Possum in Peril ep 4

Possum and Peril are back from being ill with another sick-ass episode.
We’re back on the Tom King War Crimes Beat on Danger Street; international and infernal exploitation in Damn Them All; head-banging and tear-jerking in the work of Daniel Warren Johnson; inverting the imperial narrative, whose stories we tell and who tells them in 20th Century Men; and how they can’t kill the healers we choose to be in the face of a bleak world in Dr. Strange: Fall Sunrise

Starring:

-Danger Street #1-3

-Damn Them All #5

-Extremity volume 1-2

-20th Century Men #6

-Dr. Strange: Fall Sunrise #4
Featuring appearances by Saga, Monstress, Hellblazer, It’s Lonely At The Center Of The Earth, Murder Falcon, and more

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Chapters

• 0:00 intro
• 10:40 talking comics
• 1:14:00 in conclusion

Transcript

 . Basically, we come here every single week. My name is Peril and I'm possum. Oh, this is Posse. You can say your name. I just didn't mean to interrupt you. We. Basically we work at a comic book store and we have a lot of things to say about comics and we read a lot. We're into a lot of the same things.

So we decided to start talking about the comics and literary comic book world every week. Mm-hmm.  live on stream. I take the audio and I turn it into a podcast. 

, so we read books all week and we just kind of talk about the books that we've read, and at some point I would love to get a suggestion from someone about, like a book we should read and like, you know, have a gay little book club going. That'd be kind of fun. Absolutely. 

 Do you wanna start, or I can also, I was just gonna say what we're gonna talk about today. Absolutely. We're gonna talk about. Extremity cuz this is, this isn't a new book. This is just something that I read this week kind of in preparation for assigning at the store. So we're really, I actually already have a signed copy by Oh, this side.

Okay. By Daniel Warren Johnson. Daniel Warren Johnson. We'll have him in the store on March 1st. We're all really excited. We ordered so many books.

He's dropping, , do a power bomb trade. , number one or the complete series. I actually don't know. , complete series. Complete series. Cause it's just gonna be a, it was just a eight issue. Seven, seven or eight issue. Mini-series. I can't remember how long. Yeah I bought, I think all of the single issues of that one didn't read any of them.

Yep.  do be like that sometimes, but I'm really excited to read the Trade . I look, I mean, I just love Dan. Anyways, we're gonna talk about it. We're talking about Daniel Warren, Johnson and Extremity. Mm-hmm.  and other things. We're gonna talk about Dr. Strange Fall, sunrise, which we've talked about before. I think we talked about it when the very first one came out.

It's written and Art by Tra Moore, who we're both really big fans of mm-hmm. . So we're gonna talk about that series concluded this week. Yeah. And we'll talk about it more, but in masterful form. And just a quick shout out to Heather Moore his wife who does the, the color work on his book since Oh, right.

Heather Moore does the colors. Yeah. Since, , since the New World, I think, , the one that, , I told you to read way back months ago. I love that one. It's so good. It's so cute. 

, Just cuz there is so much ground to cover. Same with, 20th Century Men. Number six, actually, , literally the best book on the stands, , that's not Monstrous. Monstrous is the best long running series on the stands. And 20th Century Men is the best menu series on the stands. Dennis Camp and, , Morian are just, you know, doing kick flips over everybody else and making it look effortless.

We'll talk about that Dr. Strange, which we already said, and damn them all by Sea Spurrier and Charlie Adler. I know I've made this joke before, but they finally released Charlie Adler from the walking deadlines and now he can do cool things like damn them all, such as dykes with hammers and 



ooh, and I'll probably end up talking about X-Men . Ooh, yes. I have not gotten through the X-Men for this week. That came out yesterday. There's a lot of them. Mm-hmm. . And one of them is all about Betsy Braddock and her lesbian relationship with Rachel Summers. And I'm very excited about it. And I wanna sit down and really read it and like, take notes and like, but it did come out yesterday, but we are still knee deep in the sinister sins of sinister sort of storyline right now,

So I got things to talk about for that too. , and those are the things I think we're gonna be talking about, right? The, the only other thing is we're gonna follow up the Tom King conver Tom King conversation from last week. Cause I caught up on Danger Street. Finally, I read the first three issues at Danger Street.

Did you bring it? I sadly forgot to bring Danger Street. But the thing about Danger Street, if y'all listened to the last one, is I talked about Tom King's who definitely did some war crimes in Afghanistan as part of the CIA in 2004. And now he, like compulsively writes about war crimes. We're back at it again, boys.

We missed it with love Everlasting . He didn't talk about war crimes, but now we're gonna talk about Dead Kids . So yeah, I'm learning a lot about Tom King lately, so I'm excited to hear what you have to say about this book. It's, it's a trip. It's, it's, it's a very weird, anyway, anyway, we'll save that for the, we'll save that for the conversation.

All right, let's see here. . If I was gonna read one comic book series, what should it be? Asks? Fire Bending Ninja. Okay. Yeah. Do we wanna give individual answers? Cause I feel like it looks like Tai's saying saga.

Okay. And I echo that. Obviously saga's one of my favorite series ever. I'm usually really up to date to it even though I haven't read the latest issue that came out yesterday. It is a book that if you're not much of a graphic novel reader, it seems to have crossed over, like past the comic book world.

And a lot of people who aren't into comics end up finding that one anyways and fall in love with it. It's, it's a lot of people's like starting point into, like getting into comics or getting back into comics. It's written by Brian K. Vaughn, art by Fiona Staples and. , it's has sort of like a Star Wars kind of thing about it, where it's about kind of a huge inter galactic war or really focusing on this one family who is who, who kind of becomes like a image of like, of like dissent an image of rebellion because they're a very peculiar type of family unit within that world.

So yeah, a very Romeo and Juliet, like two houses alike in, in indignity, but like the two warring races instead of two houses. Yeah. I can't take, I can't recommend it enough. It's, it's amazing. The art's amazing. The storyline's amazing. The characters are amazing. It just, it draws you in. So if you're gonna read one comic book, read saga, I'd say, what?

What do you think? I saga's not my answer, but I do wanna say saga bangs. Saga's really good. I think my answer for that one is honestly gonna be monstrous. I, I think monstrous is the best like, ongoing series on the stands right now, but it comes out slowly enough that you can catch up. I'm, I'm gonna come back to that, that comment about it's lonely at the center of the earth.

Cause we, we will talk about that in a second chat. But yeah, monstrous is a really, really excellent dark fantasy horror book that's, I've got everything. It's, it's, it's got women who are furries committing work crimes. It's got giant . It's got a lot of lesbian sex bodies being pulled apart, you know, all of my particular interests, mm-hmm.

you know, I, I support women's rights and women's wrongs. Yeah, there's a lot of women's wrongs in that one. There's a lot of women's wrongs in that. Yeah, it's, it's pulling a lot from a lot of different sources. There's like a little bit of cyberpunk in there. There's a little bit of steam punk in there.

There's a lot of berserk in there. . There's some furry stuff in there. There's some cosmic horror in there. Something for everyone. There's something for everyone and everything for me. So

Yeah, you can absolutely recommend that. Oh, rain. Oh, I actually haven't read rain yet, but I ha I literally have all the issues and Yeah. They talk about rain a lot at Lonely, lonely at the Center of the Earth, which we both read. We both read. I cried so much about Lonely at the Center of the Earth like that, that drove a truck right there.

Yeah. I bought that book for other people and gave it to them. It's, it's a stunning, stunning book. I think if actually a good place to start with a lot of graphic novels is actually autobiographies. Mm-hmm.  Lonely at The Center of the Earth is an autobiography. I think that's a really fascinating place to start.

And it's, I, I think it's my favorite autobiography. Like it's doing so many experimental things with the format. Like I, not to, I, I guess this is the one small spoiler I get. I'll, I'll, I'll give, but like that bit where she just starts the whole fucking thing over in the middle of it. Yeah.  or like, she's just like, well I guess I'm doing a different book now.

Like, this is gonna become a whole different thing than I initially thought my life was gonna go. So I'm just like restarting it. And they have like the, the, the cover and the the, the credits page like in the middle of the book again. . Yeah. It's like being inside of her brain reading that book, which I think is something that's really special about comics and graphic novels.

Mm-hmm. . It really is good at that. 

Huh? Okay. Yeah. I wish they're, they're suggesting order of the stick. Order of the stick. Okay, well let's write that down. Alright, we'll check it out. We, I don't have anything to write, whatever. We're recording it. So  It is true. And I'll be editing this audio a lot, so Yeah, we'll check it out. We'll definitely check it out.

