Episode 101 - Spawn 26 and Scorched 29!

[00:00:00] Speaker A: A smile crosses his cracked lips. The storyteller relishes the adoration of the rapt if captive audience. Let me tell you what makes a true hell spawn. Good evening, and welcome to the Mal bowls. This is regarding Spawn, the world's best spawn podcast. I am your co host, John Fisher. [00:00:53] Speaker B: And I am your co host, David Williams. And Johnny the. By the time this episode comes out, the conclusion will be known. Everybody's going to know who won. But right now, I'm so excited, because tomorrow, DCI finals. It's very exciting. The Blue Devils, who, for the non initiated the Blue Devils, are basically the New England patriots of the drum corps sport. Okay? [00:01:20] Speaker A: I was like, what the hell is DCI for? [00:01:22] Speaker B: Long. Sorry. So it stands for Drum Corps International, and I like to describe it as marching band on steroids. But the Blue Devils, who have won, like, the last six years in a row, are going into finals and third place. And I'm hooting and hollering because when I got into the sport, the Blue Devils were the bad guys that you don't like, okay? They're very good at what they do. They have risen to prominence because of that new college football game that just came out this year. Is that NCAA 24 2024? Is that what it's called? Okay, maybe there's, uh, the. The waiting screen has a drum cadence that was recorded by the blue Devils, and tick tock has been going crazy for it. But Santa Clara is back after a hiatus. Uh, the blue coats are currently number one. Uh, everybody loves the blue, and I'm very excited, and it only comes around once a year. Hey, y'all, co host David Williams here. I just wanted to pop in and let you guys know that the bluecoats did, in fact, win the whole thing. Santa Clara Vanguard won the percussion caption, which is, honestly, 98% of the reason that I watch it. But coming in at number ten were the troopers. So the troopers are themed, like, civil War era troopers, cavalrymen. That's their basic outfit. They look like they belong in a gunslinger comic book. And their show this year was literally about the devil. They made a pentagram. They had a devil dancing around with a lightsaber. And then eventually, the gunslinger era civil war battle guy kills the devil with the lightsaber. It was. It was awesome. It was awesome. If you love spawn, go watch this. This will get you. This will get you into the sport. Anyway, back to spawn. May the scorch be with you. [00:03:22] Speaker A: Well, what you say about the blue devils, you know, good at what they do. Hated that. Could be said about Todd McFarlane? [00:03:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it could be. It could be. [00:03:32] Speaker A: I would say. I wouldn't say I hate him, but if you go by the letters page. [00:03:37] Speaker B: If you go specifically by what he says about the letters page, I the. [00:03:40] Speaker A: End of the letters page, and everyone hates him. [00:03:43] Speaker B: Yeah, well, but also answering letters from people who hate him is more fun, he says. [00:03:50] Speaker A: Yeah, he likes the real psycho ones or something like that, he says. [00:03:53] Speaker B: I mean, I'm sure, like most things, it's just more fun to get the wacky, wacky wilds. But, I mean, also, speaking of the blue devils, we have, like, their exact opposite here that doing some stuff in Chicago this weekend. The blue angels. [00:04:11] Speaker A: Oh, that's right. The blue angels are here. Yeah, it's the air and water show. So if you hear jets in the background, that's why. [00:04:19] Speaker B: That's Johnny going on vacation. He's recording while he is on a plane. [00:04:26] Speaker A: I'm jetting out of here. No. Yeah. They've been buzzing my house for the last few days. [00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah. My desk at work overlooks the lake. And yesterday, we were all just, like, staring out the window, watching them practice. It was real fun. I got paid to do that, Johnny. I got paid to stare out the window at some planes. [00:04:45] Speaker A: Hey, that's the dream. [00:04:46] Speaker B: Miyazaki is jealous of me right now. [00:04:51] Speaker A: Is that what he wants to do? [00:04:52] Speaker B: That dude loves planes. [00:04:54] Speaker A: I can see that. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah. That's literally the whole point of the name of the wind. [00:04:59] Speaker A: And Porco Rosso, he's in a plane. [00:05:01] Speaker B: Porco Rosso. That's appropriate, because today a new king gizzard and the lizard wizard album came out, and it's about a historic plane incident. And the COVID art is actually like a plane with pigs flying it, which is. [00:05:20] Speaker A: Okay. Very poco rosso. [00:05:22] Speaker B: Everything's coming together, Johnny. [00:05:24] Speaker A: It all comes together. I saw an animated movie. I didn't see a miyazaki, but I saw a Satoshi Khan movie this week. [00:05:31] Speaker B: Nice. [00:05:32] Speaker A: I got to see paprika in the theaters. [00:05:34] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. [00:05:35] Speaker A: It was good. [00:05:36] Speaker B: I haven't seen that one yet, but I bet that it did your. Did your brain melt a little bit? [00:05:41] Speaker A: A little bit, yeah. It's got some crazy dream imagery. It's pretty wild. [00:05:45] Speaker B: I imagine that's one of those things that the bigger of a screen you see it on, the more you fall into it, and then, just like, you lose yourself. But that's why we go to this place, Johnny, is to lose ourself. [00:05:58] Speaker A: Are you Nicole Kidman? [00:06:01] Speaker B: Well, maybe. The world may never know, because here they are wonderful. We like movies. [00:06:11] Speaker A: We do like movies. Last week, we talked about the swan movie. [00:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah, we did. It was a real good one. We had our buddy Logan on. [00:06:20] Speaker A: I know we've had guests for the last couple episodes. It's weird just being ourselves. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And now we have to fill all the time ourselves. What are we gonna do? [00:06:29] Speaker A: I don't know. I guess we'll have to talk about. [00:06:30] Speaker B: Spawn, I guess, if we gotta. [00:06:34] Speaker A: That's what we do here on Respawn, is each week we bring you two issues from Spawn's universe. Except when we don't. And this week is no different, because we have a classic and a more modern issue of Spawn from the ever growing Spawns universe. As David just showed you before the record, the giant stack of modern issues we have yet to cover. And it's daunting. [00:06:56] Speaker B: It's almost three inches thick. I'd gather it was hefty. You could use it as a defensive weapon. If somebody were to bust in on me right now while we're recording, I could use my spawn collection. [00:07:10] Speaker A: I wonder if they'll keep up this pace. Or is this just, like, a big blitz of spawn that will not continue? [00:07:16] Speaker B: I can. I can only imagine that this pace is unsustainable for any. Any long amount of time. But, I mean, you know, like, monolith is. That's a mini series that was done. [00:07:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:30] Speaker B: Misery is a mini series that's almost over. I can. I can imagine they might take, like, a saga approach with the Sam and Twitch case files, where as soon as this particular case is done, they take a little bit of time off and then jump back into it, just so that way it's not everywhere. [00:07:47] Speaker A: We still got deadly tales of gunslinger coming. [00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's supposed to come out in, like, a month. Two months. October. [00:07:53] Speaker A: October, yeah. [00:07:54] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. That's real exciting. Hey, y'all. Co host David Williams here again. And just because we literally just learned about it. Deadly tales of the gunslinger, number one, is supposed to release November 27 with a final order cutoff date of November 4. So get out there and start pre ordering. Bew. Pew. [00:08:17] Speaker A: Right. Time for the third year anniversary of gunslinger himself. [00:08:20] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Three years old, man. [00:08:24] Speaker A: He's a baby. He's a toddler. [00:08:27] Speaker B: He's a. I guess he's already out of the terrible twos, and now he's just wreaking havoc, walking around, touching all. [00:08:34] Speaker A: What are the threes called? [00:08:35] Speaker B: I have no idea. I have no idea. [00:08:38] Speaker A: I feel like threes would be worse than the twos. [00:08:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the threes is where. Where, as somebody who tries to distance himself from children, if at all possible, I would assume that the threes are. The child either becomes a nice, calm little angel or becomes an absolute, like, tasmanian devil and just, like, spins around. And that was probably me. [00:09:06] Speaker A: You're a taz. [00:09:07] Speaker B: I fucking loved taz. I had taz slippers, the house shoes that made it look like he was eating your foot. I had a stuffed taz. I had a, I had, like, four stuffed tazes. I'm pretty sure I had Taz bed sheets too. [00:09:22] Speaker A: Nice. You get stuffed. Taz is at six flags. [00:09:26] Speaker B: Not at Six Flags, because I didn't go to Six Flags until I was in middle school. [00:09:31] Speaker A: Okay. [00:09:32] Speaker B: But I definitely did get the space jam version of Taz that had his little basketball uniform on. The little tune squad. [00:09:40] Speaker A: Nice. [00:09:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Excellent. You have a favorite Looney tune, Johnny? [00:09:45] Speaker A: Um, probably daffy duck. I like his disposition. [00:09:52] Speaker B: I like. I like his, uh, I love when he has something blow up in his face and his bill is backwards, and he's always just moving it back to the front. [00:10:01] Speaker A: Yeah. It's a daffy duck. Or I like bugs. [00:10:06] Speaker B: Classic. Classic. [00:10:07] Speaker A: It's hard to classic, guys. Yeah. [00:10:10] Speaker B: Hard to not like bugs. [00:10:11] Speaker A: It's also hard not to like Spawn. [00:10:14] Speaker B: We're on the same page, Johnny, and. [00:10:16] Speaker A: That'S what we're starting with. Is Spawn 26. All the way back from December, 1994. [00:10:23] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Very. A very solemn issue for a winter's read. Goodness. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Pretty zany too. [00:10:36] Speaker B: It's zany and, like, the heaviest matter in the universe. [00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's both. [00:10:42] Speaker B: It's good. I enjoyed the hell out of reading this one, though, Johnny. [00:10:47] Speaker A: Oh, it was really good. Yeah. This one contains multitudes. [00:10:49] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:50] Speaker A: And you get some good lore development. Yeah, it seems like after the spinning their wheels for, like, maybe a year or two, they finally, like, got back to some of the lore stuff. Which means that our buddy Melbolzer shows up. [00:11:05] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. But we're getting ahead of ourselves, Johnny. [00:11:08] Speaker A: We gotta cover the covers. [00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah, we do. [00:11:11] Speaker A: We have one cover here. Well, we have two. We have the newsstand and the direction. And I'm dealing with the floppy here. [00:11:17] Speaker B: I am also dealing with the floppy. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Nice. We both got floppies this week. [00:11:21] Speaker B: It's a great one to have floppy in, because that back batter is pretty good this week. [00:11:25] Speaker A: Pretty interesting. Yeah. But the COVID is very. It's very swan atypical. Yeah. He's got swan like hanging out in nature, which you don't really see very often. And a butterfly landed on his head. [00:11:36] Speaker B: He's got. There's butterflies everywhere, but there's one that just, like, sits right on his head, and he's. He's sitting on a, like a moss covered branch then just dangling his feet and his chains in the water. [00:11:48] Speaker A: There's, like, Mario mushrooms there, staring at. [00:11:51] Speaker B: The lotus flowers and the lily pads. Yeah, it's. It's amazing. It's very good. [00:11:59] Speaker A: It's fun. Kind of a reference to him going to the heavenly l area. [00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:12:06] Speaker A: In this issue is what it reminds. [00:12:07] Speaker B: Me of, or calls to, indeed. [00:12:10] Speaker A: Because there's not a lot of green and moss and butterflies in the alley. [00:12:14] Speaker B: I mean, not, not this kind of green, at least. [00:12:17] Speaker A: No, there's some kind of green. [00:12:18] Speaker B: There's some kind of green. I mean, I've seen. I have seen shades of green in an alley that probably shouldn't exist in the world, but yet there they are for all to see. [00:12:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Just like a pile of, like, weird liquid. [00:12:32] Speaker B: Yeah, it's bright green. Or like, it's kind of like the bologna sandwich from spawn, the movie, where it's, like, spray painted green. I have seen sandwiches like that, but with a natural green just kind of growing on them. And it's like, what the heck? What is that? How does, how does that get there? [00:12:52] Speaker A: What an abomination to waste a sandwich. [00:12:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's the worst part. And that you can't recover it. [00:12:59] Speaker A: No, there's no bringing it back from that. [00:13:01] Speaker B: You gotta, you gotta give it a funeral. You could put a little swizzle stick as a headstone or, or one of those little club toothpicks that's got the little frill on the top. [00:13:13] Speaker A: Or a sword with a little swords you put in a sandwich. [00:13:16] Speaker B: Oh, man. I used to take those little swords, and I would put them in my Lego guy hands because they fitzhen. As long as you turn them, they, like, fit perfectly in a Lego guy hand. [00:13:26] Speaker A: Okay, so it's like he got a huge sword. