Episode 81 - C2E2 - Relentless Geekery

Overview

We have a special guest on today – Stephen’s son Colin! Colin works at a comic book store and recently attended C2E2 in Chicago. We eagerly await the nerdy updates.

Colin tells us about the people he met and signatures collected.

then we talk about the new Spider-man movie – so SPOILER ALERT!

Merry Christmas!

Pinball kit – https://www.scientificsonline.com/product/build-your-own-pinball-machine-kit

C2E2 (Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo) – https://www.c2e2.com/

Hoopla – https://www.hoopladigital.com/

Spider-man: No Way Home: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10872600/

Substack – https://substack.com/

Recommendations

Tom Zahler Cupid’s Arrows – https://thomzahler.squarespace.com/#/cupids-arrows/

Richard Kadrey Sandman Slim – https://www.richardkadrey.com/sandman-slim

Trivia

What actor, famous for a starring role in a classic Christmas movie, played Ming Ming in Elf?

YouTube

Transcript

[00:00:41] Alan: products. Is that all right? Yeah. Let me leave that. One of the overall joys of the, of the Mac platform nowadays is that it really integrates well so that I can be working on something on my desktop, and then it can be easily available on my laptop without having. Save a [00:01:00] file somewhere, make sure that it’s shareable, you know, all that kind of stuff.

So I love that little, what they call it, you know, uh, uh, compatibility integration, whatever they have a nice of course, near copyrighted term, you know, just like they try to cover it from windows. Okay.

[00:01:18] Stephen: Welcome. And welcome to the fun buying for volunteer and see me. Okay.

[00:01:23] Colin: Yeah. Yeah. All right.

[00:01:25] Stephen: So we got our third guest on, as Alan pointed out our third esteem.

Yes. My son call him and he’s the geek of the week because he works at a comic bookstore, which is like the dream job for any 20 year old.

[00:01:42] Alan: Right. Exactly. That either that or pinball testing back in the old days,

[00:01:47] Stephen: by the way, Allen side too, before I forget, I was at the little red wagon, which is a really cool toy store in the area.

We had a kid. Cardboard kit, you put [00:02:00] together as a pinball machine, working pinball machine, it’s all peppered fold it and put it together. And then you have a cardboard working pin moment.

[00:02:08] Alan: Wow. That’s I was thinking the other day, you know, I haven’t gotten a 3d printer yet, but it’s, it’s literally like Christmas money is going to do that for that, for, there are so many puzzles that I like, I mangled a piece and I want to recreate, and I’m talking, not jigsaw puzzles, but like so much and Rubik’s cube and those kinds of things.

And it used to be that you just kind of said goodbye and put it in the box and never played with it again. But now I have a thing called screw loose where it’s a, um, um, a big enough and screw and there’s maze on the inside of the shaft of the screw that you can’t see because you’re working with the nut over it.

It’s got a little nub on the nut. That is what cracks the path through it. If you someone decided that they were going to play with it and they force it and they snap the nub off. So now, you know how you solved, amazed. You just move the nut up and down. [00:03:00] Now I can actually recreate that particular thing and any number of other things.

So just have to go back to what you were saying. You know, it’s not only for puzzles, it’s the, um, oh, well it, the possibility of being able to get to something that I thought was a lost cause is really nice. We’ll have to

[00:03:18] Stephen: talk to get our printers and talk about that. I’ll add it to the list. It sounds like Collins audio, we’re talking about other stuff.

We don’t ever do that. But Colin, besides working at the story, you just went the . So tell everybody what C2 is and tell us all the cool things. And we’ll probably have plenty to interrupt

[00:03:39] Colin: you with. Sure. So, um, stands for Chicago comic and entertainment expo. It is one of the largest comic cons in the country.

I look at it as the largest con that is still about mostly comics. Cause you know, you look at San Diego and you look at [00:04:00] New York, the two actually largest cons. And they’re both very much focused on the movies and the shows. Now like you look at the guest list and sure, Jim Lee shows up at both every year, but 90% of it is TV and movie people.

[00:04:15] Alan: Um, the castle supernatural, the castle, the next star wars was yeah,

[00:04:20] Stephen: we, we saw, we saw the Avengers trailer at New York. Comic-Con one year we went.

[00:04:26] Colin: Yeah. It, and I don’t know when I go to a comic con I want omics stuff. And so was always kind of at the top of my list to visit. I remember growing up reading, starting with the new 52 Batman stuff, they had VC would run ad around October.

For Chicago. And they would have a list of every guest that did DC comics at the time. And I was always looking and I’m like, oh my God, those are my favorite creators. This is gotta be like comic book [00:05:00] Mecca.

[00:05:00] Alan: Yeah, exactly. It used to be that way. It Comicons that each of the major publishers would actually have like a little city, you know, they’d have 10 BU’s that they grouped together into.

They had their own big, uh, Quonset huts, and they gathered all their people there. And that’s where you’d go and meet everyone. You know what I mean? It wasn’t individuals on artists, Sally, and stuff like that. It was the entire dark horse of staff or Marvel or DC or image or whoever it was at the time.

And that was wonderful. So Chicago still does that. They have a big presence from major publishers, I guess, and stuff like

[00:05:34] Colin: that. Yes. Uh, this year and last year. Well, the last time they did it was, um, 20, 20 March, uh, Um, and those two, um, Marvel and DC weren’t there and they normally are. Um, but, uh, so like the more minor publishers got [00:06:00] their spot, which I thought was kind of cool.

Um, after shock, uh, AWA and source point press, which is actually Ohio base, they’re local, they’re from Kansas. Um, they all kind of got this space up front that Marvel normally had, which I thought was really neat. Like a, uh, aftershock brought every comic they’ve ever published all their even out of print stuff.

And I was kind of going a little crazy. I was trying to not by trade, but I was like, oh, I want some

[00:06:32] Alan: right. You were trying to get current and you don’t want to find every one of the last 36 issues. The trades were no fulfilling. Okay. Exactly.

[00:06:41] Colin: So, yeah, it was cool. Um, it was. Conventions massive. I only got to see the show floor, but there were two other floors of things going on.

They had six different, uh, like event hall rooms that they were doing [00:07:00] animals and, uh, talks and discussions in. And then they had like, kind of like a party hall underneath the show floor where like people would go and play like in D and gaming. And then in the evening after the show floor is closed, they would do raves and like, like Hangouts and club stuff.

So did

[00:07:21] Stephen: you get to any of the talks or anything? Oh

[00:07:24] Colin: God. No. Oh no. I had to work the whole time, you know, and when I wasn’t working, I wanted to spend money.

[00:07:31] Stephen: So sounds a lot like an RG, you know, it kind of is,

[00:07:36] Colin: um, you know, it’s an RG, if they’re also. You know, 300 comic book shops, right. In the same area, which sounds

[00:07:46] Stephen: like G I agree.

[00:07:50] Alan: I’ll tell you those. I love going to those. I always went to Chicago Comicon before wizard world bought it. And I guess this is a reply to that. That it’s, it’s not what was rural has [00:08:00] become, as you said, it’s kind of celebrity based and what are the professional wrestlers doing here? You know, that kind

[00:08:04] Stephen: of

[00:08:04] Colin: stuff and wrestlers there too.

And there were some celebrities like Aiden Christiansen was there. Um, and, uh, the all, gosh, the guy who was the one big, bad in, uh, in breaking bad. And he also is in the Mandalorian. He’s the, uh, G uh, a moth.

[00:08:26] Alan: Yeah, there we go. Exactly. It’s a Hispanic gentleman. What’s his name? Really good. He’s got that. Like, you don’t know when he’s going to break into violence, he’s very calm.

And he like orders people’s deaths as if he’s ordering, you know, a burrito or something like that. So,

[00:08:42] Colin: yeah, he’s great. But they were like the two big movie people, and then there were some more, there were a bunch of voice actors and stuff, but really the focus was put on artists, Allie with the comic book creators.

There was a great line up this year. I was going nuts. Um, in Sealy was [00:09:00] there, uh, Amanda Conner and, uh, Jimmy Palo Mati, um,

[00:09:05] Alan: from collaborate. Exactly well

[00:09:07] Colin: they’re husband and wife.

[00:09:09] Stephen: Oh, I

[00:09:09] Alan: honestly, I never knew that

it’s wild, I guess, a deeper collaboration than I knew.

[00:09:20] Stephen: Jenny,

[00:09:21] Colin: Jenny Friesian, um, who was really nice. She had like this bright light. Electric purple hair. I could describe it as it was really cool. Um, Ryan and I’ll Higgins are best known for their power Rangers stuff. And they’re creating a superhero universe for image.

I was kind of losing my mind about that. Uh, Charles Sule one of my favorite writers. Um, Rob Liefeld was there, but I didn’t really care. Um,

[00:09:49] Alan: it’s funny. He made a big contribution, but his time has passed. And he also from, I don’t know what, whatever, the various different ways of comic book people gathered to communicate, [00:10:00] he has not always been pleasant and sometimes no matter how good your work is, that can turn the crowd against you.

You know what I mean? If you’re just a little bit too arrogant or too much of a jerk or whatever else it might be, and his reputation is not good, he really might be a really nice guy in person, but he’s put things in print or read forever. That really are not. Oh, well,

[00:10:21] Colin: yeah. Well, I, I, I am not much of a fan of his.

And I have a habit at my store of tide of trash talking to him a little bit. Cause, um, you know, the whole no feet thing and everything.

[00:10:34] Stephen: Right. But, uh,

[00:10:35] Alan: I do appreciate it when a comic book is still like 22 pages of story and art, not four different two-page splashes. So it’s like a poster book instead because it was wrong for that.

You know what I mean? Just all of a sudden it well, and they were the pages usually, but they were like, wow, this isn’t advancing the plot and no.

[00:10:53] Colin: Oh, sorry, sorry. Sorry. Uh, I had to watch what I said because [00:11:00] he’s known for getting people kicked out of conventions. If they say anything negative about his stuff, how well has the power to do

[00:11:08] Alan: that?

[00:11:12] Stephen: Just don’t express your opinion up here. Talk to him

[00:11:16] Alan: or

[00:11:16] Stephen: something ridiculous. You know? No, I

[00:11:18] Colin: just, I just stayed away because I would have a hard time not being.

Uh, but the artist’s alley was wild. It was sorry.

[00:11:30] Stephen: You guys go ahead. I got to grab this. Sorry.

