Intro 00:01
Welcome to the Corner Box, the podcast equivalent of your favorite comic shop. The racks are packed The energy's high, and every wall has something worth discovering. Longtime industry professionals, David Hedgecock, John Barber, and their guests are here to show you around, digging into the stories, the craft, and the wonderful absurdity of the greatest. Artistic medium on the planet. Comics.

David 00:27
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Corner Box, the all-new, all-different, all super spectacular corner box Season four. My name is David. I'm one of your hosts, and with me usually is John Barber, but he's not here. That son of a gun decided to take the day off. I don't know why. Maybe it's because he's been traveling from New York City back to San Diego But somebody who did the same thing practically is here with us. Our occasional guest host, Chase Mortz. Hi, Chase.

Guest - Chase 00:56
It's good to be back. I always love stopping into the corner box.

David 00:59
You know what? I think this time last year, uh the beginning of season three you came on and and filled in. So maybe this is a annual tradition, like right out of the gate we bring in our first special guest appearance.

Guest - Chase 01:09
I'm happy to be a small part of the squad, certainly.

David 01:12
So look, man, this is season four. Uh this is only episode two. So we've got a lot of new listeners now. I'm sure there's at least two or three new people listening to the show that have never listened before. So uh this is what you're in for folks. We're gonna talk about a little bit about comic books. This past weekend, as we're recording this, everyone was just at the New York City Comic-Con, including special guest Chase Mortz. And unlike Mr. Barber, Chase was willing to come on and talk all about his experiences right after the show, so it's fresh in your memory. We'll talk a little bit about New York Comic Con, probably ask some very important and pertinent questions about the show. I just did a modicum of research, so maybe I'll have something to add to it. And then we're going to talk about a comic book that I read recently that I really, really, really want to talk about. Hopefully we can get to that. But for those of you who are coming back from episode one, I do want to put a little disclaimer, Chase. For season four, episode one, we did our first cliffhanger episode where we left our listeners hanging. You know, I'm sure that they were enraptured by our discussion of a nineteen seventy-five comic book called The Destructor, which is actually probably one of the greatest four issues worth of comic books I've think I've ever read. In fact, my my claim is that I don't know that I need to read superhero comic books ever again after having read The Destructor. But we were like right in the middle of discussing that series and we like ran out of time. So we had to stop and uh and so uh uh oh it was a to be continued, a cliffhanger, if you will, Chase. And we are not gonna fulfill uh and finish that cliffhanger in this episode. We're just gonna completely ignore the fact that the destructor was something that we were talking about last episode and didn't finish the discussion on. And at some point soon we will get back to that. It probably won't be this episode. It definitely won't be the next episode, but maybe after that. So much like comic books, sometimes, you know, creative teams change and the next issue has nothing to do with issue before it. That's kind of what has happened already.

Guest - Chase 03:09
Or even in the case of like when Christopher Priest took over at the end of uh King Conan, he just pretended that the previous twenty issues had not happened and he just went back. to a previous clip hanger that he had done like years before and just picked it up from there as though like those issues did not exist.

David 03:23
Fantastic.

Guest - Chase 03:25
It was it was not readily apparent why he was doing that.

David 03:28
Was not confusing to Christopher Priest in the slightest. He just picked up his uh notebook, turned the page, and kept writing the book.

Guest - Chase 03:37
He finally addressed that 'cause we had him do the intro for the uh third volume of Conan the King that we edited and uh you know I'd seen a lot of just like fan confusion online as to why that happened and his his excuse basically was I just like the previous stuff better. So I just thought why not just ignore two years of story and just, you know, do my thing. With like no written intros to that. That's what was going on. It's just like one day you got this cliffhanger at the end of a I forget it which issue it was, and then you picked it up and it was like you were right back at issue 26.

David 04:04
Fantastic. I love the hubris of that. Also I was like, I just like my stuff better, so that's what we're gonna do. And the editorial staff was like, yeah, that's what we're gonna do. Was it Hama that was editing at that point or had it moved on to somebody else?

Guest - Chase 04:17
I think it had moved on to somebody else, but like Larry Hama was fine with it. He didn't care.

David 04:22
Yeah, so for uh actually for our new listeners, uh you might not know Chase Chase Mortz is the editor-in-chief of Funtime Go Comics, uh, which is uh a little thing that he and I run together. And we do comic book consulting and uh publishing consulting for a variety of very cool companies and people. And one of our big projects, probably our like most regular project, is We uh handled the Conan the Barbarian archive. So all past 50 years worth of Savage Sword Conan, Conan the Barbarian comic books and magazines, uh we are in charge of that archive. I do all the fun parts and Chase does all the real work Not only are we uh responsible for essentially finding any missing assets uh and digitizing them, but we also put together the omnibus packages for Titan publishing. So we handle all the design and cleanup and make sure everything's ready to go. So we're responsible for the Conan Archive. It's a lot of work. It's a lot more work than I think either one of us realized, but it's a definitely a labor of love at this point. Love. Doing that stuff. So that's uh setting the stage a little bit. Chase, you've also were a longtime AAA game industry uh veteran. You worked in that side of the biz for like what ten years.

Guest - Chase 05:31
Yeah, various consulting. So I was in um mobile gaming for like five years and then uh I've done like various freelance game projects for you know both mobile and like Steam Store stuff over the last couple years.