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah. It's, like three times as tall as he is. Look at me. Gingering and unnecessarily gingering Lego pieces. [00:13:37] Speaker A: I mean, it was the nineties. There weren't a lot of girl figures. [00:13:40] Speaker B: I mean, they were, it was the knights series, and historically, most knights were men. And if they weren't men, then they were passing as men, so that way they could be knights. [00:13:52] Speaker A: Right. [00:13:53] Speaker B: It's a fascinating history, the cross dressing of people to participate in war. I know somebody who does civil war reenactments, and they do it as a so female individual does it as a crossdresser, so they have a male Persona, and they are doing, like, that actual historical reenactment of cross dressing women who went in and enlisted in the army to fight in the civil war. [00:14:21] Speaker A: Wow. [00:14:21] Speaker B: It's fascinating. It's fascinating. [00:14:23] Speaker A: It is fascinating. That's a double layer of cosplay. [00:14:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It seems like it would be very easy to get lost in that sauce. I have a hard enough time remembering who I am on a daily basis. [00:14:37] Speaker A: Much less who you are when you're playing someone who's playing somebody. [00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the. The mental capacity of people who can. Of the mental capacity of actors to be able to be other people at other times and not completely forget who they are is just. It's fascinating to me. How do you. I mean, obviously there are ways to, like, strengthen that muscle so that way you can bounce in and out of it and not just be insane. But, man, I wouldn't even know how to go about it. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Well, you didn't waste all your money on theater school like I did. Cause I could bounce it out of any character at any time, baby. [00:15:15] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. I mean, we heard it. We heard it up top. You bounced, right? Narrator Mel Bolshevik. I couldn't have done that. My narrator and Mel Bolshev would've been like the same. I would have thought I was putting some mustard on it, but, nah, you. [00:15:29] Speaker A: Gotta put extra mustard on it. And the one who put the mustard on this issue as we open it up to go to the credits is Todd McFarlane, because he did the story and art, but it is called image comic. The dark is the name of this issue. [00:15:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:43] Speaker A: Story by Todd McFarlane, art by Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo. He's finally giving that art credit instead of just a special thanks, copy editor and letters by Tom Wardikowski, color by Steve Olaf and olioptics. Dedicated to Dave Sim, the old aardvark. [00:16:00] Speaker B: Guy with a nice little shout out to spawn ten going on. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a shout out in the issue. [00:16:07] Speaker B: Yeah, a nice little. As we'll find out later. It seems kind of like a, hey, we need some continuity here. Let's say in the book what happened. [00:16:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:16:17] Speaker B: Although in the book, it's like, huh. [00:16:20] Speaker A: This issue's kind of wrangling up the continuity and story that we got. The bigger story. It's kind of like wrangling it back to the main focus a little bit. Yeah, because it's been a sec. [00:16:32] Speaker B: It's taken us back to the, remember Al's from hell. He's got a job that he's supposed to do, right, instead of just, you know, running around, hanging out with magicians, getting Terry in trouble, etc. Etcetera. [00:16:45] Speaker A: Fighting the FBI, CIA, Mafia, Tony Twist, same time. [00:16:50] Speaker B: So this issue opens up with a grand proclamation here, Johnny. What is evil? Is the question we're trying to answer here. [00:16:59] Speaker A: And they come up with a pretty definite answer. [00:17:01] Speaker B: Hmm. I would say there's no gray area in this at all. [00:17:07] Speaker A: It says money is the root of. [00:17:08] Speaker B: All evil, but not, well, not just money, but want of money and the power it brings. [00:17:16] Speaker A: The love of money. [00:17:18] Speaker B: Cause there's a bit of a, you know, money itself isn't a bad thing. Yeah, a little philosophical here for the Todd father to just start in on being like, hey, you know what? Most things, things themselves aren't evil or good. It's always the intentions we put into them that make them one or the other. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah, this reminds me one of his intros to the HBO show. It's like something he would say on that one shows. The HBO show like evil. Yeah. He says when you don't have enough money, the world tells us we're losers. So it determines our place in society. Not kindness in our hearts, but how much evil is in our wallets. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I like that. That becomes the metaphor that he uses throughout. And instead of talking about how rich people are, he just talks about how much evil they got. Not enough evil, Johnny. I could use a little bit more evil myself, if you know what I mean. [00:18:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll take some evil. If anyone wants to send us a big wad of evil, just email [email protected] and we'll send you a po box. [00:18:22] Speaker B: I want to say that we're going to launder it and to goodness, but I don't know if I should say that we're going to launder money. That's probably not a thing that we want to say. [00:18:32] Speaker A: Not have it recorded out on the Internet anyway. [00:18:35] Speaker B: Too late. Did your dad ever wash, dry, and iron his money every once in a while? [00:18:42] Speaker A: No. [00:18:42] Speaker B: Oh, mine did. And every time he was like, I'm gonna go launder my money. But I mean, why would he do that? [00:18:50] Speaker A: Just to make it look crisp. [00:18:51] Speaker B: Money is filthy. Also, when you iron it, it fits in the wallet better. But let me tell you, if you ever needed to go to a vending machine, you wanted to get a dollar from my dad. Cause those things every time, just immediately, just super crisp. [00:19:05] Speaker A: The only thing I remember in race of the broken land that Greece or Greeze irons his money. He has like a little. I just remember they're at that bar where they were. The husband of one of the sisters loses them both to the gambling. And he busts out a little hand iron and irons his money at the same time. [00:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah, that guy's. That guy's a little. I think that's an emphasis of how kind of just, you know, distracted from people he is. He doesn't. He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't give a shit at all. He just wants money. [00:19:38] Speaker A: Money. Just that root of all evil. [00:19:40] Speaker B: Real fucked up book, y'all. If you haven't read the race of the broken land, it's kind of difficult to find. But if you can find it, it. [00:19:46] Speaker A: Is kind of difficult to find. [00:19:48] Speaker B: Yeah, it was that small press thing. And since it's been out of print. [00:19:52] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like $20 on Amazon, which is pretty high for just like a paperback book. [00:19:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Abe books, I think has it. Ad Libris, I think has it. It's what? It's. It's one of those that it's hard enough to find that it's, like, not readily available at the Chicago public Library, which is usually an indication that it's going to be a hard book to find. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Oh, wow. They don't even have the library. [00:20:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, it's wild. [00:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it was a pretty small press. Raw dog, screaming press, I think it's called. Good name. [00:20:21] Speaker B: But if we. If we get enough buzz out there, Johnny, maybe they'll reprint it. Although I guess if they're gonna make a movie off of it, they might reprint it. [00:20:28] Speaker A: Well, it looks like that's not happening. [00:20:30] Speaker B: Ah, no. [00:20:31] Speaker A: Ridley Scott, if that was the western, he was gonna make it appear. He's not making it anymore. So maybe someone else will. [00:20:38] Speaker B: Maybe S. Craig himself. [00:20:39] Speaker A: Maybe S. Craig Zahler himself will make it. [00:20:41] Speaker B: I mean, we know he makes a good western. Jesus. [00:20:44] Speaker A: Yes. I mean, bone of tomahawk is kind of a toned down version of, or like a scaled back version of race of the broken land. Pretty similar. [00:20:51] Speaker B: Anyway. The sheer number of people who talk about how one of the most disgusting movies they've ever seen is Bone Tomahawk to tell them that it's a. It's a toned down version of the original. [00:21:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:04] Speaker B: I would like to see how big their eyes can get and be like. [00:21:07] Speaker A: They did what I was just imagining, like, watching that movie with my dad and I would be like, oh my God. Like, when he gets split in half, my dad would probably, like, lose his mind. [00:21:16] Speaker B: Oh, man. Yeah. [00:21:18] Speaker A: And I lost my mind. And I've seen some gross shit in movies. [00:21:21] Speaker B: Yeah, it. It doesn't, like, you think there's gonna be a cutaway and there's just no cutaway. And it just, like, happens, like, unceremoniously, and it's like, what the. What? [00:21:29] Speaker A: Cut a guy in half. [00:21:30] Speaker B: Jeez. With a bone tomahawk. [00:21:33] Speaker A: With a bone tomahawk. With a titular tomahawk. [00:21:36] Speaker B: And we're so back to the matter at hand. So obviously evil is founded in money and the power that it represents. And then we kind of go out of this philosophical monologue into somebody talking on the phone. I love this sort of. The words and the picture match up perfectly here, where it's a grand talking about stuff, and it's just like a slow pan across the New York City skyline here. And then as soon as it goes from sort of philosophical narration to actual dialogue, the image cuts to the shadow of somebody talking on the phone in their apartment. Oh, man, you can't have that anymore. Nobody's gonna know what that is if you try to do that in a contemporary book, Johnny. Nobody's got the old. The old two piece. [00:22:32] Speaker A: Two piece rotary phone. Yeah. You show that to Gen Z, they won't even know what to do with it. [00:22:36] Speaker B: But we get somebody saying, what? They can't do that. No way. You stop them, you get my little girl back. So we got somebody talking about their child is gone for some reason. [00:22:47] Speaker A: Yes. And we pull into the window, and it's Mister Barnett and talking to his. [00:22:53] Speaker B: Lawyer, and they're talking about how they've exhausted all of their appeals to try to keep the courts from taking his daughter from him. [00:23:02] Speaker A: And he's living in a pretty dilapidated apartment, man. [00:23:05] Speaker B: He is. He is. He's living in Joe's apartment there. Look at that. He's hanging out with the cockroaches. [00:23:11] Speaker A: And there's a mouse, little mouse just. [00:23:13] Speaker B: Hanging out back there. [00:23:14] Speaker A: A lot of critters in this apartment. So maybe, you know, not the best place to raise a little girl. [00:23:19] Speaker B: But, yeah, the lawyers, like, there's nothing else we can do. I'll see you tomorrow at 10:00 and then just, you know, after. After the phone call ends, Mister Barnett's just, like, despondent on his bed. What kind of country sent a child from her dad? Johnny? [00:23:34] Speaker A: This country, baby. [00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah, us. Oh, wait. [00:23:39] Speaker A: USA. [00:23:40] Speaker B: Then next page, we're the next day. We're at the New York State courthouse on Staten island, and we see Mister Barnett in his suit, talking to the judge. And this is, man, this is a wild, a wild courtroom here, Johnny. That is a massive, massive. Judges stand there. So tall, so tall, almost as if it is as tall as this window. And they're saying that we got a big bad guy here, Johnny. [00:24:04] Speaker A: Yes. Tall windows equal bad guy. [00:24:07] Speaker B: The bad guy is the courts. [00:24:09] Speaker A: Yes. Because they're taking his daughter. [00:24:11] Speaker B: Mm hmm. And we learned, we learned that, uh, the reason they're taking her. So Mister Barnett and his wife adopted a child when she was very young. So she's what, 15? And they adopted her 13 years ago. And then Mister Barnett's wife dies, and he is chronically unemployed, and so the state is taking her back. And Fred Barnett doesn't have enough money. [00:24:36] Speaker A: Enough evil, doesn't have enough evil to. [00:24:40] Speaker B: Keep his daughter twice in two pages. Mister Barnett super despondent. Look at that. Oh, boy. [00:24:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:47] Speaker B: That body language is unmistakable. [00:24:50] Speaker A: Then we cut to somewhere in time where we get true evil. [00:24:54] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [00:24:55] Speaker A: Down in the 8th layer of hell is Malbolgia. [00:24:57] Speaker B: Yeah, he's, he's, he's also sit in court, only he's just, he's just hanging around. He's got his little, his little demon buddies just, like, dancing around. Like, you can see in the background, there's the army of spawns. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Yes. [00:25:13] Speaker B: You see some spawns there just milling about. [00:25:16] Speaker A: I wonder if Gunslinger's in there somewhere. [00:25:18] Speaker B: I mean, he's got to be. I don't see a very tall hat. [00:25:20] Speaker A: But, yeah, they should do a special edition. They add a little hat to one of them. [00:25:25] Speaker B: We spend a little bit of time basically reacquainting us with Malbolgia since it's been a while since we've seen him. [00:25:32] Speaker A: Been a long time. [00:25:33] Speaker B: And to reiterate, kind of the contract that Al Simmons and Melbolzia have about if Al Simmons is supposed to lead Melbolzia's army, and if he doesn't, then, you know, Malbolsha gets his soul anyway. So it's a win win for Mister Malbolzia here. [00:25:50] Speaker A: Yep. He either gets a general or he gets to eat a soul. [00:25:54] Speaker B: I mean, if it came, if I were presented with the opportunity at work to either gain an employee or if I don't get an employee, get a free sandwich. Hell, yeah. How is that? Who wouldn't? [00:26:08] Speaker A: It's a win win situation. [00:26:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. It's great. [00:26:13] Speaker A: But he's regaliaing all his demons and spawns with the tale of Al Simmons. [00:26:18] Speaker B: The hell, people really love to just tell stories. They're all storytellers, Johnny. [00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah. All writers go to hell. [00:26:28] Speaker B: Hmm. I guess. Yeah. [00:26:29] Speaker A: Cause they're creating evil words and false images with their tricks. [00:26:34] Speaker B: Yeah. How dare. How dare they, Johnny? How dare you, Johnny? How dare you? [00:26:37] Speaker A: The only words you need are the words of God. [00:26:39] Speaker B: How dare you? Suspend my disbelief for a little over an hour and make me feel things. [00:26:45] Speaker A: That's what we're gonna do. [00:26:46] Speaker B: How dare you? We also get the opening. The opening reading here. [00:26:50] Speaker A: Yes. [00:26:51] Speaker B: As part of Melbolge's the story of spawn I. And then we cut to Al Simmons talking to a little spider. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Actually, this is the opening quote. It's on the next one. [00:27:04] Speaker B: Oh, it's on the next one. [00:27:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:06] Speaker B: Okay. [00:27:07] Speaker A: They're very similar. [00:27:08] Speaker B: Okay. [00:27:09] Speaker A: But that's okay. [00:27:09] Speaker B: Whoops. [00:27:11] Speaker A: No, they end kind of the same way with, like, let me tell you this. [00:27:14] Speaker B: The tail spawns, they also. They also look very, very similar. [00:27:18] Speaker A: Yes. They have these, like, interludes with albolge that all have the same kind of look. And border and layout. [00:27:25] Speaker B: The border is awesome. Those two skulls. Look at it. [00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:28] Speaker B: Pretty cool that t at the top. Like, you could tell, like, exactly what kind of pen Tom o used for all those big letters. And it's wonderful. There's so much texture to them. [00:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. And then we cut to a spider. There's a spider crawling. While Spawn's thinking about his situation here. [00:27:49] Speaker B: He'S talking about all the people who've been after him lately. [00:27:53] Speaker A: Mafia hitmen, cops, even the boys in the alley. [00:27:56] Speaker B: He's kind of doing his woe is me moment. He's asking questions of himself. He's like, why am I even doing this? So while he's. While he's thinking all these questions of himself, somebody pops around the corner and answers one of the questions he asks in his own head. And then it's revealed that it's Coliosjo. And he's being like, hey, I can help you out. I'm your buddy. I'm your pal. [00:28:17] Speaker A: Don't you mean Count Cagliostro? [00:28:19] Speaker B: Count? Yeah, that's what I mean. Count Cagliostro. [00:28:23] Speaker A: I wonder when it became Cagliostro. I guess we'll find out. [00:28:26] Speaker B: I don't know. I've just kinda swooped right over it and not paid that much attention. Sorry, Jon. It's just funny. [00:28:32] Speaker A: Cause he kept calling him count, and I was like, what? And then he finally reveals. His name's Count Nicholas Cagliostro. [00:28:39] Speaker B: I'm pretty sure that's how he introduces himself in the first place. [00:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I just. I just didn't remember. But. [00:28:46] Speaker B: We know cog as sin and very bad man, so it's hard to. It's hard to remember that at one point he was Al's friend. [00:28:56] Speaker A: He was al's innocent Obi Wan Kenobi. [00:28:59] Speaker B: And so we get. Yeah, literally, we get the. Here's where you are. It's very. This is very, like, where a good portion of coleostro from the movie is pulled from. [00:29:11] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, this whole point. This whole part is, like, definitely, like, almost exactly like Cogliostro from the movie. [00:29:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And, you know, we get a little callback to issue nine to kind of give us the background on him. [00:29:23] Speaker A: I wonder if that was a Neil Gaiman lawsuit thing we had to become Cogliostro. [00:29:27] Speaker B: I have no idea. [00:29:29] Speaker A: Maybe they saw it sounded better. [00:29:30] Speaker B: Maybe. Maybe. [00:29:31] Speaker A: I think it sounds better. [00:29:32] Speaker B: I think it's so. It's easier to say, at least cog cag. [00:29:35] Speaker A: And you get to call him Cog instead of kag. [00:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah, Kag. But so coolioster's like, hey, they're gonna. This is the plan they have for you. They don't really play by the rules. They play by their own rules, but those don't really do you any good. And they're gonna try to piss you off a lot. Cause that's kind of what they're going for. [00:29:55] Speaker A: He wants to harness his inner darkness for their cause. And what is their cause? It's Armageddon. [00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:01] Speaker A: This is, like, almost exactly from the movie. [00:30:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:04] Speaker A: The final clash between heaven and hell. [00:30:07] Speaker B: That was also a big. A big story. A big story. Beat in the nineties. Everybody wanted to have a nice big Armageddon story. [00:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:16] Speaker B: End of the millennium, Johnny. The world was going to end. Might as well write about it before it ends. [00:30:21] Speaker A: It didn't end till September 11, 2001. They were just a little bit off. [00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah. What's. What's. What's a year and some change in the grand scheme of existence? [00:30:33] Speaker A: Right? [00:30:35] Speaker B: Close enough for government work. They'd say. [00:30:37] Speaker A: Cut back to Malboulgia. He's monologuing. [00:30:40] Speaker B: He's talking to. He, like, spawn, instead of having a spider on his hand, has this weird little, like, toad frog thing. [00:30:48] Speaker A: It looks like the things that jab of the hutt eats. [00:30:50] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it's just like. And Melbolzha's just, you know, he's sitting with his little belly out, and he's like, ah, lemme tell you. Let me tell you what makes a true hell spawn. That was a terrible melbolshevoice. [00:31:06] Speaker A: That was great. [00:31:08] Speaker B: So we go from specific. He's specifically talking about Al Simmons. Kind of talking about how you know Al Simmons. Why Al Simmons? Well, let me tell you why Al Simmons. And then we cut back to Alan Coggy. [00:31:22] Speaker A: I do like the detail that he leans back and pushes his feet further into the searing flames. Yeah, he's getting a nice foot massage from the flames. [00:31:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's like. I mean, he's had a hard day, Johnny. He's trying to relax. [00:31:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Tell a story. [00:31:37] Speaker B: He's putting his feet up. [00:31:38] Speaker A: This is where we get the opening quote. [00:31:40] Speaker B: Yes. [00:31:41] Speaker A: Let me tell you what makes a true hell spawn. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Then we come back to Al and Count Cagliostro in the alley. And this is a great panel, Johnny. I love the. The tug of war rats that are just, like, right at the front. It's pretty great. [00:31:55] Speaker A: Spawn's all pissed off and brooding. [00:31:58] Speaker B: Cog looks very, very despondent, too. And he's telling him. He's telling. This is where he's introducing the fact that he's like, you know what? They're pedantic bastards. They go by the letter of the law, not by the spirit of the law. That makes them, you know, very difficult to play around with. Basically, gin rules. Johnny. [00:32:21] Speaker A: Like, ironic twist, because he only. He only traded for one thing, to see his wife. And that's all he gets. [00:32:30] Speaker B: It's a lesson. And say exactly what you want in detail. It's like if you're. If you're trying to make. If you're trying to do something, like with coding, you have to be very specific about what you want the computer to do, or else it's nothing. Not gonna do what you wanted to do. [00:32:46] Speaker A: That's how hell works. Yeah, because they did. They let him see his wife, but that's all he got. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:50] Speaker A: And Cogliostro calls it a sour trade. [00:32:55] Speaker B: He knows from. Because there have been. Don't feel bad. There have been plenty of others. [00:32:59] Speaker A: Plenty of others like you, have been tricked. Don't worry. [00:33:02] Speaker B: And then while they're talking, this guy Eric starts coming down the alley, and he's like, ow. Ow. I got a friend talk to you. And it's Mister Barnett. [00:33:14] Speaker A: Mister Barnett who just lost his daughter. [00:33:16] Speaker B: Mm hmm. He's like, could you help me get my daughter back? And he's like, I lost my daughter because I'm poor. And then Al's like, are you guys nuts? I'm not some walking bank machine. [00:33:30] Speaker A: If I could make money, you think I'd be living in the alleys grab. [00:33:33] Speaker B: A clue and it's like, no, go, go. I only want to deal with the problems of people who live here, deal with outsiders. Big old, big old jerk about it. And, you know, Eric and Mister Barnett walk away and Eric's like, man out. Fuck you. [00:33:51] Speaker A: Bite me. [00:33:53] Speaker B: I mean, the sentiment's the same. Yeah. And then once again, hella despondent. Mister. Mister Barnett, mister. Those mister. Tiny little letters. What will I do? It's terrible. Not good. No, the count is like, al, what the fuck are you doing? [00:34:12] Speaker A: They're the only ones that like you. [00:34:14] Speaker B: Yeah, they, they just, they just wanted some help. And then Al's, Al's given his, uh, his libertarian speech. He's like, they should be able to do stuff by their own recognizance. They shouldn't rely on me for nothing. [00:34:26] Speaker A: I've been giving them a false sense of security. [00:34:29] Speaker B: And Cag's just like, you gave them hope. That's completely different. Then we cut back to Malbolgia and he's, at this point, he's got his hand out and he's got the little frog guy right in the middle there. And he's like talking directly to it. He's like still talking about his story. And he's like, ha ha ha. Talking to the little guy. That's great. [00:34:51] Speaker A: And this is where he says, they'll be one of my valued officers or as a source of nourishment for my hungry armies. [00:34:57] Speaker B: This is Mel Bolsher reveling in the fact that he's like, haha. I've got this game I play with. [00:35:02] Speaker A: Them and I've got them. [00:35:04] Speaker B: Johnny, I had a, I had a question. I had a question at this point. [00:35:08] Speaker A: Yes. [00:35:09] Speaker B: I wonder if you thought the same thing. The very end of this Melbolzer page where it says the sub overlord casts a spastic arm forward. It's a gesture of triumph. Did you imagine that he did a nazi salute at that point? [00:35:23] Speaker A: I imagine he did like a fist. [00:35:24] Speaker B: Okay. [00:35:26] Speaker A: He could do a nazi salute. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Cause that's, I mean, obviously, obviously if you're gonna have anybody do a nazi salute, it's gonna be a fucking Malbolsh. Yeah, bolshe man. [00:35:36] Speaker A: Probably a big Hitler fan. [00:35:38] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it's probably, maybe that's who that is. [00:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Hitler's turning a little frog man. [00:35:43] Speaker B: Little frog man. Oh, no, let's not think that. I like the little frog man. I don't like a Hitler. Yeah, Frogman isn't Hitler. So we can like frog man, then we go back to, we go back to the alley. And Kag and Al are standing around a burning trash can. Cog's filling him in on the, there's a, there's an epic battle going on that you're just kind of in the middle of, like, immediately after, after telling Al Simmons that there's, there's bigger things at play than just him. Al Simmons gets gooped away. [00:36:16] Speaker A: He gets zapped. He's the classic goo goo transport. [00:36:21] Speaker B: Yeah. He gets, he gets zapped to a beautiful paradise. Herediscal place. And we get a big old close up on that. The, the shoelace running down his meatball head there. [00:36:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:36] Speaker B: Oh, boy. He's ugly, dude. And he's been transported to a lovely place in France by Gabrielle. [00:36:46] Speaker A: Yes. [00:36:46] Speaker B: And she's like, come on, sit down. [00:36:48] Speaker A: Have some wine, have some chablis, chill outd. [00:36:52] Speaker B: And she's also like, have some the crepe suzettes. Excellent. Or she says, quite out of this world, actually, which is funny. The. Yeah, there's small inn in the Lory valley. Lori lior. Liore. I'm terrible. [00:37:11] Speaker A: No, no, it's not Liore. [00:37:13] Speaker B: It's Liore. Yeah. The o is before the eye. I'm terrible at french. [00:37:19] Speaker A: I am, too. [00:37:20] Speaker B: But. So Gabrielle's just like, eats some stuff, and she's like, I ordered some strawberries. Oh, wait, no, she does. She orders some strawberries later. So Al's like, this is the first one I've had since I've died, and I'm not hungry, so just get on with it. And so Gabrielle opened. [00:37:35] Speaker A: He does say the wine's good. [00:37:36] Speaker B: Does say the wine's good. [00:37:38] Speaker A: That's not even true. He hadn't had any wine in the alley. Come on, man. [00:37:42] Speaker B: He didn't partake of any of that strawberry ripple. Well, I mean, he does later. [00:37:46] Speaker A: He does in this issue. [00:37:47] Speaker B: He does in this issue. He gets a little toasty, and Gabrielle opens her briefcase. Actually, that's probably an attache. [00:37:55] Speaker A: Sure. [00:37:56] Speaker B: The difference between a briefcase and an attache is one of them. When you open it up, the halves are an equal thickness, and the other one, there's a big half and a small half, and I'm pretty sure that the equal halves is an attache. The big half and the small bit is a briefcase. And so, but I might have that backward. So it's one of the two. But that's the difference for anybody who's wondering. And out of this case, Gabrielle pulls out a