# Marvel Comics Just Crossed the Line | Comics Aficionados #338

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** Thinking Critical
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE
- **Дата:** 09.05.2026
- **Длительность:** 2:30:18
- **Просмотры:** 3,436

## Описание

Marvel just raised prices again—and fans aren’t buying it. After promising stability, Marvel Comics is now pushing $4.99 as the new normal.

In this episode of Comics Aficionados #338, Wes and the panel break down Marvel Comics’ shocking pricing shift and what it means for readers, collectors, and the future of the industry. Just 24 months after committing to a $3.99 standard, Marvel has effectively abandoned that model, with nearly every new release now priced at $4.99 or higher—and premium titles like Jonathan Hickman’s Spider-Man: Long Way Home climbing to $5.99. At a time when Marvel is already struggling to maintain interest, this move raises serious questions about strategy, accessibility, and long-term sustainability.

Is this desperation or a calculated gamble? Why raise prices when demand appears to be cooling? And how does Marvel expect to compete with DC Comics and Image Comics, who continue offering stronger value at lower price points? The Comics Aficionados panel dives into all of it—along with the broader impact on comic shops, collectors, and the shrinking audience for monthly books.

Jump into the live chat and let your voice be heard.

Huge thanks to the sponsor of today’s stream Unholy Nightmare 3. Launching on Kickstarter June 26—sign up now for notifications and don’t miss it!
🔗 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mutantfarm/unholy-nightmare-3

Comics Aficionados Live Topics
• Marvel Comics $4.99 Price Increase & Rising Comic Book Costs
• Batman Burns Down Wayne Manor in DC Comics (What Happened?)
• DropGate Variant Cover Controversy Explained
• Will Disney Erase the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy? Reset Rumors

🎙️ Panel Members
🪖 Mike Baron 
🔗 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikebaron8123
🔗 Kickstarter: Bronze Star 2
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/big-studios/bronze-star-2-by-mike-baron-and-pat-broderick

🎮 Dylan – TheRealComicBookGamer
🔗 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRealMacGamer

🖋️ Aaron Sparrow – Creator of Kneel Before Doomface

👨‍🍳 Eric O’Sullivan – The Grandmaster of Gratitude
🔗 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EricOSullivan

😠 Dok – Local Curmudgeon

Support the Channel / Join the Community
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Back Channel Memberships
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Contact Wes
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📧 Email: wesdigscomic@gmail.com

🔊 Automatic Dubbing Disclaimer
This video includes YouTube’s automatic dubbing feature for non-English speakers. Translations may contain minor errors and do not always reflect tone or expression. You can switch back to the original English track in the settings if needed.

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Welcome back to the Cavic Afficados here on Think Critical YouTube. Your Saturday morning delight is back to talk about comic books and the pop cultures and all that kind of good stuff. We do have a very special guest this week. We have Mr. Mike Baron, one of the innovators on Punisher and Star Wars and other classic characters doing his own thing now. How you doing, Mike? — Doing good. — Very well. never been busier. Uh oh. — Did he just pull a boomer move and remove himself from the stream? — Or he had a I have no idea. — That's fine. — No, he had to go. He's so busy, guys. — I've never out. — I've been watching Mike Baron for years and like he does that. He's just mysterious. — He is the man. He might just be Whoa. — He just uh disappeared from the street, but that's fine. We're still gonna have a good time. It uh it looks like Mike might be back. — Sorry, guys. I'm technically challenged. — I knew it. A true. — Very nice. So, you've got what? Bronze Star 2 right now on Kickstarter. What's going on with that, dude? Well, uh, I always wanted to work with Pat Brick and, uh, but he was tied up with serial books until about four years ago and then he was free and he said, "Mike, let's do it. " I said, "Pat, what do you want to draw? " He says, "I want to draw a supernatural western. " And so, Bronar was born. Bronzear, uh, we sold out. Uh, all you got to do is is, uh, do a search engine for Bronar reviews. You'll see what the people thought of it. Bronze Star 2 is a continuation. It's called Bronze Star because the sheriff of Tiny Cobbs Gap at the foot of the Canadian Rockies can't touch silver. And you know why he can't touch silver? Uh but the protagonist is Harley Brogden. He was a Confederate uh veteran and also member of Quantril's raiders until they staged their infamous Kansas attack at which time he fled. wanted nothing to do with them. He worked his way north in a poker game. He shot a young punk who accused him of shooting. The punk drew first. And when it was over, they said, "Listen, uh, you better get on your horse and hight tail it because this kid's father um is a very powerful land owner and he's going to come after you. " And he did. He created a posi and they started chasing Harley through Wyoming and Montana and finally he ends up in this tiny town in Alberta. There was a silver mine there for about six months until they found out that everybody went and the mine died. So when Harley gets to town, they say this is the asset of nowhere. And everybody asks them what are you running from? Because nobody goes to Cobb's Gap unless they're running from something. And that's how the story begins. Uh, the sheriff is a noble man despite being a werewolf and he gave his life for the town at the end of the first graphic novel and Harley becomes sheriff. Uh, the new one deals with another supernatural legend of the Pacific Northwest, the Wendigo. It's probably the most accurate depiction of the Wendigo ever presented in comics. And uh, it's brilliant. This is the greatest work of Pat Roick's career. If an artist, a 22year-old artist went into Marvel or DC and put one of Pat's pages on the table, the editor would look up and say, "What do you want to draw? " — Very nice. Congratulations. It's fully funded. And how much longer do people have to back uh Bronstar 2? — Six days. — All right. So, time is running out. And there is a link in the video description if uh Mr. Baron has sold you. And I don't know why he wouldn't have. It sounds like a very good uh book. I love westerns, dude. — Thank you, Wes. — Man, what else we got going on here? Dylan, you're the big movie guy, right? — Yeah. — Did you go see The Sheep Detective or did you see Mortal Kombat 2 this weekend? — I saw Mortal Kombat 2. — What's the word? — It was fun. Unfortunately though, the actress that plays Katana is horrific and I don't know how she got the job. She's terrible and she's like the main lead. She's kind of co-leads with uh with Johnny Cage, but she's like more of the main lead. I still enjoyed it and overall it's good because it's like it's kind of like a fun sort of 90s like schllock action movie, but she can't act. Especially cuz everyone else besides her and one other girl. Everyone else does a great job at their role. Everyone else is so good. But Katana stands out so much because she's the lead and she's terrible. Her actress is really bad. Like really, really bad.

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

Carl Urban's awesome though, right? — Yeah, Carl Urban's great. — I heard Sonia was really bad. Like I saw posts where people are saying like it's been five years since the last Mortal Kombat and this actress had not bothered to improve her craft at all. Like did not take any classes, did not, you know, — I thought she was fine. She's not like a standout or anything, but she was fine. Like her acting wasn't like Katana where it stands out with every line delivery how bad it is. Katana and Jade were the ones that like But fortunately Jade isn't in it a whole bunch, — but Katana is in it a lot and like she has a lot of key lines. It's like oh my goodness, she can't act. — Are you recommending the film though? — Yeah, it's fun. It's still good. Just don't expect — I heard there's an actual tournament this time. — Yes, an actual tournament happens this time and it's pretty cool. — Shang Tsung isn't in it, is he? — No, I don't think so. No. — Good. Because that guy was awful in the first film. It's like to go from Carrie Takawa in the 90s version to the charisma vacuum in, you know, the Warner Brothers one, I just I couldn't take it. — Sully, I'm sorry. — Yes. — Go ahead. — No, go ahead. — I'm sorry. Sully, you have a choice between Mortal Kombat 2. — Yes. — Pretty fun, you know, fighting movie. Or the sheep detectives, great all ages thing that would definitely tickle your Jeffard. And you're going to see The Devil Wears Prada. — That's all my girlfriend. She loves that first movie. She made me watch it like two weeks ago. And listen, I I'm unabashedly a big Anne Hathaway fan. Come on. We get to see her boobies in Brokeback Mountain. It makes that movie worthwhile. Come on. She's beautiful. She's talented. And uh I didn't mind Devil Wears Prada. — Doesn't make me want to sit through Devil Wear Prada, though. — I But I was like, she wants to go. She's been looking forward to this. And I made her watch 2001 of Space Odyssey and she literally held that against me. — That's fair. — That's Yeah, that that's very fair. I'd make you go watch something fucking terrible, too, if you make me sit through 2001 of Space Odyssey. — Actually, if you put 2001 of Space Odyssey and The Devil Wears Prada in front of me, which I've never seen. — I'm picking the Devil's Word. — Yeah, that's what I'm going with that. But yeah, I mean it's like she wants to see it and I'm all about making her happy and vice versa. So, uh yeah, she how am I supposed to like her to watch my movies if I don't watch her movies? Plus, a couple of months ago, I totally missed a bullet. Uh she wanted to bring me to see Twilight and uh because Twilight had that re-release in the movie theaters and so I agreed to go for the because Yeah. — And then it was like, "Oh, something came up. " And I was like, "Oh, thank God. Thank god. You know, you get to say no. — But you're noticing this, right, Dylan? — Yes. — Just three, four months ago, Sully, why is there so much powerful women in my comic books? There's too much of the matriarchy. And now it's like, oh, I don't mind going to see The Devil Wears Prada, too. — What about all that stuff about solely always making those videos about how to be a better single and all this other stuff? You don't need a woman. Now he's just like, well, that one guy that was falling solely for all that. Now he's just like — he's like, you know, with the pulling down the poster of Mr. Incredible, like this guy is not who I thought he was. — Yeah, people really miss — completely whipped now. Sad. — What happened to Insel cast? I got laid. — You can fix that. — Whip is the right word. I think it might be — whipped. Whip it. Good. — W's in the chat. Sully is whipped. — I'll put a W there. Here you go. Boom. — Good for you. So, enjoy the devil war product too instead of Mortal Kombat. — I'll have a full report next week. Indeed. I'll tell I I'll break it down. I'll beat cheat this. I'll describe all three acts. The rising tension that's and like devil wars one was just like that. It was like this is a simple movie. This movie is better than most Marvel stories are. You know what I mean? Like it was cohesive. You had a hero. You — It's not a high bar. — I know. Especially the last six years. Plus, it's got Emily Blunt in it, too. She's so hot. — I love Emily Blunt. — Yeah. Come on, man. — Did you see the English? — No, I didn't. — It's on Prime. You got to see it. It's a fresh western to say the least. — The dialogue. I've never heard dialogue like that before. It's brutal. — Uhuh. Have you ever seen the uh the bit where Jim John Krosinski is talking about uh be going through customs and uh the guy finding out he's married to Emily Blunt and the guy's like, "You're married to Emily Blunt. You — you and then the guy's JUST LIKE irritated and goes that stamp. Here you go. " Like it's pissed off. — We can't all be married to Emily Blunt.

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

— No, no. Krinski put on a lot of weight. He was like in that 13 hours or whatever he was Ryan. — Yeah. — And he was he was our choice for Mr. Fantastic. He was a great Reed Richards in that dumb movie. He was there for five minutes. He's exactly what we wanted and then look what we got. Wes rooting for Pedro Pascal. I didn't the the world turned upside down. — No, that's a good point. So, that is a good point. — We just trying to pass the buck. — So, it's fair. You saw the sheep movie? — Yeah, I saw The Sheep Detectives last night. — And you're encouraging people to see The Sheep Detective over Mortal Kombat. — I'm saying if you have any ambivalence about Mortal Kombat whatsoever, go see The Sheep Detectives. It is a uh it's a perfect film. It's fantastic. It's got a great story. It's got surprising depth. It's got uh it's got surprising emotion. Um it's got actual uh heroic masculinity. And on top of that, no message whatsoever. There's no moment in the movie where they're reminding you of something. It's just a straightforward family film that uh that anybody any anybody can enjoy. Maybe don't take your really little kids because there is uh you know, a couple of dark scary moments. But uh yeah, just fantastic. — Are you telling me at the end that the sheep detective realizes there's a box and his partner's like, "No, don't look in the box. " And the sheep detective's wife's head. — It's Gwennneth Paltro's head. So, it's a happy ending. — Is this the cheap detective or the sheep detective? — The sheep detective. It's uh the sheep detectives. It's uh it's quite good. Um I saw like one person online told me that a critic described it as Babe Meets the Glass Onion. And I'm like, no. Ryan Johnson Ryan Johnson cannot write a mystery as good as the one that's in The Sheep Detectives. He's just not capable of it. — Is this the one from like 1978? — I don't know about that. It's based on a book called Three Bags Full, but uh it's really good and it's uh Lord Miller, the executive producers, so they are just uh fired for the fences, man. Yeah, they're on a hot streak. — They got fired from Solo. Oh, oops. — Solo lost money and Railos are weird. — So, Sheep Detective, you say it's better than Project Hail Mary. — I think it's my favorite movie so far this year. It's a movie that's like, man, I wish I could write something like this. I wish that I had it in me to Chief Detectives. — All right, Sully. Do you think you can talk the girl out of Devil's Prada and maybe into the Chief Detective? Maybe it won't be so bad. — Ah, you know, she we already got the tickets in our seat assignments, you know, so we're locked into Devil Wear's Prada, too. But there's always hope for next week. — Are you going to hit Panera Bread before you get there? — No. That's too many carbs for me, you know. Just Do they have a roll up? — For the record, roll up. I I still want to create a spin-off store called Panta Bread and it's just playing death metal the entire way through and I can't figure out exactly what the uh the menu would be though. — I know Rob Vanam would be your spokesman. — My sandwich maker grumpy. No, he was effing hostile. — Yes, man. — We're not allowed to talk about sandwiches today. Apparently, there was a — a lot of fallout about that last week. — Oh gosh. Jeez. — We won't get too deep into that. — Grilled cheese. — I said it. — There was a Ben 10 book that came out this week. Dylan, — you grew up on Ben 10. Your favorite cartoon, I think, growing up. Correct. — I liked it a lot. Yeah, I love the original Ben 10. — What are your thoughts? What What's the feelings about the book? Well, the initial uh the initial problems I had from the previews were in the book, which is the art is terrible, which it's at dynamite, so that's what you'd expect, man. Some of those that design for heat blast. I never would have guessed that's heat blast forearms looks odd. The this and also the storytelling of it, I didn't really care for the changes. Obviously, this is a different universe because it's the comic universe, so it's like a whole different thing. But I thought overall it wasn't very good. I wasn't a big fan. — I didn't like the way the grandpa looked in the book. — Grandpa, Ben, Gwyn, they all looked odd. — Nothing looked kind of like uh Gabe Hernandez — like ball bags. — Yes. — There's a couple of panels where — Gwen has like Sinestro forehead. — Yes. — It's ridiculous. — Yeah, she had some eight head. — Yeah, the art is really — It's really bad. — It's dynamite. So, I mean, what do you expect? They're not going to hire somebody who's, you know, really, really good. Although, I did see something coming up that I was like, "Oh, man. They hired a real artist. " — A big book could be huge.