[00:11:33] Colin: Okay. Um, it was, uh, literally 26 rows a to Z with like a dozen people in each row. And not everyone was like top level comic book creator. There were a lot of indie people there too. Um, my dad’s friend, Tom Zoeller, who’s done some art for him.

He’s commissioned him few times. Was there

[00:11:54] Alan: every month. Yeah, exactly. So,

[00:11:58] Colin: yeah, so it was [00:12:00] cool. It was, it was a really nice wide range of creators and they did a good job of not being like, okay, all the A’s are. And then the rest of it,

[00:12:09] Stephen: all, everyone,

[00:12:11] Alan: here’s the JV squad or whatever you want to call it. It

[00:12:14] Colin: was all intermixed, you know, like the, the, the heavy, heavy hitters, like Liefeld and Amanda condor and Palla Matti, they were up in the age category, but, um, everyone else was mixed in Tim.

Steely was in like he or something. So like, it was, it was a good mix of top-level comic creators and, um, other indie artists, which I think was really cool. Yeah. Artists,

[00:12:41] Alan: Sally is always a very dangerous place for me because I tend to like go down the line and say, what are you working on? And sure. I’ll buy a copy and you do that.

And all of a sudden you’ve got, you know, plastic bags where the plastic is cutting into your fingers. Cause they’re too heavy. That kind of stuff. Seeing people’s [00:13:00] new work, supporting people that are giving things a try, you know, so, and especially then when you see them year after year, and, and I’m recognizable enough, remember me by name, but there’ll be like, Hey, and you start to have a nice rapport with catching up on, okay, here’s the neck.

That’s how we got to know Ted Sikora was that I discovered a Palmer early and didn’t just like, let him peddle his wares to me. We actually had a conversation about, wow, the artwork a lot, like John Busa. And, and, and if anything, we, we try to have a conversation where like, when you show that, you know, a little bit of what’s going on, that you’re not just new to the thing, but that you’ve been around for awhile.

And you, you just, you ask intelligent questions. You let you give them a chance to talk about what, what they love about the field and stuff like that. I’ve had really nice conversations with people that, you know, we didn’t know each other from Adam, but immediately you’re both fans. And if you do it that way, there’s not just please sign this so I can put it on eBay, but, you know, tell me, tell me more about what Le what music you listened to while you were.

It just, you take it to a different [00:14:00] level and then they kind of don’t want you to leave because so many other corrections are, you know, handshake sign. This it’s much more shallow if you

[00:14:08] Stephen: will. And that’s, that’s what I told the kids. We went to New York. I did get a thing to see Stan Lee, uh, because Colin was 12.

He was excited. You know what I mean? It was like $150. We stood in line for how long called like two hours. And it was shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, you know, and literally there was like the, the body guard you had the hand, the book to, and then you shuffled to the right in front of Stan and Stan sign.

He never even looks up, goes like, oh my gosh, I love you. I love to meet you like great kid. And they shovel shovel call. It’s still kind of like, this is great, you know, take the book and walk away. No way. But we got the meat and I’ve mentioned this before, uh, Peter Mayhew to Baca and we talked to him for like 20 minutes.

Him and his wife, his wife’s like is tall is Coleen. And he’s like six inches taller than you. So I mean,

[00:14:58] Colin: sitting down, he was taller [00:15:00] than me when I was 12.

[00:15:01] Stephen: That’s funny,

[00:15:05] Alan: Steven, you and I have talked about this before. Maybe you had some of this color, like, because I tend to, not only like the most popular stuff, but I like the odd stuff sometimes.

Like, while everybody’s over visiting with Christian center or something like that, you get a chance to talk to. And going back into the past year, I was there with gene. Colon was there and nobody was either recognizing him or his like, how can you not this guy? Like he did, he did Daredevil. He did so much great work.

Absolutely. And I loved the fact that maybe, you know, if nobody recognizes Martin Odell creator of green lantern, I talked to him for half an hour instead of the, just shuffle along. Thank you. I love your work type thing. So I hope you had some of those experiences as well. You know,

[00:15:51] Colin: I got the meat. Um, so most of the creators that I got stuff signed from, it was a little too busy and I was kind of rushing around.

Cause I only had [00:16:00] an hour or two to look around and do stuff. Right, right. But, um, Jim , he’s, he’s a fairly obscure artist. He’s done a lot of stuff, but a lot of it’s like fill-in issues for various things. Um, I love his work because he did, um, with Charles Sule run on red lanterns, specifically the run when guy, Gardner and Supergirl were red lanterns.

And that run, I think is one of the most underrated runs I’ve ever loved. I ever read, I love it. Tibet and California did, um, like the back half of the series, a, the art for it. And, um, so I was, I was getting stuff signed. He’s like no one ever talks about red ladder. And like, it’s one of my favorite series of all time.

And he’s like, I, it was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done. I am so glad someone’s read it. And I ended [00:17:00] up buying a beautiful splash page that he did for the series. Um, and I, I wa I walked in the Connick wanting to buy it a page, ended up walking out with two big spreads and a, uh, single page. So I think I’d made out that way, but we talked for about 10 minutes about the run and he gave me his email and he’s like, Hey, uh, I want you to send me a picture of your green color.

Oh, yeah.

[00:17:32] Stephen: And that’s it, you know, like you said, you know, now he’s made that connection. So the next con, you know, it’s, it’s, this is getting a little, uh, off the topic, but I’ve told. Don’t close doors and do things like this because now Colin can send those pictures and he has a dialogue with this guy. And if he’s like, Hey, I need some advice and you’ll get it.

You know, it’s those little things. And when somebody says, Hey, I [00:18:00] just wrote this comic, you know, um, I don’t, I’m not looking to sell it. I’m not looking for you to tell me what to do. I just thought I’d send it to you because I like you. It that’s what you did call in with your crypted stuff. You just made those lists.

And suddenly he was being asked to talk places and it led to other things. There’s my rant goes along with my talk I’ve been doing, I can’t help it. Sorry.

[00:18:22] Alan: I really do agree with that. Now that I’ve spoken at a couple of Comicons, it’s really cool when you have a little speaker badge, and then they say, what are you talking about?

And so they’ll be like, well, I’m going to talk about, uh, you know, female archetypes and comic books or mad magazine and like, well, I love mad magazine. And then you’ve got an off, you know, a nice opening. I’ve never been in the field, but I know a lot about this from having loved them for 60 years. And so it’s, it’s very cool that, um, by being someone that is doing something peripheral to the field, at least now you kind of have a little bit of I’m with you instead of I’m only on the outside.

And I don’t know who was, it doesn’t matter that actually had come [00:19:00] to see one of my talks and he very nicely commented. You really know your stuff. Why aren’t you doing this more? I said, well, I’m kind of just breaking it in. I haven’t been doing it at Comicons cause Comicon stopped for awhile. Anyway.

It’s um, when I get a chance, like I said, I, you know, this podcast is a little bit about name-dropping. I had wonderful conversations with and Jack Kirby and like diets in the field because of a little bit of what I talked about. When you say like Collin said, you know, everybody knows about, um, Franco’s work on.

Wow,

uh,

[00:19:34] Stephen: agents cover all those incredible

[00:19:42] Alan: X-Men like before Neal Adams took over. And so it’s kind of cool. And then when you say, well, I really love those too. And they will often say, oh, I love doing that. You know, I kind of did a favor for a friend because they were between artists writer, teams. And so they said, go, I’ll do whatever you want.

And it’s, [00:20:00] it’s very cool to be able to drop that little obscure reference because that way they know that you really, so for instance, when you, for the listeners to read lessons were cool because, you know, everything was about green lantern. At one point, the mighty minds at DC said, you know, there’s a whole Roy G Biff spectrum of different colors that there probably should be free lanterns and yellow lanterns and blue and all that kind of stuff.

And they kind of assigned them to various different emotionality is right. You know, so the red lanterns are all about all about rate. And so that’s. One of the reason that that’s cool is, you know, all the superheroes that, uh, after continually control themselves because they’re too powerful and could really bust things up if they lose it.

Well, you named a couple that if Supergirl kind of goes, man, it’s not good for the rest of the universe. And anyway, you know what I mean? So it’s cool when you get to tap into why they loved working on what they did, that it wasn’t just, Hey, it was a job and I got my paycheck, but they really, they are also a big green lantern fans.

They want to see your collection. [00:21:00] That’s a really cool,

[00:21:03] Stephen: it’s also, you start finding out the ones that really are fans and love it and are an artist and able to get into it then that way, but still our fanboys and the ones that, like you said, just do it for them. Because you’ll talk to them, like, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, I haven’t really read any of that, but I do my pictures. Do you want something sign? Okay. Don’t talk to me anymore. And you get those and it’s like, I don’t want to talk to you. I’ll

[00:21:28] Alan: I’ll tell you. There’s some people that are really wonderful at convention. You know, George Perez is now hailing.

He’s got pancreatic cancer and we’re not going to happen for much longer. I remember him being at cons where he’s a very quick artist, but perfect. And so everybody would like, Hey, could you draw this? And he’s drawing everybody. Cause he did those big, like Avengers JLA crossover issues and stuff. And there’s any number of times where someone would say, Hey, could you draw a ghost writer?

And he’d be like, well, I never drew him, but he’d do a perfect ghost writer because he just had this encyclopedic comic book [00:22:00] mind. He knew everything. So I, you know, that’s another note, especially for writers, it’s often. Like a scholarly discussion. Cause you’re kind of talking about the act of writing and stuff like that, but artists are continually sketching and showing off a little bit.

It’s very cool to see someone to be able to do a perfect Nick fury, just sitting down there and hands it to you. And, and of course some people started to charge for them. And that’s, I don’t know. I, I am from the old days when it was thank you for being at the Comicon, I’m happy to have you as a fan.

Here’s a free sketch instead of 20 and 50 and a hundred dollars and it’s become in some cases quite mercenary. I’m not sure.

[00:22:39] Colin: I will say though, you know, a lot of those people then who would get it would then turn around and sell it themselves. And, you know, with the artists kind of getting screwed by the big companies for, uh, kind of the rights of what they’ve done, you know, I think charging for a quick sketch, [00:23:00] I really don’t ever have an issue.

Yeah.

[00:23:03] Stephen: It’s it’s, there’s some of them though, like that captain America movie from the seventies or whatever that the actor was at a comic con, I obviously nobody recognized him because nobody remembered that movie from 50 years ago and he’s there and I’m walking by and I’m looking like captain Meg, who’s this she’s like, Hey, you want to come in and talk to me?

