#506: Big, Blue, Boy Scout
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Transcript
You should say that almost after everything you say.
Well, I shouldn't have said that.
That was an overstatement.
It'll make your life way easier.
And the more of a Boy Scout he is, the more I love him.
You know, you got to go out, maybe shovel snow, and then maybe do some errands, run to the post office.
Raging hard on you.
Tell him, Steve Dave.
Hello, and welcome to this week's edition of Tellim Steve Dave.
I'm here with a BQ.
Hello, and I'm here with Waltz.
Yo, on this blustery, shitty, cold day.
God, I fucking cannot stand.
I think, I think I may become a snowbird eventually.
One of those people that moves down to Florida once they hit a certain age, which is rapidly approaching.
Yeah, it was like I went outside today today to feed
my various creatures,
and it was so cold.
It was like, they were saying it was like one degree, it felt like
out there.
Oh,
it's too much.
I've heard of a new method for combating the cold.
I've not heard this before, but there's supposed to be a football game tonight in Buffalo, expecting it to be below 20 with the windchill, minus 20 with the windchill.
And the players have been
told that they should take Viagra because it helps the blood move everywhere.
Really?
I maintain with all that body contact, though, aren't there dangers of
erection?
That's a risky move.
Like, you can't help it, right?
I mean, it's against your will when you're taking the
blue chew.
I mean, if you're experiencing a certain amount of friction, I feel like regardless of the source,
you may end up
with a wow,
I had never heard that before.
I had never heard that either.
But I mean,
how much blood could it move around that it would make you warm?
Since I can't say that I've ever had any experience with it, maybe, you know, maybe it does make your body temperature rise a little bit.
I don't know.
Yeah, but
that was a headline in a major news article.
Really?
Yeah.
And
like.
Like, don't they all have to get prescriptions?
Exactly.
That's what I was just like, how are you going to get prescriptions that quick and get, you know, and filled by game time?
Right.
I mean, when you got the NFL money,
you don't even need the prescriptions.
They'll just get you what you need.
But would you consider like on a day like today, you know, you got to go out, maybe shovel the snow, and then maybe do some errands, run to the post office with a raging hard on you.
Oh, so I have a woody the entire time, no matter what I'm doing.
You're getting from a heated car, like all you're doing is like the car, the walk from the car to the post office is all you're warm for.
So you're walking around with a giant boner just like women are shuffling their children aside.
Don't go near them.
Sure is cold out, huh?
How about this weather?
I don't feel it.
Oh,
man.
Yeah, yeah.
I might just put on like another, like a vest.
And let's say you want to maybe
have some relations later on.
Like, how many blue, how many, I don't want to say blue chew, but how many of these types of enhancements, not enhancements, I guess I'll just say various
boosters can you take in one day before it's kind of like
not safe?
I think it's one.
So you gotta, what's more important to you?
Keep them warm or risking your health and life.
Or getting some
byproduct wood in the evening.
What would Tom Brady do in this situation?
Oh, my God.
If it meant winning a Super Bowl, I think he'd go celibate for the rest of his life.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I think a Super Bowl wouldn't, he would give up
ever having, he would have a dry dick for the rest of his life for nothing.
Really?
I think so.
With his wife, he would still
have all those rings already.
There's only one ring he should be concerned with at this point.
I'd like to think he would be all in on
the Super Bowl trophy more than
Carl Pleasures.
That's how I'd like to think of Tom Brady.
I'd like to think the opposite, actually.
He has kids.
It's not like he needs to do it again.
I mean, I'm sure he's gotten his fill of, you know, if anybody's gotten their fair share of ass, it's probably Tom Brady.
for.
Oh, he's been married for quite a while.
Yeah, it seems that.
Yeah.
Is there a trophy that you would give up
Nookie for for the rest of your life?
I don't think so.
I mean, I'm trying to think of anything I would be good enough to even compete for a trophy.
I mean, I like that the podcast awards we just won.
If we get another one,
yeah, the Picnic Olympic trophy.
Sorry, Frank.
There's no pussy for life, but it's mine.
I have an MTV movie and TV award upstairs on my mantle that we won.
And
I can tell you that
it is like when you're walking through your living room and you have that trophy there
and you look at it, it's pretty nice.
It's pretty nice.
You know, you look at it.
It reminds you of an achievement, man.
So maybe there's a golden globe or an Emmy that you might want, you know, that you would
make such a sacrifice for.
Oh, I mean, I'm only 45.
And how long do you, like, I mean, I know everybody wants to think that, you know, you're going to go in your 90s.
So it's only another 45 years, though.
It's only literally your entire life so far.
Yeah.
And I already went like the, like the first, like, like, how old is I?
God, I don't even remember, like 16 years without it so yeah so you've shown that you could do it yeah
you got this
like with my luck like i would have done it last year for a golden globe and then they would have canceled the glory
Yeah, all the award shows are being canceled, right?
Because of the Omicron?
I think it's that and the ratings are so low at this point.
Yeah.
Like people, they're just like, we we don't care.
And the
celebrities are boycotting them for different reasons.
Oh, okay.
You know,
it's not enough diversity, so I'm not going to the golden globes, and that way they can, you know, virtue signal and look like good people.
The the um
the numbers just keep rising, bro.
It's just like
everybody I know is it's like, I'm sick.
I, you know, I got on I got COVID.
Uh, my mom, my mom it just got over it.
Yeah.
I was a little concerned, but
she's okay now.
And
she had all the shots.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
I just got my booster the other day.
Yeah.
How'd you fare?
Headache for like a day and a half, but other than that, nothing.
Where'd you get it at?
Walgreens.
You get it in your arm now?
Yeah.
I think that's the only place you're allowed to get it, right?
I got it in my arm.
When I get my booster, I'm going to ask for it in my fanny because I don't think I, I, because my arm hurt too much.
Yeah.
I don't use it.
I mean, I could just sit on my ass, you know, but like my arm is just hurting.
You're like, I'm an artist, man.
I can't be fucking around with this shit.
I don't draw with my ass.
No, I don't do anything with it.
How did your mother
fare better worse than you did?
Oh, much better.
Well, you know, obviously, you know, she was a little nervous.
And I told her, I was like, you know, you really will probably have a very mild case.
You had all the shots, so
you should be fine, you know, trying to keep her morale up.
But she's nervous, you know, she's of an age.
Yeah.
But, you know, she's okay.
She had different symptoms than I did.
You know, she had
like a horrible head cold.
I didn't have any congestion at all.
But everybody's different.
It's crazy.
I don't know.
It's bizarre.
I'm glad she's okay, man.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah, man.
Yeah, knock on wood, man.
That's it.
She don't get it no more.
But yeah, but everybody, Victor.
Victor got it.
Victor's been struggling.
He had the high fevers, but he says he's getting better.
I thought he had it already for some reason.
Everybody feels like they've had it lately.
We already talked about it last week, though.
But
I think I said this, though.
They said that
they expect in the spring, though, it's going to be
a much better place coming out of...
coming out of the winter because of how many people have had it.
You'll be getting closer to
the magic number for where you could start talking about herd immunity.
Oh, really?
I thought we were supposed to be there already.
I thought we were supposed to be there like last May or something.
I don't know.
That's what I heard on TV.
I heard
a couple of
big brains
saying that
we're going to be ⁇ it's going to be rough.
It's going to be horrible to go through it because a lot of people are going to get infected.
But
come spring, though, we're going to be looking a lot better in terms of where we're at now, though.
Right.
I saw, I was reading reading this article about the
instances of people dying that didn't have like comorbid, you know, like diabetes or something.
And it's like, it's almost immeasurable.
It's so small.
It's like most people get better.
Great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just never see, you know, it's fucking, I thought we were flattening the curve for two weeks.
I don't know.
Yeah, it's crazy, man.
It's nuts.
Who fucking knows?
What are you going to do?
And then they said the CDC is recommending the K95 masks now
for
not for the general public yet, but they're saying, like, basically, they're saying the fabric ones, like the ones that most people wear that look like, you know, like a dental hygienist would wear.
