The History of the Blue Beetle Part 2! Scarab Boogaloo!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: What's everybod? What's up? [00:00:02] Speaker B: How'd that go? [00:00:04] Speaker A: I believe it went. What's up? You know what's up. [00:00:13] Speaker B: It's a lot of bees for the. [00:00:14] Speaker A: Blue Beetle, which we're still beeboutable. So. Remember last time when you were listening and then we were like, Dave had this great idea, and we cut the episode off. Now you get the other half of the episode. Yay. [00:00:28] Speaker B: Cause we're back from Vegas. [00:00:29] Speaker A: Yay. We went to Vegas. We really did, actually. [00:00:31] Speaker B: We really went to Vegas. [00:00:32] Speaker A: And what did we do in Vegas? [00:00:34] Speaker B: Watch South park. Oh, I watched South Park. [00:00:36] Speaker A: I watched legally blonde. [00:00:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, we did. Well, we both watched. [00:00:40] Speaker A: We watched the end of legally blonde. [00:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:00:43] Speaker A: I know more lines to legally blonde than I thought I did. [00:00:47] Speaker B: It was impressive and a little strange. [00:00:49] Speaker A: But I've also seen the play, like, twice, and I feel like the play has a similar script as well. But I've also seen the movie a bunch, and it's quotable. [00:00:56] Speaker B: Yeah, it totally is. [00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah. What? We're talking about Vegas and. Oh, yeah. Blue beetle. [00:01:01] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:01:02] Speaker B: Well, that's it. That's it. [00:01:03] Speaker A: So this week's episode is the second half of the blue Beetle discussion with Dave. [00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:09] Speaker A: And we are finally out of the Victor Fox will Eisner era. And we have given all of the Charlton things, or not all the Charlton, but we basically sold the Charlton characters because. Yeah, they got hit parade or whatever. [00:01:25] Speaker B: Um, but we pick up pretty much in the late nineties, early two thousands even now. So as I was editing this episode, we probably could have just made it the full episode because we only talk about Blue Beetle, the rest of it up till now for another, like, ten or 15 minutes, and then the rest of it's all our classic. What are you reading now? [00:01:45] Speaker A: What do you look? [00:01:46] Speaker C: What do you know what? [00:01:47] Speaker A: I'm very fond of that section. [00:01:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:48] Speaker A: And, uh, we're gonna keep it. But, yeah, if you want all of the current stuff, it's much less seedy than the Victor Fox era of Blue Beetle, but everything from Charlton comics sold this to DC onward. [00:02:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:02] Speaker A: Is where we're at here. [00:02:04] Speaker C: Yep. [00:02:05] Speaker A: And Blue Beetles has officially been out, and many people have reported that they actually enjoyed it a lot. [00:02:10] Speaker B: So many people that. That really liked it. I was trying to see it, and then just random things got in the way, and then. [00:02:17] Speaker A: We still have not. [00:02:18] Speaker B: No, we have not seen it yet. [00:02:19] Speaker A: But I also haven't seen the flash yet. [00:02:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We almost watched it last night, but you had to finish peacemaker, dude. [00:02:27] Speaker A: Peacemaker so good. [00:02:28] Speaker B: Yep. [00:02:28] Speaker A: Honestly, it's. It is one of the best things that, like, DC has put out. [00:02:33] Speaker B: It's the universe. Yeah. Cameos were great. [00:02:36] Speaker A: Cameos are great. I I don't know what that woman's name who plays ads. Danielle Brooks is amazing, though. [00:02:44] Speaker B: She's so freaking good. [00:02:45] Speaker A: She's so good. And Peacemaker, along with blue Beetle, was actually a Charlton character. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:02:51] Speaker A: Sold by DC, as well as everyone's favorite, Blackie the mystery boy. But he didn't get sold to DC. We don't know what happened to Blackie the mystery boy. [00:03:00] Speaker C: Missed opportunity. [00:03:01] Speaker A: His real name is Phil. [00:03:02] Speaker B: Classic Phil. [00:03:03] Speaker A: And he's the sidekick of the Lynx. And I don't know what happened to the lynx either. I did some wikiing, and that's basically all we know about those characters. I was really hoping we could just have a joke episode entirely focused on Blackie the mystery boy. You can't. There's no history there. There's nothing. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Nope. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Just some white kid with black hair named Phil who happened to pal around with a superhero. He might as well be Blackie. Like, what if we call Jimmy Olsen Orangey or carrots? Like, or carrots mystery boy. Jimmy, what is that? Is that a camera? No, it's more props for my prop comedy. I got a whole trunk here. [00:03:44] Speaker B: So, anyways, we're finishing our blue Beetle episode. [00:03:48] Speaker A: Yeah, blue beetle. I hope it's good. We should go see that movie and then maybe do a thing where we're like, hey, here's what we thought about Blue Beetle. [00:03:56] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll do that on our next. [00:03:58] Speaker A: What are you watching? [00:03:59] Speaker B: What did we watch last time? [00:04:01] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll figure it out. Yeah. Anyway, this is when the theme song starts playing. [00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:22] Speaker A: And then it's just gonna fade into. I'm still talking. And this is when it's gonna fade into Dave coming in. See, watch. Watch face. It's gonna play. And then Dave will start. Ready? [00:04:36] Speaker B: Oh, there it is. [00:04:37] Speaker A: Oh, Dave's already talking. [00:04:38] Speaker C: We get another blue Beetle series. This one's from DC. Len Wein is the writer. Paris Cullens is the original artist. And it's a lot of fun. We get some team ups with the question. We get a blue beetle who's really fully integrated into the DC Universe. [00:04:56] Speaker A: Very cool. [00:04:56] Speaker C: That's cool. [00:04:57] Speaker A: They throw pretty hard. [00:04:58] Speaker C: And it goes 24 issues, which is the longest consecutive run. [00:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:03] Speaker C: So far that he's ever had. [00:05:05] Speaker A: And the company didn't go under in that time. [00:05:07] Speaker C: Bingo. [00:05:08] Speaker A: Is Charlton comics dead at this point? Is that. Oh, yeah, they're there. Okay. [00:05:13] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's during. [00:05:15] Speaker A: So I bought you these toys from a rummage. From an estate sale. Not a rummage sale. [00:05:19] Speaker C: Well, I mean, Charlton was getting out of the comic game anyway. [00:05:22] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:22] Speaker C: You know, it's not like here. We're trying to save. We're trying desperately to save our comics company. Please take our. No marketable actions. Yeah, exactly. [00:05:32] Speaker A: We were trying to save our magazine company. [00:05:34] Speaker C: Bingo. [00:05:34] Speaker A: Got it. [00:05:35] Speaker C: And so it's during this time that Beatles shows up in Justice League, and it becomes Justice League international. [00:05:44] Speaker A: Is that his first appearance in DC Comics? [00:05:46] Speaker C: No. His first appearance in DC Comics is Crisis on Infinite, Earth's number one. [00:05:51] Speaker A: Sorry. That is actually what I was asking, was his appearance in Crisis on Infinite. [00:05:55] Speaker C: Sorry, I misunderstood. [00:05:56] Speaker A: No, that's all right. It was unclear, and we were on a different timeline. I was just still back. [00:06:00] Speaker C: That's okay. [00:06:00] Speaker A: So his first appearance in DC comics, if you want to read the first appearance, you just go find that Crisis on Infinite earths number one. Number. Yeah. Or the trade. [00:06:09] Speaker B: Or just the trade. [00:06:10] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. [00:06:12] Speaker A: This is a podcast, and Brian is looking over at my shelf very briefly to see the crisis on infinite Earths. Right there. Yep. [00:06:20] Speaker B: I can confirm I am not. [00:06:24] Speaker C: Boy. [00:06:25] Speaker B: Because im actually sitting in your chair, facing away, facing a really nice looking dinosaur. [00:06:31] Speaker A: Oh. I have a very, very fancy print of a dilophosaurus art piece from the concept art. And I put it in the gaudiest frame I can possibly find. [00:06:40] Speaker C: Well, of course. [00:06:42] Speaker A: It's got gold like studs around it. Yeah. Really aggressive. [00:06:46] Speaker C: Nice. So Ted is part of the Justice League, and he's a longtime member. Like I said, this is where he gets paired up with booster gold. And they are, well, other characters refer to them as, like, the heart and soul of the Justice League. You know, other characters refer to them as the gum on the bottom of the shoe of the Justice League. You know, I mean, at one point, he and. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Tomato, tomato, right. [00:07:11] Speaker C: Well, at one point, Ted and booster try to start a casino on what turns out to be a living tropical island. [00:07:18] Speaker B: I hate it when that happens. [00:07:20] Speaker C: It's the worst, right? Isn't it? And actually, Len Wein, who I mentioned was the writer of the Blue Beetle series, really objected to that portrayal of a superhero. Well, of Ted in particular, because he was a big fan of blue beetle. He was a big fan of Ditko's work on the character, and he felt this was a disrespectful interpretation of the character. [00:07:45] Speaker B: Get it? [00:07:45] Speaker C: Yeah. Right. So there are other places where he shows up more seriously he shows up in Birds of Prey for a while when Gail Simone is writing the book. As a foil's not the right word, as kind of a counterpoint to Oracle Barbara Gordon. [00:08:05] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:08:06] Speaker C: Okay. One of the things that comes out of the Justice League run and is reflected in the Birds of Prey Run is. Is that Ted has to work harder at being a superhero. He's super smart, but, like, there's one point in the Justice League book where he's put on some weight. I know the book is largely comedy, and some of Ted's trials and tribulations are played strictly for laughs, but, like, they also point out, dude, you're not in any shape to go into the field. [00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:37] Speaker C: You know, like, literally, you're in no shape for field work. You know, they deal with that. And like I said, a lot of it's played. Right. It's even in a pizza box. Yeah, well, like, I don't shame anybody, but. Yeah, well, it's kind of like. Kind of how they. They played Thor in avengers, except it was the eighties. Fat jokes were a thing. [00:08:59] Speaker A: Sure. [00:08:59] Speaker B: So not really depressed. Just kind of overindulging and. [00:09:03] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:09:03] Speaker B: As we do. [00:09:04] Speaker C: Right. And so he's, uh, you know, so, you know, plus he develops a heart condition. [00:09:11] Speaker A: Oh, well, I'm glad they're at least addressing these things. Yeah. [00:09:13] Speaker B: Hashtag Murica. [00:09:15] Speaker C: Right. So those get kind of brought up, kind of dealt with. There was one thing that was intended to spin out of birds of prey that got axed at the last minute. That would have been super cool. There was supposed to be a spin off, a blue beetle spinoff where he gets. How can I put this? Ted was going to kind of transition out of active superheroing and mentor an incoming blue beetle. You know who that blue beetle was intended to be? [00:09:45] Speaker A: Who? [00:09:45] Speaker C: Tim Drake. [00:09:46] Speaker B: Oh, shit. [00:09:47] Speaker A: Really? [00:09:47] Speaker C: Robin? Yeah. [00:09:49] Speaker A: That would have been kind of cool. [00:09:50] Speaker C: That would have been hella cool. Because Tim kind of. I mean, particularly now, Tim doesn't really fit in the bat family anymore. I mean, as near as I can tell, he gets ignored for large stretches of story time. [00:10:06] Speaker A: I lose track of my robins. Who died? [00:10:10] Speaker C: Jason Todd. [00:10:11] Speaker A: Jason Todd died because one guy hated him a lot and rigged the votes. Or so I have heard. [00:10:16] Speaker C: That could be the vote. [00:10:18] Speaker A: Should we or shouldn't we? [00:10:19] Speaker C: Yeah, I remember. [00:10:20] Speaker A: Heavily skewed. And it was skewed in a way that the math eventually was checked and was like, should have done. [00:10:26] Speaker C: Guy had, like, an auto dialer. [00:10:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Somebody. [00:10:28] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Somebody really, really hated. [00:10:30] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:10:31] Speaker A: Hated Jason Todd. [00:10:32] Speaker C: Okay, well, to be fair, they were writing kind of dickish. [00:10:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:36] Speaker A: So always be writing dickish. [00:10:39] Speaker C: He was. He was a total dick. But I was buying the book. I was buying back. [00:10:43] Speaker A: More so than dick. What? He was acting like dick. [00:10:48] Speaker C: Like a dick. [00:10:50] Speaker A: Any dick. Not just dick. [00:10:52] Speaker C: What's the. Anyways, what's the fucking. [00:10:55] Speaker A: I'm the one. Look, there's a, there's a, there's a robin named Dick Grayson, and I'm gonna run with it. [00:11:00] Speaker B: Anywho, so I'm the buzzed one over here. I don't even get it. [00:11:06] Speaker C: Jason was acting like a douchebag. He was written like a douchebag. This is much clearer. [00:11:12] Speaker B: Um, actually, no. [00:11:15] Speaker A: Yeah, so actually, Robin number four was named Douchebag Carter. [00:11:21] Speaker C: Anyway, douchebag. I, uh, I would have. I would have sure liked to have seen the Tim Drake blue beetle. [00:11:31] Speaker A: What does Tim Drake end up becoming? [00:11:33] Speaker C: He kind of. He's still a robin sort of. Sort. Sometimes he's red robin. [00:11:38] Speaker B: Depends on the year. [00:11:39] Speaker C: Didn't. Didn't he go by Drake in young justice? [00:11:42] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:11:44] Speaker C: I think he went by Drake in the recent. In Bendis young Justice revival. So. Which was. And he had this weird brown costume that was terrible. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Anyway, he was like the Drake. Like a dragon. [00:11:57] Speaker C: Or a duck. [00:11:59] Speaker A: Or a duck. [00:12:00] Speaker B: Either one would be great. [00:12:02] Speaker A: Would it like Doug Grayson, the fifth robin. [00:12:05] Speaker C: I'm gonna kick you as hard as I can. [00:12:08] Speaker A: It's okay. That's three. I think I'm done anyway. [00:12:12] Speaker C: But we get to. I gotta look this year up. This is. [00:12:19] Speaker B: We're getting in the nineties now, right? [00:12:23] Speaker C: We are, in fact. So we get to 2005 and the countdown to infinite Crisis crossover or crossover event. Okay, so it was this big 80 page book countdown to infinite Crisis. Okay. And the promotional image and the COVID is Batman holding a dead body. [00:12:50] Speaker B: I remember that. [00:12:51] Speaker C: You know, and, and we're looking over Batman's shoulder. The identity of who he's holding has been blacked out, and he's holding him kind of in front of out to, like, the rest of the Justice League, you know, like, look at this terrible thing that's happened. And, you know, there's all this speculation. Who's it gonna be? [00:13:11] Speaker B: Who's. [00:13:12] Speaker C: Who's Batman holding? And for a long time, the speculation was that he's holding Dick Grayson. Because everybody, it's a commonly accepted fact that Dan Didio was always looking for an excuse to kill off dick. [00:13:29] Speaker A: Oh, sure, you can giggle about it, but if I make a dick, I just giggled. [00:13:34] Speaker C: You're not making dick jokes. You're being an idiot. [00:13:37] Speaker A: I'm just wanting to make sure we're clear about which dick we're talking about, asshole. [00:13:45] Speaker C: Anyway, it turns out that the body that Batman is holding is Ted. [00:13:52] Speaker A: They killed Ted. [00:13:53] Speaker C: Yes. Spoiler for a 18 year old comic. [00:13:56] Speaker A: That's okay. [00:13:57] Speaker C: I accept this. Okay. But I didn't like it. He goes out like a champ because. Because it becomes apparent, you know, like, Ted figures out that something's going wrong here. Like, things are happening that shouldn't be, and he figures out that there's, like, a mastermind behind all that. He goes to Batman. He goes to the Justice League, he goes to booster and is like, hey. And all booster can see is like, hey, so how can we make this pay off for us? Yeah, Batman is like, dude, I'm busy. Get out of here. [00:14:34] Speaker A: Classic Batman goes, seriously, because he's the comic relief, right? [00:14:38] Speaker C: You know, and same, same with the rest of the Justice League. And so Ted's like, all right, I guess I'm doing this shit on my own. And he figures out who the bad guy is, and it turns out to be Maxwell Lord, who he was friends with in the Justice League. Yeah, Max Lord used to be booster's manager and got. He's the one who got booster into the Justice League. [00:14:59] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:15:00] Speaker C: Yes. [00:15:01] Speaker A: Is Max Lord in the first season of Supergirl? [00:15:05] Speaker C: I don't know, but you might be remembering him from Wonder Woman 84. [00:15:08] Speaker B: Ah. [00:15:09] Speaker C: He was the main bad guy in. [00:15:12] Speaker A: But it could be better. [00:15:14] Speaker C: It could be better, right? [00:15:16] Speaker B: Could be a hell of a lot better. But, you know. [00:15:18] Speaker C: But it could be better, right? Exactly. [00:15:21] Speaker A: Pedro Pascal played him. [00:15:23] Speaker C: Yeah. So Max has kind of taken over checkmate, which is like the spy organization in the DC universe. And he's like, you know, and I love this conversation. Ted gets captured breaking into checkmates fortress and brought to Max. And Max says, you know, I knew that someone was going to figure it out. I knew it was, and I knew it was either going to be you or Batman. And I had my money on you. [00:15:52] Speaker A: That's cool. [00:15:53] Speaker C: Yeah. But also, well. And then he's like, Ted, you should join us. You know, we can remake the world. We can make the world a better place, a safer place. And Ted's like, fuck you, Max. And Max pop, blows, shoots, shoots him right in the face. [00:16:12] Speaker B: Brutal. [00:16:13] Speaker C: This is a podcast, and you cannot see the, the look of abject shock. [00:16:18] Speaker A: I can't believe they like that. Like, oof, that's rough. Also, for the record, Max Lord is Pedro Pascal. Well, he is the bad guy. Also in season one of Supergirl before they moved the show to film in Toronto. He was kind of a counterpart to cat. [00:16:35] Speaker C: Okay. [00:16:36] Speaker A: But, yeah, that's rough. So they just shoot this superhero in the face. [00:16:42] Speaker C: In the face. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Wow. [00:16:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:16:45] Speaker A: So that's how Ted goes out. [00:16:46] Speaker C: That's how Ted goes out. [00:16:47] Speaker A: What's the fallout of that about? [00:16:49] Speaker B: Is there. [00:16:51] Speaker C: People are pissed. There's some fallout. Like, booster blames himself for letting Ted go alone. [00:16:59] Speaker A: Sure. [00:16:59] Speaker C: Batman blames himself for not listening to Ted and not taking Ted seriously. And everybody's kind of like, well, we should have taken Ted more seriously, blah, blah, blah. [00:17:09] Speaker A: Sure. [00:17:09] Speaker C: Okay. And then we get into the infinite crisis stuff, and that's where Jaime shows up. [00:17:15] Speaker B: Oh. [00:17:15] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. [00:17:16] Speaker A: That was quick. Well, not as quick as final crisis, when they killed off Bruce Wayne. And then he's in the last page of the book. [00:17:24] Speaker C: Yeah, this is a podcast, and you can't see Shaw was staring pensively at the ceiling. [00:17:31] Speaker A: It was a real, real bad event, which probably would be better if I knew half of what I was reading about. I feel like that was a badly put together trade paperback. But also, if you're gonna kill a character off, kill him, let him stay dead for a little while. [00:17:46] Speaker C: He didn't actually think they were gonna kill Batman. [00:17:49] Speaker A: They killed Captain America and let him stay dead for a year and a. [00:17:52] Speaker B: Half, but he wasn't. Although they kinda did let. [00:17:57] Speaker A: He was dead. [00:17:58] Speaker B: They let it on. That's fair. [00:18:00] Speaker A: Like, they let it sit for a minute. [00:18:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:03] Speaker A: Although Ted stayed dead because they replaced him at the end of the book with Jaime. [00:18:07] Speaker C: Right. Well, a few side note to final crisis, and you can cut this out or keep this as you wish. And I can't remember exactly how it plays out, but Darkseid. I can't remember if Darkseid intended to kill Bruce. And something happened to kind of change the, you know, to lessen the impact of the omega beams so that it just shoves him back in time. I mean, that's. They're setting up while the rest of the DC universe thinks Bruce is dead. DC is clearly setting up Bruce's journey through time to get home. [00:18:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Which was the whole series in itself. [00:18:42] Speaker C: Right. [00:18:43] Speaker A: I just feel like, let everyone be like, oh, my God. Plus, it makes for great news articles. DC kills Batman, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, like, you know, two months. [00:18:52] Speaker C: Later, you know, it's the 30th anniversary of the death of Superman. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. [00:18:56] Speaker C: You should do a podcast on that because we can talk for days about that. [00:19:00] Speaker A: I know I've heard many of strong feeling about the death of Superman and its appearance in other media and your feelings about these sorts of things. [00:19:09] Speaker C: Oh, I love the death of Superman. [00:19:11] Speaker A: I know you were real mad when the Justice League did it. [00:19:14] Speaker C: Yeah. But we can talk. That's another part. [00:19:16] Speaker B: That's a whole other podcast. [00:19:18] Speaker C: So largely because I felt they hadn't earned that story. [00:19:21] Speaker B: Yes, 100%. [00:19:22] Speaker C: Yep. Anyway, so infinite crisis number five is Jaime's first appearance. Okay. Now, Jaime was created and designed by Keith Giffen, who was one of the writers on Justice League when Ted and Booster were doing their thing. [00:19:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:19:39] Speaker C: Okay. That era of justice League is frequently referred to as the Bwahaha Justice League because. [00:19:47] Speaker A: Should I say. [00:19:48] Speaker C: Yeah, kind of like that. Because that was, like, how everybody laughed in the series, and it was a much more comedic series, you know, the most. I mean, Batman is in it briefly. Jon Jones, the Martian Manhunter is in it briefly. By and large, it's a lot of b, c, d list characters. [00:20:07] Speaker A: Gotcha. [00:20:08] Speaker C: So. But Keith Giffen and John Rogers kind of co create him, and Cullie Hamner does the designs. You know, designs the character's outfit, you know, the armor. And Giffen decides, like, from jump that this blue beetle is going to be hispanic. [00:20:26] Speaker B: Right on. [00:20:26] Speaker A: Okay. [00:20:27] Speaker C: And that. And he sets Jaime's story in El Paso