David 05:42
Yeah, and then you largely moved over to the comic book side of things and worked for IDW publishing as an editor. And then did you have a different uh title there when you were working in the entertainment division?

Guest - Chase 05:52
I was uh the manager of Creative Affairs, so I essentially just kind of project managed all of the the pitch material for things we had in the pipeline that we were pitching around town.

David 06:00
And then came to work with me. Yes. I apologize. to people often for keeping them or moving them into comic books. Uh I had apologize to John the other day for hiring back At IDW as as the editor in chief.

Guest - Chase 06:14
So Promic Books is so much better than certain game things. Oh really? Totally.

David 06:21
Oh, okay.

Guest - Chase 06:21
Well I guess then I was working with one studio, like I I thought it was I thought it was gonna be a good deal and then all they did was reveal themselves to be like a cryptocurrency scam and they stole thirteen thousand dollars from me in the form of unpaid wages. So uh comics has been much better In in that regard.

David 06:36
I'll probably try to scam you out of some money at some point. I just haven't done it yet. I'm trying to make make sure you're m want to make sure you're nice and comfortable before I start.

Guest - Chase 06:42
I think it's uplifting that neither of us I think have any idea how NFTs work, so we just couldn't even do it if we wanted to.

David 06:48
Yeah, I'm not smart enough to scam anybody, that's the truth. Let's talk about New York Comic Con. So it happened this past weekend, you were there. Chase.

Guest - Chase 06:58
I was there for a panel with um there's this game studio that I do a little bit of work with uh just in terms of like writer management called Nitrate Games. We're showing a trailer for this Jane Silent Bob game we're working on, so we got this publicist to get us a panel and uh an hour before the panel was supposed to start, uh convinced uh uh Kevin Smith to to come and crash it, which was Fantastic. He was on the panel too? He showed up ten minutes after the panel started and then uh took it from there.

David 07:22
That's awesome.

Guest - Chase 07:23
Kevin Smith is like such a nice guy. Like they they say don't meet your heroes, but I've been watching Kevin's film since I was like thirteen and he was he was nothing but gracious with his time, uh complimentary to the team and just like yeah, just spent a ton of time taking selfies with everyone who asked, and was just super affable and and yeah, just very, very cool dude.

David 07:39
Ah nice. We were talking on our Google Chat with some of the other folks that work with us on one of our businesses. I think you shared a picture of you and Smith.

Guest - Chase 07:49
He actually took it. He took my phone and he w he was at a good angle to to take it. I think he's he's like a master of selfies. Yeah, dude, he noticed that I was goofing up and he just took it from there.

David 07:58
Well, you say he posted this picture to the Google chat and uh one of the Zillenials that we work with uh She she was like, oh, that's cool. Who's that? And I almost fell out of my chair. I was like, oh God. And then you were like, it's Silent Bob. And she's like, Who's that? I was like, oh man, I'm so old.

Guest - Chase 08:17
Yeah, right. I mean she doesn't even remember 9-11, so what what chance do the works of Kevin Smith have?

David 08:21
So that's a highlight you got to hang out with Kevin Smith and he got to and he said nice things about your work

Guest - Chase 08:26
Yeah, no, it was great. And so that that was like Thursday. So we were there for the panel on Thursday. And like when you're on a panel in New York Comic Con, they let you like hang out. in the green room and so I was hanging out in the green room with Kristen Ritter who was there for a different panel and I and I say hanging out with but like more hanging out adjacent too because like she had all her own people it's very goofy because there's like some big celebrities wandering around that green room but it is just like temporary cubicles set up and there's like a a like a bin of like Diet Cokes and like a plate of like very questionable looking like cheeses that have been out like God knows how long that the I saw no one refreshed and like the hour I was back there and like people were going for the Brie and like don't go for the Brie One of the nitrate guys who was there, he did eat the brie, and uh today he's sick, which could be concred, but it it could be because he did not heed my warning. We'll never know It's a good show, but man, like the way they organized the floor this year, and I'm I I've been to this show since 2018, so I don't know if this is like a a new development or when this happened, but When you go onto the floor, the entire show seems like it's an anime show and every traditional comics publisher is like shoved into one little corner, like as far from the door to the floor as you can possibly get. They're like all in the very back corner of the Jabbit Center. It's like DC, IDW, like all just like back there, like Dark Horse, just like shoved together in this little space that is like very confusing to get to.

David 09:45
That sounds about right.

Guest - Chase 09:46
Yeah, and then other than that, it's just like a ton of merch and just like a ton of anime and like You walk in, it's like a huge biz booth.

David 09:52
Biz got to be right front and center, huh?

Guest - Chase 09:54
Oh yeah, totally.

David 09:55
Interesting.

Guest - Chase 09:56
I like asked for directions to get to the comics booth. Like I could not make sense of it.

David 10:03
Where are the comic books in this?

Guest - Chase 10:05
Yeah, and then that that show is funny too, because Artist Alley is like all the way down in the basement, so it's not even on the floor. You have to like go down into this like the the the confusing bowels of the Jabit Center, which is also very strange because like there was also like a tabletop game room that was removed and to and to actually get to Artist Alley you had to go through this big empty room where people were like queuing for the main panel. So it it really did feel like a no man's land before you like found your way down there.