They don't do shit.
I don't know.
I can't believe that, though, because you've seen, like, throughout history, you have seen doctors, nurses, dentists, assistants wear those masks.
They They have to do something.
Yeah, they have to do something.
I mean, yeah,
to say
they don't do shit.
Yeah, that was an overstatement.
But they don't do nearly as much as they're supposed to, I guess.
You should say that almost after everything you say.
What?
I shouldn't have said that.
That was an overstatement.
It'll make your life way easier.
So, Q,
go ahead.
Go ahead.
No, no, no.
I was going to say I'm with that.
Even if it's a fucking 5% chance that's better, I'll slap that thing on my face.
Like, that argument doesn't hold that much with me because I'm just like, but if it's any percentage, why wouldn't you wear it?
I don't know.
For the same reason, you're like, you go out.
Like, you know, there's a certain percentage chance you may get.
Well, I guess I mean if, like, you, if you're going on a plane or you're going, you know what I mean?
With somebody, yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, to wear it a mask.
I'll probably wear a mask on a plane, I guess, for the rest of my life at this point, just because it also just fucking is a nice disguise, too.
It's nice, yeah,
yeah.
So, that'll be sweet.
This, this COVID thing's really working out for me, guys.
Well, did you hear the study now that people look sexier and more attractive in masks?
So, I mean, Beth has me wear five.
It has happened.
It has happened to me where I got mask catfished, where I was talking to someone and I was like, wow,
this is an attractive human.
And then they took off the mask and I was like, ooh, put that mask back on.
It looked like mask from
the mask.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's happened to me.
I could tell you.
I was in Britain that said that people
really
find people more attractive when they're wearing the mask because I guess you're only getting to see like a third of someone's face, the top eyes,
not their janky nose and their rotten teeth and shit like that.
And in Britain, you know, if, if, if, if, you know, I don't know if it's a stereotype, but, you know, the teeth are not always,
you know, the best attribute of a Brit.
Right.
Yeah.
So we hear.
So we hear, yeah.
We can still insult Brits.
That's all right.
Go for it, shit.
We're trying to, we're trying to change.
We're trying to do better.
We don't know if we're going to assault the Brits.
Yeah, I don't know, man.
You know,
it has happened to me, so I know it's true.
Because a nice set of eyes is a nice set of eyes on anybody.
You know?
But, you know, it's when you throw in the other disfigurements that go on there.
I mean,
you know, I'm talking about myself here.
You know, it's, it's, you know, you got to reveal your flaws.
Yeah.
So for this, I mean, leading up to this episode, I cannot tell you guys how often I get bombarded with requests for us to do more IBI Comics.
A show on Patreon.
Show on Patreon.
And
that seemingly is the most requested show that people have.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, they want more.
And
so I thought we would give.
them some more, but on the on the free
okay tell them Steve Dave feed a little iBuy buy comics.
I love it, dude.
Some of those emails that you got might have come from me even.
I love comics.
I sell comics.
I love talking comics, man.
It's my favorite.
Yeah, people seem to really dig hearing your thoughts on the comic book industry.
Yeah.
Are you currently up to date?
Are you following all the titles that you like?
How is the industry?
Because I'm out of the game.
I don't work in a comic book store anymore, so I don't see or read any any current
titles.
I heard that the industry
is still trying to recover from COVID.
Yeah,
it's what's good is good.
You know, you're always going to have your books that hold up.
You know,
some books are not as good, but it's not always the way.
You know what I mean?
Like, the good is still good, and the not is not.
Do you find yourself buying as much today as you were buying maybe even five years ago?
No, way less.
Way less.
Way less.
Yeah, the new crop of writers, aside from some notables, haven't really landed with me.
And I think it might be my age.
I think I might.
It's like,
bro.
Yeah.
They're not.
Did you age out of comics?
Yeah.
Oh, I did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, the style.
I mean, look, I didn't because I still read it every week.
He's on his way.
Yeah.
He's still a kid.
But
you know what I have started doing is reading a lot of trades.
I read a ton of trades of storylines that I loved.
Oh, so you're going back to the stuff that you remember fondly.
Yeah, that's been happening, which is like, and I never really did that before.
So it's like, so there's a lot of material there, and I've forgotten most of it.
So it's been pretty good to me.
Like,
I'm rereading Jeff Johns' Green Lantern run now again, and I just read that he's coming back to do a flash, a Flashpoint sequel.
Yeah, so that's pretty cool.
Like, that's the sort of shit I'm into.
Like, I find that, like, the idea.
Well, what's the matter?
Why are you talking about it?
No, you're, it looks like you're like speeding up your life.
It's like you freeze, and then when it catches up, you're in fast motion.
It's strange looking.
It looks like you're going a million miles per hour.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I like, that's what I looked for.
Like, John's, I always thought brought big comic booky ideas to comic books.
And I feel like a lot of writers today,
they don't seem to care about the big comic booky ideas.
They just don't.
A lot of comics today just seem to be like mouthpieces for the author.
And I'm like,
I don't want that, man.
Like, you're not more important than the character.
So I wish you would stop doing that.
I think the audience and myself, you would be a good editor.
You know,
at Marvel or DC because,
you know, that's a great comment, you know, commentary.
You're not bigger than the character.
Yeah, you're just not.
That's smart.
But,
you know,
I don't know that I would make a good editor because I don't know how long I would last.
I think people would be like, get this fucking guy out of here.
This is our old people.
Yeah, my only tether to
the comic book industry at this point is me buying old material, you know, packaged in a masterwork or packaged in an omnibus.
That's like the only connection I have to comics at this point.
And it's the one that gives me, I found like, it's, that's all I need.
Like it gives me the utmost pleasure and I'm happy with with what how I'm proceeding in with in with comics in 2022.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah.
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, right?
Like in that like.
Well, yeah, but I guess it's kind of sad, though, that like I have zero interest in keeping up with any of the characters that I loved, you know, what they're doing currently.
And it's not in a way that I'm mad about it.
It's not.
I just like, I just kind of like, I just don't have any interest.
Not in a bad way where I'm like, I'm pissy or shaking my fist.
You're just defeated.
But I thought since I, we sprung up, we had this idea kind of on the quick to do an iBuy Comics for all, for all those.
And who, who, and let it be said,
tell them, Steve Dave, we listened to the audience.
They demanded some eye by comics, Bry.
And they get it.
And they're going to get it.
So I got to do.
We'll bend to your every whim.
I'm fine with that.
I will say this.
Well, looking through, because, you know, I'm mainly buying comicsology these days.
Digital.
Yeah, digital.
I've made the flip to that.
I would say 95% of my books are DC.
Wow, that's surprising.
Yeah, yeah.
I would not have thought that.
I would have thought right down the line.
I've always leaned DC over Marvel, but I've always loved, like, that's not no slam against Marvel.
Like, I also love Marvel, but I'm looking at
my pull list right now, and it is all fucking DC, dude.
And now, how do you get rid of the books after you purchase them?
Like, do they take up a lot of space on your phone if you were to keep them?
Well, it's kind of like, well, I do it on my iPad, and the files aren't that big, but I have a Comicsology account, which is Amazon.
Amazon owns Comicology.
So now I just download the books that I I want.
And the good thing about the Comicsology app is like if you sign up, like I have the monthly, I sign up for like the monthly thing where a lot of their back library, like all that Jeff John's Green Lantern stuff was free.
It's called borrowing the book.
You just download it and you can read it.
It's great and it's part of it.
And then any new purchases, you get 15% off as well.
So I find that the Comicology app really works for me.
Is he sneaking a commercial in here?
I'm not.
I've got no association with Comixology.
They're not paying, but that's what I'll do.
So all my issues are in the cloud.
But you once said something really wise.
You said, if you own a digital copy of a comic, you don't really own the comic.
Do you remember saying that?
Yeah, not in the way that
we have defined owning something.
Yeah.
Yeah, because you'll never be able to go to anybody and be like, oh, man, I need some quick cash.