 Yeah, please try Saga and let us know what you think. Saga is a lot of fun. I'm very, very into it. So  and most people are.

Honestly, I think it's one of the top selling comics of all time. It is one of the top selling comics next to Walking Dead. Yeah. And it's way better than Walking Dead. It's way better. Sorry. The, I I had to put on my talking shit about the Walking Dead hat for a second. . As somebody, as somebody who has actually like read a substantial amount of it that'd be a cool hat.

I talked shit about the Walking Dead and all I got was a wasted 18 years of comics on the . Sorry, I'm being a bitch. It's not that bad. It's hard. I kind of wanna watch this show a little bit for Norman Ritas. Oh yeah. Norman Ritas because I'm playing Death Stranding right now. Mm-hmm. . And I'm just like, who is this person?

I need to see what they're about on Death Stranding, I mean on Walking Dead a little. He sadly has no oily fetus in the Walking Dead. No oily fetus. No oily fetus in the walking dead. Nor does nevermind, nor does he have any daddy as s m r with Mads Nicholson, which would've made me watch The Walking Dead.

I'll fucking tell you, I could use some of that Dad's Dickson, but that's not the point. Don't care. . I'm putting on a lot of things. We're thirsting, we're a thirsting . Who doesn't thirst for that man? The pink sweatshirt and the vodka and the cigarette during the Star Wars press junket when he is just like smoking a cigarette and drinking vodka out of the bottle in his little pink hoodie in his sunglasses.

like, we love a man who looks like he got pickled and whiskey

This is a story for another day, but I'm so sad that I, the, the first and only time that I've seen Star Wars Rogue One was in jail and they turned it on the TV at about the point where Dad Dickson died. Aw. So I didn't even, I didn't even get to see Mads Nicholson in jail. And really that was like, That's, that was not the worst part of being, I watched when I was in jail, I watched Breaking Bad

Dude. They just said Breaking Bad. They breaking bad on like, at lunch. And like people would see him like selling meth or whatever and be like, you can't sell meth for that much . Like, they would like critique his meth selling methods. . Like, I was like, damn, I'm here.  .. And maybe let's start diving into some of the books.

Yeah. It'd be good to maybe talk about the comics in like 20 minutes in first, I think. I think we could talk about our bizarre little lives before we talk about books. Yeah. No, I think it's cute. We got, we got We need bits. We need bits. We need lore. We need lore, , deep lore. ,  where should we begin? Do you wanna hit with extremity? Sure. Cool. I, I have not read extremity yet, so I'm really cur I've read very little of Daniel Warren Johnson.

I love his art, but I am so curious to hear your thoughts. Anybody read this one extremity? I had a blast with this one. There is a quote on the back that is like, basically  really sums it up. It says,  Where the beauty and imagination of Studio Ghibli meets the in intensity of Mad Max . Oh, hell yeah.

It's very, it's, it's got like a very large, sweeping, beautiful sort of landscape that feels very studio ji's, feels very naca of the Valley of the Wind, which is actually, if you look at top of my Tomma Finland book, you'll see I got NACA of the Valley of the Wind hard covers.  . That's where I keep that and it's, it's about a family and I, it definitely follows like a young girl.

There is, it is written by Daniel Warrens Johnson, and if you've read anything by Daniel Warren Johnson, you will know that he is ultimate rock and roll, like nonstop rock and roll. And you see it in the art. It's just so metal and brutal and like, It captures like kind of a, a 1980s, like grungy, cyberpunk kind of, you know, feeling.

And Motif Extremity is definitely a book about pain. Like a lot of, there's a lot of pain. There's a lot of people getting their limbs ripped off. It, it starts as like this beautiful, I mean, page one at least starts like this beautiful family and this girl's really, really talented and she's an artist and it, it, it shows her like drawing and then you turn the page and like, and then the aliens showed up and, and  and like, it's just a complete war zone after that a lot of the humans are like at war with each other at this point, and the entire landscape of the planet has changed.

And there's floating islands in the sky and there's these. , it's a story about kind of nonstop, unrelenting revenge. Mm-hmm.  And the people who kind of have to suffer through it. It's, it, it follows, follows his family. And the, the patriarch of the family is very mad that his artist's daughter got her arm locked off.

Which as you learned later, was kind of like part of a larger revenge plot. And it's like people getting back at, people forgetting back at people. And it always comes back around to like, someone having to lose an eye now, someone having to lose an arm now. And it's, it's a heavy read. It's kind of a heavy read and I can't look away.

It's fascinating  and it's, it's beautiful and it's scary and it's raw and through all the pain and violence, there's clearly like so much love. It's very much a story about ending the cycle and having like a lot of those hard decisions. , but like on the battlefield mm-hmm.  It, it's, it also gives me berserk.

It feels, I feel a lot of anime inspirations throughout this book. Yeah. Daniel Warren Johnson's art, like very clearly understands like, the specific kind of like motion that is very, like, that that is like a little more na like natural. I, I don't know what quite the right word is, to like manga artists where like a lot of manga artists just have a better sense of like visceral motion.

Yeah. Than a lot of like American comics artists tend to do. But Daniel Warren Johnson absolutely has that. Daniel Warren Johnson Tread Moore look at those colors too. Colors are spectacular. That's just one of the like battlefield scenes, lot of birds. And I do like birds, which you can tell from all my tattoos.

Mm-hmm.

 I am really, really excited to meet Dana Warren Johnson and. Get some more books signed. He's got a book coming out. It's called Do a Power Bomb. It's about wrestlers and they are gonna do a power bomb. I don't know, I gotta read it. . I'm, yeah, I'm really, really excited. I've also read a lot of Murder Falcon which is about just the power of rock and roll and friendship and saving the world.

Oh, and I read Beta Ray Bill. Oh yeah. Beta Cook Bill. Yeah. Beta Ray, bill . Sorry. I dunno what I believe that came out in 2021. 2021 Sons, right? I, yeah. Cuz Donnie Kates was on Thor, I wanna say at the time. Yeah. I think it came out in 2021. Beta Ray Bill is kind of a, a character in the Thor universe who earned the hammer.

Mm-hmm. . And he became, what do you, what do you call it when you get the hammer? You're, you're wor worthy. You're worthy. Worthy. Yeah. So he, he was worthy. And his story is, I, and I didn't know anything about Beta Ray, bill and I didn't know anything about Daniel Warren Johnson. And I just kinda read this beta ray bill because he's such a weird looking guy.

He looks like a strange horse. Yeah. But Thor like if you took the, the mouth of a horse and like pulled it back. Yeah. In a weird way. It's, he's hard to look at, but he's like this hero. And throughout the, I guess when he like grabs the hammer, he takes, he's able to like take form of like his original form, which he thinks is beautiful and he's struggling with losing cuz he, he doesn't lose his worth, but he loses the hammer, like Thor has to take the hammer back or something.

Mm-hmm. . And it's him struggling with his body and it's him struggling with his image and, and the way that people relate to him and like the way that it affects his sex life and the way that it affects his interpersonal relationships. And he misses his body and he's trying to accept who he is and he hasn't like, traveled to hell and like,  again, a cool soul word about it.

It's such a good book. It's such a good book. I'm always telling possum to read it. Yeah. I def I gotta read it before Daniel Warren Johnson comes in. So maybe, yeah, maybe on Sunday. I'll, I'll finally grab it from my stack at the store. Give it a flip through. I suggest it. I honestly, I suggest anything by Daniel Warren Johnson.

It's just maximum rock and roll and you can't, you really can't go wrong when you pick up one of his books. Mm-hmm. , the man knows how to party it seems like. Yeah. If that party is kind of drunk and blood thirsty and that's my favorite kind party. Yeah. And that's, that's what a party is. I don't know why I just gave you the definition, , like, if it doesn't have, like, if it doesn't have bloodshed, like, then it, it, at least better have Molly and or crime.

But blood, she's really the top of the list for me. I'm, I'm a blood girl. It's important. , I, you're learning a lot today. I do believe in the redemptive power of violence. . I will not explain that. It makes sense. Oh, good. Good. No, I'm so glad. I'm so glad it tracks. Alright. We could, we could hop onto Dr.

