Intro
00:01
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.

00:23
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Corner Box. My name is David Hedgecock. I'm one of your hosts and with me as always, is the other host, Transformers Hall of Fame, former IDW Publishing Editor-in-Chief, John Barber. This is the second part of a thrilling two-parter that we're doing here where we, well, I am opening 20 consecutive Terminal No. 1 blind bags. And the reason for this is because I really, really, really wanted the Rob Liefeld cover that was only in the blind bags, and I was too cheap to pay $200 on eBay to get it.

David
01:00
So let's find out if I actually get this darn cover or not. I'm excited to find out. I hope you are too. We talk about a bunch of other stuff on this episode. So if you're done the blind bag talk from last time, we have other stuff that we're going to bring up. It's another wild and wacky episode, just as you come to expect from us. Okay, let's get back to the show.

John
01:19
I don't know if we want to jump right into what are John and David reading, but I've got a couple, I've got like a three pack that I kind of want to jump into. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Feature Intro
01:28
Here's what John and David read this week!

John
01:31
So one, this is just an aside. I have a young son. Takes baths. I'm the one responsible for making sure that that happens. Occasionally he has to poop. And sometimes that happens in effort to delay having to get in the bath. In which case, I just go and sit in his bed and maybe read a comic. Lighting's not good, so I'll read a digest comic. That's my thing. So I'm sitting there reading a little Lulu digest, and he comes in. We're in the middle of reading. We did a rereading of all the Dogman books.

01:58
and then all the cat kid comic clubs and then we were going to go into captain underpants then we remembered somebody had sent us a copy of the captain underpants manga so we start reading that we're enjoying it's pretty good so he sees this little lulu comic that i'm reading jack does after he's completed his pooping and he's like uh what's that my god so that's a little he's like let's read that

David
02:20
anything to not take a bath oh yeah i guess you're so easy that you're like yeah what wait you want to read a comic instead of take a bath okay Let's do that.

John
02:29
No, no. The bath got taken. As we're going to bed at night and we're in bed and he's going to, you know, theoretically going to sleep. But in reality, thinking about Pokemon and one piece Funko Pops and Legos. You're raising him right, John. You're raising him right. Yeah, I really love Little Lulu. He's just like, let's read some more Little Lulu. And I think that's hilarious. I don't know, man.

David
02:58
It is. Yeah. And there's some great art in there. Is that Gold Key?

John
03:02
Yeah.

David
03:03
A lot of that old Gold Key stuff is pretty fantastic. But all of that like old Casper and hot stuff and Richie Rich.

John
03:09
Yeah.

David
03:09
If you read that stuff today, it holds up just fine. Like it is still age appropriate for what it was age appropriate for 40 years ago.

John
03:18
I forgot. You weren't on the episode. It was one of the Chase did where I discovered, like I accidentally discovered Little Lulu and John Stanley, the artist.

03:27
There's collections of all of John Stanley's stuff from like Phanagraphics and drawn in Quarterly. He's super well-respected and I had no idea. And I was reading stuff and I'm just like, this is like really well done. And then I looked it up to see who did it and I got the whole story and I'm like, oh, I didn't put all that together. Like the people are right. And it was one of those cool moments where it's like you're reading something. You're like, this is like exceptional. People should talk about it. And they're like, oh, people do talk about it. You're, I'm the idiot that hadn't read it.

03:57
As we're approaching the end of season, what is it, season 20? What are we on? It just feels that way, John. Season 3. We're wrapping up season 3 in just a couple weeks. I've been through so much, David. Season 3. I was thinking back on the Harlan Ellison episodes, you know, about the lawsuit and fanagraphics and everything. Those three episodes are three of our most popular episodes, John. We have our most downloaded episodes. People love that. I was really fascinated by the realities of what the world was like when these were coming out. I'd never read either of them.

04:26
One of them was something that I'd always heard of and I've never read. It's called Dalgoda. I don't know if you've ever seen it. No idea what you're looking at right there. Okay. So it's by Jan Stranod, who I always thought was like a European dude. But no, he's like he's from Wichita, Kansas. But he did a lot of work with Corbin. Like he did a lot of like heavy metal stuff with Corbin and FanaCore. It sounds like a European and the art style looks European. So the fact that he's from Wichita, Kansas is phrased me off too. Well, he wrote it. And the art is by Dennis Who's from Hawaii, your hometown.