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

— They could have got the backup artist for Saturday Morning Adventures, which is all carto. — You know what I mean? — Why they went with this artist? — Yeah, — because uh they got him cheap. That's why. — Wicked cheap. Yeah. So, there you go. I was uh I was a little bit taken aback, Dylan. I was like, cuz I'm having to watch Ben 10 basically every day now, and I have for like two months. My kids won't stop watching it. — You're not going to recommend this to your kids to read? You're not going to hand them a copy? — No. And now I have to plan a Ben 10 birthday for two of my kids next month. — And I'm just imagining David, Go ahead. Sorry. — Turns out finding an Omnitrix toy almost completely impossible. They don't make them anymore. Oh, I have one in the other room. — Yeah, but if you want to get like the good one like from the original series on eBay, it's like $500 in packaging. — Are you serious? Oh, — yes. — Mine's not in packaging. But — yeah, mint condition. If it's not in package, it's probably 50 60 bucks. — Well, that's not bad. — Yeah, — for a vintage toy like that. And by the way, that is considered vintage toy. — And it freaking It lights up. It makes a noise. It pops out and everything. It's pretty cool. It's vintage. — What did it retail for? — It's that fucking old. — Probably 20 bucks. — We were that So now here it is. It's years later. They're out of production. — No, that's not the way it works cuz who knows how used it is. It might have been taken out just put on a shelf. But the rest of the Ben 10 collection, — I was able to get some, but they don't make noises. But you there's a disc that you turn and you can project an alien onto the wall. So that's the best I could do. Anything else going on in comic books this week, though? — I'm only reading comics that are uh self-produced in the negative zone, which is what we call the non-commercial part, crowdfunded books. Uh, and uh, there are a couple remarkable books there. One is actually a regular book. You can get it at Barnes & Noble. I think it's Garennis uh partisan with art by Steve Epings. A story of a young mother who's caught up in the Second World War as the Nazis advance on Stalenrad. It's it's grim, Jim. It's oversized. The art is very impressive. There's not a wasted word or panel in it. It'll it grabs you by the throat. uh it you know and as he only seems to take his work seriously when he's writing about World War II but those stories are superb. Uh I recommend it. Uh another book that I read was uh Big Man Comics Imperion which is a science fiction novel with a uh a core of faith and meaning which is rare to find. And it's not stupidly written. It's intelligently written and the art is magnificent. Uh, those are two books I read recently that impressed me. — Speaking of Steve Epting, he just got a new book announced with Rick Rainder, Hammerfist. I'm excited for that. — I was also very, very excited for that one. That was gonna be pretty darn cool. — Yeah, — dude. This is what I wanted to talk to you about, Dylan. So, my four-year-old, his favorite alien in Ben 10 is Wrath. — If you're unfamiliar with the character, he basically looks like Tony the Tiger, but more aggressive. But he's got this claw on both hands that goes out right in the middle. So my kid keeps saying it's he's wrath, but he's flipping everybody to doubleirds. — Like he's got this claw. — Nothing wrong with that. — The character double bird. — Time to show him some Stone Cold Steve Austin and just get the whole, you know, he can carry that on. — Give him a beer. Well, that also works for Wrath because whenever he turns into Wrath, he just starts cutting wrestling promos before he beats people up. It's actually a pretty funny version of the character. You might think my favorite one. — That took me a second because that was Wrath's from like one of the later shows. — Oh, so that's not the original. — No, that's not original. — Well, he likes that one a lot. And he just he every time he turns into Wrath, he cuts a promo on who whatever's in his way. If it's a waterfall, he talks crap on the waterfall. If it's another alien, he talks crap on it before he beats it up. And my little kid, my little uh my son just loves it. He loves flipping everybody off. Uh talking about how he's Wrath. — When that Wrath toy came out for the first time, it was super hot. Like so many of those Ben 10en toys at the time were just were huge. And they had a couple of different like versions of them, but they never had like that's what they that's what we need. And I think we talked about this on the either on here or on one of or on the podcast is uh Ben 10 needs a 6-in scale figure line like high-end good uh you know good$25 to $30 figures especially a lot of those early ones.

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00)

The design on forearms is really cool. There's another lava one that it kind of shows up in this one. Uh there's like Echo I think might be another one that he just turns into a bunch of them. But yeah, they got some really good designs on that stuff. — There's a customizer on Instagram that's making custom versions of each one out of like Marvel Legends figures and stuff. And he's doing like a really good job. And that's making me like, "Man, I want these figures. I want someone to come. " — So, your four-year-old already knows about the bird. No, he doesn't. He doesn't realize he's flipping everybody off as he's saying he's thinks that he's got the claws like the character, but really he's flipping everybody off. — Wrath has one big like black claw that comes out of his fist. like Wolverine. — It's like the max. — Yeah, like the max. That's the probably the best uh visual for those who don't know. — Yeah. So, he doesn't know that he's doing it, but he's definitely doing it. — So, I'm trying to delicately work. — Exactly. He's doing like I'm ask like you can't just be doing that to strangers, buddy. Somebody. But it is cute when your four-year-old starts flipping people off on accident. — It's a good moment to be a dad. — It's also a good moment to point out that we are also sponsored by a new comic book coming up in June that our good friend Aaron has a bit to do with. Let's check out this trailer. Previously, monsters became mankind's last line of defense, led by an ancient vampire. A fragile alliance built on distrust. A vigilante turned to something darker. A cop fighting the beast within. A cursed priest bound to a demon. A child trapped in a monster's body. But now something ancient has surfaced. The tome of Leviathan, a book of apocalyptic power that no human can understand except one. Dr. Herbert West. cold, methodical, obsessed with conquering death. First he brought the dead back, then he learned to control them. Now with the toone, he won't just raise the dead. He'll command them. Dinosaurs, corpses, monsters, everything that's ever died will fight for him. And if that wasn't enough, something inside the team is breaking. If they fail, the world won't survive. Oh man, that Too loud for me. Gee, — definitely know it's too loud. Too much dinosaur goodness. — That's right. Sully can't handle the dinosaur rose. — Oh no, it's too loud. I'm going to diss. — So Sparrow, on the very end of that trailer, there's an awesome image of that dinosaur with one of the heroes in front of it. There's an interesting story about that, you know, a little bit tragic, but I think something that people would might want to know, right? Uh well so that's the um that's the last cover uh work that um that Vudon did and uh he unfortunately passed away and so uh you know we really miss him. we had like a lot of he's really great artist, really exceptional person. Um we loved working with him and we were looking forward to doing a lot more with him. But uh yeah, unfortunately um there was a tragic accident and he and his family died and um you know it's uh it's really bittersweet to see that cover because uh he's just such a good guy and it really you know it's just one of those things where it's like you don't know how long you have with people. You don't you know tomorrow's promise to nobody. So, um, you know, it's it's really kind of like a heartbreaking thing, but just what an amazing artist and what a good person. — Yeah. So, there is a little bit of a story behind that one, which I think is

### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=1500s) Segment 6 (25:00 - 30:00)

uh pretty interesting. But we're getting close, Barl. Less than three weeks to go before this bad boy launches. Or no, I'm sorry. We got it in June. — In June. Yes. So, yeah, I think that's about three weeks away. — No, June 25th. more like — book is done like all the unholy nightmares um you know since uh since the launch uh this one is done so we will be fulfilling very shortly after it is uh you know it closes so um everybody please uh please go and sign up it uh it's really great um Drew is doing a great job uh he and Aurelio you know both Aurelio brought the characters to him that he kind of wanted to use and then Drew added a bunch of spices and It's uh it's coming out really great and I love the fact that Dr. Herbert West is in this. I'm a big reanimator fan. So, you know, the fact that he is a public domain uh Cthulhu character, you know, Lovecraft character is uh is fantastic. Very, very cool. And we do have some questions from the people. Jag Live. So, if we ever get a crossover DC Marvel Punisher versus Death Throat Stroke book, would Mike Baron be willing to write it? — Sure. — I know it won't happen, but it would be a dream. — No, Mike hates money. — Mike hates good storytelling. What are you doing? — Yeah. Why would he want — What does he have to offer? Come on. — Yeah. Sure, man. You could already come up with a story for Deathstroke versus Punisher. That'd be a pretty good one. — Yeah, I can. I'm not going to do it right now, but — No, that stuff costs money. — But, you know, I prefer to write characters that have some basis in reality. When I did The Punisher, I approached it as a straight crime story. For the first three years, there was no science fiction Punisher as a barbarian, dinosaurs or anything like that. He did interact with Dr. of Doom and the Kingpin and other uh classic Marvel uh villains, but those guys were kind of based in reality, too. — But Deathstroke would be quite the foe for him because Deathstroke's basically like an evil super soldier where he's been enhanced and he can use like 100% of his mind. In fact, at one time he would just beat the holy piss out of Batman quite easily. — Whoa. Black Canary can. Come on. You know, she can beat up. — Beat up everybody. — Everyone. She's the bestest ever. — What do you think, Dylan? Is uh Deathstroke versus Punisher the ideal Marvel DC crossover for Deathstroke one of your favorite characters? — Uh it'd be fun. I don't know if that's the ideal one. I'd have to take I'd have to think about it, but that would definitely be fun. Be interesting to see them two interact. — Would cat versus death be a better way to go since they're both enhanced? I mean, you got two super soldiers there, so that part would be interesting, especially because, you know, things went more ideal for Cap to where the circumstances for Death Strokes, uh, him become a super soldier were very messed up. So, that'd be an interesting dichotomy. — And then Jaglog says, "They did my boy Liu Kang dirty again. " — I don't know how they did Liu Kang dirty. He was the golden boy in the movie essentially. Like the entire time they're like, "He's our best champ. " And he beat the tar out of pretty much everyone. — But he didn't beat Shiaoan, did he? — No. — Yeah. Gotta got to give that to the girl who can't act. — He kicked Joe Lewis's ass. — He can act. — Well, he without getting too much into spoilers, like he fights earlier on in the movie when he's like has immortal and no one can kill him and he's like beating the tar out of him like the whole time, but he can't kill him cuz it's at a point where they haven't destroyed the McGuffin to where they can kill him. He's like — all his horcruxes. — Yeah, but he's handling him like he is like beating him up. So I wouldn't say they did Luke hang dirty. — You know who's just call a horcrux? — He also has probably my favorite. He has the best uh fatality in the movie. Like when he takes out a guy, it's pretty cool. — But Liu Kang's always had the worst fatality in the games. Just like the bicycle kicks. — Fatality. — The dragon turns into the dragon. He turns with a dragon. He — That's after Mortal Kombat one. And number one, it's the bicycle kicks, — right? — No, the bicycle kick is a basic move. — Oh, but he didn't turn away. — Well, then they're on the edge ready. Finish him, Wes, with the bicycle kick. What a lame finish. — I'm telling you. — Then Scorpion, he throws a jab. He's like, this finisher sucks. What a fatality is terrible. Was that — must never learn the fatalities? He just hit one button. — No. — Been going his whole life doing the

### [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=1800s) Segment 7 (30:00 - 35:00)

wrong thing. — I don't like that same uppercut fatality. — Why is everyone crouch and hit the knees for the fatality? That sucks. — Was that back a quarter sweep up and C? I haven't seen Genesis. I forget. — No, it was the cartwheel kick. Fire kick. I told you IT WAS JUST SINGLE KICK. THAT'S A TOTALLY DIFFERENT THING. — WHATEVER. IT WAS JUST a dumb kick. — You had freaking Kano ripping hearts out. You had uh Scorpion eating things. Subzero would break him into 100 pieces and Liu Kang just like kicks him. What is this crap? He's a good guy. He, you know, — n was the one that rip you apart. Well, yes. There was a point where he started turning into a dragon and then he would eat you. But that's when they started acting like the fatalities and all the extra stuff. — Yeah. — Did he do the fucking fire kick? Is that what killed him, Dylan? — No. Fire kick. — What is the fire? — He just had a stupid kick. — No. And like uh like the exploding print said he had the cartwheel and uppercut was his fatality. That's what he did. — Thank you. Fire kick or a bicycle kick? — Well, who bicycle kick was one of his moves, but it was just a kick. Who ripped off your head? — Wasn't that the one? one where he just like went through the air and just kept tapping you with his toes? — Right. — It was a dumb move. — Yeah. Liu Kang was supposed to be like the hero of that game, but he had the worst move set. Nobody ever played with him. — No, they did play with him quite a bit. The two Sparrow. He likes lame characters. — The two characters that were the lowest on the original M lowest played on the original MK cap were Sonia. Sonia Blade and Kano. And that's why they weren't in KO was the best. Ko was so good in the new movie. — Ko has all the best lines in the new movie. He's great. — He had all the best lines in the first movie. He had all the best. — He also had all the best lines in that fucking the YouTube series, — the Mortal Kombat Legacy — was in that different Oh, different Kano, but yeah. — Yeah, it was and he had the laser eye vision thing. — As soon as they made him Australian in that first MK movie and then they canonized that in the games, Kano became super cool. The west whoopsy is what someone just said in chat. — What? — I guess that's when you give someone a five knuckle shuffle or something. The west — that Luke had a stupid fatality. It was a kick and that's what it was. — No, it wasn't a kick. It was a serious uppercut. Yeah, he does. Yeah, — he'd whail on you with some butterfly kicks and then he would uppercut you off the screen and then you'd fall back down and uh you know, basically be a sack a second obviously. comparison. It's not the coolest fatality, but also you were completely wrong on what the fatality was. I think that's what everyone's hung up on. — I was playing that when I was like 15 years old. I'm almost 50. It's — not tearing It's not I still remember IT LIKE IT WAS YESTERDAY. It's still not It's not tearing a heart out and it's not ripping a head off and showing it to you, you know, but it's uh it fits his character. — Oh, yeah. The subor he rips in there like spine was — Sonia blows you a kiss and then you just like burn up. That's the dumbest mentality. — Nobody cares about Soda Blade. I don't know why she's even in the movies. She sucked. — No, Sonia's cool. Just not, you know, she wasn't play very playable in the first game. — The guy that introduces her uh partner Jaxes was a way cooler character. He had robot arms. You just rip your arms off and stuff, — right? — Yeah, Jax is cool. school. — I mean, he didn't have the metal arms right away, but — no, I'm never going to live the five knuckle shuffle thing. — He's talking about this Sean Cena wrestling move, not the perversions that you guys — Yeah. He said he said, "Oh, you give him some five knuckle shuffles. " And we were like, "What? " — The guy got out of line. You got — Is that your go-to? Is that your go-to, Wes? When you're in danger, you start giving out five knuckle shuffles. — The guy was out of line. You had to put him in line. — You All right. — Oh my goodness. Whatever. — The web slinger. — It's almost like a trade. — What character would you like to see the absolute version of in the absolute universe? Like absolute booster gold. We've kind of already gotten that one, right, Dylan? Cuz he had all that Omega power in him when he was being held, right? Well, he got uh he got taken over by Dark Side. But yeah, we saw him in the Absolute Universe where he got tortured for a long time by the Dark

