Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Monolith closes his eyes, revisiting his history, his origins. He sees the goddess Gaia and Earth and the planet eaters, seeing himself younger, living on his planet, looking at the skies.
Good evening and welcome to the malvols. This is regarding spawn, the world's best spawn podcast.
I am your co host, John Fisher.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: And I am your co host, David Williams. And it is a little bit of a baritone week for ye olde co host David this week.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Were you screaming?
[00:01:06] Speaker B: No no. Nothing as fun as getting too, too drunk at a baseball game and yelling encouraging things to a bad pitcher, right? No no no. I got a little sinus stuff. It's, you know, seasonal allergies, Johnny. Every season's got them.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Even spooky season?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Even spooky season. Maybe it's my body is scared of the spooky season. Yeah.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Cause we're recording on the cusp of spooky season. But you'll be listening to this right at the get go. Spooky season.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: Dead in the middle. You could say dead.
[00:01:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You're playing oingo boingo, watching slasher movies.
[00:01:42] Speaker B: Oh, I've already started the fucking oingo Boingo re listen of 2024, Johnny.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: It's always. There's no stapping it. There's no stuff.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: I listened to it in the car on the way to see Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. I thought it was appropriate.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Very appropriate.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Very appropriate for Danny Elfman.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Wasn't Betelgeuse? Oh, no. I guess it was Pee Wee's big adventure. That was his first big post. Oingo.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Well, that was during Oingo Boingo. Still.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: He did Oingo Boingo up until, I think their fair world show, even though they hadn't released an album in a few years, was 1995.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Damn.
[00:02:15] Speaker A: He did it for a while. There's one oingo Boingo album or a couple that are very, like, you can tell, like, influenced by his, like, scores. Like, one of them just called Boingo is very symphonic. Is that all right? Was that a word?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: Symphonic? Yeah.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it better be. You know how much symphonic death metal I've listened to.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: There you go. But they kind of evolved, but they were still around. I think their last album was like, 93. And then they. They did a farewell show in 95 because they have the dvd of the show.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Ooh, nice.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: It's official. It's not a bootleg.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Danny Elfman has a rare percussion instrument collection that he just, like, if you ever get a chance to meet him. He'll just, like, show you around all these weird, like, one off percussion instruments. I don't remember what any of them are off the top of my head, but it's.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Sure. Bom, bom, bom, bom.
That's Danny Elfin right there.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Hey, man, he makes a good score, too.
[00:03:09] Speaker A: Yeah. Beetlejuice score was excellent.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: It's hard for me to accept that Hans Zimmer does good Batman scores because.
Yeah, because the original Danny Elfman ones were so.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: It's, like, barely a theme, though. It's just, like, done.
I mean, it's good. It works for the movies, but it's like, you can't, like, hum it.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: No. And you could definitely whistle some Danny Elfman, though, Johnny.
[00:03:31] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:03:32] Speaker B: Infinitely whistleable.
[00:03:34] Speaker A: Bom, bom, bom, bom, bom.
That's Danny. I was gonna confuse you. The one. Because Batman and Robin and Batman forever have a different one.
I don't remember.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: I don't remember. I really don't remember.
[00:03:51] Speaker A: Well, I do. And I think about it all the time. The different Batman themes.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: I mean, somebody has to, Johnny. That's how we keep the Batman themes alive.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: Yep. I wonder what the new spawn theme will be.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: I don't know. Maybe. Maybe they'll get Danny Elfman to write it for the King Swan movie.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Yeah, he'd be good.
[00:04:09] Speaker B: It'll infuse a little bit of that. Actually, I think it would be better if they had somebody else do the main theme. But just get Danny Elfman to come in for leitmotifs for clown. Every time he shows up.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: There you go.
Your lower, whispery voice, David, because of your bronchitis, is making me think of.
I'm on NPR.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: This is NPR. No, it's not. This is nprehood.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it is. And every week we bring you two issues from Spawn universe. And this week is no different. We're bringing you two modern issues of spawn.
One of them is the spin off monolith number two.
All the way back from June 2024.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: A little bit of a oxymoron there, monolith two.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. It is.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Okay, we'll just throw it away then, because it doesn't make logical sense.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: If it's monolith, it'd be two olithe.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Duolith.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: Duolith.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: Duolitho. Duolith. Gal.
[00:05:12] Speaker A: Duolitho.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: Do you remember when the mysterious monolith showed up? That was literally just an art project in the desert.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: I do remember that.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: I took it upon myself to do a very poorly photoshopped monolithgow. Where I just put John Lithgow's face on the monolith, and it was wonderful. Johnny, if I remember, if I find it, I will post it on the instagram, okay?
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Yeah, please do.
[00:05:37] Speaker B: We'll post a new episode.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: The monolith gal.
We got monolith number two is our first issue up, and then we've got spawn. Mainline spawn 355.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Yes, indeed.
[00:05:49] Speaker A: From July 2024.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Definitely not spooky season, then.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: No, it was hot season.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Well, I guess maybe spooky season for dogs because of all the fireworks.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's true. It was spooky season for me. Cause I had fucking Covid, man.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Nothing's worth being sick in the summer.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it sucks.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it really sucks.
[00:06:09] Speaker A: Especially I was sick on the 4 July.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: Oh, that's rough.
[00:06:13] Speaker A: I wasn't born on the 4 July. I was sick on the 4 July, David.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, you were probably about as pro America as the being sick on the 4 July as the actual song. Born on the 4 July. It's a depressing song, johnny.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Is it?
[00:06:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's about a Vietnam vet who comes back and has absolutely no support.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Okay. I was thinking, like, isn't that a movie? They made a movie out of the song. Maybe the song's from the movie. I just always think of born on the 4 July.
Every heart beats true for the red, white, and blue. And I was like, what's depressing about that song?
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Maybe. Maybe people. Some people are depressed by uptempo souza esque marches, jen.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: That's true. They are. My friend Aaron got pissed at me on 4 July. Cause I was playing all that shit. And he got Madden.
He's also, like, a communist, marxist, anti american. I mean, you know, whatever. Whatever.
[00:07:05] Speaker B: You know, that's the beauty of America. America is supposed to embrace those who hate it.
[00:07:09] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:07:11] Speaker B: Right now is probably most people.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Let's embrace things we love, though, as Rose Tico said, that's not how you win. You don't win by killing the things you hate. You win by saving the things you love.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: Hmm.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: And then nerd's head exploded because they're all so mad because Rose Tico's talking in Star wars, man.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: I like Rose.
[00:07:31] Speaker A: Yeah, Rose is cool.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: I never understood it, but I guess that's because, you know, I guess I believe that everybody belongs in Star wars instead of just people who look like me.
[00:07:42] Speaker A: Whatever. She's just a cool character. She's, like, a nerd, and she's, like, a commoner. Like, that was cool. Yeah, there was kind of a through line in the first two movies about, like, you know, like, Finn was a janitor, Ray was a scavenger.
Rose was a lowly, like, engineer nerd.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: Like, it was all these, like, kind of, like, working class, like, lowly people. And then in the rise of Skywalker, it didn't matter. And it's just like, whatever.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It was basically for a brief period of time there, we had Star wars.