because, as he put it, it's just about as far as you can get from any other hero in the DC universe. [00:20:37] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair. [00:20:38] Speaker C: And. Yeah. Cause what Keith was interested in doing, I mean, he had been agitating for more diversity in the DCU for a long time at this point, and he wanted to be able to tell the story of this kid who's not yet another white guy trying to balance his own cultural issues along with these new heroic obligations. And they kind of laid out the first year's worth of stories for the new series as, like, this year long origin story. And that's where we get, like, the reach. You know, all of that. The reach is the alien race that has created the scarab. [00:21:23] Speaker A: Ha. [00:21:24] Speaker C: We not watched young justice. [00:21:25] Speaker B: Nope. [00:21:26] Speaker C: Like, the cartoon. [00:21:27] Speaker B: No. [00:21:28] Speaker C: Fellas, I know Nate would be so disappointed in you guys. [00:21:32] Speaker A: Thankfully, he's gone to bed. [00:21:33] Speaker C: He has gone to bed, but still, like, seriously? I mean, it's good shit. [00:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:39] Speaker A: Okay. [00:21:40] Speaker C: Good to know you guys have HBO. Max or Max? [00:21:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:21:43] Speaker B: Yep. [00:21:43] Speaker C: Then come on. What's your excuse? [00:21:45] Speaker B: Ugh. I got a whole. Yeah, that's a whole nother podcast, which I definitely want to do because there's just. There's so much content out right now. And, like, I got a whole fatty stack of comics I still got to read through on top of, like, the weeklies that are. I'm getting behind on. And then all my podcasts and then audiobooks, which we'll get into later, and video games and. Yeah, you know, only so much time. [00:22:10] Speaker C: I do, in fact. That's true. [00:22:12] Speaker B: And then I'm rewatching all my Star wars stuff for Ahsoka. Again, touching that later. But, you know, so many things fair. [00:22:21] Speaker C: And you don't got a binge it. Try one. [00:22:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. No, no. [00:22:24] Speaker A: So anyway, so we've delved deeper into the origin of the scarab. [00:22:30] Speaker C: Yep. [00:22:30] Speaker A: And we're getting more of that. We're also getting this new character who is nothing like and nowhere near any of these major superhero stories. [00:22:39] Speaker C: Right. And actually graphically and culturally different from. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Everybody else in the Justice League. [00:22:45] Speaker C: Right. And when his series starts, you know, in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis, he's been missing for a year. [00:22:53] Speaker B: Oh. [00:22:54] Speaker C: As far as his family knows, he's been gone for a year. Oh, yeah. Like, his mom is worried that he'd been off doing drugs. In the time that he's been gone, his dad has been shot and is walking with a cane. [00:23:05] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. [00:23:06] Speaker C: Yeah. His friends have all been like, dude, we thought you were dead. And he can't really quite figure out how to tell them, dude, I helped Batman. So the fact that we get a Jaime Reyes movie, this version of the Blue Beetle isn't really a surprise because he's the one that we've been seeing in the cartoons and in, you know, and, I mean, even Jaime even shows up in that, in that brave and the bold show in a completely separate episode. [00:23:35] Speaker A: Cool. [00:23:36] Speaker C: Yeah. So DC has really been investing in Jaime's character for a while, and he's. [00:23:41] Speaker A: Not related to Garrett or corn. [00:23:44] Speaker B: I'll see. I feel like that kind of. Kind of a similar situation with ghostwriter Robbie Reyes in the last ten years. I was just gonna say, yeah, he's mexican American. And obviously, there's. There's so many different ghost writers, so it's kind of cool. They focused on him, and he was great in Agents of SHIELD, and, oh, my gosh, he made him look. They made a really big aspect of Avengers lately and Jason Aaron's. [00:24:06] Speaker C: Oh, have they? Yeah, that's right. They did. [00:24:09] Speaker B: So it's kind of cool seeing all this representation going on. [00:24:12] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:13] Speaker B: As a fellow brown person. [00:24:17] Speaker C: Thumbs up for our fellow brown person. [00:24:19] Speaker A: Yes. [00:24:20] Speaker B: But, yeah. So it's kind of cool. [00:24:22] Speaker C: We actually put our thumbs up another. [00:24:25] Speaker A: House, but my thumbs weren't up. [00:24:26] Speaker C: Yes. [00:24:27] Speaker A: So I've done my duty as a white ally. Just. Just kidding. Just kidding. There's more. There's more. [00:24:36] Speaker C: The fight's never over, man. So what else? [00:24:40] Speaker A: So Robbie Reyes. Not Robbie Reyes. That is Ghost Rider. [00:24:43] Speaker C: That's the other Reyes. Jaime. [00:24:45] Speaker B: Jaime. Yeah. Wait, so it has. I guess we're kind of in the kind of current times ish. Has he appeared in a lot of comics recently and DC comics? [00:24:55] Speaker C: Yes. [00:24:56] Speaker B: I've only read some of the Superman comics and some of the Batman comics, but have really delved into the deeper stuff. [00:25:02] Speaker C: Okay, so Jaime's actually had three series. [00:25:05] Speaker B: Oh, wow. [00:25:06] Speaker C: Yeah. So we had his original series after Infinite Crisis, and then we've got titled Blue Beetle. Blue Beetle. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Got it. [00:25:14] Speaker C: Yep. Oh, and then we've got a blue Beetle series in the new 52. [00:25:20] Speaker A: Okay. Do they change his origin very much in new 52? [00:25:24] Speaker C: I don't think so. [00:25:25] Speaker A: That's interesting. [00:25:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:25:26] Speaker A: Because some they went buck wild with, and others, they were like. [00:25:29] Speaker C: That worked. Yeah. And then they just finished a six issue mini series called Blue Beetle graduation day. Okay, and did you pick that up? I did not. [00:25:40] Speaker A: Did you read it? [00:25:42] Speaker C: No, I'm aware of its existence. And there's a nice bit where Superman visits, and Jaime's mom gives him a lot a and he speaks to her in Spanish. [00:25:51] Speaker B: Cool. [00:25:52] Speaker A: Good. [00:25:53] Speaker C: Yeah. So that sequence was making the rounds on the Reddit when it came out. Yeah. And now we get a movie. [00:26:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:01] Speaker A: Very cool. [00:26:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm kind of excited now. [00:26:04] Speaker A: Jaime is the blue beetle. That is in the blue and gold books as well. Right? [00:26:09] Speaker C: Well, he shows up, but the blue and gold miniseries was booster and Ted. [00:26:14] Speaker A: It was booster and Ted. [00:26:16] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:26:16] Speaker A: Even the recent one. [00:26:17] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, so I kind of forgot about that one, which is weird, because I read it and liked it a lot. [00:26:24] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:24] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:26:25] Speaker C: So, okay, so when we last left Ted, he was dead. He was dead with a hole in his face, in his head, if you will, to keep the rhyme. [00:26:34] Speaker A: Sure. [00:26:35] Speaker C: And since then, the universe has reset itself at least twice. [00:26:40] Speaker B: Right. [00:26:41] Speaker A: You know, no longer blue, but covered in red. Ooh. [00:26:45] Speaker C: That was well done. [00:26:46] Speaker A: Thank you. I'm sorry it took me so long and I had to interrupt you to make. [00:26:49] Speaker C: That's okay. I'll allow it. Anyway, so the universe has reset itself at least twice. Once with Flashpoint. [00:26:57] Speaker B: Yep. [00:26:58] Speaker C: Slash 52. [00:26:59] Speaker A: So this is a podcast, and I'm pretty sure Dave's had their eyes rolled. [00:27:04] Speaker B: I heard it way over here. [00:27:06] Speaker C: If my eyes rolled any harder at the mention of Flashpoint, then they would they would also. They would have jumped right out of my head and rolled under the couch. That's another podcast. [00:27:19] Speaker A: Which. [00:27:19] Speaker B: Which makes me want to. Want to know your opinion on the new flash movie. [00:27:23] Speaker A: But I didn't see that one. [00:27:25] Speaker C: I've seen it. [00:27:26] Speaker B: I did. [00:27:27] Speaker C: Well, we can talk about that. [00:27:29] Speaker A: Well, that's a whole nother talk. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Is it? [00:27:30] Speaker C: Come back to me. [00:27:31] Speaker B: Was it on Max yet? [00:27:33] Speaker C: I don't think so. But come back to me when you ask me what I. What I've been watching reading lately, and I'll talk. [00:27:37] Speaker B: Copy that. [00:27:39] Speaker C: And then the rebirth. [00:27:41] Speaker A: Right? [00:27:42] Speaker C: Rewrite. So, in. With all these universe rewriting events, Ted is still alive. Okay, so. [00:27:50] Speaker B: Which they did a lot of characters, and. [00:27:52] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Nobody stays dead in the comments except Uncle Ben, apparently. [00:27:56] Speaker B: And when Stacey. [00:27:58] Speaker A: And that particular. [00:27:59] Speaker C: That, yes. Used to be buck. [00:28:03] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:28:04] Speaker C: Oh, Captain Stacy. [00:28:05] Speaker B: Oh, yep, yep. [00:28:06] Speaker A: It's a canon event. [00:28:07] Speaker C: Has to happen. Boy, can I just. I'll save that. Never mind. [00:28:12] Speaker B: Goddamn, that movie was so good, though. [00:28:14] Speaker C: It really was. Anyways, all right, other questions. [00:28:19] Speaker A: So this is the entire history of the blue Beetle publishing wise. [00:28:23] Speaker C: In a pretty sizable nutshell, but yeah. [00:28:27] Speaker A: Okay, so then I guess the next question is, if I know nothing about the Jaime Reyes story, where should I start? What should I read? Where should I go? Is there anything about his storyline that is really worth looking into? If I enjoy the movie, where do I go from there? Okay, you know, recommendations and story notes that might make this whole thing make more sense to me. [00:28:51] Speaker C: Based on what I've seen in the trailer, you don't need to know anything going in. [00:28:55] Speaker A: Yeah, they're gonna try to make it pretty self contained. [00:28:56] Speaker C: Yeah, I have a point I'd like to make about that that's relevant to our flash conversation, but I'll wait until we get back. [00:29:04] Speaker B: I'm here for it. [00:29:05] Speaker C: So if you watched the movie and you liked it, then I. I would suggest you go to your local comic shop, and then you can get the graduation day collection, or you can order it from Amazon or cheap graphic novels. [00:29:21] Speaker A: Please try to support your local comic shop. [00:29:22] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [00:29:23] Speaker C: Please support your local comic shop. And if they don't have it on the shelf, ask if they can order it. [00:29:28] Speaker A: And usually they can. [00:29:29] Speaker B: Happily. [00:29:29] Speaker A: The shipping is almost as fast. Yep. [00:29:31] Speaker B: They'll happily order it. [00:29:32] Speaker C: Yeah, they will order that for you. You can order the graduation day book, because I think the trade just came out of that. The collected edition and almost all of Jaime's story has been collected in one volume or another. So I don't know if they've done an omnibus yet, I think they've just done smaller, smaller trades. Yeah. So. But it sure seems like they ought to be putting out more stuff. [00:30:03] Speaker A: So have they never done an arc of booster kind of mentoring jaime? [00:30:08] Speaker C: That kind of comes up at the, in the blue and gold miniseries towards the end? [00:30:13] Speaker A: Okay. [00:30:15] Speaker C: My impression