David 10:27
Only in comics would the comic books get sidelined and shoved to the side. Yeah. of a comic convention. That is the most comic book thing of comics right there.

Guest - Chase 10:37
Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's called Neo Comic Con, but like the the artists and and the comics publishers are the two hardest possible things to find in that show.

David 10:43
The last time I was there, I went down to the artist alley tables And it really is just like the dank dark dungeon of the Java Center. It's like, it's like, I think that's Rob Litho, but it's so dark down here that it can't quite tell if it's him or not.

Guest - Chase 10:59
Yeah. I don't recall this being in 2018, but in 2026, like they definitely sell beer at the concession stand and you can drink it anywhere on the floor. Well dude, everything for you. I was in disbelief. Like I bought one and I'm like, do I have to like stand in a little area or something? Like do you have to be like separated from the kids? And they're like, get out of here. Like just go. Just break it.

David 11:18
Here, whole in that case, give me two. That's like uh Disneyland now. Disneyland you can drink booze now too, or at least Disney California you can. I don't know if you can in the main Disneyland still.

Guest - Chase 11:28
California Adventure you can, but in in Disneyland proper there's like Two bars that serve alcohol and they're both very hard to get into. Yeah, there's like the the New Orleans themed one and there's the Moss Icely Candina.

David 11:38
It's probably for the best. So you're cruising around the show. You got your beer in your hand, got directions to the comic book area. What was the thing you saw? You're like, whoa, that is awesome.

Guest - Chase 11:47
The cosplay was great, but like the things I like doing the most at these conventions as I've gotten older is like the cheap back issue bins of like Sets of comic books and like $5 trade paperbacks. Like I spent hours just spin diving. I got this collection of the first nine issues of The Shadow from 1987 with uh Bill Sinkevich on the first arc. Fantastic. I got some of like the Hill House DC horrors like made their way to the bargain bin, which feels like kind of soon for that to have happened, but there they were. So I picked up a couple of those. There was so much emphasis on like merch and exclusives and stuff and it's like I don't I don't know if I want to spend like seventy-five dollars on foil cover of a comic book that is easily accessible.

David 12:23
How dare you? And I didn't I didn't go Sunday so I probably missed out on all the sales.

Guest - Chase 12:26
But uh yeah, the thing that knocked my socks off was was you could go around and w and with the exception of like You're not gonna like roll up to like Nick Fergoda at this day and age and and and be like, hi Nick. Like there's there's always a huge line, but Eric Larson was right there. Uh I got to talk to Simon Bisley, which was fun. Uh Dave Baker, we hung out for a little bit. It was just very lovely to see old friends and and kind of get a peek at what people were working on.

David 12:47
Dave's compatriot, Nicole Goo, won a Harvey Award for her new book, so that was nice to see the name of that book. This place kills me, written by Mariko Tamaki, drawn by friend of the show, Nicole Gu. They got the best young adult book category. So congrats to them. That was awesome to see Yeah. Dave didn't win anything, nor was he nominated for anything, and he is a frenemy of the show officially. Although it's season four, who knows whether it's go where we're gonna end up.

Guest - Chase 13:14
I'll tell you what, man, he was showing me a peek. He's doing a book at Oni with Malachi Ward on art called Citizen Stardust, which is sort of this meta take on Stardust the Super Wizard, and like this guy who like played Stardust the Super Wizard that falls in with like this this cult of performing artists and he showed me some art from the first issue. Man, that book is looking pretty. It looks so good and I'm so excited for it. They have uh Dave Stewart on colors and and he and Malachi together just like it looks great.

David 13:40
Dave showed some art of that a while ago to John and I. We were hanging out, it stuff looks great. It's weird how interested I am in Stardust the Super Wizard, not ever having heard anything about it five years ago. But then they did that anthology on they kick-started an anthology. That uh was nominated for an Eisner for a moment and then they backed out because like apparently one page of the two hundred and fifty pages was done with AI. The editor did not know that when he included the art, but Anyway, that was a great book. And in fact, Michelle Melkie, who we work with now, uh, who does covers for us at Funtime Go, that's how I found him, was at Stardust, the Super Wizard graphic novel Kickstarter. I love that graphic novel. It ignited a passion for Stardust, the Super Wizard, that I did not know I had. And so when Dave when Dave uh announced that he was doing this book, I was like, oh yeah, I'm I'm all in on this one. I'm excited to see Yeah.

Guest - Chase 14:33
He's on uh coal covers for us.

David 14:35
Yeah. So Chase and I, uh the aforementioned Coney and the Barbarian stuff, we're also doing some new material for uh Titanslash heroic signatures. We're doing a Cole comic book miniseries. Uh drawn it was announced at San Hero Comic Con, so we're not giving anything away, but gorgeously drawn by Mark Buckingham right now. We have Dave Stewart on colors. This is a exclusive Malachi Ward is is handling some of the covers for us

Guest - Chase 14:59
That's right. I'm expecting his first one uh Wednesday. We got that to look forward to together.