[00:08:12] Speaker A: Lower decks, kind of, in a way.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: I fucking love lower decks.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: I know you do.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: I love the stories of the little people within behemoths.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: It's very fun.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Well, speaking of behemoths.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Let's start on old monolith here.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: That's not who shows up in this one, but it's close.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. We're not talking about the spawn character behemoth. We're talking about another behemoth, like, creature, Mister monolith himself.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: I totally forgot behemoth existed until just.
[00:08:42] Speaker A: Yeah, behemoth is that big thing that was in King Swan for, like, three or four issues.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, man.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: We should probably start with the covers like we normally do, Johnny.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Absolutely. But you said covers, plural. You're wrong, baby.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: What?
[00:08:58] Speaker A: There's only one cover. This is a rare, besides, like, the old spawns, but even they have the newsstand and the direct covers.
[00:09:05] Speaker B: Oh, that's true.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: This is one of the rare spawn issues that has one single cover.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Mm hmm. It is the monolith of COVID It.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: Is the monolith of COVID They stood up to their name. It's by Francesco Matina, and it's monolith. It's like a rock got broken on his face, and it's, like, crushing around him.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's, like, bolts of red lightning around the pieces of rock that broke on his head, and he's just, like, scowling through it. And he's got impossible amounts of teeth, Johnny.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Just teeth come out of his chin. Just teeth on teeth. On teeth.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: See, some of those teeth are not even useful.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: That's a shitload of teeth.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: He's drooling, and he doesn't look very happy.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: He does not look very happy.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Not in the least.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: I like the color scheme. Like, the purple.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good. Nice. Nice earth tones. A little, too.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Fuck. So, Francesco Betida, we like his covers. But as you know from probably Instagram or just Reddit or being in the comics community, he has been discovered using AI art, which sucks. He got called out because there was a Superman with the s. Had, like, an extra tail on the s. Like, it was like an s with an extra tail. It was just like one of those weird.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: So it was like extra hands only in the s form.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Or extra fingers.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Right, exactly. So I just want to say, like, you know, there are allegations. I don't know if he's ever. I couldn't find any information if he's come out and commented on it or anything like that, but, like, that sucks.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah, we have to. We have to keep it in mind. Hopefully. Hopefully it turns out to be wrong. But, man, there have been a lot of people who've been like, I'm definitely not using AI, and have been found to have been using AI for fucking everything.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Yeah, we use AI. We don't even record this podcast. This is all AI generated. We have enough. Once you hit 100 episodes, you can just upload it to the cloud and be like, okay, just keep generating episodes.
They do all the work for you.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: I feel like as a goof sometime, we should make a all AI episode and see how, if it's more listenable than actually us.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: That would be interesting. I mean, I would be curious to see what that sequel was like.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: It would be all tangent from me, fake Star wars stuff from you, because obviously, it wouldn't be able to pull real Star wars, right?
[00:11:25] Speaker A: If you like. Yeah, oogie boogie was hanging out on.
[00:11:28] Speaker B: Bratooine, and then spawn would never come up because that's the thing we talk about, least on our spawn podcast, AI art.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: I really like it for, like, putting in funny prompts and sharing them with my friends. Like, to make, like, dumb memes. But, like, also, it was better when it was shittier because it was, like, hilarious.
Had a weird, like, surrealness to it. Now it's just getting better. It's, like, just sad.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: It's really sad. And we know we read comics because we want to a, because comics fucking rock. But also because, you know, the ones we choose tend to be created by people who we like their art.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: And that's what we want to support. We don't want. We don't want the artists being the ones who are replaced by machines. No, we want the factory workers to be the ones that get the benefit of automation.
[00:12:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:16] Speaker B: Want the people in dangerous situations, not the people bleeding their souls into the thing, things that they want to produce in the world.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Well, it looks like they're pretty fatted allegations. I did finally find an article that said that DC junks all his covers and, like, dug them. So. Okay, that was like, June 2024.
[00:12:34] Speaker B: So let's hope it's the swift kick in the pants he needs to get his. Act it out.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Cut it out.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that was. That was when this came out. So, yeah, we should probably.
From here on forward, we should. We should keep a. An eye on whether anything past June 2024 had a matina cover.
[00:12:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Probably didn't, hopefully. I mean, there was some AI controversy, I guess, with the spawn spawnuary.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Because one of the accounts that won.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Was all they didn't know.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Well, I mean, I think it. I think it did say something about robot art.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:13:08] Speaker B: And the name of the account isn't very subtle.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Okay, well, there you go.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Problem.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: Oops.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: But it is. It is also very difficult because they probably anonymize the submissions.
[00:13:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: They weren't like, hey, look, that's somebody I know.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: And it's. It's gotten so sophisticated now that it's hard. It's hard to tell.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: It is hard to tell. But that's the COVID We know this isn't AI written because we crack it open, we go to the credits.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: And we got script plop by Mister Sean Lewis.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yes, indeed.
[00:13:40] Speaker A: With Todd McFarlane on additional script.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: I can't. I can't. I can't put my finger on the additional script this time through Johnny.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: I couldn't really.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it seems like he had a light touch on that additional script, this issue.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Just a light touch. The velveteen touch of a dandy.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Or maybe. Maybe it's the. The interaction monolith has in the train with the child and his mother. And her mother.
[00:14:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he was like, kill the kid.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: As a father of two daughters, he's just like, kill the kids. What? Todd, who hurt you? Besides being the father of two young children?
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yes, we have. Art by Valerio Gian Giordano, colors by Ulysses Areola, lettering by emerald design. We already covered the COVID Creative director is Todd McFarlane, and editor in chief is Thomas Healy. Previously in Monolith.
In the far future, Monolith escapes his prison, while Omegaspawn seeks to recapture his protege.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: So, Johnny, what happened to the super cool comet spaceship? He stole a regular spaceship?
[00:14:46] Speaker A: Yeah, he got sucked into the prison. He's had to take with what he can get.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: It is a really cool spaceship.
[00:14:52] Speaker A: It is cool. Kind of reminds me of the imperial shuttle. The white one?
[00:14:57] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: Is it like Return of the Jedi.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: The one that has the retractable fins?
[00:15:01] Speaker A: The wings will fold up.
[00:15:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Not retractable. Yeah, fold up. Fold up. A bowl, the one that palpatine flies around in.
[00:15:09] Speaker A: Yes. Imperial shuttle. Yeah, it's pretty cool. He looks like he kind of just takes it as far as he can.
[00:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I like this little middle panel that's just like him in light space.
[00:15:20] Speaker A: Just like, just flying.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: It's flying as fast as he can.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: It looks like he flies it to like he crashes because of cosmic storms, exploding stars, all this stuff. Then he ends up on a train, a transport train, which is more like a transport bug.
[00:15:35] Speaker B: Looks like something straight out of wild, wild west.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a giant spider worm thing.
[00:15:40] Speaker B: He stows away on this, this transport. We learn he's not the only person on this, this transport Johnny. And he's not the only non native individual on this because immediately, the first words after we see the transport are alien men on the train exit. Their job is to dig up resources to keep the train going.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: He's got like a big backpack that he, like, dumps the resources into.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: I bet the train conductor was just like when he saw monolith come on.