### [35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=2100s) Segment 8 (35:00 - 40:00)

Legion — and then he became Yeah. Dark Sid's vessel. That's kind of absolute booster gold, isn't it? — I get uh not really like absolute ambush bug. And I mean that. I would like to see some like, you know, since fun. I loved ambush bug. That was a dumb — not absolute condiment king in Batman. — Condiment king. Really? Wow. What does he use? Like, you know, garlic ioli and spicy relish instead. — He's got Sriracha. — Fancy stuff. Sriracha katcha mayo. — It's the ultimate version. He's spicy. — It stings. — It would stick. — I don't know what uh ultimate or absolute character. You know, a kind of one that's left. — Firestorm — from the be cool. — I'd like to see red tornado. What an absolute legion. — It all depends on the writing. — Oh, yeah. But I could envision but I also thought that Jeremy Adams Aquaman was absolute Aquaman, but that obviously didn't end up being the case, — man. — Do you want an absolute uh Jonah Hex? — I mean, well, we're getting actual Jonah Hex back. Just I'm waiting for that. I don't I mean I would I always take more Jonah Hex. I just don't know what they do with an absolute Jonah Hex. I don't know. — Jimmy Pommy Audi writing it. — I hope but I don't think so. I don't They haven't announced the creative team for the new uh Jonah Hex book. They just announced the book a while ago and no creative team yet. — I'll ask him. — Maybe. Yeah, — it'd be my choice. — Do we need an absolute blue beetle? — Mhm. Which blue beetle would you go with though? That's it. — It's got to be haime, right? Then he could be like just an enormous beetle man like Fran Kofka. You've been at Dennis Camp. It's metamorphosis by France Kofka but using Haime Reyes is the blue beetle and he's a giant dung beetle. I can see it now. Wow. — False says we don't have KGBs. That is correct. But there was a file that said the KGB project where there is an absolute KGB but we just haven't seen him yet but we they've mentioned him in the books and Jag Live says so why is DC promoting the new Barbara Gordon series so much? The premise seems like a miniseries. Also you guys are wrong about Dick and Babs number one over Corey. — DC's promoting a book. I haven't seen anything. Well, that means — you have to read the comic to see it. Yeah, — it's in the back of every comic — except for the Batman book where Barbara gets arrested and then it's the Dream Girls Pride special. It is weird. — No, I think it had both. I believe it had both in the back of B. Yeah, cuz I remember correctly it had both. — But I — Yeah, it's got both. You get the Batgirl and you get the Pride. You get both. I think the reason they're doing it is because Batman, Poison Ivy, and then whatever is going on in there is going to be this upcoming Batman event where they have to take the city of Gotham back from Vandal Savage. — Oh, so it's another war for Gotham. — Savage. — Gotham War, too. — Yes. — Yeah. You'll never believe it. Gotham's been taken over by the bad guys. — Oh, wow. Again? — It never What do you mean again? It never happens. — Never been done before. It's all new. — Oh, all better. — Barbara Gordon should not be with Dick Grayson. She should be with Jason Todd and Dick Grayson should be — She shouldn't be with Jason Todd. Do not agree with that part. But Corey and Dick are better than Barbara and Dick. I much prefer Nightwing and Starfire together. — Babs and Jason can share their trauma together, dude. — No, we don't need that. We don't need those two together. All right, Sparrow, who are you? Are you team Babs or Corey for Dick Grayson? — Oh, I'm Babs. — Yeah, I you know, I thought that there was there was an issue where uh she you know um I can't remember who wrote it, but uh it was when she was Oracle and she was feeling like, you know, she was feeling down. she felt like she couldn't pursue a relationship and Dick Grayson uh great guy that he is like took her up and you know swung around with her uh so she could get the feeling of being a being Batgirl again and uh it was a really sweet issue and I thought that it really kind of defined their romance as being you know Cory's hot Cory's the hot chick you date for a while but Babs is the one you settle down with — you know the oracle tells you what's going to happen and the anacle tells you what happened.

### [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=2400s) Segment 9 (40:00 - 45:00)

— Zack, — interesting. — What do you think, Sully? Who are you with, Babs or Corey? — Team Corey, 100%. — Exactly, dude. It's — Remember this old one? — Yes, indeed. Team Corey. Plus, I like their daughter in the Kingdom Come universe. Um, Nightstar. — I thought you were going to say, "I like their daughter and I'm not Starfire. " I was like, — memory hold that. — He's compromised. No one remembered that until you just opened your mouth, right? Oh my god, that was — Oh, no. The problem was we all remember it. Dream says that was Birds of Prey 8 ate by Chuck Dixon. — Oh, there you go. Chuck Dixon. No wonder it was good. — No wonder it stuck with me. — Chuck can't be right on everything. — Nerd says, "I'm sorry, Wes. I just now saw the email. Hope my submissions did not uh stray too far from over two derivative. " Oh, no worries, mate. I'm gonna get back to you tomorrow. I have a bunch of uh correspondents I need to get to and uh we're having a good time and all that stuff was all good. — Says, "What's up? " — Go ahead. I was just gonna say I wanted to respond to your uh to your Chuck Dixon can't be right about everything by just telling you it's canon. — Okay. Tom Taylor, — let me go put on my newsies cap. — The nerd says not to bring things down. Aaron said, "Tomorrow's promised to no one. " And just then, I've been informed I'm four minutes away from being an active shooter from an active shooter at SYU. — Oh shit. Stay safe, man. Oh, — absolutely. Bunker down, lock the doors, and um you know, we'll be praying for you, man. Hopefully everything's all right. And everybody else at uh SYU. — Absolutely sucks, man. Wait, is that going on like right now? — I'm assuming it's going on last minutes. — 10 minutes ago. — Yeah. Damn. — Yeah, definitely pray uh pray for everybody there that uh things turned up well. Hopefully it's uh bad information or maybe not quite exactly what they're saying. HH the family over to Sigma Comics, my favorite people. Great to see my mentor. We are in El Paso and headed to Phoenix. had to kickstart him and back Bronze Star 2 and Calico unwanted men. Absolutely. — If you guys don't know what Calico is, he's Punisher for animals. He's an animal rights Avenger. The books are grim, Jim, but they're fascinating. — I'm right. — You got to see HH in El Paso. — HH is uh Harold German is his name. He's a good friend of mine. lives in uh the Bronx or no, excuse me, uh Brooklyn. Uh we usually sit together at conventions when we're both there and we will be together at Phoenix. — Very nice. — Great. — Good. I got to see when we were at obviously in Dallas and had a good time. So definitely go to Kickstarter, back Bronze Star 2, back Calico Unwanted Men, and then sign up for the Unholy Nightmare 3 uh newsletter. That way you can be informed of everything going on with that uh project as well. And congratulations to HH and all the success, dude. You definitely earned it. So I guess we will get to the big topic of the day. Marvel about two years ago promised that they were going to hold the line at $3. 99. That was going to be the bulk price point for their line of comic books. There would be a few books that were $4. 99, but not very many. And two years later, there's only one book being promoted in July with a 3. 99 price point. Everything is $4. 99 and above. And the $5 standard comic within Marvel is here. What do you think, Erin? Are we starting to creep a little too far out of the U realm of impulse buy with this number? — Well, when Marvel and DC tell you that they're going to hold the line at a cheap price point, it's like when a politician tells you that a tax is just for a certain, you know, it's just a billionaire tax. It's not going to affect you. Trust me, there's something in there that's going to affect you. Um, it uh it's a lie. It's, you know, they have to, unfortunately, they have to increase the price point. They have to try to squeeze the last remaining readers uh out of more and more money because they're losing readership. And rather than putting in the effort to make their books better, hiring more talented writers, getting better stories out there, they are just continuing down the path of, you know, cheap writers because instead of just focusing on a core, say 20 books that are really, really good, they're going to give you over 70 in a month that are really, really bad to mediocre. So, this is uh unfortunately where it is. And if

### [45:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=2700s) Segment 10 (45:00 - 50:00)

you're going to keep paying this price, you know, at some point, everybody asks themselves, is this worth it anymore? And you'll make more money on each issue, but you're will that be worth the amount of readers that you lose that fall away from a lot of titles because they're just not going to keep paying that price. What do you think, Dylan? Are there are you still willing to give as many books a chance — uh at five at 49 4. 99 or are you out? — Definitely not, especially at Marvel. And I think it definitely scares a lot of people out cuz I think are already not too keen on the floppy format right now and then with how much you have to pay for it. Like you know you get one chapter of a story, you get like 24 pages for $5 and you have to wait another month. You're going to create the people that do want to read are either going to pirate or trade weight now. Like this is not a uh good way to go about especially when you're the one that isn't making good comics right now. Like everyone knows like even you see it everywhere. Diehard Marvel fans are talking about how much better DC is right now. Marvel does not have it like that to be upping it to $4. 99. That's crazy. — Um $5 does not seem unreasonable to me. — On the other hand, uh both you guys are correct that they're putting out inferior product. A story why, you know, if a story doesn't take it so seriously, why should the reader? They have to get serious about these characters. Uh, and that means they have to hire writers who understand the medium. And I'm not sure that the writers they use understand the medium. You can tell any kind of story you want in graphic format. Uh, but you have to understand the medium and use it correctly. And that includes how many words per page, when do you open it up, when do you slip it down, taking characterization seriously, making your character stand out, and this is something That has to be emphasized. When characters talk, they have to sound like real people. — Unfortunately, a lot of comics now do sound like uh real people, Mike, but it's all the NPCs on Twitter. Like so many characters now are just spitting out the same Twitter screeds that you see from the writers and they're using them. — That's not serious. I mean, sure, those people are real that say those things, but they don't understand the medium. — Uh, the number one rule is to entertain. Number one, entertain. And then you can tell any kind of story you like, but if you're not entertaining, you can't just to deliver a lecture and expect people to like it, — right? See, I I'm going to have to disagree with Mike a little bit on this. I think $4. 99 is too high. It's not that $5 is too much or anything. It's for people that don't read comics to try comics. Um, so you you've created a situation. Yes. I mean, look, for us that have been reading comics for 5, 10, 30, 50 years. Yeah, it's fine. It's $5. It's whatever. We're all adults with like, you know, actual incomes. But for your teenagers, your early 20s, even for kids, um $5, yeah, it's too much to try the thing — that you don't even know if you like the medium. — Um, — well, we always buy a book on the basis of the art, right? We've all opened up a book and this hadn't happened in a long time, but you open up the book and you say, "Holy shit, this art is terrific. I'm going to buy it. " — Right? Then you go home and you're usually disappointed because the writing is seldom up to the art. That's no longer the case because the art has deteriorated. — Yeah. — I Oh, I agree with that. What I'm But I'm looking at it as look, we we've already established kind of this shrinking shrinking market. And the only reverse course out of that is because there there's there is the law of inevitability that's coming. — Excuse me. — And that is single copies of books literally sold for tens of thousands of dollars to one guy that just it becomes a vanity industry. It's already close. It's approaching that now. And but that's the inevitable end result of the vicious cycle that the comics industry is in, which is smaller readership be gets higher prices be gets smaller readership begets higher prices over and over. Eventually you hit an unsustainability point. And we're we've been rapidly approaching that. the acceleration. They they've kind of staved it off with a lot of their the gimmicky things, but all it is just