Let me sell my digital downloads of my back issues ain't happening but if you have some key issues and you need some quick cash you know you could flip them but this is this is a this is for a readers uh only
and it's not for collecting purposes if you're into the into the hobby for collecting and for trying
to
score books that may have value increase in value in years yeah you you're probably not into digital No, definitely not, because why would you even be interested at all?
I do have a lot of
the, what are the, the graded books?
Yeah,
I didn't realize, yeah, you had a collection going here.
Yeah, yeah.
I got a nice.
How many CGC books do you think you currently own?
Probably about 15.
And you sent them in or you bought them already, graded already?
Both.
Both.
Both.
Yeah, I tend to grade books that are like, I have like this thing where I'll do like a book that's not worth much money, like
Kyle, Kyle Rayner's first appearance in costume.
Just because I love it, I'll get it done.
But I have like Ghost Riders first, number one, like his first appearance of Johnny Blaze on the bike.
Oh, Marvel Spotlight 5.
I got that.
I have a few ones that are like up there.
I heard you had you told me you had Amazing Spider-Man 129 graded, right?
Which one's that again?
Oh, yeah, I do have that.
I have First Punisher graded.
Yeah, like 9.4, too.
That's a big wig right there.
That's a high roller right there.
Well, you know what?
I just waited till I remember when everybody turned on the Punisher a few years ago?
And suddenly people are like, your Punisher, he can't ever be seen again.
I was like,
Perfect.
I swung it and I bought it, but it looks like he's coming back, which is great, which is great.
Like I said, since we kind of did this on the quick, we didn't have time to read anything,
but I thought we could do
everybody's top five
favorite comic book character ever.
This is tough, yeah.
Bri,
was it tough for you, Brian?
Tough for you, Brian.
I have one.
I came with one.
I thought it was Buddy Bradley.
Oh, I forgot about Buddy Bradley.
Okay, I have two then.
Yeah.
Well, you go first for Sayyidina.
Well, you know what?
Let me real quickly read to you from my tablet something about Raycon.
A lot of people don't even make resolutions.
And you know what?
We get it.
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I mean,
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Come on.
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It's no wonder Raycon's everyday earbuds have over 48,000 five-star reviews.
And
it's true.
I mean, they're telling us, oh, they want us to do a live shake test during the read.
Well, I don't have them with me, so I'm not going to be doing that to try to shake them out of your ears.
Well, why on earth on an audio podcast can't you just say you're shaking your head like a dog getting out of the bath?
Well, Walt, let me tell you, these copywriters don't really think of things like this.
I'm going to go over in the corner.
I'm going to put mine in.
Okay, I see you doing it.
Okay.
You keep talking, and
I'm going to run into the wall at full speed.
Right.
Head first
and see if these suckers are going to fall out, all right?
I'll finish right up.
You got to go.
All right.
Right now, Tell M Steve Dave listeners can get 15% off their Raycon order at buyraycon.com slash T-E-S-D.
That's buyraycon.com slash T-E-S-D to save.
Whoa.
And that's the whole 15% on Raycons.
Byraycon.com slash T-E-S-D.
I noticed that your Raycons have not fallen out of your ears while still in.
All right.
The shake test.
Titus.
Tightest ear holes in the game.
Are they waterproof?
Because now he's got blood running down his forehead.
Okay, so we're talking about favorite comic book characters.
I thought I was judging yours, so I didn't come with that.
Well, just give us your favorite.
I really like Deadpool a lot.
Yeah.
That's a very
popular answer.
That would be like, you know.
That's the everyman answer.
Deadpool is like Harley Quinn right now.
Oh, is he?
Like everybody's in a Harley Quinn outfit at the convention.
Every girl,
every dude is in a Deadpool costume.
So, you're that's okay, though.
I love it.
I'm opposer, but I admit it.
I really like the movies.
I just, I like this.
As far as comic book movies go, my experience being
the Deadpool movies and the Eternals, I really like
Deadpool a lot.
Yeah, Deadpool's good.
Colin Bunn wrote
the best Deadpool I ever thought.
I thought Colin Bunn's Deadpool was legitimately like
he's become Deadpool's become like basically like a class clown at this point.
He's like Buggy.
Yeah, there was a brief period where he was in Colin Bun's hands where he was legitimately dangerous and insane.
And I thought that that was the best version of
that character.
Is Deadpool one of your top five, Q?
No.
No, okay.
All right.
No, he wasn't even, I have a list of eight right here that I couldn't even like sort through.
You can't whittle it down, you're saying?
No, I mean, I got it to the top five or six, but yeah, I got a rough one.
I mean, I know who my number one is.
There was never a question about that, but after that, it kind of became like
you know, harder, harder to cut people out.
Your number one isn't Buddy Bradley, is it?
No,
Buddy Bradley from HADE, a comic series that came out in the early 90s, I guess, somewhere on there, Peter Bag, Peter Begg, yeah, yeah.
And it's basically
very of the times, very grunge,
based out of like a it's a guy who lived in New Jersey and moved out to Seattle, and he's part of the whole grunge scene.
And he has his friend Stinky, who's like a total fuck-up drug.
And now, this was a comedy, or what would you describe it?
Yeah, yeah, it was definitely a drug.
Did it make me laugh?
Yeah, and you know why?
It wasn't really the writing as much as the art.
Like, the art was,
I don't know, it would make me LOL.
Yeah, if you could find it, like I found it for really cheap, like the trade paperbacks, they were like $2 each on eBay.
So I picked them all up.
I know they did a massive hardcover, too, of it.
Oh, did they?
Yeah, like the Complete Hate.
It's like a nice, beautiful,
yeah, you should look for it, slip case and everything.
You have to look into it.
Yeah.
All right.
So you're going to judge us?
Wow.
I mean, because I probably have heard of most of your features.
Yeah, I got a feeling that there's no deep cuts.
Maybe there's one.
But of course, Fool Killer.
Oh, I forgot about Fool Killer.
Yeah.
Which should be coming up on high by comics sometime soon.
Yeah,
I'll dig back into Fool Killer.
All right, Q.
So
what do you want to start off with, number five or your honorable mention?
I don't know.
I don't know, man.
I'm so in knots about this list.
I feel like the characters are listening and like they're going to feel.
So you tell me, man, like, how do you want to do it?
I'll go with my honorable mention first.
Okay.
My first honor.
So I have seven.
I middled it down to my top five, but the first guy who didn't make the cut
is a character called Grimjack, which I'm sure nobody listening or even at the table is that familiar with,
really.
But it was a character, Independent, First Comics, by a writer named John Ostrander.
And I always thought it would make a great movie.
I really won't give that much into it because I don't think anybody can really appreciate it listening because it's so obscure.
But it was about a mercenary, a hired gun who worked in a city called Sinochur.
And it was like a city that would constantly be teleporting in and out of different realities.
So, like a street that was there yesterday may be gone the next day.
And when a different street pops up, it's just a street full of vampires.
It was always changing.
This city was always like, like, like morphing into something else.
And he was this tough ass old gun for hire
who lost everything.
And he was just like, you know, just that kind of comic, like,
you know, nothing all that new, but just placed in this where he'd be fighting ninjas one episode, one comic, and then the next comic, he may be fighting like,
you know, space aliens.
It was just, this guy could do anything at any point.
And it was just a series that really I adored.
I can't believe that it was never turned into something of an animated movie or a film, though.
Not the material, but I remember the name well because you and Kev used to slobber over.
Oh, Grimjacket.
What company put him out?
First Comics.
And then when First Comics went under in the late 90s or early 90s, IDW finally got the rights after a long legal battle.
But
it was never, it could never,
you could never break through in the industry itself to be like a top seller.
It was always going to be this cultish kind of comic book that if you knew what it was, you dug it.
Tim Truman, you've ever heard,
he was the artist on it.
He was the co-creator.
I don't know if you remember that name, Q.
No, not offhand.
What else?
Hawkworld.
Yeah.
I was never a big Hawkworld.
He was very gritty.