David 15:03
You chose Malachi Wood for the covers and and I chose Nathan Zerti. People who know those two names are gonna understand where where we're coming from. So you did some cheap back issue bin diving. Yeah. Was Howard Chankin involved in that original run as well, or was it just Sinkevich. Because I think that's like some formative material of Mr. Barber's. Oh really? Yeah. I know that like Sinkevich was sort of like an early uh influence on on John in his sort of love of comic books. But I I feel like there was a Howard Shaken series around that time. They must not be the same. I'm not a big shadow guy. I've I've never really

Guest - Chase 15:46
I I like the character fine. I mostly picked it up for the Sinkevich art. It's written by um Andrew Hulfer.

David 15:52
Andy Hulfer, okay. Yeah, longtime uh DC editor Andy Hulfer.

Guest - Chase 15:55
Colored by Richmond Lewis, uh which is very cool.

David 15:58
Oh Andy Hulfer is the editor for the Blahaha Justice League. He was the guy that put Keith Giffen and Jam DeMateas together along with Kevin McGuire to do, in my opinion, the greatest Justice League series of all time. And there's been some good ones.

Guest - Chase 16:13
Richmond Lewis is uh David Mazzakelli's wife. Uh she colored Batman Year One.

David 16:17
Oh, interesting. Speaking of Justice League, another one of the greatest Justice League runs was written by Grant Morrison, and you would have one of the few Grant Morrison comic book runs that I actually understand. I was able to like read it and understand what was going on. That's my favorite Grant Morrison thing, only because I was able to understand what was going on, which n which is not true of a lot of the Grant Morrison stuff that I read.

Guest - Chase 16:41
Did you see that uh IDW got the James Bond license and they're doing it with Grant Morrison?

David 16:45
That's where I was going with that. What do you think of that announcement?

Guest - Chase 16:48
Do you fucking imagine if they had let you or I spend any money when we worked there? Like I feel like We both bang our heads for like damn near a decade on the point like if we get big talent we can sell more comics and like the bean counters at the time weren't hearing it, but now it seems like Like yeah, we will we will put Grant Morrison on a license. Like it it feels like an alien planet to me.

David 17:10
Yeah.

Guest - Chase 17:10
Half the time I I find Grant Morrison completely inscrutable, but then the other half of the time he's pretty good.

David 17:15
The thing that he does that I think people respond to is, you know And this was, I think, prevalent in his Batman work, is that he does know how to set up and knock down like a a mystery. I think this will be good. Feels like a Jam a good James Bond 007 like mystery uh you know adventure heist kind of thing is is right up his alley. There's probably gonna be a some sort of supervillain. There'll be a twist on some sort of supervillain that'll get a reveal. That feels like a Grant Morrison thing. So I think it's a great casting for the creative talent. I'm I don't know did they announce our artist for it?

Guest - Chase 17:45
Maybe they did.

David 17:46
I had that uh son of a gun like I wish we were allowed to have uh any kind of budget moment when they did put Jason Aaron on Teenage McNinja Turtles. We couldn't even get and this was well before he was popular, we couldn't even get budget for a guy like Daniel Warren Johnson, who at the time Well, I think when we were trying to get him was he he was I think he was maybe he had done Extremity and we couldn't get him on because we knew at even at that time that he was a Transformer fan and we wanted to try to get him on for something. Uh probably wouldn't have been to the level or success that, you know, the Dan Warren Johnson Transformers uh book eventually did, but we tried. We tried.

Guest - Chase 18:23
I I'm not seeing any artists tied to it yet. So we'll see uh yeah, we'll see who they've They do, but yeah, I'm I'm certainly willing to to give it a shot. I like James Bond just fine.

David 18:32
Another announcement that I thought was interesting in that like man I have zero knowledge or like connection to this, which is something is killing the children. They made a big movie announcement. I guess like it that thing's getting made, man. There's a direct There's actors attached, so that thing's actually gonna happen. I found that fascinating because I keep hearing things about something is killing the children, and I have I I don't know why I'm not interested, but I haven't even thought to read any of that material yet. Have you dove into any of that yet?

Guest - Chase 19:01
No. I feel like I should read it because it's so huge, but it's just It's a complete blind spot for me.

David 19:06
It's wild because it feels like James Tinyan the Fourth has built an entire publishing empire at this point, and it's all largely on Something is killing the children because I I you know he's done other stuff, but I don't think any of it is landed like I can't even think of anything else that is done.

Guest - Chase 19:23
I was reading that for a while and then I kind of fell off.

David 19:25
I can't even remember those kinds of things. But in any case Good for him. I'm excited to see another creator-owned project turning into something big like that. I hope that James Tinyon the Fourth is gonna make a giant pile of money off of it.

Guest - Chase 19:38
I'm pretty sure he's already made a giant pile of money. I don't think James Tinyon the Fourth is hurting for money.

David 19:43
Yeah, I don't get that impression either. I think I think it's uh it's doing quite well.

Guest - Chase 19:47
Like Tiny Onion had like the biggest standalone booth in Artist Alley and NYCC. There you go. He's not stinging.

David 19:53
I knew that Tiny Onion, the publisher, was doing pretty well when I heard Challenger's Comics. They do a they have a podcast. Uh there's a comic book. shop in Chicago. Uh and that's where I get all my comic books. But they do a podcast, Contest of Challengers. And Challengers Comics in Chicago did a signing with James Tinyon. And they were talking about the signing and how many people were like involved in making sure that that signing went off without a hitch and like how many people showed up. And I'm like, Man, he's running a staff of four or five people just for this signing event. Things are going well for Tiny Onion.

