[00:01] 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.

[00:24] David: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Quarter Box. I'm one of your hosts, David Hedgecock, and with me is my very good friend, John Barber. John Barber, how you doing, John?
[00:32] John: I'm doing good. Our listeners have not lost any time whatsoever. They still have been getting our podcasts every single week for every single month of every single year for going on three full seasons now.
[00:44] David: But you and I have not talked once again in a couple of weeks.
[00:48] John: And David, I did the math on that. That creates a problem.
[00:55] David: It does.
[00:56] John: Yeah, apparently we have to make these at the same rate that people listen to them.
[01:01] David: Oh, God. How are we doing it?
[01:03] John: Yeah, I don't know. How do we continue to Volume. We make up for it in volume.
[01:09] David: So I just need to turn my speaker up? Is that what you're saying?
[01:11] John: Yes. I think that's how it works.
[01:14] David: So anyway, it's been a couple weeks since we talked, John. We haven't even chatted since I saw you with San Diego Comic Con. We were on a panel together.
[01:22] John: We were. We were on a whole panel together. And I think I started the panel off very poorly. I think I got a lot of dirty look from a lot of people when I said what I said. I mean, botched that a little bit. I didn't mean to.
[01:33] David: Who's giving you dirty looks? Didn't from across the room was looking at me like, what are you saying, dude? And if people out in the audience like F you hedge caucus. Oh, well, I didn't think it was going to be that controversial. I knew it was going to be a little controversial, but I didn't think it would be that controversial.
[01:48] John: I didn't listen.
[01:49] David: So I'm not sure. Well, yeah, clearly. I laid down the gauntlet, basically. I said everybody that was up on the panel loved comic books more than everybody in the audience. Oh, right. And that didn't that went over like
[02:02] John: a wet fart. Yeah, it was coming from a good play. No, that was good. In my heart. I think
[02:06] David: it's true, because I like everybody. And I said on the panel, and you're one of the people, but everybody who I've ever encountered in my life, who is more successful than me in comic books in the business of comics. And not to brag, but I've been very successful in comic book in the business of comics. I've probably almost made as much money as I've spent on comics over my 20 year career. I'm almost broken even, John. Is what I'm saying. Like I don't think anybody can, very few people can say that. Maybe the image founders and one or two other people. That's about it. Yeah. So anyway, I've been, I've had a very successful career and to a person, the people that have been more successful than me in their careers in the comic book profession love comic books more than I do. And that is a very, very rare thing for me to encounter. And I am always humbled by it, like greatly. But for me, what that tells me is that like, there's room for me to grow great. That's exciting to know that, you know, even after doing this for so long, I can still, There's still stuff for me to learn and admire even more. And I continue to do that. I love, I love the medium and someone to aspire to, but, but also just telling me like, man, you really, really, really got to love comic books if you want to work in this profession because it's not easy. It's very hard to work in this business.
[03:29] John: Yeah. Thank you, Envy.
[03:32] David: And the other thing about that, so, so you really have to love it. And also the addendum to that is that it's a very, very hard way to make a living. And also it's even more hard to make any money, like any meaningful amount of money to make it all work. So if you can make it your profession and then also make a decent living at it, you have to really, really love this stuff and really be willing to sacrifice quite a bit in order to climb that particular mountain. That was the challenge. basically, as I laid down in that panel was like, look, man, we all love this a lot. What you're looking at on this panel, the seven or eight people, there's a lot of blood, sweat and tears that went behind, you know, getting to be on the stage in that panel. So hopefully people took it like the challenge that I sort of laid it out as, and not as like, uh, I don't know. I don't think that's how it went. I guess I could have ordered it better. I probably could board it better now too. I don't know why I'm repeating my error here on the podcast.
[04:31] John: No, I was wondering that myself. Yeah, but yeah.
[04:36] David: Thanks, John. Thanks for having my back. What a pal. Outside of that, though, I thought the panel went really well. I was, I had a great time.
[04:43] John: Yeah. Yeah. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah. I got to say, I had a Rob Rob. I felt them as you walk by.
[04:48] David: Yeah. You, you brought him son of a gun. You, oh, okay. Tell our listeners what happened.
[04:54] John: Well, it was, we were during Rob's observations. I definitely made that joke to David that, that he, that he wasn't going to be able to go to the one panel he was going to go to because he was on and you were on another panel.