is that for a long time, Booster doesn't know Jaime exists, you know? Well, yeah. I mean, why would I may. Well, Ted didn't use the scarab. The scarab doesn't give Ted powers. Oh, yeah. Like back in the, in the Charleston book, when Ted talks about his origin and tells Tracy what happened to Dan, Ted is there with Dan as he's dying. And Dan says, I want you to be a hero. I want you to carry on the legacy of the blue beetle. And Ted's like, yeah, I will, Dan. I got you. I'm here for it. And then the. The floor of the. The cavern they're in collapses, and Dan's body and the scarab vanish into the darkness. Oh, yeah. Ted never had possession of the scarab, at least initially. And like I said, all of his powers were technology based. He was much more of an acrobatic and science hero. He had the bug, you know, the ship. [00:31:14] Speaker A: Sure. [00:31:14] Speaker C: And he had a, like a. He calls it, I think he called it the buzz gun or something. And it was basically a light gun. A could produce crippling sound vibrations. What? [00:31:26] Speaker A: Star Lord on Earth? [00:31:29] Speaker C: I wouldn't even say that. I'd say more of a cross between Daredevil and Spider man, like Ditko's work on Ted. Just like a lot of the early Spider man issues end with Spider man walking away, pondering the issues of his day. A lot of Ted's stories that Ditko did end that way as well. Right, exactly. So let's say one last time. Right, but booster, I mean, so. So I don't know that booster knows that. That Jaime exists. [00:32:03] Speaker A: Okay, do we expect a Ted or a booster reference in this movie? Do we hope for one? [00:32:09] Speaker C: I expect there will be a Ted. At least a Ted reference. Possibly a Dan Garrett reference. DC, at least in earlier ages, has not been reticent about recognizing that Dan Garrett exists. [00:32:23] Speaker A: Sure. [00:32:23] Speaker C: You know, there's a Dan Garrett trading card, for God's sakes. All right, so two t's. Two t's noted. I would love to see a booster gold reference. I'm not expecting it, although I know there's going to be a booster gold tv show. [00:32:39] Speaker B: That's right. They just announced that right. [00:32:41] Speaker C: Yeah. And let me just tell you. So at San Diego, you know. You guys know that I work for. For a comic slinger. [00:32:48] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep. [00:32:48] Speaker C: And one of our wall books was booster gold number one. [00:32:52] Speaker B: Cool. [00:32:53] Speaker C: For $90. Wow. Let me just tell you, if you had told me five years ago that booster gold number one, a longtime denizen of the dollar bins, would be a fucking dollar 90 book, I would have laughed in your face. [00:33:12] Speaker A: And now you're like, that's not a bad deal. [00:33:15] Speaker C: I mean, I wouldn't pay it, but I've already read it. I may already have it. Fair, so. But I really liked the Geoff Johns booster Gold series. [00:33:23] Speaker B: Okay. [00:33:23] Speaker A: I like Jeff Jones. [00:33:24] Speaker C: Yeah. Have you not read the booster Gold series? [00:33:26] Speaker A: I haven't read a whole lot of DC in general. Do I just love Batman beyond? [00:33:31] Speaker C: Get you the DC subscription? You know that I can't remember what's called, like, DC infinite or something like that? [00:33:36] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I went to Jim Lee and Fredzie, talked all about it. [00:33:39] Speaker C: Whatever. The Marvel. The DC version of Marvel Ultimate Humpty Dumpty or whatever it is. Get that, because that booster Gold series is really good. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Right on. [00:33:50] Speaker A: You know where else you can get some of these trades? Your local library. [00:33:54] Speaker C: Oh, good call. [00:33:55] Speaker A: Actually, when. When I'm reading books from Brian's giant stack o comics that he sets up for me to read so that I can catch up one day if there's books missing, I usually find the trade. [00:34:06] Speaker C: On the Libby app through my local. [00:34:09] Speaker A: Library, and I pick up what I might have missed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But if it's a major storyline, I can be like, oh, yeah, here. I can finish that out or whatever. Especially sections of the comic stack that occurred while Brian was working at a place where he had free access to comics. [00:34:27] Speaker B: Yep. [00:34:29] Speaker A: That made his collection kind of spotted here. [00:34:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:34:35] Speaker A: But, yeah, library is also a really great place to find some of those. Maybe I'll see if I can find mine. Find it on Libby. [00:34:41] Speaker C: Yeah. There you go. I like hoopla. I do have a lot of things there. [00:34:45] Speaker A: You know, I watched an entire how to. Like, how therapy is structured so that the conversation is continuing forward but still reflective, like a training video for psychiatrists. [00:34:58] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:34:58] Speaker A: Just up on Hoopla. [00:35:00] Speaker C: Interesting. [00:35:01] Speaker A: It was fascinating. I implemented into my life for about a month before I forgot it and went back to being a crappy listener. It's great. [00:35:08] Speaker C: Well, there you go. I read the entire run of immortal Hulk on Hoopla. Oh. [00:35:14] Speaker A: So I think. Oh, you know what I think Hoopla is? Where I typically read comics on my iPad, Libby, is where I listen to books and sometimes read books. [00:35:26] Speaker C: Well, see if Libby has. [00:35:27] Speaker A: They're both available. Libby and Hoopla are usually available through your local library, and I highly recommend. [00:35:32] Speaker C: All you need is a library card. [00:35:34] Speaker A: All you need is a library card. And in some libraries, you can even get access to national parks for free. [00:35:39] Speaker C: That's true. [00:35:41] Speaker A: This has been. Bryce goes to the library. Okay. So, Brian, are there questions you have about the blue beetle? [00:35:52] Speaker B: No, that was. That was pretty much it. Like I said, like, I. I'm going into this not knowing a whole lot of anything about him. And, you know, the last couple years, I've gotten a couple of DC books here and there, and mostly just Batman and Superman stuff and some of the bigger events, but he hasn't really been around in them too much, so it was kind of. Kind of cool. Just getting a nice history of it all and. And the different characters that have played the blue beetle throughout the run, so. Yeah. [00:36:18] Speaker C: Mm hmm. [00:36:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it was neat. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:21] Speaker A: It was kind of a nice deep dive without going too much into spoiler territory, which was nice spoiler. Terry. He's the archdemacus of Blackie, the mystery boy. [00:36:32] Speaker C: Phil. [00:36:33] Speaker A: Phil, whose one thing is that his hair is black, because that's unusual, because, you know, all comic characters are wipes. [00:36:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:43] Speaker C: At that time. Yeah. [00:36:45] Speaker A: Except for that guy. This is a podcast. I'm pointing to Robin. Well, a pop figure of Robin. [00:36:49] Speaker C: It's a salt. It's actually a salt and pepper shaker. [00:36:51] Speaker A: A salt and pepper shaker that is in the style of a pop figurine. [00:36:56] Speaker C: Ooh, I have Robin, too. [00:36:58] Speaker A: Does. And it looks like classic Adam West. [00:37:04] Speaker C: Batman and Burt Ward. Robin and Burt Ward classics. Yep. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Well, Bryce, how are you feeling about all this now? [00:37:12] Speaker A: I feel pretty good. I feel like I have a better understanding of knowing what. Which iteration of this character I'm going into, because I usually am a little curious about that. I'm a little disappointed that booster gold, the booster blue Beetle team ups, won't be where I can immediately go to, because those books look the most fun, that if I go there, I'm gonna just be reading about some guy named Ted. Although I hear they're great. They're not necessarily what I'm making to be looking for immediately. But I'm happy that anybody who's listening to this, who is wanting more information will also be properly warned. Dave, you want to cite your sources real quick? [00:37:46] Speaker C: My main source was the blue Beetle companion by Christopher Ervic from two Morrows publishing. [00:37:55] Speaker B: Very cool. [00:37:57] Speaker C: Yes. Two Morrows is my favorite comics history publisher. They're the big ones. [00:38:03] Speaker A: Yeah. We didn't introduce you as such this time round. We were just like. And Dave is here. But Dave, you are. [00:38:09] Speaker B: Holy crap. Dave is here. [00:38:10] Speaker A: Historian. [00:38:11] Speaker B: Okay, there it is. [00:38:12] Speaker A: He's the talking this whole time. [00:38:14] Speaker C: That guy's an asshole. You know, Nate asked me if I consider, you know. Cause I've been. You guys know I've been teaching. I'm starting my 28th year here. [00:38:24] Speaker B: Right on, man. [00:38:25] Speaker A: Congratulations. [00:38:26] Speaker C: Thank you. And this is Liberty's, my school's 25th anniversary. Yeah. And Nate asked me if I would consider myself a beloved teacher. And I'm like, I don't know if I can say that. Yeah, other people. [00:38:41] Speaker B: It's one of those things where, like, you can't. You can't call yourself that. That's something that. [00:38:47] Speaker C: Right? [00:38:47] Speaker B: Like, I can't call myself an asshole. That's everybody else's shtick. [00:38:51] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:38:52] Speaker A: You know, you don't get to determine whether I'm not a cool person. [00:38:55] Speaker C: That's everybody else, you know? Right. And Nate's like, well, would you say you're iconic? I'm like. I mean. I mean, I guess I would allow that before. I guess I would say that about myself before I'd say I was beloved, because I don't know if that's the right answer. [00:39:11] Speaker A: Sure. But as somebody who knew you when you were in your. What would that have been? Second, maybe third year of teaching at liberty, so less before your fifth year even happened and has seen both my brothers go through your classroom at some point or another, as well as all of my siblings be on campus during that time. And as somebody who has substitute taught at that school whilst you were there, I think I can safely say that you are a beloved teacher, and absolutely, without any hesitation, can say that you are iconic. [00:39:47] Speaker C: Well, thank you. I was not fishing for that. Yeah, no, that's true. I wasn't fishing for that. But I appreciate it. [00:39:53] Speaker A: No, I mean, you don't have to necessarily worm onto the bait. I'm gonna bite. If you want an opportunity to be complimented, I'm here for you. I appreciate that. Well, I appreciate you. [00:40:04] Speaker C: Thanks, man. [00:40:04] Speaker A: So, yeah, Brian, what are you reading these days? [00:40:08] Speaker B: Oh, man. Like I said, I trying to catch up on this big ass stack of comics that I've kind of let go by the wayside, because, again, I have way too many just hobbies in general interests. Yeah. But I've recently started the Andy Serkis Lord of the Rings. How is I started with a similar. And it is dense. And, like our good buddy Logan said, he's like, it reads like the Bible and straight up like, this is the Tolkien verse Bible, which I'm pretty sure he wanted. But it starts out with, like, here's an intro on kind of what this is. And here's another intro on kind of what this is. And then here's a letter Tolkien wrote to his. I was an editor or a publisher on why this book is important in the grand scheme of things in his universe and how it ties in with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings with, like, before, during, and after. And it's an hour long chapter of this. Of this letter that he wrote. It was cool as hell, but it's very dense. I'm kind of taking my time with it. And I'm about to try and finish Miles