Episode 111 - Rat City 5 and Sam And Twitch Case Files 5

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Okay, then I'll adapt. You die. Good evening and welcome to the Malbolge. This is regarding Spawn, the world's best Spawn podcast. I am your co host, John Fisher. [00:00:43] Speaker B: And I am your co host, David Williams. And Johnny, it's astounding how fleeting time is. Look at us. Look at us. We got screwed out of four spooky episodes this year. Since fucking Halloween is on a Thursday, I want that fourth Thursday. So spooky season's almost over, Johnny. It's so sad. [00:01:05] Speaker A: I feel like it just began. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like we completely skipped over making a big deal about spooky season. [00:01:12] Speaker A: Well, because we were recording not in spooky season. [00:01:14] Speaker B: Yeah, you gotta. [00:01:15] Speaker A: You gotta recording earlier and we built up some ones because I had that vacation. So we missed a couple weeks. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Next year, we need to not forget spooky season, Johnny. [00:01:23] Speaker A: I spent spooky season shitting in the woods. It was real spooky. [00:01:29] Speaker B: I was about to say, many a spooky film has less of a premise than that. You could have done your own Blair Witch. You could have just filmed it on your phone and been like, I'm sorry. [00:01:40] Speaker A: I mean, honestly, if we're thinking about it, this is probably appropriate time to start celebrating Halloween. It's like October 20th. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's true. [00:01:48] Speaker A: I got a Halloween party next weekend, so that'll be good. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Excellent. I haven't been to a Halloween party in a very long time. [00:01:55] Speaker A: You probably came to mind. Was the last one you. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Yeah. It was one of yours. Yeah. [00:01:58] Speaker A: I used to do a big Halloween party every year, but then I got old and tired of cleaning up my house every year. [00:02:04] Speaker B: It's true. [00:02:05] Speaker A: And I was like, I can let other people do this. [00:02:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And cleaning up after a Halloween party is a particular kind of madness. Because then there's like, is this. Is this my clothes that somebody pulled out of my room? Or. Or is this their clothes and is this real clothes or is this just costume clothes? Do I need to figure out who this belongs to? [00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it was fun for a while. It got really big and then I was like, okay, I did it. I had a big Halloween party. [00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah, you gotta know your limits, Johnny. [00:02:31] Speaker A: Also, Covid happened and they stopped having parties. [00:02:33] Speaker B: Oh. Yeah. I guess. I guess that was kind of a big thing. Whoops. Shows you how many parties I attend on the regular. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:41] Speaker B: Not many. [00:02:43] Speaker A: Well, we're at a spawn party right now. [00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, we are. I guess I'm. [00:02:47] Speaker A: I guess we're in a spin off party. [00:02:49] Speaker B: We are in a spin off party. We're spinning around and around, but in a good way. [00:02:54] Speaker A: In a right round. We're spinning right round. [00:02:56] Speaker B: Like a record, baby. [00:02:58] Speaker A: You know it. But we are regarding Spawn. Each week we're bringing two issues from Spawn's universe. Except when we don't. [00:03:04] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:03:04] Speaker A: This week we are. And we've got two issues from the universe. We've got our lovely pairing of the premier Spawn titles. [00:03:16] Speaker B: In Smash Bros. Parlance, they would be S Tier. Spawn spin off titles. [00:03:21] Speaker A: Yes, they're S Tier. Just like the Necromancer Ice build on Diablo 4. No, there's no Technical Rancher. I made that up. The spirit board, if you use the Quill Volley, is supposed to be S Tier. [00:03:34] Speaker B: Okay. I mean, you didn't even have to fact check yourself there. I would have believed whatever you said. [00:03:40] Speaker A: That's why I said it. I didn't get away with anything. [00:03:45] Speaker B: I'm a pushover. Don't give. Don't give me final cut, Johnny. I'll let it go through. [00:03:50] Speaker A: No, we're reading rat city number five and salmon twitch number five. I think they're both from August 2024. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Yeah, they. [00:04:00] Speaker A: They got split up with Sam Twitch from July. [00:04:05] Speaker B: This parent got. [00:04:06] Speaker A: They may not even be true. Who knows? Because there's some delays this summer. [00:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of delays. But yeah, this pairing got split up because of our interview with Erica Schultz. And I'm glad that it's somehow come back together. [00:04:19] Speaker A: Just dovetailed right back together. [00:04:21] Speaker B: We pulled a production schedule, pincer maneuver, and figured out from both sides. [00:04:29] Speaker A: I guess we really didn't talk. I guess we're doing Rat City first, huh? We didn't really talk about it beforehand. [00:04:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we usually do Red City first. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it's the first up. It's the first. It's the number one. [00:04:40] Speaker B: It's number one. [00:04:42] Speaker A: I mean, it's probably my favorite Spawn title right now. [00:04:44] Speaker B: It's one of my favorite comic books, period. Right now. It's so much fun. [00:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:04:50] Speaker B: It's just impossible to not have a good time, I think. I don't know. If there are people out there not having a good time reading Rat City, phone us up on the old Gmail. Regarding Tom Pod Tell. [00:05:04] Speaker A: What the hell's wrong with you? [00:05:05] Speaker B: Yeah, what's. What's this guy's problem? That's. That's. That's what our. That's what our response is just going to be, Johnny. It's like, what's your problem? Like this book that's real constructive. Real constructive. But you know what is Constructive, Johnny. [00:05:19] Speaker A: Starting with the covers. [00:05:20] Speaker B: Start with the covers. What cover did you got this week, Johnny? [00:05:24] Speaker A: I got the A cover. Ooh. [00:05:25] Speaker B: I have the B cover. So we got the spread. Nice. [00:05:28] Speaker A: Nice. Yeah. I got the A cover by Fede Melee. And it's the deviant, like, standing in the alley with, like, some futuristic buildings and some smoke. [00:05:38] Speaker B: It's real. It's real spooky. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like he's got you cornered in the alley. He's coming for you. [00:05:43] Speaker B: He's got like. Like green highlights. It's like the. It's like his. The deviant suit was made for blacklight. He's just got those green glowing bits. It's. It's very spooky. I went for the more cartoony Kevin Keane covered. And it's just, you know, the deviant holding the green fists. Flame. It looks like it's pulled directly from the Saturday morning cartoon, and I like it. [00:06:07] Speaker A: I wonder where we get some deviant cosplay out there. [00:06:10] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:06:11] Speaker A: I mean, someone will do it. [00:06:13] Speaker B: Deviant cosplayers do exist, Johnny, so. [00:06:15] Speaker A: I know. I mean, the deviant. [00:06:17] Speaker B: We get a deviant in the deviant and then it's like deviant ception, Johnny. [00:06:21] Speaker A: You mean like if someone did a sexy deviant, somebody. [00:06:24] Speaker B: Somebody's going to do a sexy deviant at some point. [00:06:27] Speaker A: I know. It's like a sexy Boba Fett. Has anyone ever done, like, a sexy gunslinger? [00:06:32] Speaker B: I mean, how do you. How do you just wear a bikini underneath? How do you improve on perfection, Johnny? He's already pretty sexy if you ask. [00:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah, he's got that perfect butt, as we learned in Sponge Kills Everyone, somehow. [00:06:46] Speaker B: He's got the big butt. I don't know. [00:06:48] Speaker A: Perfect ass. [00:06:49] Speaker B: He's like Ryan Reynolds. He's got, like a BBL going on. [00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah, those are the covers. [00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah. They're pretty good covers. [00:06:56] Speaker A: They are. I like the logo. I like how the logo has, like, the static on the city. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:01] Speaker A: So we pop it open and we got the credits. Script plot by Erica Schultz, Art by Zay Carlos, color by J. David Ramos, lettering by Erica Schultz. We already covered the covers. [00:07:15] Speaker B: Sure did. [00:07:16] Speaker A: Creative Director is Todd McFarlane and editor in chief is Thomas Healy. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Previously in Rat City, Peter and Quinlan retrace their footsteps to piece together what's happening. Meanwhile, Dr. Amon is hot on their heels. Yeah, that's what happened. It ended with Dr. Amon popping in the apartment and pulling a gun on him. [00:07:34] Speaker B: Yeah, he sure did. He says, that's my shit. Give it to me. So we start at Caltech capacity in California many years ago. Johnny, we can tell that the Todd father was not part of additional script in this because he would have asked for exact number of years 23 years ago. But it's Dr. Bose teaching some college kids about some quantum physics and he is unimpressed with their work ethic. [00:08:04] Speaker A: One guy's playing Tetris. [00:08:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good to know that even in the future, Tetris is still around. It's a good game. [00:08:12] Speaker A: And that guy behind him looks like he's dressed like Captain Panaka. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Yeah, he's good. He's about to go. He's about to have to go fly the queen from Naboo to the Galactic Senate, isn't he? [00:08:22] Speaker A: Yeah. And say things like we'll be sitting ducks. [00:08:26] Speaker B: But hey, he does get to fly that super awesome royal Naboo cruiser. [00:08:32] Speaker A: That is a cool. [00:08:33] Speaker B: It is very shiny. [00:08:35] Speaker A: Very shiny. It's a cool ship. [00:08:37] Speaker B: It would show every fingerprint that you put on it. [00:08:39] Speaker A: Yeah, you had to clean that shit. [00:08:41] Speaker B: So I guess if it's super polished, it would be very good to check. Or easy to check for sabotage. Just look for the fingerprints. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Well, I bet they got those R2s that roll out, they can like scrub it down. [00:08:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess that's true. [00:08:52] Speaker A: They send out the astro droids. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Little Astromyx. Then we, you know, after. After Dr. Bose is done lecturing, we learned that he is. He is just like the jerk professor that nobody wants because he doesn't understand that. You know, not everybody in a college class on quantum physics wants. Cares about it as much as you do. Some of them just need the credit. Just relax. And then he's approached by a shadowy man with a tattooed hand. [00:09:21] Speaker A: I'm a mysterious stranger. [00:09:22] Speaker B: Uh huh. He wants to talk to him about. [00:09:25] Speaker A: An opportunity, a tattooed hand and a light in his forehead. [00:09:29] Speaker B: Mm. And we don't see his full face. His full face is in shadow. [00:09:33] Speaker A: It's Jason Wynn. [00:09:34] Speaker B: Ah. It's Jason Blood. This is Jason Blood. Jason Blood. This is where Jason Blood came from. It's the. It's somehow Blood's Blood's bloodline and Jason Wynn's bloodline have joined forces by a marriage. And this is Jason Blood. [00:09:53] Speaker A: Mix them together. [00:09:54] Speaker B: I don't know. It would be hilarious if that were true. But it's not. Then we flash forward PTS years later, and it's again the shadowy man with the triangle light in his forehead talking to Dr. Bowes in his office, you know, congratulating him on his Recent promotion. [00:10:12] Speaker A: We get another close up of his tattooed hand. [00:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah, they're talking shit about, you know, the employees of the company and how, you know, up here in the C suite, they ain't gotta deal with the rabble. They ain't gotta. Ain't gotta deal with the detritus of society walking in rarefied air. Johnny, these guys are jerks. Capitalist pigs. So Dr. Bose still has a, you know, a sense of wanting to do good by the world instead of by the company, and suggests ways that his research could go to this shadowy figure. And the shadowy figure is like, what you're talking about puts half of our company out of business. So there's no way you're doing that. I don't care how many people have to die for. We need to make money. [00:11:01] Speaker A: That's how it goes. [00:11:02] Speaker B: Specifically, Dr. Bose's nanite technology could make rejection drugs for transplants obsolete. But BTS also makes rejection drugs. Yep, yep. Drugs to prevent gvh. [00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's terrible. I mean, that's a good idea. [00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, but buy me some money. Not to. This guy, this guy says, hey, if you make life better for other people, you make me unhappy because I'm not getting more money. And Dr. Bo is just like, oh, oh, shit. Oh, shit. He gets so sad. It's like he disappointed the boss and the boss, hey, I gotta fuck off to Switzerland real quick. Figure out a way to make us more money that doesn't, you know, make us not make more money in other parts of the company. He's like, go on, you little scamp, go make me some money. And then as Dr. Bose leaves this person's office. Did we get a name? I don't think we got a name. No, just Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman. As Dr. Bose leaves the chairman's office, he runs into Dr. Amen, who's fiddling around with his nanite, you know, programming them and stuff. And Dr. Bose goes from bewildered underling to jerk of a boss. [00:12:27] Speaker A: Yeah, he's a jerk. [00:12:27] Speaker B: To Dr. Ammon, he's a big old jerk. He's like, hey, guess what? We got a. They didn't cut our funding like you thought, but we gotta start thinking of other things to do, so let's make some money for this company. And Dr. Ammon's like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm not here to make money for the company. [00:12:44] Speaker A: We're scientists, God damn it. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Dr. Bose is like, you're going to fucking make some money for this goddamn company or you're going to get the fuck out of here. Dr. Amman's like, Fine, I'll go. Dr. Bose is like, but remember, all the shit you've worked on belongs to this company. So you'll be out on your ass with fucking nothing. Dr. Amman's like, you can't do this. And Dr. Bose says, up. Just did. [00:13:09] Speaker A: Is this what it's like to be scientist, David? [00:13:12] Speaker B: Oh, man. Not that I've noticed. Not that I've noticed at all. I'm sure at some places this is. This might happen at companies. [00:13:25] Speaker A: Big pharma. [00:13:26] Speaker B: Big pharma. But that's because a lot of the things that they do at big pharma are already based on something that's been established. So they have a little more leeway to not do things. Whereas if you're in basic research, you just gotta do everything as it comes up. My experience with science so far hasn't been this. Usually if the boss says something that's crazy, then everybody else is just like, what the fuck are they talking about? I don't. I don't even know what's happening. [00:13:57] Speaker A: We cut back to where we left off last issue after that little flashback. [00:14:02] Speaker B: Yeah. We're at Owen's apartment with Quinlan and Peter and Dr. Aemon holding them at. [00:14:09] Speaker A: Gunpoint with a cool futuristic looking gun. [00:14:13] Speaker B: I guess at blaster point. [00:14:14] Speaker A: Blaster point, yeah. And he's curious about this exosuit. [00:14:18] Speaker B: This is. Did my nanites do that to you? Is this what Bose was secretly working on behind my back? Did he finally make the chairman happy? He's not bitter at all. Yeah, not at all. Oh, man. Usually. Usually when people are bitter, they've got like. Like the. The icy, Icy word. Balloons or like dripping with venom. I'm surprised his don't have that because he is a cold motherfucker and it's just filled with ire. [00:14:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:49] Speaker B: I'm surprised it's not coming out of every pore. But, you know, he starts asking Peter about the suit and he's like, how does it work? What does it fucking do? And Peter's like, I. I have absolutely no idea. It just kind of showed up. [00:15:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that just started happening. [00:15:07] Speaker B: It's like, I don't know what's happening with my body. I'm getting suit parts in places that suit parts never were before. I'm making weird emissions. My dreams are crazy. [00:15:20] Speaker A: And Dr. Amon was the shadowy figure in the alley a few issues back. Yeah, that gave her the power source and had a little. [00:15:28] Speaker B: Had a little bit of tracking bug on it. It's a little bitty bug. It's a little bitty bug. [00:15:32] Speaker A: Literally a bug. [00:15:33] Speaker B: I love the. I love the conceit of a computer bug being a physical little robot bug. [00:15:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:40] Speaker B: What was it recently that there was. Oh, it was a Star Trek episode where there was a little. A little metal bug that found its way to a specific part of the ship and then like fused itself in there so they couldn't get it out. And it also had like a little bomb in it, so if you tried to remove it physically, it would just blow the whole thing up. It was. But they made it look like this really, really terrifying spider, like black widow esque, with the long skinny legs and the big voluminous. It was great. It was great. I love a bug. That's a bug. [00:16:16] Speaker A: What Star Trek was it? [00:16:17] Speaker B: I do believe it was Discovery. [00:16:19] Speaker A: Oh, okay. [00:16:21] Speaker B: Yeah, because Paul Stamets is the one that figured it out. So it was Star Trek Discovery, one of like the last three episodes of the series. [00:16:29] Speaker A: Is that done now? [00:16:30] Speaker B: Yeah, they finished it. They were like, okay, it's done. [00:16:34] Speaker A: So Quinlan takes the. We go back to where she took the power source and plugged it in. Little bug climbs in her computer. [00:16:41] Speaker B: It's just like, thank you, thank you. I live here now. And, you know, we get to see part of. Part of the tracking happening because Quinlan pings Owen from the computer, you know, because they're in cahoots in this cahoots period. And then through that, Dr. Aemond knew where Owen was, so he was like tracking him from both sides. He was doing a one man pincer maneuver. And