05:01
No. This is like perhaps best known for its backup stories. That starting with issue two, it has Grimwood's Daughter. That was an early work by Kevin Nolan that IDW would later reprint.

05:12
But then following that was the Bo Jeffries saga by Alan Moore and Steve Parkhouse. This is always like this Alan Moore comic I hadn't read and I didn't know what it was. And then it was like, oh, he's just doing backup stories.

05:22
And then by the time I kind of was aware of that stuff, you could buy copies of the Bo-Jeffrey saga by itself. So, you know, I've read that stuff. But Dalgota, I hadn't read. It's a story set in a bit in the future, but the world is very much drawn like the late 20th century. They offhandedly refer to like economic problems that had made things not change dramatically. But it kind of just adds to the reality of the story.

05:52
another star. And they can communicate faster than light, but their ships can't. So they've crossed some ships back and forth over the past several decades and have regular communications. But there's always been this mutual suspicion. Now this spaceship shows up and it has traveled from this alien world to Earth faster than light because the alien world has just been attacked by this third-party alien race that wiped out the alien fleet.

06:21
This alien has come to earth to retrofit the earth fleet with their faster than light drives to go out and help them to stop these attackers which are six light months away from their star. So they've got like half a year to fix this stuff. But the story is like it's told very much like concrete. It is more about the fact that this alien comes to earth and then he this navy guy talks to him about the legalities of what he's doing and then they they go and be roommates and so it's very down to earth and realistic sort of.

06:51
The angle on it though is that the aliens are humanoids with dog heads. So Dalgota who's the alien that comes to Earth. There's a little editorial by Gary Groth in the end or an afterword by Gary Groth where he's like I'm going to put my money where my mouth is here in 1984 and I say that you can do these mainstream comics better so I'm going to do a mainstream comic. This is like Fanagraphic's attempt at a mainstream comic and the art is amazing.

07:21
is incredible. Like, I don't know. Like, I was looking up.

07:24
Did something like tragic happen to him? He did a bunch of comics in the 80s. He did a lot of Riteef, Riteef, Riteef, Riteef, the Keith Lemaire character. I've never known how to pronounce it.

David
07:35
No, I do.

John
07:36
But I've never really read that stuff either. But it's European-ish, but it's super well done, super unique, and has a lot of personality to it. Jan Stranad's writing is good.

07:47
It's a pretty cool comic. You know, it's weird to see this sort of slow-paced unfolding. Maybe there's some awkward flashbacks where there's a lot of like, well, surely you recall your history when these first ships arrived, you know, and then you go into a flashback. But like, there's a kind of a neat trick where you think they're surprised that they found an alien ship, but they're actually surprised that they found an alien ship that looks like it was built this year, as opposed to being built 35 years ago, which is the newest it could look like. And like that's kind of a neat little twist to it. Once you start to figure out what's going on. What's it called again? Dalgoda. D-A-L-D-O-D-A. I think there's collections of it. There were two series. The second one is called Flesh and Bone. Hold up the interiors. I want to see that. The cover looked amazing. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's good stuff. Oh wow. It's not skimping on the panel count either. No, no, no. It's definitely, it's got a Yeah, heavy metal European feel to it, but not the salacious parts of it, like not in the way we were talking about last week, you know, or the other, you know, it's not women in bikinis and barbarians. It's the weird lettering and square balloons and stuff. It definitely looks like it's a foreign translation, which could not have helped its sales in 1984. I got it. You know, it's funny just imagining this showing up in a world where Fantagraphics is publishing like they've got some Karl Barth.

09:19
Kim Thompson was a huge Carl Barks guy. So they did then and they do now publish Carl Barks stuff. Gil Kane's Savage and Jack Jackson's Los Tajenos. Like what an odd lineup for fanagraphics. You're still into that world of fanagraphics that I'm used to where it's like Peter Bagg and Dan Klaus and then maybe Chris Ware's coming in and Roberta Gregory and that kind of stuff. Jump to 1991 when it is that world.

09:48
Chris Ware hasn't really come out yet, but the other ones are out and doing their stuff. There's a comic that Fanagraphics published called Critters that Kim Thompson's love of Carl Barks sort of, I think, made this comic happen, and it would be all these funny animal comics, including Usagi Ojembo would often be in there. And remember Usagi Ojembo at this point was published by Fanagraphics. This comic is called AKQJ. That's Ace, King, Queen, Jack, or there's no other meaning to it, but it doesn't say that on the cover.