### [50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=3000s) Segment 11 (50:00 - 55:00)

trying to draw more, but at the end of the day, all of these initiatives, be it price rises, uh variant covers, incentives, gimmickry, uh everything is about extracting more dollars from a shrinking audience. — Yeah. And the only way that you can reverse that course is by growing the audience. And growing the audience necessitates having a price point in which people that don't read comics are willing to try comics. That's I think $5 is too high for that. — I agree. Uh I go every Wednesday. I spend my money. And I also see something that gave me complete perspective on the new release shelf. Um it's the dollar bin, the dollar bins. Um and there's a certain section of the dollar bins. They're just my store is just trying to get rid of inventory. So I'm seeing like six to eightmon old books um in the dollar bins. And it's like in the beginning of the dollar bin, you know, everything else is like Bronze Age Archie stuff, you know, whatever you want. But there's a huge stack of current books even like I was noticing a bunch of action comics with card stock variant covers and it shows you like the ridiculousness of like the variant chase too. It's like look it's already in the dollar. It's already in my store's dollar bin because they just want to move inventory. make $1 off of this unmovable merchandise that was clogging their shelves. And it's like that's just that's the future of the floppy. And unfortunately, and I'm the biggest fan of it, too. Like, one thing I love to do is I love to look at the CPI inflation calculator. It's from the US Department of uh of um of labor statistics. So, uh like when I started this thing back in the day, Marvel Comics in 1981 went up from 50 cents to 60 cents and they stayed there for the like basically most of the 80s um until they went up to 75. But in 1981, 60 cent, a 60cent comic book today would cost you $2. 28. And this was printed on newsprint and it had advertisements and like lots of video game advertisements, lots of junk food, like you know, all down the line. But shouldn't a comic book, you know, still be around that? Shouldn't Wouldn't $2. 99 be a better price for a floppy? For a monthly floppy? No variant cover, no bells or whistles, but it's like, what are we paying for? And to whom? Lecturers, bad art, you know what I mean? Stories that don't matter. I mean, all of this stuff is adding up. No pun. It really is. And for me personally, the guy who goes every Wednesday, I'm down to one Marvel comic book on my poll list, and it's Philip Kennedy Johnson's Hulk. Everything else can go. Seriously, I'm just I can't really afford to be spending my money on taking risks, and I want to read new stuff. I really I I'd like to be interested in like like, oh, this left off the shelf at me. Actually, this happened this week. I got ordained issue number two. It's a third printing from Bad Idea and because I took a chance on the fourth printing reprint, you know, a couple of weeks ago of issue one and I was like, "Oh, wow. This is what I've been looking for. New stories with with better art, you know, and it just but is it going to be, you know, it's not worth it for a Marvel book? I mean, Sorceress Supreme, you're giving me Steve Orlando again, you know, that's not going to be worth five bucks a month. " — No. Oh, and how many times that has Steve Orlando had and failed and they just keep relaunching and relaunching with him again. It's like he's already proven that people aren't interested. You know, whether you think the book is good or not, not enough people are interested in it. Not enough people think enough of him as a writer to seek him out and to pick up his book. So, you're just throwing good money after bad. It's, you know, or bad money after bad even. I was at Graham crackers this week and they've got a bunch, you know, every day they have a bunch of dollar books set out front and I went through five boxes of dollar books. That is an easy That should be an easy purchase for me. I should be walking out with a stack, you know, because I was like, I could spend I was like, man, I I'll spend like 50 bucks on books. Do you know how many dollar books I bought? — Two. I guessed it. — What'd you get? — What' you get? Yeah. I got an issue of backlash from Image because I was like, you know what? I own this. It's in a bag and board, but I'll have a nice beat up reader copy to beat up where so I can look at Brett Booth art. And then I got a copy of uh there was a video game called City of Hero. Um or not, I'm

### [55:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=3300s) Segment 12 (55:00 - 60:00)

sorry, not City of Heroes, uh Freedom Force. And apparently they made a comic and it had Tom Sioli artwork in it. So I grabbed that. — Very nice. But most of those boxes, most of those boxes were stuff from the last five years that I was like, I have no interest in this. — And doc, one other thing people have to remember is the way that Marvel produced books, you don't get a story in a $5 comic book. No, — you get a chapter in that story. — If you're lucky, it's a four issue story and it cost you 20 bucks for that one story. But if you're unlucky and maybe you're reading Al Ewing's Venom book, it might be a 20issue story. Yeah. I mean, how long did that How long did Al Yun's venom go and only tell one fucking story? — That's what I'm saying. — Most of it was filler. — For five bucks, you don't even get a beginning, middle, and end with with, you know, a definitive conclusion or anything resolved by the end of the book. And I think that's another thing that you have to take into consideration when well, — you know, that's just too much. — Sully before talked about the consumer price index. um you know 229 right now that would be you know eminently reasonable. That's definitely within the um the uh impulse buy territory. If you compare that even to a book from the 1920s like or the early 30s that were that was 10 cents — uh or you know you'd be at a $1. 93 — you're still right it's aligned to the inflation until a certain point. — Yeah pages doc I mean those were 60 pages those monsters those golden age books those were 60 pages for a dime. Then they went up to 12 cents, you know what I mean? By the 1950s, but they held at a dime for like two decades. — Yeah. So, if you com if you compare it, you it the comic industry kind of stayed about the same price with inflation adjustment for a very long time. And then after some of the coll, you know, we had the '9s collapse, we had the, you know, kind of the 201s collapse. um where and you've seen these collapses happen and every single time it results in they have to adjust their new normal. Um and you're now seeing back in the day it was 25 price increases then it went up to 50 cent now it's dollar minimum jumps every time it jumps. — Yeah. And like something that's never discussed and it's the real reason that book sales and comic sales are down is we have a generation of young people who do not read period. They don't read books. They don't read comics. They grew up on the internet playing video games. The only books the only comics they buy are those based on their video games. — Well, they also read a lot of manga, but that's but I agree. — True. Um, so — I also blame Dylan and his generation for really — Yeah, I blame Dylan for a lot of things to be honest. — But the thing is you're also losing the lifelong readers. It's And it's not that we're dying. We're giving up. Um because So yes, you — No. Heidi McDonald says we're all dead, Doc. — I'm dead. Um this is a fucking — She's older. She's older than all of us, but we're dead. — I'm pretty sure — I'm so old. — Oh, you're not old, Mike. You're classic. — Thank you, Mike. You're right. — I have to bow out now. I want to thank you for having me, you guys. Wes, me. — I will return when you least. — It's always fun, brother. Definitely. Be on the lookout for Bronstar 2 on Kickstarter. — Thank you. — Go check it out. Go find it. The link will be in the description. Indeed. Great art. Great Pat Barrick art. It's amazing. — I love Pat's art. — I do too. I mean, it's just It reminds me like I haven't backed one or two yet. I can get on that because it's like that's the good thing about backing these projects because it's like, "Oh, wow. Issue two's already out. I forgot to get one. Oh, I did. Well, let me just You can fix that. Just click the link and go buy it. " And you I really feel like a patron of the arts. I'm a bluecollar dude and I can literally contribute to art being produced. That's really fun and that it's satisfying too and this thing of ours and that's actually and that's also worth the price point too because it's self-publishing and we're helping an independent artist create art and we're part of that process. So yeah, — definitely feels different when you're trying to support an enormous media

### [1:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=3600s) Segment 13 (60:00 - 65:00)

empire like Disney where they keep price gouging you. And back in the day, Doc, basically the comic book would be sitting there at the checkout aisle in competition with — uh you know, uh baseball cards, soda pop, and candy bars. Well, candy bars aren't $5. They're still 250 now. They've gone up. — Yeah. and soda soda's up to — uh — 280 you know — and a lot of that is sin taxes that have been — implemented in a lot of pl like in different states but so candy and soda have they've gotten their inflation has been partially due to sin taxes — and you know gluttony taxes that states have introduced over the years and they're still able to be cheaper by 50 by you know 30 40 50%. — Well, they're still on that impulse purchase aisle. That's what you still see when you're checking out and comics aren't there because they just they're too they became too expensive. they became too expensive and the quality diminished to the point where the when kids would flip through them, they didn't get interested anymore. Um, and I and now that that's something that we rarely discuss is the fact that as much as we love that like early 2000s uh kind of maturation of the comic industry and superhero books and everything like that, you know, with doing things like Civil War and the Ultimates and um the Wild Storm stuff and Vertigo and even whenever you've tried to bring you know that kind of maturity and I don't mean maturity in like you know DNA or language but you know mature much more serious themes um brought into your comics. It it kind of and and the realistic art that became all the rage where, you know, people were concerned about anatomy looking correct instead of looking fucking cool. And you ended up with kids going, "Well, I mean, it's not bad, but I'm not really that interested. " They stopped you. you stop having a product that enticed children. Um that and honestly even the digital coloring that makes everything Oh yeah, we've got five 50,000 different shades of color in this comic. Now it looks like fucking mud to children. It looks like mud to me. Then again, I'm kind of a child. — What do you think, D? Isn't this a weird time for Marvel to be raising their prices when they're basically getting stomped by DC comics? And certainly DC is doing that on the back of a line of $5 books in Absolute. But, you know, you go to the rest of their line, a lot of their books, at least half of them are $4 basically in the the price point that Marvel said they were going to stick to, but now they expect you to pay $5 for all the crap that nobody wanted to buy in the first place. Isn't this just going to make them have to go to $6 even faster? That's what it seems like. It doesn't seem like the opportune time for them to jump to $5 when they've got like two good books right now and one of those good books is three issues in. So, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to switch to $5 now when you don't have a whole lot of leaders of readership and you're losing it and everyone, even diehard Marvel people are talking about how terrible it is right now. It doesn't make any sense to be switching to $5 now. It just seems like this is seems like some idiot there's like this is how we can recoup our losses by just charging more cuz that works. That won't drive people away. — I think that that's but that's what they're that's exactly what they're doing. They're looking at it as the loss of readership is an unsolvable problem. — The let's just get more money — out of the remaining audience — is the only solution. — Yep. — Yeah. because they still have to go up to Disney and show them the books and be like, "Hey, look. This is what we forecasted. hit. — They weren't going to hit it. Got to raise the prices. " — It's an it's basically being run by accounting at this point. — It's an old George Carlin joke. — That's the other thing that we don't talk about all that much is, but you know, part of the reason that comics have not kept pace with inflation and have outpaced it is because they are part of a big corporation that they continually have to justify their existence to. So, you know, when you have shareholders, you know, you have to have those meetings where you're proving that you're, you know, you're making money, you're making money. And remember, Disney is a company that in the past has been famous for shutting

### [1:05:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=3900s) Segment 14 (65:00 - 70:00)

down divisions that were profitable because they weren't profitable enough. The moment that Disney looks at the books and they're pouring more money into Marvel than they feel the return justifies, that's when you're going to see Marvel shut down the, you know, there'll be some brand managers that are in Burbank, you know, with Disney publishing and then the books will be farmed out to somebody else. They will be licensed out the way that Disney comics are. You know, I know that there's uh there's idiot YouTubers that think that they know something that are like, "You guys have been saying this for 10 years. " Yes, Disney moves slowly, but it always moves in the same direction. Yeah. They've been keeping over to it for 10 years. — Yeah. Look, the best predictor of future results is past performance. — And we've watched exactly what Disney has done, what Marvel's done, what the comic industry has done, what their accounting, what their uh sales department has done. Every single thing they've been doing is fucking predictable. new gimmick, raise prices, cut talent, um events because — more events and it doesn't matter what they tell us at a you know a retailer meeting in 2024 — that — and this is this and this is corporate. Look, I'm going to tell you this right now as somebody that is in the corporate world. The corporate culture is any promise that is made has an expiration date of the next breath unless it's put into a contract that promise has all of the expiration of okay and next sentence — is there something parallel we can compare this price point to I'm thinking about Pokemon cards your actual you know those are — I mean the best is baseball cards really. — You also had a very kid-friendly hobby, very very uh easy to get to. It was basically cheap. — Then everybody started buying up all the companies including Marvel. — It skyrocketed the price. — They priced out basically normal people. And now baseball collecting is just like this weird hobby just for rich dudes. — I was looking at Poke like the price of the Pokemon cards. They're at they're about $450 to $4. 99. So I'm thinking is that like you know is that a fair comparison like a parallel? — Well to a degree yes except for it still has a very large active user base. Um it's a more inter baseball cards because they've been around longer than comic books. basically were in the same spaces but did the same exact thing to themselves — and and Pokemon cards have maintained a uh and in fact actually they've had a renaissance in popularity uh in the past few years now has to do with the speculator market. — Yeah. So much so that a bunch of fat lossers who can't work a real job uh you know push kids out of the way and get into fist fights over them at Costco. — Yeah, — exactly. But so no, you I I'd say Pokemon cards have a much more involved and active user base because even though you have all the the terrible speculator bullshit and the you know, as it as Aaron said, the fat lossers that need another job uh that punch kids to get cards off the shelf at Costco. Um — that is a video something I missed. really do that to a kid. — Yeah, that's Yeah, — I've seen him punch women, — pushing them out of the way and stuff and Yeah. — Yeah. — Grab stuff out of the kid's hands like you know it happens all the time. — I was at So, a couple of weeks ago there was there's I'll put it this way. Pittsburgh is a very active comic city. as in we have probably more shops per capita than most cities in the country if not the world. Um, and we have one kind of semiquarterly convention that is but it's mostly the fudge lady and a guy selling his old fucking — uh Yeah, the light the lightsaber guy, the knife guy, the fudge lady, the people trying to sell me gutters and 55 guys that are trying to sell me their 1980s fucking Happy Meal toys. Um, we have that where comics is like eight tables and we have one annual comic

### [1:10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=4200s) Segment 15 (70:00 - 75:00)

convention in this town that is not super big. At the same time, there is a monthly card show that travels around just the metro area and so like 10 miles in within 10 miles there's going to be one at least once a month. Um, and you can't you could barely walk through it and it's just a card show. — I was a couple of — You'll never get me to speak ill of the fudge lady. I'm always delighted. — Oh, I love the Hey, I love the fudge lady. lady, but And she definitely found her target audience. Um, — you're walking around that show, you're going to need some fudge. — a sugar. — Exactly. Um, but so what I mean is like cards in general have a more active user base and whereas comics are it's kind of a dead hobby right now. There's not a lot of activity. — there's all this uh claims that we've got new fans. — I know. Yeah. They're invisible. I look I keep hearing this from all these shops. Well, they're not active. They might come in, buy a comic. I I don't know. But they have not involved themselves in the in it as even a hobbyist at this point. They are just a even if they if there are new people coming in to read these absolute comics, which very much might be, they're the equ they're the equivalent of the kid that picks up one book off a spinner and never finds a comic shop back in the 90s. Well, let's hear for the peoples. We got some good um questions here. Kichioki about to hop on Absolute Batman and I want to give Absolute Catwoman a chance but I see Chi Grayson riding. What's her track record like? Nose ring equals red flag for me. — Oo, no ring is undefeated. — Will say that Absolute Batman, I think you're going to have a good time. You'll enjoy that book. Uh I am also pretty uh hesitant about Absolute Catwoman. They put Scott Snyder as a coowriter, but obviously Chay Grayson's gonna be writing. He's probably just going to give some ideas or some overview to it. Uh she's done TED talks like a TED talk like this is the comic book hero we need. It appears just from the research that I've done because I don't think I've ever read a book with her writing it uh that she's probably kind of more of an activist than a writer. But — yeah, I just — is this Googled there is a 0% chance I would buy a book by her. looking at her previous comics, there's not a whole lot. — Yeah. But yeah, paid speaker to go out there and stuff like that. Maybe uh this is the one that ends up being good. Uh but you know, I would be apprehensive because you just — I thought that they just race and gender swap Devon Grayson. — No. — Jesus. — All new all different Devon Grayson. — It's all new. but this time — named after a commie. — Yeah, but I think she may have like done some short films or something like that. But — I don't know. Well, it feels like uh I don't know why Scott's doing that. He's doing something. — But we will see how that one I don't particularly like the uh design of Catwoman anyway. The big fishbowl head to me, Dylan, is just kind of stupid. But — Draota loves fish heads. The fishbowl heads. That's what this his favorite thing. He did it with uh with Black Mask and he loves those fishbowls. — There are some fishbowl heads in East of West the Jonathan Hickman series with Nick Drago and that you mentioned it. — Yeah. — When you think — that's what he likes. of cats, the first thing that you think of is a big fishbowl head. — Yeah. — Yeah. Design's okay. It's not great. It's not terrible. It's just whatever. But the writer on this new one Yeah. doesn't get me excited. and her appearances in Absolute Batman have just been meh. I really like Absolute Batman, but when she shows up, it's just like I don't really care about her at all. — Look, I'm just going to step out a little bit. — I'm only going to say this once. There's only room for one fishbowl head in comics, superhero comics, and it's fucking The stereo. — Mysterio. You got it, baby. — But I mean, — Jeremiah, should Marvel and DC try selling their books cheaper when you buy them digitally? $4. 99 for a physical issue, $2. 99 for the same issue on Comicsology. — Definitely be cheaper digitally. — 100%. — I do agree that it should be cheaper digitally. You may actually cultivate a new generation of readers. So you be and but here's the thing.