[05:06] David: I seriously considered not joining the panel. So I could go to the rough life of panel when I found out that they were at the same time, I was a little devastated. I was like, maybe they don't need me on that panel. He was giving away something cool on the panel. I didn't know what it was going to be. I found out I thought it was a bad rock number one, a special San Diego Comic Con addition to bad rock number one. And I'll have it now. And I have every other cover of bad rock number one.
[05:28] John: Oh, geez. There's two reasons you should have gone to the other panel. Your performance and the bad right now, I'm just kidding. I'm just joking. Sorry, that was just a tiny outback together. I'm totally joking. Totally joking. David didn't see Rob and then he got mad at me for not introducing me.
[05:43] David: That's a horrible way to tell that story. John, I'm sitting there. So after the panel, there are people coming up to us and asking us questions and stuff. By the way, I was really impressed by how many people were in the room. I was like, "Oh, wow." Like there was more people in the room than on the panel and that's unusual. Yeah. It was a fairly like decently packed. It was a big room and it was reasonably. And there was lots of people there. So I don't know who they were there for, but it was great to see so many people come out and listen to us talk. I'm sure it was all the Cornerbox listeners. That's probably everybody when the audience was listening. So people come up and start talking to us. So I'm engaged with this comic book creator who I've actually supported his kickstarters in the past. And so he was asking me some questions because I had mentioned some Kickstarter stuff that was one of the things that one of the topics that didn't want to be his talk on in the panel. So I was kind of talking to him about, you know, his successes and failures and sort of from an outsider's perspective of what I was seeing hit where he I think he managed does a really good campaign. The comic book that he does is called Fang Hunters. It's on Kickstarter and he's doing his fourth or fifth Kickstarter at this point anyway So I was talking to him But I had my bat turned to the rest of the group behind me and you were in the rest of the group And so I finally finished with this gentleman and meet him and his lovely wife and have a nice conversation Turn around I walk over to where you are and then you're like, oh guess who you just missed and I'm like who? And you're like Rob. I'm like what dude you didn't come over and get me or nothing man And you just Rob Laffield walks up, shakes your hand, tosses to you for, I don't know how long, probably gave you a bad rock number one that you shoved in your backpack quietly and secretly. And then I finally turned out after he's walked away and at no point did you think to yell like hedgecock or anything to let me know that he was right there. I could have said hello. I'm so frustrated with you. I can't believe you did that. I thought you were my friend, John.
[07:44] John: Well, sorry. I tried. It was real quick. He was just walking by. He had to go somewhere. We just said hi.
[07:50] David: Yeah, he can't stay in one place too long because crowds just start forming around like Jesus, giving out the fish and the bread stuff. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Anyway, you had some stuff going on, like, saying you were comic-con?
[08:02] John: I guess this is like public now. We're working with Masked Republic, who have the rights to the Santo movies about the 1960s, Lucador, he's a scientist and adventurer and genius and stuff and a wrestler. We're doing a 3D comic from screenshots of the movie of Santo and the Treasure of Dracula. I'm putting the whole thing together. My whole thing with it is that it's not a screen grab book like every other one that I've ever read that kind of The idea is to kind of make this thing try to read like a comic and I'm having a great time doing it. We gave some away at a panel with Master Republic. Our mutual, well, we can't call him a friend, acquaintance Nate Murray. No, our mutual friend Nate Murray was gonna be on the panel, but he had the day wrong. And he was actually going out to try to buy some, or try to get some 3D glasses, pick up some 3D glasses that he needed to pick up when he found out the panel was going on. Somehow made it back for the panel while he was gone, he missed Sergeant Slaughter showing up and being on this panel. Was that planned? I mean, it was planned for Master Republic, but we didn't know that. So Sergeant Slaughter comes up and literally sits in Nate Murray's seat with Nate Murray's name tag in front of him. It talks to the audience for a while, and then he gets whisked off 'cause he's got places to go as well, and then Nate comes in with the 3D comics. I don't know if that's a big announcement, but that was our announcement. I was happy to have that finally exist.