so now Dr. Amon's like, I know you got some files. Give them to me. Peter's like, we don't have your files. We don't have them. Dr. Ammon's like, yeah, sure, I'll just put my gun away. Not. [00:17:26] Speaker A: And he just shoots to the side. [00:17:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Which is probably good because generally when people are doing the warning shot, they shoot up. And then in like a Mel Brooks movie, you have the bits of ceiling falling on you. So shooting to the side just takes the debris out of the. As long as he doesn't hit like a. Like a load bearing pole or something. [00:17:48] Speaker A: And the bullet shot, like, sends Peter's armor into a tizzy. [00:17:53] Speaker B: This mechanical descendant of K7 Letha does not like that. No, not at all. It's like the alarm clock that rouses it from its slumber. And, you know, Quinlan's very upset at this jerk just shooting around and being like, we don't have your fucking files. Fuck your Booster fucked my system. And they start arguing about, you know, that Booster caused the blackout. He's like, my Booster didn't cause the blackout. And then while they're arguing back and forth, Peter just, like, slowly starts, like, hallucinating. It's a little. It's a little fear of loathing in Las Vegas. When they're on the edge of the desert near Barstow, when the drugs kick in and everything just starts. [00:18:46] Speaker A: Melting. It's the best way to put it, kind of. Yeah. [00:18:48] Speaker B: And like the. [00:18:49] Speaker A: And then Quinlan starts talking crazy about how he should kill her. Kill her. [00:18:54] Speaker B: Like the. Their dialogue starts going. Going wonky, so you know that it's kind of not real. And Quinlan is like. He's the reason that Rhys is dead. So we gotta kill him. We gotta kill him. And Pedra's just like, uh. And in his hallucination, Quinlan and Dr. Aemond both slowly. Fleabiac arise. [00:19:17] Speaker A: They turn into Fleabiacs. [00:19:19] Speaker B: I gotta say Fleabiac with a little whoop. With purple hair. It's a really good look for a Fleabiac. Also got a pierced horn, which is excellent. [00:19:29] Speaker A: That's hilarious. [00:19:31] Speaker B: And then we get the opening reading where the Fleabiacs are telling Peter to adapt or die. And Peter says, okay, I'll adapt, you die. [00:19:42] Speaker A: And he starts fighting these Fleabiacs. [00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah, he's just like. The cape is wrapping around his arms and charging up to shoot out some necroplasm and turns into a big axe and stuff. And he's just like, haha. [00:20:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty cool. [00:20:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:02] Speaker A: Reminds me of Battletoads. Whenever you. If you do a big combo, your hand would, like, turn into a mace or something. [00:20:08] Speaker B: Such a hard fucking game. [00:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Fuck Battletoads. [00:20:12] Speaker B: That second level. The second level. Fucking jumping. [00:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah, the motorcycle. It's like, impossible. [00:20:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:21] Speaker A: I really wanted to like Battletoads. [00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it was fun. It was fun. Except for the fact that it was hard as. [00:20:27] Speaker A: Yeah, the first level was fun. That's all I ever played. [00:20:30] Speaker B: Well, I mean, you got really good at it. I unfortunately didn't discover Battletoads until after my sister moved out of the house. So I couldn't just have her play the second level for me so I could keep going. [00:20:44] Speaker A: That's trouble. [00:20:45] Speaker B: Sad. [00:20:47] Speaker A: No, but, like, she probably wouldn't even be able to beat it. It was impossible. [00:20:50] Speaker B: I don't know. I'll have to ask her. [00:20:53] Speaker A: Can you beat the second level in Battletoads? I just feel like you would have liked Battletoads since you were a Ninja Turtles guy. [00:20:58] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I tried to play Battletoads. [00:21:00] Speaker A: I know. I like the idea of Battletoads just so hard. [00:21:03] Speaker B: I also really enjoyed the pause music because when you paused, it's just like a very simple little, just. Just a little looping beat. [00:21:13] Speaker A: Okay. I played the one on Super Nintendo a lot. Battletoads and Battle Maniacs. That one had a hard level, but it wasn't quite as hard. [00:21:23] Speaker B: Maybe they learned their lesson. Maybe. Maybe their mysterious chairman came out of his office and was like, you gotta fucking stop this. People aren't buying our games and it's ruining our profits. [00:21:35] Speaker A: That was rare. They went on to make Donkey Kong country and a whole bunch of video games they made. [00:21:43] Speaker B: Didn't they do goldeneye? [00:21:45] Speaker A: Goldeneye. Perfect Dark. [00:21:47] Speaker B: Yeah, man. I remember in sixth grade, my friends would rent Perfect Dark from the video store, but they would each mark the cartridge that they'd been using. So that way when they went back, they would only check out the cartridge that they had used. [00:22:04] Speaker A: So they knew. [00:22:05] Speaker B: So, yeah, so that way they wouldn't have to worry about restarting anything. [00:22:09] Speaker A: I played a lot of Perfect Dark. [00:22:11] Speaker B: I played none, unfortunately. We flash out of Peter's sort of addled brain into back into Owen's apartment. And while there are no Fleabiacs or any dead bodies, Peter does is looking spiky and battle Toad Swordy like he was. So at least that part of the vision was true. [00:22:36] Speaker A: Right. [00:22:36] Speaker B: Quinlan's just freaking out and Dr. Aemond's like, impressive. [00:22:43] Speaker A: And like he like, spreads his quills even more. [00:22:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:22:47] Speaker A: And almost stabs Quinlan in the eye. [00:22:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Quinlan approaches Peter and the. The symbiote suit is just like. Ah. Ah. You stay the fuck away. You're a threat. [00:22:57] Speaker A: No touchy. [00:22:58] Speaker B: And boy, Johnny, that is. That is dangerously, dangerously close. [00:23:04] Speaker A: It's like when you pet a cat too much. [00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah. That tip of that spike is so close to the eyeball, it reminds me a lot of the Billy Zane Phantom when they. The bad guy needs to get rid of the scientist who has helped them sets up razor blades in the focus of a microscope. [00:23:28] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:23:29] Speaker B: When they try to show him something and he zooms in on it, it gouges his eyes out. And because that way he is of no use to the good guys in the story, it took me a long time to get over my fear of microscopes after that. Johnny. [00:23:45] Speaker A: Yeah. You thought someone had put a razor blade in it. [00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, luckily I have glasses and so I Usually when I approach a microscope, I don't know, I wear my glasses first just on the off chance that there's spring loaded razor blades in there. They'll at least get caught in my glasses instead of my eyes. [00:24:01] Speaker A: Okay. [00:24:04] Speaker B: A wild movie. Yeah. [00:24:06] Speaker A: Billy Zane's Phantom. Yeah, I think we talked about it before, but originally that was supposed to be Bruce Campbell. [00:24:12] Speaker B: I think you have mentioned that because I've also mentioned that I really like the Phantom, except for his whole premise is just he's a shipwrecked white guy who a whole bunch of the natives of Africa are like, look at this white guy. We gotta take him to the sacred temple in the middle of the Wolf of the Forest. And then he becomes like the protector of the tribes. So it's a little gee, but for a pulp adventure you could. It's hard to do better than the Phantom because he wears a fucking purple suit and like zebra striped underwear on the outside of it. It's wonderful. [00:24:45] Speaker A: Yep. And he uses a gun. [00:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's how you know he's American. [00:24:51] Speaker A: Eamonn tries to grab Quinlan and pull her out of the apartment and she's like, hell no. [00:24:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Aemon calls him, calls him a little prick. You little prick. And then levels the blaster right at their face. [00:25:05] Speaker A: Looks like Aemond's about to shoot them. About to shoot Quinlan. And then the classic something stabs him from behind. [00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah, we get the narration is just some Quinlan thoughts. And they're saying, I have to believe Peter didn't know what he was doing. He didn't know. Right. He didn't know what he was doing. Right. [00:25:25] Speaker A: When he stabbed Aemond through the back. [00:25:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:28] Speaker A: With his big old sword hands. Like a battletoad. [00:25:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And this last page is just a big splash page of deviant in the background, like hunched on the ground with one fist raised through Dr. Aemon. And it's. It's dope. Oh my goodness. It's pretty frightening too. That's pretty scary. It's pretty scary. That's like the first slasher kill. Usually a couple trying to get intimate in a car. And one of them is. One of them is horribly, horribly mangled while the other one screams and runs away and then gets killed as well. That's what this is. This is like the first, the first lover killed in a slasher. [00:26:12] Speaker A: Speaking of slashers, you see Terrifier three beat joker. [00:26:16] Speaker B: Ooh, I didn't. They were talking about it on npr, so I'm wondering if terrifier is passive. [00:26:22] Speaker A: Oh no, they're talking about terrifier and npr. [00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Because they were talking about like people coming with, with throw up bags supposed. [00:26:31] Speaker A: To Be real gnarly. [00:26:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:33] Speaker A: My friend who saw it only texted me, holy guacamole. [00:26:38] Speaker B: I have maybe a potential small spoiler about how they could have. Because we wondered about what they were going to do to make it. [00:26:49] Speaker A: To escalate. [00:26:49] Speaker B: To escalate. Would you like me to share what I've heard? Is the escalation. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:54] Speaker B: Child death. [00:26:56] Speaker A: No. [00:26:59] Speaker B: I have been informed that that is the escalation. [00:27:02] Speaker A: Holy guacamole, Batman. [00:27:04] Speaker B: Holy, holy guacamole. So I guess that means, much like Monolith two, I am not gonna like Terrifier three. [00:27:11] Speaker A: Oh, man. I don't know if I can handle that. [00:27:13] Speaker B: Although, Glenda, Glenn Danzig, early 80s Glenn Danzig might. Because, you know, famous Kill the baby. Glenn Danzig didn't actually kill a baby, you guys. [00:27:24] Speaker A: Just in a song. [00:27:25] Speaker B: Just in the song. [00:27:27] Speaker A: There is one of the greatest endings on an exploitation movie I've ever seen is the cursed and evil movie that no one should ever see called Uncle Goodbye, Uncle Tom. [00:27:37] Speaker B: Okay. [00:27:37] Speaker A: Which is literally a documentary crew from Italy. They don't explain. It lands at a helicopter in the middle of a plantation and films a documentary in the antebellum. And it is a despicable, horrible movie. But it's framing devices. There's this black Panther who's like, reading this. This account. And so at the end, he gets so pissed off, he goes in the suburban white couple's house and picks up their baby and hits it against the wall. And that's the last shot of the movie that it ends. [00:28:04] Speaker B: Jesus Christ. [00:28:05] Speaker A: It ends with an exploding baby. [00:28:07] Speaker B: Jesus Christ, Johnny. [00:28:09] Speaker A: It's a despicable movie. [00:28:11] Speaker B: Wow. [00:28:12] Speaker A: Goodbye, Uncle Tom. Yeah. Don't. Don't see. Don't watch it. [00:28:15] Speaker B: We should probably bleep out the name so nobody's interested in. No, leave it in there for transparency sake. [00:28:23] Speaker A: The theme song is good. There's some good music. Rizzolani. [00:28:25] Speaker B: I was. I was doing my first rewatch of Candyman for the year because that's one of the few movies I will actually rewatch. And I got nervous halfway through because I forgot that the baby doesn't die. And I was like, ah, fuck, he killed that baby. Oh, oh, oh, good. He didn't do it. [00:28:40] Speaker A: He didn't kill it. [00:28:40] Speaker B: He didn't kill the baby. That's like the whole. That's like the whole redemption arc. [00:28:44] Speaker A: Don't you also rewatch Trick or Treat? [00:28:48] Speaker B: I haven't rewatched Trick or Treat. I'm afraid to rewatch Trick or Treat because I loved it so much. I don't Want to accidentally stop loving it for some reason. But I'll probably rewatch it this year, actually. [00:29:00] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good one. [00:29:01] Speaker B: I just enjoyed how well it fits together. It was great. [00:29:05] Speaker A: It's fun. It's like Pulp Fiction for Halloween. And that's. That's Red City. Pretty much. [00:29:11] Speaker B: Yeah. We get the skull to end it. We get a new generation, new stories, new you. Coming soon to a comic shop near you, Johnny. All of those have been released. [00:29:22] Speaker A: Well, so in the new ones, they started including Knights versus Samurai. And I'm like, that's not Spawn Universe. At least as far as. [00:29:29] Speaker B: No, but they did. They did announce it at the same time. [00:29:32] Speaker A: No, because it's a McFarlane. [00:29:34] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. [00:29:34] Speaker A: It's made by, like, Thomas Healy's the editor. Like, it's made by McFarlane Productions. [00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So. But I think it's as close to a. It's obviously not a spawn title, but the way they've been producing it, it's like the only non spawn title that the spawn teams are putting. Putting out. [00:29:52] Speaker A: Right. And it looks like even the inside of it looks like a Spawn bug. Yeah, I picked. I picked it up and flipped through it. I didn't buy it, but I bought it. [00:29:59] Speaker B: It's good. [00:29:59] Speaker A: Oh, is it good? [00:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah. It's an interesting story. [00:30:02] Speaker A: Yeah. David Dasmalcham, arch and nemesis, wrote it. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Because he's sucking up all the Chicago theater. [00:30:10] Speaker A: No, he was in Chicago theater. I don't think. No, he likes Chicago. No, I just am in awe of his life, and I'm jealous. So that's why he's my arch nemesis. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Hey, Johnny, don't hate. Appreciate. Yeah, you're much more likely to get sucked into his orbit if you don't. I mean, Johnny, life is not tried. It's merely survived if you're standing outside the fire. So just jump in. [00:30:42] Speaker A: Dude, that's hilarious. I've had Baton Rouge stuck in my head for, like, two weeks. [00:30:48] Speaker B: I'm so upset by these Garth Brook allegations simply because my Go to karaoke song is Friends in Low Places. I have so many. I have so many good childhood memories of listening to that song on the jukebox and eating mini corn dogs and frosty mug root beer with my mom that I can't get. It hurts, Johnny. It hurts. Why do all the people have to be nasty? [00:31:13] Speaker A: Hopefully they're not true, I guess, is all I can say. [00:31:16] Speaker B: But, I mean, what are you gonna do? I have to presume that they are true and get relief later if they aren't. Because it's much easier to do it that way than. [00:31:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:27] Speaker B: Any other way. [00:31:29] Speaker A: Baton Rouge is a banger, man. Combat Rouge. [00:31:34] Speaker B: Spawn origins collection number one. Still only 9.99. [00:31:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:31:38] Speaker B: Inflation ain't touched that shit. Got the Witch Blade ad again. And then Fallout is the toy ad in the bed back. [00:31:44] Speaker A: It's so funny. When I was camping with my dad, I was playing, like, all these because I thought he would like them. There's like, kind of these old, like, Texas, like, songs that are in Fallout New Vegas because it's like a Southwest set game and, you know, like, songs like out in the west town of El Paso, like, stuff like that. And, like, he was so blown away that I knew some of these songs. Like, how do you know these songs? And I was like, from a video game? And I think I broke his brain. Like, I saw, like, smoke come out of his ears. He's like, why would these songs be in a video game? He was so confused. He just. He thinks video games are like Defender or like Joust still. He doesn't understand that they're like, you know, full pieces of media. [00:32:25] Speaker B: Yeah. But, I mean, that's because he. It's not his orbit. [00:32:30] Speaker A: That's not his height of video games for my dad was Mario Golf. He did like Mario Golf. [00:32:34] Speaker B: Oh, nice four. Nice job. [00:32:46] Speaker A: Next up, we go from the city, from Rat City to the country of Indiana. [00:32:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:53] Speaker A: Not the country of Indiana, the countryside of Indiana. They can be their own country if they want. You can have them. [00:32:59] Speaker B: I mean. I mean, out in. Out in the boonies so far, there probably actually is a city of rats somewhere. [00:33:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:33:09] Speaker B: They got to have their own metropoli. Right. I've read. I've read enough Redwall to know that somewhere in the middle of these woods, there's an abbey that's filled with the micens and squirrels and chipmunks trying to protect their lives from the evil badgers and traitorous rabbits. [00:33:31] Speaker A: See, I was thinking watershed down. [00:33:33] Speaker B: Well, yeah, I think Watership down is what inspired. Inspired Red Wall. [00:33:38] Speaker A: Oh, really? [00:33:39] Speaker B: Yeah, because Red Wall is like an epic fantasy series around anthropomorphized animals. [00:33:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And like, in Watership down, while they talk and stuff, they act like normal rabbits. [00:33:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:33:52] Speaker A: They don't, like, make. Like, they don't have swords. [00:33:55] Speaker B: Yeah. But no, these. These ones have, like, little tunics and little swords, and they go on little quests. [00:34:00] Speaker A: I never read Red Wall. [00:34:02] Speaker B: It was. It was good shit. It's good shit. [00:34:07] Speaker A: I was just very anti fantasy as a kid. I was like, I like science fiction and horror, and that's it. I didn't like fantasy. Lord of the Rings, the movie has got me on a fantasy. [00:34:15] Speaker B: So I don't know how it is reading as an adult, but it's probably pretty good. [00:34:21] Speaker A: I think my nephews are reading it or one of them is reading it for