Strange or I could just talk about Tom King in the, in the CIA for Danger Street. I just talked a lot. It's your turn. Okay. Let's talk about Motherfucking Danger Street. Okay, so the fill people in who were not here last time thing about our man, Tom King, and I use our man very loosely here. Tom King was in the CIA in 2004 and like served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I don't mean like served in a positive way. I mean in a, he was he serving cunt? He was not serving cunt in.

Excuse you. I'm a veteran. I served content Afghani Afghanistan. Oh, wow. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be thinking about that for a really long time. Anyway, so he de he like, def, okay, so here's the thing. Like, I don't, I don't believe writing something in a story means you did the thing. Because again, if that was true, I would be fucked.

But like, as somebody who writes a lot of pretty horrible things as like a weird horror writer, so I, I don't think fiction equals reality here. However, first of all, if you were in Afghanistan in 2004 as part of the cia, you definitely did some war crimes. And then also if you've read Tom King books, of which I have read too many he, he like compulsively talks about this, like strange adventures is all about Adam Strange committing war crimes.

Like it's in Mr. Miracle. I, I like that one. But it is still like, kind of about war Mr. Miracle committing war crimes. It comes up in sheriff of Baghdad, which is the one non superhero thing he's done that. Is also very bluntly about war crimes. Like it comes up in his work time and time and time and time again.

Like of these people who are like either directly soldiers or like, or soldier adjacent doing something really horrible and reckoning with all this like horrible guilt or at least witnessing something, it comes up again and again and again and it gets weird. And so we read Love Everlasting, this really wonderful new book he put out with Elsa Charter.

And I went on this whole rant about how it was the one book of his that does not feature war crimes. Well, we're back baby, we're back on the Tom King War Crime Beat with Danger Street. So it's set in the DC universe, it's set in the DC universe. All the, all Corin. And I figured this out at the store. All the, the characters that are in it, all the main characters are all people who showed up in like, I can't remember what they're called.

I, I think it was like DC first issues or whatever. They were, they were, they were these separate one-off. Storylines. A couple of characters in there. Got future stories. I think the Green Team and warlord got spinoff series from that, but they were all characters that showed up in just these like one shot issues.

It's kind of kind of like a, what do you call it, the suicide squad, how it's, it's a lot of like no name characters that never really got their shot. Exactly. Like kind of smashed into Yeah. Smash this book smashed into this book in very weird ways too. Cuz you get, like Dr. Fate is narrating the, or Dr.

Fate's helmet is narrating this, the helmet of Nabu is narrating this. Who's Senti? Who's sentient, yeah. Okay. Is narrating all of this and he's framing it like a storybook thing. Like he refers to the characters as like ogres or knights or princesses or princes. So you get a, a lot of disparate characters.

You get the creeper who here is recast as basically a right wing radio host to an a very eerie degree like,  as, as somebody who like has studied like right wing bullshit for some time. They, Tom King is very clearly pulling on what's his fucking face from Fox News? Like the, the, the really famous one right now.

Oh, what's his name? That guy, the guy who's obsessed with it. The m and ms. The guy who was obsessed with the M mss. Yeah. The guy who was obsessed. The m are too sexy. No, no, no. He was sad that the m and ms aren't as fuckable anymore. Oh. He wants to fuck the m and ms. He wants to fuck the m and ms. Yeah. The guy who wants to fuck the m and ms, he's clearly pulling from the guy who wants to fuck the m and m.

So he is, he's recast my boy the creeper as a right-wing radio host and it's really sad. Tucker, Carls Tucker Carlson. That's a stupid name. Yeah. Fucker Carlson. There we go. It was Fucker Carlson. So recast him is like basically fucker Carlson, like on the downswing. And then you also get like the dingbats of Danger Street who are just these like.

Local kid, like local working class kids who don't seem to really have any parents who just like hang out. There's a, a character named Lady Cop and she's referred to as Lady Cop in the book and she's like, stop fucking calling me Lady Cop. And they're like, no,   you get Warlord who is basically like, looks like Green Arrow.

He looks like Green Arrow of Green Arrow was doing some like cosplay in at the center of the earth. Like he's got this whole like loincloth cone in the barbarian thing, but he looks like Oliver Queen. He got the original Starman and Starman when Starman was blue. Not Starman, when Starman had like that cool fucking cane and whatever.

Yeah, like OG Starman you get the green team, which are these like group of billionaire kids who just have obscene amounts of money. And then I think, yeah, Atlas the great, what is this team tasked with? Okay, so, so there's disparate stories here. And basically what ends up happening is two things. Starman, metamorph and warlord, Starman, Metamorpho and Warlord are like, we're gonna get into the Justice League.

We stole this helmet, or We didn't steal this helmet. We got this helmet from the green team. These billionaire kids basically sold them the helmet, and then they're trying to get into the Justice League, right? So they're like, we're going to call, they're trying to buy their way into the Justice League.

They're trying to buy, they basically, okay, so they got the helmet of Nabu, so that what they could do is they were gonna call Dark Side down, and then they were gonna trap him in this helmet. It is a dip shit plan. Intentional, okay?  is an intentionally terrible plan. However, they accidentally bring down Atlas who holds the sky up, right?

Basically. And they, they kill Atlas because they, they like basically have like a PTs d flashback and like kill at. But then during that, they freak one of the starman freaks the fuck out and is like having a whole episode and he shoots an energy beam off in a direction, kills one of the kids from the ding batts of Danger Street, just fucking merks this kid first issue.

Second issue has warlord and starman like hold up in a hotel and star man's like, I feel so terrible. I killed this child on accident. And fucking warlord is like, we are soldiers, man. We're brothers in arms. Like, I ain't gonna let you go down, man. Oh no. Like, does he kill a child in solidarity or something?

warlord hasn't killed a child directly yet, but it's, they're, and, and the third issue, they're like talking to the green, the, the, the green team, the billionaire kids about trying to revive the dead kid. But like, they definitely murked a dead kid and or they definitely murked a kid. And fucking war Lord was definitely doing the whole like, we're brothers in arms.

I'll never let you go down. Like I, we'll we'll cover this up. Basically we'll figure this out. Okay. So they're trying to cover up killing a kid. Atlas is dead now. So like dark side and high father are like, well fuck, one of the original gods is dead. Like the sky is literally falling. We need to figure out who, who can hold the world up.

You find out that the green team, what, what the way the green team relates to all this and they tie everything together is they're basically like engineering a culture war intentionally. Like they're, they're engineering a left right wing culture war. That sounds like a, a billionaire move. Yeah. Cuz like there's this group called the Outsiders not Batman in the outsiders.

Like the og og not that billionaire. Yeah, not that billionaire. . Who are basically, you find out later that they're attempting to kill the, the green team kids. But you don't know that. And the news doesn't know that. And so one of the. . What if the outsiders like blows up a yacht that these green team kids are supposed to be on and kills like 37 billionaires?

It's extremely based. Blow up all yachts now. Absolutely. If I don't see them as chum in the water, I don't wanna fucking see it. . So yeah, kills, kills like 37 of these billionaires. Creeper guy ends up like spinning this as like a whole, like, oh my God, there's this, this terrorist group out to get us out to get hardworking Americans.

The billionaires. So like the creeper guy is now working for, as a right-wing radio host for the green team. The green team is intentionally trying to, it's not totally clear why they're doing this exactly other than to profit, but they're like, they got their hands in. Yeah. They've also got their hands in warlord.

They're starting to get their hands in warlord. Not like, Not like this, but Oh, not like that. Yes. Thanks for clarifying . But these kids are like trying to engineer a culture war so that they can profit off of it because they don't fucking believe in anything because they're billionaires. They believe in nothing.

Like their hands are, they're related to, like, they're the, they're the overriding like connective tissue to basically every one of these disparate characters basically. And their entire shit is, yeah, they're just trying to engineer this so that they can profit from it. Like, cuz they know like that there's not profit to be made in ideology, in of, in, of itself.

Like there's only profit to be made in the conflict of ideology. Like, and so this sounds so Tom King. It's extremely Tom King. And as something of like a continuity slu myself in that way, that like, you know, there's like collections where it's like they have this, like every character in the DC universe and here's their biographies.

Like they, they have books like that. Right. And I read one of those things when I was in sixth grade cover to cover. So like, , the amount of like absolutely goddamn useless. Like DC Comic Explorer that I have locked in my head now,  as a result of that. I read a bunch of the Marvel ones too, but I, not to quite, to the degree that I, yeah, it's a whole section of your brain.