[09:29] David: We've been getting a lot of new listeners lately, John. We have to set the scene here a little bit. I had never heard of the Luchador movies featuring Santos in my life. I had never until we had Kurt Burdick on the show. Oh yeah, right. It was like the first or second time he came on the show. For those of you who haven't heard the Kurt Burdick interviews, you should definitely go back to the first one. I think it was like season one, but maybe it's season two. And he starts talking about these Luchador movies. And I was so fascinated by his description of these movies went out and watched like two or three of them and they're amazing. You have, if you have not seen these movies, they're fantastic. So the fact that like, here we are like a year and a half later and you're making 3d comics of the screen grabs of one of the movies. Like, how did we get here, John?
[10:15] John: Yeah, no, that is completely coincidental too. Like I wasn't driven from, from your side. You know what actually happened? I, I, I sent this over to you and, and, um, Dave Baker, uh, I don't know, year or two ago where I'd done this like sort of mock up using a creature Lagoon. And here, this is kind of a maybe a more interesting way, maybe you could actually do something, you know, where it literally the only thing that is like possibly a counter example to this. We've gone over at length with Dave on the show, which was the John Byrne Star Trek things. That's actually not what I'm talking about when I'm saying the rest of this stuff. Because that's a unique animal all on its own that has its own set of issues and weirdnesses to it. But in the 70s, you used to have like these photo novels of movies. I had the Star Trek, the motion picture one, and I got one with some Harvey Corman movie like last year or something just because it was so, I was like $2 and so goofy. But they're all terrible. Like they're done by people who don't know comics and, you know, there's grabbing stills from the movie. It must have been incredibly difficult to do as well in 1977.
[11:15] David: Can't even imagine.
[11:16] John: Yeah. And then when people do screen grab books now, like you see with like, K-pop demon hunters or whatever. We did some at IDW. Like almost always, it seems like everybody that does them decides, well, what if we took everything we know about comics, about making comics and just throw it out the window and we throw on a bunch of Photoshop layer effects and make it like a weird size and make it really hard to read and don't think about the storytelling too much. And like I'm really trying to do like the opposite. It's the weirdest dang exercise I've ever done of like going through this movie and remaking it into a comic book. There's sequences that happen a little out of sequence now or things get compressed or lengthened out. You're trying to tell the story in the medium of comics using only pieces from the movie. We're not AIing scenes or anything like that. That's not happening.

[12:08] John: We're not hiring new actors. Just like a 4K transfer of a movie that you're just watching anywhere is printable. You know what I mean? Like the resolution of the files from movies that you would get is high enough that you can actually use it to print something in a way that it wasn't in the DVD era.
[12:26] David: Right.
[12:27] John: Although, funny thing about the Santo movies is that they, at least some of them, at least this one, they filmed clean and dirty versions of it. There's scenes where some of the women may or may not have clothes depending on which version of the movie you're watching.
[12:42] David: Oh, okay.
[12:44] John: And like the current Santo, who I believe is like the original's grandson, who isn't involved in this, but is I think tangentially involved with everybody because of the various rights issues and stuff like that. But he objects to the nudity versions. So probably there wouldn't have even been an issue if we would have done it anyway, but it certainly had a deference to him where you were doing the clean versions, which are a VHS rip into the middle of this 4K movie. So there's these things that are at best 640 by 480, Deinterlaced, but probably 320 by 1, whatever. That part's a little bit of a challenge working around. Yeah. That's probably not what we're here for.
[13:23] David: 100% what we're here for. We're almost four seasons, almost three full seasons, John. People know what we're about. This is what we're about.
[13:31] John: Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited to actually have something I'm making that I can talk about that exists, even if it's the goofiest thing in the world. But it's really, like, it's fun. It's a cool book. people were great to work with.
[13:42] David: You know what I love about this the most is that you're like, let's make this screen grab movie in 3D.
[13:48] John: Oh yeah.
[13:48] David: This needs 3D glasses.
[13:50] John: It really adds to it. There's a couple of shots in there that are just unquestionably better in the comic book version than the movie. All respect to the movie, I guess.