Guest - Chase 20:30
Which is great. I love to see somebody like Kind of just on the the the strength of their work, pick up a fan base that allows them to, you know, have more control over the not just the creative content of their work, but I think, yeah, like the things they want to do and the distribution of it. Like I'm always for a comic success story when it feels like there's not very many of them.

David 20:46
Clearly he gambled on himself. James Tinyon the fourth was the Batman guy and Detective Comics. Like he was fully embedded and meshed in DC comics and then in he bet on himself, bet on his popularity and And it's paid off for him. It's got kind of the uh Robert Kirkman method of comic book creator dumb.

Guest - Chase 21:03
Yeah. I'm talking how I love a comic success story. I I I did have drinks with someone who I I I won't name so they don't drag him into this Or like a former DC person who just hates absolute Batman exactly as much as I do and we discovered for the exact same reasons.

David 21:17
Man, don't be hating on absolute bad man. It's doing great things for the industry, whether or not you you don't need to read it.

Guest - Chase 21:22
Most of our listeners will probably disagree with me because everybody on earth, except for me and like two other people, love that book. Clearly. Like that's like selling half a million copies a month. It's great. But talking with my friend, it it seems that there there are two kinds of characters in a Scott Snyder book. There are omnipotent, pure, evil characters who exist to influence And there are characters designed to receive suffering. And there are no other distinguishable characteristics about anybody in the world except for the givers of suffering and the receptacles for suffering.

David 21:56
I mean that is absol absolute Batman at least.

Guest - Chase 21:59
That's like all of his books, dude. That's like all of his books. It's not just limited to absolute Batman. It's like every book.

David 22:05
For superheroes that works particularly well.

Guest - Chase 22:08
Yeah.

David 22:08
You know, like That is kind of like superheroes, like yeah, it's constantly getting it.

Guest - Chase 22:19
Like the death of Superman worked, like Superman like put his life on the line to like save the people he loved and save the city of Metropolis and then like emerged as a beacon of of why he was needed in the world, right? It was like Nightfall too, like Batman Had a lot of suffering, but that was in in name of this journey of of coming back and taking the mantle of the bat from this like sort of analog for the extremity of 90s comics and and why maybe being like a stand-up guy can be a good thing when you're a superhero. Like I maybe absolute Batman will get there. Like I don't know. Not seeing it yet. I haven't seen a lot of like the Joker like coating his body and like the bodies of babies and stuff. Cool, cool. You do you. I love a comic success story mostly.

David 22:57
So I I mean there's a Batman for you. The the original Batman series is exactly I think what you're talking about. There's more of a joy to it. Jorge Hempnez is drawn the hell out of that book right now too.

Guest - Chase 23:07
I find myself increasingly drawn to like needing things that are at least slightly joyful. Because uh it can be real miserable out there.

David 23:14
You're hitting that age where it's just like uh man, I just I don't want to live in this reality anymore. I just gotta like

Guest - Chase 23:19
My lower back is going, like my knees are feeling it. The first day of Comic-Con, I walked 25,000 steps and like I thought I was gonna die. Like I didn't know how I was gonna do the next three days, but you know With some Advil and some coffee, they'll have power through it. Nice.

David 23:32
There was another an absolute lying announcement. They announced absolute justice So did you hear about this?

Guest - Chase 23:38
I somehow missed this. I'm actually a little surprised.

David 23:40
I thought they were gonna keep this one in their back pocket a little bit longer, but they've announced a Justice League essentially the absolute version of Justice The book's called Absolute Justice. It's written by Jason Aaron, who's the current absolute superman uh writer. And I keep hearing like that the absolute superman was sort of a slow Burn, but now it's like a lot of people's favorite book. Like Jason Aaron's really um dug into the lore and has really established the absolute superman now. I'm a longtime Jason era meh. Really? Uh re Yeah, I just never been a big fan of his stuff, but uh Odal course the last few years with the end of his Avengers run at Marvel. I really enjoyed that. I thought it was really good. His Marvel exclusive contract, I'm sure, came to an end. And so he instead of renewing it, he started sort of branched out and did a bunch of other stuff. And largely a lot of the stuff that he's done, I've really enjoyed. Like he did uh Thundar the Barbarian stuff that he wrote. I really liked it. It was great. I thought he did a great job with it. And he's got a creator own book over at Image called Bug Wars, which I'm really enjoying and I highly recommend. Uh Mahmoud Asrar is the artist on that. It's gorgeous. So good. Um so I've come around to Jason here and uh I haven't sampled Absolute Superman, but I I will at some point. I I just haven't dug into it yet. You read the first arc of Absolute Superman?

Guest - Chase 24:54
Yeah, I liked it a lot and then I kinda, you know, I moved and Didn't figure out like what my local comic store was for a while and kind of fell off, but I liked it enough to keep going. I just feel like I'm surrounded by books that I keep buying because I need to read them and then I'm not reading them. So I have to get through some of this backlog before I can spend Money on more books. Like my nightstand looks like a fucking hoarder nightstand, dude. It's just like stacks of comics and like books and like just stuff that's like it's like on my agenda to read next and then other stuff keeps getting slotted in there and like The cat knocked over a tower the other day and like woke me up in the night and it was just it's not it's gone too far.