picture of Angela that looks like it's her. Like a postcard. Like, you go to heaven and you find the Angela postcard and you send it off to your family. [00:38:38] Speaker A: It looks like a picture she'd have if she's doing, like, a signing. [00:38:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like, at her booth, like, come meet Angela. [00:38:45] Speaker A: Come meet Angela. She won't kill you unless you're a hellspawn. [00:38:48] Speaker B: Gabrielle gives her a little. Gives him a little bit of background on kind of what. What Angela and her ilk are. And then Al's like, you're an angel, too. Gabrielle's very, very interested. And so she left. She left the spear behind. You said she left the spear behind, Usain. Since we don't get to it for a very long time, I wonder if this is a sort of beginning. RUMBLINgs do you think this might be the spear of longinus, Johnny? [00:39:15] Speaker A: It might be. I thought that, too. I thought she was gonna say it. [00:39:17] Speaker B: Was, but she doesn't say anything. [00:39:19] Speaker A: I guess that'd be more of a hell weapon because it killed Jesus. I don't know. [00:39:23] Speaker B: Yep. I don't know. But it seems. It seems very much like something that heaven would want to keep. Keep wraps on. Like they'd want to keep it in their vault. And we know they got that. That vault of weapons up there. [00:39:37] Speaker A: Yes. That Al goes and robs. [00:39:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And then gets. Gets hot. Sick from it. [00:39:44] Speaker A: Uh huh. [00:39:45] Speaker B: How dare he? [00:39:46] Speaker A: Or no, he doesn't get hot. Sick. [00:39:48] Speaker B: Hot was already sick. They were looking for the cure. [00:39:52] Speaker A: Opens hot. Being in the dead zones opens the dead zones. [00:39:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Man, those were good books, Johnny. We should read them again. [00:39:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Those are Rory McConville leading up to 350. Pretty awesome stuff. [00:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And so Gabrielle's like, I ordered some strawberries. You want some strawberries? I ordered some strawberries. And then Al is just sitting there listening to her with the little butterfly on his head. Lots of little insect buddies in this issue. [00:40:20] Speaker A: Yeah, there are. He doesn't know where the spear is. He left it in the alley and it was gone. [00:40:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And she's like, I have. She's like, so it sent you to a. So you did get sent to that place. How did you get back? [00:40:32] Speaker A: Little Cerberus reference. Yeah, I thought they called it out. [00:40:35] Speaker B: I thought they did, too. What the hell? Oh, there's a lot of callbacks, a lot of. A lot of references, but whatever. Yeah, but so. So apparently, how he got back from the. The family dinner where he's eating with that he eats after walking up that grand staircase carrying cyan. Nobody knows how he got back. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Oh, there it is. She attacked me with it. Later, I touched one of the buttons on the side blew me into the darndest sort of dream I ever had. That was the server's dream. [00:41:07] Speaker B: It merely redefined you briefly in terms of levels of reality. Quite how you got back is a puzzle to all of us. [00:41:14] Speaker A: It was the power of the love of comic creators, as we know. [00:41:19] Speaker B: Yes. She leaves. She leaves off with a not so veiled threat. [00:41:24] Speaker A: Well, it seems not everything's perfect in heaven, because she calls Angela a bitch. Yeah, I can't see that bitch Angela wriggling her way out of this one. [00:41:32] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we know that. We know that there's. Angelo's rubbed a lot of people in heaven the wrong way, because especially when she's like, I got the hunting license, and they're like, God damn it. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Yeah, she does her own thing. [00:41:45] Speaker B: Cause Michelle didn't want to let her in. It was like, you gotta go back to heaven, lady. [00:41:49] Speaker A: And she says, you don't want to be caught in the middle of these sides, do you? And zap, he's back in the alley. [00:41:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And we get a different. A different, like, the coloring has changed. [00:42:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, like, pretty groovy. [00:42:02] Speaker B: It's, like it's extra shadowy and extra. [00:42:05] Speaker A: Shadowy and, like, smoother. [00:42:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Cog's just been drinking at the. The trash can while Al was gone, and he's a. He's pretty far into it when Al gets back. But I like this. What the hell? Heaven, actually. [00:42:17] Speaker A: Classic joke. [00:42:19] Speaker B: They're not the one you or I were taught about. I like that they keep different small pieces of heaven in different time continuums. Cog's just like, you know, I'm a man like you were, or I was a man like you were, and I got caught up in all this nonsense too. [00:42:33] Speaker A: It's all about winning. [00:42:35] Speaker B: We get a little tease about the upcoming Angela miniseries, and then Al's just like, I mean, I gotta get out of here. Oh, I gotta. I need a break. Oh, come see me. [00:42:45] Speaker A: Too much lore. Too much lore. Gotta go. [00:42:47] Speaker B: So he just leaves. Leaves Count Cag to just, you know, drink by himself. And then we're back to Malbolgia, and he's cackling. He's cackling with joy. [00:42:59] Speaker A: He squished the frog man. [00:43:01] Speaker B: He squished the little frog man. [00:43:02] Speaker A: His eyes are popping out. [00:43:04] Speaker B: Yeah, like a bad comedian. The Malbolgia laughs at his own rhetoric. So, John, I guess. Oh, I guess that's something the Malbolgia and I have in common. [00:43:14] Speaker A: You laugh at your own stuff. Yeah, you and Mal, Bolgia and the hair. [00:43:17] Speaker B: I am often the only one who laughs at any of my jokes. I'm not squishing any frog friends, though. [00:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah, don't do that. [00:43:26] Speaker B: No. The frogs are having a hard enough time as it is. [00:43:29] Speaker A: Return of the fricking frogs. [00:43:31] Speaker B: Gay Mel Bolger's just like, he's just enjoying the hell out of this. He's set this game in motion, and now he's just. He's just, you know, having a grand old time. [00:43:41] Speaker A: He loves how confused Al is. [00:43:43] Speaker B: And it's. There's a reference to the finite amount of energy they have that they waste so much of it before they get to the point where they realize, oh, shit, this is actually something I have to pay attention to. And then at that point, I needed this. It's almost too late. [00:44:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:44:01] Speaker B: Right after that, we get a little level. A power meter level. Johnny. [00:44:05] Speaker A: 7174. [00:44:05] Speaker B: 7174. Then it says two. [00:44:08] Speaker A: I haven't seen that in a bit. [00:44:09] Speaker B: Yeah, not since. Not since before the. The Grant Morrison bits. [00:44:14] Speaker A: It's funny to see, like, him, like, responding to the letters by, in the media itself, because I remember there was a letter being like, where are we gonna see that power meter again? Yeah, there it is. [00:44:24] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. And then we cut to two nights later, and Al is cutting it up. He's drinking that ripple. He's telling stories about how great he is. He's recounting the violator miniseries. At the end of the violator miniseries, Al agrees to give clown his powers so that way he can get out of the clown body and then go beat up his brothers and promises to give the power back. [00:44:51] Speaker A: And he does that. [00:44:52] Speaker B: He actually did give his power back. [00:44:54] Speaker A: So kept his word. And he's drinking the ripple. That's why he's all drunk. [00:44:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Can you imagine a demon keeping his word, Johnny? [00:45:01] Speaker A: He did. The clown kept his word. [00:45:03] Speaker B: Al's all full of himself and having a grand old time. And then we see Eric. Eric is looking not so good. He's like, al, you're a jerk. You could have helped him, done something. And Al still thinks that, you know, he's all caught up in his own. His own story. And he's like, I wasn't gonna say saved that blue faced piece of. [00:45:22] Speaker A: Not him. [00:45:23] Speaker B: Yeah, about his friend Fred. And then Al's just like, who the hell is Fred? [00:45:28] Speaker A: He's like, hello, I brought him to you. [00:45:30] Speaker B: And Eric throws a newspaper at him. And we see the story of man commits suicide over custody ruling. And we see that the despondent Mister Barnett has decided there is only one solution to his issue. [00:45:45] Speaker A: Yes, very unfortunate. [00:45:47] Speaker B: And it shakes Al out of his sort of his reverie. Kagliosho's watching unhappy. Yeah. He's like, I told you, he's got the little hand of, this is your own fucking fault, dude. It's a great, it's a great little. The body language in this, this issue just conveys so much. There's so much that, I mean, there's a, there's a lot of words, to be fair, but there is so much extra that the, that the body language of everybody conveys in this. This is, this is an excellent issue, Johnny. Then we, you know, al's like, I gotta go be alone now, guys. And, you know, Eric's like, that's it. Run away, you loser. And the Mal bolshe is like, ah, this is the part. This is the part where he pulls away from society. Here comes a loner just having a good time. [00:46:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Just laughing his ass off. [00:46:44] Speaker B: It's like he's watching a movie he's seen a million times, but he's like, this is my favorite part, this one. Look at him go. [00:46:55] Speaker A: It will be some time before the maniacal sounds die down. [00:46:59] Speaker B: Oh, man. Hilarious. [00:47:02] Speaker A: Look at the jaw on that. That's so thin. [00:47:04] Speaker B: It is. Oh, man. How does he, it seems like if he turns his head too quickly, it would just go snap. [00:47:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it would just snap off. [00:47:11] Speaker B: He must drink all of his milk. Or I guess if he eats. If he eats people, he can just kind of, like, absorb the calcium from their bones. [00:47:21] Speaker A: As long as he doesn't eat wolverine, because he's got a metal skeleton. [00:47:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, who would break his jaw on Wolverine? [00:47:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:29] Speaker B: Then the final panel we get is, is just a full page of Al just brutally standing in the alley. He's just, like, all wrapped up in his cape. You could just see his eyes. [00:47:42] Speaker A: And tonight, for the first time since his return, he feels dead. [00:47:46] Speaker B: Mm hmm. And then, Johnny, next issue, the curse. [00:47:49] Speaker A: Uh oh. [00:47:50] Speaker B: Uh oh. Uh oh. That guy doesn't show up till another series. [00:47:54] Speaker A: Yeah, till scorched 13 or something, right? [00:47:58] Speaker B: Yeah, something like that. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. [00:48:01] Speaker A: It kind of ends on a solemn note with Al just walking away. [00:48:05] Speaker B: Yeah. There's so much. We talk a lot about tonal whiplash, or I talk a lot about tonal whiplash. There's a lot of tone shifting in this, but it all, it all works together. So I don't think it's really a whiplash kind of thing. It's very nicely put together. The bits of, you know, Melbolgia, having a rip roar, a good time, and then, like, lore dumps, and then the. The joys and the depths of despair. It's good. [00:48:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I've been. I've been playing, like, a dragon. Infinite wealth, which is one of the new Yakuza games. And, man, let me talk about tonal whiplash, because, like, japanese culture, man, they're okay with, like, the most goofiest shit and then the most serious stuff at, like, the drop of a hat. I. Yeah, like, a second later, it'll be like. It'll be, like, ridiculous. Like, the story of the game is, like, super ridiculous. They'll be, like, a talking crawdad and shit, and then all of a sudden, you're, like, dealing with, like, the death of, like, a mentor, and it's just, like, total whiplash back and forth. But it's a great game, but it's. The Japanese are very good at that about, and it's just accepted in their culture. Like, even paprika that I just saw. Like, it's very goofy, but also very serious and scary, like, on the drop of a hat, so I like that. I'm okay with the tonal lip lash. [00:49:24] Speaker B: I'm good with it, too. We got a blah, blah, blah 21 here, johnny. [00:49:29] Speaker A: Yep. Time for the back matter. [00:49:31] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Todd apparently made, like, a. Well, I guess it was the Todd Toys world tour that we had the advertisement for. A couple issues ago, he got picked. [00:49:42] Speaker A: Up by seven LA tv stations. CNN and NBC took the coverage nationwide. [00:49:46] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Hell, yeah. He did a. He did a signing at Fort Hood that was pretty cool. There's a shout out to a really cool. A really cool bookstore that Terry Fitzgerald liked in Manhattan. Kino Kunia bookstore. I don't know if it's still there. Probably should have looked. If it's still there, go see it, everybody. If it's not. [00:50:05] Speaker A: Yeah, you get some of that tone of whiplash from the japanese comics. Like, I was talking about. [00:50:09] Speaker B: Oh, man, there. Downtown, there's a K pop store, and I was. I walked by it, and I was like, I have to go in this. I don't know what's happening. I didn't know it was happening the entire time, but I enjoyed myself. I know. I know nothing from K pop. And so I was like, look at that. That looks fancy. Look at this. [00:50:25] Speaker A: Hey, there's not only one still in New York, there's one in Chicago. [00:50:28] Speaker B: Whoo. [00:50:29] Speaker A: Arlington Heights. [00:50:31] Speaker B: Oh, nice. Oh, I can't. That's a. That's a bit of a hike. [00:50:36] Speaker A: That's a bit of a hike. But yeah. They have one japanese based retailer known for his collection of asian books and