I loved his art, but yeah, Tim Truman, John Ostrander, Grim Jack, he didn't make the cut.
cut, and I'm glad he didn't because Surprise barely remembers it.
So I'm getting judged on this.
I'm glad he was an honorable mention.
What do you got, Q?
I mean, I have four honorable mentions.
I don't know.
Go ahead.
All right, so I got Spider Jerusalem is on the bottom of the list
from
Transmet, yeah.
And he was essentially
Hunter S.
Thompson in the future.
He's a journalist on the right side, but it takes place in this futuristic society where everything's fucked up.
Like, there's this great storyline about
people who are frozen now.
Like,
what do they call that?
Cry genetics.
And, like, how, like, when they wake up in the future, like, they're basically like, people are like, why the fuck are you here?
Like, they're not, it's not exciting.
Yeah, they're like, and they, and they come out and they have no, they have no property, they have nothing, so they're forced to live in, like, these like hovels with other people from the past.
And it was all sorts of weird ideas like that.
And Spider Jerusalem was this journalist who came out to fight the man in it.
And it was filled with all those ideas that I love so much, which are just like, you're not going to see them anyplace else in comics.
And TransMed, I thought, nailed that, man.
I think that's a series that easily could translate.
to a film or a series.
I'm surprised it hasn't.
Warren Ellis, Derek Robertson, as I recall.
It's just so well done, and each story arc builds on the one before it, and it's just, it's just fucking, and he's a great character.
How many issues did that last for?
Did it go 100?
I think it did at least 75 because there's like 10 trades.
Okay.
Like I have the collection on my shelf.
So he was a big one on that list.
For me.
Ah, I am shocked.
He's honorable mention?
I'm telling you, man, this is tough.
This is tough.
Which ghostwriter is going to mean a lot to Bry's final decision?
Because Bry, I'm sure, wants to go old school with Johnny Blaze.
And I know you're kind of going Danny Ketch.
I'm Danny Ketch, but I think
Danny Ketch is my ghostwriter, but I understand that
most people would say
it's Johnny Blaze.
I couldn't argue with the Johnny Blaze guy.
Is it Robbie Rays?
Is the new ghost rider?
Yeah, that I could argue with.
I mean, I remember I was in Marvel's office when
that first came out, Robbie Reyes came out, and it was the first issue came out with him in that car instead of the motorcycle, right?
It's a charger now, I think, or something like that, Johnson.
Well, it's Bryce's car, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, you are Robbie Reyes.
And I was in the Marvel's office, and I was getting a tour, and they were like, oh, you want to see the Ghost Rider
room?
Because it has all the future covers and artwork on the wall and stuff.
And I went in there and I remember talking to the editor at the time.
I don't remember his name.
And I was like, ah, the car.
I was like, what made you go with the car?
And he goes, he goes, you're not sick of that motorcycle?
He goes, everybody's sick of that motorcycle.
And I remember looking at this guy being like, oof.
You said oof.
You didn't go, yeah, yeah, I'm sick of the car.
No, no, I didn't say oof.
I didn't say oof.
But I remember being like, well, I like the motorcycle, but like, I remember thinking, like, I don't know if a guy who doesn't like the motorcycle should be in charge of Ghost Rider.
I was like, I don't get it, get it.
And Robbie Reyes, as a character, has done absolutely zero to earn his spot.
He's done nothing.
The car looks stupid.
Like, it's just dumb to always have this car, like, in the middle of an Avengers, like, battlefield or something like that.
You're just like, where's he drive?
I don't know.
I never got into Robbie Reyes.
Now, what makes you like Danny Ketch so much?
I mean, I know it was probably right in your sweet spot.
Yeah, it was my sweet spot.
It was, in fact, I was aware of Danny Ketch before Johnny Blaze.
You know what I mean?
Like,
a big difference because when Johnny Blades came back, I was like, who's this fucking old man with a ponytail?
It's like, get the fuck out of here.
Yeah.
But since then, I've come to learn Johnny Blaze as much.
This is a tough one that didn't make the top five Sandman.
Wow.
Now, has the Sandman TV series started yet?
No, not yet.
No, okay.
I thought I saw it did.
I think they did a podcast or something.
Oh, yeah, they did like an audible
thing.
Oh, okay.
That's where I was hearing so much accolades about it.
I assumed it was a television series.
That's tough.
I mean,
I like the Sandman series.
I wasn't as
smitten with it as other people were.
I kind of like old school comics.
I don't need the highbrow stuff.
I like to see costume men punch
costume villains.
I don't need a heady discussion every issue
between Morpheus and death.
I can appreciate it.
But I guess I'm kind of like lowbrow,
and I'm proud of it.
Yeah.
You know what's going on?
Lowbrows built this country.
God damn right.
USA.
USA.
USA.
USA.
But I get it.
That's a series that has its,
it may be considered the greatest comic book series ever written.
It's in the discussion.
I mean, talk about a comic book with ideas.
You know what I mean?
Like, like something you really couldn't see anywhere else.
I thought Sandman brought that to us, and I loved it.
I mean, it was like mind-blowing to me.
It was almost like when I read Swamp Thing by Alan Moore.
I was like, I didn't even know
that this shit was even possible in comics.
You know what I mean?
Like, you're like, this is so crazy, and the ideas are so dark and out there that it really blew my mind.
And Sandman was
one of the biggest.
I am really
on my edge of my seat.
I know no one can see it because if these are his honorable mentions,
what's going to be his top five?
These are some good picks, right?
Yeah.
My final.
Honorable mention is Kyle Rayner.
And he is one of my favorite characters of all time.
So for him to not make the top five, it was a fucking internal struggle, man.
So this is Green Lantern?
This is a guy who took over for Green Lantern in the
early 90s, 91, 92.
And he had a very lengthy run.
Very beloved character, like one of the few replacement characters that connected so
well with fandom.
Like there is a segment that wanted Hal Jordan back, but they also didn't want to see Kyle Lee because he was so likable as a character.
Yeah, I think he's a better character than Hal Jordan overall.
Like, Hal Jordan, I find, not that I don't like Hal, but like, that it's like a one-note thing with Hal every single fucking time.
We got it.
Your dad died in a plane crash.
You know what I mean?
Like, you're the man without fear.
I like when he was his most interesting to me was when he came back to life and everybody hated him.
Because what happened was Hal Jordan went insane and killed the entire Green Lantern Corps.
And that's how they introduced Kyle Rayner.
They brought it down to one Green Lantern, one guy.
And he was inexperienced.
It was almost like the greatest American hero type shit, where he didn't know how to fucking do things correctly.
And he was like the new kid on the block.
And then when they brought Hal back because of Jeff Johns, everybody hated Hal because they remember him as a bad guy.
Like he was possessed at the time, but like people were like, fuck you, Hal Jordan.
And that was when he was most interesting to me.
When even fucking
Who's the Killiwag was like, dude, get out of my face.
Like, that I just thought it was way more interesting.
And he became Parallax, right?
Became Parallax, yeah.
And he was, he was, he was possessed by a yellow demon in his body, right?
Like, that's
the demon was parallax, yeah.
Well, well, what happens is inside each
the green lanterns are powered by these batteries, Brian, that are shaped like lanterns.
But, and there's like a major, there's like a giant one on each planet that has
like there's there's a red lanterns, yellow lanterns, blue lanterns, and inside each of these lanterns is a living energy creature.
And the yellow one was Parallax, and he got out and possessed Hal Jordan, turned Hal Jordan into Parallax.
I mean, that was all retcons.
Yeah, yeah.
Initially, that wasn't, I mean, no one was thinking that.
They literally, GC was like, let's just make him a mass murderer.
The guy who has been a hero for the last 50 years,
they were like, they green lit.
Get it?
Green lit.
Yeah, nice.
That he would become a murderer after saving the universe.
I don't know how many times in his career, but yeah, he would go out as a murderer.
But, you know,
it was a good move, I think, not to let that be his legacy, though.
Was he a murderer the whole time, or he became a murderer?