Morales on the PS five to get ready for that Spider man two book book game. Wow. I mean, shoot, there's enough stuff there. It's gonna be a book. But I'm super excited for that. Bringing us back around to that Spider man mini convo we had earlier. And then I'm also rewatching some clips, Clone wars episodes to get ready for Ahsoka in a couple weeks on my way to, like, all the rebels and stuff too, as well. Yeah. [00:41:43] Speaker C: Okay. [00:41:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's. That's kind of my busyness going on right now. What about you, Dave? What you got going on? [00:41:50] Speaker C: Well, what you reading? [00:41:51] Speaker B: What you watching? What you playing? What's Nate doing? [00:41:55] Speaker C: Well, Nate is sleeping right now, but when he's awake, he's playing his way through the outer worlds again. [00:42:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:42:01] Speaker C: But as for what I'm watching, I'd like to make two observations. [00:42:04] Speaker A: Yes. [00:42:05] Speaker C: Because of. On things that. That have happened during your most recent hiatus. First, I absolutely loved across the spider verse. It was magnificent. [00:42:15] Speaker B: Oh, so. [00:42:16] Speaker C: Boy, I sure loved the first 20 minutes or so that took place entirely on Gwen's world. [00:42:21] Speaker B: Oh, my God. I loved how that movie was just as much of a Glen movie as it was a Miles movie. [00:42:28] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, so I went to see that one in the theater with my buddy Rob, and we get through the. You know, we get through that opening Gwen sequence, the opening title rolls. And I turned to Rob and I said, you know, we might as well go now because I can't imagine the rest of the movie's gonna be any better than that. And then, of course, it turned out to be as good as that. So. But so there was that. That I wanted to mention also, as far as the flash goes. [00:42:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:59] Speaker C: Young Barry reminds me of Pauly shore. [00:43:02] Speaker B: Oh, God. In the worst ways. I. [00:43:05] Speaker C: Right, because he's the weasel. [00:43:06] Speaker B: Fucking hated him so much. And I don't like Ezra Miller to begin with, even before all the nonsense. So, like, that was. [00:43:15] Speaker A: Ezra Miller ruined karaoke. [00:43:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Even before then. But no, yeah, I get you. That was. Yeah. [00:43:22] Speaker C: Well, and the other thing, though, the other thing that I wish they had done with the kind of the climax where all the parallel universes are starting to collide. I sure wish we could have gotten a universe with Peacemaker and blue beetle in it. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:43:40] Speaker C: For a couple of reasons. First of all, hey, here's the universe that's coming. [00:43:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:43:46] Speaker C: But also, Peacemaker and Blue Beetle are both Charlton characters, so they have actually a reason to be in the same universe. Yeah. [00:43:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:53] Speaker A: Peacemaker's characters did show up at the end of Shazam. [00:43:56] Speaker C: Oh. So I haven't seen. I haven't seen Shazam two yet. [00:44:00] Speaker A: So there is. [00:44:01] Speaker C: It's. [00:44:02] Speaker A: It's got good parts and bad parts. I didn't love it as much as the first one, but I didn't hate it. [00:44:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:07] Speaker A: They're just sort of the third act kind of just marvels and becomes just a lot. And there kind of comes a point where there's a lot of. Why don't they. Just moments. [00:44:18] Speaker C: Okay. [00:44:19] Speaker A: The first two thirds of the movie, I really enjoyed. [00:44:22] Speaker C: Okay. [00:44:22] Speaker A: I like. I liked kind of the dynamic of it. It was worth putting on while I was working on something, and I would occasionally look up and continue to watch, and then I would back away, but I enjoyed it. But, yeah, they do at least make a connection to peacemaker within that. [00:44:36] Speaker C: Okay. [00:44:37] Speaker A: So there's really no reason for them not to have shown up during all. [00:44:41] Speaker C: Of these universes, right? [00:44:43] Speaker A: Not that I've seen the Flash. [00:44:44] Speaker B: So I don't know, just to kind of clear things up, the peacemaker you're talking about is the same one in Suicide Squad, right? [00:44:51] Speaker C: Right. [00:44:51] Speaker B: John Cena with his own show. Yep. [00:44:52] Speaker C: Yep. [00:44:53] Speaker B: John Cena. That show was so good. [00:44:58] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:44:59] Speaker B: But kind of an update. The Flash will be out on Max later this month, actually. [00:45:05] Speaker C: Oh, okay. [00:45:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:06] Speaker A: I'll have to give it a watch. [00:45:07] Speaker C: Well, I still have to watch Guardians of the Galaxy three, and I know that just showed up on that just dropped on. [00:45:13] Speaker B: Sure did. That was good. But it was rough. But goddamn, it was so good. [00:45:17] Speaker A: It's very good. [00:45:18] Speaker C: Yeah. So as for what I'm reading, I'm really liking the Superman books right now. I'm reading Superman. And action. Okay, I mentioned earlier that action is an anthology book, right now. The main story follows the super family. [00:45:34] Speaker B: Superman, John, and then the two kids from. [00:45:39] Speaker C: The two kids from the war world story, Kara shows up, Connor, everybody. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Kind of. Superboy. [00:45:48] Speaker C: Yeah. Even Keenan. The Superman from China. [00:45:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:52] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [00:45:53] Speaker C: Is there. [00:45:53] Speaker B: I think that was the last issue of that I read. When he shows up, well, he's in. [00:45:58] Speaker C: Kind of all of them in the background, but they're all involved in the story with Metallo. And then the b story, like, the second story in the anthology is Clark and Lois and young John living on the farm in Smallville. [00:46:16] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [00:46:17] Speaker C: Yes. And John gets kidnapped. And then. And, you know, because he's young, he doesn't really have full control of his powers and still figuring all that stuff out. And then the first few issues, the third story was power girl and omen from the Teen Titans, kind of playing out some of the after effects of the planet Lazarus. [00:46:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:46:42] Speaker C: Crossover that I didn't read. [00:46:44] Speaker B: It was really good. I really enjoyed it. [00:46:46] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. [00:46:49] Speaker B: So it. It all kind of spawned out of the. The robin comic. [00:46:52] Speaker C: Right. [00:46:52] Speaker B: Which was really good. And then they, like, canceled it early, but then had this event kind of come out of that. [00:46:59] Speaker C: Yeah. It also tied into. Tied somewhat into that world's finest series that Mark Wade is writing, as I understood it. [00:47:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause. Yeah. So Mark Wade didn't do the Robin comic, but he did the planet Lazarus event that spawned out of that. [00:47:13] Speaker C: Okay. [00:47:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:14] Speaker C: And then. So the first few issues deal with some of the fallout from that because power girls powers change. Then that spins out into a power girl special and power Girl series. [00:47:29] Speaker A: Cool. [00:47:30] Speaker B: Oh, right. Side note, I really dug those. The side stories with Power girl and her, like, because it all dealt with her, like. [00:47:37] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:47:38] Speaker B: Internally, mentally, and. [00:47:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Dealing with, like, her own feelings of where do I fit in in this family, in this universe, you know? [00:47:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:47] Speaker C: Right. Cause she's still a refugee from a different parallel universe. And then the current one, or the most recent one, has been featuring steel. [00:48:00] Speaker B: Oh, cool. [00:48:01] Speaker C: And setting up the steel miniseries. It's being written by Michael Dorn, who played Worf in Star the Next Generation. [00:48:08] Speaker A: Oh, sick. And if you don't remember, from Star Trek, generation Next Generation, he was cold Stone in gargoyles, which is arguably more iconic. I'm just kidding. [00:48:21] Speaker C: But you say cold Stone, I think of ice cream. [00:48:23] Speaker B: Uh huh. Same. [00:48:24] Speaker C: Sorry, man. [00:48:26] Speaker A: Fair. But you remembered it. [00:48:28] Speaker C: I mean, I remembered the ice cream anyway. Yes. [00:48:31] Speaker A: Lieutenant war. [00:48:33] Speaker C: So I've been enjoying that the Superman book. I'm really liking that a lot, too. Issue one picks up from issue 1050 of action comics. [00:48:44] Speaker B: Right. [00:48:44] Speaker C: Lex fights Superman fights Lex. Superman arrests Lex. Lex ends up in jail. That's where we find Lex in issue one of the new Superman series. [00:48:55] Speaker B: And, you know, he's there, like, the whole time. I read a too. [00:48:59] Speaker C: Yeah. He's in the joint. [00:49:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:00] Speaker C: And when you think about it, Superman really has to focus to tune out all the other noise in the world, to focus on what he's doing in the moment. And he can focus out everybody except for Lex. [00:49:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:14] Speaker C: So Lex is in his ear all the time just talking shit. [00:49:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:49:18] Speaker C: Just not. Not even just talking shit. Like. Like this fight. This fight can be over in 2 seconds if you do the one thing that you and I both know you don't want to do. You know, like when he fights livewire, you know, things like that. And it was a cool first arc that I read. Right. And in that first issue, kind of. [00:49:38] Speaker A: Like mean dirty cricket kind of. [00:49:40] Speaker C: Well, it's funny you say that, because not only is he in Superman's ear all the time, since Lex is in the joint for the foreseeable future, he has ceded legal control of Lex core over to Superman and renamed it Escorp. [00:50:01] Speaker A: Interesting. [00:50:01] Speaker C: Yeah. And Superman's like, I'm not gonna do this. I don't want this. What are you doing? And mercy, Lex's assistant, says, superman, look, I mean, this is all legal. You know, you can look at the papers. But the bottom line here is if you don't accept your position as the head of this company, then this company closes down, and all the people who work for this company get, get fired. They're out of jobs. And, of course, you know, Clark is like, what? Damn it. [00:50:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:50:37] Speaker B: Different take on that whole thing and on their dynamic and. [00:50:41] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:50:41] Speaker B: Because normally, it's not a big secret that, like, I'm not the biggest Superman fan, but I heard all these recent books were good, so I picked up the first couple issues, and then I think I picked up most of the issues of the first arcs. Mm hmm. I'm reading John Kent because that's just a, Tom Taylor does amazing job. [00:50:58] Speaker C: Anyways, the miniseries. [00:51:00] Speaker B: Yeah, it just, yo, it's. It's been a really cool dynamic with everybody and in all the. The super books. [00:51:07] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:08] Speaker A: I'm curious to see, because it feels like Lex is kind of trying to teach Superman a lesson in your life is hard. I get it. You fight aliens, but try running a company. [00:51:17] Speaker C: I'm not quite sure we're getting some insight into, into Lex's