There is free. Okay. Yeah. How you doing? He goes, well, it’s 50 bucks. Well, screw that. Oh, you know who

[00:23:28] Colin: you are. They stuck him at that. Comic-Con right next to one of the golden age artists who did captain America, did they get a lot of the finishes? And I’m like, why?

[00:23:41] Stephen: Yeah. There there’s a leak of some kind calling.

You got some really cool books in your hand while you were there. Talk about that. Here you go.

[00:23:52] Colin: Friday, the, uh, uh, sorry, Thursday, the first day we were there, the day we were saying. Um, we got the booth [00:24:00] mostly put together and then my boss was like, I just have to put the wall books back up and figure it out.

And he’s like, that’s a one person job. If you want to look around, you’re more than welcome. And I’m like, okay, bye. And I sipped away and I was walking around. And so I came into the con with the intention of only buying Greenland and stuff. I wanted to get a page. I wanted to fill a couple holes of my ears and I wanted to find a low grade affordable golden age, green lantern issue.

Um, I accomplished most of those goals. Um, so I was looking at the booth that, you know, they had boxes of stuff that I could afford, but they also had, you know, comics that were several thousand dollars or more. Right. Right. Well, I got the, see, uh, A 0.5 complete, but completely [00:25:00] detached and everything. Copy of detective comics, 27,

[00:25:04] Alan: um, origin of Batman.

[00:25:06] Stephen: I’d never gotten to

[00:25:08] Colin: see that before. I was really excited about that.

[00:25:11] Stephen: And then right after that

[00:25:14] Colin: one did not know. Um, so one of the other booths that I saw they had in the display case, and I’m probably forgetting stuff this little, this the big, like, like eight foot long display case. That’s dead on auction at our website ear.

Um, 7.0 highest rated ever. Superman number one, which was the one that sold at like during the con, like the auction ended, it went for 2.6, 5 million. Wow. Um, captain America comics, number one at a brief five. Um, they had an action one at eight to two and a half restored. Um, which I had not seen any of those books before either.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Alan: Oh my God. Yeah. Without really touching distance. Right.

[00:26:04] Colin: Um, with comics two slash one, you know, it’s complicated with that, you know, first Shizam, um, uh, detective comics, 29, which is the third Batman, they had that at us, which is

[00:26:20] Stephen: insane

[00:26:22] Colin: grading wise. And for those of you listening that don’t know comic grading, um, you get them in these big classics blabs in they’re graded on a scale of, uh, one to 10, uh, 1.5 to

[00:26:33] Alan: 10,

[00:26:35] Colin: 9, 8 being the most reasonable that you can get with a modern book at perfect condition, 99.9 and tens exists.

But they’re really rare even with brand new books right off. Um, so seeing some of these old comics at crazy grades still,

[00:26:57] Stephen: they

[00:26:57] Alan: are the more valuable they are, especially anything [00:27:00] that has survived 50, 60, 70 years. And somehow not been turned into a place mat, not, you know, had the doggies or something like that.

[00:27:09] Colin: Um, the coolest book for me that I saw, um, was at the booth with all these crazy ones. The guy was really nice. We were chatting for a few minutes about stuff. He was like, oh, what do you collect? And I’m like, Greenland lantern wearing a green Lander and hat and the green lantern mask and a green lantern shirt with a Greenland and ring on I’m like, I was really trying to convey what I was into

[00:27:29] Alan: there,

[00:27:33] Colin: but I’m like Greenland. And he’s like, oh, well, you know, I have one, two and three. I’m like, oh cool. I was thinking he was talking about the silver age volume without Jordan. No, he had one, two and three of the golden age stuff, which was Alan Scott from the. And he he’s like, you want to see him? And I’m like, yes.

So he brought them out and I’m looking at, I’m like, oh my God. And, um, he’s like, you want [00:28:00] to hold the number one?

[00:28:03] Alan: Isn’t that?

Right?

[00:28:10] Stephen: Well, it was in like, it was

[00:28:11] Colin: in like two bags and board and then a thicker Mylar thing. And then, and then in a top loader, so it was protected. There’s was like, like an inch and a half of plastic between me and that comic. Right. But I was holding it and he’s like, you know what, give me your phone.

I’ll take a picture of you with it. I’m like, okay. So I have a

[00:28:30] Stephen: picture of me holding

[00:28:31] Colin: it right next to my face. Massive smile. That’s hit by my a mask, but that was really cool. Um, no one had an all American 16, which is the first appearance of Alan’s got the original.

But there’s only, I think, like 30 known in existence. So that was a bit of a,

[00:28:53] Alan: yeah. That is one of the cool things about, you know, again, for those who aren’t necessarily comic book collectors, you know, there’s grading services [00:29:00] now that do this, um, verified grading so that everybody can really agree. This is the condition that it’s in and therefore the value.

And one of the things that they’ve had come out of the data they collect is, well, these are the books that are really not only valuable because of conditions because of rarity. Like if we know that generally 30, there were things back then in the print runs of the hundreds of thousands, but they got tooled up into paper drive.

They got rid of a read by kids and kids aren’t, but are gentle necessarily. And sort of find out that there really are only 30 copies out there. And you’re saying this 7.0 is the best known existing copy. I don’t know people nowadays in this. Easy copying of everything, digital to go back to Adams and to go back over there was really provable scarcity.

That’s that’s still a very interesting thought for people to get their minds around that it’s not custom, but it sure is scary. You know what I mean?

[00:29:54] Colin: So I, I kind of, it felt like I was going through a museum. I [00:30:00] was seeing all these crazy pieces of comic book history everywhere. Um, the other cool thing is there were a couple people that had ages of original artwork that that’s all they dealt.

Um, so there was, there was one place called Anthony’s art and rare comics or something like that. Um, they had easily a thousand binders of comic art ranging from like the fifties to now, um, There was

[00:30:32] Alan: one that wasn’t hard to find that stuff. So if you were into that early, you really could accumulate that incredible collection just by going to a con and saying, I don’t know.

So how did they used to work at certain publishers? Did they held onto the art? Others returned it to the artist. And so artists will be selling their own stuff at cons for like five bucks a page or something like that. You know, that was a way of getting a little bit more money. Maybe I under guests, I don’t think it was ever five, but 10, 20, 50, a hundred compared to what it’s [00:31:00] worth nowadays was still an incredible bargain to be able to buy into something that now has become, um, more rare.

And especially the original art really is a water. You know, this is that this guy, if he came to splash page four, fantastic for number 48 or something like that, you know, but like, wow, for those who don’t know, but that’s before number 48 is the coming up the lactose if I remember correctly. And so that’s one of those things that everybody wants that image.

Did so many great iconic images. And to have like, this is the, this is the, what do they call it back then? No bristle board, whatever it was, you know, it’s bigger than a comic book page. It’s usually what was your, like the blue and white little squares around it, wherever they were it’s it’s cool to get that insight into what they did to make them become a comic book and like penciled instead of ink.

So you can really see, this is what came out of Jack Ruby’s head. That’s just amazing. So anyway,

[00:31:58] Colin: I [00:32:00] got to see an actual curvy page while I was there. Um, well I was, uh, I didn’t get to look at it for super long because, um, it was, it was one of those boosts that all they had, they had like three binders of art and that was eight and it was all stuff in the tens of thousands of dollars.

They were nice enough to let this kid. Look through them, but there were actual customers, a looking at that stuff and I’m like, okay, I probably should walk away. But it was a page from hunger dog, which was Kirby’s big finale of his fourth world saga. And it was really cool. It had, um, it had some of the minions of dark side on it.

And then it was, I think it was the page when the building collapses on a Ryan, right. The beginning of the story. Um, so it was really cool and I w an especially cool page, cause this was in the eighties, right. At the end of Kirby’s [00:33:00] time as a main artist on comics, you know, after that, he really just kind of did concepts and stuff every once in a while he’d do something.

Right. But this was something that not only did he pencil himself, but he ink himself. Which was rare. Oftentimes Kirby would pump them out so fast. You would have to have two or three incurs just to get the

[00:33:19] Alan: book done. There were certain people that really worked a lot with him.

[00:33:24] Stephen: Yeah.

[00:33:25] Colin: Vince Colletta did a lot of the stuff in the late sixties and seventies, and I don’t like his inks.

Um, they’re too thin. Anyway, cut out stuff. He would lose a lot of the detail that Kirby would put in. Um, there was actually this project going on right now. Some people have to let it ink pate, Kirby pages. Um, and what they’re doing is they’re using, um, microscopes and it kind of, I want to say x-ray, but I don’t think it’s actually x-ray technology to try to find the, a raced pencil marks to try to figure out [00:34:00] what Kirby, but there that.

[00:34:04] Alan: Um, I know that they’ve done that for like famous painting. You know, when they find out that this fresco is falling apart and they want to fix it, recreate it, they do all that. X-ray mammography is not quite the right word, but you want, I mean, this, the spectral analysis and the fact that it’s not only for Rembrandt paintings, but for type of pages is a really cool thing that people really want to see what was going on with Herbie.

That sometimes his work was bettered most often worsened by whoever has anchor, you know, so that’s very

[00:34:33] Stephen: cool. They’re using the technologies to do that type of stuff. You know, it’s like those TV shows where they drain the ocean and things that used to be there archeologically and they recreate it and you look at

[00:34:45] Colin: it through AR and you see, I love that.

So, um, my favorite page that I did see though, was a cover was the cover for Greenland in 56, [00:35:00] from the silver age, it was a Gil Kane. And it had, it still had the plastic stuff they used for the letters and everything. So like you had the, the DC logo, the

[00:35:11] Stephen: tone

[00:35:11] Alan: for various different things and that my God, okay.

Anybody on the cover leaning back. So you can look up his nostrils because that’s my characteristic thing about bilocate art. Isn’t how many guys wear the nostrils shots?

[00:35:26] Stephen: No,

[00:35:27] Colin: it was, there was this big purple face monster that was like grappling with, uh, how Jordan on the cover. That’s what it was. Um, nostril.

No, but it was, it was really cool. And, um, I was like, I can, I just look at it closer because it was on the wall and the lady that was helping me. Cause that was the place that I bought a couple of pages I have. Um, the lady that was helping me was like, yeah, it’s free to look. And I’m like, okay, [00:36:00] Very cool.

So yeah, that was, that was really interesting. Um, it was, it was a great time. I ended up finding a good chunk of the green lantern issues I needed, which I was very glad for. Um, I got the first guy Gardner, which is issue 59 of green lantern, which is a book that’s going crazy right now because of the TV show.