[14:04] David: But David, you had an announcement as well. As our longtime listeners know, We've been working with the fine folks over at Heroic Signatures, and they're the owners of Conan the Barbarian and all of the Robert E. Howard properties. They currently publish all the Conan comics through Titan Publishing. But Heroic Signatures is actually the owners of all the Robert E. Howard properties, and they produce the con books in-house. So I think part of the reason why you've seen in the last couple years Conan sort of have this cool resurgence in the quality of the books is because Heroic Signatures is very much invested in making really good products. So anyway, it's been a joy to work with them. We've been handling their archive for a couple of years now. And so we're, Chase and I, when I say we, I'm talking about Chase, frequent guest to the show and editor in chief of Fun Time Go, Chase Martz. We together handle the archive of basically every single Conan comic, Savage Sword Conan, Conan the Barbarian, Conan, King Conan, et cetera, et cetera. We're responsible for the entire archive as well as most of the other Robert E. Howard comic books and magazines that have been produced. So we're in charge of making sure that the archive is clean and up to date and everything's in it and easy to find and we make sure the licensors have what they need. And we're the ones that are making the omnibus packages and making sure those are all printed and looking nice. It's quite a challenge. There's a lot more to it than I ever expected there would be to it when we first started the agreement. But it really has become a labor of love. And so anyway, the heroic signature folks have been really happy with us. And, um, so they've asked us to do a few more things that we've been doing behind the scenes. And one of them though, has been announced at San Diego Comic Con. They announced a new Cole series. Yeah. So, uh, probably the second most popular of the Robert E. Howard brands, Cole, Marvel put out a lot of material featuring him with those subtitles.
[15:52] John: That's what we're doing there behind sailor, Steve cardigan, right? The number one Robert E. Howard character.
[15:58] David: Yeah. Sailor Steve, Corrigan, Cole, and then Conan. Exactly. Uh, so we're doing Cole at Tempered Blade is the subtitle. Uh, it's going to be a mini series and we're working with some fantastic folks. John Arcudi is, uh, is writing it. Uh, for those of you, uh, who are fans of Hellboy, you may have heard that name before, uh, as well as a bunch of other things, we had Dave Stewart on the colors. Eisner award winning colorist, Dave Stewart's doing Hamel in colors. And John, I am getting to work with one of my favorite artists of like the last 20 years. Eisner Award winning artist, Mark Buckingham. The artists responsible for basically all of fables, among a bunch of other stuff. But I think, you know, of the last 10, 15 years, you probably, that's where he spent the bulk of his time. Well, I guess Miracle Man too. He actually just did, I mean, he just did New Miracle Man and obviously he was one of the original artists on that series as well. So we announced that. So we're working, we've been working with Mark and John and the rest of the crew for a couple months now on the project that's coming together really nicely. It's beautiful, gorgeous stuff. Mark Buckingham is like crushing the art, like crushing the art. And you know, Dave Stewart on colors is exactly what she thinks is beautiful. So we're super excited to make that announcement and working with Mark Buckingham. John, what a professional's professional. What a delight. So I got to tell our listeners the story. It's a stupid story, but I, okay, I'm going to digress everybody. So give me, give me a minute here, but I think it'll be worth it. So we made the announcement on Saturday and it was going to be at 3 PM on a panel, the Coney and panel where they're making the house. So, so chase, uh, was in town. We were hanging out and we decided to go to lunch down by the harbor. We're San Diego local. So we know where all the good spots are. So we were over in Point Loma at the harbor, uh, eating at this place called and I had a delightful lunch there and called the lift. And while we were waiting for the lift, we were sitting on a bench and there was a tree overhead. So we're sitting under this tree and it was like the lift like three minutes away. And all of a sudden out of nowhere, about a gallon of bird shit got dumped all on my head inside of my shirt and all the way down my pants. Like I'm not exaggerating when I tell you, it was like, Take a milk jug, a gallon milk jug, and pour it over yourself. That's how much bird shit completely covered me, John. Oh my God. Looked up and there's like this giant sea bird, some sort of e-grid, he's just up there smiling back down at me and it had completely evacuated its bowels all over me. So at first, like right when it happens, I'm like, Oh, like my first thing is, okay, I got to take care of this. Right? It's like two 15. Right. and the lift is coming and the panel's at three. And if anybody knows anything about San Diego Comic Con, like 45 minutes to, you know, we'll probably be in the lift for like 15, 20 minutes and then another 15, 20 minutes to get this panel, it's gonna be a little tight, but we should be fine, right? I'm like, oh no, I gotta get cleaned up. The lift's coming in three minutes. So I could go to the bathroom and I grabbed some paper towels and then I see like the devastation.
[19:12] John: Oh my God.