### [1:15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=4500s) Segment 16 (75:00 - 80:00)

At the end of the day, I still don't think digital is the future. And the primary reason is because literally we we install software to not get impulse buy exposure on the internet. We can't do that in the real world and that's — I don't know the Japanese market is substantially larger than the American comic book market over and majority of their sales are digital — for 100 for the thousandth time. The Japanese market has a cultural acceptance of comic books or sequential art storytelling that America simply does not have. It is part and parcel to their entire culture. — Yeah. What I'm saying is they've got a bigger market. — My point Yes. It My point is though, you don't need to cross the biggest hurdle, which is letting people know that sequential storytelling fucking exists. — I think people know the — Japan doesn't have to do that. It's literally they might as well be born with that knowledge. But I don't think that selling books, single issues digitally, is effective. I think it does have to be like a subscription model. So, I think you should just get all the new books for a specific price on whatever app they're using. I know Marvel and DC have separate apps. They should come together and make a single app that everybody is using. And I think that would be uh it would probably help out the popularity and probably uh be a good idea. But there is no digital strategy within Marvel and DC. But the idea that you should pay the same price for digital and physical comic books is ridiculous. — It's ridiculous. You don't get anything out of it. You know what I mean? — It's reductive. — It's stupid in this for the — retailers that are scared. — Yeah. But remember and they're going to look at it the only thing to keep in mind is they're going to look at the video game industry and be like, "Yeah, physical game is the exact same price as a digital game. We're not changing it. " and they don't get anything either — because it's the exact same situation. It's an indefinite lease. — It's not the same collectibility with comic books. Also, you still get access to the game mechanics that you need to play the game when you're doing it uh you know digitally and whatever. It's different in my opinion. — I don't know. I think that the lower price point is a good loss leader. Um, I mean, it's not even a loss leader because what do you you're just making money, you know, on something that you've already produced. So, what it does is I think Doc's right in that it will cultivate, it's the best chance that you have of actually reaching a new generation of readers of getting them invested and then once they like something enough, hopefully that turns around into them wanting to own physical copies of it. — There's this whole thing going on right Now, I'm going to do a video about it this week, but you might have seen it, Dylan, to where there's this big holu about whether or not DC should be printing their Absolute Universe comic books in compact comic format now, or should they wait years like they they're doing with the classic stuff and there are a bunch of retailers like, "No, you can't put it out on compact comic because then nobody will pay for the more expensive version and we'll make less margin on the compact comic. So, we need to do that. " without thinking that there are so many more readers that only read that form factor. And once they discover that, they might come into your comic book shop and start buying the single issues as they're waiting for the next compact comic book to come. — Still get caught up in the variant cover schemes with all your I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump on your — That's how you get new whales, man. collectors. — Yeah, they that's stupid to wait. You need to do it right now while it's still hot and then instead of waiting to potentially when the uh Absolute Universe dies potentially, you need to do it now. Just put it out when the trades come out. You just do it that way and you'll have you'll get some people hooked. You'll get people that want to read it when it comes out and they'll pick up the single issues. That's it's seems — they're going to get through volume one like, "Holy crap, this is good. " And then they're going to find out that there's more story that they can have access to right now. All they have to do is go down to that comic book shop. — Yep. And they might even become like a lot of us where it's like, you know, I don't really even care for the compact format anymore. I like the bigger stuff. I think it looks better. And they might even become more of a snob. Like that also has the potential. — On that note, — well, on that note, I mean, this week, uh, Absolute Batman, Absolute Wonder Woman, Absolute Superman, their volumes one of their trade paperback had a hard coverver re-release with Jim Lee covers. I mean, I think they're about maybe 30 bucks each. And I didn't even look at the price point. I'm sorry. I was I saw them on the top shelf though um on the new release shelf. And also at my local comic book shop, they have a dedicated absolute shelf. And I I check it out

### [1:20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=4800s) Segment 17 (80:00 - 85:00)

every once in a while. And it's kind of like backlogged with especially in the past several weeks DC has republished like issues 1 through 10 of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman and just like kind of flooded the shelves with reprints of of like issues 1 through 10. And it's like they're not moving and they're just cluttering space. So, I mean, I think I'm on the side of the camp. Stay away from, you know, the compact edition sounds great and it probably would sell, but it's going to make a log jam trying to move the pre-existing stuff that's already on your shelf and then you get these hard covers. Well, don't order so much of the, you know, maybe invest in readers and maybe invest in building readers who then will buy more books and you'll start selling in volume as opposed to them just coming in and buying one absolute book off the shelf each month because that's all they've gotten hooked into. You know, give people options to get addicted to comic books. You know, I think that is the better strategy. — And maybe stop trying to sell them the exact same fucking product five different times. You don't need a re-release with a hard cover and a Jim Lee cover. No, you don't. Look, I'm sorry. You didn't need to do that. The publishers are also clogging the shelf. — Yeah, but if you want somebody to buy it, you put it out in the compact comics format. They fall in love. They realize there's these other versions. Like, you know what? I want the fucking luxury version. I'd like the compact comic. I'll put it in my comic book or back pocket, but I want the one, you know, that that's the higher end because it's in my collection permanently. That's how you — I 100% No, no. I 100% agree with that. You need Because here's the thing. I mean, Dylan said, — you strike while the iron is hot. — Not until years later. The — absolute universe, regardless of how hot it is right now, — has an expiration date. We just don't know when that date is — and it will expire. It might be five years, it might be 10 another six months. We don't know when this is. It will never replace the DC universe, but you can create new readers with it now. Not at the tail end when the fucking when the fire's burning out — and the heat has all — Oh, I heard about this years ago. I heard it was good. Should I get it? — Strike while the iron is cold. That's that's — the Marvel method. — That is the Marvel method. But that is 100 that is 100% what the fucking retailers are asking for. And look, I've lost a lot of respect for them — because it's all of the me me. It's it has 0% you they have. And look, I understand they're in a uh an industry right now that is basically been circling the fucking drain for the last decade. And so they need any little thing they can get that they're the only place you can get it. Some sort of exclusivity to them. They need that to try to stay afloat week to week. They're not really thinking so much about five years down the line, but they godamn should start or else there is 0% chance they will be. and striking while the iron is hot with having these compact comics available to buy in fucking Target for people that don't read comics. — Mhm. — Is probably really smart so that five years from now those same people are in your shop buying the — eight different fucking covers of whatever bullshit you're trying to sell them. — You know, — you know what else would be nice for me as someone who is buying floppies and putting them in bags and boards still? What would be nice for me is a nice cheap collection that I could just have on a bookshelf so when I want to read it, I don't have to go into my comic box, flip through, take out the issue, you know, open up the bag and board, try to get the comic out without catching it on the tape, you know, trying to read it in a way that doesn't damage it and then putting it back with all, you know, the same challenges. It'd be nice just to grab that compact off the shelf and to check it out. So again, you're selling me the same thing over and over again, but you're at least this time you're selling it to me in different formats. You're not just throwing a new cover on it. buy it again. — Yeah, — I think a good idea for a compact if you want to put absolute into a compact, I would put like, you know, all the issues number one and the all-in special. Start off with the all-in special have back all the issue number ones, Green Lantern, Flash, and Martian Manhunter and then go with that. You know, there's your gateway at an affordable price to people that are interested. — You could do like Yeah, that's like uh what they did with the G. I. stuff, you know, with the they took the Skybound G. I. Joe stuff, you know, they took like the Duke and like G. I. Joe and like, you know, put it all in one. You could do something like that to get a little sampler.

### [1:25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=5100s) Segment 18 (85:00 - 90:00)

— And I mean, it kind of goes back to the Americans don't buy anthologies. Um, which is kind of what that would be. It's not really because it's a bunch of individual books, but it's essentially anthology treatment. Um, I look, I understand both arguments. I think you should And I don't think you should do — an absolute talk — with the coming out in that month every month for absolute probably would work actually. It would probably it would pro it would work better than a uh than your standard anthology. But the question is so you get say you end up with readers that are like I only want the Batman story or wonder the absolute Wonder Woman story. Now you're those people are like, I'm not buying it. — Or wait, that's your choice. — Yeah. Well, then you have to buy the singles. — Yeah. Great. — And they're that they're looking at that as a bad value proposition, too, — right? That's all you got all kinds of different raiders out there and different ways to attack it, but just leaving it alone is not the answer. In my opinion, Omega Man, it's not reader focused. They should be printing on cheaper paper, pushing digital incentivizing casual purchases. This is only going to continue the slow death of American superior comics. — That's interesting. I remember — listening to Mark Miller, a friend of our show here. Uh Mark Miller was talking on one of his Miller Times about two years ago about you know self-publishing one of his books and he was like after the pandemic uh it doesn't matter about the price of the glossy stock versus uh newsprint stock all the paper stock prices skyrocketed. I think he said it was like 72%. So it's like negligible now the price difference between newsprint and glossy stock. And so, — so how's that how has that changed and come back towards normal? Has that adjusted back? — Exactly. — How was Altera able to sell books for 150 and $2 then? Okay. Because they're on newsprint, you know, I think it did come back uh down. — I personally like the glossy stock. I think it looks like shit. you're reading with the light on, it glares. And I'd rather just have uh if not just newsprint, but that good textured paper where you can actually feel it in your hands. Yeah. Like this third printing of ordained number two I got this week by uh by Bad Idea. I'm in love with their pulpier newsprint style of paper stock here. It's got a wonderful feel to it and it just holds the colors so much better than the glossy stock. I'm totally in love with this as a publication just because oh look at this. This is great and I just love the way it feels on my fingers. I mean I think this is the way. But you know just comics are a tactile experience. You know that's part of the appeal. I think it was Stan Lee who said at a convention once someone asked him about digital and he said you know to him comic books were like boobs. You know he uh he doesn't mind seeing one on a screen but he'd much rather have one in his hand. — Yeah. It's good. Where's — There was a There was an era in like the very late 90s um where they had a paper stock that in my opinion is still one of the it's like the perfect paper stock. It was thicker and a little bit more sturdy than with glossy and it actually held cal saturation better than the news print. but it wasn't the gloss the super glossy stock that they use today. Um because that becomes almost unreadable, especially with how much we've switched over to LED lighting in America. It it becomes it just reflects way too much. It's way too shiny and makes the reading experience fucking terrible. Um, and that's the one that I wish they'd go back to. — Yeah. But yeah, they definitely need to attack this stuff and get prices down and invite new people in or things will not get better. Feder Rico, what is the percentage of Marvel going license for? You think? I think 75%. Mark Miller and Robert Kirkman Studios could do it. Even Ghost Machine, what do you think? IDW tried that a couple of years ago and — well that was a test case. I I've got you know obviously I know people in Disney publishing and that was a test case they were they but it was unfortunately the test case failed because they tried to do it with the characters that Marvel was pushing at the time

### [1:30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=5400s) Segment 19 (90:00 - 95:00)

— your Captain Marvels and things like that nobody was interested in and it was happening right around the time that IDW was starting to collapse. So, it was uh it was really bad timing, but you know, that was a trial balloon to see if that could uh if that could work. And, you know, they'll circle around to it again. I'm not sure about Marvel, — but I did I have talked to some people that were like in a group that were submitting maybe uh numbers for DC when it looked like, you know, DC wasn't doing very well and they were in a state of flux and the number was so astronomically enormous that it wasn't for anybody to do it. Yes. I I'm going to tell you right now, it anybody that does it, enjoy your one or two years and then realize that you just wasted one or two years because at the end of the day, you're going to end up making zero money. You'll probably not lose money, but you won't make any money. All you did was essentially work for free at the end of the contract because Marvel will take so much of the they will want so much money up front, take so much of your royalties, you will have no profit. — The Disney deals are ridiculous right now. The Disney licensing deals to get any kind of Disney license is ridiculously high. And the thing that's interesting about that is again it's a time when Disney should not have the ability to command high prices right now. you know, the Star Wars license should not cost much of anything. The Marvel anything because it is all on the downswing. But this is when they seem to be like amping up the price if you want to license things and produce them. So, you know, again, I think Doc is right. I think the cost is they keep circling around to it, but the cost is too prohibitive at this point for anybody in the industry to take them up on it. The only model that has ever actually worked in comics like sustainably was kind of the hero the heroes reborn model that they did. — Marvel Knights — uh because Marvel Knights was the exact same model. — That's what I'm saying. That's what I was saying. I was agreeing with you. Marvel Knights the — where Marvel gives them a budget, they get they pay for it up front. It's kind of the same uh situation as the Sony deal with Marvel right now for Spider-Man movies. Sony puts up the money, Marvel makes the movie, — contracting out the production. — Yes, you're Licensing Marvel will never work. Being the contractor for Marvel will be beneficial for everyone. That is the project. That is the process they're going to need to do. But everybody's going to try the oh, I'll pay you to use your fucking characters because they want to be the one essentially they're paying to get the license. Um, instead of being the contractor that's sought out. Everyone makes money on that model. Nobody makes money on the licensing model. We have a debate going on in the in the comments section. Aaron, what's the worst sully take? Is it fire and ice welcome to Smallville being pretty good or is your poke stuck? — I all I said JK is never going to let me live this down. All I said of complimentary about Joan Fu Stars um Fire and Ice, Welcome to Smallville was the coloring was pretty good and I like the Amanda Connor covers. Who doesn't like a cheeky Amanda Connor cover? I love them. I didn't like that fartacular cover. I can tell you that much. — I don't know. Sully is a bad take machine. — I have no bad take. — Dylan says Sully is a contrarian. He just says stuff to confound us that he doesn't believe. — I This is authentic and genuine, man. — This never would have gone to De's product months ago, but now all a sudden you you're championing. — I because I need to go. I mean, I just it's you need to go to I don't know. You have a wife, don't you? Doesn't she make you watch her movies once in a while? It's her She's got the remote control tonight. Yeah. Yeah. — Wes's wife is like, "Please leave the room. I want to watch my movie without hearing your opinion. " — Basically, yeah, we I don't have to watch crap like that, but she wouldn't watch stuff like that. She likes kids. So, we do have a few more topics. We did have a big issue of Batman this week from Matt Fraction, which has been very uneven in my personal opinion. — There was a couple of issues where there was some ninjas and motorcycle race and maybe some Joker stuff in there that was kind of interesting. Feels like Batman's going a little downhill. And in the end of this week's Batman Dylan, they end up blowing up Wayne Manor to I guess protect Bruce Wayne from Batman because Vanal Savage is after him. Even though