David 25:27
I'm grateful to the podcast actually because it's kept giving me reasons to like read, to like stay up on a bunch of stuff. Don't get me wrong, like I've had a huge stack of stuff to read. But I've been reading a ton of comic books this year, and I'm super into the RPG lit stuff like the Dungeon Crawler Carl type stuff. So I've been reading a ton of those books too. So I've been reading reading I haven't watched any TV hardly at all, although football season has started and I'm definitely watching that. So anyway, back to Absolute Justice. Jason Aaron's writing it. Juan Ferreira, uh who I think is like done a lot of Superman absolute Superman um stuff. is drawing it and the conceit around it is that the tagline is abandon all hope. So I'm getting the impression that this particular version of the Justice League is not going to be the one. It's not going to be the, you know all light and joy. So I'm interested in that. I'm I'm enjoying the absolute line. DC as a whole has really captured my attention over the last couple of years. I'm super into everything a lot of the stuff they're doing.

Guest - Chase 26:27
The artists they choose and like the the visual presentation of their books is so top notch. Any sort of quibble I have with like the writing on absolute Batman Alone aside, like I I think the line itself is is very brilliant. It's undeniable. I think how it's kind of captured the the attention of the direct market. And I think much of that is is just based on the fact that they're choosing these really great interesting artists who are putting out like these really quality comics that are fun to look at.

David 26:49
For sure. The art talent at DC, you can tell that they're investing in art talent at DC. I think Absolute Wonder Woman is probably still the best superhero comic book being done right now. I I think it's still probably the top. I love that book. Uh I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Absolute Batman I've been reading and I'm enjoying. But like the DC All Initiative, like The Lobo book with um Scotty Young and Jorge Corona, at first it's like, mm, I don't think I'm liking this. Like the first issue I was I was like, ooh, I I'm not loving this, but now we're getting to into issue six and seven. I'm really into it now. It's like Scotty Young's warmed up. Whatever jitters that he had at the beginning, he's gotten those out and now he's really he's He's full Scotty Young now and Horio Corona's fantastic. And they brought in Nicoletta Baldari to do some stuff there. The uh Riley Rossamo just came in and did an issue. So fantastic choices for artists. Riley Rossamo And Nicoletta Baldari. I think those are two of my favorite artists going right now. Like Nicoletta Baldari is probably one of the few cover artists well I will if it's a book that I've never bought before or I have no interest in. and Nicoletta Baldari does a cover for it, I will buy that book. Like she's one of the few artists that I that I follow in that way. And Riley Rossimo, every time he does interiors, man, I'm all there. The guy's amazing. There's something about his cartoony, gritty cartoony style that is just, man, that appeal. His look that look appeals to me.

Guest - Chase 28:09
I love his stuff so much. Yeah, agreed

David 28:13
Anything else for New York Comic Con that you need to report back to our listeners, Chase?

Guest - Chase 28:17
It was a great chance to catch up with old friends. I mean I saw yeah, I saw John Barber, even though he's not here. I I did see him on the floor.

David 28:23
He big timed you, didn't he?

Guest - Chase 28:24
He was talking with someone else and so uh I just snuck up behind him and like punched him in the back. Hard. He was talking with Fred Bandit and I I don't like being one of those guys who like inserts himself in a conversation that two people are in the middle of, so I just kinda said like hi goodbye and then uh I remember I got together with uh Bobby Kernow. Got drinks at the famous Jimmy's Corner. Nice. He's doing great. It was lovely to see him. Saw uh Rich do it, got drinks with him. Um yeah. Scott Brian Wilson who wrote like Kilmore and True Colts uh hung out with him for a little while and doing He-Man stuff right now, if I remember. Yeah, he is. And I guess like uh they're doing like the Skeletor prequel.

David 28:58
Oh, that's cool.

Guest - Chase 28:59
Ian Gavin Smith.

David 29:00
Oh nice Gavin's getting better. I like Gavin's stuff.

Guest - Chase 29:03
I like his stuff too. I kinda missed him because every time I went by his booth he was like talking with a lot of people and and and again I don't wanna be that guy. But I think I did see him in Times Square. I was like housing some halal food at like one A. M. and he was like walking down the street. But I was I was pretty well sad there with my my like paper container a takeout so I didn't want to like run after him.

David 29:20
You're a former denizen of New York City, like you lived there for several years. Did was there anything in particular that you had to do? While you were back.

Guest - Chase 29:28
So I mentioned uh Jimmy's Corner. That's a bar in Times Square that feels like it's out of time. It's been there since the seventies. It was run by this boxer named Jimmy Glenn, um who unfortunately passed away during COVID, but he was in his eighties. Sun runs it now. And they're still there. They're still pouring five dollar pints in the middle of Times Square. And they're actually involved in a uh dispute with the Durst landlord family in New York and it's it's been kind of like this long drawn out lawsuit so I'm always worried that I'm gonna hear they're closing down. So I I I gotta stop in there every time I go in the city. I went down to the West Village. I went to NYU so I spent some time hanging out in Washington Square Park and kind of just Walking around the old neighborhood, went and you know, checked out the strands, like just hit some of the old haunts. It was it was really nice.

David 30:04
So other than the shadow mini series, was there anything other big purchase that you got? A signature or a sketch or something that you wanted to get?