magazines. [00:50:41] Speaker B: Hell yeah. That's awesome. [00:50:42] Speaker A: That still exists in New York as well. [00:50:44] Speaker B: Nice. So go get it. Go, go give him, go give him some patronage and be like, hey, I learned about you from a nice little book we like to call Spawn. [00:50:53] Speaker A: Yes. From the 1994 issue, since this is. [00:50:58] Speaker B: The last issue of the year. Terry Fitzgerald, just like, you know, thankful for all these things in my life, thanks to all these people. And he's just got like, a laundry list of people he wants to thank and, you know, give well wishes to he even thanks. [00:51:11] Speaker A: Peter David. [00:51:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:51:14] Speaker A: Tom McFarlane's mortal enemy. [00:51:16] Speaker B: Evidently there's a lot of Peter David's bashing in this issue. There is, or at least in the back matter of this issue. [00:51:26] Speaker A: Yes. [00:51:26] Speaker B: Get the little blurbs for the upcoming issues. Then we get the spawning grounds, Johnny. Oh boy, oh boy. First one is Richard Graves from Aurora, Illinois. I wonder if he knows Wayne. [00:51:40] Speaker A: He might. [00:51:41] Speaker B: He might. [00:51:42] Speaker A: Party time. Excellent. [00:51:43] Speaker B: So Richard Graves sent Al a demo tape to listen to some music he made. I kind of wish that there was like a band name or a. [00:51:54] Speaker A: Anything so we can maybe look it up. [00:51:55] Speaker B: Yeah. But so apparently Richard Graves is very excited that Todd McFarlane created a black superhero who wasn't just a blaxploitation character. He says that he draws the women very nicely. Yes, all caps. We got a bonk. [00:52:15] Speaker A: Bonk. [00:52:16] Speaker B: Our first bonk of the spawning grounds. And, you know, just says, hey, you know, Todd, you're good by me. You do. You set out to do things that are, you know, artistically enjoyable. And hell yeah, that's all these people who say you're a jerk. Fuck them. That's a good sentiment. Then Todd responds by saying, I wasn't really trying to make a political statement about it. I just thought, you know, it made for good story. Also, the tape is really good. Yeah. The second one is the dreaded c word. Johnny. I read that and I was like, how is he going to shoehorn the word contin this? I don't care. [00:52:53] Speaker A: Yep. No, it's continuity. [00:52:55] Speaker B: Continuity. My eyes kind of glazed over halfway through this letter, like, eh, I don't care. [00:53:02] Speaker A: He's basically asking, how do these, all these mini series match up? Spawn going to youngbloods, the violator miniseries. All that talking about the violator saying he was born in the 16 hundreds, yet the violator fought medieval spawn about 800 years ago. Just a bunch of continuity crap that doesn't really matter. [00:53:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Todd's answer to it is the closest thing that I think you can get to a shrug in, in written form. [00:53:27] Speaker A: Yeah. It's just like, look, it's gonna be happen. I'm gonna try to keep it straight, but, you know, it doesn't. It's not gonna mesh perfectly. [00:53:34] Speaker B: Yeah. The next guy, very excited about everything. We start off with the eternal. The eternal complaint about issue number eight where it says kaka happens instead of shit happens. [00:53:47] Speaker A: Yeah. That was hilarious. He's like, why is it say shit? They say shit and spawn Batman? [00:53:52] Speaker B: I personally think it's great that he says caca happens because it's, like, so serious. And then Mel Bolger says, caca. [00:53:59] Speaker A: That's just unexpected. [00:54:01] Speaker B: It's wild. [00:54:02] Speaker A: It's also very nineties. Caca was very popular, say, in the nineties. [00:54:06] Speaker B: Then it goes on to the toys. Dude's excited about the spawn mobile hot wheels, but he can't find it at Toys R Us. What the hell? Also, what the hell. The comic book stores are selling these, these figures for more than they should be. [00:54:21] Speaker A: Dude, I remember that. That was, like, huge in the nineties. Like, going to a flea market or going to a comic book shop, they'd have all those figures marked way up. Not just them, but, like, Star wars figures, like scalping of. That was huge. He didn't have eBay. [00:54:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:35] Speaker A: So you had to go through the comic retailers, man. [00:54:37] Speaker B: And then something, something, Peter David something, something. And just that, you know, he's looking forward to the crossover with the crossover month. And my favorite bit of Todd's response. So he says, you got a lot of questions. Let me see if I can answer them individually here. Number one, Peter David is fat and balding. So what's your point? Next question. [00:54:58] Speaker A: Got him zing. He had a broken piece on one of his figures, and Todd says if he sends it, he can replace that part for him. [00:55:09] Speaker B: It's pretty great. It's pretty good. The hot wheel was made as a promotional item, so they didn't make very many of them, which is why it's still $20 on eBay. Oh, it's probably more now since they were doing the signed ones not too long ago. [00:55:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:23] Speaker B: Another bit of, I'll get to the specifics of the costume later. Don't worry about it. [00:55:28] Speaker A: I'll get there. [00:55:30] Speaker B: And then he's like, I'm not going to tell Alan Moore that he can't put the word caca in there. [00:55:35] Speaker A: If Alan Moore wants to put caca, Al Moore gets the caca. [00:55:40] Speaker B: That should be our headline quote. Johnny, if Alan Moore gets the caca, it should be on his tombstone. Alan Moore wanted the caca, and he got it. The next guy, it feels a little bit like he's gonna give a, why did you put these books out of order again? But he's like, no, actually, this was actually pretty fucking great because I didn't read any of them until I had all of them. And I read them all at once, and it was great. [00:56:07] Speaker A: And Todd's like, yeah, I like to do that. I like to get my comics and sit down and read the full story arc in one read. This is why trade paperbacks are appealing to some readers, which I can see. [00:56:19] Speaker B: You forget a lot less from issue to issue when you read them straight through in a trade paperback. [00:56:26] Speaker A: That's why I tried to read. I read the issue before every time I read a new issue. [00:56:30] Speaker B: Hmm. Yeah. [00:56:31] Speaker A: That's just helps me get oriented where I am. [00:56:34] Speaker B: It also. It also helps. There are a lot of subtle emotional things that get lost when there's not that direct carryover. [00:56:42] Speaker A: Yeah. I feel like once we cover an issue, though, it's, like, locked in my brain, and I remember everything from it. [00:56:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Until, like, six months later, when it's been pushed out by everything, by other issues. [00:56:53] Speaker A: Right. [00:56:56] Speaker B: We're slowly building that. That repository, though. [00:56:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:57:00] Speaker B: This next letter is also pretty great. It's a young college kid in Canada who is apologizing for not buying Todd McFarlane's spider man hash. One because he bought a playboy instead. And second, bonk of the spotting grounds. [00:57:18] Speaker A: Bonk. It's funny that he has mentioned the guy at the comic book store is his buddy, so that's why he sold it to him. [00:57:24] Speaker B: Cause he's not 18, and he's like, the playboy was cheaper. And quite simply, it was a playboy. [00:57:31] Speaker A: I mean, in the nineties. [00:57:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Do what you can with what you have. [00:57:35] Speaker A: Unless you find a stash of porn in the woods, like everyone always talks about. [00:57:38] Speaker B: Yeah, this is the. The first time we have a halfway through the letter, a passing of the phone so somebody else can talk. And it's just a kid who used to. To live near Todd McFarland and hung out with him. It was like, hey, Todd, remember me? How's it going? How's your wife? Pretty good. [00:57:57] Speaker A: I like that. This guy, his name's Sean, and he said he originally bought spawn because he thought it said Sean. [00:58:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I absolutely have made a decision on a couple of things by being like, oh, hey, that's got my name on it. I'll get that. [00:58:12] Speaker A: I'll get that. How's my name? Well, when your name is John, that makes it a little. [00:58:16] Speaker B: There was a movie that I've talked to my mom about it in the past few years, and she says that the purchase of this movie was one of the largest regrets of her existence as a parent. And it was like, a 60 minutes long film called David and the Magic Pearl. [00:58:38] Speaker A: Okay? [00:58:38] Speaker B: And it is awful. A few years ago, somebody had a big, long, rambling article about, like, they came across this thing in the wild, and they were like, how does this thing exist? But it was poorly animated. It was about a family that lives in the middle of a jungle, okay? And then, like, some treasure hunters, like, bulldoze over their house while they're looking for this thing called the magic Pearl. And then it turns into, like, an Indiana Jones mixed with Scooby Doo esque adventure to get this magic pearl. And the big fat bad guy who bulldozed David in his family's house, like, gets sucked to a hell dimension at the end because of kind of akin to having drank from the wrong, the wrong chalice. I have very fond memories of it, but I don't think anybody who isn't a young child named David in the nineties should even bother with it. [00:59:34] Speaker A: David and the pearl. [00:59:35] Speaker B: It's called David and the magic pearl. [00:59:37] Speaker A: Okay. [00:59:38] Speaker B: I mean, if you can find it, I'm sure there's probably somewhere, but if you can find it, email [email protected]. and tell me what you thought of the movie that I watched over and over and over and over again and drove my parents crazy with. [00:59:53] Speaker A: That's funny. [00:59:54] Speaker B: I do believe there was even a song that at one point I knew all the words to him would dance around to. [01:00:02] Speaker A: That's funny. Just because it had your name. [01:00:05] Speaker B: Just because I had my name, yeah. And then Todd's like, hey, I answered a whole bunch of positive messages this time because you guys keep complaining about how I don't talk about the positive stuff. It's just so much more fun to answer the negative. [01:00:21] Speaker A: Yeah, no doubt things will return to normal next issue. Besides, it's a much cooler answering the psycho letters. Then we get a poster by Tim Townsend. [01:00:32] Speaker B: It's a, this is a badass poster, Johnny. [01:00:35] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, you got spawn with his, the galaxy within his cape, the cosmos within his cape. And his eyes are just like, yeah. [01:00:44] Speaker B: Look at, look at the, those vertical shines go all the way down. [01:00:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. Got some shiny eyes. Posters by Tim Townsend. [01:00:54] Speaker B: Then we get the first official Todd toys photo gallery, fall 1994. [01:00:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Really depressing series of photos. [01:01:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the factory where they make all the toys. Yeah. [01:01:05] Speaker A: The factory in China, I imagine. [01:01:07] Speaker B: I would assume either China or Taiwan. [01:01:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And they're just painting. It's crazy that a lot of those stuff was hand painted. You don't think about that. Like, the spikes on all the medieval spawns and all the spawns are hand painted. It's just crazy seeing, like, all this playsets come together. There's so many parts. [01:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, boy. It's rough to see so many people just, like, smushed together. [01:01:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:31] Speaker B: I honestly question the logic behind putting these pictures in something I did too. [01:01:38] Speaker A: I was like, you don't want to see how the sausage is made sometimes, man. [01:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I guess this was standard for then. But, you know, it seems like literally that room full of boxes that just, like, they look kind of precariously placed and they're like, right next to just packed tables of stuff. It's. [01:01:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just crazy to think about. There's someone who had no idea what spawn was, like, painting spawn helmets and stuff. [01:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I like process, but, man, the industrialization is a wild thing. [01:02:08] Speaker A: What do I have to complain about? I have an iPhone, so I'm part of the problem. [01:02:11] Speaker B: Nobody, no, nobody ever had to suffer to make that. Johnny, what are you, what are you saying? [01:02:15] Speaker A: Yeah, not at all. [01:02:16] Speaker B: At no point in the process is there ever any issue from gathering the raw materials to assembling them to shipping them to selling them, everybody's treated beautifully. [01:02:28] Speaker A: It's just a perfect little machine. In the next page, we've got the ad for, an ad for angels and visitations by Neil Gaiman. A collection of stories, poems, and various other pieces. [01:02:39] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [01:02:40] Speaker A: Rip. Neil Gaiman. Yeah, I just heard about that. [01:02:45] Speaker B: I was like, uh oh, I've, I've been following it for a couple of weeks. I'm just waiting for it to become a bigger thing. [01:02:52] Speaker A: Really, really disappointing. [01:02:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's unfortunate. Yeah. I mean, if Charlie Kirk is going to use his power to be a creepy old man, how does it keep anybody from being a creepy old man? [01:03:06] Speaker A: Who's Charlie Kirk? [01:03:08] Speaker B: Was it Charlie Kirk? The, the old, it was a very old news guy. Was it Charlie Kirk? [01:03:16] Speaker A: Charlie Rose? [01:03:17] Speaker B: Charlie Rose, that guy? Yeah. [01:03:21] Speaker A: Yeah. He does the roundtable discussions and stuff. [01:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, every, everybody