### [1:35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=5700s) Segment 20 (95:00 - 100:00)

it kind of just like says, "Hello, I'm associated with Batman by doing this. " — Yeah. Uh it was uh Vandal Savage seemed to have info on every little anyone that had any association with Batman, all his safe houses and everything throughout Gotham. So they end up taking Also, I to recap this for anyone that didn't read it. So they're like Vandal Savage, he's the commissioner of the GCPD right now. Poison Ivy is the mayor, but he got cart blanch from Poison Ivy to do whatever he wants with the city. So he has info on where all the safe houses and everything is. So Batman gives every member of the Bat family a mission to go and like get all the our tech out of here and move it to this place and if you can't then just burn the safe house and that's their goal. So everyone has a mission except Tim Drake because he retired a few issues ago. So, it shows everyone on their mission, like, you know, Duke's doing this thing, Damian's doing this thing. Then it cuts to Tim Drake having dinner with his boyfriend. And then it goes back to the Bat family and they're all doing their cool stuff. It's like, ah, it's really a sad time for Tim Drake fans. Uh, but then in the end, they end up blowing up Wayne Manor. And I don't think it's that big of a deal because it's comics and it's just a building. So, you can easily just be like, "Oh, two issues later, we rebuilt Wayne Manor. It's back. " I don't think blowing up Wayne Manor in a comic book is that big of a deal. — No, it kind of feels like a big deal because that's like his parents' home and even if you rebuild it, it's not the same. Like it's a big deal in that kind of sense, but you know, again, it could just be like, nope, it was all an illusion. We had uh we had Dr. Fate, you know, Batman contacted Dr. Fate. He had a plan for this to make it look like we blew up the manor, but it's still all there. — Dylan, I have a question. Uh, so it's like at the end of the the Zidarski run, Vandal Savage owned Wayne Manor. Does he that is that still his property? — I was if that's the case soon though because I did not read the end of Zarski's run because I hated that run. So I checked out. So there you go. That's good info. I didn't know that. — I mean, yeah, you had Vandal Savage finding the Batcave basically. I was Wasn't that part of it? Was it like all the fail safe confusion? I mean, it's all hated fail safe so much out. I can't remember anything about that stuff because it was just so kind of like off and on bad. Even like my sus take of like I was the only one that enjoyed Batman falling to earth and like hey he's got a solution to every problem. looked great because Jimenez was drawing it, but it was really stupid and I hated all the fail safe stuff, but Fractions Batman — has been like all over the place where there was a solid like four issues there where it was really good and then these last two issues it's been like mixed where it's there's some cool stuff and there's some really dumb stuff. Like I hate the fact that uh the prior issue they had to set up the will help tie into the Poison Ivy being mayor thing which is a G Will Wilson book. It's like this is the main Batman book. You shouldn't have to be like, "Oh, we have to tie into the G Willow Wilson Poison Ivy bullshit. " Like, no one cares about that. And then this, like, we have to set up the Ma Tamaki, Barbara Gordon book. It's like, you're the main Batman book. Other books should have to tie in with you. You shouldn't be having to set these things up. This is stupid. Because I was enjoying it. It was on a good little run because after the It started out rocky. The first couple issues, I wasn't the biggest fan of Factions Run. And then it hit a good stride for like three or four issues. Like, this is actually really good. And then these last two issues, it's like it's slowed down again where there has been some interesting stuff. Like I like the uh Bruce and Alan Scott interaction. I thought that was pretty good, but then it was intertwined with that stupid Vandal Savage Poison Ivy stuff where it's like I don't care about that at all. So it's been a mixed bag overall for me. But much better than Zadarski, which was just dog shit. So at least that here there's good and bad. But — am I the only one that feels like Vandal Savage is far too big a villain to be the Gotham GCPD commissioner? — It's stupid. It's stupid. — It's like guess what? Dark Side is mayor next. He's come from Apocalypse to be mayor of Gotham. — Yeah, this is something where like I this is one of those things where like I wouldn't have blamed Fraction, but I know he's buddies with Zarski, so he wouldn't do it. But him just scrapping everything for what Zidarski did, just acting like, "Yeah, that happened. Now we're moving on. We're on to something new. " Like I wish you would have just done that cuz that was a Zadarski thing with Vandal Savage. So I wish you would have just been like, "Yeah, that's cool. That happened. That's great. Love my boy. Now we're moving on to something different. We're past that. " — Yep. All done with that. — Yeah. — On to a new run. — God, Batman's in such a bad place right now. — You could even be like, "Hey, that Val Savage was commissioner during Hush 2. Read Hush. Find out. — Throw that to Jeff Lo. have to deal with it. — Yeah, but my run it's something different where we're past that. — So, is Pennyworth Manor still going on too? Is that like where they live or is they just are they going back to the penthouse? — The brownstone. — But they just burned down — Wayne Mayor and uh Chips Sedarsky's run

### [1:40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=6000s) Segment 21 (100:00 - 105:00)

didn't they? — Right. Rebuilt Pennyworth made him or something. — I don't know. The penny word was the most off-putting. Dylan, did you notice that part? — The Alfred part? What do you mean? — Yeah. Yeah, the Alfred part where he tells him, "I'm glad you're dead. " — Yeah, but I saw that as like banter. Also, it's with his mind. So, I saw that as like banter, like talking to your boy like, "Fuck you. I'm glad you're dead. " Cuz he's telling him something he doesn't want to hear. I didn't see that as like genuine like he's glad Alfred's dead. I saw that — banter. — Caffeinated Wolf reminds me of something. It's been uh it's been a few issues since the villain has taken over Gotham, but we need to get back to that plot pretty soon, right? Who is it this time? Who will take over Gotham next? — Well, every writer since uh Snyder has done this. Tom got it — King did it, — James Tynan did it, Sadarski's done it, and now Matt Fraction's already doing it. — I got it. City of Kites. — Kite Man. — Oh, you know what I mean? City of Phosphorus. Dr. Phosphorus has taken over the city. — I was while you were gone, I was recapping everyone on how we get to see all the Bat family doing their cool little missions and then Tim Drake having dinner with his boyfriend. What did you think of that part? — that — sir glad we're having Netflix and chill tonight? Like what? I will say at least this time we saw Stephanie Brown having a little animosity towards it because in the other book like Stephanie Brown was so happy for her ex-boyfriend hooking up with a dude now being with somewhat different and this there's a part where they're all talking about like what their mission is and like uh like what's uh Tim Drake up to and uh Damen's like he's out with his boyfriend doing those things and Stephanie's like oh great good for him. It was like she was being very uh not too happy about I was like, "Oh, at least that's finally some more realistic portrayal of how Stephanie would feel. " — Yeah, exactly. It's like I'm so tired of like them only being allowed to have the one reaction that's allowed. — Yeah. — I was glad that they didn't waste a on this issue, which wasn't very good that I didn't like it was Ryan Suk. So, that was good. But I'm I'm pretty over this storyline — that everyone keeps running. — Can someone for the love of God just fridge Bernard? — But he's making — fridge Bernard and then reveal that like, oh my gosh, he had mind control powers and he was actually pheromone powers and uh he was actually in sorceling Tim Drake. Tim Drake's back — mind raped and physically raped. Yes. — Stephanie did run over some police officers for no reason. That did happen. She's like, "Wait, I'm going to take a detour and run over these cops. " — Yeah. She like slides in. She's like the slide into them. I just need to hit some cops real quick. — Yeah, but they're evil Vandal Savage cops. — There's no bad issues. — Evil Vandal Savage cops. Yes. — Matt Fraction said when he took over the RUD, "Nobody's going to take over Gotham during my run. " Well, technically he's not wrong because uh Zadarski set this up like this was already in play prior to him taking over. He just continued it. — Well, he's not wrong. — Yeah. If you come in and Gotham's already taken over, then no one did take over Gotham during your run. — It was just already in play. — No. And I guess the big reveal, I guess, is that Babs is has been uh captured by the police and she's going to jail. — Knowing that uh Maro Tamaki is going to be writing a Babs book makes me revise my answer and say that Dick should be with Starfire because I'm sure by the end of Maro Tamaki's Barbara Gordon book, I will hate Barbara Gordon. — Oh my goodness. — Yeah. — By the end of the book, May it come soon, I will hate Barbara Gordon. Yeah, there's a lot of promos for that Barbara Gordon book. — Yeah, every DC issue has it. — Mine is a Batman Lego. — And this issue is just a — That's the back cover. — Yeah, that's the — You got to open it up and see the previous. — Is this your first time reading a comic book? — I got a Supergirl. I got uh Let's see. And they got a checklist page on the inside back cover, which is — Supergirl didn't release this week. No, Supergirl the movie is I got a movie ad. This is from my this week's um Book of Cook book of L. — Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's a good — Yeah, this was actually really good. — I have Book of L also. See, this is Book of L. There's the Barbara Gordon preview right there because I've read a comic before and I know how to find it. — There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, Barbara Gordon Felen and Barbara Gordon Breakup. This is anytime any we get a few people in the chats like good take soleie. This is who you're agreeing with.

### [1:45:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=6300s) Segment 22 (105:00 - 110:00)

with. — Thank you. You finally said it. Good take. There you go. — Framed can't read. — Sully's just gonna clip that three set that you know that — I already said that earlier. I completely agreed with him with his take on talking about Fantastic 4 with West. I already gave Sullie his credit for having a good take. — Orange is the new bat. He just brings that up whenever he's getting a little bit of heat for one of his dumb takes. — W liked Fantastic 4 more than Superman. They're both flawed films. — Fantastic 4 is a little bit better plotwise. — I'm glad you liked it. You know what I mean? — No, — I've yet to see it. So, you know, — better than the Devil Wars Pride. I can guarantee you that. — Dude, that was a decent movie. I swear. I mean, it had rising and falling action, a hero you can root for, and you know, she had a character arc. — There's no Virgin River. I can't. By the way, I don't know if you guys know this, but Megan Fitz Martin is now riding Sully. — Oh man. He made me — Also, just to clarify, someone's talking about how they were just regular cops that Vandal Savage brought in is his own position like legally. He brought in like an outside force of like mercenaries and stuff to be like extra brutal. These aren't just normal cops. So, just to clarify that. So, they deserved getting hit with a motorcycle. Take that, you son of a bicious. — Take that, — man. I don't even know what they were after. They were just after stuff, but it was completely unnamed. Like, you go to all the bunkers and grab our stuff. Like, okay. — Yeah. You know, various bat gadgets and things. Can't let them get a hold of the shark repellent. You know, — you're going to need that for Jeff or — the bat family is on the run once again and in hiding. And beat cop. Uh Jim Gordon now has to tell all of his other cop friends that his daughter's a fel. — He doesn't have to tell him. It's televised. — Yeah. N Savage told — pretty public. — Yeah. Everybody knows. — Yeah. — So yeah, that was that issue. This is what Dice Mamamoto says. Wayne Manor's Child's Play. What they really need to do is that to Crime Alley. — Yeah. A place named Crime Alley is probably a good place to just get rid of. Yeah, you know, — blow that up. — Yeah, I figure if I was at any point Bruce Wayne, I'd been like, "All right, first of all, I'm running for fucking mayor. Um, everyone else apparently gets a shot. Every bad guy. You know what? And I'm a multi-billionaire. I will cheat to win. I will buy the election. — Oh, like Tom. — Yeah, I know. And then when I'm all done with that, the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to brick in the two ends of Crime Alley. Guess what? We just got rid of Crime Alley. — I don't know. It sounds like a Gavin Newsome like take on Bruce Wade and he might make Crime Alley worse. — You know what I mean? — No, cuz I'm going to brick it up so that you can't go do crime anymore because you can't get to the alley. — Sounds like the Chaz to me. What you do is you brick in all the crime in that alley. Then they just have to crime against each other. — Yes. That you get them all in there and then you brick it up. I never said anything. — Then you have a Tamaki miniseries called Crime Alley. — I was that was the premise of the Arkham City is that uh Warden Sharp and uh you know being manipulated by Hugo Strange just walled off part of the city and all the criminals were there. — Well — yeah, leave them there. So good. — I never said anything about evacuating them — and then let fucking nature take its course. — That was Batman this week. We also had a big uh controversy over the last week or two called Dropgate. — Doc and I did uh have a video on that and had a conversation about it. I definitely wanted to hear what you guys thought. What did you think about this dynamic pricing scheme, Aaron, where they released 25 issues at $25 for this cover that they'd been, you know, heavily promoting, and then they went into an auction phase where people were paying upwards of $1,500 for a single issue of Absolute Batman 19 with the special cover on it. — I'm of two minds on it because on the one hand, I think that uh that retailer is a piece of shit and you should never ever order anything from them again. I think that people should just abandon them and mass because I think that's a really sleazy thing to do. On the other hand, I think it uh it's fine to not let suckers keep their money. So, if you're stupid enough to buy into that dynamic pricing auction and you want to get this, you know, you're the dipshit that paid $1,500 for this cover that by the way, what's the minimum on uh on those exclusives? 23,000 that you have to order in order to get an exclusive. Something like that. Um, if you paid that, not only do you deserve to lose that money, but congratulations on your book that will