I got the first silver age appearance of Alan Scott, which is something that I was really hunting for because it’s also going to go crazy because of the TV show. That’s a showcase 55, um, uh, first black hand number, uh, Greenland in 29. So I was really, I, I I’m miss, I, I, I’m only missing four keys now and then I’ll have every key of Greenland.

And since the silver age,

[00:36:49] Alan: I asked him, I mean, it, you know, cause I was buying all along. I don’t know that I actually had to fill in my collection that much since like the midst. That’s not, [00:37:00] I was buying them from people. I always got everything current, but already back then I was filling in all the dark devils.

I had missed all the Thor’s, all the exponent, all, you know, like I was more of a Marvel than a DC fan in terms of wanting to go back and fill things in. But man, how many Comicons and I don’t know nowadays, you don’t do it on paper, but I used to have this little list that was, you know, all by once. And of course it got folded and put into my pocket so many times it starts to fray at the holes.

You know what? I’d go through the boxes and pull things out. It might be that now once you’re looking for keys, you’re not necessarily hunting through boxes. You’re looking at the wall, you’re looking at very select things. And so it’s not so much a pressure hunt in terms of finding them. It’s more like, wow, this is money.

Am I going to invest in so good for you? And that’s really cool. Okay. I

[00:37:51] Colin: actually, I, I, um, wrote out because I, I didn’t know how well the internet was going to be. Um, at the con. So I had a [00:38:00] little note that I wrote every key I was missing in the market price for each grade. Um, so I would, I would be in there prepared and I wouldn’t be like, oh, I don’t remember if that’s a fair price for it or not.

I would be able to tell and be able to negotiate

[00:38:16] Alan: easier. I had exactly the same thing, but back then it was the Overstreet type of price right there wasn’t that. But I remember that boy, you know, I didn’t grow up in Morocco. And so I didn’t learn about how to handle at a bizarre, where did I learn to haggle and a Comic-Con you know, where you’d be like, okay.

Yeah. There’s like four things I want to buy. And the total is like 56 bucks. Can we bring it down to 50? And how many times they, I was like, sure. It’s like, wow, I can just ask it. He gives me six bucks. You know, it was the first time. I like an adult.

[00:38:51] Stephen: I don’t feel like that most of the time

[00:38:56] Colin: is what what’s fun is when I’m trying to do the [00:39:00] haggling.

If I got the exhibitor badge that I did odd, they oftentimes would give me a little bit more of a break,

[00:39:07] Stephen: which was nice. Doesn’t that sound like some sort of game, you know, where you have your certain comics and what other people want and you’re haggling and trading money. I mean, it sounds like a game we play.

[00:39:21] Alan: I know there’s been times like the game of five. You know, I’m getting ready to buy something and I’m, I’m about to haggle with the guy. And then somebody next to me, he says, if he doesn’t buy it, I’ll take it. And it’s like, well, I guess I don’t have much bargaining room now

[00:39:37] Stephen: he’s ready to snipe me.

Probably a plan. He just sits around every time someone wants to haggle, he goes up and says that

[00:39:45] Alan: I honestly, I never thought of that. That’s probably what it was that he had. That’s very funny.

[00:39:52] Stephen: I hate haggling. It’s just my DNA, my upbringing, you know, my mother would never make it in any of those middle Eastern [00:40:00] bizarre, but I, I like, oh, you want that much?

Okay, here you go on. You know, it’s so hard for me to handle.

[00:40:07] Alan: Honestly, it wasn’t easy. It was just kind of an experiment when it worked, then it encourages it, but you know, where I don’t handle and help me. And I’ve been, maybe we went on a cruise and got off the car. And everybody else was targeting and it’s like, man, if there’s anybody that needs money more than I do, it’s these folks, oh, buy the t-shirt for what you’re asking prices.

I’ll buy that. It just didn’t occur to me to try to get them down when it’s like, that’s less food for their kids know here, more food. So that’s a very like white Western attitude. And yet that’s how I feel is that I’ve been blessed with having enough money to go on a cruise. What am I good at these guys?

Don’t

[00:40:45] Stephen: that’s saying this is across the board. Not saying it’s everybody, you know, I know there are issues and there are differences in countries. I I’ve been on a ship. I worked in, you know, I was there at the bars that were run that, you know, so I understand all of that. But the [00:41:00] cool thing with today’s world is a lot of those people, they do that.

It’s a side hustle because they go home and they run three businesses off their phone and they do it while sitting there waiting for somebody to buy a clunk. So, I’m not saying it’s everybody, and I know there’s some that still do it and struggle just to make a little money, but there’s a big change in the world with some of those.

Yeah.

[00:41:22] Alan: I know I’ve had people I didn’t mind haggling with because they seemed Katy. You mean when somebody is asking too much for like a count shouldn’t cost that much. How about we offer half that because he hasn’t marked up because he knows people are going to have, try to haggle them down. So you just kind of play the game by the rules instead of being the, the, the idiot that’s waiting to be fleeced.

Anyway. So, uh, any anybody that you were surprised to see there? You know what I mean? Uh, it was, it was there any, I, I imagine it’s a buildup to it is they publish those big artists list and you know, who you’re wanting to seek out. [00:42:00] Was there anybody that was like, oh, I didn’t know. You’re um, working on this now or working for a different company now, any, any big surprises?

[00:42:07] Colin: Um, I think the biggest surprise was that Jenny Friesian was. Um, because , their website was having trouble before the show. So, um, it wasn’t completely updated and it wasn’t completely accurate and everything. So that made it really difficult trying to bring stuff to get signed. Um, right. And their guests split was different from the artists Allie list, because I think what, what the guests were, where people they specifically asked to come and people like, like if they happen to have a booth in artist alley, they were given that instead of purchasing it, whereas the artist alley lists where people that purchased it, then you could have AAA creators who purchased a spot in artist alley that wouldn’t be listed as a guest.

And I didn’t figure that out until after the fact [00:43:00] I

[00:43:00] Alan: had to find everybody cause there wasn’t.

[00:43:04] Colin: Alright. I, I, I had a, I have a department of truth, number one, which is my favorite comment going on right now, the, uh, Kenyan shop, exclusive variant cover that he signed because I supported him on sub stack. Um, and he sent it to me.

Um, that’s a crazy expensive book. It’s phone for like 500 bucks on eBay. Um, but,

[00:43:27] Alan: uh, I, the field now it’s like, Ooh, some stack, Ooh. You know my opinion. I know some of what you’re saying, but it’s like, wow, I’m no longer in cyclic. I can’t keep up. If I’m not every day buying, you know, James, James

[00:43:41] Colin: Kenyans, one of the big writers right now, he did Batman, uh, department of truth.

Something’s killing the children, um, like

[00:43:50] Alan: hoopla or Comixology or something like that. I caught up on my such

[00:43:53] Stephen: a good book,

[00:43:54] Colin: such a good book, but. Friesian did the variant cover of it, [00:44:00] and I want to get her to sign it. And Martin the interior artists to sign it. Then I want to send it off to CBCs to get graded.

Um, but I did know she was going to be there, so I didn’t bring it. And I was kicking myself the whole show. Um, but sub stack, have you heard of sub stack? I think you’d get a kick out of it. No, I have not. Okay. Um, do you know basically, you know, Patriot, right? Yes. So it’s kind of like Patrion, but instead of like having a variety of geared rewards and stuff, it’s, um, you pay monthly or a year and you get weekly or multiple times a week newsletters from your favorite writers and creators.

Just kind of being the original intention was like their thoughts and ramblings are like excerpts from what they’re working

[00:44:50] Alan: on and blue access to them at the public doesn’t have, if you will,

[00:44:54] Stephen: all the bone is behind the scenes DVD stuff.

[00:44:58] Colin: Yeah, exactly. Well, [00:45:00] earlier this year, sub stack spent a lot load of money, like a ridiculous amount, handing out grants to comic book creators, like top-level people.

Um, uh, Brian, Brian, Michael Bendis, Brian K. Vaughan, um, tips at our ski, uh, um, like Scotty young, uh, like Scott Snyder. If you think of a high level comic book, creator odds are, they at least got reached out to by sub stack and like here’s a bunch of money. Um, this is the pay the artists or pay for what you need to make comics on our.

They are not sub stacked comics. They are the creators own comment. They can reprint them at the exact same time, physically with whoever they want. They can literally do anything they want with the comics and they have full rights of it. Sub stack just wanted to [00:46:00] draw people to the, um, program. And James Kenyon said, Hey, um, so I’m going to be doing this.

I will be doing every other week, a, an exclusive department of truth story on substance. And I’m like, okay, you have my money.

[00:46:19] Alan: Yeah. So, and, and just getting like real, you know, it’s not like someone writing in their diary is not real content, but to be producing something that is their work as a new department, that’s very attractive.

I would love to have as a thing. Okay.

[00:46:35] Colin: So every Friday, every other week, he does a department of truth, a wild fictions, and kind of what it is. And I’ve been. His case files of the paranormal thing that the department of truth has shut down. Um, the like Pope Popa ideas and stuff, it was really cool is they’re taking real paranormal stuff and mixing it into this world.

They’ve referenced people that I’ve done [00:47:00] work with Ben Radford, um, uh, uh, Greg, um, oh, geez. Now I’m blanking on his name, but people I’ve, I’ve been on stage with and done talks and I’m like, they exist. I’m like if they existed the department of truth universe, that means I exist in that department. But, um, and

[00:47:22] Stephen: then the weeks that told him to contact the creator and say, Hey, yeah,

[00:47:28] Colin: I’m going to, but, um, and then the other week that they’re not doing that, he’s putting out, um, what he’s calls a project blue book with Michael Avon OMI.

It’s a comic straight up. That is, um, true crime style storytelling with real life UFO encountered, um, Michael Leyva

[00:47:52] Stephen: and work from powers

[00:47:53] Alan: and stuff. And I remember him and Ben just talking about true crime is one of the things like what he did, jinx and various other things. [00:48:00] That was how they got together.

It wasn’t about superheroes. It was about true crime playing that, the superhero. So anyway, very cool.

[00:48:08] Colin: So sub stack scent. So, so, uh, he said, uh, Tinian when he sent out the first newsletter, cause I was already on his regular newsletter saying, Hey, I’m going to be doing this. Everyone that signs up the first day for a year subscription will get a free variant cover from his archive signed by him.

So I’m like, okay, I signed up within 10 minutes of him sending the email out. So that was.

[00:48:39] Alan: Yeah, it sounds like, I mean, that sounds like MacArthur genius grant, or it sounds like the melted cheese in, you know, run assaults time. So like, I, I know you’re a great artist, a great creator. I don’t care what you do.