It's a whole section of my brain. Now. I can't unwillingly, I can't form like core use. I can't like form useful memories. I can only think about like women, the bit and extreme amounts of like art history, lore, , like, these are the only things I can keep in my smooth brain at all time. I'm so happy you're here.

Oh, thank God, . That's why we keep you around . Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yay. So, yeah, I, I, I don't feel like I did a super good job experience. How many how many danger shoots are there now? There's three and there's gonna be 12 because Tom King really loves doing that 12 issue mini-series. Are you gonna keep reading it?

I'm gonna keep reading it. Because of the, here, here's the thing about Tom King is that despite everything. I'm fascinated by his artistic choices. And some of those are annoying as fuck. The man like absolutely has like a come stained copy of Watchman somewhere. He is absolutely beaten off on that book.

Like nobody's business. He loves that 12 panel grid. Like it's, it's ridiculous. , like he's obsessed with it. However, he's good at using it. He like, he's good at using the 12 panel grid. He's one of the, like, sometimes it's very annoying, like you see that sometimes in his Batman run, like, but other times he's really, really good at it.

Like the end of issue three of Danger Street just has like the, the, the visuals are showing all of the characters, like where they ended up at the end of, end of the, the chapter, whatever. But the overlying text is just lady cop and someone else in the cop's office like having an argument about printer toner.

And it's really funny,  like, it, it, it doesn't sound funny, but like, it, it actually is like he's good at that kind of pacing thing. He makes very interesting, like formal, like he works with artists who he's very in sync with, like particularly Mitch ards.  and they make very interesting formalistic choices together.

And Tom King takes bold fucking swings again, for better and for worse. But like, so I'm, I'm continually fascinated by him as a writer and what he's trying to do. So like, I will definitely keep reading, like even if like, look, I read All of Heroes in Crisis and that was dog shit. I, that Heroes In Crisis was actual dog shit.

It was true. I I just, I love how how much of a critique you have of Tom King . It, it's so authentic because you've read seemingly everything. . I've read a lot of it. I, I not everything but close. It's very close . Like, I, I've learned so much the, that the only Tom King I've read, I believe is Love Everlasting.

That's because you were like, let's read this. And I was like, okay. . And I like your taste, so, Aw, thank you. And. Yeah, it's not really like a lot of the ways that you describe it, it's not like it's about a woman and her experience, like getting caught up in like some kind of romantic novel multiverse.

Mm-hmm. . And she's not committing war crimes and like , no, no war crimes in sight. He even writes a war section and there's no war crimes. Yeah. Besides just the war. Crime of war generally. Yeah. , but like it's it in itself. Yeah. But no, but no veiled references to Abu grave. Actually no, I don't think he's made a veiled reference to Abu grave yet, but yeah.

Any second Now, I guess, and honestly probably if, if, if he ever like dropped that he was at Abu grave, I would not be shocked. But that man could confess any number of war crimes and I would not be shocked. Which actually is maybe not a bad way to spin off into 20th century men with a brief bit about how he wrote this book called Sheriff of Baghdad.

Okay. Tom King.  and it is basically from the point of view of a few different people. One of them is an American operative in the CIA in 2004, Afghanistan. It, it, it reads a little bit like, okay, Tom. But the other character in here, like that's that's really important is, I can't remember if she's Iranian or Afghani cause it's been a long time since I've read it.

And I really, I enjoyed her as a character. I enjoyed her perspective, but it definitely was still written from a very like, guy who was formerly in the fucking military kind of perspective. Yeah. And the reason I'm going to twist that around to 20th century men is cause 20th century men could very easily be the same thing.

It could very easily be that. Do, do we have it? We do have it. And the thing, I will show it in just a sec. I wanna make sure I'm getting a certain name correct. I'll just show it. This is AYA, sorry. Aya Bik is cover. He's a letterer. He's lettered so many, so many, so many books. I I love the, the text on the, on the front of this.

Yeah. He designed all this text for it. Like he's the letter for so many books. And he did the art for this too. It's like ribbon of blood flowing through it. Yeah. The Rhythm of Blood. And this version has a short story on the back which is really cute. And the thing that's kind of so crucial about this cover and what's gonna be kind of crucial about the whole book is, I'm gonna quote Rakesh here.

I'm gonna paraphrase Rakesh here, who's a really good comic writer on Twitter. They write a lot of essays about comics. The thing about 20th century men is what it does is it kind of wears the skin of like 20th century, like western superhero comic storytelling. And it wears that skin so that it can eviscerate the genre and like the inherent whiteness of the project from the inside out.

Hmm. And like, cuz that's really what this story is doing. And if you look at the three covers to 20th century men, number six, the first two are focused on the American operative who has just gone completely bug fuck insane at this point. Like he's just killing anybody in his path like it up to and including other American soldiers.

Like Yeah, I saw those covers. They're gruesome. They're really gruesome. But then you get this cover and this is really what it is. Like,  . Yeah, it is specifically about like this, the Afghani people coming to Afghanistan like way like thousands of years ago.

Like that's how the book opens is with that story about the Afghani people coming to Afghanistan like thousands of years ago. Let me see, just, I just wanna for the beginning of book six, at the beginning of book six.  Yeah. Uhhuh it wasn't, it wasn't, it was before Mohamed, before the West and the time when we were still wanderers.

It was Ahmad Khan Baba leading us through drought and famine and bandits and war. It was the miracle of Ahmad, Kahn Baba, leading us to the bowl in the mountains and daring to declare against all history, in all tradition, a revolution in the way of life and forever. And in that moment after, oh, sorry.

He like, comes there, tells them this is where we're going to live, and then he immediately dies. And this is a big cultural story. So yeah, so, because the thing about 20th century men is like all, all so many of the covers make it appear like it's about the Russian operative

I'm gonna backpedal a tiny bit just for people who haven't read this before. This book takes place during the joint, like United States and, and Soviet like invasions of Afghanistan. Like when the Soviet Union and the United States were fucking around in Afghanistan trying to steal autonomy from like the Afghan the Af Afghani people and trying to like, take them for either imperial power

And so the book like makes you think it's focusing on this Russian operative named Peter or P Oder who was basically like taken from his family by the state as a young child cuz he had just this genius level intellect. He was put into this like mecca suit that looks like a giant like gorilla robot thing.

And he's now kind of like the Russian super soldier. The American super soldier is this like beefed out terrifying mother? Actually, I'll just show you images of them fighting. In this issue. Is this like absolutely beefed out cybernetic motherfucker who was pulled out for Afghanistan or not Afghanistan was pulled out during the Vietnam War.

He pretty much immediately went awol and started making sculptures out of like ripped up people's limbs and shit. Like, yeah, that's like on the covers of the other book is like these bizarre, fucked up sculptures of human. Exactly. And it's, and, and it's, the book makes you kind of like, it starts off leading you to think it's about these men and that it particularly cares what these men fucking think.

And it just very much does not. And it instead kind of shifts focus to, I wanna make sure I'm getting her name right off the top of my head. It's like, I have dyslexia, so I'm like, my brain either mixes up, mixes it up as Ezra or Aza, A R z a or a z r A. And so I apologize if I am mixing up her name here because my brain just absolutely cannot handle it.

But the book is basically, it very clearly starts to shift focus to be about her setting up like an autonomous state with like the as, as an Afghan woman herself, like setting up a, a state with her community isolated from international trade intentionally. Mm. Like she very much does not wanna be part of the international trade.

 And like Peter finds out about this and he like, is in love with her, but like in a very like, fetishistic way and he doesn't, he can't conceptualize like the Afghan people having autonomy. Exactly, yeah. Outside of like international economy. And there's a whole bit in the fifth issue where she's like trying to explain what she's doing and like what her community is doing and she's like, he doesn't get it.

So like, I, I'm, I, instead of explaining in terms of community, I'll explain it in terms of like crop yield and like decreasing infant mortality rates and explain it in these very mechanical ways rather than very communal ways. Like I have to explain it in very like systemic structures. Yeah. To try to get through to him.

Yeah. It's, it's, yeah. There's, there's all you. You can't  you, you can't have a crush on this girl without, like, without is fetishism within the lens of like this colonialism and this whiteness. Yeah. And she makes it incredibly clear, like toward, like later in the book, she's like, how, how do you like. Like she, she never says I'm twisting you around my finger.

But like, she more or less tells us that she is, but she, but she's a little bit like, how can you expect me to love you when you don't love my people and you don't love me and you like rain bombs down on my people? Yeah. On a daily fucking basis. Like, what do you think is happening here? Like,  and there's a really, really amazing bit in here where like, she's like narrating and she's talking about her family and there's this little page reveal.