school, I think. [00:34:24] Speaker B: Nice. Nice. Do either of your nephews read Hank the Cow Dog? [00:34:29] Speaker A: That's so weird that you mentioned that. There was a copy of Hank the Cow Dog in the house we stayed at. They read it when we were camping. I flipped through it. It was a signed copy. [00:34:39] Speaker B: I fucking love a signed copy. Yeah, shit, I love Hank the Cow Dog. [00:34:44] Speaker A: I had a few of those. [00:34:45] Speaker B: I got them from my. Because, I mean, it's a big Texas thing. It's a big Texas thing. It's the. The HEB guy. The Heb guy funded them. [00:34:53] Speaker A: Oh, really? [00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:55] Speaker A: Like, I think I went to an heb. [00:34:58] Speaker B: He just use it. All the Texas highlights. They got some crazy shit, Heb. [00:35:02] Speaker A: They have, like, a living room furniture and, like, coolers that are like. You have Fort Knox locked inside the cooler. Like, they're crazy. Just at the grocery store. [00:35:13] Speaker B: Texas is a wild place. It is literally the wild, wild West, Johnny. [00:35:18] Speaker A: It's true. [00:35:19] Speaker B: They got. They got Kevin Klein with his little sunglasses and everything. [00:35:22] Speaker A: Well, Sam's in the mild, mild. The wild, wild. What is Indiana? That's not the Midwest. Was the upper Midwest. [00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the Midwest. I was gonna say he's at the wild, wild desk because he's not out there yet. [00:35:35] Speaker A: Oh, Sam. [00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Twitch is. Sam is riding the wild, wild desk. [00:35:39] Speaker A: Yes. Twitch is in the wild, wild middle. [00:35:42] Speaker B: Of the wild, wild cornfield. [00:35:44] Speaker A: The wild, wild cornfield. We start with the COVID Mm. I've got the A cover. [00:35:50] Speaker B: I have the B cover. So we've got the spread again. [00:35:54] Speaker A: A cover is by Mirko Kolak, and it's Sam looking pretty badass, like a rifle smoking a cigarette. [00:36:03] Speaker B: And a silhouette of Twitch with, like, boondock saints positioning in the background there. [00:36:11] Speaker A: Yeah, he's, like, about to pray and shoot somebody. [00:36:14] Speaker B: This is definitely the poster for the Quentin Tarantino movie, Johnny. Yeah, it's dope. And then Sam's jacket is the city. The, like. Yeah, the city. The city at night. Oh. And I guess. I guess San or Twitch is like. There's, like, a prairie sunset on Twitch. Holy shit. That's actually a really great cover. [00:36:39] Speaker A: Yeah, the city looks cool. It makes me scared to, like, imagine living in New York City. It seems crazy. I live in Chicago. [00:36:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, It's. It's got to be a whole nother world. [00:36:50] Speaker A: I can't imagine living in New York City. [00:36:52] Speaker B: I can't. [00:36:53] Speaker A: It's just like what do you. How do you. You live in New York City? Like a movie character. [00:36:59] Speaker B: How does, how did you. How do you do that? Well, my B cover has Sam and Twitch checking out a crime scene. And there's a big, just sort of whited out area that's got a whole bunch of blood drops on it. It's the Javi Fernandez cover, which is largely why I got it, because I love me some Javi Fernandez. [00:37:21] Speaker A: Can you hold that up again? Let me see it. [00:37:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, hold on, let me make sure I'm. It's got. [00:37:26] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. [00:37:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And Sam's. Look at Sam's just standing there surveying the scene. And Twitch is actually down there doing the nitty gritty, you know, like they do. [00:37:36] Speaker A: Like they do. [00:37:37] Speaker B: Like they do. [00:37:38] Speaker A: I mean the covers in the Sam and Twitch series have all been pretty excellent because they're a fun duo to draw. [00:37:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, they've been. And the amount of grittiness you can put on it I think is a real sort of fun experiment for the COVID artists because there's not a lot of like, especially with Rat City, you can put a little grid in it, but it's gotta still have that futuristic cleanliness. [00:38:03] Speaker A: So it has to be sunshine. [00:38:04] Speaker B: It's the detritus has to be very specific. Whereas Sam and Twitch, I mean fuckin. You could just take a still scene from any 70s Charles Bronson movie and just put save and Twitch in it and it fits. So we should, we should probably pop these open. Pop it open, get these credits read. We got script plot by Todd McFarlane with co plot by John Gough. The art, as always, has been done by Simon Kudransky. The colors by FCO Placentia and Sheila Saldana. On the color flights again, lettering by Tom Orzikowski covered the covers. Creative director is Todd McFarlane and the editor in chief is Thomas Healy. And previously in Sam and Twitch, Twitch gets pulled in to help on a murder case. But as the clues unfold, he may be the next victim. [00:38:59] Speaker A: Dun dun dun dun dun. And then we get everyone's favorite thing. A boring press conference. [00:39:05] Speaker B: Yeah, a local sheriff press conference. [00:39:08] Speaker A: Local sheriff. I mean, sometimes they can be exciting when they say stupid things. [00:39:11] Speaker B: Yeah. But this one's got the tried and true. I was born and raised in this town. [00:39:17] Speaker A: Yeah. The sheriff's telling everyone about the raid on the Drugs from last time where they had to shoot all those guys. [00:39:23] Speaker B: Yep, yep, yep. [00:39:24] Speaker A: And he's just, you know, saying how great they are. [00:39:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Just saying that, you know, he's sad that there's loss of life, but it was unavoidable, etc. Etc. [00:39:34] Speaker A: Then trestle pops up to talk and he's also talking up the town and the police force. [00:39:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And as each panel goes, it gets a little. Speaking of the static from Rhett City, Johnny. Each panel, each successive panel on the. In this comic book gets a little. A little fuzzier, a little static year a little. A little less saturated. [00:39:58] Speaker A: Yeah. This guy's got a rare ass. Fucking CRT TV in the year 2024. This guy should play some classic video games on it or something. Selling on ebay. [00:40:06] Speaker B: Yeah. It pulls out and we've got this. The. It's the. It's the killer, Johnny. The killer is watching this press conference and he's like you. This is lies. Lies. [00:40:16] Speaker A: And then the next page, you get a full two page spread. [00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Plain filled, and you made me a killer. And he's pointing at the television and it's. That's on a chair. Oh, Jesus, Johnny. This. This room is filling me with dread. Absolutely. [00:40:35] Speaker A: There's like a couch with no cushion. [00:40:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's just. There's just books and stuff scattered all over the place. It looks like at one point everything was ship shape and a spot for everything and everything in its spot but has since just been kind of. [00:40:53] Speaker A: Trashed. [00:40:54] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little bit of Selina Kyle posts Catwoman arising from Batman Returns. [00:41:01] Speaker A: Only it says no good deed. Instead of hell here. [00:41:06] Speaker B: I need somebody to make a Catwoman Obi Wan Kenobi mashup where it's Obi Wan Kenobi saying hello there, but somebody's scribbling out the O and the T And then instead of General Grievous, it's just a whole bunch of cats going, no, I think. [00:41:26] Speaker A: You'Re gonna have to make that, David, if you want to see it. [00:41:28] Speaker B: Damn it. Damn it. Well, damn it. But so do you like a hello there joke? Hello there. [00:41:35] Speaker A: It's so funny how like just the public perception of those movies has changed so much. They're just so hated and now they like kind of adored and like, even the bad or weird stuff, it's like been memed so much that you love it. [00:41:49] Speaker B: What are you gonna do, Johnny? You gotta. [00:41:51] Speaker A: It's Star Wars. [00:41:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good. All Star wars is good. Even when it's bad. Just like Star Trek. All Star Trek is good, especially when it's bad. [00:41:59] Speaker A: Oh, it just shows. Like George Lucas, like is ahead of his time and kind of knows what he's doing. And for better or worse, he changed the movie industry with using all the green screen and stuff. Like he, the Marvel wouldn't exist. [00:42:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, you know, he, like you have, you were very on the record as saying that you very much enjoy swings. Big swings. Yeah, man. Old Georgie Porgy, he's, he's swinging. He's never, he's never getting caught looking, Johnny. [00:42:29] Speaker A: He's always, he's never playing it safe. [00:42:31] Speaker B: No, he's, he's, he's like max, three pitches guy, because he's, he's going to swing it, whatever it is. Sometimes, sometimes it works, sometimes it don't. Can't all be winners. But anyway, angry man pointing at the tv, turns it off and then like slowly tromps outside, gets in his unmarked van, drives to the middle of a cornfield to. I don't know if this is the same house or one of the houses we've been in previously or a different one, but there's a boarded up house in the middle of the cornfields he goes to. And then like a paranoid person digging up the money that they've put in little caches around their property. He's digging