could be a creep, Johnny. [01:03:29] Speaker A: Yep. [01:03:29] Speaker B: Unfortunately. [01:03:31] Speaker A: Unfortunately, it was not the toddfather, though. [01:03:34] Speaker B: Nah, not yet. [01:03:37] Speaker A: No, he's too wholesome. [01:03:39] Speaker B: Yeah, he does. [01:03:40] Speaker A: He just doesn't seem like someone. [01:03:41] Speaker B: I have a feeling that if there were issues with the Todfa, that they would have come out already. [01:03:46] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:03:47] Speaker B: The people are not shy about talking shit about Todd McFarlane, so if they had something they could really sink their teeth into, I'm sure we would know about it. [01:03:55] Speaker A: Hey, we don't have any female writers or have any females that work for you. It's hard to be a creep. [01:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. Oh, well, at least in that way, you can still be a creep. That's true. Fucking why did we have to make this issue more depressing than it already was, Johnny? I don't know. [01:04:12] Speaker A: I just thought about that Neil Gaiman stuff. [01:04:14] Speaker B: I just heard about it. I was wondering if we should mention it. And, I mean, I guess we should mention it, but I don't have. Don't come to us for news, though if it's not spawn related. [01:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah, we got an ad for tops cards, image universe founders series. We got spawn, some youngblood, Savage Dragon, Shadowhawk. [01:04:36] Speaker B: The guy with the three arms, I do believe is from cyber force. [01:04:40] Speaker A: Okay. [01:04:41] Speaker B: Or with the forearms. [01:04:43] Speaker A: Forearm. Is that his name? Forearm? [01:04:45] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't remember what his name is. [01:04:47] Speaker A: That'd be hilarious. Name, forearm. [01:04:49] Speaker B: I do remember a couple of stories revolve around, like, him slowly losing the ability to use a couple of his arms. I mean, obviously, if you have that many arms, that's going to be a plot point that you come back to again and again. [01:05:02] Speaker A: I like how the three are on one side. You couldn't put, like, one on each side. [01:05:06] Speaker B: Maybe it would have felt two mortal kombat if they had done that. [01:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. [01:05:09] Speaker B: I'm sure. I'm sure that was a consideration. Also, you see, all the ones on that one side are cybernetic, whereas the other one is natural. So it's probably. It's easier to. To make something that's all on one side than to make it cross over. Johnny. [01:05:24] Speaker A: That's true. [01:05:25] Speaker B: Technomish. Then we get an advertisement for wizard number 42 with two competing Alex Ross covers. [01:05:32] Speaker A: You can either get one that's the champions of justice or the nightmarish fiends of the Marvel universe. Hence two covers. On this issue of wizard, there's an. [01:05:40] Speaker B: Advertisement for Angela number one from Neil Gaiman and Greg Capullo. [01:05:44] Speaker A: Yay. [01:05:46] Speaker B: We still have to cover that. And then the Todd toys advertisement on the back. [01:05:52] Speaker A: It's the Todd toys with those three initial figures. And just, like, calling their shot. Cause next month you got spawn mobile violator, monster rig, and spawn alley playset, followed by more figures. [01:06:02] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Including chapel and bedrock. [01:06:05] Speaker A: People were crazy for these spawn figures. [01:06:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm still crazy for these spawn figures. [01:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah, the classic ones look cool. I like that little bendy violator. I would love to have one of those. He's like, ah, I have a feeling, though. Like, it disintegrates now. Like, I feeling like, that bendy. [01:06:22] Speaker B: I don't know. [01:06:22] Speaker A: It might just be like, blah. [01:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah, probably. [01:06:25] Speaker A: That's the thing about these toys, man. They weren't made to last forever. [01:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, like, the guy who. Who broke them, he was like, I bought these to play with them, not to collect them. [01:06:34] Speaker A: We admire that. [01:06:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's spawn number 26, Johnny. [01:06:40] Speaker A: Spawn 26. A really good one. A lure filled romp in the alleys. Not really a romp. Kind of a melancholy romp. [01:06:50] Speaker B: And a romp in the time displaced pieces of heaven. [01:06:55] Speaker A: Yes. So next up, we're fast forwarding all the way to May 2024, 30 years later. Yeah, we got the scorch 29. [01:07:24] Speaker B: The curse has happened and then happened again and then happened again, and then we thought he was the new person. [01:07:30] Speaker A: And he wasn't an old character. Now we're here on the scorch and this excellent John Layman run. [01:07:37] Speaker B: Yes, indeed. He's doing real good job with this series, Johnny. [01:07:42] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I love it. As always. Gotta start with the covers. [01:07:47] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [01:07:48] Speaker A: I have the a cover. [01:07:49] Speaker B: I also have the a cover, which. [01:07:51] Speaker A: Is Jessica surrounded by a bunch of eyeballs. [01:07:53] Speaker B: It's incredible. [01:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah. I love how, like, pistol. That pistol she has. Oh, my God. [01:07:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:59] Speaker A: It's, like, the biggest pistol in the world. [01:08:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it is. It looks like she stole them from Javi. Yeah, she's, like, posing, and there's all these eyeballs. It's very. It's very meta, because we got all these eyeballs staring at Jessica Priest, but there's also eyeballs staring at the eyeballs staring at Jessica Priest. And it's like, well, maybe we're the eyeballs in the picture, Johnny. Did you ever think about that? [01:08:20] Speaker A: We're all the eyeballs. [01:08:22] Speaker B: The rest of our bodies don't matter. When it comes to observing the world. It's just our eyeballs. We're just a bunch of eyes floating around in meat sacks to see stuff. Pretty much, yeah, that's kind of. Yeah. [01:08:35] Speaker A: And the bee cover, you get haunt. [01:08:37] Speaker B: Bee cover is pretty metal. [01:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it is pretty metal. It's haunt like, crouching on a skull with a pentagram carved into it or written in blood. [01:08:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's got, like, a. It's got spikes coming out of it. And obviously, it's like he's using it kind of like a. Like the. The green goblin's glasse lighter. He's not, like, ripping into it like it's an enemy. He's just, like, on it. And I imagine it's, like, flying through space. [01:09:01] Speaker A: The flying skull. [01:09:03] Speaker B: Kind of like brainiac ship is a flying skull with squid legs. Tentacles. That's what they're called. [01:09:10] Speaker A: Yes. We forgot to mention the first cover. A cover is by Marcial Toledano. And von Randall did the B cover. [01:09:19] Speaker B: Which is why the bee cover is so metal, because von Randall does some metal stuff. Some metal ass stuff. Why don't we. Why don't we crack. Why don't we get our eyeballs off this front page, Johnny, and get them in the credits page here, pop it open. Put eyeballs on these credits. We got script plop by John Layman, with additional script by Todd McFarlane. Art by Steven Scovia. Colors by Robin Nugenthenne. Lettering by and world design covered the covers. Creative director is Todd McFarlane, and the editor in chief is Mister Thomas Healy. [01:09:54] Speaker A: Busiest man in show business. [01:09:55] Speaker B: Mm hmm. He deserves a drink if he isn't. Come to town, Thomas. We'll buy you a drink. [01:10:02] Speaker A: Come to Chicago. We'll buy you a handshake. [01:10:04] Speaker B: Yeah, several handshakes, probably. [01:10:05] Speaker A: I wonder if he's had Malort. [01:10:07] Speaker B: I mean, I just had Malort for the first time, like, a month or so ago, so. [01:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I should have brought some to Swan Con. That would have been smart. [01:10:13] Speaker B: I. Yeah. Oh, then did you check a bag, or did you just carry on? [01:10:18] Speaker A: I just carried on. [01:10:19] Speaker B: So you'd have to bring one of the little airplane bottles. [01:10:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Or check a bag. I don't really check bags. Usually. You don't need to. On Southwest, you get a carry on and get a backpack. That's all you need. [01:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah. If you're taking more than that, it's probably gonna be a very big trip. You should probably just take a car. [01:10:35] Speaker A: Yeah. I remember spawn museum at Swanconda. Uh, or punk g 42, whichever one you want to call them. They got all their stuff there on Southwest, because you get two free checked bags, and they got the biggest bags they could and just stuffed them full of all the spawn stuff. [01:10:50] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. That's the way to do it with. [01:10:53] Speaker A: Him and his wife. Yeah. So they got, like, four free checked. [01:10:55] Speaker B: Bags what was it? Southwest was also the only flight provider not affected by the outage not too long ago because they still run an old ass like windows three. [01:11:05] Speaker A: They want, like, a windows 95. Like, yeah. [01:11:10] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. Southwest, um, they. They live by the adage, if it ain't broke, I don't fix it. [01:11:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, if it still works. [01:11:19] Speaker B: Previously in the Scorched. With the surprise return of Jason Wynn, Jessica Priest and the scorch team take the offense. Eve take the offensive, not the offense. [01:11:30] Speaker A: They think they're offended by Jason Wynn's existence. Like, oh, my God. How dare you exist. [01:11:38] Speaker B: Oh, boy. So we start off, Johnny, we were. We were just. We were just talking about this guy, weren't we, Johnny? Look at him. [01:11:46] Speaker A: James Bond, zero zero seven on the screen. [01:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah, we got Charlotte Lynn watching James Bond on a big, big screen tv. [01:11:53] Speaker A: Looks like Daniel Craig. He's blonde. [01:11:55] Speaker B: So, closest one, because, I mean, the next closest one it would be. Would be Sean Connery, but I don't. I don't know how often Sean Connery used to silence her. [01:12:06] Speaker A: No, he used the PP seven. Yeah, the Walther PPK. PP seven is the one from the video game because they couldn't. In Goldeneye, they had to name all the guns. Weird names because they couldn't get the actual licenses. That's why it's called, like, PP seven and, like, club and things like that. [01:12:22] Speaker B: But they could call them hands. They got the. They got the license for hands, Johnny. [01:12:26] Speaker A: They're slappers. They're called slappers. Slappers. [01:12:28] Speaker B: Oh, so they didn't get the license for hands. [01:12:30] Speaker A: That's no slappers. You go like this. Slap, slap. [01:12:34] Speaker B: So we cut from baby Charlotte Lynn to Charlotte Lynn. Just ripping it up at the gun range. She's got good grouping, excellent aim. Yeah, she's just relaxed. She's just, you know, doing what she does. She graduated with highest marks from Quantico, had her pick from all of the agencies to do stuff, and then she. She. When the agency was recently reactivated, she was like, hell, yeah. Imma go there. [01:13:05] Speaker A: I'm gonna work for them. [01:13:07] Speaker B: Then one day, as she's walking to her car, she gets blamed in the face. [01:13:12] Speaker A: Just, boom. Frank Bishop shows up and shoots her. [01:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, that was the end of Charlotte Lynn. And, damn, that was quick. But as you'll remember, she's still around. Charlotte Lynn is still around. How did they achieve this magic trick in this comic book, Johnny? [01:13:30] Speaker A: Well, the viscerator crawls out of the shadows, and basically, Frank Bishop uses his magicks to change her into Charlotte Lin. [01:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah, because Frank Bishop is one of those weird people who still has magic, and we're not quite sure how they still have their magic, because he's not a green worlder. [01:13:48] Speaker A: We know it's special because it's magic with a k. Yeah. [01:13:51] Speaker B: And then she's like, I hope this. She says, my brother was punished by being in human form for being a dummy. This better not last too long. Cause this is gross. She's like, ew. Ew. [01:14:02] Speaker A: This gusty human body can't stand the ugliness of humans. Yeah, which is funny. Cause by anyone's. No, I don't think anyone will call Charlotte Lynn ugly. [01:14:12] Speaker B: Absolutely nothing bonk. [01:14:14] Speaker A: But that viscerator. Third bonk, another bonk. [01:14:19] Speaker B: But. So then we cut. We cut from, you know, Frank Bishop being like, you just gotta deal with it. To Charlotte Lynn giving a report to Jason Wynn, and Jason Wen being like, yes, yes, they're scorched. They're there no more. And then we've got chi spawn, haunt, and redeemer just. And a pair of legs. [01:14:42] Speaker A: This looks like some overt kill demon people legs. [01:14:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that must have been some o killer. [01:14:47] Speaker A: This is very much like that shot in age of Ultron where he sees the future and everyone's dead. And Cap's shield is broken. [01:14:53] Speaker B: Yeah, very similar. And haunt almost looks like he's got a big old chunk. No, haunt does have chunks taken out. [01:15:01] Speaker A: He has chunks taken out of him. His arm, his chest, his abdomen, Mandy. [01:15:05] Speaker B: His ankle. Oh. Oh. For some reason, that's the worst one. Just thinking of your ankle being kind of like, oh, ah, oh, oh. It's no good. [01:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah, so they're all down. [01:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah, down. And they. Then, you know, we got Mark. Mark on the comms being like, are you okay? Are