She's actually the narrator. Sometimes. She's the narrator, sometimes she's the narrator for this entire issue. Oh, okay. Where does this I like her. I like her a lot. She's great. So there's this, there's this bit right here. Where do the sleeping bombs had spread? Oh, oh, sorry. So a bunch of bombs fall on her people, but they don't activate.

The Soviet Union was just like, decided to just drop its payloads. Not even cuz they were trying to bomb them, but just because they had excess weight. So they were like, oh, who fucking cares if, like, we'd blow up some people down here. It doesn't really matter to us. So they drop all these bombs, but the bombs don't go off.

And this is in the past, like this is when she was a child. So none of the bombs go off. And this becomes like a whole big thing for their community is they're like, we exist around these bombs that never went on. Whoa. Yeah. It's, that's, that almost sounds like that's pulled from like real life. That definitely has happened.

Yeah. Like there's, there's a lot of that if you go into like, that's so harsh, but so fucking real. Like, and I'm just like, damn. I bet that's a real, like from a real thing. Absolutely. There was. Yeah. And so where do the sleeping bombs had spread and Poem, song and story. Refugees from all across Afghanistan were coming looking for a miracle.

God would grow to meet them. Everything I did, I did for that, for us to grow. For a, for a while my story was a spy story, and for a while it was a love story. And so then that ends with the panel of like, her and the, the, the fucking Russian super soldier. And you think it's about him. You think she's talking about him.

Sh and then the page flip. Immediately you see his, his goofy ass not recognized the man she's actually talking about the man who like she actually loves, who's like one of her own people. Yeah. Over here. And it's just such a brilliant little fucking moment  like, and that's really like the whole book in a nutshell right now is like, that's such a good comic book moment.

It's an incredible page turn. I love a pa a good book and page turn Chainsaw Man was really good at that too. Chance saw Man's page turns were exceptional. I so God , so like, so this, this final issue like is the part where like the American and, and, and, and Soviet super soldiers are fucking killing each other, but they're not the focus at all.

Like the, the violence that they're doing is happening and it is relevant and it is shown when it is relevant, but it's really more about this community either being slaughtered or trying to save each other. Like while these two, like imperial powers are in a very literal sense, like tearing apart Afghanistan.

So to like own and control it. Like, and it's just, yeah, I am actually trade waiting on this one , which is kind of hard to do because possum is so excited about it. We, we don't get that many of these books in my store. I have number one and I think I have number four. Oh yeah. And I feel like you're buying, like, you've probably bought most of the ones that have come into the store.

I actually, yeah, I have bought ones. You know, cuz we get like, We get like one, maybe two of them. Yeah. We only started getting more of them because I literally would not shut the fuck up about this in the store DePaul, like, on a daily basis. And he was like, okay, we'll order you some. Yeah, so I'm, I'm kind of waiting for the trade, but I'm really fascinated to finally dive into it.

Yeah, it is a brilliant, beautiful book. I we will definitely be talking more about it in depth when we have both read it. Honestly, it'd be cool to actually make like a whole video about it or something. I would love to make a whole video about it. And I would like, I'm gonna reach back out to the, the writer Dennis Camp.

Cuz he really liked my, my writing about it on Twitter. And so he sent me issue four, five, and six early the digitals before they went to I know you have a relationship going on with camp. It's so cool. I I really like his work and 20th Century Men is, is. Just fucking exquisite. Like it's, it's some of the best comics I've ever read.

So I would, yeah, I would love to like talk with him and see if like, I don't know, either he could like pop in or just like, I don't know, like send, send me some process shit, like from like the pages and or just, just to hear his like thoughts on it cuz like he's doing incredible work. And I would also definitely, I'm definitely gonna pull some of Reesha's quotes.

Who, if you're not following Rekesh on Twitter, again, phenomenal writer. Just put out a huge thing about all of DC's crises and like a retrospective on all those has written extensively about the good Asian and these Savage Shores, which are also banger books. I'm gonna stop talking cause I've been talking for a little too long.

But , mean, I've been listening to you talk about 20th Century men every time it comes out and it's, you're always giving me the download on it and I'm really glad that the stream gets to hear about what you think about this book because. , I think your perspective on it makes a lot of sense. You make me want to read it and I'm really excited to you now.

Oh, thank you. I, I really appreciate that. And I'll just throw as a last note to the, the to the stream. Don't just take my word for it. Okay. Cuz at the end of the day, I am still very much a white bitch. Like, and like there are like writers, like there are middle Asian writers writing about this book.

There are South Asian writers writing about this book. Like, there are writers who have more relevant experience writing about this book. Like, fucking read it. Like, like, I don't think rote has put out like a big article on it. But I would, I would, yeah, find some of his tweets, just read some of his stuff.

Like there's some incredible writers writing about it right now. Dennis Camp also is, is I think South Asian. . And so .Like, and which again, is just relevant to the book and the, the cultural perspectives it brings. And so yeah, don't just take my white perspective on it, like please read critics like, who have more relevant experience with this.

It, it feels like a pretty important read. Mm-hmm. , I would say. And the art, the art really grabs you. Yeah. Step. And Morgan does some really incredible, like not quite to the same amount of shifting as like Mike Huddleston does with with Decorum. But it is still very, like he shifts his style. He shifts like the painterly elements, like some of it's like much more Hyperkinetic, like he's pulling from a lot of different art sources on this and like, he's shifting his style in these ways that are really brilliant and visceral issue.

Four, five, and six of this book are like some of the best single issues I've, I've ever fucking read, period. The suicide cowboy stuff. And the fourth one, the I mean the, honestly, the life on Mars journalism stuff from the third one. I'm gonna, I I'm gonna, I'm just gonna keep talking about this book forever if I don't stop.

But it's incredible.  Yeah. We, you know, we come to this dream to inert the fuck out . So that's what you came for. You ain't got nothing to apologize for. Aw, shut . Thank you. I try or try not to apologize. Okay. Do we wanna hit strange since we've both read that one? Yeah. I really wanna talk about Dr.

Strange. Let's look at Dr. Strange False Sunrise. Look at the cover. First of all, this is book four. Out of four, all the covers look like this. They are just Tramore and Heather Moore going balls to the walls. Mm-hmm. , it's just like, it's so psychedelic, it's so fluid, it's so pretty. It's just jumps right out at you.

Like there's no one is doing it like these two. Nobody . Yeah. Let me find, there's a, there's a page in here that I think is just going to, every page is just like a, I want to giant poster. Like, it's like when you're reading Mobius and, oh God, that page, that's when, that's when when Poin opens her eyes.

Yeah. Oh my God. Yes. God, I, I can't speak highly enough about this book. Just every page. It's just like, what's happening? There's just like, it's, it's incredibly exquisite and like, I know I said this before when we talked about Dr. Strange, number one, I am a hundred percent fucking sure now that Tread Moore was like playing a bunch of, from soft.

and was like really into it because you see like, not just like aesthetic nods to like dark souls bloodborne Eldon ring, like you see a bunch of those, but also like emotional cruxes, like the meta-narrative of dark, like that, that panel is extremely dark souls. The meta-narrative of the meta-narrative of dark souls, like irrespective of lore, but the meta-narrative of dark souls is ultimately about perseverance in the face of like a brutal world.

And in the, in the wake of like, and just like in the wake of, of, of so much mass violence. And I'm just gonna pull up an image while peril is showing you that. And yeah, just like living in a, in a really bleak world, but still finding like hope and love regardless, you know, in a big way. It reminds me a lot of your writing.

Ooh. And a lot of your art. It reminds me of the. Sort of, cuz we're definitely in like some sort of other world. Mm-hmm.  Like either another dimension or some sort of like hellish purgatory. Yeah. It's the idea space in this one. Yeah. The idea space. And it, it's, it's like melting and it's painful and it's love and it's, and it's, and it's hope and it's ideas.

It's just the art is, you know, you soak, it's like you soak up every single panel as you're reading it. It just like pours out as you know, they're almost hard to read because like, you want to spend so much time on each panel. Mm-hmm.  and it's poetry. Yeah. It's, it's extremely poetry. Like, it's just, it's just poetry.

It's poetry in motion and just the words, you know, like they're conveying so much. God, I remember book two. Yeah, book two had a lot of like, Powerful magical poetry. And they started talking about like the types of gods that are happening and like the God's children. I'm just like, oh, this is like an epic or something.