### [1:50:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=6600s) Segment 23 (110:00 - 115:00)

never be worth that in a million years. It's the whole FOMO thing. If you get caught up in that, that's your own fault. So, on the one hand, I think the retailer uh deserves to burn for it uh and they deserve a terrible reputation. And I think that if the artist didn't push back on that and complain, then I think that he is just a guy who wants to get his check from them every uh every month for doing a cover. And — I believe he was getting points on all sales during that uh that streak. — Oh, there you go. So, yeah, I think uh I mean — he probably made a lot of money off of that. — money. So, yeah, he's not going to come out against it. But yeah, I think it's super sleazy and I think that uh it should not be done. And I think that that's another thing that just hastens people abandoning comics. — You're not. — What do you think about it, Dylan? Did you think it was pretty nuts? I couldn't believe that somebody would be willing to pay $1,500 just for the hot cover. — That's crazy. That's insane. It's just a cover. Who cares? I don't understand it. I'm not in that world at all. All those people that like need to chase down the cover of like every issue of a comic they like or things like that. That's crazy to me. I can't get behind that. It's not my It's a different world for me. — Yeah. $1,500. That's like a video game. — A lot of video games. Maybe you could almost afford a PS6 with that kind of money. — But it's kind of crazy to where we gotten this po point of the industry where people are so caught up in the FOMO and having to have the cover of the moment that they're willing to do basically blood sports to figure out who's going to come away with it. But in the end, I think uh it's going to turn off a lot of people that were willing to open up their wallets — and spend top dollar full and their money are quickly parted. Um but yes, this hastens the demise of a segment of the industry that it's really kind of necessitates. It's necessary to prop up the comics industry right now. I don't like it, but all the exclusive variants and everything is literally the only one of the only things propping up the industry right now. Um, it's the only thing keeping certain retailers alive. And somebody some bad actor, it it's very simply one bad apple spoiling the bunch. This will hasten the demise of that segment of revenue from the comic industry that it right now relies incredibly heavily on. Well, somebody says, "Isn't that capitalism? Let the market decide. " I don't know. It's uh it's like after there's been a a hurricane and somebody tries to charge you three times more to fix your roof or something like that — because you feel like you have to have it or when people are hoarding toilet paper and try to overcharge you for it. — Yes. this because this isn't look this isn't a simple supply and demand issue. — It's a manipulated market. It is not the invisible hand. There's a very visible hand here guiding them guiding that market. That's a planned economy, not capitalism. — Yeah. Supply and demand issue. There there's more enough supply for the demand, but they Yeah. They were hoarding it. — Yeah. And they were generating artificial scarcity. It look it's no different than the fucking Franklin Mint — or the Deers Corporation. — Yeah. The Debeers. Oh god, that's a perfect example. There are more diamonds on this planet than you would ever fucking need. — Everybody gets them. — Yes. And but the Debeers Corporation has bought up every fucking diamond mind on the planet and just closed them off. Look, it's and it's like the look, in a lot of ways, it's kind of like the dairy industry. Um the it's entirely kept afloat by government money and um artificial reduction in uh supply because if the supply actually came out um most dairy farmers would end up out of business because they wouldn't be able to make enough money to continue. Um, now granted this all actually goes back to prohibition, but that's a whole other conversation. Um, but no, yeah, you have an artificial manipulation of the market to generate

### [1:55:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=6900s) Segment 24 (115:00 - 120:00)

artificial scarcity and the fear of scarcity when there's actually no scarcity at all. — Yeah, exactly. I can almost guarantee you that no more than two or 3 thousand people — Mhm. — that are comic readers are really really interested beyond hey it's here I'll grab it. — Um in that particular cover but they generated artificial hype. It's look, it's more power to them for the manipulating uh, you know, marketing and sales strategies, but at the same time, it's horribly fucking dishonest. — Yeah, — there's no such thing as a 500 uh produced comic. There's no thing from the big two. — No, — there isn't from the big — no from the big two. a 500 print run comic does not exist. The only way to make it exist is by destroying 2500 books. — Yeah, I guess there are some ways to get like a thousand print run, but then you ended up having to pay like two or three times more uh per, you know, issue that you're ordering. — Yeah. — But even then, a thousand is the lowest number. And then, you know, you had uh back in the 2000s, Graham Crackers did something similar on that X Force. Rob Lifeeld sec the the second volume of X-Force. They did sketch variants and limited them very very significantly. But they were kind of like whenever that one publisher a year or three ago did that uh or that one store did the Miles Morales where it was just a stapled on extra cover. Graham Crackers had done that in the 2000s with uh sketch variants of X Force Volume 2. — But at least each sketch variant is its own unique thing, right? It's a — No, no. I mean, it was literally the sketch version of the A cover that was on card stock stapled over the A cover. Um, they did that in the 2000s and I got a couple of them, but they weren't charging astronomical prices for them. The book was it was a $3 book, $2 book back then. I think I might have paid $4 for it. I think the mo most I paid was the fucking shipping. — The market falls out on all of this stuff. So, it's like you just if you really want it, don't get caught up in FOMO. Just wait. — Right. You'll find it in the dollar bin like I did. — There's one in like a thousand of, and I don't mean one in a thousand var ratio variants. I of ratio variants that actually maintain or exclusive variants that maintains their its value and demand over the long term. The uncanny X-Men 510 partial sketch variant it maintained its there's a J Scott Campbell Amazing Spider-Man 688 lizard variant. There's a uh Gabrielle Deloto exclus or uh ratio Amazing Spider-Man variant. Just one. I don't remember even what issue that one is. Those have maintained their value and actually continued to appreciate over the years. Everything else loses it. Let's hear for these staples. We got Duke. You think these villain takeovers are covert Trump arrests all over again? Doom, black cat, Lex, Catwoman. It's totally not CCOA. Again, totally not Ice, guys. — Yeah, it it's that's exactly what it is. It's a bunch of people that see Trump as the boogeyman of their life — and he's and they've just taken whoever the worst bad guy is that they can think of at that moment or for that particular story — and just make him act like Trump. — They'll — the who they think Trump is. — Some of it might be, but let's not act like villain takeovers are anything new happening long before Trump. So, I think it's a mix. I think there are probably some that are like, you know, taking out their like it's just like Trump. I think a lot of it also is just like unoriginal

### [2:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=7200s) Segment 25 (120:00 - 125:00)

writers be like, what do I do? The villain takes over cuz that's been done. — Yeah, it's Oh, no. It's definitely that. But, but they use Trumpish shit as like the overarching plot is not that, but the plot points in it are. is to Vandal Savage's tactical unit that we're talking about is that an ICE allegory or a stand, you know what I mean? Blatantly, yes. — I mean, — well, there's a weird like last week there was a Punisher issue and all of a sudden they go to the talk to the doctor and he goes and he's talking about how, you know, I don't really love America because, you know, I wasn't I'm not, you know, totally American. So, I might be sent back even though I've never been where for I'm actually from and I don't know what's going to happen. And then he like they come back and he's like, "Oh, no. I like America. That's that has nothing to do with what I was talking about. " I was like, "Where did this come from? This has nothing to do with the story. It just it was just weird. " — Am I misremembering that one? Was that a different book, Dylan? — I don't remember that happening in Punisher. It also sound like you had a stroke the way you described that. That was — I was trying to remember the worst recounting I've ever heard. What the hell? — That's worse than your recounting of Luke King's finisher. — Yeah, that was like I was like, "What the — You want to recap on Virgin River this week? I'll do it. " — No, no. I think it's just like a making a point about ICE and deportations in a book where it doesn't belong. Like, okay. — It's it's like um uh what's the one where you just start randomly screaming obscenities? — Tourette's. What's that? Tourettes. They have like trumpets. — Um where it's like parets for Trump shit and like they're just sitting there like giving you a recipe for fucking chocolate chip cookies and then Trump's a Nazi. No, you if you go on Instagram, — Instagram and you look in the comments section of any post, no matter how non-political it is, there is somebody in there mentioning Trump or bringing up Trump. — Yeah. — It's like you could post your bulldog playing in the yard and some guy will be in there like immediately like mentioning Trump and you're like, "What is what is going on? — What does this have to Yeah. So they they I'm pretty sure most of the writers in comic books at this point have Trump Tourette's syndrome where they're going about their fucking day. It just comes out and then they just continue like nothing happened. It doesn't make any sense. It it's completely out of left field. It's just factfully monumentally incorrect. And like it's just randomly dropped into the plot for no fucking reason. — Yeah. It's like, you know, bulldog playing in the backyard and somebody's like, "That bulldog's smarter than the current administration. " And you're like, "What does that have to do with anything? " — You are correct. It was Weapons of Armageddon, the Wolverine book where that actually happens. Oh, — okay. I was like, I don't remember that guy. — I was like, what is this doing here? It's so weird. — Is it Charles Soul? No, that one was — Oh, Chipski. Yeah, Chip Sedarski. That's part for the course. He's — shut up Canada. It's just like uh — I don't take any — shows up where it does below, but it that does uh happen. — I don't listen to any anybody any anyone criticizing American government by from America's hat. — Tommy Reviews. Hey, comics afficionados. been a long time and I finally caught the show live. Hope you all have a great Mother's Day. It seems like everyone uh is raising their prices. Nintendo just raised the price of their Switch, too. — Yeah, this is still connected back to that like weird temporary jump in the cost of uh transistors. — Mhm. — And RAM um because of fears that China was going to attack Taiwan. No, I thought it was because all the AI places were buying all the RAM for their data centers. — They were, but between the China's going to attack Taiwan and the um all the AI companies buying up all of the RAM and the hard drives and everything for their data centers. Yeah, it caused this massive spike, but RAM and processor prices I think have come back down to normal — as the AI companies continue to go belly up and they have their fire sale. You're just picking you're in a parking lot in an AI data center just like uh how much for that table of RAM I'll give

### [2:05:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=7500s) Segment 26 (125:00 - 130:00)

you 20 bucks. — That ultimate guy went to like the biggest manufacturer of RAM in Korea and basically said I want to buy like the next three years worth of RAM that you produce and signed like a non-binding agreement. So they like shut down their division that sold those — components or the — Yeah. commercially out to people and then he never followed through on it and they didn't buy it. — So kind of weird. — Yeah. — And I know all the data centers are being like um people are going out there and protesting them and shutting some of them down. Well, in fairness, they're co they are causing our fucking electric prices to go through the roof — any anywhere around because they get sweetheart deals with the electric company and then you and me for turning on our lights and opening our garage door and running our refrigerator, we get to pay a higher price. Kind — of like uh Amazon with the post office. — Yeah. Basically, we end up having to pay for them to get free shipping. — Yeah. Been crazy. Khichio says, "Aaron Dylan and Sully only, what are your thoughts on Mark Hamill's latest thoughts on Trump? Smart thing to say where your company has a film coming out Trapping poorly. " All right, Aaron, he puts you first. What are your thoughts on Mark Hamill? Oh, I mean speaking of people who wake up every day and just immediately think of Trump, uh I said on uh you know the Babylon B ran that article where or that parody article where they said that uh you know Mark Hamill screaming as Trump reveals Mark I am your father. And I said well he's not uh he's not Mark's father but he's definitely his daddy because that's all Mark thinks about. you know, it seems like it's he just wakes up every day AND HE'S LIKE, "OH, TRUMP," LIKE RIGHT AWAY AND HAS to get on Blue Sky and uh you know, send out his little blue skis, you know, just out there uh out there on the internet. It's uh it's really sad. I think it's ruined his legacy as uh as Luke Skywalker along with The Last Jedi. Um maybe we owe Ryan Johnson an apology because maybe when he looked he met Mark Hamill and uh said, "I'm gonna start writing this script," he said, "Oh, you are a depressed old pussy. " And so that's uh you know maybe that's where he got his take on Jake Skywalker from. But I think it's really sad that uh a president affects you that much. Um I don't think a presidency has ever affected me in that way. Uh even the ones that I super don't like. Um as far as like smart thing to say where your company has a film coming out. Um I don't think he does he doesn't make any money off Mandalorian and Grou so he doesn't care. — What do you think Sully? Oh, it was completely in bad taste because that had have been a very calculated move to have that image that it was definitely like that was called pushing daisies visually. It's all show don't tell there. And whatever he said to be like eventually when he's you know blah blah and it's like who are you trying to fool? sell this to? I mean, you know, the you want to, you know, uh, turn the temperature down, don't make statements and don't do things like that. That's up there with the Daniel Warren Johnson's, you know, Absolute Batman, you know, choking out the ICE agent. That's like like, hey, look, you it's embracing political violence. It's something you know ironically the country was born in that but it's something we don't embrace as a culture you know for the past 250 years you know or since the civil war but it's like you know we don't really as a people where is this coming from well it's coming from his side of the aisle and if like how am I supposed to take you seriously now I mean I just I I really am kind of disappointed with him you for what it's worth, you know, I think Mark's a great guy overall. He's a good actor. He's the Joker. He's Luke Skywalker, you know, and like, but how am I supposed to Every time I think I look at like my old making of Star Wars thing. He's like the magic of Star Wars. It's hosted by Mark Hamill. It's this old special from like way back in the day. And um now all it's sullied. He's like sullied his own name like by like, "Hey, guess what guy? you just endorsed kind of political violence. you're wishing the demise of your your enemies and — well him Daniel Warren Johnson you know it's all these like weak men that are projecting their — murder fantasies onto you know these characters you know the inauthentic that's inauthentic and not genuine of like of using a dart board or you know or it's Mark Wade you know talking about bad aim or it's Jimmy Kimmel