10:18
It's just got a picture of a Jack card. One of the characters from Critters is this guy named Captain Jack by Mike Casley. He'd later go on to do some Ren and Stimpy comics. He worked in animation. He and Ken Mitrouni, who gets mentioned in here as a special thanks, do the Archie Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at some point. It's a super good series. That was always a lot of fun. But Jack is this science fiction cat that looks a lot like the Tom from the Chuck Jones, Tom and Jerry. I wouldn't see that.

10:48
Yeah, this is, as it tells you, not about that Jack. This is about another Jack in history. And we're introduced to the story where it's this sort of very super cartoony art. Really good art, again. Like, this is, like, top flight stuff. Like, this is Jeff Smith-level art. The story is, like, perfectly delightful. What's funny about it is that it's like if you took a kid's cartoon and then you did that. And, like, there's no twist to it. Like, it isn't, like, and then they say shit. You know, there's some sort of, you know, like a meta version of it. It's like, they have a bad joke contest. And then, you know, they get into this like vaguely heartwarming

David
11:24
situation where they have to do it. It's not like Jay Stevens, you know, came along and put his Jay Stevens dwellings, right? But it isn't even like Jay Stevens, like Jet Cat, where it's like perfectly

John
11:34
acceptable for kids, but it's got like a little bit more of a modern edge. This is just, you know, this is just a very classic comic. Again, I want to emphasize, this is a comic about Captain Jack, who you all surely remember. You were reading comics in 1991.

11:48
You remember how close to the lips and hearts of all of America's children Captain Jack was in 1991. But this isn't about that Captain Jack. And the comic is called AKQJ. He had to make an effort in 1991 to not sell comics. And I feel like they did. They gave it their all. They did. Yeah. You buy this thing. That title is not getting me to pick it up at all. Nor is that cover to be fair. Yeah. No. And it's a delightful comic. I mean, nothing bad to say about this comic. It's completely I'm glad I read it. The art's wonderful. Do a retrospective of this, you know, like all the stuff. Just like, wow. Even the back cover is the other three cards in the ace, king, queen, and jack. More playing cards. Yeah, it's not super exciting. Is it playing card related? No, no, this isn't like Jack's Luck Runs Out, if you ever saw that by Jason Little. That's a playing card comic. This isn't that. His name's Jack, and there's a king and a queen in the story. Interesting to look at that. And then, I mean, I got like a stack of fan of graphics books from San Diego Comic Con. Like, I I always do and full of super high production values and they're really all over the place now. They've got Marvel stuff. They've got the Disney stuff. And then they've got super underground stuff, classic underground stuff, literary comics, beautiful reproductions of Basil Bulverton, Space Hawk stuff, a color comic, and then a black and white comic. But I don't know. It was interesting to wrap my head around that timeline that we had built in that Harlan Ellison episode.

13:18
is that I think a good description of Gary Groth was a thing that Chase had told me. One of my favorite phrases that I've ever got from Chase. I guess he read it in an interview where Noel Gallagher was describing Liam Gallagher as a man with a fork in a world of soup. And like that's Gary Groth before he finds love in Rockets. You know, like he's looking for love in Rockets. And then it does, and it all falls into place. And you know, like everything aligns itself in a way that makes sense with Phanagraphic.

13:48
from that point forward. But there's like this cone of it not making sense. And it's still being this sort of thing that would have critters. You know, it would have just these funny ones. Right. Yeah. Sometimes great, like Usagi Ojimbo, sometimes kind of forgotten. You know, sometimes the good ones that got forgotten. Delgoda and Captain Jack sitting by the side of the road waiting for somebody to pick them up in the future here. And both worth doing. Both worth checking out. You know, you see the level of competence on the interiors.

David
14:18
that gets buried just because, you know, the cover and the title is just not well thought through. Like, who insisted that AKQJ was the title? How does that decision get made? Somebody needed to pull somebody to the side and say, hey, we're not doing this. That's where our jobs come in, John. That's where the editor needs to step in. I guess, yeah, and there's, like, certainly certain times where you should take the non-commercial route, like we were saying. Yeah, that's not one of them. I feel like there's a, the Captain Jack fairy tale special.