Like, I don't know poetry words, but I was like, this is large mythological, poetic beautiful shit. It informs the entire story. It's amazing how expansive mythologically it is in such a condensed space. Like four issues is not much. Like, th there are comics that they're pretty girthy. No, no, no, no. Those ones are pretty girthy.

Yeah, those ones are pretty girthy, but it's still only four issues. Ultimately. True. Like, especially for like a huge epic. And yet, and yet, like it still is able to maintain that epic feel and like the epicness of its scope. Cuz it is, let, let me just, let me just read the poetry of some, one of those beginning pages.

Of this is like the opening page often lost in thought. I wonder how do we do it? How does anyone survive a day? My body fails me. My mind DeSales me. Cruelty and hatred and power and fate all cry out for blood teeth. Caked red with our siblings. Yet we persist. The gall of us, the courage, the uncanny human valor it takes to waken face each sunrise.

Even still some maintained more overall have mercy. Beyond this. I'll forgive. How can I not be inspired by you? I love you. The unloved. I love you. The damn. I love you so much. My For Lauren and Shattered Companions. Like it is a book. God, it just gives me chills, right? Like that. That's this page. It's just astonishing.

Like cuz yeah. This book ultimately is about like, I crawl, sobbing from bed to stand opposite pain and death and voice. My arrogant resolve. What are you, to me? Pain. You arrive and you pass.  I'll survive this day. Today is all I have. And basically like today and each other, like being in immense, in a very broad sort of way, it's like about, I mean, you could argue dealing with depression, you could argue dealing with like insert thing here.

But really in a, when people, when people say like, it's a very broad human story, usually they're full of fucking shit. But this case is like, this is actually it. Like this is like, how do you respond to pain and grief and despair in the world in a way when it feels so crushing and overwhelming, like you cannot kill it.

You, you, what is the line from issue three? You cannot kill the healers that we choose to be. Yeah. . Oh my God. Like I read that line to Am and m was like, I'm buying this book now. Like I peeled m on that line alone. I, it, it kind of breaks the matter on how many people aren't buying this book right now.

Someone actually came into the store I think yesterday. Yesterday, yeah. And was so happy that we still had book one cover A and I was like, , that's what you want. Like, yeah. I had to come, I usually go to this other comic book store. I had to, I had to cheat on them by coming to you guys.   Was so, and like, just like, talk with us about it.

I'm like, wow. It sounds like it's like selling out at other stores. Like, what's wrong with my store? Like, , like, please come to the escapist and buy this book or any local comic book shop and buy this book right now. It's, it's so worth buying in these single issues. Mm-hmm. , like, like trade waiting is of course valid.

Tati , but this, this one, you really just to sit down with each of these comics and really go through each panel, it's again, like, I don't, I've never been a fan of Dr. Strange necessarily. I've definitely seen all the movies and I think he's cool and fun and magical and interesting, but I'm, I'm not like following Dr.

Strange mm-hmm.  in any meaningful way. But this book is,  is very much worth it for people who aren't into superheroes, people aren't into, you know, stuff like that. Like it's a Dr. Strange book, but it is, it is. It's a different beast. Mm-hmm.  and it, it is talking about so many more things. He's kind of like approached by a goddess who I believe like escaped her own reality or something.

And she, she needs a midwife and she chooses Dr. Strange . Yeah. Yeah. So she is, so there, there's two gods. There's BHOs and Sophia, and BHOs is the God of ideas is like the, the like I, all ideas, shapeless ideas, just like the concept of things fall under his domain and Sophia is the shape of things. Wow. It's, I, I

It's funny, it's funny to hear you use he pronouns. In my head, they were just lesbians. . They're lesbians and they made lesbian children. And I don't know, I mean, maybe I, I thought it was, do they, they probably do hear him in the book, but I just chose not to see it. Honestly. You're so right. Queen , you're so right.

We do, because like, lets is formless Blis is Idea. Mm-hmm.  and like, I don't know. And then clearly, I mean what's her name? Sophia. Sophia. Sophia is, is Shape. Yeah. And she's shaped and she escaped from BHOs or Blythes. I can't remember which of the two, because like, BHOs, I'm just gonna say BHOs because I, that's what I remember.

But like BHOs was trying to control her. So she escaped from the realm of pure idea, which is where this takes place. And approached. And she had 12 other children? Or she had 12 children? 13. Well, yeah, the 13th child. The 13th child is the, the plot of the book. Right. So they had 12 children together and then BHOs tried to control her, so she escaped.

Into our world. And she approaches Stephen Strange and she's like, Hey homie, I'm pregnant with the 13th child. And the 13th child will be born in this world and also the world of ideas. Right. Right, right, right. And so I need you to midwife for me physically here on earth, while also journeying to the realm of ideas to grab my baby when it manifests.

, what the fuck? It's so, it's such a powerful book. Yeah. And Wait, I was wrong. Sorry. There's 14 children because by the, the there was the 12 children, there was coin, and we'll talk about coin in just a second. And then the and then the 14th Child's the one being born. Oh, okay. I thought you were saying coin was the child being born and it's like, oh, I didn't pick up on that

No, no, no, no. My, I, sorry about that. Sorry about that. No, no. Coin was the 13th.  and Coin is like this Dark Knight figure. Like, and I don't mean Dark Knight in a Batman way, I mean like in a, a suit of a suit of armor and is just living in men's pain all the time. And BYO sends coin to basically like every time Sophia tries to have another kid outside of the 12 that they had together, he sends coin to basically murder the child.

And any midwife that like tries to manifest. Yeah. Dr. Strange is not the first midwife to like come through. Apparently it happens on every Red Son and mm-hmm. . God, I don't wanna give too much away. Yeah. But honestly, like a huge part of this book is just like spending time with it. Mm-hmm. , it's like one of, it's, it's definitely like gonna be one of my favorite books of the year.

Same like, it's gonna be top three. Like, it's like, no doubt. Like same, it's kind of top three of last year too. Cause it started coming out in what? November? November? Yeah. That's, it's been like a monthly, so now, now we're in February and this is the last one. New books are really gonna have to hustle if they're like going to catch up because between like fall, sunrise and 20th Century men, which both did start last year, but like ended this year, like it's, it's gonna be hard fucking work for any book to like crack that top three with, with these two already filling it.

Like yeah, we don't wanna give too much away if you're trade waiting. Or just like, haven't yet. But it is, it is truly some of the best superhero work I've ever, I've, I've ever read. It's some of the most like, like emotional and personal it, these battle scenes. I mean, yeah. It's just so kinetic, so flowing.

I like no one's making art like this in the comic book world right now. And it's, it's so unique. Yeah. But so clearly inspired as well. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. It's like, it, it's, it's really up there with Allstar Superman and ish kotz ish Cotton and Marco Rudy's Bucky Bar in Langton. Fosses, Bucky Barnes, the winner soldier.

Which is, I can't believe I like a Bucky Barnes book. But yeah, Bo, both of those books, like understand superheroes and like the power of, and, and, and the hope that they inherently carry. And Dr. Strange Fall Sunrise is one of those books. Like, it's, it's really up there with all star Superman. For me, in terms of like, oh, I'm gonna read All Star Superman soon.

I cannot fucking read. I I just bought it. Oh, I think I left it in my car. I need to go grab it. Oh yeah. , I cannot wait to talk with you about All Star Superman. Yeah. There's so much to talk about. I need to read more. Grant Morrison, this is, I think everybody right now needs to be reading more Grant Morrison.

This is very Grant Morrison. Yeah. Like, I feel, I feel it like, like in spirit, even if not necessarily in voice, like in, in . What, what it's like the messages it's trying to communicate are extremely more what else, what else we talking about?

There was, damn the mall. I, I, I guess we could potentially skip monstrous if we're not feeling it, but like, or if we're running kind of late on time but we could easily hit damn. Okay. Yeah, let's talk about Damn them all. Let's talk about damn them all. This is not the usual artist. This is an the artist, the coverup for this one is done by a non DK who if you've read any Ram V comics you might be familiar with, I believe he did.

Did he? No, no, no. He did Graphite's Wall and radio Apocalypse and I, yeah, no, he didn't do these Savage chores. But really excellent cover. So for anybody who doesn't know damn them all is basically cease Spurrier being like, oh, oh, you canceled my Hellblazer series. Well eat shit. I'm gonna go do Hellblazer, but she's a dyke with a hammer over at Image, my type I need.