[00:16:10] Speaker A: It's like you're in one of those real time strategies, like you're playing starcraft. And he clicked on the resources, like go click resources, and he sees the earth, a big blue marble, pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan would say.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Mm hmm. He knows he must get to that planet, Johnny. That planet specifically. And then, and then we see, actually, Johnny, we get a little bit of a Starcraft point of view here. Yes, we do. It looks like Omega is playing Starcraft irl.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yes, he's playing StarCraft with the train and monolith. He's watching over them.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: He's just like, come on, come on. I gotta beat the Zerg.
Why did I do protoss? They're good. They're just slow.
[00:16:47] Speaker A: My brother played a lot of Starcraft. I didn't play too much of it. I was bad at RTS games.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: I was bad at it too. I had a friend who, like, religiously played command and conquer and.
No, I was terrible at command and conquer.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: The only ones I really played a lot is I played a Star wars one, shockingly.
And I played the Lord of the Rings movies one.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: I played that one. That one was pretty good.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: Was it battle for middle earth? Yeah, yeah, it was fun. But yeah, Monolith is on the train. He starts reminiscing about his past. We get the opening quote.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: He takes a car nap, which is everybody knows is the best nap, or a bus nap or a bus nap.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: Even if I have like a 15 minutes bus drive. I'll take it. I'll take an eight minute nap. I don't care.
[00:17:31] Speaker B: It's a skill being able to wake up before you're stopped, though.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: But, yes, you gotta kind of like, go in and out.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Pro tip. If you ever. If you ever are worried about it, just write a little note and, like, slap it on yourself to say, wake me up at.
And someone will. People will do it. If you have a note on you that says, wake me up at Ashland. People are gonna wake you up when you get to Ashland.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: There you go. That's funny. I'm going on a road trip in a few weeks, and we'll be driving for part of it. And so I'm looking forward to a good car nap. Just want to leave really early in the morning, and I'm not driving, so that means I'm just gonna take a little nap.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: It's wonderful. It's wonderful.
[00:18:06] Speaker A: But, yeah, he sees Goddess Gaia and he sees Earth. He sees these planet eaters that were introduced in the scorch, if we remember.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Gaia is just pondering her orb, and little baby monolith is just there like, ah, yeah.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Little baby monolith's hilarious.
He's the baby guy.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: It looks a little bit like Alexander Rodchenko, Worf's son from Star Trek.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Yes. He kind of looks like a ninja turtle.
[00:18:34] Speaker B: He does like one of the in between ninja Turtles, right? Pizza.
Radical. Radical.
[00:18:42] Speaker A: Yep.
And he's living on his planet, and he's watching.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: He's literally watching another planet getting eaten by the Zerg. I mean, the planet eater.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: The planet eater's not the Zerg. So we saw that, and he's like, fuck, I better train.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And then we get a nice little rocky training montage. He's hitting the sides of beef. He's running up the stairs.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: In Philadelphia, he has two, like, rotor chainsaws on sticks. I. Yeah, that are badass.
[00:19:09] Speaker B: They're like pole saws only.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Like, with. With circular saws instead of chainsaws.
[00:19:14] Speaker A: Better way to put it. Yeah.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: But, yeah, he's. He's lifting up massive rocks that are like, rough estimate, about 20 times his size.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: He's cutting open these rocks. And we learned that in the. In the wake of these. These planet eaters and omega spawn, that his home planet is just like, mad maxed. It's overrun by just like, warriors and warlords.
Yeah, yeah. Monolith played nice with them because he knew that he would get valuable training from them.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Yes. They send him to another planet that's getting ravaged by planet eaters.
And he fights them.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: He shows up and he single handedly takes them all down.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: He's like, flying through their skulls constantly.
[00:19:59] Speaker B: Yeah, he's like ripping off their mandibles and jamming it into their heads.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: Those who come uninvited will have their bones turned into armor.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: It's much like Nausicaa of the valley of the wind where there's the big bugs. I forget what they're called, but when they die, they take the, the humans take their carapaces and, like, their eyes and make windows and armor and stuff out of them.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that's pretty cool. And his, all his destruction attracts the attention of old omega spawn.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Old omega spawn. I like this. I like this shadowy omega spawn with just his green, glowing eyes.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty cool.
[00:20:38] Speaker B: This is very random, but this reminds me of in my grandparents town, there was a entry, a location of a small Iowa chain restaurant called Happy Chef.
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: That we, that's where our last breakfast with them always was, is. We always went to Happy chef. And they had this giant, like, 20 foot chef statue out front that, like, you, you press a button and it speaks.
And every year, like, the, the recording got more garbled. And so, like, it started off saying, like, welcome to Happy Chef. Where families are always eating good or something like that. It was just like.
And that's how I imagine Omega spawn is speaking right now. It's just, you're my servant now.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: He's like his own little happy chef.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Happy chef. Good. Pancakes.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: Then. Monolith awakes from his train nap. Someone leaves the note on him and shakes him awake.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: He sees a mother and her child, and he focuses on the boots.
[00:21:36] Speaker A: Yeah, what's up with that? It's cause they're like, show they're poor.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: I don't know. Either that or that's just like, you know, when he wakes up, that's what he sees. And he's like, what is that monolith?
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Maybe he's just a shoe guy. He just appreciates shoes.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: Yeah, he's into shoe gaze.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:51] Speaker B: So the child comes over and says, hey, what's your name? Are you good or bad? And monolith just says, good.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: He's like the fucking iron giant here.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: The child's like, hell, yeah, me too.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: I'm good too.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Snake spider train bus is heading its way to the Emerald City, which is one of the safest places in the galaxy.
[00:22:12] Speaker A: It's new Dubai.
[00:22:13] Speaker B: New Dubai. But it's green. So Emerald City a little bit.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: I can see it.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Once the. The train enters new Dubai. It just like, lets all its passengers go. And so monolith is just like, standing there outside the train, like, wondering where to go. And he's just like. And the little girl he met on the train is like, hey, this way, us good guys have to stick together.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: Then thoom.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Oh, geez. And then the transport just blows up.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Giant laser blast shoots down from the heavens and destroys the train.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Or it's not laser blast. It's omega landing. He lands like a comet and destroys the train.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Instantly kills the little girl and her mother. And what the fuck? I was so upset when I read this the first time. I was like, what?
[00:22:59] Speaker A: Second child death in monolith. Cause he killed the young version of himself in the last one.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And then monolith is here, gaslighting being like, even though I killed those people, it was you that killed them. With your being not paying attention to me.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Omega's gaslighting, not monolith.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Did I say Omega was gas?
[00:23:17] Speaker A: You said monolith was moth. Yeah, sorry, just to clarify for those at home.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: Check. Check that. Reverse it.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: I wasn't trying to be a jerk.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: No, no, no. Thank you. Thank you. My mouth kind of just does whatever it wants and I don't know what's going on down there.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Get it right, David.
And Monolith picks up like, a big old chunk of the blown up train, smacks him with it. And Omega just says, I am your God. Yeah.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: And they're having, you know, another just drag down, all out fight here.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Punches him into a bunch of dudes and some crates.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: The dudes all wearing, like, jumpsuits? Yeah, they look kind of like the putties from.
[00:23:53] Speaker A: They do. Like putties from mighty morphin Power Rangers.
[00:23:57] Speaker B: Monolith is just like, hey, Omega, fuck you. I'm not gonna bow down to you. And then Omega's doing his grand. You will bow before me or I will kill you. And then I will make your body bow kind of thing.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: And it's him just like, waxing poetic about destroying the earth with the planet eaters. He's so excited.