He was possessed by this creature.
Oh, that's when he started.
But then Ostrander got their hands on him and they made him the Spectre.
Yeah, he's
right.
He was for years.
Yeah, he was the Spectre.
Yeah, I like that yeah that's that's my hal jordan that's my hal jordan specter hal jordan yeah i like that yeah i forgot about that um yeah because go ahead no just because like they kept up the horror vibe of the comic like when hal jordan was in it and
and you had this guy who was responsible for the death of fucking thousands dealing with the fallout of that and and and i was like and and that's where he met he saw green arrow for the first time and he did such a good job of like selling the creepiness of your best friend becoming a murderer, then coming back to life as a ghost.
And it was like,
I thought it was really well done.
So
I really like that run of Hal Jordan.
It's weird when he came back.
It's weird, too.
They have never collected that series in any format.
Really?
Yeah, nothing.
Not the first issue.
Like maybe they would even do one trade paperback.
Nothing.
It's like the only way you can read it is in those single issues.
I find that strange.
And they've done an omnibus of the Spectre, but it's all the 60s stuff.
Right.
My other honorable mention is somebody you're going to recognize, Bri.
Frank Castle, the Punisher.
All right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not one of my top five, but a character that
there was a time when I was like, oh, there's nothing cooler than the Punisher.
He's got white boots.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But
he's one of my top fives.
He hasn't aged well, though.
I disagree.
The concept of a Punisher has not aged well.
I disagree, man.
I mean, the concept of somebody going out and taking the law into their own hands with a gun,
we have seen in real life that
it is
very polarizing.
But he was found innocent, so it must mean the punisher is a good guy.
Well, in the conflict,
you know what, though, but in the conflicts,
you have the ability to,
without a doubt, show that the people that the Punisher's killing deserve that and more.
Right.
Yeah.
In real life, you don't have those new ones.
There's no child pornographers.
They're Italian hitmen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
The Punisher wouldn't kill somebody for hitting him over the head with a skateboard.
He might.
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I mean, but you look at Garth Ennis' run on Punisher and you're like, it's...
It's so character defining, man.
And like, Garth did a good job of walking that.
Like, he never, he, he never made it so the Punisher was a good guy or was living a good life.
He was always like obsessed.
You know what I mean?
Done right.
It's like the same reason we watch fucking horror movies.
Like, nobody's saying fucking Freddy Crueger is a good guy or to be emulated, but I love watching him.
Like, why can't there be stories about an insane fucking.
And the thing about the Punisher that I loved, that we might be out of road on this.
I don't know how much more this can go, but he's the only character,
as far as I know, that aged in real time.
Like, they never
made him.
They've changed him up, though, because he was a big one.
They had to now.
Yeah, but up until up until, like, really relatively recently, he was that guy.
He was in his late 60s.
I don't even, when I fell in love with the
Punisher, it wasn't even from the Ennis run.
It was like the Mike Barron stuff and the stuff even before that.
The Stephen Grant, Mike Zeck.
Yes.
No, me too.
That's when I got into him as well.
Texera was my guy.
Oh, he was.
Oh, he was my guy.
War Journal.
His War Journal, man, was the fucking best.
I loved it.
But Ennis, for me, took all that and made it into something even more badass.
He really took the character to the heights that probably haven't been seen since.
But yeah, I mean,
just
the most simple
concept, you know, it still shows.
I mean, there's still, there's so much you could do with it.
Like, it's so, like, interesting, a character of Frank Castle.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and even when, I mean, anybody listening to this, I couldn't urge enough.
I think it's called Welcome Back Frank, right?
Like,
yeah, if you find Welcome Back Frank, which is when Garth Ennis took over the character, because before that, he was an angel.
You remember this fucking shit from Marvel Knights?
Bernie Wrightson, which you would think would be better than it was,
turned the Punisher.
And he's had some weird fucking turns over the years, but like he was essentially, he died, he went to heaven, and was turned into a hitman for heaven.
And he had these glowing eyes and like this symbol on his forehead and these guns that would have been.
Guns that would shoot like
angel fire.
And it was a flop.
It wasn't a good idea.
And Garth Ennis
acknowledges it like in the beginning of Welcome Back Frank.
He doesn't throw it out.
He's like, Yeah, they took me to heaven
and I rejected it all.
It was a good take on it, man.
And then the other one was Frankencastle.
You remember Frankenstein?
Frankencastle, yeah, they turned him into a Frankenstein-esque monster.
Yeah, Wolverine's son, as I recall.
Jackin, right?
Sliced him up and killed him.
And so they took him in the sewers and put him and like made Frankenstein out of the Punisher.
And they called it Frankencastle.
And it was like two years he was Frankencastle.
And I got to be honest, it was way better than it should have been.
Like, it was better than it should have been.
Like, I remember really enjoying parts of that run, knowing it was temporary, knowing that, you know, this was just a wild take on the character.
When a character is that old, you will see some weird concepts come out when it's when he's decades old.
I mean, there was a point where they turned that the Punisher needed to have his skin dyed.
He was in prison, right?
He had to have his skin dyed to become a black man.
was a hit in the theaters at that point.
Didn't he also have like a tight afro?
Yeah.
It was like so bizarre.
It was crazy.
Yeah, they're going to make some questionable choices over time.
That's what happens if you have a character who's decades old.
There's going to be moments, there's going to be high points and low points.
And I have,
who was the artist?
Steve Dillon.
That did a lot of Punisher.
I have an original Steve Dillon framed on my wall.
It's the one where he finally fucking gets one over on Manucci
and she's like on fire and stuff like that near the
polar bear.
Like after the polar, like, there's an issue where he fucking punches a polar bear in the face, dude.
It's fucking nuts.
Like, his enemies throw him.
This is why, like, don't tell me the Punisher is not a great character.
They throw him into the polar bear cage in Central Park Zoo.
Um, and they come in, and like, or he falls in it, right?
And they come in to kill him.
And he's like, How am I going to take these guys out?
Because he's been shot like a couple of times, he's got no weapons.
So he just goes up to a polar bear and straight up fucking jacks it in the face.
And the polar bear goes nuts and starts killing everybody in the cage and shit like that.
And you're like, this is fucking awesome, man.
Like, you know, it's great shit.
It's, yeah, that's Garth Ennis's.
I think that was,
yeah, one of Garth Ennis' early runs.
So, Punisher, great character.
In my top five, he's number three.
He is number three.
Now, did you hear about the, he's coming back?
And they're,
but a different type of Punisher Marvel is doing.
They're changing the skull.
And they're taking no more guns.
He only can use ninja swords.
It's just temporary, though.
Yeah, it's just a temporary.
No, it's
yeah, it's like a temporary.
Okay, it's like, you know, it's just like when Superman died.
Okay.
Punisher will be back at one point using guns.
I need the polar bear punching Punisher.
That's the one you want, man.
Who's your...
All right, so he was number three, though, huh?
He's number three.
Punisher was number three.
I've always loved Punisher.
No, sorry, number four.
Number four.
What did I do here?
Flip-flop him?
I fucked up.
I've got 10 more honorable mentions.
I have one more honorable mention.
One more, and that's the Joker.
Wow.
Interesting.
You know, most people
would be putting heroes or anti-heroes on the list.
BQ throws a curveball with the Joker.
He's in the under the five, but he's the Joker, man.
I mean, he's the fucking Joker.
So he's more iconic.
He's a fucking time, too, than if he's.
He can be.
I think he can be.
Yeah.
It is a lot of bad takes on the Joker.
But yeah, so he was in in there.
Okay, so
number five, rounding the bottom of the list.
So Punisher's number four, then.
Okay.
Yeah, we'll go.
Number five.
Yeah.
Jesse Custer.
Preacher.
Now,
you're very familiar with that.
You read it.
Yeah, I read it.
I watched the show.
I liked it.
I liked it a lot.
Though I would probably say I like Cassidy more than Jesse Custer, right?
Yeah.
Well,
Cassidy's a more fun character to read, maybe, but there was something to Jesse Cusser's strict moral code that I fucking really liked.