I just want you to not have to worry about the real world as much. So you can devote your time to creating beautiful things for the world, you know? So that’s [00:49:00] a very interesting and noble thing for subs to be doing. And of course there’s money involved, but it really is. I love that idea. I went up boy, when I first started to make okay, money.

That’s really, one of the things I wanted to do was how do I free the people whose work I love from the shackles of how to make rent, not to get food. I really wanted to be a Manatee and be able to say, not in the way of I now I control your work and it must be about the church you want to mean. It wasn’t a matter of control.

It was a matter of sponsorship and respect for people. What were, they should make better music. They should make more music of the kind of they make and not have to worry about how much of the

[00:49:43] Stephen: real world. It was a lot of authors that I know that use Patrion and sub stack to do those things. And there’s another one in both stack that they use and medium, uh, contributed a lot through

[00:49:56] Alan: like Indiegogo and Kickstarter and various other crowdsourcing type [00:50:00] things.

But most of those are project-based, you know, kind of a one-shot we’ll produce this in the next three months, six months, and you sponsor me and getting that done. The ongoing sponsorship is very interesting too. You know what I mean, to commit to, I am going to indeed put out a, a book a week, a song a week, a short story, every two weeks, whatever else it might be.

That’s pretty

[00:50:19] Stephen: cool. From the business standpoint, uh, a lot of the authors will get a list, you know, get their people, then they’ll do a Kickstarter and have everyone. And they get, I mean, they’re probably going to make the book anyway, but this basically pays for it ahead of time. And then they still put it out.

So it’s like a normal book, but then they get all these people and they’re like, Hey, by the way, I have a Patrion that I give this, I have a sub stack that I give this and they get those people signed up. So it’s this continuous, uh, you know, because

[00:50:52] Alan: there’s things that are available like that at different levels, different

[00:50:57] Stephen: focuses, right?

Because. [00:51:00] Not the general thinking, but the, the group I’m usually around and the thinking goes that if you have a thousand fans that are like your biggest fans, that love your stuff and that you can make a living off of that, not gouging them, not, you know, exploiting them, but that they’re happy with what they get.

You know, it’s a, it’s a win-win, they love the entertainment that you give them and you give them more and they’re willing to give you those couple of bucks and a thousand people give you a couple bucks a month. We’ll give you a full-time living. That’s the thinking.

[00:51:33] Alan: Yeah. I know I’ve read books and articles about, you know, what’s the future of commerce, the internet.

It’s not about things necessarily. And it’s about experiences and access in a way that you separate yourself from the regular crowd. And it doesn’t have to be, um, VIP status. It really can be well, a hundred thousand people might give $10 to. Like, I dunno. How did Louis CK get rich? Because he [00:52:00] sold the special for like five bucks, but up, you know, 200,000 people bought it and suddenly he’s a millionaire.

That’s kind of a cool multiplier effect. You know what I mean? Not outrageously priced, so it’s not really high level access, but it is well, a little bit of popularity, a little bit of word of mouth and you can, you can not only get money for that project. You can say, no, I have a buffer so I can work on what I really want to work on next.

Instead of always having to be, who’s going to pay me to do this. And then there’s concessions there’s, uh, notes that are given you as to, oh, we don’t like that word. You’re gonna have to take that out. You know what I mean?

[00:52:35] Stephen: Okay. So, so Colin, um, before we jump forward to topic two, uh, let’s your wrap up there for

[00:52:44] Colin: Oh, it’s a great show. If you’re in the comics, you should check it out. There you go. I had a great time

[00:52:49] Alan: on the drive and I can’t believe I, in my mind, I always thought it was. I have a toy and peripheral to comic go, instead of being deeply comics, like you’re saying, [00:53:00] how did I not know that?

So that’s a big thing. I would have been in Chicago at the time. It would have gone, but now that it’s a six hour drive, it’s, there’s an overhead associated with it. And I just didn’t bother to investigate

[00:53:14] Stephen: enough. You should go to Chicago sometime, Alan, it’s a nice city. It’s a good place to visit.

[00:53:23] Colin: We’re like a dozen people that all they sold were Funko pop. And there were some toy people too. But you know, I’d say that about half of the vendors were comics, mostly vendors, you know? Um,

[00:53:41] Alan: which was great.

[00:53:42] Colin: Um, there, I mean, I think there was a good mix of everything and made it a good show because, you know, comic book, people are into things that aren’t just.

Okay. And I think this had a really good mix of that. There was something for pretty much everybody, and there was plenty for comic [00:54:00] book people,

[00:54:01] Alan: uh, three or four day show. How long does it run?

[00:54:04] Colin: We ran, it runs normally with a weekend that it goes, it runs Friday to Sunday. Yeah. And it generally is open like, uh, 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM and then a couple hours earlier they close on Sunday so they can get all everybody, uh, out in time.

Yeah. I, I, on the drive home, I talked to Adam, my boss and I was like, so what can I do to make sure I come next year?

[00:54:39] Alan: Exactly. That if you’re working, the booth is a small concession to be there. You’re in the place on site. That’s very cool. Okay. In Rosemont or downtown or McCormick place, where was it? It was the McCormick center.

Okay. Got it. Okay. Cause that, that has exhibition halls and [00:55:00]

[00:55:00] Colin: they basically, we basically took up the whole building, I think with or at least the vast majority of the building. Um, so this year was our best year, even though attendance was lower than normal, which was really cool. I told, I told Adam that it was cause I was there.

There we

[00:55:20] Alan: go. See, let, let that, let that buzz around. And he said,

[00:55:23] Stephen: okay, okay. Before you go, Collin, uh, we’ll get you in on this too. Uh, jumping and this is spoilers. So turn it off if you don’t want spoilers, but Spider-Man what what’d you think, Alan?

[00:55:41] Alan: Oh, I love it. Oh man. It is really wish fulfillment if you’re a fan, not only in the movies, but as the comic book world, because it really does like some part of what I’ve been seeing for the multi-verse is they get to get sloppy.

They get to have any variation that they want to just say, oh, that’s a different universe. In this case, it [00:56:00] was beautifully done to have the different, and here’s the biggest spoiler, the different spider men and the different villains that have in the movies, but each of them and in the comic books, a long history of that to integrate all that together so that it really was like a team effort of Spider-Man and to have all the sense of humor that Marvel movies and fantastic special effects, you know, the, the incredible.

Pre-web swingers going. Here’s the sand, uh, electric storm with a tornado and the buildings collapse. The building statue of Liberty is

[00:56:38] Stephen: collapsing in America. Shield. Exactly. It just

[00:56:41] Alan: was fantastic. And the way that it, it, so there was a while where Spider-Man was not well integrated into the Marvel universe because he was Sony.

Instead of you know, that Morgan university, now that they’ve done all the right things with the Avengers to bring them in and these movies, it was so [00:57:00] true to everything that makes Spider-Man good that, you know, I, I, it’s not about his spider in it. It’s about, he’s a decent guy and he’s, he’s willing to make incredible sacrifices because

with great power comes great responsibility. He actually act like it instead of

[00:57:23] Stephen: just. And we talked about that. Yeah,

[00:57:26] Alan: exactly. It’s fantastic to see someone be heroic that isn’t, Hey, I happen to be strong as a God. And so it’s kind of easy for me to be heroic

[00:57:37] Stephen: then instead

[00:57:38] Alan: he has so many problems in his life and so much difficulty to go through and he still steps up or does the world so

[00:57:47] Stephen: sorry, from, from my viewpoint and Spiderman has always been my favorite.

I, I mean, just hands down when I was a kid to now good, bad, whatever. I don’t [00:58:00] think they could have made the movie any better. I think they hit, they did it just right. They there’s a lot of chances. They could have screwed something up. They could have made it horrible. And I don’t think they did. Uh, now is it, is it saying it’s going to win every academy award and being the number one film of the, uh, top 100 films of all time?

It’s not. Uh, but for a Spiderman film, it hit every point and it was done well, they didn’t have, it was so many villains. We’ve seen it before where there was that many villains, the story gets muddled and it sucks. They did not do that. They, it was hit right on with three Spiderman. It could have, they could, could’ve really messed up, but they, they, they put in the story, what fit each of them and work together.

It wasn’t just cardboard cutout Spider-Man it was the characters. There was only one thing I’ll talk about in a minute, but there wasn’t hardly anything of this. It was [00:59:00] two hours and 40 minutes or something like that. And I, I did not go, oh my God. How much longer is this movie at all? Wasted

[00:59:07] Alan: moment. No drag time.

Honestly, the fact that they got great actors to come back and instead of worrying about like how much screen time do I get and, you know, kind of elbowing each other out of the way that they were. Decent like Spiderman to say in service to the story in service, to on part of this universe that I was privileged to be invited into, you know, to see Toby McGuire come back after not having played Spider-Man for 15 years it’s it was just the coolest thing that people left their egos and all of the villains had art.

It wasn’t only, Hey that someone took the fan Powell, you know, beat them up and their lyrically evil that there really was depth to the green goblet and Dr. Octopus and even the Sandman, you know what I mean? W what’s his base motivation to take care of his daughter? He doesn’t, he’s not a criminal just because I like to steal things.

So I, again, Marvel has always been great [01:00:00] about that kind of complexity and that humanizing, both heroes and villains, and this movie just shine with all of that, you know, like kind of funny, he might be the most wellness thing in the movie and he’s just a guy, but he’s an obsessive. Awful and the damage that he can do.

You know what I mean? It’s not a matter of, can you push over a building? No, but you career can solve your reputation beyond that. Beyond what anybody would think is decent. Right. So very, very well. Yeah.

[01:00:31] Stephen: Colin and I disagree on the past. Spider-Man in the past Spider-Man movie. Um, I didn’t really care for Garfield as much.

I did like amazing. Spider-Man two. I thought it was a pretty good movie, but I never liked him as Spiderman as much. I love Tom Holland as Spider-Man, but I, again, I think that they upped the level of my awareness and appreciation of Garfield and Spider-Man in this movie [01:01:00] more so than they did in his, a separate movie.

Uh, I think

[01:01:04] Alan: I’ve liked them all for different reasons. And yet I don’t, I, I don’t know that I have a favorite. It was just very cool to see what each of them brought to the. Uh, and, and get your right Garfield. Absolutely. Didn’t he wasn’t like the lesser of the three Spider-Man he actually, his version was important to the movie, the way that he acted at that.