up a body so he can do something with it because he's just got bodies, but he's got plans for those bodies. He just hasn't had to put them in. [00:43:29] Speaker A: He's got to preserve them in the ground. [00:43:32] Speaker B: He digs up a body, the body. [00:43:33] Speaker A: That kind of looks like Simon. Peggy. [00:43:35] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit. And then we turn into. It's literally the very opening of this comic series, like verbatim. Johnny. [00:43:49] Speaker A: Yes, it goes back to the beginning. [00:43:51] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the guy that we opened on running in the. Underneath the full moon, through the creepy, the creepy cornfields, over hill and over dale, past the trains, you know, to this abandoned, this very same abandoned house run by abandoned cars in the field. He runs into the house and we get again the question, did you follow the plan? He says, yeah, the answer to that is why were you running? Instead of cutting directly to the kill shot like we did in the first. [00:44:26] Speaker A: Issue, we get a little more info. [00:44:28] Speaker B: Get a little back and forth. There were some issues, issues with the plan as it was just because, you know, stuff always happens and the person, the person that was in the house just says you. You've always got an excuse. Lansky. [00:44:41] Speaker A: This is Lansky, the man who's disappeared. [00:44:44] Speaker B: And then we'll see very shortly. Yeah, he's like, you're high, aren't you? And he's like, a little. That's it. What? I'm undercover at a drug den. Do you expect me to just stay sober the whole fucking time? No. [00:44:56] Speaker A: They're going to make you smoke. [00:44:57] Speaker B: Yeah. They're going to make you do the. [00:44:58] Speaker A: Shit to make sure you're the legit deal. [00:45:01] Speaker B: Yeah, like, that's. [00:45:04] Speaker A: That would suck. That'd be a hard job. [00:45:06] Speaker B: That would be a hard job. I couldn't imagine. Well, obviously it's taken his toll because, like, he's, you know, the guy. Not the. Not Lansky guy, is like, tell me. Tell me that you're not addicted. [00:45:17] Speaker A: Is that Trastle? [00:45:18] Speaker B: It looks like Trussel. [00:45:20] Speaker A: I think it is, but a lot. [00:45:21] Speaker B: Of them have that same. [00:45:22] Speaker A: I know a lot of them got the same goatee, but I think it's Trle. [00:45:26] Speaker B: But I think it is, yeah. Oh, it's. Yeah, it's. [00:45:28] Speaker A: Oh. He says, I'm doing my job, Tressle. [00:45:31] Speaker B: And he can't say. He can't say that he's not addicted because he probably is. And Tressel's like, bah. [00:45:37] Speaker A: Blam. [00:45:38] Speaker B: The brass falls to the floor and gets picked up. The gloved hand. And then we do another flashback that's to more recent times where Twitch and the rest of the Plainfield cops are sitting at the. At the diner, you know, talking about stuff. We've got the guy who's just like, hell, yeah, Twitch did an amazing job, you guys. And there's a call that the detectives have to take, and it is from Tressel, who has found Lansky's body because it's the one that was tied to a chair at his ex girlfriend's house with the man she brought home from the bar, the man who picked her up out of her puke. [00:46:22] Speaker A: Yes, the knight in shining armor. And Twitch is like, what's up? Is this something about the case? And he's like, nah, nah, nah, nah. [00:46:30] Speaker B: Yeah, he's like, it's something else. I'll just finish it up really quick. Does a quick little. Just like whispers. Whispers into the phone, like, covers his mouth. And he's like. And then afterwards, hey, sorry about the Twitch. Come on, bring it in, buddy. Let's have a hug. Even though we've never had any physical contact before, and I'm pretty sure Twitch is not a hugger, his facial expression. [00:46:54] Speaker A: Is just like, let's get this over. [00:46:55] Speaker B: Of the two of Them. I would say Sam is probably the hugger. [00:46:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. [00:47:03] Speaker B: But I don't. I also don't think Sam. [00:47:04] Speaker A: It's like when we saw Pat and Dal at comic con. Or C2E2. [00:47:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:09] Speaker A: And Pat was like, see, you know us because, you know, I'm a hugger. And that Dallas will shake your hand. They're a very Sam and Twitch pair. [00:47:17] Speaker B: They are. They are. I mean, it takes. It's. It's. It's a classic combination. Johnny, you've got Sam and Twitch, you've got Sully and Mike Wazowski, you've got beaker. Doctor. Dr. Bunsen, Honeydew and Beaker, Classic pairing. Beaker definitely isn't the hugger because he would probably accidentally explode. You, Dr. Honeydew, Dr. Do. Will. Will Sidle up next to you at lunch and be like, are you gonna actually eat that sandwich? Cause I'll take it. [00:47:45] Speaker A: After the world's most awkward hug, we cut to the lady's house where Lansky's body is. [00:47:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And they're just like, this is fucked up. There's a little note on his chest that says, no more hiding. Which we've known. You know, Trestle's like, you know, we're gonna need to ask some questions. We're gonna need to take some pictures. You know, we're gonna see if there's anything unusual. And Lansky's ex girlfriend is like, I already talked to everybody about everything. [00:48:14] Speaker A: Closed. She's still in a blanket. [00:48:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And Trestle's like, hey, we gotta go down to the basement. I don't. Were they in the basement? Like, fucking. Why did they go to the basement? Yeah. [00:48:24] Speaker A: It's like, why are we doing this? [00:48:26] Speaker B: Why are we doing this? And this random man's just like, hey, man, I was. I was just trying. [00:48:36] Speaker A: I just met her, dude. I was just trying to get laid. [00:48:38] Speaker B: Yeah. He's like, I just. I just wanted a one, a quickie and fucking get on home. And now there's this dead guy, and can I go? Please, can I go? One of the detectives comes in and he says, hey, everything's clear. And Trestle's like, okay, well, here's what's gonna happen. This was a murder suicide. And shoots them both. And they're like, fuck, okay, dress the scene. I'll go call it in. You've got not very much time. And then from there, we cut to the hotel that Twitch is staying in. And he is slowly disrobing. He starts by removing everything from his pockets. And then he pulls out an Empty gun holster. And he's like, the hell? And then he just sits there and stares at it and then remembers the most awkward of hugs. And he's like, ah, that mother. [00:49:34] Speaker A: He took my gun. [00:49:35] Speaker B: Give me a hug, bro. A hug. It's like the horror remembrance of a moment of trauma being replayed in the victim's head. Here it's just the guy asking Twitch for a hug. [00:49:52] Speaker A: I love it when someone just stops and thinks really hard. Yeah, I was thinking it reminds me of. Let's just watch this with Jackie Brown. Whenever Samuel Jackson figures it out, he sits there for like a full minute thinking. Like, the camera slowly zooms in on him and it's like, jackie Brown. [00:50:09] Speaker B: Like. [00:50:09] Speaker A: Trussel stole my gun. [00:50:10] Speaker B: Yeah, it's fucking. He's. He's dialing a number and he's like, come on, come on, come on, pick up, pick up, pick up. And it just says, I think I'm in trouble. [00:50:18] Speaker A: The issue ends with a new logo. A blood splatter. [00:50:21] Speaker B: Yeah, blood splatter. [00:50:22] Speaker A: With a blood splattered splawn. A blood splattered spawn logo. [00:50:30] Speaker B: A spawn bladdered. [00:50:32] Speaker A: A spawn bladder. Bleed bladder. Make your bladder. Bladder. [00:50:35] Speaker B: Yeah, you gotta do it. You gotta do it. [00:50:37] Speaker A: No, it's like a blood splat with a spawn logo in the middle of it. [00:50:40] Speaker B: Yeah, the traditional orb. One that, you know, I think they're bringing it back. I think I'm seeing the orb more frequently now, Johnny. [00:50:47] Speaker A: Yeah, the orb is popular. It's on the hat I got at spawncon. [00:50:50] Speaker B: The new generation, new stories, new. You again with the issues. Hey, look, there's the issue of Red City we just covered. Johnny. [00:50:58] Speaker A: There it is. [00:50:59] Speaker B: Fallout again. Is the toy ad on the back. [00:51:03] Speaker A: Crawl out through the Fallout Baby. [00:51:06] Speaker B: That is Sam and Twitch. Case files number five, Ken. [00:51:09] Speaker A: Case closed. Well, not closed. [00:51:11] Speaker B: Not case. Very much in the middle. We're an in media case, Johnny. Yeah, Very, very in media case, Johnny. I am surrounded by the sleeping. But not the sleeping dead. No, no, the sleeping dogs. And I think it's time that we rate them, because that's the best time to rate puppies is when they're asleep, Johnny. [00:51:35] Speaker A: It's time to rate the puppies. So first up today, we did rat city number five. Kind of get some backstory on Dr. Ayman and PTS. And what can I say about it? The art is still excellent. Just that cyberpunk world and just the little details they put in there. It's vibrant, it pops. I remember being very. The first time I read it when the Fleabiax popped Out. I was, like, pumping my fist. I was like, oh, yeah, I did not expect that. But that was really cool touch. You can really tell that, like, especially in later issues that Erika Schultz gives a shit about, like, Spawn universe, like, you know, it's separated, but it, like. [00:52:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:52:16] Speaker A: It builds