Like, he was a guy that took no bullshit.
He was like an old school cowboy brought to life in a comp book, and he had some, like, very stern black and white moral codes that I thought were great.
great in that book like he just used them they were used against him sometimes um great character.
And Cassidy was definitely more interesting and more funny.
But at the end of the day, Cassidy was a bit of a scumbag.
He tried to fuck his wife's best friend.
He was a piece of shit.
You know what I mean?
I couldn't, you know,
I don't know.
Although he did have one of the best lines I've ever read in comics, I thought Cassidy.
And that's towards the end of the series when...
after he tried to fuck Tulip and ruined his friendship with Jesse Custer, and he was asking
Jesse for help.
And Jesse was like, Dude, go fuck yourself, man.
Like, you're a piece of shit.
You're an asshole.
You're a drug-addicted vampire.
And Cassidy turns to him and goes, Well, it's real easy to stick by your friends when everything's going well.
He goes, But what about when your friends are on the road to hell?
Not so easy.
And that's a good line.
And I was like, fuck, that's, I mean, I paraphrased it a little bit, but I was like, that is a good fucking line.
And then, and then, you know, I don't want to ruin the ending of it, but like, it turns the whole book on that one line.
So fucking Cassidy has one of my favorite lines of comics.
I can't argue with you, man.
You can't argue.
Can you imagine if you were to go back in time when Preacher was being published, and I would tell you that DC abandoned the Vertigo line?
Insane.
Isn't it like unbelievable that they are just like, there's no market for Vertigo books?
They just don't sell.
So they just killed the line.
You're almost like, what world am I living in?
Vertigo was Sandman?
Vertigo was Sandman.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Vertigo was
swamped.
It was all that Alan Moore and the Vertigo?
All that smart stuff, all that like kind of like,
you know,
definitely for a different audience than, you know, like a Spider-Man or the Avengers or Superman, Batman.
There was a different attempt being made to reach a different audience, and they're just like, yeah, we're shutting it down.
They did.
Yeah, you know what?
They kind of relaunched it as Black Label, but not really.
But Vertigo will be back, right?
Like, you'll see the deck.
Yeah, at a certain point, I have to think they'll slap that label on something.
My number five, and
this is with a caveat, though.
Robin.
Oh, wow.
I know
that's a weird one, though, because it's only
the Marv Wolfman, George Perez, new Teen Titans Robin, where
he's struggling with, like, I need a new identity.
I don't want to be just under under the shadow of Batman.
I want to take these short shorts off and become a man.
I want to fuck Starfire.
Got a clip for the week.
That's where he grew up right there.
And he just became so
much more interesting to me as a character than just being the boy wonder.
I love the way that George Perez drew muscles in his legs.
Like, man, I just wanted legs like that.
Never could achieve that.
Never tried.
Never try.
But boy, dude, I loved
Dick Grayson as Robin in the new Teen Titans becoming Nightwing.
And
there was a point, like all these characters in my top five, you know, at different points of my life, they were my favorite characters.
This would be my, probably like my
15 to 16 year old self just falling in love with Dick Grayson as as a character and
second-guessing everything, being like, what would Batman do in this instance?
You know, they're looking to me.
And is it because I know Batman?
Like, am I treading on, you know, like just getting the benefit of the doubt because I'm associated with Batman?
It was so interesting.
It's such like, he was so unsure of himself.
You know, after all he did, he still was like, am I worthy of leading the Titans?
Which is fucking crazy because you would think like trained by Batman and fighting crime since you were like a teenager, you would
not even like a fucking eight-year-old.
Yeah.
Unless they retcon that out.
I got to imagine they retcon that out by now.
It never made sense, Robin, right?
Like, that was always the thing.
Like, why is Batman bringing a child into all this danger?
Story-wise, no.
I mean, sales-wise, they're probably like, you know, what'll get the kids back to reading Batman back in 1938?
And they were like,
throw this kid in there.
Yeah, no, for sure.
They eventually.
Go ahead.
No, no, no.
Do you find that like
how many robots?
Are we at too many Robins?
Are we at too many Batman at this point?
What a question.
If you're only going to get that question to iBuy Comics, if you're listening to ISO Comics looking for that question, good luck.
Are we at a point, a tipping point?
Are there too many Robins?
I mean, Robins, Batgirls,
Signal, another Batman now in New York City.
You're just like at the fucking League of Batman, Batman Inc.
You're just like, Jesus.
Yeah, we are definitely at There's Too Many Robins.
Tim Drake,
he was introduced just
as my
love affair with current comics, if you want to call it, but like then current comics is kind of winding down.
I'm finding less and less enjoyable, but I still found Tim Drake to be an interesting and good addition to the Batman universe.
And
is he still Robin?
He's still Robin.
Yeah, he spent a while as
Damien is also.
Well, he was Red Robin, and I think he's back to Robin now.
But Damien,
I don't know.
I would like to say it should have ended at Tim Drake, but man, do I like Damien?
I really like that kid.
So, Damien, Brian, is Batman's.
This was a good trick.
Who did this?
I forget.
Like, there was an out-of-continuity story where Batman fucked Raza Ghul's daughter and she got pregnant.
And then that string was abandoned, right?
Like, nobody touched that for decades.
That story.
Oh, is that Son of the Demon?
Yes, Son of the Demon.
That's it.
And it was always...
Mike Barr.
Okay, great.
So Mike Barr writes Son of the Demon, and it's a story where Batman has sex and impregnates Raza Ghul's son, and and then it was ignored for, I would say, 20 years, maybe even.
Like, it was just ignored.
And then some writer, and I wish I remembered who to give credit to, was like, Batman's got a son.
And like, and if like, or a daughter, but it turned out to be a son.
And all this time that we haven't seen him, he's being trained by...
Batman's greatest enemy, the League of Assassins, Shadows, right?
And
then he comes back, and the kid is a straight-up fucking psychotic.
He kills.
He kills without,
like, his first answer is death.
Like, that's where he's at.
And, like, he thinks his father's a pussy.
Um, and he tries to kill Tim Drake.
Doesn't every son think that at some point in their lives?
Like, my dad isn't Batman.
He's literally like, you are a pussy because you will not kill.
He tries to legitimately kill Tim Drake, who was Robin at the time.
And Batman's like, all right, I have this psycho son.
The only thing I can do is make him Robin to keep him under my fucking wing.
And he was trained since birth.
That Robin makes sense to me.
Like him going out and fucking and fighting crime at night to stop him from just killing people.
Like at least like in comic book logic, it makes sense.
But,
you know, now I just, I couldn't even tell you how many Robins there are.
Yeah.
You know, yeah.
The answer to the question is, yeah, there's too many Robins.
Definitely.
But that's my number five.
Who's your number?
Who's your number three then, right?
Well, that was, that was, well, it was Jesse Custer, was five.
Four was Punisher.
Three, Spider-Man.
Wow.
Three is Spider-Man.
You know what?
This is unbelievable because my number three is Spider-Man.
Oh, all right.
I like this show.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
All right.
So
what
turned you on about Spider-Man?
Well, he was one of my main reading when I was a kid was Spider-Man.
And that cartoon for me, that 67 cartoon, I don't know if it has the same kind of
emotions for you, but for me, I watched it every day after school.
I loved it.
I adored it.
And that made me just love the comics of that era.
But
how old are you when you start reading Spider-Man?
Well, probably that's in the 80s.
So we're looking at
Black Costume.
Spider-Man was kind of my intro to him.
All the Venom stuff, like all the McFarlane stuff, like later on, all that shit.
Like, I really loved
arguably the best costume in comics.
I would have a hard time arguing against that.
Yeah.
What would it be like?
Him, Superman, and Batman, three most identifiable costumes.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Wonder Woman maybe get thrown in there too.
Yeah.
But, you know,
I like the Clone Wars, like the Clone Saga.
I know people hate it.
I fucking ate it up.
I love Ben Riley as a character.
I got so into it.