Anyway, the discussion for instance of who’s got artificial web web got actually liked it’s biological. It’s like, where does that come from?

[01:01:35] Stephen: But that was so great because I mean, that’s one of the things with Spider-Man is Peter is a scientist. He’s smart. So that’s why he built the web shooters, but then it’s like, well, wait a second.

Why the hell are you calling yourself? Spiderman. If you can’t make webs, who cares? If you stick the wall, you could have been sticky banners, but you know, it’s, it’s that w what do you do thing? And, you know, people have discussed and argued, so they covered it [01:02:00] all in this with the changes to the Spiderman.

And it, it was the well, call it. Yeah. Sorry. We’ve been excluding you. Oh, No, I disagree. What are you saying? Yes. So I’m

[01:02:15] Colin: going to be, I liked it more than I thought I would going in because I really, I do not like the Toby Maguire movies. I think they’re lame. Um,

[01:02:26] Stephen: I’m I I’m turning them off.

[01:02:30] Colin: So I think my biggest problem with them is I think Alfred Molina was a great doc.

Um, I, I love, um, the actor who plays, bring goblin, the flight. I Willem Defoe. I, but I don’t like that suit. And I don’t like really where they were going. I don’t know. I didn’t, I wasn’t the biggest fan of some of the stuff within, in that movie. I thought he was really interesting in the role, [01:03:00] but I, I don’t know.

It just didn’t work super well for me. No, let me

[01:03:04] Stephen: interject real quick. So you have grown up in an awareness. With Marvel MCU. So your expectations of superhero movies is completely different than like ours. And I’m not saying you’re wrong, but

[01:03:19] Colin: even as a kid, I didn’t like those movies, the only superhero movies I had

[01:03:24] Stephen: and that’s fair, but I will say, um, the storylines for those movies, looking at them now, they’re maybe not holding up quite as well as they were 20 years ago, which is fine.

But I did think I liked in this movie that they kept the outfits the same. They didn’t update them. They, they, this is what they, they did though.

[01:03:46] Colin: They did. He wasn’t wearing. Yeah. I mean, he wasn’t wearing the outfit after the first time. Well,

[01:03:52] Stephen: he was not the red things. Yeah. The hoodie and stuff, but, you know, overall they didn’t try and update everything.

And I think William Defoe as [01:04:00] Brene goblin was fantastic that they did really well in this movie, bringing them out. They did update him as a personality. He was great in the movie.

[01:04:11] Alan: Previous one, he wasn’t as good this movie. He was much more Norman. I was born mentally well, and that they really showed that if you’re a sociopath, you don’t have a revelation like Dr.

Octopus does when his arms stopped talking to him that maybe he’s really a decent guy in a scientist and pregabalin doesn’t have any cure in that way. He really is multiple personality. Not

[01:04:34] Stephen: maybe mega crazy.

[01:04:36] Alan: Yeah. He’s crazy. More and more dangerous. Cause he’s so unpredictably

[01:04:43] Colin: because of that. Well, when I’ve seen the trailers and everything, like I, there was nothing that was really getting me crazy excited.

I don’t care for the MCU movies. Cause the Peter in that seems he’s he’s iron lad. He’s not either Parker. You know, he, it [01:05:00] doesn’t feel like him at all. Peter’s always been very self. Um, you know, he’s always stood on his own as his own character. And in the MCU movies, he’s relied too much on iron man building his suit for him, giving him his web shooters, all of that stuff.

And even when he did build his suit at the end of far from home, he used stark technology for it. So I don’t, I wasn’t super pumped walking into the movie. I liked it more than I thought I would. I think part of my enjoyment of it was seeing Andrew Garfield in the role again, because I think he’s the best Spider-Man we’ve ever gotten them on live action.

Um, and I thought he was a joy in this. They didn’t change his character a whole lot. They, I was worried about that. I was worried they were going to change him a bit to make him feel more in line with the more G shocked type of Peter Parker that the other do our, you know, cause he’s always been weirder and a bit [01:06:00] more rough around the edges than the other.

Um, well, my favorite part of the movie, which really isn’t much part of the movie Daredevil kept back and I couldn’t be happier about that. I was

[01:06:12] Stephen: losing my freaking mind.

[01:06:14] Colin: The second he set down the cane, I was like, oh my God, I know who

[01:06:19] Stephen: that is. And that’s a great example of them really getting things, right.

Because the Netflix Marvel shows have kind of been pushed off to the side and forgotten. They, they weren’t as good as they could have been. There was things people would wish better about them now, I

[01:06:36] Alan: think. Yeah. That’s a good joke. Yes.

[01:06:41] Stephen: Oh man. I think, I think all

[01:06:43] Colin: three seasons of Daredevil, I, I have a very unpopular opinion, which is that Daredevil is the best live action comic book thing we have ever gotten period.

Um, which I know is, is very against

[01:06:57] Stephen: a lot of people’s. [01:07:00] Well, but those, those shows I think were good test grounds for what we’re getting now on Disney plus, because the stuff on Disney plus is just over the top, really good, like movie quality stories and stuff. Good.

Oh my God. We’ll get back to Hawkeye. Hold on. So bringing the characters in shows that, okay, we still know they exist and I don’t think their stories. Like mess up anything in the MCU, you know, I mean, they’re, they’re kind of off on their own so they can bring that stuff in and bring those characters in.

And now we have kingpin, uh, you know, there’s our Hawkeye coming up, but they, they, they didn’t, again, they didn’t screw it up by putting long, drawn out court battle and Daredevil at court and all this stuff he was in for two minutes, that’s all we needed.

[01:07:56] Alan: Just the taste of there. And actually I, what they [01:08:00] did make perfect sense to me, if you’re going to have the Avengers, whereas this big galactic menaced, you don’t have the guys that fight in hell’s kitchen on the streets as necessarily part of that conflict.

You know what I mean? There’s different scales and different focuses for what the heroes are about. And when you’re going cosmic, you don’t brag in the guys who have much more personal scale. So

[01:08:22] Colin: the one-time Daredevil went to space. He almost killed him. Because they told him to press a red button and he couldn’t tell which one was red.

That’s a real comic book story.

[01:08:32] Stephen: So here’s my, this is my personal writer opinion. And I told call him this. And it’s nowhere a criticism and nowhere saying this ruin the movie or anything. But from the writer point, I was thinking about the part where Mary Jane fall. Now, every movie has some girlfriend of Peter’s falling off of something that he has to save her.

He either does it G dies or he does most of the time, he doesn’t end. She dies. So, you know, [01:09:00] all you’re all going, oh my God, it’s happening again. Which is kind of like, come on, get something new in one way. But I think what they should have done is earlier in the movie to make it that more drama. Something about where she, she does fall and he just catches her and she’s like, well, what if you’re not there to catch me?

He’s like, I will always be there to catch, you know, one of those typical Peter type of conversations. And, and she’s like really worried about it. You know, all these dangerous things are happening. What if you can’t save me? Am I putting myself in danger? And now here we go. And then that would make her character a little better because she still chooses to put herself in danger, knowing that she has no powers and Peter May not save her.

So there’s that, you know, helping her. So then when she does fall and he can’t return, it’s like, oh my God, it was foreshadowing there, go chill, Mary Jane, and then Garfield swoops in saver, probably something earlier with [01:10:00] him of, you know, I’ve been unsure about being Spider-Man or something that fit his character.

He said that stuff. Okay. So that would’ve fit perfect with him saving and you know, I that’s just the writer.

[01:10:13] Colin: Yeah. Since he talked about losing Gwen and that LA kind of lost hope with him with

[01:10:19] Stephen: exactly.

[01:10:20] Alan: So that’s kind of where I’m coming from. I thought that that was so much the movie about what the multi-verse is about is all the possibilities that we make and that we create new universes when we do so.

And that in, in that set of multi-verse is, there’s not just one reality where it’s only tragedy, there’s a chance for redemption. And so I thought that so much of them talking about how they’ve had Gwen’s or Mary Janes in their life and they lived, or they died, or they stayed together, or they broke up that they really gave each of those characters a chance to see not only their reality, but what would it be like, how wonderful it would be if I really did save her that her neck didn’t snap [01:11:00] or things like that.

And so I thought that was incredibly powerful. Because it, wasn’t only about that movie in the way that you’re talking about that. Right. Or they could have set something up earlier in the movie. I thought they set it up from the entire array of movies, satisfied with wow. They, they, they let him win that.

You know what I mean?

[01:11:21] Stephen: I think in the whole big action scene, it kind of lost the momentous as much attention as it could have gotten. Maybe it seemed like they did it and it’s over. And they moved on without pointing out that, you know, the impact, maybe that was it, as I

[01:11:38] Alan: can see that, you know, and I just, I, I, it’s not so much an Easter egg.

I just, one of the things I’ve always loved about Kai books and that, that I get a lot out of it is because I remember everything. And so when they bring a villain back that hasn’t been around for a hundred issues, which is like, you know, eight years in comic book time, it’s still very satisfying to be like, oh, this writer didn’t forget about the molecule.[01:12:00]

You know

[01:12:00] Stephen: what I mean?

[01:12:01] Alan: You know what I mean? And I love when they make those references and to have those long-term plans from some DC or Marvel getaway weekend, where they say, we’re going to lay the groundwork for this to be resolved six, not six movies from now a hundred issues. And yet they really are good at building to that.

And then for the people that are like me, that get all the details of all, of course, most of them it’s very satisfying to see. I kind of had a feel for that. I kind of saw that. It’s nice when the puzzle comes together, I love

[01:12:32] Stephen: that. Excellent. And you got, you got to admit it. They did really well during the whole battle.

First of all, the cap shield on statue of Liberty was

[01:12:41] Alan: great. A good artifact to throw into the whole MIG.

[01:12:45] Stephen: But then when this fighter men aren’t working together and things, bad things are happening and it’s like, that’s typical, Peter things go wrong. But then when they’re like, wait a second, we’re individuals, we don’t know how to work as a group.

We need to. And they said, that’s what we’re going to do. And [01:13:00] then they showed all three of them swinging, you know, you got, and then the scene where Spider-Man was up in front of the moon and he, it looked just like a spider verse at east let down that I think that was their nod to miles. They did mention, well, there’s gotta be a black Spider-Man somewhere,

[01:13:16] Alan: you know?

And then Jack said that that one thing I thought was missing was I really thought they were going to find some way to introduce the fact that in another multi-part. It is going to be miles Morales. Cause I thought they gotta be bringing that in. And maybe the fact that they introduced the multi-verse, they’re gonna let that stew for a while instead of being obvious about

[01:13:33] Stephen: it.