[00:24:14] Speaker B: This massive, massive stone throne that he's sitting on is pretty epic.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: Yep. Monolithic, you might say.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, one could. But then. So the new Dubai has.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: They're like, fuck this.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Yeah, they've had a contingency plan for in case, you know, anything, like planet eaters or two big, massively necroplasmically powered dudes come and start fighting in their city.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: And they're like, go get the gun. Get the gun.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yep. They all start scrambling to get this big ass gun they got.
[00:24:42] Speaker B: So they've got this massive, massive nuclear weapon that like, it take. It's taken them decades to get a single round. So they've only got one shot, Johnny. While Omega and Monolith are there, you know, fighting in the fire and monolith.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Too, in the classic look, when the planet eaters are done eating planets, what are they going to eat? They're going to eat you, dude.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: They're going to eat you.
[00:25:03] Speaker A: And they're just wrecking the city. Like, they're just like wrecking. They're like Pacific rimming up in here.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: Monolith literally just like run tackle. Like, he just tackles Omega into a building that then explodes. That's a massive amount of force to just tackle someone into a building and then have the building explode.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah. As we all know, necroplasm doesn't melt steel beams.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Technically, I think two guys fighting to make a building come down classifies as an inside job.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: But what about building seven, Johnny?
[00:25:38] Speaker A: What about building.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: That's not how buildings work, right?
[00:25:42] Speaker A: What about it, David?
[00:25:44] Speaker B: I don't know. It's not there anymore. That's all I know.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: That's true. It collapsed.
[00:25:49] Speaker B: It's the forgotten building of the attack.
But so while Omega and Monolith are just like in the rubble trying to get up to punch each other again, the guardians of new Dubai are like, they're down. Shoot em.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Chute em for humanity, boys. I love that.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: Monolith and Omega get up and they start doing the kinda. I feel like they're doing the. They're tired boxing.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Yeah, they're just like punching each other.
[00:26:15] Speaker B: So they're hitting each other and instead of explosions or body parts flying, there's just like Spittle.
[00:26:21] Speaker A: Yeah, they're getting tired. They're getting worn out.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: I like the, like the slow, deliberate pace of going back and forth a little bit between their fighting and the gun spooling up and shooting.
While Omega and Monolith are engaged in very close quarters fisticuffs. They get hit with this big blue energy ball from the gun. And when it connects with the beasts, it disperses their body's molecules, separating time and space. So now they're basically shadow walking via external mechanisms now, but they're fighting during it.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: It's like Gandalf and the Balrog falling. They're just like fighting.
[00:26:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And then like out of the deep darkness of space, it's like an island. Just like comes at them. It's like an island devoid of a planet. It's just like a flying island in space.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a cosmic island, David.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: Yeah. And it just like. They just run right into it.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: How very fitting. On our 108th episode, which is one of the lost numbers, there's a cosmic island appearing because there's the four. There's the numbers. 4815, 1623, 42. This is the lost numbers. But if you add them together, it's 108.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Okay, nice.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: And this is episode 108 of the podcast.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Oh, man. Johnny, I think we might have accidentally just stumbled into a long con of. This is the last podcast, dude.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: September 23 is officially. This Monday is the 20th anniversary loss. So it's never. It's a good time to start this Monday as of this record upcoming.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: So several. Several Mondays.
[00:27:53] Speaker A: Several Mondays ago, yes.
But I'm probably gonna do a rewatch. I think it's been too long.
[00:28:00] Speaker B: I'll do a. If I get around to it, I lightly promise that I might someday, eventually watch them.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: Okay. I mean, at this point it's probably okay, but honestly, there's not another show that I feel like has like superannuated it. It's like I wouldn't. There's nothing I would be like. If you want that lost feeling, watch this. It's pretty much its own kind of thing. I mean, it definitely influenced a lot of shows, but there's nothing quite like it.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: They don't make them like they used to. Right, Johnny?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I guess. Cause now they just make like eight episodes on Netflix.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Yeah. They basically just make an eight hour long movie.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty much. And half of them probably be better as a movie.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. With a lot of the shit taken out.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, making it look too. It's good. It's two and a half hours, guys. Come on.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: It would also be significantly cheaper.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: What's funny is the opposite is what I felt about Matt Reeves Batman. I felt like that felt like an HBO show that they crammed into a movie.
[00:28:58] Speaker B: Yeah, kind of.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: And like. Cause there was like three distinct, like, kind of episodes. Cause, like the riddler stuff, the Carmen Falcone stuff. I was just like, and now it's a tv show with the penguins. So it all comes together.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: It's a weird. Trying to serialize movies like television shows and then television shows, trying to just be like a series of movies. They're intermixing so much that the whole industry is a little lost in the sauce of what they want specifically.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: That's true. Loss in the sauce are these two monsters as they fall to this island.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: They form a crater and they stand up and they look around and they're like, where are we? And Johnny, it's a place that we know kind of well.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: So we've been there a couple of times.
[00:29:38] Speaker A: Couple of times around the 300s. It was a very popular spot.
Omega Island.
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Omega island.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: That's where they are.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: That's the end of the issue.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: That's the end of the issue. It's a brawl of an issue, a.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: Tumble of a tourney, a jumble of a journey to omega island.
[00:29:56] Speaker A: Indeed it is. Turn the page. You get the ad for the other.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Spinoffs, new generation, new stories near you.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Coming to a comic shop near you.
And Warhammer 40K is the toy ad. They just came out with a new Warhammer game.
Like video game. It's supposed to be good. Space Marine two, I think it's called.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: Yeah, there was a scroll across an ad for the guy who played the main space marine.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: Talking about how cool it was to be part of the Warhammer family.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: I wonder if they're spooling up a lot of this because of that Henry Cavill Amazon show that's supposed to be in production now.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: Oh, there is one, I think.
[00:30:32] Speaker B: Yeah, they've been talking about it. That's the next thing he wanted to do. I assume it's in pre production, but.
[00:30:39] Speaker A: Amazon's loving the video game business has ruined. Between last of us and fallout, it's been fairly successful.
[00:30:46] Speaker B: They've hit on something.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Halo, not so much.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Then we get the image classics ad.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: And then also fallout toys.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Oh, there's double toys. Double toy ad. Double video game toy ad. Oh, my God.
Wow. That's what happens when you have a spawning ground. That was monolith.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: That's monolith number two, duolithead.
Alrighty then.
[00:31:25] Speaker A: Alrighty then. Next up we've got spawn 355.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Mm hmm. The 355th issue of Spawn.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Seems like just the other day that we were at 333, the mark of the beast.
In fact, it was years ago, David. Years.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Yeah. Technically, I'm literally one month shy of two years.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: See, I saw you got the better cover.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
I was just looking to see that you got your cover.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: So I didn't get the mark. I didn't get. They were sold out of it by the time I got to the store. So I didn't realize that I missed it.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I've got the COVID B. It's Mark Spears with violator on it that he gave us when we spoke to him in that episode. We spoke to him on, he gave us that.
A little unofficial heads up on what was gonna be on this specific cover.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: And it was very exciting.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: That sign in the background on that b cover by Mark Spears, that's where I guess that kind of sign is where Todd McFarlane got the name was. He saw a sign like that and.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Was like, the no trespassing.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Violators were prosecuted.