Right. Me too. She's such a queen. Absolutely awful queen. I love her. So the, the, the plot of the book more or less is that there, that. There are 72 arch devils in hell, right? There are 72 devils that were cast out of heaven, not because they did anything wrong, but because God saw the imperfection of his design and hated it.

God's like actually a cunt in this book. We haven't met him tight, but God is an asshole. Like, and that has been made extremely clear. So true to life. I know, right? Extremely . 

Anyway, these 72 demons have been basically brought to earth against their will and are in immense, immense, horrible pain trapped in either coins or trinkets.. So, okay. She's a dyke. She's a dyke. And does she have a girlfriend? Not yet. She might be getting with the lady cop who's So we haven't seen her scissoring yet. No  no scissoring yet. She just has a hammer and is a dyke. Yeah. She just has a hammer and she very clearly is gay.

And Sea Spurrier keeps writing lesbian leads and God bless him for it. He's one of the few. I shouldn't say straight cause I don't actually know that, but one of the few men who can write lesbians really well, he, he's probably sucked Dick. Yeah. I mean, who among us hasn't, like you haven't sucked Dick in 2023 Grow up

And that's why Dan Thema is an authentic queer piece of literature. . Okay, wait. So anyway, so, so, so, so the actual plot I will wheel this back is about this magician woman whose hu whose uncle taught her everything she knew. He dies very suddenly, right? And so she's trying to figure out what the fuck is going on.

She's working with this low level gangster, basically like beating the shit out of people and giving him magic advice when all of these arch devils start appearing on earth and they start appearing in the hands of just like, Random people who start using them for their own nefarious ends eventually an issue.

This is five, an issue four. She basically decides, okay, like I'm going to exercise all 72 of these demons back to back to hell. Because demons in this book aren't inherently malicious. And in fact, a lot of them are just like neutral to actively nice, mostly neutral, like, and are just in, so, just in really terrible pain being constricted upon this plane of reality.

It's kind of like to, to, to even have them be here is kind of like turning them inside out physically, but they can't die. Like it's, they're just in a lot of pain and they're being picked up by random people. Right. And so people are using them for everything from like, I want to be the mayor of the city to, like, I have now, I like I as a crooked cop, have.

Set up a whole thing where like, I have this weird magic house and I'm still taking like money from like pimps and, and dealers and shit. But I've also like cut off people's heads and have stolen the magic from their br or stolen like the esoteric knowledges from their brains. And each devil does different things.

So there basically becomes this like, not turf war is, is the wrong word, but this war over who gets to wield these demons, like tools like these people. Okay. These demons have been reduced effectively to, for lack of better words, human bondage. Like, and not, and not the fun kind of bondage. The, the really fucked up, unfortunate kind of bondage.

Because they, if, if they are invoked, they have to obey their quote unquote master's will, right? And so they're being forced to do things they don't wanna do. They're being forced to fight each other in ways that they don't wanna do. Like it's not a contract. Like in Chainsaw Man, it's not a contract like in Chainsaw Man.

It's like you get called up, you just have to do whatever the fuck people tell you to do. And so the main character, Ellie and a couple of her friends basically decide that they, they need to exercise all 72 demons back to hell so that they can not be in pain anymore, so that they cannot be exploited and used.

They've got two of them, they've been able to exercise two of them. I see. And there's a really important line here that one of the demons says to Ellie at one point when she's talking about how, like you can use loopholes in contracts to kind of like, cause they're not really devil contracts, but like in the same way it is with Chainsaw Man.

But you can use loopholes in the commands that have been given to the demons to kind of like nullify them if you know what you're doing. And so she's talking to them about, And proof floss. One of the demons says, for someone who takes such pains to avoid demonic exploitation, you've proven quite adept at reducing us to functions, which is really kind of the thing about this book is that all, most of these human characters want to use these demons for their own purposes and don't really give a shit how much it hurts or what the other, what the demons want or what they, they think.

Yeah. Cause they're just demons, right? Because they're just demons. Yeah. There's a really fun note in the book where like the, the journals of her, like magician uncle where it's like, good thing they're all like evil ksu deserve what they get. Right. And you can almost feel the painful, like right there.

Yeah. As he like knows what he's doing.  like in, in Conjuring a demonn. And so even though she's trying to send back all of these, these all of these demons, she's still perfectly willing to, to use them in similar ways. She just is not the bigger bastard. To use the book's parlance than some of the other people are.

And the demons who are working with her do know it. Like they know she is using them too. And like to, to kind of be stuck between a rock and a hard place on like, I'm being used by one group of people, but the other group of people who are trying to use me are infinitely worse. And, or like, this person is using me, but I can also get the things I need, i e to go back to hell and not be used anymore.

So like, I'll get used by them in these way. I can, I'll be exploited in these ways so that I can avoid exploitation later. Ooh. It hits, it fucking hits. Like, and it's really, it's really something that, yeah. The, the allegory is, is ripe . It's really ripe. And there's one, there's one character who it's, it's really important to bring up, I'm forgetting his name.

But he's a queer asylum seeker and he's houseless, and this is important because he initially picks up this demonn.  Cuz he finds the coin and like asks the demonn to protect him basically. And so the demon just takes the form of a white cop and just kind of stands next to him. Oh my god. So, so that, so that no one will harass him.

Oh my God. But then he pretty quickly figures out that this is painful and that this demonn does not want to be there anymore. And so he's like, I'm not gonna keep you in human bondage, dude. Like, I, like I'm I'll. Like, he, he basically does the Aladdin thing at the end of Disney's Aladdin where he is like, you know, be frig or whatever.

Oh, okay. And he's just like, yeah, like, I'm not, I'm not going to do this to you. Like, I'm not going to like, basically put you into slavery like this. Like, now that I understand how this functions and what this is doing to you. Like, no. And he's the only one, the single person who has done that of his own volition, purely out of the goodness of his own heart.

Like the single person who's done that and later, like they're, they're kind of working with him, the main characters. To exercise all these other demons. And one of the ones they're working with that, one of the demons that this, this asylum seeker guy is friends with his power as a demonn is that he can is that he can basically mend friendships.

Like a lot of these demons have very esoteric powers almost in a kind of chainsaw mend friendships. Yeah. They all have like a com. They all have like three or four, like very, very specific esoteric abilities. Like I'm trying to, I love the data pages. I'm seeing through the data pages. I love a fucking data page.

You can, you can definitely tell that sea Spurrier while working on Hickman's Xmen in the Hickman Xmen era. Yeah. This is like, yeah. I just giving me Hickman,  like, here we go. This one about samina is they, they refer to Samina as he can give an account of souls that died in sin and teaches all seven of the liberal sciences, grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy.

which would probably have been halfway impressive in a world without standardized education and YouTube tutorials. But the point being is like they all have these, these abilities and a range of them. And so Ellie uses one of the, the, the demons. They're working with abilities to mend friendships to basically get out of getting fucked over by this crime boss that she kind of like screwed over a little bit.

And the asylum seeker guy basically says to her at one point, like, you turned the gift of friendship that this demonn can use. Like you turned this gift of friendship into a weapon and he's not fucking happy about it. He's like, I, I see what you're doing. Like, like we need you and you are doing the right thing ultimately in a very broad scale sort of way, but you are willing to use people like this.

And that's a huge thing. So to to out myself to the chat, I'm a huge hellblazer head. Oh, okay. . I'm okay. No, just . No, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a huge Hellblazer reader. There are 300 issues of the original series. I've read like 237 of them approximately. Plus a bunch of like specials and stuff. And c Spurrier who c Spurrier's, rebooted run all 12 issues of that.

I love Hellblazer. And a huge part of the Hellblazer mythos is depending on who's writing it, John Constantine is, is either a bastard with ultimately very good intentions or he is like a bastard who is more or less doing the right thing, but is a bastard first and foremost. Like that's more of the garthus kind of side of things where if you get to like the Neil Guyman, Mike Carry, like kind of stuff, it, he tends to be a little bit more caring of a dude, but ultimately he's willing to use people and willing to take risks that get people killed.

And that's a huge portion of this. And he's also willing to play around with loopholes to try to get out of. Deals he's made and things he's done to other people. And that's a huge part of this book too, is like Ellie and also her, her uncle Alfie are people very much like John Constantine. They're people who like do good things sometimes and sometimes are on the right page about things, but are willing to exploit and use other people.