Right. And I, I, you know, I think it was fine without actually putting somebody because if they put miles in now, well it might not even have a movie or be in another movie for five or six years. So they get an eight year old kid he’s going to be 15. So you don’t want to necessarily do that.

[01:13:53] Alan: Another thing I love.

So I don’t know the name. I don’t know the work of the two main writers of the movie. Like, you know, [01:14:00] there’s various other people that have contributed to all kinds of movies. These guys had not heard of them before, but they were very canny kind of like Kevin FICA is, is if I get, um, by geese. Thank you overall.

They just have a love and a feel for what makes the Marvel universe. Cool. So the Spider-Man Spider-Man is fighting. And even though you said kind of buying her lad, you know, a little bit too much to start, but to see him come up over the wall with his own extended RS. Now he’s not only his limbs against doc with the extra limbs that he’s got his own set of extra arms too.

I thought that was a really cool. Yeah.

[01:14:37] Stephen: And it was so typical, Peter, because of the cars getting beat, like, sorry. Ma’am hold on. Wait

[01:14:45] Colin: now, Colin, uh,

[01:14:47] Stephen: what’d you think of, uh, aunt may, uh, getting hurt and dying?

[01:14:52] Colin: Oh, I didn’t like that at all. I know. I

[01:14:56] Alan: somehow didn’t it. Like,

[01:14:58] Colin: I agree. [01:15:00] My whole thing with it was, you know, everyone’s like, oh, we finally got the great power, great responsibility, uncle Ben speech.

And I’m like, but if you remember the whole discussion about. Vitamin being brought into civil war. Everyone was like, thank God. We never got the great responsibility. And now people are celebrating that. We finally got it in the wrong way. You know, I did not like it at all. I’m like, he’s been Spider-Man for like four years already.

He should have had that discussion four years ago. He can’t already have been Spider-Man and had that cause that’s what makes him Spiderman is this dissonance that I really bugged me

[01:15:43] Stephen: and I kind of agree. And I agree with you out that it was unnecessary. They didn’t do anything to set it up. It was just like, they seem to do it to try and make it really dramatic.

Uh, and actually,

[01:15:55] Alan: I, you know, I thought she was okay. I thought they’re going to bring in the ambulance and she’ll go away. And then the fact that [01:16:00] she’s actually injured in pearly, I guess that is, we all were fading even while she’s talking. I dunno. I, I hope they find a way to bring her back, not in a Dr.

Stretch universe way, but that’s, that’s its own. I’ve had a number of people that say, you know, you guys are missing the whole point. Benedict Cumberbatch is in the movie for those people, ladies who are very much attracted. Um, it was very cool to have Spiderman bringing in another major Marvel character.

And, and that’d be kind of a, uh, a prelude to the multi-verse of madness that we’re going to see from doctors change. I, that whole idea of, you know, the multi-verse is tricky because it’s the butterfly wings thing, right? You don’t know how much a little change over here is going to affect a whole bunch of other alternative realities.

I know Dr. is going to have to contend with that, that, that, well, I’m looking forward to seeing what they do. I’ve always thought Dr. Strange was great because instead of being really grounded, in reality, anything can happen. Literally, and it’s cool to [01:17:00] see who keeps their head in a situation like that. All reality is shifting under your feet and there’s big mouths with fangs floating in mid air.

You’ll see a digital art who has the mental toughness to be able to say, I can still cope with getting back home. Somehow getting back to my reality. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do.

[01:17:17] Stephen: I agree. Great. All right. Well, Hey, we’ve been on like an hour and a half, so that’s about our, our limit that people are like, okay, I’m enough.

I’m done with these nerds.

[01:17:27] Alan: Honestly. Thank you so much, calling for all of your checks and especially for joining us in the comic book discussion, we often jump around multiple topics. This might be one of the ones where we really. Focused. It stayed with something. Cause there was so much to talk about, you know, I, I am so happy to be alive.

It really is the golden age now of comic books being made into movies. Because as I, as I’ve gone at any number of my lectures, you just couldn’t do it for a long time. You didn’t have the special effects. You didn’t have the costumes that didn’t have the obvious zipper. You know what I mean? The fact that you can really make Superman [01:18:00] fly in Spider-Man swing and over bring down the lightning.

It’s very, very cool that I’m alive to see these things. I’ve loved all my life become quotes real, you know what I mean? To see them very well portrayed. And so. Um, I will be at C2 next year. COVID not withstanding. We’ll see what happens there, but

[01:18:18] Colin: it’s going to be in August next year. Just so you know,

[01:18:23] Stephen: like the first, the first week in August,

wait, before we go, I got two things. So book of the week, uh, I don’t know if you’ve, uh, knew this one, our friend, Tom Zoeller, uh, he did the cover for my S my magician and, uh, you know, you’ve played trivia and stuff with them. Uh, great artists.

[01:18:47] Alan: He’s got a book

[01:18:48] Stephen: out. Yes. So this is a huge, uh, Cupid’s arrow. It’s kind of a men in black X-Files type agency made up of the, the [01:19:00] cupids that, uh, will shoot their era. For a true love for couples that are destined to change the universe. So it’s not everybody, it’s only ones that are in the book that lists that.

So this, I did the Kickstarter, uh, this is a thick book that he did. He wrote, he drew part back wonderful book. Um, so I’ll put a link to that. Uh, I love his stuff. This love Cupid’s arrows. What was the other one? He had loving capes

[01:19:38] Alan: because I met him at a Comicon. It’s like we know each other. It’s very cool. Like when you see your teacher at the grocery store. Oh, great.

[01:19:46] Stephen: Okay. So I got a trivia of the week for you, Alan. So there’s a lot of Christmas movies right now. And one of the newer classics that’s very [01:20:00] popular is. Uh, it’s become one of those that people want to see every year.

And it’s a tradition now. Well, the head elf in elf is Ming manmade and the actor that plays Ming Ming was also in another very eponymous Christmas movie, uh, in its time. Do you know who that was?

[01:20:24] Alan: So, so bear with me. We just saw it elf the musical this last weekend at the Beck center, I had elf kind of come back into my consciousness.

So I have maybe a little bit better shot. I’m trying to remember ed Asner played Santa Claus. Was it Bob Newhart. Okay. So I don’t remember then head

[01:20:41] Stephen: elf. Yeah, he was calling. Do you know?

[01:20:48] Colin: I do know. I overheard you telling people, so I’m not going to say, well, I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t heard you already.

So under

[01:20:55] Alan: so much makeups that I wouldn’t be able to pick them out, even if I know. [01:21:00]

[01:21:00] Colin: Oh, you wouldn’t be, it’s

[01:21:02] Stephen: hard to tell because how

[01:21:04] Alan: about Macaulay, Culkin? Like from home alone becoming that

[01:21:07] Stephen: you’re getting warmer.

[01:21:11] Alan: So the home alone movies let’s see. How about, uh, kids in the hall? I’m trying to think of the two band.

Was it Joe Peshy? Was it?

[01:21:21] Stephen: No, that’s a

[01:21:22] Alan: good one. He’s kind of Elfin, if you will. Sorry, Joe. You know? Um, okay. So further back to the home alone for their back. It’s further back.

[01:21:32] Stephen: Okay. Wow.

[01:21:35] Alan: Kid from miracle on 34th street. What would that

[01:21:38] Stephen: little, little girl that’s a little too far, a little too far. So I’ll tell you who it is and it’s wonderful.

You got to go watch it. Okay. Terry was played by Peter Billingsley from a Christmas story. Oh, man, you can put your, I, you can shoot.

[01:21:57] Alan: Okay. Yeah. That’s a very good bit [01:22:00] of trivia. I must have seen that, like in the credits is that you kind of wonder if that’s, there’s not many billings Lee’s

[01:22:08] Stephen: running around and Gina and I did go up to the rain palace and watch a Christmas story.

And I saw a post from that. I realize that I haven’t watched that movie in many, many years, and I don’t know why it is so good if you like, uh, um, Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks. This is that type of movie. And it has holds up today. It’s set in the fifties. So it was like a period piece. So, but the way it’s done and the story is still holds up.

It’s still funny. There were kids in pajamas watching it and laughing. There were 80 year olds while.

[01:22:46] Alan: So I agree. It is a great movie. It’s got perfect scenes. It’s got a whole series of great scenes. It’s got Darren McGavin, it’s got,

[01:22:54] Stephen: you know what I mean? All cold Jack and like Sandlot, you know what I mean?

All kinds of kids who grew up [01:23:00] to

[01:23:00] Alan: be in other movies and stuff. So that’s very

[01:23:02] Stephen: cool. So there’s our trivia Christmas trivia. Let’s see.

[01:23:07] Alan: So my recommendations real quick, I’ve started a series called Sandman slim. I think it’s Richard Coudray and there’s actually like a docent in the series and it wasn’t on my radar until just recently.

But of course I dove into the first one and it’s like supernatural, urban crime fiction. Of course, you know, the guy is, he escaped from hell. He’s a Nephilim who was, you know, the product of an angel meeting with a human who has got some powers, but not powerful as an angel. They are so wonderfully vulgar and.

Iconic classic. Like the guy writes really floridly and vulgarly and I just, I laugh out loud at any number of prescriptions he has for just how badly this guy was killed. Just how terrible the stenches of something coming from health and stuff like that. So if you’re looking for that kind of thing, kind of like, you know, like urban [01:24:00] supernatural, like who does it, Jim butcher does it well.

And, uh, Bendix jacket with the Alex bureaus books that, well, this is that plus throw in the executioner. Cause there’s a lot of killings. There’s a whole bunch of nuts. So, um, I also recently discovered a thing called once in a future. It’s a great book. Oh my God. It’s fantastic. I, I have Comicology and hoopla.

So I regularly am looking for, um, what’s coming out now that I, because I’m not buying regularly now I’m looking for what the coolest new things are and totally stumbled onto this one. And I’m Dan Mora, illustrator. I don’t know their work real well, but then I realized I’ve been reading something from Dan Mora and I really liked his artwork.

The overall story is, um, so king Arthur is supposed to come back when Britain is at its greatest time of need. You know, there’s a particular phrase that goes with that’s when the once and future king will return. Well, what if king Arthur coming back is not the solution to that, but he’s the one that makes it, that you’re in the once in the [01:25:00] greatest time of me, what if he’s really the child slave the bad guy that he also did some horrible things while he was king and they make a lot out of that.