[00:32:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's like that old meme of, uh, of Bill. Bill stickers will be prosecuted, and somebody puts another sign up that says, bill Stickers is innocent.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Oh, my God. What a great joke. What was that joke in, like, 1925? Jesus Christ.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Hey, it was, it was new at one point. I I do like the little bit of trivia that one of the greatest comic characters ever is literally the toddfather having a funny little word joke.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: Yep, the violator will be prosecuted, but.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a classic, classic violator face in that good, good Mark Spears style with all the, all the teeth and the spit and the gross rock like skin.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: With his nice color palette, with the blues and the reds and the purples.
[00:33:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I love his colors. Well, I, you know, I'm not the dish von Randall at all, but I wish I would have the Mark Spears, but I got the von Randall cover, the a cover, which is spawn.
[00:33:38] Speaker B: I'll give it this. Johnny, the von Randall cover has a much cooler sword than the Mark Spears cover does.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Big old sword. He has a really long arm, but it's pretty cool.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: There's the, like, skulls that have, like, spike Mohawks.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it has, like, the strip of color in the middle.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: It's pretty good. It's a, it's a good, it's a good constellation cover, Johnny.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: No, it's good. I'm glad. I mean, I like it, but if.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: It, if it didn't come out in contest with the Mark Spears cover, it would have been priority to get. Well. Johnny, I think it's time for us to crack open this cover here. Both of them, the a and the b. And look at these credits. We got world breaking, world record breaking comic up at the top there. We got script plot by Rory McConville, with additional script by Todd McFarland, art by the man himself, Mister Brett Booth. Inks by Adelso Coronae. Colors by Robert Nugent, lettering by the Tom father himself, Tom Warzikowski, covered the covers. Creative director Todd McFarlane and editor in chief, Mister Thomas Healy.
Previously in Spawn.
Spawn and Lyra are cornered by the vampire forces, and things take a turn for the worse until an unlikely ally in Jin. Damn.
[00:34:51] Speaker A: Turns out that's exactly what happened.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: It's accurate recap.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Accurate recap. And we opened on green world two months ago.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: The Gaia fighters that are just. They look like battle ents.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Yes. They were also DLC on the call of duty Spawn package. DLC. You could play as one of these guys. And they were accused of being. They're accused of being cheating because they're really hard to see, I guess, if you're in the shadows. People did not like them. Well, people did like them, but other people didn't like them.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Other people didn't like them because it's.
[00:35:22] Speaker A: Like, pay to win.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Everybody's a critic, Jimmy. Yeah, but. So we've got the march of the battle trees back home in their retreat.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: After the war in hell.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: One of the, like, one of the squad leader guy trees is talking to the Stewart Steward. Sorry, I called him steward.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: The steward. Oh, I'm the stewardesse.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: No, he's just there in front of the trees going, look what I can do.
But no, the steward. And he's talking about, we need to prepare ourselves for sin's ascension because this is before nick sits on the throne. And the tree guy's like, there's something else we got to pay attention to. And the steward's like, yeah, yeah, I know, jim downick. And the tree's like, no, no, nobody knows where nix is. Yeah, we get the proclamation that jim downing is slowly dying, and then we turn the page, and if his hair is any indication, johnny, he looks pretty healthy.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: He looks alive and well.
[00:36:34] Speaker B: He's got a new suit. He's got some additional bits of armor. He's got the ribbons.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Is he a scion now? Maybe.
[00:36:43] Speaker B: I guess maybe. Maybe he took nyx's position.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: He's the cyan of green world.
[00:36:47] Speaker B: He's got, like, those flower petals around him.
We're in now where jim downing is between the vampires and lyra and spawn.
[00:36:58] Speaker A: It's just like, yo, nick's told me to round up all angels and demons. So I'm taking you, you, and you. I'm taking lyra, spawn, and Reaper, and we're getting out of here.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Lenny Kravitz, vampire, is looking a little medusa y right now because his hair looks like. Like snakes sticking up in the air.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that's crazy.
[00:37:15] Speaker B: New queen. She took the throne. I think it's weird that they don't know who's on the throne of hell all these months later, Jim.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: I guess blood just doesn't share that information.
[00:37:25] Speaker B: What a jerk.
[00:37:26] Speaker A: Yeah, he keeps it close to the.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: Chest, and Jim's like, yeah, months ago, dude.
[00:37:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Didn't you respawn 350, you dope?
[00:37:35] Speaker B: It was a big event. Come on.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Respawn did a live comic book meeting about it. They did a live comic shop in person meet and greet.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And then they did a. And then they did a special episode where they talked to the spawn hunter about it. How could you be? So apparently vampires aren't keyed into the comic book world, Johnny.
[00:37:54] Speaker A: I guess not.
[00:37:56] Speaker B: They think they're better than pop culture drivel or something.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:38:00] Speaker B: Boo. Boo. Stop gatekeeping. Culture.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: Vampires you have. Vampires die.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Vampires die.
Yeah. So the. The vampires say, you're not taking. They just tried to kill our boss. You're not taking them. And Jim Downright's like, hey, man, just. Just follow on orders. You could go. You could take it up with your boss if you got an issue with it. I'm still taking these guys with me.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: Yep. And he just like, says, like, look, don't reject Nixdev. And she's the one that gotta leave people off. Powers off the earth. And she could always bring them back.
[00:38:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And she's like, imagine what she could probably do to you if you piss her off enough. Yeah, you don't want that.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: They can't call blood to confirm. Cause the phone's broken.
[00:38:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:49] Speaker A: We all know vampires only have one phone.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah. If you've ever had to help a person older than you with any piece of technology.
And vampires are centuries old.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: That's true. They probably don't know how to do it.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: They're probably like, what the fuck is this?
They're probably still confounded by horseless carriages.
[00:39:08] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:08] Speaker B: And then Spawn's given a little sass back. And Jim Downing's like, you don't order me around anymore. And shoots him with his green world beam.
[00:39:17] Speaker A: Zaps him. I got powers, motherfucker.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: And then this vampire is like, it doesn't make any sense. We get. We get why she would want spawn. Why would you want these other two? And she was like, I tell you that I do what I'm told. That's my position right now.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: He's like, I come. I'm told to get the people. I go and get the people.
[00:39:35] Speaker A: You don't want to fight me and upset the apple cart.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: He looks very. This vampire looks very distressed in this one.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: I know. He looks so sad.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: He's like, ah, what the.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: I don't know what to do. And so they're having a face off, and he's like, so you just trying to stop me or whatever. And he goes, does the good, the bad, and the ugly where it shows his eyes. It shows the vampire's eyes. Shows both their eyes.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: And then Jim Downing's like, I didn't think so. And then, like, fooms away, teleports everybody.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: Out of there with, like, a massive showing of power.
[00:40:03] Speaker B: Massive. And then the vampires are just left there with a whole bunch of light and some flower petals floating around.
[00:40:12] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: Jim Downing and Spawn and Lyra and Reaper show up in an abandoned room of an abandoned building. And Lyra's like, where are we? And Spawn says, we're inside of one of our safe houses or one of my safe houses. And Jim Downing's like, not just any safe house.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: The one we fought in.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: The one we fought in. And then we get a nice little recap of overt kill and Jim Downing and psychor beating up on Al Simmons from Spawn 334.