John
14:48
Yeah, and having it be black and white, even at that time, that style of art, I guess Bone got away with the adjustment. Yeah, because 91, not only did you have Image, you also had the self-publishing boom. So you had like Tyrant, you had Terry Moore. Yeah, I guess you could still get away with it. Yeah, there's a lot of, Usagi was black and white, Bone was black and white. Even when Bone went to color for a little bit, it went back to black and white. Yeah, it didn't really become color again until Scholastic, not to discount the Disney Adventures.

David
15:18
stuff that had happened before that. I'm fascinated by these pads that I never picked up, and it's a treat to read something that I've been aware of since, like, mid-80s, you know? And it's like, oh, I never read that. I didn't ever read that. Ooh, John, guess what? I got another terminal number one. Oh. So this is the cover D by Art Adams. Pretty nice. Very Art Adams-esque. This is the gremlin character-looking guy that I like. This guy. There's a mask variant. Yeah, the Frank Miller mask variant, yeah. No, it's an Art Adams die-cut mask variant.

15:48
I think. Oh yeah. No, I want that one. Cover D, John. I got a cover D of number one. Nice. I think you could have just bought that off the rack, but I just, nope. Instead, I bought 20 copies. All right, I'm going to open one more and then I'm going to tell you about my book. All right. All right. Oh. It's another copy of number one cover C. So I got two of those now. This is the Dave Finch cover with a giant eyeball on it. I like this one, but I didn't need two of them, but I got two now.

16:18
Yeah. I feel a little enthusiastic about this as I'm opening these. They came in packs of 10 when they were shipped to me. And so we have gone officially through the first pack of 10. So we'll start into the second pack in a few minutes. You hear that collective sigh of relief from the listeners who are worried that we're going to stop at 10? No, we're not stopping. We're not stopping. All right, I got two things that I wanted to talk about, John, that I've been running out of time. I've been trying to read a ton of comic books as usual lately. I've been trying to catch up. The one that I thought I wanted that we talked about this week is a book from Avatar. I've been kind of diving into some of the Avatar stuff.

16:48
Okay. Basically, I've been buying physical copies of books that you can't find online and that are probably not going to be reprinted because the company is defunct or whatever, for whatever reasons, you can't really get another copy. And also, I'm enjoying the more obscure stuff. So what I got for us is Streets of Glory from Avatar, the publisher of Avatar Press. And I got the hardcover. I think I paid, including shipping, I think it cost me all of eight bucks for this thing. The original price was was back in, oh geez, I don't even know what year this was. The original price was $27.99 back in 2009. $200. Like that's a lot. It's like, yeah, that was expensive, man. But that's not what I paid. And for the $8 that I paid, this was just a joy to read. I've talked about Garth Ennis before and Garth Ennis, one of the things I enjoy about him is how consistent he is in his storytelling. His lead character is always like a dude who's like loyal to a specific that he himself has. It's not necessarily a code that is lawful or righteous, but it is his code and it's lawful and righteous to that character. And that character adheres to that code. And this is no exception. The story is being told by a man in a coffee shop. You get the impression this is in the 1950s, maybe the 1940s-ish. And he's telling the story of a man that he met at the turn of the century in like 1898.

18:18
that time is Joe Dunn, a former soldier of the Union. He was on the Union side, not the Confederate side, and stayed in the military afterwards and spent his time basically in the Middle West, sort of conquering the frontier. So we meet this character Joe Dunn towards the end of his life, and this character Joe Dunn is moving into this town somewhere in Montana to reconnect with a woman who he had met probably 20-ish years earlier and had formed a relationship with, but left because he didn't think that they were going to work out. As it turns out, he had fathered a child that he didn't know he had with this woman. And so when he goes to meet her and try to win her back, he discovers that he's got a daughter who's in her early 20s. Then the story, you know, it kind of weaves and bobs. Much like a lot of, you know, Garth and his stuff, there's some super violent, like, stuff that's happened.

19:18
in this town. Evil characters are coming through. There's a guy of wealth who's trying to get the town to basically bow down to him so he can buy up all the land for cheap and run a railroad through it. Sort of like a very Western-ish style story. And there's a crazy Indian who is super violent. It's pointed out that this Indian is not like normal. Like he's a violent criminal, basically. Just happens to be Indian. The cowboys and Indians aspect has played up a little bit in that.