Now,
are we looking at another problem, Walt, where there's too many spider people?
Like, you can't even, like, remember when there was a clone and everybody was losing their fucking mind over it?
Yes.
Now it's like there is like the appeal of Spider-Man appears to be an infinite amount of Spider-Man these days.
And I say it's hard to have that many Spider-Men
running around
and not feel like it's less special.
That's me personally, but I mean, I also know that that could be hate speech, though, too.
And I don't want to
get the Feds after us.
Yeah, I just don't like, to me, I think that just like it's, but the same thing is being done with Batman, though.
So it's just a go-to.
It's just like when you need to, like, when you, you know, you need to break the glass to, it's an emergency, you know, because the industry is like floundering and you're like, hey, what's going to sell more Spider-Man?
That's why they do it.
I mean, it sells.
So that's why there's that many Spider-Man.
Yeah.
There was a point in my life when I was first getting the comic books, I just wanted all Spider-Man action.
I would go around, you know, doing this, you know, the web shooters.
Web shooters as I'm running around grocery stores pretending I'm shooting web,
you know,
swinging from any rope that I saw, like I'm Spider-Man.
Like, I love Spider-Man, and there's only two Spider-Man books for me to get my rocks off:
Marvel Team Up, and then
a little bit older than Peter Parker, Spectacular Spider-Man.
So, there's three once 1977 rolls around, but
that's when we had it tough.
There's only one Spider-Man, and we made do
yeah, which is weird because, like, I almost feel like the cutoff point should have been Miles Morales because, like, Miles was introduced in an alternate universe.
I actually think they made a mistake when they brought the universes for me.
Obviously, they don't think that, but I thought it worked better when Miles was in his own separate universe.
Like,
this thing now of like, there's Miles, there's Spider-Man, Ben Riley's back as Spider-Man,
Spider-Gwen.
It's just like this endless array of spider people where you're like, God,
do they not think that?
The reason Ben Riley worked for me is because it was so shocking that he was a clone of Peter Parker.
Like, it was such a weird idea that you're like, wow, I dug it.
But now you're just like, everybody's a clone of fucking Peter Parker.
It sucks.
Who's your spider artist?
Your one be all end all Spider-Man artist?
McFarlane.
No, Jr.
Bagley.
Oh, John Ramita.
No, you know what?
It would be the Bagley or John Ramada Jr.
It'd be one of those two.
Probably Bagley, if I'm going to have to call a gun to my head.
Oh,
I was about to put one to your head, so you're lucky.
That's how serious it is here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
You know, I do have a page of Preacher, an original art page of Preacher that Mosier bought me when the book was still going, and I'm sure he paid like $150 for it, but now it's probably worth like $10,000.
But you remember when Cassidy gets stabbed in the eye when they find out he's a vampire?
I have that page with the knife in his eye, it's framed in it, it's framed in my hallway right now.
And Mosier just sent it to me out of nowhere like 15 years ago.
Nice guy, nice.
Yeah.
So, what are you thinking so far?
Who's got the lead?
Well, you're
give me your five and your four Q.
I'm looking at three.
You've revealed three of your five.
Yeah.
Right.
I got Jesse Custer, Punisher, and Spider-Man.
Okay.
I've got Robin, Spider-Man,
and I'm about to reveal my third one.
All right.
A way in after your third one.
Okay.
This is where I'm going to lose it right here.
But, you know, I got to remain true.
Congratulations, Q.
It's a character called Werewolf by Night.
Oh, Jack Russell.
Jack Russell, 70s book, had 43 issues, none of which stand out other than two
Werewolf by Night 32 and 33 because they introduced the character Moon Knight, who's going to be, I think, make a huge splash on Disney
plus's live-action Marvel Universe series.
Just a teenager in Los Angeles who has a family curse that turns him into a werewolf three nights out of the year.
And
I loved it as a kid, and I still love it.
And if I had one character to work on, like if Marvel was like, you can have a book.
I don't want a regular series.
So just give me four issues.
That would be the character I would choose because
nothing's really been done with it.
Nobody cares about it.
And I would just bring it right back to what it was,
or right back to what it was.
I know everybody's going in would be like, I would change this, I would change that, I would do this, and I would totally alter this and make it somebody else.
And I'd be like, nope, I want to bring it just exactly what it was when I was a kid.
The same goofy villains, the same
relationships with the female Topaz.
And he had this best friend who was like 15 years older than him named Buck.
Nobody knows what I'm talking about, but that's one of my favorite characters.
And they're about to release it this year.
They really released all of them in an omnibus, but they're about to remaster them, Q, in Marvel Masterworks.
They're going to go back in, and they're going to be so crisp, and the colors are going to match the original comics from the 70s that I cannot wait at $100
volume.
But I would spend five times that much for this series.
Yeah, that's how much it is.
I'm telling you that.
Yeah, but that's, and again, there's not really, like, I could talk about it, but nobody knows what I'm talking about listening.
It's just too obscure, but that's one of the ones that I love that character, and I go back to that series, and it still brings me right back to being like a little kid and like sitting in the back of my mom's car driving around and like
just loving that series.
I've always loved the concept of a monster as a hero.
Yeah.
That always appealed to me because I love to watch monster movies as a kid too and I always loved like that Marvel was like well we'll just take Dracula Wolfman and the Frankenstein monster and we'll just make them ours.
We'll introduce them into the Marvel universe and they'll team up with Spider-Man it's such a goofy concept but for a kid in the 70s it was like you know that was where I got my wood you know
today it's blue chew back then
did you read blade were you a blade guy uh
blade was uh toma dracula you know marv wolfman gene colin
basically shaft just introduced into uh into this series i love the character you know i i mean
just because it was so different you know like here's a here's a black vampire hunter who's a badass it was just like it was awesome it was so cool and i love that character but i have not seen to date a good solo blade series it just hasn't happened yet everyone starts out and they get and they just don't they there's a lot of missteps and inevitably it gets canceled almost two years in they can only last two years pull the the plug.
And there hasn't been a Blade series in forever from Marvel.
I don't know why.
I mean, those movies are awesome.
I think he's on the Avengers now.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
Yeah.
How about that?
The Blade movie, the first one.
What'd you think?
Great.
First and second one.
I hold equally.
The third one starts to get a little out there a little bit,
but I like the first and second one quite a bit.
I went to see it in a theater, and
I was expecting
nothing.
I was expecting like them to be wincing the whole time and covering my face and just looking around and being like this is the fucking greatest thing I've ever seen in my life I loved it yeah wouldn't it be awesome like why not bring Wesley Snipes back as Blade dude I cannot understand how they're not doing that he looks fucking great why he's why aren't they doing it I don't know man they recast blade and when I heard that and the guy who they cast I'm sure is is great like I you know he's good in other stuff but like fucking Wesley Snipes is still alive Still looking good.
He's up there.
Yeah, I was going to say, he's probably like close to 60.
Get him a trainer.
If he even needs one, I don't know if he does.
I don't think he needs to.
But, you know, get him ripped and trot him out there, man.
People would love it.
All right.
How old do you think Wesley Snipes is?
I'm going to say 62.
I'll say 59.
59.
Exactly.
You could, like, how fucking great is that if you got him back as Blade?
Like, why not?
He's not too old.
Is it the tax thing?
Is it really like there's like,
could there be, like, was he blackballed
in Hollywood?
Because he hasn't really gotten a lot of roles.
Yeah, maybe.
Like, what did he do that was so egregious other than not pay his taxes?
And he
paid his debt to society.
You're right.
I think he seemed a little unhinged during all that, though.
People are like, we can't fucking work with that guy.
Yeah, there may be more to the story.
I don't know.
We were at Comic-Con.
God, this has to be like it was right after Wesley Snipes got either out of jail or
when the fuck was he out?
2013.
So, yeah, it might have been 2014, right?
I was at Comic-Con.
And
Wesley Snipes, we were at the DC party, right?
And they were having this big party.
And
he was there, and he was dancing by himself in a corner.
It was right after he got out of prison.