upon what has come before in good ways. [00:52:18] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:19] Speaker A: It uses what it needs to. [00:52:20] Speaker B: Yeah. She's definitely not just working in the universe, you know, kind of, because she has to. She's definitely enjoying the universe and trying to make it all make sense. [00:52:32] Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah. Really cool issue, you know, kind of just like some backstory and a little bit of action. But like I said, I love the Fleabiac reveal. I love the melting repeaters, kind of hallucinating and just, like the freaking out of the suit. I'm gonna give it four tracking bugs out of five little bitty bugs. [00:52:52] Speaker B: He says little bitty bug. [00:52:53] Speaker A: Little bitty tracking bug. [00:52:55] Speaker B: Hell, yeah. Yeah, that's a good. That's a really good score. This is just. This is literally just a character study issue where we're learning more and more about the people. So there's very little. Very little forward momentum. But that doesn't mean that it's not an excellent issue. It's great. It's very good. I love this series, Johnny, and it's still going fucking fantastic. And I am going to give it. It's a very middle issue, and I feel a little weird about giving as. [00:53:26] Speaker A: High as three and a half. Maybe I should go three and a half. [00:53:29] Speaker B: I'm gonna give it way higher than it should be for a middle issue just because I love it so much. I'm gonna give it four and a half empty boxes of death sticks on the. On the last page here. That's what it looks like. It looks like they're supposed to be cigarettes, and so why wouldn't they be death sticks? It's just fucking fantastic. I love learning, like, the Dr. Ammon's. [00:53:49] Speaker A: One of those doctor smokers, huh? [00:53:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:52] Speaker A: One of these doctors who knows they shouldn't smoke. But it's so intense. They must smoke. [00:53:56] Speaker B: It just feels so good on his T zone, Johnny. It's just. There's so much. There's just so much character here that we haven't had a chance to go over yet. It's very quickly. Like, we know that Dr. Bose and Dr. Amon are both bad. The literal six pages we get of a backstory on them sets them up and entirely separate ways. So they're. They're both evil in their own ways. And it can't be any clearer how different from each other they are. And that's that. I can't. It's very efficient. It's very efficient characterization, Johnny. And I fucking love it. [00:54:35] Speaker A: Well, it's cool because in a lesser story, they just have one doctor. Or like, it would be confusing about which was which, but this one definitely, yeah, does a good job. It's interesting to have both perspectives of like the boss and the underling. [00:54:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. [00:54:49] Speaker A: But it looks like we're not to worry about Dr. Aemond much longer. [00:54:52] Speaker B: Well, I mean, yeah, unless. Unless he gets nanited, which is possible. We'll see. We'll see. But yeah, the care and creating the character that went into this literally just to kill him at the end of the issue is fucking beautiful, Joni. [00:55:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's great. [00:55:09] Speaker B: It's just a great series. I love it. [00:55:11] Speaker A: Our second issue today was Sam and Twitch, Case Files Number five. And it's kind of the. Moving on to the next chapter. It's kind of the end of like the first chapter of this, I feel like, because it ends with the cliffhanger of him calling Sam. [00:55:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of like the mid season finale, like right before you leave for the holiday break. Something to kind of. It closes a little bit of something but leaves most of it open. So that way you're like, ah, shit gonna happen, man. [00:55:43] Speaker A: That's like, I've been rewatching Loss and like, you forget, like, they had to deal with like mid season breaks and like sweeps week and like there were like 23 episodes a season. It was some wild time. [00:55:53] Speaker B: There was. I mean, there was literally there was a season of Star Trek the Next Generation that ends on Jean Luc Picard's or Commander Riker saying, Fire, war. Mr. War. Fire. And then you have to wait a whole summer to see if he fires. And if a thing explodes, it's like, geez. It's like, geez. [00:56:14] Speaker A: The anticipation was great, though. [00:56:16] Speaker B: And now. And now we're pissed off if it doesn't all drop at once so that we can binge it in a single weekend and then immediately forget about it because we've tried to process it too quickly. [00:56:27] Speaker A: Yep. [00:56:28] Speaker B: Television is weird, Joni. [00:56:29] Speaker A: Television has become very strange. This is crazy. Like, back in the day they would be like writing the later episodes in the season while the first episodes were. [00:56:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Or sometimes like writing the episode as they're filming it because they had, you gotta keep going. [00:56:43] Speaker A: You gotta go. [00:56:44] Speaker B: Had a contractual obligation to have all of. To have us an episode A week. And it was like, shit, what are we doing? [00:56:52] Speaker A: Kind of like comic books in that way. [00:56:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Where we were going is very. This was a very mid season, mid season finale here. [00:57:01] Speaker A: Good issue. We get some answers to some of the mysteries. The cops are definitely behind it. And we get some views of the killer. I'm gonna give it four CRT TVs out of five. [00:57:12] Speaker B: Nice. You guys stack them all on top of each other and watch the same news channel on them. [00:57:17] Speaker A: Yes. [00:57:18] Speaker B: Just like a villain would face them out your window and the neighborhood kids will just be like, ah, now I. [00:57:23] Speaker A: Want to do a whole bunch of them where it makes one and then like makes one big picture. [00:57:26] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So like a mini Jumbotron. Nice. [00:57:29] Speaker A: Like a mini Jumbotron made out of CRT TVs. I miss that. I want to find out about like 911 by like walking down the street and seeing it on tv. [00:57:36] Speaker B: Yeah. You walk by the hardware, the electronics. [00:57:40] Speaker A: You'Re like, oh my God, man, I. [00:57:42] Speaker B: Would love that, Johnny. I guess you gotta live in New York for that though. Cause yeah, that's very hard to get. Even here in Chicago you need that density. You need to be walking down Bleecker street, passing by used bookstores and cafes and the electronic store with all the stuff in it, that secondhand shop that's owned by April O'Neill. You gotta go in there. She lives in the studio above it. So she's not in the store. She's probably upstairs. [00:58:08] Speaker A: They did the. They do that in Joker 2. I haven't seen it in the trailer. She's like watching him on the tv and she like breaks the glass and takes the TV home with her, but. [00:58:21] Speaker B: Because there's a little bitty man in there that lives in the tv. [00:58:24] Speaker A: And you know why? You know why I won't know any more context of that scene, David? Because I had plans to go see Joker 2 on Tuesday with my friend. There are no showtimes at night. The only showtimes are noon and 4:00. [00:58:37] Speaker B: What? [00:58:38] Speaker A: It's so weird. It's already like gone. It's like bombed hard. I like was like, oh, it'll be around for like a month or two, but nope. [00:58:45] Speaker B: No, it's. [00:58:46] Speaker A: It's hated. [00:58:48] Speaker B: It has probably already outstayed its welcome as far as many people. [00:58:51] Speaker A: It's probably already on streaming. But I still want to see it. I'm morbidly curious. There's very few movie musicals I don't like. Okay. [00:58:58] Speaker B: I would, I would like to see it. I would like to See if it is as deserving of the hate. [00:59:04] Speaker A: I imagine it's not. I imagine it's just kind of boring. [00:59:08] Speaker B: I think. I think a lot of people. People fucking hate musicals and I don't get it. Like, they're. [00:59:15] Speaker A: I like musicals. [00:59:15] Speaker B: Their reasoning for not liking musicals is they can't suspend their disbelief enough to enjoy them. And it's like, but you're going to watch fucking everything else that you watch that requires just as much suspense. [00:59:27] Speaker A: You think people really talk like they do in dialogue? Like, no one talks like that. [00:59:30] Speaker B: Do you think people's apartments are really that clean? [00:59:33] Speaker A: No, I was trying to think. The only movie musical I remember, like, really disliking is you might like it. I don't know, maybe you haven't seen it. But Repo. The Genetic opera, I don't like it. You're like, that's my favorite movie. [00:59:45] Speaker B: No, I didn't like it either. But I think that's because I found about it through the. The sort of channels of cult people who fucking loved it. [00:59:56] Speaker A: Right. I kept hearing about how awesome it was and I saw it and just didn't do anything. [00:59:59] Speaker B: It didn't. It didn't live up to the hype that I thought. I also think the music was bad. [01:00:04] Speaker A: Yeah, the music wasn't very good. [01:00:06] Speaker B: Like, it was. It was trying to be of the moment kind of edgy music. [01:00:10] Speaker A: And yeah, I did like. I do like the guy from Buffy, though, singing. [01:00:14] Speaker B: He's good. [01:00:15] Speaker A: Anthony Heald. [01:00:16] Speaker B: Anthony. Anthony Stewart Head. [01:00:18] Speaker