[19:14] David: was all over me. And then at the same time, as I'm like, I'm any I'm looking the paper towels. I'm like, this is not gonna be not gonna be another. And then the smell hit me, John. Like, oh, I'm not going to the convention. I turned to Chase and said, Oh, I'm not going. So I took the lift back to my house. Chase took a chase called his own lift and went to the convention. I took the lift back to my place. I'm not kidding, John. I like the clothes had to be hosed down with a hose in the front yard. And I had to take a shower like I was. So by the time all of that was done, it was already three o'clock, like the panel was already heavy. So I missed the panel with the announcement. I wasn't there. I completely. So Mark bless him. He was like, Oh, I've got a little time or let's go to lunch. I'd really like to, you know, hang out with you guys and meet David in person. Like, you know, Chase was kind of like letting people know, and probably the most humorous and hilarious way that, you know, the, the eager of happiness, like, bless me. So anyway, the next day, uh, we got to hang out with Mark and it all worked out great because we went to lunch and we got to hang out for a couple of hours and chat, you know, you sit there chatting with Mark Buckingham, the guy that is the co-creator essentially of fables and one of the hours for miracle man, I was no reward winning guy. Like he's been, he's done everything working in the industry for 30 or 40 years. Man, what a treat. It was so funny, and he knows everybody. And so it was great to just sit and talk to him about his work and his career and life in general. It's had a great time. So that was my highlight of the show, John.
[20:49] John: That's cool. Yeah, man, I remember first encountering him when he was doing "Miracle Man" back in, what was that, late 80s, early 90s? I don't even remember. Like Neil Gaiman started writing it before he did "Sandman," but it didn't come out for later because the last issues of the Ellen Moore run took longer. But he was like this super interesting artist back then where like every issue would kind of be a different style. And he had one that was all drawn like Andy Warhol drew it and stuff. I feel like this comes off as like us shilling or something for the companies who work out. But man, I've truly been enjoying the Titan Conan stuff. Well, all the Titan Robert D Howard stuff. Sorry, the heroic stuff. My company also works with them and made the Conan art decision thing. much of the art has been so detailed and fine line and I'm like, oh, I wonder what Buckham's gonna do with it. And a truism about the Comic Con is that if you're there, you're the last person that knows about the stuff that was announced. So I only saw, I actually only right before you started talking about it, did I see the promotional work that was released. Wow, it's neat. It's kind of got a Kirby kind of thing. It almost looks like super early Barry Windsor Smith Conan, where it was still a heavy Kirby influence to it. And it's like such a cool look. I wasn't expecting it at all. But like, I went from kind of being like, Oh, yeah, I'm looking forward to that series. I mean, you know, I knew about it before. He told me about it. I was excited about it. Like, now I'm like through the roof. This looks
[22:12] David: really neat. And he's doing all these really cool design elements on the page, sort of like what he did in fables from time to time, you know, where he's got like this almost much ask, you know, art nouveau, like framing of the panels is next level, man, it's just some gorgeous stuff. And Like what he was doing with was it Silver Age and then Golden Age the most recent ones that he did at Marvel Things the other way around but the Golden Age and then Silver Age, but yeah, anyway that work in the Silver Age That's phenomenal work. Like it is just phenomenal and gorgeous work. He continues to produce at just an amazing level
[22:52] John: He's the best old writing on his part as well from what I may have heard
[22:58] David: I feel like I don't want to touch that I gotta stay friends with everybody. I don't know where that's gonna go. Anyway, some phenomenal work and really, really has been a pleasure to work with. So anyway, that was my big win for San Diego Comic Con is getting to hang out with a legend of the comic book.
[23:18] John: That's awesome. Speaking of legends in San Diego Comic Con, man, I had a couple, I don't know if run-ins are the out run into that are kind of wild. Like Rob Liefeld? Like Rob? I think. That's something. To our guest and Eisner Award winner, Dave Farper, who was relaxing with his wife in the hallways and we discussed the, I don't know, oddness of our episode and that we should try again
[23:52] David: sometime. It wasn't our best episode. I think if you listen, hopefully our listeners agree that The episode's really good. It's a good episode. Yeah, it's good, I guess. It just wasn't the stuff that I think we wanted to talk to.

[24:02] John: Yeah, we wanted to be excited. We were just massively.
[24:05] David: Yeah, yeah. We got super-sight-tracked talking about the Eisners, basically. I mean, that was the end of the show. But he also guest to the show, Nicole Gu.