And so it’s there there’s there’s references to the Knights of the round table and that they might also have become corrupted over time. It’s really, really well done. And I love things where I know the whole, the Morton Arthur, the whole Arthurian cycle pretty well, and the way that they break the rules and change things, but still make it so that you can guess what may be coming up.

But then you’re continually surprised. I love being surprised when you read a lot, you have the standard 36 plots. And usually within the first five minutes, you’re like, oh, this is part number 22. You’ll love it when I get surprised. And so this book is that it’s really well. I can’t wait to read more Collin, you know it.

[01:25:48] Colin: Okay. Yeah. I’ve been reading it. It’s been a lot of fun. You should read pretty much anything caring Dylan’s ever read written. He’s one of my favorite writers right now. He did an excellent run on star [01:26:00] wars and Darth Vader. That is one of, some of the best stuff ever written in the star wars universe.

[01:26:05] Alan: That’s what I tend to do is I find a new guy and it’s like, I devour everything they did because then I trust them, you know, but anyway,

[01:26:11] Colin: He’s doing a turtles right now and the turtles are my favorite thing Kirby ever did, and this is the best run that’s ever happened. Um, and he did a book with, you gotta read it.

It is so good. It is one of my favorites of all.

[01:26:27] Alan: And actually I’ve run all those. There’s like four volts. And I didn’t, I didn’t connect the name. You know, sometimes names don’t stick badly. Cause I usually do remember, but I really liked those and I kept finding it, the library and going, I’ve never heard of this before.

Let’s give it a try. And then I’m like, you know, Colleen and I authored and the day reading, uh, in bed and I’ll be like, let me just, let me just give you this little bit of dialogue because it’s so perfect. You know what I mean, bookies that is just so perfectly written. And I love that title as well, but I didn’t realize how much I was already a fan until I saw the [01:27:00] reference to the wicked and the divine.

So I knew that part. Exactly. Okay.

[01:27:04] Colin: Um, Dan Mora is doing the art for detective comics right now. And I swear that dude was born to draw Batman. It, it all, it’s, it’s some of the most perfect stuff I’ve seen of Batman. And he’s going to do a world’s finest series with Mark Wade, uh, in March that I’m very excited about.

[01:27:23] Alan: You also worked on black hammer, which I discovered, and that’s like, wow, this guy, someone that can do kind of gold and silver age artwork, but modernized slightly, but still, you know what I mean? When you can do modern primitivism, um, there’s a couple of people that are really good at that. It’s not as finely detailed, so it looks kind of corny and old style, like we’ve mentioned, um, um, Michael Avon, um, lemming does that really well.

I really kind of like where I usually like ultra realistic artwork and where someone does a cartoony style, but still very effective. I’m like, how did he sneak past me? Usually I [01:28:00] dismiss the cartoony stuff. If it’s not. And yet it’s in service to the plot. It’s I don’t know. I liked dad more as art and I will look for more of him as well.

So very cool.

[01:28:11] Colin: If you like Dan Mora too, you should look up, uh, Evan, doc Shaner. Um, he just finished a 12 issue, strange adventures series about, uh, Adam strange with, uh, Tom king. One of my favorite writers and his stuff feels a lot like doc Shaner, or it feels a lot like, uh, Dan Morris, but a little less modern.

It is, it is quintessentially silver.

[01:28:39] Alan: Okay. But by the way you mentioned it earlier, I’ve never warmed a Scotty young, honestly, somehow his stuff is a little bit too exaggerated or a little bit too childish. And I just, I dismiss it because it just doesn’t work for me. And yet it’s all kind of fun. I really don’t mean to ever diss anybody.

I really always want [01:29:00] to be about who I like versus who I disliked. But because you mentioned it was like, I don’t know what it is, but that is doesn’t work for me whenever he does variant cover various different things. That’s the one I would never fucking buy. I don’t want that in my

[01:29:13] Stephen: collection. I think it

[01:29:14] Colin: says, have you read, um, his Oz stuff?

I don’t think so. Cause he did an adaptation of Oz. It’s it’s very, the art is very different. He has this like Chidi style that he does now that I’m not super crazy keen on like the bearing covers that you were talking about, but some of the stuff in the beginning of his career, before Marvel contracted him to draw every character ever as a cute little cartoon,

[01:29:41] Stephen: it was, yes,

[01:29:43] Colin: it was very stylistic, but it would really work, especially with odd.

Um, this was also. With an artist right now on a lot of create our own stuff called Jorge Corona. And Corona [01:30:00] kind of keeps a lot of, um, Scotty Young’s feeling of his older work, but makes it his own. You should check that stuff out too. They did a series that I absolutely adore called the me. You love in the dark, the five issue mini series just ended from image comics.

It was amazing. Um, it was one of those books that every month that it came out, I would recommend it to people. So we had to keep ordering the previous issues so people could catch up.

[01:30:30] Alan: I’m taking a couple notes here because you know, I’ve often been the guy that tells, oh, you haven’t heard of this one, but you really like it.

I can’t tell you how much. I appreciate the fact that you have the modernity, the current stuff coming out. Cause you work at a comic book store and you really are able to say, this is, these are the diamonds amongst all the regular

[01:30:48] Colin: stuff. I really. I can start sending you like, Hey, here’s my recommendations of stuff that I,

[01:30:56] Alan: you know, you should start a sub stack thing and I’ll subscribe, [01:31:00]

[01:31:02] Stephen: send it to me.

And we’ll put something on the website, you know, the weekly comic recommendations or something. Okay. That would be cool.

[01:31:08] Alan: I discovered them. I’m happy to Crow about like what I just said, you know, Hey, I just finished the Alex Spiro series and now here’s, what’s the future. And when I find something that isn’t just okay, the next in the series, and that’s really good.

I just read the latest Spencer book by ASAP gins because Robert Parker died and he was good, but it’s not like, Hey, everybody read this. It, something really is like that, that it stands out. Like what’s the future. Did I really want to tell everybody, you know, this is how good comic books could be. This is really

[01:31:33] Stephen: good.

I find that interesting. You say that about Scotty young and it just shows everybody. Like something different and there’s reasons to like, that’s why this modern culture of, oh, you don’t like what I like, well, you’re stupid. You suck. And this is why you’re wrong, you know, because I love Scotty young. I got, I hate Barry land and I didn’t know quite what it was, but I was like, oh, that looks kind of cute.

I started reading it like, oh my God, this is so great. I loved that. Just [01:32:00] devoured it. And I, you know, calling Dolby free comic book day, Hey, Scottie young as a t-shirt I’m like, give it to me. I want one, you know, I, I, I really liked his art. I actually thought I tried to commission him for somebody who doesn’t do personal commission.

[01:32:14] Alan: Okay. And w what you just said, maybe the way to close that his thing is, boy, is that true about matters of taste? I had so many discussions of this. Isn’t a matter of fact of right or wrong or true or false. It’s a matter of taste if you don’t catch up on your hot dog. It’s not that suddenly I’m a bad guy because I liked catch up.

You know, you don’t have to Savage me over your. And yet people do tell you about this is the one good Spiderman. No, there’s three, you know, it, it, it’s weird to have people be so like, I dunno, dismissively opinionated about things that I wish that they would just say to each their own, everybody gets their own

[01:32:52] Stephen: favorites and appreciate why somebody likes or doesn’t like something, because that could give you, uh, a deeper [01:33:00] understanding of why you like something or help pick out new things that you would like say, oh, you know what?

That’s a good point as to why I don’t like that. So now I can evaluate better these other things as whether I’m,

[01:33:13] Alan: that’s a great way. And not only a matter of awareness of how they’re thinking about how you’re thinking and that sometimes when you’re like, well, I don’t know. I just like it when someone says, well, if you did know, what would you say?

Right. So what is it? What is it in my background? What does it in my, I like these colors. I like this, whatever else it might be. That’s I don’t know why I like the color orange and yet I really do. And so why would that be? Because. Energetic because it’s associated with flavors that I like or whatever else it might be.

But even that is not sometimes, you know, there’s wow, next time. We’ll talk about Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance versus quality and how sometimes when you try to get to the, here’s the four facts that lead to this one conclusion, you can’t do that. The conclusion stands by itself and reducing it [01:34:00] to these individual factors that doesn’t explain it.

It actually weakens the argument. It degrades the why of it, if you will. And that’s very different frames of thought for whether you’re an anthropologist or whether you’re a statistician or whether you’re, you know what I mean? Can you add this up to get to the right solution? Sometimes that works.

Sometimes it absolutely

[01:34:21] Stephen: right before we go, I got a new desktop play thing

[01:34:25] Colin: to show.

Thanks

[01:34:32] Alan: for being our guest. So

[01:34:35] Stephen: this is Brahm Stoker with a little Dracula book.

[01:34:39] Alan: I was going to say Tesla, but now that I see the Dracula,

[01:34:43] Stephen: Stephen King keep me inspired right here.

[01:34:46] Alan: I say, what can I show off today? Here’s December 23rd in my puzzle a day. So I’m still telling just one as well. And so she’s been mentioning that she’s been getting them done and I’m like, wow, I don’t [01:35:00] know that many people that are as into puzzles as I am.

So to find that Colleen is enjoying, it’s like, well, that’s cool. Something we can share.

[01:35:06] Stephen: I saw something made me think of you. They’ve got Rubik’s cubes for some reason, or like having another Renaissance. And I saw Rubik’s cubes out, but now they have ones that are like a six rows square. And I was like, far

[01:35:21] Alan: more than that.

I’ve seen them where they’re like 20 by 20 and I’m like, that’s.

[01:35:24] Stephen: Insane. I want to know the internal workings. How does that work? Doesn’t revolve at all. I want to see the inside,

[01:35:32] Alan: they got cool articles online about that, about how they first figured it out and how they’ve made it so that it really does work for even more facets.

Wow. It’s an engineering Marvel. It’s really cool. I’ll have

[01:35:42] Stephen: to look it up, but then they also have the two by two I’m like really? Is that hard to do so, all right, man. Well, Hey, you guys have a great Christmas

[01:35:54] Alan: happy holidays. Merry Christmas. It’s always a pleasure. Stephen, take

[01:35:57] Stephen: care. Very fun. Tell Colleen Merry Christmas.[01:36:00]

Episode 81 – C2E2

Overview

Recommendations

Trivia

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When's the Fun Kick In? Short-Sleeve Unisex T-Shirt

Episode 81 – C2E2

Overview

Recommendations

Trivia

YouTube

Transcript

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When's the Fun Kick In? Short-Sleeve Unisex T-Shirt