19:48
I thought it was a really good read. Garth Ennis is really good at what he does. He's great at crafting story. He's got some really fun moments here. I think the reason why this isn't remembered maybe or talked about is because the art is by Mike Wolfer, who I think does get better as he goes along at Avatar Press because he was sort of like a heavy lifter. It feels like he drew everything at Avatar Press for a while. Mike Wolfer was one of like two artists there that was in the stable that sort of drew everything.

20:18
He's competent. He's okay, but it's just there's nothing special there. There are moments where you're like, oh, that's kind of interesting, but it never quite gets to a level of like, oh, I can see this guy working at one of the bigger companies. I can see this guy doing more stuff at Avatar Press, you know, and that's where he's going to be, unless he starts doing something with his line weights. Just anything, bro. Just vary your line weight just somewhere, anywhere on the page. Let's start there. Anyway, I liked it. I thought it was a good fun read. It's a fun little throwback.

20:48
Like Western Tale is about six issues worth of material, I think, in this thing. I definitely recommend it, especially at the price point. You find a cheap copy of this on eBay. Nice little evening read. I blew right through it. It's not that it wasn't dense because it actually was pretty dense. There's a lot of story here. Some great characters, some interesting dynamics across them, lots of tension and pathos. I liked it. Definitely recommend it. People should check that out. I've read that. I don't totally remember it, though. Funny thing is that around that time, I was living in New York, and Garth is also living in New York in Manhattan.

John
21:18
and he would come by and he was part of the marvel drinking crew after work a lot of times i remember and i think it's actually this comic i don't know the details of it but i remember him talking about stuff i think he might have been talking about jesus right like it was something about like you said that passion had just come out the mel gibson movie and that came up he wasn't like like like preaching about something he was just like he was like a comment or something that he said and then later on it parts of that conversation turned up in there were parts of his part of the conversation turned up in in oh it's a comic avatar had this like stable of artists who were kind of mostly not quite ready you wouldn't put them on to Punisher Max right then you know when Garth was doing that or something that or anything with Steve Dillon of course is like you know the ideal for what Garth was doing right then I thought or McCray maybe but they would let Garth do his stuff and like Dynamite would do that later on too it was just Garth wants to write his scripts you know he's got the story he wants to tell doesn't want feedback on it you know I mean like doesn't want you saying I would make this more commercial as if the, you know, if it wasn't called that or if the girl, you know, no, he wants to tell the story, you know. Like, you talk to, like, Axel Alonso about stuff and wouldn't work through stories, I think, I guess. I don't know how they work. The weird thing with Garth, I think, is that there's so much stuff. All of it's pretty good. He's got a couple modes. He's got, like, his joke mode. He's got his war mode. Maybe he's got his, like, super elevated mode where he hits, like, Preacher or Punisher Max or something.

22:47
And the war one is like, you're going to get a great war story. It's going to be really good. It's going to be a lot like all the other ones, ultimately, but it's like a really good read. And it's hard to remember individual stories from it, but they're always a pleasure to read. And like super well researched, super engaging. It isn't just like a bunch of research on there. I don't mean to make it sound like that. It's, whoa, I can't believe I saw that. You know, you made that choice. You know, it's great stuff like that. But yeah, it's easy for that stuff to get kind of lost. And a lot of the Avatar stuff, I feel, falls into that.

David
23:17
It felt like a spiritual follower to the book he did at Black Bull Entertainment, Just a Pilgrim. It felt like it was a follow-up to that in some ways, but without some of the religious affectations that Just a Pilgrim sort of had placed on it. But like an older hero, this guy's got to be in his 60s or 70s as he's portrayed in the book. It felt a lot like Just a Pilgrim. In fact, after reading it, I went and bought both of the Just a Pilgrim I'm going to read those next because I felt like oh I mean I may that's the beauty of a Garth Ennis book is like you read one and you're like oh I want to read some more of that. Yeah there's not like a you know exactly where to go next like after reading this I knew exactly what I what I needed to do next. It's like the roadmap could not have been more clear. It's like oh I like this oh yeah I want some more of that. Okay just a book. I'll go get that. Hey everybody we're going to take a brief pause right here to talk about my new Kickstarter campaign.

24:16
Ms. Mina and the Midnight Guardians Book 3 is now live on Kickstarter. I'm super excited to share it with you. As you know, we don't do any advertising here on the show. We just do it out of the love of comic books. But if you have been looking for ways to support us, this is the way to do it. Head over to funtimego.com. There will be a link there to take you to the new campaign, Ms. Mina and the Midnight Guardians. What is Ms. Mina and the Midnight Guardians? Well, it's the dawn of the 19th century and Dracula has nearly conquered Europe.

