in decades of reading Groo, was Rufferto and Groo on the boat together, and it sank. So is that a story point in the story...?

[00:35:09] John:

No, they just do it?

[00:35:10] David:

Yeah, that just happens. The only solution is you got to write a letter. I am... I might have to write a letter... to write a letter to DG, because...

[00:35:17] David:

...that... I'm sure I won't be the only one because most fans of Groo are like me. Then there's like, "what is happening?" And I'm sure it's just one of those things where they just decided to change it for whatever reason. But it was—it's I'm shocked it's not explained or talked about in any way, shape or form. Anyway, that—that blew my mind.

[00:35:35] John:

Yeah, yeah.

[00:35:36] David:

So how did you like the first issue there, John?

[00:35:39] John:

Well, now I'm disappointed in it.

[00:35:42] David:

Sorry.

[00:35:43] John:

It was interesting because I, I read a like several issues of old Groo like fairly recently.

[00:35:50] John:

So I had like kind of that in my head as I, you know, as I was reading it, you really could see the difference in some of the art, but like I said, it's more of an evolution than anything. It certainly isn't like Aragonés is taking a shortcut anywhere that a shortcut could be taken. That's just not happening. Like, there's so many panels with like 50 people in them. And they're all, like, doing something kind of funny, I guess if you if you sit there and look at it, you know, like it's all something. It was a fun Groo. It's definitely one that is, it's a continuing story that I think it's going to read better as 80 pages. Unlike some Groo where it's like every issue is a complete story of itself. This is definitely just going straight into the next one, not even with like a huge cliffhanger or anything, just kind of like...

[00:36:30] David:

It feels like the last few years of mini-series have been more like that.

[00:36:34] David:

I know they've been doing series of mini-series for a long time, but the format seems to be going more towards the full length. You know, what actually...

[00:36:41] John:

...struck me is that there wasn't a two-page spread opening in a poem like that. So the beginning did kind of strike me like, "oh, it's a little different."

[00:36:49] David:

They're shaking things up, John. Yeah. Gotta bring in those new readers.

[00:36:53] John:

Exactly. The coloring. Spectacular. I mean, she's a great addition to the team. They all gel together so well. And Aragonés has made a second appearance in the last couple of weeks in the... Chip Zdarsky Mad About DC... oh.

[00:37:07] David:

Yeah.

[00:37:07] John:

That's right. One-shot. So there's a little little Aragonés in there as well.

[00:37:11] David:

Nice. Well, speaking of Groo John, this is not great news, but Mark Evanier, the writer of Groo, just put out a post saying that he had, like, $1 million worth of artwork stolen from his home. Recently, I guess he knows who did it.

[00:37:25] John:

Like, I just read the most recent post, like, right before he got on here. So, yeah, it definitely sounds like it's somebody that he knows. He doesn't say who it is. Sounds like something... you know, it's fairly well.

[00:37:34] David:

Yeah. So hopefully it's recovered soon. Sounds like, you know, he's got the police on the case. In the meantime, he posted a list on his website of the art that was stolen. He's got, like a four-page PDF of artwork that he's got. And it's horrific that some of this stuff is stolen because, oh, man, I hope it doesn't get destroyed because, there's some gems in here, John. First of all, I mean, the first thing that popped out to me, John, is that there's two pages of Captain Savage artwork that Mark Evanier had that stuff.

[00:38:03] John:

Oh, you're right.

[00:38:04] David:

He's got the cover to issue 12, and he's got a page 12 of the issue 16 from Captain Savage. I had never heard of Captain Savage before until last week when you started talking about Captain Savage and the issue that you read featuring Ben Grimm before he was The Thing, but now here we are, Captain Savage.

[00:38:22] David:

Artworks getting stolen, John. $1 million worth of Captain Savage art. Probably.

[00:38:27] John:

I have an alibi.

[00:38:30] David:

Okay, I hadn't gone there, but I'm glad you said that.

[00:38:34] John:

Sorry. I was trying to dig around to see what issue of Captain Savage that I read. I just said issue seven.

[00:38:40] David:

That you—that you said you read. Okay, but there's some really amazing stuff in here. He's got pages from Giant-Size Avengers number two. He's got the cover to Iron Man number 12, John.

[00:38:51] John:

Oh, yeah.

[00:38:52] David:

That's a great cover. Yeah. There's The Coming of the Controller. That's a great cover. It's a—I think it's George Tuska cover art. Anyway. Beautiful cover. This is the one that kind of blew my mind. He's got the cover, the original volume one, Silver Surfer number five.

[00:39:09] John:

Oh, wow.

[00:39:10] David:

That blows my mind that he's got that. It is a gorgeous piece. Yeah I love that Silver Surfer series. That original series is like my—one of my all-time favorite stories.

[00:39:21] David:

And I can't believe he's got the cover to it. Anyway, he's got some amazing stuff. He's got some Tales of Suspense. He's got some Thor, X-Men. He's got page six from X-Men 136, and it's hard to get that stuff, man.

[00:39:34] John:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:39:35] David:

So I don't think he's exaggerating when he says, like, there's $1 million worth of artwork that was stolen. Did... like, it's clear that he's got that.

[00:39:43] John:

I'm so bad at those numbers. I didn't realize that... 136 is the death of Phoenix. Like, that's... yeah.

[00:39:48] David:

Yeah. It's got a page from it.

[00:39:50] John:

Yeah.

[00:39:50] David:

Yeah.

[00:39:51] John:

Lettered by titles' Tom Orzechowski.

[00:39:53] David:

There you go. Look at that. Full circle. John I think we have to just shut it down right now.

[00:40:01] John:

We're making light of this, by the way. Like that... like it's horrible. It's somebody that you trusted seems to have slipped out with all this. Yeah. I don't even know how many pieces of art it is because it's a—it's a lot.

[00:40:13] David:

If any of our listeners are our original art collectors, please make sure you download that list. If you're playing in those higher-end markets or those mid-level markets, please make sure you download that list. It's available on a couple of different websites, but you can get it on the Mark Evanier site. And make sure you download that and keep your eye out because it's unacceptable, unacceptable that somebody has taken this man's stuff. It's not okay. These pieces of original art are their history, and they need to be treated with respect. So I'm really hoping that whoever got them does not destroy them in the process of trying to get away with it. I don't know what this person was thinking, but what a mess. So I'm wishing Mark all the best. Not only for him, but just for the sake of history. Like Silver Surfer cover number five alone is something that I would really, really like to see in person sometime. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, John, that's all I got.

[00:41:03] David:

I think that's it. Thanks, everybody for coming. Thanks for listening to us. We're getting more and more listeners lately, John. It's been really nice. We're not popular, but we're going ahead in that direction.

[00:41:13] John:

We're getting less not popular.

[00:41:14] David:

John, I might be one of the cool kids soon. Also, for the first time in my life, my... I... now, I've cursed it. Now it's never gonna happen. So anyway, thanks everybody for listening. I'd like to subscribe and all that junk. We'll see you next week. Bye.

[00:41:29] Intro:

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