past, like after he left Smallville, my impression, but there's. [00:51:26] Speaker A: A bit of a gap. [00:51:27] Speaker C: And I don't really have anything official from DC to back this up, but my impression is that Josh Williamson, the writer on this one, is looking at Superman birthright as the origin that he's starting from. Do you get that impression? B rom? [00:51:46] Speaker B: I haven't made it that far in, but that with everything that's been kind of built up, that kind of makes sense. [00:51:53] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:54] Speaker A: They have kind of a history. [00:51:55] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:51:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:51:56] Speaker C: Even though Lex won't acknowledge that he and Clark have a history and he doesn't know that he and Superman have a history. [00:52:03] Speaker A: Right. [00:52:03] Speaker C: So. But it's good stuff. Yeah. Super good. I'm really enjoying that. I'm also enjoying local man from image comics. It is a, it's a flip book. You know, the front, it's, it's co written by Tony Fleeks and Tim Seeley. And Tony's doing the art on the present day stuff. And it's this image hero named Crossjack who is kind of washed out of the hero game. He was kicked out of the team he was on, and he's returned to his hometown in Indiana. And everyone's like, asshole. Like, nobody's happy to see him. Even his parents won't even hold dinner for him. Yeah. Like, nobody is happy to see him. And so he's trying to mind his own business, but he keeps getting dragged into stuff that he doesn't want. Not only does he not want to be, he probably shouldn't be, but, like, his arch foe kind of followed him up into the big leagues. And while he was being a villain up there, suffered a traumatic brain injury. [00:53:06] Speaker A: Oh, no. [00:53:06] Speaker C: At the hands of, from a beating at the hands of one of cross, Jack's teammates. So he also went back to the hometown, and he ends up dead in his jail cell the first night that, that Jack is back at home. So of course he's the prime suspect. [00:53:22] Speaker A: Right. [00:53:23] Speaker C: But then the flip side, Tim Seely does the art, and it's total nineties image. [00:53:28] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [00:53:29] Speaker C: It's a flashback story that gives some insight into Jack's character, maybe some insight into what's happening in the present day. [00:53:36] Speaker B: I appreciate when, when books do that where they have two different artists for, like, two different timelines or two areas. [00:53:42] Speaker C: And, yeah, it's such a fun book. They just wrapped up the first storyline and it's coming out in trade, and then they're doing a local man gold it's a crossover with to flashback to the old death mate crossover between valiant and image. [00:53:59] Speaker B: Okay. [00:53:59] Speaker C: That's probably before both your guys time. [00:54:01] Speaker B: But it's kind of familiar. [00:54:04] Speaker C: It's. It's gonna be a blast. I'm really looking forward to it, so I'm liking that a lot. I've been reading. Let's see, what else have I read? I've read Fritz Lieber's swords and deviltry Pfafford and the Grey Mouser. Nice little sword and sorcery stuff. And I'm reading, doing some professional reading because I'm revamping my. Some of my teaching stuff for this year. See? [00:54:31] Speaker A: What else you playing? Anything? [00:54:34] Speaker C: I'm still working on Assassin's Creed odyssey. I mean, it's. I'm coming up on 200 hours in this game. It's so deep. I mean, I finally finished, like, the main game. [00:54:47] Speaker A: Okay. [00:54:48] Speaker C: To the point where I can start new game plus if I want to. But I'm still working my way through some of the deep dlcs. Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely getting my money's worth out of this game. [00:54:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:55:00] Speaker C: And then, let's see, I still got to go back and finish assassin's Creed Valhalla, and I've got assassin's Creed Origins waiting for me. [00:55:09] Speaker A: That one I hear is, oh, no, maybe it's not. I know the one of them has a kind of a different take on the game, but I don't know if that's the one. [00:55:19] Speaker B: I heard Origins was fun either way. [00:55:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm kind of. I'm playing this. This trilogy backwards. You know, the order is Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla. And I started with Valhalla and then went to Odyssey without even finishing Valhalla. Right. Well, because I was waiting for the rest of the. Of the. For the last batch of dlcs to drop, and I think I'm still, like, I'd finished the main game, and I think I'd finished most of the dlcs for that one, but I feel like I was missing something. But no new game plus for Valhalla, which is too bad, because you don't get Mjolnir or Excalibur until almost the very end of the game. [00:56:01] Speaker B: Yeah, I knew about Mjolnir, but. Oh, that's cool. [00:56:04] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, takes place in England, dude. Come on. And it's Vikings. [00:56:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:10] Speaker C: Now, you know, I'm still playing. If you can't figure out. If you can. Can't figure out that it's Vikings from. [00:56:16] Speaker A: From Valhalla, you know, I figured out that it was that, but I didn't know if it was upper Scandinavia or if this was more towards. [00:56:23] Speaker C: You're giving way too much thought, man. It's. It's, it's. It's Viking invaders. It's Viking invaders. [00:56:30] Speaker A: Got it. [00:56:30] Speaker C: So here for that. [00:56:31] Speaker B: I mean, I. Yeah, I made it 4 hours in, and then it was like, oh, and now the prelude's done. Here's the real game. I was like, oh, shit. [00:56:38] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:56:38] Speaker A: Kind of like this podcast. [00:56:40] Speaker C: Yeah, right. Exactly. Like, and then I'm still playing around with Pokemon violets. [00:56:47] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, you know, this is, you know, Monday the 7th, but on the 8th, there's a big old noon in town. [00:56:53] Speaker C: Pokemon presents. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that. [00:56:57] Speaker B: I'm hoping we're gonna get those, the DLC info on there or more, at least a release date. They've been teasing it for forever. [00:57:04] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's got to be the, the first one has to be sometime this fall or Ranger or Pokemon stadium. [00:57:15] Speaker A: Slash pocket versus pocket tournament. [00:57:18] Speaker B: Dude, that would be sick. [00:57:19] Speaker A: Do, like, a Marvel versus Capcom. [00:57:21] Speaker C: But it's just, that's probably not gonna happen. [00:57:25] Speaker A: More. Luchador Pikachu. [00:57:27] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's true. [00:57:30] Speaker B: I might wake, well, depending on what time I go to bed tonight, I might wake up in early and watch that. I'll watch it. Either way, I dig it. Who am I kidding? [00:57:37] Speaker C: Oh, and I need to watch secret invasion. Yeah, I've not watched. [00:57:42] Speaker B: I dug it, so I didn't love it, you know, as most marvel things these days. Well, I say for now that because I know you, neither of you guys have watched it also, right? [00:57:51] Speaker C: Have I talked. I can't remember. Have I talked about my thoughts on the comic series? [00:57:55] Speaker B: No. [00:57:56] Speaker C: So I really liked the first issue of the comic because, you know, it focuses so much on the Skrulls and the Skrull queen and kind of the whole. I thought we were going to get this examination of kind of, like, religious extremism. [00:58:12] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Cause it was a huge aspect of the comics. [00:58:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:15] Speaker C: Well, that's, like, the main point of the first issue. [00:58:18] Speaker B: Yeah. And a lot of Italians as well. [00:58:20] Speaker C: Well, but then there's almost no other mention of any of that throughout the rest. Yeah, except. Except for he loves you throughout the rest of the story. And I ended up enjoying the Avengers and new Avengers tie ins more. Cause those were the ones that talk about who gets swiped when and all that. And I thought those, I liked those a lot, but I ended up disliking the actual main series just. I didn't enjoy it at all. Especially the end with where Norman shows up. [00:58:53] Speaker A: Yeah, the end is rough. I like how they kind of worked it, so that, because, I mean, having read thunderbolts all the way up to that point, I liked seeing how Norman twisted it. [00:59:04] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I dug them harder, but, like, yeah. [00:59:08] Speaker A: By the end, I mean, it just gets out of control. Like, Janet comes to a quantum size that's, like, beyond. [00:59:14] Speaker B: I know. [00:59:15] Speaker A: Bryce. [00:59:15] Speaker B: Bryce started reading it when I got all the comics together for him a couple years later. But, like, I was reading it as it was coming out, and I was liking it, and then it just kind of get. Kept getting dragged on, and there's so many tie ins, and most of them were pretty good, but, like, it was just like, okay, can we wrap this up? Or what's. [00:59:34] Speaker A: Perhaps it was because I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, or perhaps it's because I read it all at once, but I absolutely loved the event. [00:59:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's. That's why it worked out, is I. [00:59:43] Speaker A: Read all the way start to finish. And it was also. It was jumping on point for several other things. [00:59:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [00:59:50] Speaker A: That's where I discovered Nova because of the time with the super scroll. And that's where I realized in, like, you know, the thunderbolts and things like that, or Deadpool and, you know, all that. No, it was a neat examination of everything that had happened in the last several years that, I mean, I jumped on it, disassembled, and. And that, you know, lead up to Wanda. The house of m stuff. [01:00:15] Speaker C: Right. [01:00:16] Speaker A: So I. For me, it was like, cool. [01:00:19] Speaker C: I'm getting. [01:00:20] Speaker A: I know what some of these things are. It's like my first event that's really harkening back to other things, but it's also harkening back to times that I only am vaguely familiar with. So it was like, oh, cool. I can finally get an examination of the Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, you know, history. [01:00:34] Speaker C: Right. [01:00:34] Speaker A: The janet van dynamic. [01:00:37] Speaker B: Although it. It has my, one of my all time favorite comic lines from Nick Fury. And it kind of leads in with. Because at the time, Thor was kind of off on his own. He just came back from Ragnarok, and he's trying to bring back Asgard. And the, that was Matt fractions intro into Thor, which gave him the solo series after Straczynski, which his run is great, too. But, like, I think it was like, one of the last issues was it was Nick Fury coming in with all the heroes, and the queen is just like, you know, I'm your God, blah, blah, blah, and Nick Fury, like, you turn the page and it's like, my God has a camera, and, like, you turn the page again and it's Thor, and it's a full fucking spread of, like, Thor, calm down, lightning. Like a fucking badass. [01:01:23] Speaker A: So good. [01:01:24] Speaker B: One of my all time favorite comments. Just things. Yeah, my God has a hammer. [01:01:29] Speaker A: I also liked that they used it to go, hey, Tony, having nanites and the entire world on a system that runs through your brain is too much, and they use it to kill it off because they end up infecting it with a computer virus, and he gets all sick. So it was a nice, like, hey, let's depower him a little bit, please. [01:01:48] Speaker C: Right? I dig it. [01:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:51] Speaker