Because this is right after the very Sadeena spawn quote of Saigor. You two.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: Oh, man. Devastating. I'm still devastated.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Well, they get to team up together in King Spawn, so that's good.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: And so. So Spawn starts trying to ask some questions of Jim Downing. And while that happens, Reaper just like, just like.
[00:41:05] Speaker A: So rip his chest open because he's trying to kill himself constantly because of that one thing. Blood said.
[00:41:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And so. And then, you know, the conversation just stops. And Jim Downing's like, what the fuck is happening?
Spawn's just like, we gotta. We gotta restrain him. He's not well. He's gonna keep trying to kill himself because blood told him to kill himself. And then Jim Downing's like, okay, I guess. And blasts him with his green. His green world beams.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: He's kind of over his shoulder, eyes closed, like, I don't want to do this.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's for your own good.
And then he's like, ow. I thought he was one of your boys. And I'll say, long story, long story. Look back at the mid to late 200s, please.
[00:41:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: Jim's like, man, he's pretty beat up. And Spawn's like, he'll heal. He'll heal it, and he'll try to do it to himself again. So we gotta do something. We gotta make sure he's safe. Gotta put him in a padded room or something.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: Jim Downing points out that Lyra has snuck away in the ensuing.
[00:42:06] Speaker A: Yeah, she's just like, bye bye.
[00:42:07] Speaker B: Jim downing's like, you know, I'm not here to. I'm not here to take care of old Eddie for you. And he's like, what I'm really here for is what the.
What's. What's up with Nix? I haven't heard from her in months.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: And it's like.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: Spawn's like, what are you talking about?
[00:42:22] Speaker A: He goes, the fuck you talking about, Jim?
[00:42:25] Speaker B: Danny says, I haven't talked to her since before the war ended.
[00:42:28] Speaker A: Everything he said was a bluff.
[00:42:30] Speaker B: It was like, a bluff. Spawn's like, I'd love to do what Jim Downing's like. Green world hasn't been able to contact her, so we're hoping that you would have some in with her since you've got history as maybe not great as some of that history might be. Yeah.
[00:42:46] Speaker A: And he's like, did you talk to her? Hope you have some answers. And he's like, nope. She just banished me.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Nope.
And so Jim Downing doesn't know why the dead zones were expanded. And Swan was like, I thought it was so green world could do shit. Chimdani's like, nah, that's. That's. I guess that's what it was initially, but it's not doing us any good right now.
[00:43:07] Speaker A: And then he says, well, they're not really cohesive right now because the council's just at each other's throats.
Or emerald parliament's at each other's throats.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: It's just. Just green world has a different vibe than it used to. And Spawn's like, should I be worried? And Jim Downing's like, nah, don't worry.
[00:43:24] Speaker A: It'll be fine.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Don't worry about it.
[00:43:25] Speaker A: They're just squabbling politicians. And Spawn's like, well, how'd you find me? And jouning says that he could hear the symbiote screaming. Yeah, because they used to have a connection. Because he used to wear k seven lethal.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: Yes, he did. Yes, he did. He was potentially created by K seven Letha, depending on if you're. If the original issue three human.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: Although he's the person he turns into.
[00:43:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And Al's like, yeah, I don't know. Like, it's severed. Its connection to hell is severed. So I don't know what to do for it. It's not having a good time.
[00:44:00] Speaker A: He's like, yeah, you changed too. And he's like, yeah, I got a spiffy new outfit.
[00:44:04] Speaker B: Yeah, look at this. Look at these ribbons. They don't get caught in nothing. Magical ribbons. They don't ever get tangled.
[00:44:10] Speaker A: You know how hard they are to keep fucking clean?
[00:44:14] Speaker B: And Al's like, hold on, I got a favor to ask you before you go.
Aside from saving your life.
Nice. I like a sassy chip downing.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: Yeah. And he wants him to take Eddie to green world with him because he thinks there he'll be able to.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Yeah, he'll. He'll have another connection to the hell powers that helped keep his vampirism at bay. And Jim Downing's like, I don't. I can't. I don't know. I don't know what will happen. I don't think it'll. I don't think it'll work. And Al's like, it's anything. Anything is better than him staying here. And Jim Danik's like, okay, sure. But if anything happens to him, just know that I didn't want to do this.
[00:44:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
And he zaps on out of there and says, by the way, that bluff won't work twice, so don't expect me to save your ass again.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: Mm hmm. And he disappears into a little green dot doink.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: We cut to Lyra, who's watching on her phone blood. She's got a cool apartment. It's, like, in an abandoned building.
[00:45:16] Speaker B: It's kind of like how I imagine a room in the foot clan party headquarters from the original teenage mutant ninja Turtles building would look like she's watching.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: On her phone blood, who's being interviewed on a talk show, talking about their.
[00:45:33] Speaker B: Asking the Ramus foundations.
[00:45:35] Speaker A: Yeah, if he's retiring, he's got feedback.
[00:45:38] Speaker B: From day to day.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: He's got money in AI and klee energy programs. AI, there it is again. It is so pervasive.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: Lyra is unhappy with basically anything, anything, blood. And so just throws her phone against the wall in frustration at him.
[00:45:55] Speaker A: Always a bad idea.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: It's just, like, seething at this table. Just like.
And then there's a dramatic chipmunk and goes.
[00:46:05] Speaker A: Turns around and spawn.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Spawn.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: He's like, I just came to talk. I promise.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: You know, they just start talking, and Lyra's like, hey, man, I got out of there because I needed to regloop. Blood is my target, not taking my eye off that prize.
I was like, it didn't go well the first time. What makes you think it'll go differently? She's like, what, I should give up?
[00:46:26] Speaker A: At least Spawn's learning to use other people and not do everything on his own.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Mm hmm. And use other people in a collaborative way instead of just literally using them. So, yeah, so he can get what he wants done. So he's. I feel he's. He's becoming a better a better leader from this. It's taken. It's only taken him 350 issues. Yeah.
[00:46:49] Speaker A: You know, they only really started to be a leader, like, you know, 30 or 40 issues ago.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Yeah. He ran away from basically any sort of organized collection of stuff for the longest time.
[00:47:03] Speaker A: And even still does he start his course and he's like, bye.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Yeah. It's like, I'll come back and yell at you every once in a while. You won't know when.
[00:47:10] Speaker A: Then we cut back to over by blood's place.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: We see an empty forest, and then we zoom in, and then we see the forest isn't empty, but is, in fact, filled with the body parts of numerous vampires.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: Dead vampires. Looks like a goblin.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Yeah, looks like a fucking orc right there.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: Yeah, looks like an orc. Yeah, that's what I meant.
[00:47:28] Speaker B: Just like, bits. Just, like, staked trees.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: And we see fixer. Fixer ain't dead. We thought he was because there was the. The damaged cybernetic eyepiece, but nope, he's still there. Yeah. We see it just fell off. And he's like, man. Sorry, sorry. Sorry. I haven't answered your phone calls in a little bit. But don't worry, blood's not gonna know that we were here.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: They're all dead.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: He asks about the target, and Jason Wynn's like, she escaped, but, you know. Yeah, we'll recalibrate our strategy. It's fine.
[00:48:02] Speaker A: He's like, I can handle him.
[00:48:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Jason Wynn says, trust me, simmons power won't make him a threat.