Guest - Chase 30:11
I kind of treated the show as a pretty lean show. I didn't want to like have to lug a bunch of stuff home and I'd I'd spend so much money at San Diego. I'm still paying some of that off on the old credit card, so uh wrong to add more. I tried to intentionally keep myself to the bargain bin and not get too out over my skis, uh especially with, you know, the holidays just around the corner.

David 30:28
Oh man, yeah, that's true. I applaud your um My restraint, my self-control. Your restraint. Yes, I applaud your restraint. Chase, uh, we are starting to do promos for Sugar Balm Milk Run. Yes. Uh which which our listeners are going to hear the promo for right now. Hey everybody, it's David. We're gonna take a moment out of the show so I can talk to you about my new project on Kickstarter that's coming soon. It's called Sugar Bomb Milk Run. What is Sugar Bomb Milk Run? Well, when twice blessed supervillain Milkmaid turns a corporate superhero. Hero squad into rampaging moo tents. It's up to cybernetic hero Sugar Bomb to bring the chaos under control. Exploding with satire style and radioactive daily, this is one high stakes showdown you won't forget. Get ready for an utterly Insane ride. Right now on Kickstarter we have the sample page up, but if you go to git. funtimego. com, you can find out all about Sugar Bomb Milk Run and the puns that I just read. To you will make a lot more sense. Alright, go to git. funtimego. com to grab your VIP reservation now. Sugar Bomb Milk Run with art by legendary artist Bart Sears, featuring pinups from From Juan Jose Rip, Alan Goldman, Anna Plethera of amazing talent. Get your VIP access now. Git. funtimego. com. It's a great way to support the show. We don't take any advertising. We don't do Patreon or anything like that. John and I just do this because we love comic books and we love talking to all of you. There's so many of you listening now that it's just really, we're really grateful for it. Okay, thanks everybody. Let's get back to the show. I'm excited for it. Are you excited for it?

Guest - Chase 32:14
I'm very excited for Milkron. I'm not excited for my mom to see what Milk Run is, but uh overall I'm quite excited for Milkron.

David 32:22
The problem with Milkrun is that as we're learning, there are no images in that entire book that we can show because it's not that it's very much PG thirteen or maybe a soft R, but there's like no nudity or anything. But uh we're getting censored like all the All the social media platforms.

Guest - Chase 32:39
It's not pornography, and like David said, like it is it is PG thirteen, I think, in humor, but the distortions of of anatomy are just so egregious that I'm not sure a correct rating exists for like what it is.

David 32:49
Yeah, that's a good that's a good way to put it. It's really gone a little far. Yes. So well that's that's what Sugar Bomb is. Uh anyway, um we're not talking about Sugar Bomb. We're gonna talk about this book that I just read. It's called Manhole Mayhem. by Marty Keene. For our longtime listeners, uh Marty Keane is the creator and writer artist of a sort of parody book called Bootleg Spider-Man Which sort of reimagines Spider-Man's origin story in a way. It's wild, totally out there, and I loved Bootleg Spider-Man so much that I went down a Māori Keen rabbit hole. And picked up a collection of some of his work called Steel Streets. And that too was like amazing. It was like the teenage mutant ninja turtle Raphael mashed up with Robocop. And it's just like this wild mashup that like really worked. It was great. You know, he's got a new book uh called Manhole Mayhem, and I had no idea what it was. All I got was a cover. And the cover does sort of make you think it might have something to do with Teenage Mage Turtles, some sort of parody there, because the cover is a red bandana. mask covering much like the turtles and a couple of psi weapons crossed in front of it and that's kind of all you see. Everything else is black.

Guest - Chase 34:03
It is a striking cover. I know you can't see it because you're listening to us, but Trust us, it is very cool.

David 34:08
It's a great cover. It's it's it is striking. That's a good word for it. And so I got mine, and when I open up the very first page Is this the first page of the original Teenage Municipal Turtles? Is it like a direct one-to-one?

Guest - Chase 34:20
Hold honestly, I think I can check. I have the uh IDW reprints on my shelf.

David 34:23
Well, in any case, you open up this book, and the very first page is a close-up of a teenage mutant ninja turtle, and across the top it says, Definitely not Eastman and Laird's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So So it is definitely a parody of sorts. I definitely highly recommend this book. Uh I think you should go out and get it right away. Whatever the price is, pay it because it's totally worth it. It's this gorgeous like oversized magazine size book. It's got this lush paper texture to it. And it's got like an old school sort of old magazine uh look and feel to it, but definitely modern and fresh. But um exactly one to one. Here's like yeah so not one to one. Definitely similar. It's got a similar feel. So Marty Keene's art style, we talked a lot about outlaw art. I would I would consider him sort of an outlaw artist. Uh he certainly has a couple of different styles that he plays in. This one is very much old school Eastman and Laird Teenage Ninja Turtle style that he's using here, and he does it to great effect. He's actually quite good at it.

Intro 35:21
And the story goes along Spawn Remote. Spawn Remove.