B: So the comics definitely, or the show definitely veered very much away from the comics. So I guess similar to Dave, your opinion on the whole Superman death in Justice League, like, it wasn't earned just yet. There's so much backstory and just set up in the comics and in business's run. [01:02:09] Speaker C: Right. [01:02:10] Speaker B: That was year three or four into his Avengers run. [01:02:13] Speaker C: Right. [01:02:13] Speaker B: And he was sprinkling in little things here and there, or at least, you know, retconning a little bit like it was a solid setup. And then, yeah, the show wasn't quite there, but I see where they were going with it. For the show, at least. But, you know, once you guys finish, I'll. I'm down to discuss that more. [01:02:30] Speaker A: Sure. [01:02:30] Speaker C: Okay. [01:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a whole different podcast, right? [01:02:35] Speaker C: No, I dig it. [01:02:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:02:36] Speaker C: All right, Shabba, what are you reading? [01:02:39] Speaker B: Are you just busy playing zelda the whole time? [01:02:41] Speaker A: Actually, yes. But also I just finished endurance, which is the Alfred Lane Lansing retelling of Ernest Shackleton's attempt to cross the Antarctic. [01:02:57] Speaker C: Okay. [01:02:57] Speaker A: And 27 men left England heading for the Antarctic, and 27.98 men came back. They got a stowaway in. [01:03:10] Speaker C: I was gonna say, you found. They found. The math is most of a man. [01:03:14] Speaker A: No, they got. They had a stowaway, and then that stowaway wound up getting such bad frostbite that they had to amputate his toast. So they would have said had 28 come back. But that's not. But the whole. Just insanity of it. The bad decisions, the good decisions. Really? What, Shackleton, the cap, the leader of the expedition. Not the captain of the ship, but the leader of the expedition. His claim to being a good leader is that he was decisive. And while he did, like, mull things over, once he made a decision, he stuck with it for as long as it could be stuck with. And if he realized it was a bad decision he wasn't afraid to turn it around and be like, this was not a good idea, we're going somewhere else and change direction. It does lead to the unnecessary death of a puppy and a cat at one point and at some point they eat their dogs. Spoilers. [01:03:59] Speaker B: But by and large, gotta do what you gotta do. [01:04:02] Speaker A: This book is. I mean, this book is written. [01:04:05] Speaker C: They probably smell bad on the outside too. Thank you. [01:04:10] Speaker B: Well played. [01:04:11] Speaker A: Well played. [01:04:11] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:04:12] Speaker A: This book was written both from extensive research from somebody who had done a research book on it beforehand but also with journals and interviews from the actual crew. [01:04:25] Speaker C: Oh, really? [01:04:25] Speaker A: So there's all these excerpts from the journals and it's very, very insightful into. [01:04:30] Speaker C: What was happening with that wasn't this. This was. Was this right around World War one. [01:04:35] Speaker A: They left and were blessed by the king the same day he declared war on the Kaiser. [01:04:40] Speaker C: Okay, that's so crazy. [01:04:41] Speaker A: He was like, have a good ship or have a good trip. Bon voyage. I gotta go declare a war. [01:04:48] Speaker B: But he didn't tell them he was declaring war. [01:04:50] Speaker A: As far as I know, they did not know. [01:04:54] Speaker C: My understanding was that at least somebody knew because I had. I can't remember where I read this but my. I had kind of gotten the impression that somebody on the trip was like. And it might have been Shackelford himself. [01:05:09] Speaker A: Shackleton. [01:05:10] Speaker C: Shackleton. Excuse me. [01:05:11] Speaker A: Rusty Shackelford. [01:05:12] Speaker B: Rusty Shackelford is Dale Gribbles alias. [01:05:15] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. It might have been Shackleton himself. But my impression was that he knew that the war was coming and was like, well, maybe we shouldn't do this. On the other hand, because the war is coming I don't think we have the option of backing out. [01:05:32] Speaker A: I think it was a little of that. I mean, they all knew what was happening. Like, this was. [01:05:37] Speaker B: It wasn't anything. [01:05:37] Speaker A: So they left in August. The start of world War one is the July crisis. [01:05:43] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:44] Speaker A: So things have been happening. Stirrings are happening. But he'd been so desperate to try to get this off the ground that I think if they had decided not to go, it never would have happened. And he was like, this is the last frontier for England. We did not discover the south Pole. The only thing left we can do on this planet that has not been done yet is crossing the Antarctic. And that was his whole thing. He was just, you know, king and country. But I will say I made a terrible mistake when it was all done, I find. So I'm rooting for these guys. [01:06:15] Speaker C: Wait, you or Shackleton? [01:06:17] Speaker A: I did. [01:06:18] Speaker C: Okay. [01:06:18] Speaker A: I made a terrible mistake finishing this book because, I mean, not in finishing this book, but as I finished it, you know, you're rooting for these guys you want so badly for them. And the way it reads, he goes through until they split up. And then he covers about. He covers the guys who stayed on Elephant island, which was 22 of his crew. And he and five other guys go set sail in a lifeboat that has been converted to a sailboat to try to get to South Georgia. And they go through the Drake passage. It's the most dangerous waters on the entire earth. And they get there, and all of these whalers are like, you guys are gods among men, as far as we're concerned. First of all, we thought you were dead. Second of all, you took an open boat across the worst part of the ocean of any ocean, metal. And so, yeah. And so Shackleton is desperate to get them back. But we read all of the stuff about the elephant island to the point where they give up hope. And they're like, we need to start thinking about preparing to get our own ship and try to send people off this island. And then it goes, okay. And then Shackleton gets to the island in, like, two and a half weeks. [01:07:23] Speaker C: That's really fast. [01:07:25] Speaker A: He manages to get away, get from. From Elephant island to South Georgia in excellent time. There's a couple of bad mishaps, but they. They get there okay, and then it takes him, like, six different boats and attempts to try to get back to Elephant island. And he's like, we have to get there. He plays with the chilean government, the english government sends the ship that first went to Antarctica, like, with Captain Scott that he had actually been on. They send it and they're like, fine, take the big old ship. We aren't using this for war. And Shackleton is like, there's no time. My men are dying on an island. And so he charters, like, some metal fishing boat and tries to go in promising Chile that he. Chile. He's not gonna, like, go under any ice. So he finally goes and he rescues them. They're like, come see our fort that we made. And he's like, get on the goddamn boat. [01:08:16] Speaker C: We're leaving. [01:08:17] Speaker A: And they leave a bunch of stuff behind on Elephant island. But, like, it's the first island that any of these, any person has ever set foot on. [01:08:24] Speaker C: It's them. [01:08:25] Speaker A: They're the first people to ever set. [01:08:26] Speaker C: Foot on this island, okay? [01:08:27] Speaker A: And he doesn't care. He's like, get the boat. They take two boats out. They get in the boat, they go back to South Georgia, and then they're done. And then they don't talk at all about what happened afterward. And I read these last, like, seven chapters or so out loud with my dad. My dad was in the room, and it was just so fascinating that I just kept reading out loud. It was really nice. And then my dad goes, what happens when they get back? They just ship them off to war because it's 1916, and I'm like, surely not. Nope, that's exactly what they did. [01:09:01] Speaker B: Oh, shit. [01:09:02] Speaker A: Four of them died sweeping mines. [01:09:04] Speaker C: Wow. [01:09:04] Speaker A: One of them killed himself. And, like, three or four of them got severe enough injuries that they got taken out of the war effort. But every single one of these men, except for the photographer and Johnny Atoz. No. Johnny Atoes, ended up opening, like, a small. He ended up doing a whole bunch of shoe shop. He was not allowed to join the Royal Marines, probably because he was joined toes, the merchant navy and served there, but he ended up volunteering for that. But every single one of them wound up serving the war effort in some capacity. The most useless crew member of the entire thing. He wound up, like, basically establishing the paratroopers for England. [01:09:49] Speaker C: Interesting. Yeah. [01:09:50] Speaker A: So they all went on to do really, like, either. Great. [01:09:52] Speaker C: Clearly he was useless to Shackleton because he was meant to be jumping out of planes. [01:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah, he was a motor expert. So as soon as the boat got stopped, he became, like, the storeroom operator and, like, hated his life. Yeah, but, yeah, the whole. The whole book was just grueling. There were points where I would just be like, I can't. You know, like, you talk about the bad death of Edward Delacroix, the green Mile, how you spent the whole time kind of looking through your fingers. Yeah, it was a lot of that. I'm just like, oh, how, how? And I remember I was reading, like, a part of it while I was doing physical therapy. And my. My physical therapist is looking at me like I'm a crazy man as I'm, like, holding this book further away from my face just to, like, I want to keep looking, but I can't. [01:10:35] Speaker C: I did. [01:10:36] Speaker A: So I just finished endurance. Highly recommended. It was very good. I'm playing breath of the wild, still excessively. And then I had access to the classic systems on the Switch. I was granted access to that because my cousin kindly signed me up as a family member on his profile. And I played through so many games that I've just never gotten a chance to beat. And I finally played Metroid Fusion, which was a Game Boy game, and it turns out it is Metroid four. And it's like a direct sequel to the super Nintendo game of my childhood. [01:11:12] Speaker C: Okay. [01:11:12] Speaker A: I had no idea that's what it was. So very much enjoyed that. And then comic wise, can I, can. [01:11:20] Speaker C: I drop one observation in. So we also have the switch and the access to the. Charlotte has been on a golden eye kick. So Charlotte, to be clear, Charlotte is not a gamer. Like, she's. Let me rephrase that, because that sounds kind of elitist. She was a limited, experienced gamer. [01:11:44] Speaker A: Sure. [01:11:44] Speaker C: Okay. And so, and she doesn't really play much of anything, like, current, because that's just not her get down. [01:11:52] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. [01:11:52] Speaker C: But like, when they released, like, Tony Hawk one and two on the Xbox, the remastered, we got those because that she wanted. That's what, you know, she played that Goldeneye. She's made it all the way through on spy. [01:12:08] Speaker A: Okay. [01:12:08] Speaker C: And now she's playing on secret agent. [01:12:11] Speaker A: Okay. [01:12:11] Speaker C: And she has already said that when she finishes it on secret agent, she's going through on zero, zero seven. [01:12:17] Speaker A: I only played that game on zero, zero seven, and I never beat it because I couldn't find my way out of the statue garden in the graveyard. That's the only reason. I just was like, I've tried this too many times. I'm sick of this. And then I moved on to a different game, and I never beat that game. [01:12:34] Speaker C: Well, Charlotte