And she does that in a really big way. Like it, it's implied. She like, it's implied. She fucking killed a dude. Like, like a demonn? No, just like a human. Like somebody she knows and was like an acquaintance with Yeah. They haven't explained that why she did that yet. This sounds like some size superior. It, it sounds like, you know, no one, not, no one's necessarily a good guy.

Pretty much everyone's a bad guy, but these are the protagonists, you know? Mm-hmm.  like, except for that one asylum secret guy who has so far been like phenomenal and just like, really like been a real, been a real homie. Throughout the whole thing. This is number five now. This is number five. It was, it was slated to be a six issue mini, but Oh, is it getting continued?

It's, it got continued. Whoa. And you can tell it was one of those things where like some, some series, it's unclear if like, it was an, it was planned as a six issue mini because they only had six issues to tell. But then because it's sold, they like, were like, okay, we can expand the story from here. It's clear that this was a case of like, they very clearly had a whole story.

They could tell with these 72 demons and exercising all of them, but they weren't sure if they were gonna get canceled. Like se Spurrier's, Hellblazer run got canceled very unceremoniously by DC who are all cowards. So this is kind, this is kind of a spiteful book. It is a very spiteful book. , this book is so full of spite like to a, to a degree that I'm not u like, I think there are bits in here that might have been for his Hellblazer run , but there's other stuff that can't have been for his Hellblazer run like the 72 demons thing.

The, the thing about this book is like, it very much is a Hellblazer book in a lot of ways, but it also differentiates itself in how its magic systems work and how the Demonology works. Because in Hellblazer it's, it's very much still connected to DC's conception, like, of, of these things. Like, like hell, Lucifer runs hell or ran hell until, you know, Sandman and the Lucifer series.

Anyway, this whole thing. But like DC has ideas about what Lucifer is, DC has pre-established ideas of what hell is. DC has pre-established ideas of how demons function in that world. And so, and like swamp thing in ex, like hell laser exists firmly in the DC universe, even if he doesn't interact with it very much.

Except now that they've kind of integrated him into the DC universe. But like he's still very firmly within a, a, a set mythology, so to speak. And like lore works certain ways. There are ways that the, the lore works in this that are incompatible with how DC runs things. Mm. Like the 72 demons being fallen like that, like he might have been able to get away with it in, in like Reconning that a little bit.

I don't know if he would have, because it, it would've kind of flown in the face a little bit of some of the pre-established, like, sh I, you see this is my thing with damn them all is I feel like I need to read Hellblazer . No, but the thing is, you don't though, like, like it's one of those things that like, it, it's, it's enriching to have the context of like, oh, this is very much like a, a Hellblazer book, but you, but it's, it's not carrying over any characters or plot lines.

Like, you're not missing anything by, by not reading Hellblazer. I'm just not Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm gonna read it, but Yeah, you do. I feel like there's gonna be an aesthetic reference that I'm not. I don't know. I'm just diving in. Oh yeah. I mean, I mean the trench coat in the tie is absolutely all I need is this like hot dyke in her cool outfit with her, hammer with her.

That's all I actually need. So I actually got nothing to be worried about. Look at her, look at her dyke in it, up in her tie, which actually is a, a is maybe the, the most explicit hellblazer reference in the whole thing is cuz like John Constantine. Yeah. Where's that trench coat in the tie? Yeah. And also chain smokes cigarettes like nobody's business.

There's actually a whole Hellblazer arc about like early Hellblazer during the Garth Ness era where he gets lung cancer from smoking. And so the beginning of hel Garth Dennis's run is John constant being like, fuck, I have lung cancer. And like basically doing some like four-dimensional chest to like con these demons into taking away his cancer while also not fucking him over.

He also, like in another arc, like buzz takes a chainsaw to some, to an angel's wings. Yeah, Garth Enes is, John Constantine is an asshole. Like maybe the most asshole one, except for, okay, sorry. The last thing I'm gonna say about Hellblazer before we get completely off the entire fucking rails is that another, another comic writer on my shit list, Brian Azzarello briefly wrote a Hellblazer Run.

He's the only American to I have ever done. So however, he did formalize John Constantine being bisexual. I Oh, really? I will give Azzarello that. It wasn't, it was implied by a bunch of other writers that really stuck too. It really stuck. It was, it was implied by Alan Moore. It was implied by it was implied by Jamie Delano.

I'm pretty sure it was implied probably by Mike Carey. If, if I'm remembering the Mike Carey run correctly. It was probably implied by Ennis despite how like weirdly homophobic and queer accepting Garth Enes is. He's a weird man, but Brian Azzarello. Was the one to formalize it. And he formalized it because the, the overarching villain of Ella's run is basically, what if Batman was really into bondage?

I'm not even kidding like that. Like, that is like strictly the test . Like is is like, he's like, I wanna know now I'm curious. Here's, here's this billionaire. He's not . Oh no. Batman's definitely into bondage. Batman's also a sub. What, so what if Batman was open about his bondage that he's currently already into?

Yeah. And also, if I'm remembering correctly, like a serial rapist, like I, I, it's been a long time since I've read it. Like he sucks anyway. Point being, he sucks, but like, because of that, like John fucks this guy at one point, and that was like the first time you'd seen him have like a bisect scene was like, he fucks him.

But like, I, I don't think it was like a pleasure thing. It was, I, I don't, I don't, I don't remember most of AAR's run. It wasn't that good. But yeah, he Azzarello did formalize John Constantine being by. , which then did carry over to like, it, it basically stuck after that. Like, and I think it was a time period thing to some degree where like Azzarello was writing Hellblazer in the very early two thousands when it was at about the point where DC would maybe let them do that to John Constantine, who, like, they were, they were willing to let queer characters exist before that.

Like you had Rachel Pollock Stone Patrol in the late nineties like you had yeah, but not like a big but not like not a big man from one of their big comics. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And so that's, that's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. So I, I will give Brian Asar role of that making John Con by and Dr.

13 are the good things he's done in this world. And also the, the, the plot of moonshine, which I haven't actually read. I just like the premise. The premise is really good. Werewolves doing moon werewolves doing during prohibition. That's pretty bang. That's pretty, that's a good one actually. That's a pretty good, Matt, I didn't think of that.

Azzarello is really is a good idea guy. He's, he, he's a banger idea guy. He just doesn't pull it off. Ah, do we, is Tante still here? Is our mod still here? Maybe. I have no idea.

 Well, I think we got up to five viewers today. Wow. We did pretty well for ourselves. Yeah. We, there's like two new followers. Yeah. Two new followers. Oh, hello. Oh, yeah. I'm still here too. Hi. Thanks for joining. You're the number one fam. Oh, dang. Wow. Well, you know, you, you got here early, so. Mm-hmm.

Whoa. You made the text all red. Ooh, I love it. . Thank you. I'm learning. This is exciting. This is exciting for us. We're still.  getting a format together. Mm-hmm.  and figuring out, I don't know what's happening, , but we're here because we want talk about cool comics. It's something we're really we both feel pretty passionate about and we're just excited to put ourselves out there.

So this is kind of like just thank you basically. Thank you.

 So let's review. What did we talk about today? We talked about extremity, if you remember. Cool. Rock and roll. Brutality, limb. Choppy fun times. Mm-hmm. . I will be re definitely reviewing. Do a power bomb when that comes out. . Hell yeah. Hell yeah. This was not the stream cherry, but this is like number three or something.

We talked about Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange Falls, sunrise, which is completely out at this point. Go pick it up your local comic bookstore right now. Or I guess you could probably read it on the Marvel app or whatever. Oh yeah. Definitely available digitally, whatever the Marvel app is called. And we covered damn them all.

Number five. We also talked a lot about Hellblazer. We talked a little bit about 20th Century men. We will be talking about this one more extensively in the future. My, I, I cannot wait for us to talk about this fucking book. Yeah, I can't wait to talk about that one more too. We talked about, we talked a bit about Saga, we talked a bit about monstrous, a little bit monstrous.

We talked a bit about lots of stuff. And yeah, I'm gonna check out this order of the stick book. Mm-hmm. , or I guess online comic. See what that's about, and then. . Yeah. Join us every Thursday. Mm-hmm.  Usually we start at three 30. It was a little bit later today, but yeah. I might move it back a little bit.

I feel like we're late every time. It is true. It could be good if we Yeah, we pushed it back a tiny bit. . All right, well nice meeting you and thanks everyone who came in and see you win when I see you. Absolutely. See you then.