David 35:26
So you meet all four turtles as well as their mentor who's a rat And you're like, okay, well here we go. What is what what they're talking about doesn't match anything that the turtles normally match. They're clearly not a family. They're there's some sort of other mission going on here that's not clear, and then As you get into the story, you find out that the turtles are not actually turtles. They are different characters from other early teenage mid-nage turtle parody comic books that are disguised as turtles. So you get the radioactive black belt hamster guy, a kung fu kangaroo, there's the uh prepubescent gopher, and then there's the commando koala. All these were like early black and white parody comics that spun off of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trying to capture that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle popularity. So pretty funny that these are callbacks from a long time ago. There's probably like three people, and one of them is me that knew exactly what these were about. It's super fun. It's really well drawn, like a fun sort of parody, just written in a fun style with some great Eastman and Laird. artwork, some fun splash pages, a great package. So I just want to call people's attention to Superhero Comics, Z-U-P-E-R hero comics Uh so Zuperherocomics. com. I want to call people's attention to Mighty Keane's work. He's just out there doing crazy fun, cool stuff, and I think uh more people should be paying attention to this guy because I like what he's doing is it's not amateurish, but it's it's outsider art. It's very much like just outside the the norm in the best most fun possible way. So My uh highest recommendation uh of the week, and my only recommendation of the week, Manhole Mayhem from Superhero Comics.

Guest - Chase 37:11
Yeah, check it out.

David 37:13
Chase, anything you wanna uh anything you're reading right now?

Guest - Chase 37:16
I found uh some cheap Gotham Central Trades that Greg Rucca, Michael Brubaker, like sort of street-level Gotham City series I started rereading it. Really like it a lot. And they're printed on newsprint, which I like a lot. They really leaned into kind of like the pulpiness of that book. Even just from a paper texture feels like a very kind of old school, like street level Comic, and it's just it's just neat to kind of revisit those stories that I hadn't read since high school.

David 37:37
That's how this Manhol Mayhem is. It's like the quality of the printing that choice of the paper like I love it when the publisher thinks things all the way through like that because a lot of stuff you're like yeah I'll just read it digitally right you know on an app somewhere but when you get a really good package like that and it's kind of thought through and built to whatever the thing is that the story that they're telling, it really does add a lot to it. Another great example of that is um Kurt Burdick's Death of Power. Kurt Burdick's Death of Power, his choice of printing size and the paper that he's using, it all adds to the overall like feel of the book and I and I just love the choices that he made for that. I don't think that book would be half as engaging as and as cool as it is. If he hadn't gone on that sort of like oversized paper stock with the gorgeous like thick paper that he uses, anyway I love uh I love the good printing.

Guest - Chase 38:28
It's worth shouting out uh Michael Lark on that book, that Gotham Central book, 'cause I I feel like more than a lot of his other stuff, he's really leaning into that sort of Batman year one, like Mazakelli style with like the thicker lines and and the very kind of deceptively simple use of details and a and shadows and the way faces look that really give the book sort of this timeless feel to it.

David 38:48
What is the central conceit around that book?

Guest - Chase 38:50
The whole comic, it's like a comic that takes place in the world of the Gotham Police Department mostly during the day.

David 38:57
There's no superheroes in it?

Guest - Chase 38:58
Yeah, like the first issue, they're they're investigating this tip on a kidnapping and accidentally come across Mr. Freeze hiding out in like this CD motel. And there's like no Batman there 'cause it's daytime and it's like, what does a human police force do in a city that's populated by these superheroes and supervillains? And what are some of just like the the street level human cases that don't get any attention because they're these bigger clops going on around them. So it yeah, it's a look at kind of the very cool human characters around Batman that are sort of existing between like the grand comic spectacles that Or you know, the focus of the main series.

David 39:26
I feel like if I was having to deal with like Batman level stuff, my answer to that would always be to run.

Guest - Chase 39:33
Certainly like certain officers like love leaning on the Batman and others want to show that you know like the police force isn't just there to turn on the bat signal like they can do stuff too. So it's uh you know there's there's there's a good push-pull. There's a lot of cool character drama.

David 39:45
Nice How many volumes of that did you pick up?

Guest - Chase 39:48
There's only three volumes, and I just picked up all three uh the paperback volumes. Nice. No, they just yeah, I just grabbed all the trades on the newsprint, because that's that's how I like it. I like it soft and on newsprint, which sounds much grosser than I wanted it to sound. I I didn't want it to sound like that.

David 40:04
Well, on that note, I think we've concluded the latest episode of the Corner Box. Uh anything else to add, Chase? Anything you you need to plug uh before we we've already plugged Sugar Bond Milk Ren, anything else you want to plug before we uh Wrap up here?

Guest - Chase 40:15
No, well I guess if you're interested in the game I was doing on the panel, it's called uh Jay and Silent Bob's Joint Venture, and you can um just find our our trailer online now if uh cozy farming games with uh filthy mouths are your thing.

David 40:26
Well there you go. How how is that not everyone's thing?

Guest - Chase 40:29
Yeah, I I I certainly hope it will be.

David 40:31
Thanks Chase for coming. Appreciate you jumping in and uh sharing your New York Comic-Con experience with us. Thanks everybody for listening. Uh we'll be back shortly. Uh Mr. Barber will be with us And I think we're gonna have a special guest. Uh so uh it'll be uh another special guest on our next show, uh, but John will be in tow. Uh so thanks everybody for coming. See you next time on the corner box. Bye.

Intro 40:50
Bye everyone 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.