you alive? [01:15:26] Speaker A: Snake, snake, snake. [01:15:30] Speaker B: I saw. I saw a video recently that they. The guys who developed the. Or, like, who modeled the original Metal Gear solid game, like, built the maps out of Lego before they put them in. I can see that in the system. So that way they could figure out all the. So that's how they figured out, like, sight lines and stuff. Sure. They just, like. They were like, how can you? Which is. Man, they had to have been having so much fun. [01:16:00] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that makes sense, because the game kind of has, like, modular little rooms, so it makes sense that they use legos to figure it out. That's kind of cool. [01:16:09] Speaker B: And so then Charlotte Lynn is regaling again with the storytelling. Johnny. Charlotte Lynn is regal. [01:16:15] Speaker A: Everyone's telling a story. [01:16:17] Speaker B: Good old Jason Nguyen with how the scorched went down. [01:16:23] Speaker A: So they've been on a warpath ever since. They got all the information acquired from their server. [01:16:27] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [01:16:27] Speaker A: In last issue. [01:16:29] Speaker B: And then they. They put the. No, the new oak killers on the counterattack. And so it's just haunt Jessica, priest, and Redeemer. Just standing there, like, it looks like in a kind of, like, in an elevator shaft, and then there's just, like, dozens. [01:16:44] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:44] Speaker B: Like, of these. These cybernetic freaks, I'll call them, just, like, barreling down on them from above. The. [01:16:53] Speaker A: Oh, killers. [01:16:54] Speaker B: Oh, killers. Since they haven't mentioned it yet in this issue, the O killers are the individual, like the drone fighters that are connected to overt kill with some cybernetic bits that have been. Oh, I guess they're about to talk about it. Oops. [01:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah, they're about to talk about it. Yeah. But they're fighting, and Han's like, there's too many of them. [01:17:17] Speaker B: And then we cut to Jason Nguyen being like, let me. Let me show you. Let me show you the rest of our arsenal, Charlotte. [01:17:23] Speaker A: I'm not sure what else we got. [01:17:25] Speaker B: And they walk down a crazy hallway to where overt kill is just strung up and hanging. And he's got his. He's hanging brain, Johnny. Like, for real. [01:17:37] Speaker A: He's hanging with his brain out. [01:17:40] Speaker B: So they're like, we can't control overt kill. He's too much. But that brain. That brain not too. That brain not too brownie. We can just zap, zoop, Zoop right. [01:17:49] Speaker A: Into it, zap in there and control him. [01:17:52] Speaker B: Because he said that the overt kill cybernetics, if they're ever transplanted onto anybody else, just, like, rips them apart. And so he's like, why don't we. [01:18:01] Speaker A: Just, you know, use his brainpower, hook. [01:18:05] Speaker B: These little drones up to the old man himself, and, you know, then we're back to the fight between the scorched and the oh killers. [01:18:13] Speaker A: Jessica's kicking a guy's eye out. [01:18:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, Mandy. [01:18:16] Speaker A: And a lot of eye trauma in these two issues. [01:18:19] Speaker B: Oh, boy, it hurts. It hurts a lot. Haunt's over there just flipping some guys. [01:18:26] Speaker A: Redeemer's slicing through him with his sword. [01:18:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And then we get a little bit of strategy talk where. Where the oakillers thought that they could overpower the scorched by their sheer numbers. You know, it makes them disposable if they need to. But, you know, the scorched, at least, are better forged team than just a whole bunch of oakillers thrown at a. They're under problem. But then they. They activate the self destruct sequence amongst all the. Oh, killers. And so they all explode and they blow you up. Boom. And then as the fire from the explosion clears, haunt and Redeemer get bracket, bracket, bracket. Oh Jesus. That, that, that wrist. That wrist shot on haunt where he's. [01:19:09] Speaker A: Getting shot in the wrist shot. [01:19:11] Speaker B: Fuck. [01:19:12] Speaker A: Shot in the damn ankle. He's just getting all his joints messed up, man. [01:19:16] Speaker B: So he's been. He's getting the other kind of. He's getting the bullet wounds now to match all of his knife wounds. Yes. And it's revealed that it's bishop with a couple of oak killers with miniguns on their arms. [01:19:31] Speaker A: Minigun hands. Yeah, yeah. [01:19:33] Speaker B: They look kind of like fighters from that bio freaks game. [01:19:39] Speaker A: I remember biofreaks on n 64. [01:19:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a great game. Actually, it wasn't really a great game. I just liked it because it was gross and I wasn't allowed to play it. So I was like, haha, that makes it good. And then Bishop. Bishop's like, you know, I'm gonna kill your friends unless you agree to work for us. And Jessica Priest is like, fine, don't kill him. And he's like, man, I really wanted to kill you because you killed me. Ah, well, I'll just fill you full of horse tranquilizers here. [01:20:09] Speaker A: Yep. Foot, foot, foot tranquilizer. [01:20:13] Speaker B: That might be overkill, Johnny. I think. I think you're only. I think they're supposed to be dosed, so you only need one. [01:20:18] Speaker A: He only just hit all three of them. But he doesn't care, man. [01:20:23] Speaker B: He's a jerk. [01:20:24] Speaker A: He just has to hope that what win has in store for you is worse than death. That's all he can do. [01:20:30] Speaker B: We cut back to Jason Wynn being like, so are the scorched being prepped? For what? We're doing them in Charlotte Lynn's like, I mean, Jessica Priest's being surgeried on, but what about the other two? We just got them in some bacta tanks. [01:20:46] Speaker A: Yep. [01:20:47] Speaker B: Charlotte Lynn's like, there's one more. There's one more member of the team. And Jason Wynn's like, yes, I know. Medieval. [01:20:53] Speaker A: We must get him. She's like, no, not him. [01:20:56] Speaker B: Yeah, she's like, we intercepted some comm signals. They got a. They got a. They got a man in the chair somewhere. [01:21:03] Speaker A: Find them and shut them down. [01:21:05] Speaker B: We get Mark standing before a wall of screens just showing snow. [01:21:11] Speaker A: Everything's cut out. [01:21:12] Speaker B: It's the color of a television set tuned to a dead channel. Johnny. Mm hmm. For all my neuromancer friends out there to bring cyberpunk back into it. [01:21:21] Speaker A: Okay, I don't know what that means. [01:21:23] Speaker B: Oh, Neuromancer is a book by William Gibson. [01:21:26] Speaker A: Yes, I have. I know that. [01:21:28] Speaker B: Oh, it's the opening line is the sky. One of the opening lines is the sky's the color of a television tuned to a dead channel. Oh, literature. It's a good book, Johnny. [01:21:38] Speaker A: I have it. I should read it. [01:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah, you should read it, definitely. And then Mark's just like, I was. [01:21:42] Speaker A: Trying to get on a cyberpunk kick like years ago, and then I read. God, what was it called? I fucking hated snow Crash. [01:21:48] Speaker B: Snow crash. [01:21:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I tried to read that I wasn't a big fan of, but I heard Neuromancer is way better. [01:21:53] Speaker B: Neuromancer is better than snow crash. [01:21:56] Speaker A: Snow crash. Yeah, it was all right. [01:21:58] Speaker B: Neither of them, though, are anywhere near as good as the cyberpunk we are currently enjoying Johnny in Rat City. [01:22:06] Speaker A: Wow, hot tank. [01:22:08] Speaker B: You're probably going to be disappointed in Neuromancer because it's no Peter and Rhys and Quinlan. [01:22:15] Speaker A: Okay, well, shots fired. [01:22:18] Speaker B: But it is good. It's good. It's much less riding around installing new programs on your discmin to fight other people, because that's what snow Crash is. It's just like a dude constantly installing a new program into his body as he's driving around. [01:22:35] Speaker A: You mean hero protagonist? Isn't that his name? [01:22:38] Speaker B: I don't remember. [01:22:39] Speaker A: It's hero. It's definitely hero. I think it might be hero protagonist. [01:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I have a hard enough time remembering names that I care about much less than a book that I was just mad about. But we get the scorched skull to end the. End the issue. [01:22:52] Speaker A: It's not quite over because we get a spawning ground. [01:22:54] Speaker B: Do get a spawning ground. So we get another submission from Jet. And it is his first she spawn, Johnny. [01:23:00] Speaker A: And she has a giant ass gun. [01:23:03] Speaker B: Uh huh. And we get a little bit of lore that we didn't realize. [01:23:08] Speaker A: What cover is he talking about? Where she has three arms. [01:23:10] Speaker B: It was the first scorched. He literally says scorch number one. [01:23:14] Speaker A: Well, I'm gonna look. [01:23:15] Speaker B: But Jett's mom says that they wondered why Jessica Priest's guns all had so many, like, handholds on them. And she was like, we looked at the scorched number one cover and we realized that she's got necroplasmic hands. [01:23:33] Speaker A: I don't know what cover they're talking about. [01:23:35] Speaker B: I don't know either. I don't know either, but anyway, so I guess. I guess Jessica can use necroplasmic hands to hold guns. Whatever. Yeah, that's the. Maybe. Maybe Thomas Healy can drop us the COVID in it. We'll see. But anyway, art Jetsart. It's fucking incredible. Look at this. Look at that. Look at the sky. The sky's a great color. She's shooting off one of her guns. And Jan and Jett liked. Liked the build up to 300 and thought it was very well executed, so 350. Thomas does say that Jessica has a few special abilities we haven't really focused on much, but that with all these titles, maybe we'll come around to it. [01:24:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure she's got many tricks up her sleeve. [01:24:21] Speaker B: The next guy. The next guy is like, hey, what do you think about can the scorch to be, like, a proving ground for. For people? Like, you know, there are new spawn people, so just throw them on the scorch, and it'll be. [01:24:33] Speaker A: Focus on there. Put Taylor on there. [01:24:34] Speaker B: Taylor. Taylor would be absolutely worth. He would just be, like, hanging around, like, fucking up mark shit. Like, he would. [01:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah. He'd be, like, playing PlayStation on Mark's tvs while they're on a mission, and he'd be like, God damn it. [01:24:50] Speaker B: He would have unplugged something important just to play a game. [01:24:53] Speaker A: Yeah. He's like, I gotta plug in my Xbox. [01:24:57] Speaker B: That would be fun. Little foil, though. [01:24:59] Speaker A: That would be funny. [01:25:00] Speaker B: Oh, boy. [01:25:01] Speaker A: And we get that. We get a little picture just to, like, go along with it, of when Javi writes the scorched. [01:25:06] Speaker B: Yeah, cuz. [01:25:07] Speaker A: Cuz Javi can't read or write. [01:25:09] Speaker B: Javi's super literate. [01:25:11] Speaker A: That was. That's so funny that you noticed that. [01:25:15] Speaker B: Well, whatever. Well, I mean, it's now a big. It's now a big deal that he can't read. Tell me when we're getting close. Close to Gettysburg. [01:25:23] Speaker A: Yep. [01:25:24] Speaker B: Do you need more spawns, universe? Johnny? [01:25:26] Speaker A: Uh, yeah, I guess so. I mean, not after this week. We got three issues this week. So scorched a misery and spawn. [01:25:36] Speaker B: There wasn't spawn. It was gunslinger. [01:25:38] Speaker A: It was gunslinger. Yeah. I haven't read them yet. [01:25:41] Speaker B: I did. They're good. [01:25:42] Speaker A: Cool. I'm gonna read them today, probably. [01:25:43] Speaker B: They're all good. There's the storyline of the scorch that I think is about to make a. No, we're about to get the. No, it's gonna go. No, I think it's good. [01:25:53] Speaker A: What does that mean? You know, just about to swerve. [01:25:55] Speaker B: No, there's gonna be. Yeah, there's gonna be a little bit of trickery on John Layman's part. [01:26:01] Speaker A: Okay. [01:26:02] Speaker B: I think there will be some ulterior motives revealed for one particular individual over the past couple of issues. Will show their true colors. [01:26:11] Speaker A: Hmm. Okay. [01:26:13] Speaker B: And that it's a person we like, and obviously that's what they were doing. [01:26:16] Speaker A: Sure, I figured. [01:26:17] Speaker B: But I think it'll be a nice little review. [01:26:19] Speaker A: Okay. Then we get the ad for the. [01:26:21] Speaker B: Fallout figures with uncle baby Billy san's nose. [01:26:25] Speaker A: Yep. You got Lucy the ghoul and Titus night Titus or Maximus, whichever you want to call him. What a fun show. [01:26:35] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a real good show. [01:26:36] Speaker A: They're making the game. I'm playing, like, a dragon into an Amazon show, so I'm excited for that. [01:26:42] Speaker B: Nice. I've never heard of like a dragon except for today. [01:26:46] Speaker A: Well, it's the same as the Yakuza games. They just. In Japan, they were always called, like, a dragon, and here they were called yakuza, but just to make it cleaner, like games. [01:26:54] Speaker B: Okay, I know about that then, because. Yeah, if you had just said yakuza, then I would have been like, yeah, I heard about that. [01:27:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, so it's like how resident evil in Japan has always been called biohazard. [01:27:05] Speaker B: Okay. [01:27:05] Speaker A: Here, like, a dragon's always been called yakuza, but they're trying to, like, you know, blend it together so they. The new ones are called like, a dragon. So it's like when they changed Princess Toadstool to Princess Peach because she was toadstool in America, but she was always peach in Japan. She's big in Japan. [01:27:22] Speaker B: I mean, she's big here, too. Honestly. Peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches, peaches. [01:27:28] Speaker A: That's true. [01:27:28] Speaker B: After that song, we have a. We have a