[24:13] John: Had a huge weekend, a couple Eisners for that book. She was actually on a Mark Evanier cover panel to just tie everything together with the show. She had a spotlight panel. I saw her. You're not gonna believe it. She managed to get Dave Baker to moderate her panel. I mean, that's like a pretty big get.
[24:31] David: What a get. I guess when you're an award winner, you can get any of that.
[24:36] John: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if he would have done it if she'd lost. Like, what if he didn't?
[24:40] David: You think Dave goes on and is like, "Son of a bitch, I introduced her to comic books." And they're like, "Just doing it."
[24:48] John: Here's a crazy panel that I walked into. This is like, one day I was like, Man, I'm, I need some air conditioning. I need to sit down. Uh, there's a peanuts panel going on and like the line was huge. And I'm like, Oh, forget it. Well, it's other ones. So I went to this other panel and this is something I've never heard of. I've mentioned it to a couple other people and other people also are not aware of this thing. So, you know, Jim Sperrenko, the comic book artist.
[25:12] David: I heard of him. Yeah. One of the toys.
[25:14] John: You remember the, uh, the, the issue of tower of shadows that he drew, right? The, he drew the story in tower of shadows. Number one, kind of a legendary story. I think it's a fan of graphics has it in print right now in their Tower of Shadows collection. I think it's in some Stranko collections too. So just like a short story that he wrote and drew that was very much about the storytelling of it. Well, in 1972, a movie was made of this. A short film. A director named Ken Dixon, who I think knew Stranko, somehow got involved with the, or or somehow got a grant from or something from the American Film Institute, the AFI. Maybe this is even a thing that just happened in the early 70s is like filmmakers would get like these sort of tryout short films. So he had some sort of budget to it or something.
[26:06] David: To put it in comic book terms, this was like a Zara grant in the late 70s for filmmakers?
[26:10] John: Something like that. Yeah. David Armstrong was a producer of it. So the idea was they were originally going to do, there's this Harlan Ellison story where It's about like driving on the freeway, but all the cars have guns and any like this is like a big freeway shootout kind of thing They're gonna do that before they realize they didn't have the money to make that movie So AFI had a house like they actually had this like creepy house that they used for filming and stuff I guess it's available for filming which is perfect So it became this like zero budget thing and the mood of the house is like basically already there He and the director Ken Dixon gets to rank o to write the screenplay and do storyboards for this movie They film it and it's with like real people John Carradine's in it. John Fiedler is in it You might remember him as the original piglet in Winnie the Pooh He's in some Twilight zones and stuff too Like he's a he's an actor you drag you definitely would recognize him if you saw him if you watched anything from the 60s and 70s. I don't know a woman named Joanna Phillips. They're showing this movie at Comic-Con. It's like a restoration of the movie. It's like 13 minutes long. It's really short. It's a straight adaptation of the story. I think it's not licensed, right? Like I think that that has got to be the issue of it. But the producers there is being interviewed by this guy. It's like one of the worst panels I've ever been on or I've ever seen. I mean, the person running it, you're moderating I think it's like, so now are we going to be able to, is this going to get released? Like now that now this has been all cleaned up and was it going to come out? Short answer. No. That's it.
[27:46] David: Oh man. That sounds brutal.
[27:48] John: Yeah. There's a VHS rip of it on YouTube that you can find right now. It's called shadow house. Yeah. So you can really see what it is. It's real well made. And then also in this panel though, there's a interview with Stranko from 10 days earlier. Like he was at another convention, uh, on the East coast. She wasn't there in San Diego, but it's like a brand new interview with him talking about it. If you know Stranko, obviously this movie is one of the most important things ever made by anybody. The moderator asks the producer, you know, like, uh, so in a way, or somebody asked, maybe somebody in the audience asked a question. Was this like a thing that really kickstarted your film career? He's like, Oh, I never thought about it, but yeah, I guess so. And the moderator's like, you heard it here first. I guess so. Like it was really that kind of panel, but the movie itself looks really nice. It was unfortunate because even though it was restored, you're watching it at Comic Con, so like the lighting is really bad and everything, you know, it'd be cool if that print made it out somewhere because it's very, very well put together.
[28:44] David: It's better than the version that's on YouTube right now. Yeah, significant.
[28:49] John: I just clicked on it and you can. Yeah, it's a version of it. The version that they showed there was pristine. Like it was.
[28:54] David: Oh, wow.