### [2:10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=7800s) Segment 27 (130:00 - 135:00)

talking about like Melania being a widow. There is just some like, you know, and the shamelessness of not being able to have the humility to say, "Listen, that was in bad taste. I'm sorry. " — A lot of guys that got beat up in high school saying to them, you know, saying to them that spent a lot of time in their own head going like, "Man, here's what I would do if I could just could I would do this to them and then just feeding on that and letting that just like bury into their soul. " — It's like, who gave you orders? We can't get along. I mean, seriously, I'm in the middle. Unfortunately, I think it's the people that should have gotten beat up in high school but didn't would have caught the — All right, Dylan, speaking of which, what were your thoughts, dude? — Um, I don't care. I'm not a Mark Hamill fan for his political takes. I view it as like when your political obsessed like grandpa says something retarded. It's like, that's nice, grandpa. Still love you, grandpa. Like, that's how I feel. It's like you're still Luke Skywalker. You're still the Joker. I don't care. I don't follow him on social media. He can say whatever retard things he wants. He's still a legend and until he says something in a movie or TV show, I don't go and seek out what Mark Hamill has to say. I don't care. — Very nice. Exploding pretty friends don't let friends whatnot. — That's a valid point. Um, you know, the only thing I ever buy on whatnot is vintage books. I will go have to intervene because I consider you a friend of mine — and I can't let you whatn not it vintage books anymore. — I think I think whatnot is perfectly fine for vintage books. I think it is a absolutely the worst. I think it's a it's the perfect venue for the seller. It is absolutely the worst venue for any reader or customer to try buying modern books, especially anything with hype on it. — Well, it's like QVC for comic books. I've never even shopped there. — Okay. — Yeah, it's Well, sort of. I mean, everybody gets to run their own channel. Think about it like um like YouTube us being live right now, but and the audience there has every time we put something up on the screen, they have the option to buy it and they can start running li and it just runs a live auction on it. Um, and then the the chat would be over there clicking instead of the super chat button, they'd be hitting the bid button and it would just jump up to the next increment. There you go, Doc. You're cut off, sir. And uh, this has been another fantastic episode. I guess we should mention our sponsor once again because we do have the team from Unholy Nightmare 3 sponsoring the channel. definitely have June 26 circled on the calendar. Previously, monsters became mankind's last line of defense. led by an ancient vampire. A fragile alliance built on distrust. A vigilante turned to something darker. A cop fighting the beast within. A cursed priest bound to a demon. A child trapped in a monster's body. But now something ancient has surfaced. The tome of Leviathan. A book of apocalyptic power that no human can understand except one Dr. Herbert West. Cold, methodical, obsessed with conquering death. First he brought the dead back. Then he learned to control them. Now with the tone, he won't just raise the dead. He'll command them. Dinosaurs, corpses, monsters, everything that's ever died will fight for him. And if that wasn't enough, something inside the team is breaking. If they fail, the world won't survive. Heat.

### [2:15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=8100s) Segment 28 (135:00 - 140:00)

S is scared. — Still too loud for me. My god. Definitely go and sign up on Kickstarter for Unholy Nightmare 3. You don't want to miss out on that one. And while you're there, go check out Bronstar 2 with Mike Baron. He was here for the first half of the show, as well as Calico Wanted Men, the latest offerings from Sigma Comics and our friend HH German. All right, fellas. It's time to recommend some comic books and perhaps some toys. Aaron Sparrow, you are up first, sir. What are you recommending this week? All right, as far as toys go, I uh I picked up the uh McFarland Toys Gang Buster uh Joseé Delgado here. Um actually a really nice figure. Uh like all McFarland's a little too tall. Uh the legs are too long, but uh really nice. I also at the same time picked up Jack Knight Starman from the James Robinson Starman run. Love that version of the character. Loved that run. So I had to grab that. The only version we got previously was a Mattel Classics version that didn't have any pososeability in the chest. So again, Mattel chiefing out. Uh went by the comic shop. I talked about it earlier. Picked up from the dollar bin Freedom Force based on the uh the old game. This was uh this was a lot of fun. Some great Tom Steelely artwork. Picked up some Brett Booth with some Storm Watch uh for a dollar. Well, I pick up Brett Booth all day long. Good reader copies. good to go through and revisit, you know, one of my favorite Wild Storm books from back in the day. And then since there was nothing on the new comic shelf that caught my interest, I just went through and I picked up uh the G. I. Joe's that I was missing. So, I picked up some of the silent missions uh that I had missed like Copperhead and Firefly. So, that's it for me this week. Those are my recommendations. Oh, you know what? I have one more actually. I'm going to uh pop the uh the link in the chat on FunMy Comic. Uh, I had the opportunity to read the script for um, Veiled Legacy, which is a book by Danny. Uh, you might know her on uh, social media as comics and um, really sweet gal and a absolutely amazing writer. This book really surprised me. I thought I knew what it was going to be and it uh, it's a basically a uh, it's a vampire book so I and it's got a female protagonist. So in my head I was like, "Oh, it's kind of like going to be a Buffy thing. " And it's not that at all. It's got some uh some amazing twists and turns. The first issue is really uh really visceral and uh really captures you and I think that uh it deserves a look from you guys. So, I just threw the link in the chat there for Veiled Legacy. — Very cool. And Subhuman says he just picked up 225 to 270 of Uncanny X-Men. — Yeah, well done. — Excellent run. Mostly Mark Sylvestri and uh some Jim Lee in there as well. — Little Rickley and Arty here and there, I think. — Yeah, Rickley and Arty filling in every once in a while, but you're probably about 50% Sylvester, 50% Lee on that. — Very, very cool. All right, Sully, what are you recommending this week, dude? — I got a stack of funny books right here in my hand. Um, I've got — Devil Wear's Prada. The comics — Devil Warriors brought it too. Coming on. You'll have your scalathing review next week. I got a crowdfunderer this week. It was really good. From the same side of the aisle, we got Mike Baron and some of our other comics afficados like Andy Smith, Art Tab Bear, and uh we got Tom Tuttles and Christian Rossi's Seven Amens before Sundown. It is a western vampire story, and it's really good. And once again, I feel like a patron to the arts by supporting uh crowdfunders. I went to my local comic book shop twice this week. I went on last Saturday after the show. I took my girlfriend to my local comic book shop. It was free comic book day and I got two free comics. She You picked Garfield and some girly thing. Of course, Normy. But uh I picked up um Evan Kaggel and Ram V's um Dididium. And this is really the art in this is really good. I hope this is a black and white comic and this isn't just like an like a preview where it's uncolored. I'm hoping the whole thing's like that. The art in it is excellent. I also got the 2026 Energon special. Um it's not the best one. I'll say that it's very mask heavy and uh like the transformer part was I think like three pages or something and um it's okay. It's not my favorite, but this went on sale at cover price for $3. 99 during the week. So, it's got two uh

### [2:20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=8400s) Segment 29 (140:00 - 145:00)

alternate covers for The Completist. Uh if you'd like that kind of thing. I got three new comic books this week. Uh this one's a third printing of Ordained issue number two on Bad Idea. Uh it caught my eye because of this wonderful paper stock we were talking about earlier. I love the way the colors, you know, hold on to the page. How there's we were talking about lights and like external light sources and you need a good, you know, gentle light to read, you know, a paper comic book and uh and it's a really fun story. Like what if John Wick was a Catholic priest? It's pretty good. I'm been I stuck with uh with Flash Gordon on Mad Cave. Now, Andy, uh, Dan Abnett's on, uh, The Writer, and it kind of grounded Flash Gordon a little bit, but uh, I'm in for it. I'm really I enjoyed the Jeremy Adams run, and I'm going to stick with this for a little while. And my pick of the week is Phil Kennedy Johnson Swan Song over at DC for the next couple of years. It's Adventures of Superman, Book of L. Um, I love the design of the Super Family. I love everything about this book. I can't wait. And I can't wait to go back and reread all the Warw World stuff. And like as one complete Philip Kennedy Johnson story, this has been going on for years. And um I'm in for this stuff. And it's so funny, you know, I'm I got two of my favorite DC books are Superman books. I'm in for that. I like that a lot. And those are my picks of the week. And I just want to say too, thank you to everyone out there. And I'm going to pimp my YouTube channel for a second. I am three subscribers away from being a happy Star Trek fan. 1,7001. I'm almost that close to getting 1700 subscribers that I've ground out and grinded and earned over the years. I make comic book content, cooking content, spirituality. It's a poperri kind of thing and it's about joy and bringing joy to your life and with a good dose of spirituality and uh so come aboard and uh and help put me over. Thank you so very much. Thank you, Wes. Thank you everyone on this panel and especially the best live chat on the planet every Saturday right here. Sparrow, are you gone? — I think Sparrow is gone. All right. — No, I'm here. I was just just — had a question. Dice K wanted to know Freedom Force has comics. Are those covers accurate, Aaron? — Yeah. Yeah, it's uh it's Tomoli artwork inside as well. So, you get that nice uh Jack Kirby feel. — There you go. Perfect. All right, Dylan, what are you uh recommending in this week, dude? Uh, — I would also say Book of L this week was great. I really enjoyed it. I liked it a lot. We got Pyros. The way he's being set up is really cool. Uh, I think his backstory is interesting and he's he does some cool stuff with this book. Uh, JSA, we're starting the new arc of The Search for the Spectre, which I really enjoy this first issue. It's a good setup and we got the main artist back. It's pretty good. I would recommend it. And then Absolute Superman. It's not as good as the prior arc with Hawkman, but at the end, we get a pretty cool Mexican standoff that looks to set up the next two issues. I'm excited to see that big fight. And uh it's pretty good. And of course, you got Daniel Sampir on art, so it's a good looking book. So, yeah, three good DC books this week. — You got any big videos or streams coming up, dude? — Yeah. Uh I just streamed yesterday and that's up right now where I went over some of the comics this week and also showing off what I got for free comic day. to the free comics on top of my poll because I bought like uh well not my poll but what I picked up which was like $60 worth of comics and uh talking about the these books a little more in detail and some of like the news we got and also have a Star Wars Battlefront video going up later today so that'll be fun. — Star Wars Battlefront is that a video game? — Yes. — Is it a good one? — Yeah, it's fun. — Well, that'd be exciting. — Very nice. Last but not least, not Daniel. My bad. Rafa Sandaval. Yeah. Disappears on the — Wonder Woman. Yeah. — All right, Doc. You're in here, dude. What's up? — So, first I'm going to recommend that you guys go check out our review of the Marvel Comics Civil War Unmasked oneshot. Or is this a miniseries? — It's a miniseries. — Okay. um to answer a question that we all stopped asking 15 years ago and that should have been answered 20 years ago, but we finally get some answers regarding um Tony Stark's kind of behavior and perspective during Civil War. It's a it's a great comeback to an insult when you're already at home, it's three weeks later and you're standing in front of the mirror and you're like, "That's what I should have said. " Um, so I'm going to recommend you guys go check out our our review of that.

### [2:25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=8700s) Segment 30 (145:00 - 150:00)

Um, when's that out? Monday. — Yep. Monday. Then I'm going to recommend it's kind of a little strange recommendation, but I'm going to go with Cyber Force is old books. You can find them all in the dollar bin or this one. This is when uh Mark Sylvestri, I think, took over writing from his brother Eric. But Dave Finch art, this is around the time that Cyberforce actually became probably one of the best and most underrated books on the market in the mid 90s. Um, and Kickstarter right now they're doing v the the Kickstarter is over, but you could be a late backer for their volume two complete uh you know what what's it Cyber Force complete collection volume two their hard cover. I got the volume one cuz I liked it and all, but this volume two is where it actually becomes one of the best books of the late 90s, like the mid late 90s. Uh, surprisingly kind of out of nowhere. And great book, Brian or uh Dave Finch Art. This is early Dave Finch when he's still very much a uh protege of Mark Sylvestri. So, you could probably find these books individually in the dollar bin or you can find them get them remixed. You be a late backer to the Kickstarter. Also, X-Men 3, the first appearance of the blob. Strangely a higher price book than number two, but that's because number two is the Vanisher, who's while a cool villain, never been like a recurring villain. Where's the blob? He's been a Marvel and X-Men villain for years except for when one of the generic Stephanies or Tiny or I don't remember who it was decided to make him apparently fucking Psylock during the Age of X-Men era because you know that's totally believable. Um — was Leah Williams. — Oh, it was Leah Williams. Yeah. Apparently, she's got a fat guy fetish. Um, so, but yeah, go, you know, this book in decent condition is actually pretty good. Uh, it's a little higher price, but it just keeps appreciating in value. So, I'd say if you if you're looking, it's a good issue, too. I mean, there's not a lot of great issues in the first X-Men first part of the X-Men run, but this is actually really good. And finally, we'll go with a toy. Um, I got these for on I think they're clearanced again at Target right now. I think I saw uh deep discount on them. I think they're down to 28 bucks maybe. So, um, not bad. the uh the desert scorpion and uh this fucking scorpion thing. Um yeah, these are cool uh Joe figures. I really like these. Um and but I think you can get them on clearance through at Target right now. So go see if you can find one. And those are my recommendations for the week. Oh, very nice. And I recommend everyone enjoy your weekend. Have a nice time. Enjoy the summer. The kids are out of school. — Have a good time. — Dylan, are you recommending people watch the UFC this weekend? — Yeah, we got a decent card. The main event looks to be interesting. I'm excited to see how that goes. I'm hoping Strong can do something, especially with Hamzot cheating and totally not making weight. So, the UFC covering for him there. Wait, did I see that the there's June they're doing a UFC event at the White House? — Yeah, they're doing the White House card that they've been building that up for a while. — Sadly, the card for if it was a normal card, it'd be fine, but for how much they built up the White House card, it's uh — it's not as good as you'd hope. — Is it in the ballroom? — It's supposed to be on the lawn. — Just kidding. — Mhm. — Nice. — Hey, we haven't had that since Aaron Burr. Oh, — I thought it was weird that Jeremy Stevens is on the main card. — Yeah, he was out. Now he was doing like bare knuckle and stuff and now he's back. So — weird. — WWE Backlash is off also today. So I recommend that you skip that and go see Detectives.

### [2:30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4PcVzAAxFE&t=9000s) Segment 31 (150:00 - 150:00)

Detectives. — Go see Sheep Detectives or Devil Wars Prada over — Devil Wars Prada. Yeah, I'll tell you all about — to be perfectly honest. To be perfectly honest, you could just go find a field with sheep and watch them instead of backlash. — Happy Mother's Day, you mothers. No, stop.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/50248*