[00:48:09] Speaker A: It's his badass military tactics.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: Yeah, his pincher maneuver. But he says, don't worry, you'll get your chance soon enough. And we get. We end on another reveal of a new character. Johnny, I don't know who this is.
[00:48:22] Speaker A: I don't know who this is. It might not be a new character.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: All right, I'm going to assume that's tremor in the background.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: That's tremor, yeah, definitely.
[00:48:28] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: And I don't know who this mysterious lady is.
[00:48:31] Speaker B: I've never seen this lady in this fucking bitchin yellow jacket.
[00:48:35] Speaker A: Yeah, pretty cool with the blue jumpsuit, like zero suit samus.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Yeah. This is an amazing costume choice, Johnny.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty cool. The gold and the blue works nice.
[00:48:45] Speaker B: Together in the canon of fantastic fictional yellow coats. This rivals April O'Neill's.
[00:48:53] Speaker A: Wow.
Wow. Or Dick Tracy's.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: I would put April O'Neal above Dick Tracy just because I have more of an affinity for that ip.
[00:49:04] Speaker A: I have more of an affinity for April O'Neill, if you know what I'm.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: Saying you like that. She is fair and balanced.
[00:49:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:49:12] Speaker B: She presents the news as it comes, no editorializing.
[00:49:16] Speaker A: And that's we get the power meter to end this shoe. He's still at power meter one.
[00:49:20] Speaker B: He a weak boy.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: He is.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: He unpowered.
[00:49:25] Speaker A: So I fixer, ain't afraid of him.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: Got a spawning ground. Some fan cosplay.
Last couple of episodes ago, we got some Jessica priest cosplays in the back of a very Jessica priest issue. And here we've got some Al Simmons cosplays at the back of a very al Simmons issue. Two of them from Instagram, two of them from Reddit. They're being equitable now.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: Our good friend Spawny Boy is showing off his meatball head spawn costume, which is pretty cool. The magical shoelace.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And then there's one omega shrine cosplay that shows kind of the work in progress. That's pretty cool.
[00:50:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's cool. It's cool to see the muscle sculpts. T'Challa Sheen has the massive, the massive anime sword that was on a lot of the early kingspawn covers.
And then we got the third peep from Reddit.
[00:50:21] Speaker A: Really put a lot into the big boot.
[00:50:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good big boot.
[00:50:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: That seems to be from my viewing it from a distance and never in person. It seems like the boot seems to be a thing. People have trouble getting big enough.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:50:38] Speaker B: But this one's pretty good. I can imagine that. It's hard to find something that has enough structural integrity to stay big for like a whole day of tromping through a convention.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: It's a good big boot.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: Yeah, good cosplay.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: Need more spawns. Universe Johnny.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Always.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Hell yeah. Well, let's check out these ongoing titles.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: Yep. We got an ad for the other four of the main four.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: We got the image classic set and then a world of Warcraft toy.
[00:51:12] Speaker A: Toy, a new one.
[00:51:13] Speaker B: Is this the first time we've covered it?
[00:51:15] Speaker A: I think so. First time we cover World of Warcraft. Did you ever play Warcraft, David?
[00:51:19] Speaker B: I spent a lot of time in high school watching my best friend play a lot of video games, and World of Warcraft was one of them.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
I never really played it.
[00:51:31] Speaker B: It was only for a few months because then he got very into counter strike. And so mostly I watched him play counter strike, but I watched him play some Warcraft.
[00:51:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: Most of my friends went other directions for their mmorpgs. There was a lot of Everquest. There was a lot of, there was a lot of Everquest.
[00:51:48] Speaker A: There were a whole bunch of mmorpgs at that time. There were a ton.
[00:51:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it was very, very hard to find a group of people who all played the same one.
[00:51:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: Like, in any friend group, it seems like each person played a different MMORPG.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: Yeah. There was a matrix one. There was a superhero one. There was a ton.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: My sister played a lot of world of roadcraft.
She enjoyed it.
That's. That's spawn 355, Johnny.
[00:52:20] Speaker A: That's spawn 355. It's alive.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: It's. It's alive like flubber.
Well, Johnny, so that's a couple of issues that we just gone through, Johnny. And this is a couple of puppies in this chair here with me. Johnny.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: Davey's got two dogs with him.
[00:52:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
Actively have two dogs with me. So, yes. We got this little puppy right here. What do you say we rated? Is there a puppy? You wanna rate some puppies?
[00:52:47] Speaker A: It's time to rate the puppies.
So first up today, we have monolith number two, which, interestingly enough, we were kinda like Sass and monolith. The other time, we were covering number one, and I don't remember not liking it. I remember not enjoying it and just being confused.
But I really enjoyed it this time.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: Actually, immediately after finishing reading it, I sent a text message to Johnny and was like, Johnny, what the fuck was I thinking? This book rocks.
[00:53:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's awesome. It's metal as fuck. It's just like a big fight. I love the gun. I love seeing little baby monolith and fighting the planet eaters.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: It gives us a lot of that context that we were wishing was in the first issue.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: It does.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: We should have just shut up and read the second issue.
[00:53:31] Speaker A: But we should have.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: Great.
[00:53:33] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Sean Lewis is having fun.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: You can tell this Valerio GNg ordano art is great. It's very good.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it's really good for that kind of space techno, alien, blade runner kind of technology they got going on here. And just the epic ones with, like, Gaia and the planet eaters, like, get some epic imagery.
[00:53:55] Speaker B: It's also very clean. So the fights end up being very, like, you know what's happening in that fight.
[00:54:00] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. No, it's very clean.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: This is a great issue of comic Johnny.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. I'm excited to read number three now. Now that I'm, like, on board. Yeah, maybe just, like, reading number one a few times. Reading this a few times, like, unlocked it for me in my brain or something. I don't know.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:54:16] Speaker A: I'm gonna give it four super laser weapons.
[00:54:19] Speaker B: Ooh, nice.
[00:54:20] Speaker A: I love the super laser.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: That's very good. That's very good. I am also gonna give it four. I'm gonna give it. I'm gonna give it four inside jobs, Johnny.
[00:54:31] Speaker A: The building was an inside job.
[00:54:33] Speaker B: The building was an inside job.
Yeah. Art is good. We know Sean Lewis puts a good story down on paper, and he doesn't disappoint here at all.
[00:54:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Like I said, I'm excited for number three. Excited to read it.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: It's just so good. So good. I wonder if the thing that soured me on it the first time through. Was just the introduce a child one panel, and then two panels later kill it.
[00:54:59] Speaker A: I think so. You seem really disturbed by that.
[00:55:02] Speaker B: I think I brought it up at the time.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: You did?
[00:55:04] Speaker B: I was like, jesus fucking. So if you can get. If you get over the child death, it's good. Yeah.
[00:55:11] Speaker A: You know, like most things.
No child death in spawn 355, actually. Really? No death. Really? No one dies.
[00:55:23] Speaker B: Well, it's the. It's the aftermath of the aftermath of.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: The big action of last time.
[00:55:27] Speaker B: There's some dead bodies.
They're not actively dying in the issue.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: That's true. Yeah. It's just kind of like an aftermath of the big blood showdown getting spawned out of there. Kind of touching on what's going on in green world. So you get a little bit of the story evolving, which is pretty cool. I don't know. It's just fun to learn that, like, Nyx has been doing her own thing. So that's why green world hasn't, like, taken over and just kind of going back to that plot line that they haven't forgot about. So that's good to get. To get that reminder of that.