has beaten it once on spy. She's working her way through on secret agent. She just finished the knife, the stealth level where you. She was struggling with the knife throwing, with aiming it, you know, so she. But she figured out she'd have a lot more success just chopping slappers only. So anyway, continue. Tell me about your reading. [01:12:59] Speaker A: Oh, your comics with comics. I haven't picked up a ton, but I recently grabbed the. Well, I haven't even started actually reading yet. I have a stack of journey into mystery that I'm supposed to be reading, and I was planning picking it up tomorrow, but I have finally actually started reading. [01:13:15] Speaker C: Wait, the Kieran Gillen won? [01:13:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:13:18] Speaker C: Wow. Okay. [01:13:19] Speaker A: So I have. But I picked up and started. Yeah. So good. [01:13:22] Speaker B: It's one of my favorite series ever. [01:13:24] Speaker A: Oh, the kid Loki stuff. [01:13:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:13:28] Speaker A: But I'm starting that hopefully tomorrow. I've been listening to an audio Star wars book when I drive, and I think I'm going to put that on hold because I have a library loan of the graveyard book by Neil Gaiman that I would like to read. [01:13:39] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh, that's so good. [01:13:43] Speaker A: I have been listening to Gaiman interviews for, like, the last month, and he keeps bringing it up, and he brought it up in his masterclass several times. Yeah, it's very, I'm very excited about it, but I know very little about it other than how he came to write this book. [01:13:56] Speaker C: Oh, now I'd like to know that. You don't have to tell me. Just tell me. [01:14:01] Speaker A: Sure. Because we got to wrap this up. [01:14:02] Speaker C: Right. [01:14:03] Speaker A: But I am working my way through the watchmen. Finally. I'm a terrible comic person. [01:14:09] Speaker C: No, I'm just, I would, first of all, I would never say that. [01:14:12] Speaker A: Oh, thank you. It's very kind. [01:14:13] Speaker C: I mean, I mean, to anybody. But I'm just sort of surprised that you hadn't read it before now. [01:14:19] Speaker A: I've never actually finished the whole movie either. [01:14:22] Speaker C: Well, I mean, that I can understand. [01:14:25] Speaker A: It's very heavy. I started watching the motion comic on Max, and it was very good. But after a certain point, I was like, you know what? I want to start reading it. And the version that Brian has, that I have been reading has letters in between each issue from. It's night owl. Perhaps it's like his diary. [01:14:45] Speaker B: Oh, that's right. [01:14:46] Speaker C: They all have that. So even the individual. Like, if you got the individual. Well, sure. How are you gonna animate that? But if you got the original issues, the original issues have that material too. Okay, so. Because that's part of more stories world. Yeah, part of the story, part of the world building. So makes sense. Mm hmm. [01:15:07] Speaker A: And then I think I'm gonna try to get back into turtles again, because that turtles movie was fantastic. [01:15:11] Speaker C: So that out already? [01:15:13] Speaker A: Mm hmm. I saw it on opening day, which I did not expect to do, but my brother and my nephew were in town, and Nate wants to see it, and. Oh, my gosh, it's so good. [01:15:22] Speaker C: Oh, I really loved Indiana Jones and the dial of destiny. [01:15:25] Speaker A: So did I. [01:15:26] Speaker C: Just wanted to throw that out there. I cried at the end. [01:15:28] Speaker A: So did I. [01:15:29] Speaker C: The first time, I, like, I thought it was a little long. Too many chases. And the chases were too long. [01:15:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we talked about that at comic Con. [01:15:37] Speaker C: Right. And. Yeah. And the second time, I did not feel that way. I, like, I thought everything made sense. It felt. Everything felt right. It felt appropriate. So I don't know why I liked it so much more the second time. [01:15:52] Speaker A: Curbed expectations, understanding of how things were. So pacing made a little bit more sense. [01:15:57] Speaker C: Maybe that could be it. [01:15:58] Speaker A: I mean, I just finished a book called the blink of an eye. And it's about editing. It's by the guy. It's by Walter Murch, who wrote. Who directed return to Oz and did a lot of editing on the smell of napalm in the morning. [01:16:11] Speaker C: Apocalypse now. [01:16:12] Speaker A: Apocalypse now. Thank you. And something he points out is that filmmakers, when they finish their movie, they've seen their film hundreds of times. [01:16:21] Speaker C: Right? [01:16:21] Speaker A: And so their film is almost made for people who've seen it several times by that point. And he talks about how when you show it to an audience, the best feedback you'll ever get is three days later. Because in the moment, they're trying to kind of make sense of it all, and they haven't really processed it yet. And when you can get longer term feedback, you know, they said there was a movie he made where they put a little sign out front with a man sitting at a table, which was like, call us in a few days to tell us what you thought of the movie. Because those interchanges right at the moment aren't always as reliable as you'd want them to be. And sometimes people will latch onto one thing that they think they didn't like, but that's not really the problem. And we've seen that. We've seen that with our podcast where the day of we go, oh, my God, I love this movie. This, this, this, and this. That was a little weird, but whatever. And then a few weeks later, we're like, you know. [01:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Or. [01:17:13] Speaker A: Or even being like, actually, that's not bothering me anymore. [01:17:17] Speaker C: Right. [01:17:17] Speaker A: You know, and things like that. And I feel like this movie really felt like it was a movie that was watched 100 times, and I feel the same way about Crystal Skull. I have enjoyed crystal skull more every single time I viewed it. [01:17:30] Speaker B: I did, too. [01:17:31] Speaker C: There are a lot of things I liked about it. [01:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:17:33] Speaker C: I still don't know how I feel about Mutt, but clearly, that was a problem in me. [01:17:38] Speaker A: I mean, arguably, it is frustrating, but I'll take mutt every day of the week over Kate capture. [01:17:45] Speaker C: Yeah. By the way, one thing, because Nate has now seen dial of destiny multiple times. [01:17:52] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:17:52] Speaker C: Yes. And I don't know if you guys noticed this. I didn't notice it until the second time I saw it, but. Okay, so, at the beginning, when he takes the magnet off the fridge and puts it directly over Marian's picture. [01:18:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:07] Speaker C: Okay. Did you catch it at the end, when she's putting stuff groceries in the freezer, he looks down, sees that the magnet is over Marian's picture, takes the magnet down, puts it in his pocket. [01:18:19] Speaker A: No. [01:18:20] Speaker C: So that her picture is not covered when she. When she closes the bridge. [01:18:25] Speaker A: That's funny. [01:18:26] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:18:26] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome. [01:18:27] Speaker C: I thought that was. I like that. [01:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, speaking to the, you know, the points before, like, I typically like to watch movies twice before I really, like, give a full opinion on them just because. Yeah, it takes a couple days. And then, you know, once that first initial viewing is done, it's like, okay, cool. Let me just sit and enjoy this and see if I do enjoy this on the second viewing. [01:18:48] Speaker A: So I also have noticed that the audience you're in matters a lot. Not just, like, the crowd, but, like, when I watched Captain Marvel for, like, the third time with my sisters and my mom, like, by the end of that movie, I was like, oh, I totally get it. This is actually really fun. Like, I still have a couple of problems here and there, but they aren't screaming at me anymore. [01:19:11] Speaker C: Right. [01:19:11] Speaker A: And, you know, maybe that's because certain films that have come out afterwards, I've been like, well, I thought that that's where that was a lower point, but apparently it's not. But honestly, like, I feel like I enjoyed that movie so much more. It was like, the first time I watched in game, and there were. There was, like, five women behind us. And when that moment of, we're gonna run the gauntlet, if you will. Yeah, I see all the women. There was a girl behind us who was like, fuck that girl power. And I was like, yeah, this is awesome. Like, it was really cool because it was cool to hear that. Feel that. [01:19:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:19:46] Speaker A: And I feel like if you went to indiana Jones with a bunch of grumpy old men who were like, this isn't my Indiana Jones. It was. You were bound to be. It was bound to color your experience. [01:19:55] Speaker C: There were definitely a lot of old white dudes in my first showing, and I pretty much ignored them. I have no idea what their response was. I wasn't because I didn't care, because that movie was all about me. [01:20:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:07] Speaker C: It's funny that you guys both mentioned seeing a movie multiple times before you make your judgment, because I will tell you for free that I knew that Zack Snyder's Justice League was a steaming pile of shit the first time I saw it. [01:20:19] Speaker B: We still need to have that podcast. [01:20:20] Speaker C: But that's another pod. But that's another podcast. I still got my notes on it if you ever want to do it. [01:20:25] Speaker B: I feel like we need to. [01:20:29] Speaker A: It's bad enough that we recorded an entire episode complaining about Venom and then didn't release it. But we made you watch the entire Snyder cut and didn't even record it. [01:20:39] Speaker C: Yeah, believe me, that fact has not been lost on me. And I think I've mentioned that to you before too, douchebag. [01:20:47] Speaker A: All right, everybody, for those of you listening at home who've managed to make it through all two and a half hours of this, if you want us to record and give our thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League and the future of the DC universe, leave us a comment and, you know, let us know if that's something you're interested in. Shoot us a message on Instagram or any of those sorts of things. With that, I think we can close this bad boy out. [01:21:16] Speaker C: Sounds good to me. [01:21:17] Speaker B: So that was blue Beetle? [01:21:20] Speaker A: That was blue beetle and everything we're listening to? [01:21:22] Speaker C: Yep. [01:21:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And reading and watching. [01:21:25] Speaker C: And watching. And blue beetle hits theaters August 18. [01:21:29] Speaker A: August 18. This will be out. [01:21:30] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. [01:21:31] Speaker A: Give this a listen before you go in. Give this a listen after you go in. Listen to this quietly while you're watching the film. Don't do that. Don't do that. That's. [01:21:38] Speaker C: That would be. [01:21:39] Speaker A: Ruin your experience and those around you. Be nice in the theaters and, uh, you know, eat your green vegetables. Bye, everybody. [01:21:51] Speaker C: Bye bye. [01:21:52] Speaker B: Later. [01:22:21] Speaker C: No, actually, I was just trying to give you a clean spot for the attic. [01:22:27] Speaker A: Brian, clap a few times. [01:22:28] Speaker C: Clap, clap. [01:22:29] Speaker B: Way ahead of you. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap. [01:22:36] Speaker A: There she was, right in front of me. Clap, clap, clap. It's like a Rorschach knob. Went to the club, there she was, hot. Clap, clap, clap, clap. Lots of cocaine left club.