A: That's his name. Nancy Stewart Head. [01:00:20] Speaker B: He was the best part of it. [01:00:22] Speaker A: He was originally cast in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd. It was gonna be him, Christopher Lee and someone else. And they were gonna sing Attend the tale Sweeney Todd. And that was originally gonna be in the movie and they filmed it and everything. [01:00:36] Speaker B: That would have been fucking amazing. [01:00:37] Speaker A: I can't remember who the third person was. It was Christopher Lee. Anthony Stewart Head and someone else. And they were gonna. They were gonna be the ghost chorus, but they cut it. Because if you remember, in Sweetie Todd, there's one scene where Anthony Stewart comes up and it's like, hello, Mr. Todd. [01:00:52] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [01:00:52] Speaker A: Yes. And it's just like, why is he in this movie? But yeah, it was going to be the ghost chorus. So. [01:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, because I think he gets. He gets his hair cut. He gets his hair cut off, Johnny. [01:01:02] Speaker A: Yes. [01:01:03] Speaker B: Just all of it. All of it in one fell swoop. Back to the rating. This issue is great, Johnny. It's spooky and it simultaneously clears up a little bit of issue we have with the police in Plainfield, Illinois, to make us like them a little bit and then immediately be like, oh, no, these guys fucking suck. Don't like them. So I do like that it's kind of, you know, it's informing you that. Don't think that we're trying to make these guys out to be heroes, because they are. No, they're bad. I like everything about it. Really. It's very good. Simon Kudransky and Todd McFarlane together make a great team. I'm going to give this four. Man yelling at the TVs. If you're yelling at the TV, something's wrong. Something's wrong to begin with. That TV can't hear you unless it's sports. [01:02:04] Speaker A: We'll allow it. [01:02:06] Speaker B: Sometimes that gets a little crazy. [01:02:08] Speaker A: Don't be a little out of hand. [01:02:09] Speaker B: Don't punch the television, please. It's not gonna do you any good. [01:02:13] Speaker A: Do you have to do. I was that game over to the OSU game, and I was home in Oklahoma a couple weeks ago. People are mean. They're just, like, screaming the worst things of those poor college kids, and yet. [01:02:24] Speaker B: They think they don't deserve money. [01:02:26] Speaker A: Right. This guy behind us was just like, you suck. Get it together. Just, like, screaming, geez. I was like, damn, dude, get over it. [01:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah, let's get over it. Well, Johnny, we need to get over these ratings and get on to letting the world know about some people we know who are very good in the Spawn community. [01:02:50] Speaker A: That's right. We've got a friend on Instagram, a fan page called Filled with necroplasmhellspawn. [01:02:58] Speaker B: Mm. [01:02:59] Speaker A: And it's just a dude who's got a lot of cool spawn stuff. [01:03:02] Speaker B: A lot of. A lot of cool, fun stuff. [01:03:05] Speaker A: A lot of fun Spawn stuff. But, yeah, he's got, like, action figures. Great collection in his room. [01:03:12] Speaker B: Yeah. He's got pictures of, like, the wall of figures as yet unopened. [01:03:20] Speaker A: Looks like he has similar tastes in music there, David. He's got a Gojira and a tool poster. [01:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah. He literally has a Persephone song on his. What's that profile on his main profile. So he's also into the progressive metal, which is very good. We could probably have a nice conversation about leprous if you want to reach out. Filled with necroplasm. Underscore Hellspawn. I'll talk leprous with you. Yeah, no, it's a great collection. It's real good shit. Look at that. Look at that fucking medieval cogliostro. He's got there. [01:03:53] Speaker A: Oh, nice. Lord Cogliostro. Who knew what a weasel he'd be. Yeah. So make sure to give him a follow. That's philandecroplasmhellspawn. While you're over there on Instagram, make sure to give us a follow. We are regarding SpawnPod. We absolutely do. And if you want to reach out, you can do it on Instagram. But if you want to reach out with a long form letter, you can hit us [email protected] Absolutely. I always like to ask a question to spur conversation and this week I want to ask. Did you ever discover a piece of news from watching on a CRT TV in an electronic store window? Has that happened to anybody? If it's happened to you, send us an email regarding swampodmail.com. [01:04:32] Speaker B: Please do. Please do. [01:04:34] Speaker A: It happens in movies all the time. [01:04:35] Speaker B: I definitely haven't had it happen, so. [01:04:37] Speaker A: No, I don't think so either. [01:04:39] Speaker B: I would be overjoyed to meet somebody it happened to, though. [01:04:42] Speaker A: Yes. [01:04:44] Speaker B: Like that would be a life defining moment for me. If it happens to me, I would never shut up about it. You would be sick of me even more than you already are. [01:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah. Remember when 9112 happened? I was walking down the streets of Chicago. [01:04:59] Speaker B: Can you, can you imagine what, what terrible tragedy would befall us that we just refer to it as 9 11? Two more planes, buildings, I guess. [01:05:10] Speaker A: I don't know. It's just got to be something that's like worse than 9 11. So it's called 911, I guess. [01:05:14] Speaker B: I guess. I guess it could only be 911 too, if the fucking Freedom tower gets hit by a plane too. [01:05:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Or if they do something bad on 9 11. [01:05:24] Speaker B: Yeah, boy, that's not fun to think about. [01:05:29] Speaker A: No. [01:05:30] Speaker B: No. So let's think of better things. Let's think of good things like Lonnie Bones. Lonnie Bones does our music. You should Google him. Lonnie Bones music. It's Lonnie with a Y and not an ie. He does good shit. [01:05:42] Speaker A: And we'd like to play his good shit on this show. And to keep this show going, we should read some more spawn, shouldn't we, David? [01:05:49] Speaker B: Yes, we absolutely should. And the good shit that we should be reading for the next time we get together and talk about this, we should continue on with some of these more contemporary issues that we have because we have to. We have to. It's. It's kind of like the magic trick of the hanky that never ends. It's Just like, we're winnowing down the stack of new comics to get through, and it's just building itself up from the bottom, and it's like, ah. So, yeah, we're going to read a couple of new issues, and for next time that we talk, it'll be monolith number three and main title spawn 356. [01:06:30] Speaker A: Cool. See how Monolith wraps up. [01:06:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it'll be. It'll be exciting. I'm very excited to read that Spawn again. I'm. I'm loving Main title Spawn. It's so much fun. It's really so much fun. [01:06:42] Speaker A: The great art. [01:06:43] Speaker B: It's. It's great. There's the variety in all of these different series that we have going on. It's just great. It's. [01:06:51] Speaker A: It's a lot of fun. [01:06:52] Speaker B: It's. I. I know at some point we're going to look back and be like, man, I wish we had the. The glut of riches like we had back then. So I'm trying to make sure that I enjoy every moment of it now. [01:07:06] Speaker A: Me too. [01:07:07] Speaker B: It's. It's some good shit. I don't know, man. [01:07:09] Speaker A: Spawn fever might ramp up even more after the movie. [01:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll be here for it. You will. You will learn about it. Hopefully not first from us, but at least at some point along the way, the way you will hear about it from us. Before you hear about it from us, you should make sure that other people hear about us from you. Be that you telling your coworkers, your family, your friends, or leaving us a nice rating and a review anywhere you give us a rating or review. [01:07:38] Speaker A: Or subscribe. [01:07:39] Speaker B: Or subscribe. Yes, please do. We love talking about Spawn. We want as many people to learn about Spawn as possible. I want everyone else to have the same conversation that I have with my mother where you try to explain Spawn, and. [01:07:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:56] Speaker B: And it just doesn't stick. And she's like, now, why do you like this? And it's like, because it's fun. I want everyone to. [01:08:02] Speaker A: He's a fun hell guy. [01:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. He's hanging out with dead people. He's beating up bad guys. You know, what more could you want? There's dinosaurs. [01:08:12] Speaker A: There's a gunslinger. [01:08:13] Speaker B: Yeah. There's a man in a chair. [01:08:17] Speaker A: Lots of men in chairs. [01:08:18] Speaker B: There's at least more than. There's at least one cigarette. Smoking man in this. Yeah, I was watching something. [01:08:24] Speaker A: All your X Files fans. [01:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I was watching something the other day, and the guy who played the cigarette smoking man was in it. And I was like, ah, it's a cigarette smoking man. [01:08:32] Speaker A: There he is. [01:08:33] Speaker B: What an iconic role, man. Well, speaking about iconic, Johnny, I have run out of things to say, so that leaves me with nothing to say. But may the Scorched be with you. [01:08:49] Speaker A: And also with you, David. [01:08:50] Speaker B: Hell yeah. [01:08:51] Speaker A: Hell yeah. Scorched.