[28:55] John: You know, you just the lighting wasn't good.
[28:56] David: I think what random thing that you stumbled into. I know it's wild. That was a beauty of a comic-con right there. That was a perfect Sandio comic-con moment.
[29:05] John: Yeah. David, this might be a corner box exclusive, what I'm about to say. I thought people found out that this is what happened on this other thing here. And again, not only is it apparently not, but I can't even find references to what I'm about to say online. Some of it, yes. Did you hear anything in the run up to Comic Con about Felix art doing the Dark Knight recreated? Yes. Something like 48 or 50 different artists going through and each one of them redrawing a single page of Dark Knight returns number one.
[29:41] David: Right. It was just like somebody had commissioned all these different artists to do that. It was some dude's personal project of the way I understood it. Yeah. Yeah. And then we were somebody with a lot of money. Right. Right. Cause he got some great names in there.
[29:55] John: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, Nick Klein, James Herron, too many to go to, Nick Batara.
[30:02] David: Ryan Nutley was in there.
[30:03] John: Boy Nixie, Ryan Su, Chris Burnham, John McCray, Tommy Lee Edwards, Mike Allred, Nick Dragata, Ryan Stegman, Paul Pope, Jim Mafood, Jock, John Paul Leon. Incredible stuff. So, Felix Art is releasing a hardcover of it, and it's coming out at Comic Con. The story is that there was some sort of a fistfight or altercation at the Felix Art booth on preview night. I didn't go to preview night. I don't go anywhere near preview night for exactly this reason, to be honest. According to Bang Cool published that story, there's an update correction that Felix says that there was no conflict at the booth that might have been conflated reports over different things. But what did happen, and this is the part that I don't hear about, somebody from Marvel mentioned this really casually and Nate Murray and I afterwards, we were, you know, we were hanging out. We like both looked at each other and we're like, did you know that? Because it was dropped as if that was a thing everybody knew and everybody else reacted like, oh, yeah, we know that. But then so did Nate and I because we were like, we didn't want to look like jerks. Apparently what happened is the DC issued a takedown on it because it wasn't a licensed product.
[31:12] David: They didn't license that?
[31:13] John: Right. Like my mind exploded when I heard that.
[31:17] David: the value of those hardcovers because you know they printed them man you know they printed those books they had them at the show right gosh how do you not know that you have to license that come on
[31:29] John: but yeah it's it'd been everything about it seemed like it was like yeah i don't know like i just never occurred to me like oh that seems like a license they could absolutely they'd give them that like it's all these like geese it's guys that are actually drawing batman this guy is
[31:42] David: Right. Also, Speedo's comics are, I mean, the business, they represent tons of artists. Yeah, they're terrific. They don't know any more artists. No disrespect, but they would just feel it's yours. It's just a thing that they have the connections that they need to get the license for something like that. And they paid whatever they had to pay to make that happen. Wow. Oh, man.
[32:00] John: It was related to a charity thing, you know, but that even just made it seem more licensed,
[32:05] David: you know, to be like that seemed right. Or at least, you know, if it was related to a charity that at least DC had given its bossing for it. You know, I just, wow, that's crazy. That's amazing. I guess they thought they could get around it because, uh, they weren't giving taking any money for it. I guess that's, is that the, maybe that's what they were thinking. I don't know. Yeah. That's too bad. I would love to see that thing out there in the world. Maybe, uh, you know who we need to put on that? Chris Ryle. Yeah. Chris Rock and get John Burns X-Men, uh, story out there in the world. You could probably get this one out there too. I think this is the all-Sandy O'Gacham show, everybody. Sorry. I wanted to talk about some of the comic books, but I think we're going to wind it up here. I'm standing at a booth. Our mutual friend, Scott Dunbeer, is responsible for all the artist editions that you see out in the world from IDW and now from Act 4 Publishing. So I was chatting with him and his lovely family. And next to him was the Jeff Darrow table. But Jeff wasn't there. This is early issue in the morning. So I was sitting there chatting. Chase was with me as we were standing there. Jeff Darrow walks up and doesn't have bad or anything. So if you don't know what Jeff Darrow looks like, you don't know it's Jeff Darrow, but I know what Jeff Darrow looks like. And I was like, that was Jeff Darrow. And he sat down and he didn't do anything. There was a guy, a couple of guys like around him. He was chatting with one of them. And then he started like, I don't know, doing something, but no one was