24:46
Fangs are set on America's next. Only Mina Murray and a ragtag band of monstrous allies stand in his way. The vampire king is hunting an ancient Amazonian tribe, guarding a secret powerful enough to either crown Dracula the ruler of the world or end his reign forever. The race is on to discover the secret of the golden jaguar before darkness falls over the earth forever. That's the story. It is drawn by the incredible twin artistic group, the Zhang Brothers.

25:16
I absolutely love written by me with covers by fantastic artists like Eisenhower nominated cover artist Ludo Lulibi, Chuma Hill and comic book legend Tony Harris. The artist responsible for Starman and Ex Machina. Go to FuntimeGo.com and check out the new Kickstarter. We're live until Friday, October 2nd, 2026. Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians, book three, live now on Kickstarter. Thank you in advance for your support.

25:46
Now let's get back to the show. All right, John, another blind bag. First one out of the second batch. And it's another Art Adams cover D, issue number one. So I've got two cover D's and two of the cover C's of terminal number one. A lot more repetition than I thought there was going to be, to be honest. I thought it was going to vary a little bit more. I wonder if the sequencing has to do with the boxes.

26:16
Fully. Could be the way they batch them. When you buy a bulk of them like this, you're going to get a certain... Oh, another cover C. Another David Finch issue number one cover C. Like that, if you were just getting all these cover Cs and Ds, that would totally make sense. But the fact that you got so many number sevens in a row is... That's a rare one, and you got a lot of them. Is it rare? I don't know. Is it rare? I mean, rarer than... Yeah, I guess it's probably more rare than some of the other ones. All right, let's see. One more.

26:46
This is number 13, I think. Oh, look. It's another cover D. Another Art Adams cover D, number one. All right. The other book that I wanted to talk about briefly, because I'm a bad mouth, and we like to lift up comic books here, but every once in a while, we've got to punch them in the face. So, randomly, I'm on eBay a lot, John. I buy a lot of comic books on eBay. And I saw this thing. I don't even know how it got to me or how I saw it, but it was called Superzone.

27:16
And I was like, super zombies? Like, I'm not into zombies, but I might be into super zombies. And then I saw that it was published by Dynamite Entertainment. And as our listeners might recall, I was very happily surprised by Thunder the Barbarian recently that Dynamite does. And because the quality of the book was just so good. And so it was so well crafted that I just really enjoyed it. I was like, oh, I need to give Dynamite another look. So I was like, oh, okay, well, super zombies is by Dynamite.

27:46
To be fair, to Dynamite, 2009 is when this was published, and that's when I kind of felt like, oh, maybe Dynamite was not of the highest quality publisher at the time. My memory was correct, John. It's not very good at all. Super Zombies is a mess. It's written by Mark Guggenheim, so that was another. I was like, oh, Mark Guggenheim, like, sure. He's a writer of note. Mel Ruby is the interior artist, and I like Mel Ruby's stuff. Very competent. I think he's done stuff for the big two, but certainly a name that I recognize. I was like, oh, I like Mel Ruby's stuff. This book, Super Zombies, is wildly ambitious in its scope. Like, really? There's at least 20 heroes that are introduced in this first issue, right? Well, the problem is that there's 20 heroes introduced in the first issue, and it just, it's all over the map. It's barely comprehensible. Not only is this book trying to introduce 20 different characters, there's also non-superheroes that it's trying to introduce as well. A huge cast of characters is trying to get introduced in this four-issue miniseries, but also they're jumping back and forth between at least five different time periods. So it's going back like 10 years and then 15 years and then bumping forward to five weeks ago and then back to 52 weeks ago. I'm not even exaggerating. It's like that level of jumping around in time. Not only do I not know who the characters are, but I don't even know when anything is happening. And it's not crafted in a way that makes it easy for me to understand. I read the first issue twice because I was like, okay, I didn't understand anything that I just read.