[00:55:55] Speaker B: Mm hmm.
[00:55:55] Speaker A: It's a fun issue. Kind of in between her, you know, not a big action packed issue, but it does some good lore and has a good story to it. I would give it four Gaia soldier Call of Duty Skins.
[00:56:07] Speaker B: Hell, yeah.
[00:56:08] Speaker A: Funny shoe. And Brett Booth is killing it.
[00:56:10] Speaker B: It's just so good. It's. It's. This current run of main title spawn is hard to rate because it's. Each issue is fan fucking tastic, and it's hard to just, like, come out of the gate strong and be like, this is. This is good shit. Let's give it a five. And then the next issue was better, and it's like, ah, fuck.
What did we do?
[00:56:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it's great. I think. I think four is the perfect place to settle. I'm gonna give it four yellow half jackets.
[00:56:37] Speaker A: See, I knew you were gonna say that. That's why I didn't take that one.
[00:56:39] Speaker B: Because, I mean, if you had taken it, I would have had to come up with something else.
[00:56:42] Speaker A: That's okay.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: That's. That's the benefit you get from going first, Johnny.
[00:56:46] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:56:46] Speaker B: It's just good. It's just good comics.
[00:56:48] Speaker A: Good comics.
[00:56:49] Speaker B: If you aren't reading main title spawn, you should be reading main title spawn right now.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: Get on it. Rory McConville's killing it.
[00:56:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know who else is killing it, Johnny?
[00:56:56] Speaker A: Our friends on instagram.
[00:56:58] Speaker B: Indeed they are.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: They're making into the spawning grounds all the time.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: Yeah, they are. Look at them. All of them. It's not due to the fact that they are our friends. We just. We just happen to know people who are very talented.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Yes, exactly.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: We give them no benefit. In fact, we probably harmed them.
[00:57:15] Speaker A: And today we wanted to highlight who's in the back of the spawning grounds. Omega shrine cosplay. He had the one with the work in progress shots. He has his badass spawn cosplay. Ooh, he's got one where he's got the sword too. And the sword's eyes glow.
He's got an orc. He's got, like, a crazy. He's got a bunch of crazy stuff. Oh, he's got me and Keith David.
[00:57:34] Speaker B: Oh, nice.
[00:57:36] Speaker A: That's awesome. No, his spawn cross plays really good. Excited to shout him out.
[00:57:40] Speaker B: Uh huh. He's got, like, a cyberpunk demon. Look at that.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: That's some cool shit.
[00:57:44] Speaker B: Oh, man, he's got hella processed shots. This is great. Oh, he's got. He made a lot of the little spirits of the wood from.
[00:57:53] Speaker A: It's either spirit away or Princess Mononoke.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: It's Princess Mononoke.
[00:57:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:57:57] Speaker B: I could only think of Nausicaa of the valley of the wind again. Oh, man. He made a long ass tongue for something. What's that? What's that tongue called? A wendigo tongue.
[00:58:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Pretty good stuff. While you're over there checking him out, make sure to check us out. We are regarding spawnpod on Instagram.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Yes, indeed.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: And if you want to reach us longer form than Instagram, you can hit us up on email. Regardingspawnpodmail.com.
[00:58:18] Speaker B: Yes, indeed.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: Unless you're some weird podcast scammer that tried to hit us up the other day. Don't do that.
[00:58:23] Speaker B: They've done that a couple of times. It's like, from name, but not, like company. And it's like, what is this? Oh. As soon as you open, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:58:32] Speaker A: Boo. Are they trying to scam us into paying money to do our podcast? Yeah, right. I'm not paying money to you, random guy.
[00:58:40] Speaker B: Yeah. What are they gonna. What are they gonna give us? Nothing, probably.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: Probably.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: But you know who doesn't give us nothing? Johnny?
[00:58:46] Speaker A: Lonnie Bones.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: Lonnie Bones. He gave us music. It's great. Yep. Lonnie Bones music. Just google it. You'll find him. It's Lonnie with a y, not an.
[00:58:55] Speaker A: Ie, not like granny.
[00:58:58] Speaker B: Unfortunately, the only time we will use the word unfortunately in regards to Lonnie Bones.
[00:59:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: Speaking of Granny Blake and unfortunately, Lonnie Bones not being granny Blake, you want to maybe do another episode of this year? Podcast that has 100% more Granny Blake than this particular episode did, Johnny?
[00:59:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Let's do it.
[00:59:24] Speaker B: All right, awesome. Well, we can do that by reading a couple of new issues while we're getting through this backlog of new issues. Reading misery number two in Kingspawn 36.
[00:59:36] Speaker A: Sounds like a plan to me.
[00:59:38] Speaker B: There's a lot of granny Blake in misery number two.
[00:59:41] Speaker A: Yep. You know, we're big Granny Blake fans.
[00:59:43] Speaker B: I don't remember what happened to Kingspawn 36. I'm gonna have to reread that before I can talk about it.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: I think it's.
I read it recently. I don't know. It's starting the new plot where he meets that, like, tech guy.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Oh, I think I remember now.
[01:00:00] Speaker A: Okay. It's leading up to the Cygor battle.
[01:00:02] Speaker B: Spoilers.
[01:00:03] Speaker A: Spoilers.
[01:00:06] Speaker B: Read misery two in Kingspawn 36, and then come back in a week and listen to us talk about it. It should be a good time.
[01:00:11] Speaker A: Absolutely. And please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. We always appreciate it.
[01:00:16] Speaker B: We sure do.
We love it when you talk to other people about Spawn. We love it when you talk to other spawn people about us.
We can hear it. Our ears burn when you talk about us.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: And we like it. It's a good burning.
[01:00:29] Speaker B: I call up Johnny. I'm like, johnny, are your ears burning? And he's like, my head is on fire. Of course, his head was actually on fire at the time. It was a ghostwriter cosplay gone wrong.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[01:00:43] Speaker B: Johnny, we got a couple of books we're gonna read next week. We got another couple of good issues of Spahn under our belts for this week. We tell the people. We love them. People. We love you.
[01:00:53] Speaker A: We love you.
[01:00:54] Speaker B: We love you almost more than we love Spawn. Sorry. Sorry about it, but we're not sorry. We love spawn more.
[01:01:00] Speaker A: What can we say?
[01:01:01] Speaker B: Well, we can't say anything else, Johnny, but may the scorched be with you.
[01:01:06] Speaker A: And also with you, David.
[01:01:08] Speaker B: Hell, yeah.
[01:01:09] Speaker A: Hell, yeah.
[01:01:11] Speaker B: I guess. I guess now I have to let you go play some more Star wars outlaws, huh?
[01:01:14] Speaker A: No, David, I don't like it.
[01:01:17] Speaker B: What?
[01:01:18] Speaker A: I'm sorry to admit to you and the podcast viewers, it is not my favorite video game.
It has a lot of stealth sections where you gotta sneak around, and it's really frustrating.
And, I mean, it looks cool. I want to like it. I'm sure I'll go back to it, but it just really frustrated me for the first few hours, so I kind of just stopped playing it.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: Aw, sad. Well, you heard it here first. Some Star wars that Johnny's a little disappointed in.
[01:01:43] Speaker A: Hey, it's happened before, and it'll happen again, Sadeena, if the price is right.