around. And so I just like, I was standing in front of Scott's table. I just kind of like sidestepped my way. Like two sidesteps and I was standing in front of Jeff Darrow's table. I'm like, Hey, uh, I don't know if you know this, but you're Jeff Darrow. And he's like, well, yes, I am. I'm like, are you doing stuff? He's like, it's like, yeah. So he starts pulling out his whole portfolio, original art. He's selling all this original art. It's way too pricey for me. I thought about it for a minute, but I was like, I got a budget for the show. So Jeff Darrow is known for a bunch of stuff, but the thing he's been doing the last several years of Shaolin Cowboy, which I love. I think we've talked about Shaolin Cowboy on the show just recently. Fantastic book. If you haven't read it, listeners, you've got to, got to pick this up. And he's got a new mini series out Shaolin Cowboy AI Live. First issue. I read the first issue, read Force of the Endigo actually, and really liked it. Jeff's art is just as good as Everband, if not better. And the story super, all the Shaolin Cowboy stories are like right up my alley. I love this stuff. cowboy samurai like a shine me up man. Yeah. So he had an oversized black and white just line art edition of the first issue of Shaolin cowboy number AI alive number one. So it was like a treasury size additional like a 10 by 14 ish size and just the black and white are no colors or anything. And inside of it, it was signed, of course, and he said, I believe I mean, he only printed 10 of these things And it came with an original piece of art, like a full sized, probably like 10 by 12 piece of original art that came with the book. And you got to pick which original piece of art you want to get on a separate original art portfolio that just had these pieces that were going to go with this limited edition book. So I was like, well, there goes my entire comic con budget. Cause I 100% bought that. And I got to be the first one basically to pick which piece of art out of this portfolio of which piece I want in my opinion, I got the best piece in the whole, uh, my whole portfolio. So that was my big, that was my big win. That's awesome. I guess that's why the bird pooped on me the next day that a balance out like, you know, the karma like make everything even somehow.
[35:44] John: You know what? At least you weren't holding that book above your head right then.
[35:48] David: Yeah. It was safe and secure at home already at that point. She, Alright Johnny, I think this was the All San Diego Comic Con catch up episode, but do you have anything else you want to chat about?
[35:57] John: No, we could do, we should do, we should save that for our next one.
[36:00] David: Well thanks everybody for coming and listening to us chat about San Diego Comic Con in our adventures. Hope if you weren't there you still enjoyed some comic book goodness while San Diego Comic Con was going on. There's so many cool specials and events happening and all these big announcements. We didn't even talk about the Marvel doomsday. Did you see the trailer Avengers?
[36:20] John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I did.
[36:21] David: I was not very interested in Avengers Doomsday, but after seeing that trailer, I'm like, "Oh, you know what? They're just kind of bringing back all the greatest hits and so I started replaying them." I'm like, "I think I'm in. I'm excited for it now."
[36:35] John: Yeah, I mean, just to throw this out there, people seem to like Spider-Man character and the movies about him. Also, man, people like that Tom Holland in Zendaya, like, top one in two movies starring both of them. And we're going to have Zendaya versus Tom and on the day that doomsday comes out with a given version of doomsday in three yeah so I don't know I don't know how we do it there but there you know like that's gonna be that's gonna be tough on America because it's gonna have our our two I don't report heroes I don't
[37:06] David: think it's a neither or situation John I think you can I think it's okay to choose both sides
[37:09] John: on that one you can you can watch both I hope they make it through okay I hope it doesn't
[37:13] David: cause problems at home it's awful I see what you got me to do you mean me too they seem like a sweet couple. It seems great. Yeah. He seems like he really adores her, which, you know, can't ask for anything more. I really, really, really want to talk about steel streets.

[37:26] David: So we're going to do that next time. This thing that I've been reading is so there's a teaser. Oh, also, John, next time we're going to do our top 10 hottest artists of the moment. Okay. And we're into the third quarter of the year. So we got to, we got to catch up with that. I've got some hot takes, John, very hot takes. All right. Top 10 hottest So come back listeners. We'll see you next Tuesday and thanks for listening. And hope you enjoyed that. Hope you got something out of it. And I hope the eagerness of happiness does not target your doorstep.
[37:55] David & John: Thanks everybody. Bye everybody. Bye. 

[37:55] Outro: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.