dog named Peach that we sing that to all the time. [01:27:35] Speaker A: That's funny. [01:27:36] Speaker B: She is round. She is potato shaped. Well, speaking of dogs, Johnny, we got some puppies to rate. [01:27:41] Speaker A: It's time to rate the puppies. So first up today, we did spawn 26 Capulo McFarlane joint. I really like this issue a lot. I like that it got back to some of the lore after kind of the interlude of the hunt. And Grant Morrison, he got back to some of the earlier stuff with Count Cagliostro. And it's kind of a somber tale that shows Al that, you know, he can't just sit on the sidelines. [01:28:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:09] Speaker A: Cause people are gonna get hurt. And he needs to realize that it's. It's basically him realizing everything's bigger than just himself. Cause you got Mal Bolshevik there. You got heaven. You've got the folks in the alley. And there's just bigger stuff than himself going on. And he maybe stop being so selfish and self pitying. [01:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:28:24] Speaker A: But good lessons for spawn. Good lessons for us. Love the art. Love all the malbolgia stuff. Always good to see him with his crazy jaw. Yeah. I really like this issue. I'm going to give it 4.5. Little frog guys. [01:28:41] Speaker B: Very nice little frog guys. He's just like, oh, little frock guy. [01:28:44] Speaker A: Till he squished. [01:28:46] Speaker B: Till he squished. [01:28:46] Speaker A: His eyeballs pop out. [01:28:48] Speaker B: I agree. I agree, Johnny. This issue is great. This is a great issue. This might actually be a underutilized, you want to try spawn? Give this a whirl. [01:28:59] Speaker A: Yeah, this would be a good, this would be a good jumping on point, for sure. [01:29:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Because everybody who gets introduced, there's an explanation. It starts with a story that you don't need to know anything else about beforehand. It gets, it gets you the kind of grand sense that occasionally comes by with the opening monologue. It gets you the ridiculousness that we come to spawn for. With him getting drunk, drunk, talking about how cool he is. It's very well put together. The art. Incredible. The writing is actually very, very, very good. Like, as somebody in a, as Ben Herman in the spawning grounds was talking about how the hunt was just like. He was like, your writing is amazing now. Writing is very good here. Yeah, it's very good. I've obviously read this issue before. Because I know that I've made it up to the seventies. I completely forgot about it. When I read it again. I was just like, how could I forget this issue? [01:29:56] Speaker A: It's hard when you're reading them all at once. You know, they kind of blur together. [01:29:59] Speaker B: This is great issue. Yeah, it's just great. I'm gonna give it four and a half tug of war. Rats in the alley fighting over it. I waffled back and forth between deciding whether they were tug of warring. Or if they were about to do a lady and the tramp, one of the two. I'm going to assume that with the red eyes, they're probably like, nah, this is mine. Nah, this is mine. [01:30:20] Speaker A: This is my piece of food. Yeah. [01:30:22] Speaker B: Very good issue. [01:30:23] Speaker A: Nice. And then we have the much breezier action packed. [01:30:31] Speaker B: It took like a fourth of the time for us to talk about. [01:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. It took like 20 minutes. The other one took like an hour and 20 minutes. [01:30:38] Speaker B: Oh, boy. [01:30:39] Speaker A: But that's the scorch, baby. Action packed. Yeah, in and out. [01:30:42] Speaker B: It just it just clips along in the best way. In the best way. [01:30:47] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm going to give this. I mean, I guess let's talk about it. I mean, Steven Segovia on the art. Clean, effective. Always like his art. You know, this is kind of setting up the next arc here with Jessica being under the thumb of Jason Wynn. [01:31:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:31:04] Speaker A: So it's a little bit of an in between issue, but we also get some clarification on Charlotte Lynn and things like that. So I'm going to give it four James Bond marathons. [01:31:15] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. Which. Who's. Who's your favorite. Who's your favorite bond? [01:31:19] Speaker A: Oh, I'd say either Daniel Craig or Timothy Dalton. [01:31:22] Speaker B: Timothy Dalton's very good. [01:31:24] Speaker A: He is good. He only got two movies in there, but they're both pretty good. Yeah, but he's just very good. [01:31:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very good. I have a soft spot for the Pierce Brosnan ones, so. [01:31:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I like Pierce Brosnan. [01:31:34] Speaker B: I like Pierce Brosnan. They're not really very good movie. Goldeneye is fantastic. But, like, the other two are just like, what? [01:31:45] Speaker A: You're the three. [01:31:46] Speaker B: They're the three. Oh, boy. [01:31:48] Speaker A: Yeah, he did Goldeneye. Tomorrow never dies. The world is not enough and die another day. The mushroom of line. Die another day. [01:31:56] Speaker B: I've never seen die another day. Holy shit. [01:31:58] Speaker A: That's one with a Madonna song, man. [01:32:00] Speaker B: I do know that one time we were in Branson and we took my grandparents to. To see the world is not enough on the IMAX. And my grandfather was like, I can't hear shit. I don't know what's going on. And my grandmother just spent the whole time being like, what is this? What is this? I don't know why we decided to do bad idea from the start. I think my parents were just like, we gotta. [01:32:24] Speaker A: We need something to do. [01:32:25] Speaker B: We gotta do something. Brightston's actually a pretty cool place, but we would always go. And at Christmas time, so, like, a lot of the things were closed. [01:32:34] Speaker A: Sure. [01:32:35] Speaker B: So our options were limited. But yes, scorched 29. Excellent. It's very good. I love the Charlotte Lin. It's introduced to us as a badass and then shot in the face. [01:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:32:49] Speaker B: So rip Charlotte Lin. [01:32:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Bishop's a good villain. He's a little smarmy bastard. [01:32:54] Speaker B: Yeah, he's a man. I hope. I can't wait until that little weasel gets pinched. [01:32:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I know. [01:33:00] Speaker B: It's great. It's setting up, like you said, setting up the whole Jessica being the antagonist of the scorched, it's just a good little piece of action. I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna give it four eyeballs, Johnny. [01:33:13] Speaker A: Four overkill eyeballs. [01:33:15] Speaker B: Four cover eyeballs. Four big old eyeball. [01:33:17] Speaker A: Oh, four big old eyeballs. Yep. The covers, they're staring you down. Yeah, it's fun. I'm excited to read the newest issue so I can see what you're talking about. [01:33:27] Speaker B: Yeah, we should talk about it at some point. [01:33:31] Speaker A: That's a good idea. [01:33:32] Speaker B: It's a good idea. [01:33:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we probably will. [01:33:34] Speaker B: Probably will. Speaking about talking about more spawn, Johnny. Yeah, you want to talk about more spawn in, like, a week? [01:33:40] Speaker A: I do. [01:33:41] Speaker B: All right. Awesome. How about since we talked about that three inch thick stack of. Stack. Yeah. [01:33:47] Speaker A: Maybe we should work through some of those modern ones, maybe put the classics on hold for a bit. [01:33:50] Speaker B: Those classics ain't going nowhere. They'll be just as fresh when we get to do them. So we're gonna. We're gonna work through some of these. These more contemporary books just so that way we're not so far behind, and it'll be fun. So next week, gunslinger 32 spawn 354. It'll be nice. It'll be nice. [01:34:10] Speaker A: You get your hobby. You get your owl. [01:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:34:12] Speaker A: What more could you want? [01:34:13] Speaker B: Well, you got Olinda, you got mystery lady, you got Terry. That's. You know, it's great. [01:34:22] Speaker A: That's all your friends. [01:34:23] Speaker B: Yeah. You got Jason. Jason blood. [01:34:26] Speaker A: Yes. You've got the operative guy who flies around in his jet. [01:34:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. The super, super nineties guy. Who else is in an issue? [01:34:37] Speaker A: I don't know. [01:34:38] Speaker B: We'll find out. We'll find out next week. [01:34:40] Speaker A: We'll find out next week. [01:34:41] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. [01:34:42] Speaker A: And in between then, if you want looking for some stuff to do, pop. [01:34:46] Speaker B: On Instagram, put your eyes on. [01:34:49] Speaker A: Put your eyes on Instagram because we've got someone that we wanted to highlight. His name is Jordan Conley, but his tag is achibaba. Achi baba. So. Achibaba. And he is a badass spawn cosplayer. [01:35:07] Speaker B: Yeah, he really is. [01:35:08] Speaker A: He had a really good picture of himself at a con recently. That was him, the Joker and Rambo that I thought was awesome. [01:35:17] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:35:18] Speaker A: But, yeah, he's got a great spawn costume going to different cons, anime expos, things like that. [01:35:25] Speaker B: He also has a great maskless Al Simmons scowl and stare. He's like staring into your soul when he's walking around without the mask. He's excellent at it. He embodies that commando spawn real well. [01:35:42] Speaker A: Yeah. So make sure to give him a follow for his awesome fun cosplay. Pictures. He's usually taking pictures with other cosplayers, so it's always cool to see who he runs into. [01:35:51] Speaker B: Oh, hey, he's got one where he's hanging out with that clown from one piece. [01:35:55] Speaker A: Hey, there you go. Actual clown or the guy's just a clown? [01:35:58] Speaker B: The guy. He is a clown. Well, he has a. He has a facial deformity that makes his nose real big and red. So he decides to cover it up by having his whole schtick be. He's a clown. [01:36:13] Speaker A: Okay. [01:36:14] Speaker B: It's called Buggy the Clown. [01:36:16] Speaker A: Oh, I see him. There he is. [01:36:18] Speaker B: One piece is ridiculous. It's fun, but absolutely ridiculous. Go follow him. [01:36:23] Speaker A: Give him a follow. [01:36:24] Speaker B: He's doing real good. Shit. Also, you should follow us on Instagram regarding Spompod. [01:36:30] Speaker A: Absolutely. Posting about episodes. [01:36:32] Speaker B: We should probably be a little more active than we have been recently, but. Sorry about that. [01:36:36] Speaker A: Yeah, life gets in the way. [01:36:38] Speaker B: Yeah. But, you know, we're still there, and it's a great place to reach out to us. If you want to. If you want to talk about. If you want to talk about spawn, come talk to us about Spawn on Instagram. [01:36:47] Speaker A: If you want to talk to us. Long form about Spawn, you can always hit us [email protected]. dot. [01:36:52] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. [01:36:53] Speaker A: I always like to ask a question to try to spur some answers. And I would say, what is your favorite James Bond or James Bond movie? You know, because there's many good answers. [01:37:04] Speaker B: Sub question. Even if it's not your favorite movie, which is your favorite opening song? [01:37:10] Speaker A: Oh, yes. Which is your favorite Bond song? [01:37:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Which one do you sing all the time? Which one do you shoehorn any three syllable word into on a daily basis? [01:37:21] Speaker A: I think that's David in Goldfinger. I think. [01:37:25] Speaker B: Yes. Absolutely, yes. [01:37:28] Speaker A: Also, when you're on the Internet, please make sure to rate, review, and subscribe. Tell your friends, family, coworkers about us. Tell your other spawn fans. Spread the word. [01:37:37] Speaker B: Do it. And speaking about spreading the word and music. Lonnie Bones does our music. Google yourself. Lonnie bones with a y, not an ie. Lonnie bones music is on Apple Music. He's on Spotify. If you like what he does for us, you should hear what he does for him. He saves all the good stuff for him. So, yeah, give it a listen. If you think our stuff is great, get ready to have your mind blown. It's good. [01:38:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:38:03] Speaker B: Yeah. And, well, with all that, Johnny, it's been a great little bit of spawn here recently. Got a lot of spawn coming down the pike. Got a lot of spawn stuck in the old noggin. Yep, this spawn train is running, and the caboose is nowhere in sight. [01:38:19] Speaker A: No, it's just a bullet train to spawn. [01:38:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Real excited to see. Hopefully the blue coats win. I mean, I'll go for Boston's. Boston's battery scores have been excellent the past few years. They just, like, came out of nowhere on it. That's going to be, like, a two percenter joke. Sorry about that. But anyway, spawn, excellent. End of the summer, excellent. How is it already the end of the summer, Johnny? Who knows? [01:38:45] Speaker A: I don't know. Time, it goes fast. [01:38:47] Speaker B: It's weird, but love doing this. Love the show. Love you all for listening at least. We have nothing to say. But, Joni, may the scorched be with you. [01:38:59] Speaker A: And also with you, David. [01:39:01] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. [01:39:02] Speaker A: Hell, yeah. [01:39:03] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. So. Well, Johnny, we were talking about. We were talking about some mustard earlier. I think it's, uh. I think it's time to go find something I can slather a little bit of that mustard on. [01:39:17] Speaker A: Hopefully it's not a moldy sandwich. [01:39:19] Speaker B: I mean, the mustard cuts through it. [01:39:22] Speaker A: Hopefully there's two sandwiches. Otherwise, we're gonna have to fight over, like, those rats in the alley. [01:39:27] Speaker B: You'll have to kill me first. [01:39:30] Speaker A: Oh, don't I know it, Sadeena. [01:40:11] Speaker B: It was just Rufus. He got stuck behind the toilet. [01:40:13] Speaker A: Rufus?