29:16
Oh, by the way, it introduces not one virus that turns people into zombies, but it introduces a series of three different distinct viruses that eventually leads to people becoming zombies. And none of those viruses are actually the thing that makes people become zombies. And it's just like, man, this is way, way, way too complicated. Don't give me a title, super zombies, and then give me a dissertation on fucking viral That's not what I'm here for, man. I'm here for super zombies. I'm here for punchy-punch and fighty-fight and a little bit of bitey-bite. And then the art doesn't do anything to help, like, understand where you are or who the characters are. Everything is overly colored. Everything's, like, muddy and black with these weird, like, highlights of fire. But nothing else in the room is, like, lit appropriately for the amount of fire coming off of somebody's hand, you know?

30:15
It's ambitious, man. It is super ambitious, John. And just pratfall, nosedive, like hard. Not one I can recommend. I paid $4 for all four issues. Included the shipping because it was part of a larger shipment that I was ordering. I don't think people should spend that much money for this. I got robbed. Wow. My feelings about Dynamite Entertainment circa 2009 confirmed. Well, that is certainly not where the company is now in 2026 because, again, Thunder Barbarian, delightful, loved it. Thought it was top-notch in terms of production and quality. 2009 Dynamite Entertainment was exactly who I thought they were. You know, you had that Garth Innes factor on it. I love Mark Gugan. I've worked with him a bunch of times. He was a showrunner on Arrow for a while, which I loved. He was like a super nice guy. If you've ever met him, he's like a... I never have. Absolutely not like some Hollywood jerk or anything like that. He's, I'm walking by, I'm a comic-con, he'll call out to me kind of guy. Like, he's just a really nice guy.

John
31:15
Terrific writers written some really good stuff like Garth was doing stuff at Dynamite around that time too the boys was coming out like it's a similar kind of thing like okay here's here's an opportunity to go make something how are you going to make it and and you know I can see Guggenheim being like well I can do oh I can do this and I can do that I can do this and that and that and that and you know just getting too big and getting unwieldy you know whereas Garth what he wants is somebody that's going to draw the story he's got and then he's going to tell this like direct story that follows one two three 2, 3, 4, 5. And that lack of editorial oversight can be a blessing or a curse, depending on the project and the individual and the time of day and all these things, you know. And I'm not saying there was no editor on that or anything like that. I don't know anything about the conditions it was made under. Like I said, everything is made under the worst possible conditions, so I assume it was super rough because it's a thing and it got made, so I assume it was really hard to make. That is interesting to look at, like, that era of comics. No editor is credited on the book.

David
32:14
I think we got some interesting juxtapositions here between our comics. You know? Salgota to AKQJ and then Super Zombies and Streets of... Streets of Glory. Streets of Glory. I was going to call it Streets of Laredo because that was a different Garth Ennis comic. Was it really? There's the Punisher Max arc, Streets of Laredo. Oh, okay. Perfect. Awesome. All right. I feel like we have justified our jobs in a way today because the editors can help us.

32:44
Yeah, occasionally, yeah. If we do a good job, stuff happens. All right, John. Another terminal number one cover seed, the David Finch. I got three or four of those now. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six left. I've only got six more chances at that Rob Liefeld cover. It's not looking good for me, John, but the level of repetition on these covers is not filling me with a sense of hope.

John
33:11
I was gonna think we were gonna have at least like an elementary school level of like statistics learning on this but like I think the lack of randomization has potentially thrown that yeah another number seven unlikely so I got five copies of issue seven now all right let's see all right we got a different one we got the the wraparound to cover a so I've got the wraparound to cover a and cover b so I've got the complete connecting to

Outro
33:41
Wraparound covers. So that's good. That's nice to have. That feels like a win. Yeah. Maybe we should just wrap it and just keep going. 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. Is that a B cover? Yeah, it's a Wraparound B cover. All right. I got two of those now. Nice. Make it even wider. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to keep going. There you go. Both sides of the room can have an A and a B. I have two.

David
34:11
Two A's and two B wraparounds now. Only two left. Thanks for coming, everybody. See you next week. We'll still be opening. We're almost up to, we're coming to the end of season three. This is like the Red Wedding episode. Like, what are we going to do to make the end of the season work? Better wraparound cover B. Okay, this is the last one. Bye, everybody. Bye. Last one. Well. It's the Reifeld one. You did it. Oh, no. No happy ending for me.

34:41
He's a cover a wraparound. Oh, man. I really thought there would be a little more variation. Son of a biscuit. Bye, everybody. Thank you for coming. I hope you're entertained by some of that. David Hedgecock will return in Avengers Doomsday. This is turn me to evil, John.