And I remember looking at him, and I was like, like there was a, there was like a, nobody was going near him.
And I was like,
is it because of, is it because of that, or is it because everybody's so intimidated to him?
To me, he was still giving off movie star vibes.
Yeah, like, I would be, yeah, like,
I wouldn't go near him.
Like, you, you know, some people you feel comfortable going up to being like, dude, I fucking love the movie, you know, Blade, blah, blah, blah.
But he gave off this thing where it's just like
there was a respect circle around them, but I didn't know if it was respect or crazy.
I would love to have him back as Blade, man.
You know, Marvel, sometimes they know what they're doing, though.
I mean, he was, you know, he was in Coming to America Part 2.
He was just in that.
So,
maybe, maybe.
I think it's a mistake to recast it while you still have him alive and in good shape.
I don't know.
100% agree.
I am like...
It wouldn't do nothing but excite the fan base, I think, to have him shoehorned into the Marvel universe.
Yeah.
Somehow.
And make those old ones canon.
Yep.
You know what I mean?
Like, make them cannon, bring them in.
Even if you want to make a new blade,
somewhere.
Someone take out the mantle.
Yeah.
Like, but to not use Wesley snipes with.
Son of Blade.
Yeah.
Son of a Blade.
That's OB.
What do you got?
I see you.
I was going to wait.
Yeah, we got another spot.
I was going to wait till right before the number one.
Oh, okay.
That's great.
That's building anticipation.
Make everybody have to sit through and showman.
Because no one's turning off before we get to number one.
So I am going on to number Deuce as well.
Two, yeah, yeah.
Swamp thing.
That's a strong one.
That's a strong one.
There's a case to be made that there's no character in history that has had more prestigious
series two times.
You know, when he's first introduced in the 70s by Len Wien and Bernie Wrightson, it's one of those game changers for the industry.
Brings it to another level in terms of the art and the characterization.
But then in the 80s, you know, Alan Moore gets on there and does some stuff that's like, that's still being riffed on today.
He just cleans fucking house.
It's one of the best comics runs ever, without a doubt.
Right.
I adore it.
I love the art on it, too, with John Totalbin and Stephen Bissett.
It's just one of the most perfect because he's just changing things just enough, tweaking them to give them a darker, more sinister tone, the stuff from the 70s, which was already dark to begin with.
And he just brings like this, like I said, sinister vibe to everything.
And
that's like when you say, like, you know, you read Sandman and Preacher and you were like, comics can like expand my mind.
And comics are like doing things that I didn't think that they could do.
That's the feeling I got
when I was a teen reading Swamp thing because
you know it was it was definitely more intelligent, more mature than the stuff I was reading as I was maturing, right?
There was a line in, I wonder if you'll remember this, I bet you you will, but but I it was a one of the first times I was ever creeped out by a comic and like stuck with me and I couldn't stop thinking about this.
But you remember like his uncle's like the bad guy, right?
That was uh his uh his girl's uh uncle.
Uncle.
Okay, but do you remember when, like,
after that?
Abigail.
So, remember, though, after that, for whatever reason, and I'm going to go and reread the books now after this, but like Swan Thing goes to hell.
Oh, yeah.
He ventures into hell.
Yep.
Woof.
When he sees Arcane and he's got those bugs in his mouth.
His head now is attached to like a
15-foot
pile
of maggots, bugs,
creepy, crawly, night crawlers, just everything that's disgusting in the insect world, his body now is made up of.
And it's like, and he loses
his sense of time, right?
That's the creepy line where he says to Swanthing, he's like, I knew you'd come down here and get me eventually.
He goes,
How long have I been down here?
He goes, and he thought he was there for like 20 years.
And Swanthing goes, You've been down here for two weeks.
And I was like, oh my God.
I was like,
hellish.
It did more to make me afraid of hell than Catholicism ever did.
I agree.
Yep.
Yep, exactly.
That's the same thing.
You're just like, I'm going to be a good boy because
I don't want any part of this.
Yeah.
He's a genius, Alan Moore.
And unfortunately,
you know, he's kind of turned.
He kind of hates the comic book industry, it feels like now.
He kind of poo poos everything and he doesn't want his name on anything.
He feels
he was like robbed and taken advantage of by DC with the Watchmen and everything.
Yeah.
Which I go back and forth on that because sometimes I agree with him because like he's
Alan Moore.
You know what I mean?
Like you guys should be giving him everything he wants and all the respect in the world he wants.
But then there's a part of me that's like,
yeah, but isn't the same motherfucker that wrote Tom Sawyer and Harry Potter in the same comic book?
Why does he get to use anybody's characters that they want, but like he makes a fucking, he does it and DC's up bad guys for it.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, it's slippery slope.
Yeah.
But I love Alan Moore's work so much.
And it's not like anything that's been done with Watchmen since then has been worth.
Like, what would have been better?
They had just given Alan Moore what he wanted and he stayed in the industry and continued to write those those books for all these years, like that would have been so much more valuable than
before Watchmen
or whatever bullshit they did with it since then.
Well, do you think
DC, again, like it's in case of emergency, break glass?
There's been a whole bunch of those moments as things have like really gone down the shitter for the comic book industry.
It's like, okay, we got to bring Watchmen back and we got to bring him into the DC universe.
This is the kind of thing that is the panic move of all panic moves because there's nothing else to do.
But
there's a reason why the Beatles are still
the mystique and the respect and the aura is because they never got back together.
Yeah.
They reformed on a roof in 1970 and never got together again and recorded any new music.
And that's why they are still
on top of that mountain.
Like, you have to have the discipline to fucking, if you're DC, not to go to the well and do,
you know, make Watchmen part of the DC universe.
It didn't work either.
I don't know if you read that.
I read pieces of it because I was a little bit intrigued, but
it wasn't the Watchmen that I knew.
So it was like, none of it was anything that I recognized.
Even the
storytelling mechanics behind it were like,
why are you guys doing this?
There was no benefit to it, I thought.
Yeah.
that's the only reason.
And those greenbacks, it's like we are like floundering.
We need something that's going to get everybody excited.
And I almost would be like, if I'm somebody in the room who's like, whose paycheck is like, you know, give me an idea or you're fucking out of here.
Why don't we bring Watson and put him in a decent universe?
Fuck Alan Moore.
Fuck Alan Moore.
I would do it too if my job was on the line.
They're like, fuck that guy.
That wizard
who lives in his castle.
He's got enough money.
They'll send him the check, so it's up to him to cash it or not.
It don't matter.
But, like, I don't, yeah, I don't like, I don't,
I understand, like, I'm saying, like, you got to have the discipline not to do it, but I also understand, man, it's like you're next on the line and you're going, and you're in a room with like, you justify your job, asshole, or you're out of here.
I would be like, I would throw that out there for consumption.
Walt had the same conversation with Giddam earlier.
Let's bat it around.
What's the worst that can happen to me?
I'm going to lose lose my job anyway.
Did you watch the HBO series?
I watched bits of it.
Yeah, I was interested.
Yeah, way better than I thought it had any right to work.
I thought it worked.
I mean, obviously, people loved it.
I'm surprised that it didn't get a second season.
Well, maybe they're hearing you and they're like, we fucking pulled this off.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't know if we can do another one of these until HBO, until someone at HBO in five years is like,
Watchmen, Watchman, bring Watchman back.
I like this guy.
Why aren't you more like him, Johnson?
I was just about to say, Watchman.
What's this werewolf by night bullshit you gave us?
What is this?
Get out of here, Watchman.
Oh, so we are on to our two number ones, Brian.
Well, no, my number two.
Oh, you didn't reveal your number two yet?
No.
Oh, I thought you did.
But it's not, I don't think it's going to be that controversial, and it's definitely going to reveal my number one.
But my my number two is Batman.
I thought it would be.
Yeah, I mean, and a lot of that honestly comes from, and we've run into this stumbling block before, but like, Batman 66 was my world when I was a kid.
Like, obsessed with it.
Love it, love it, love it.
I've never grown out of that.
I still watch it to this day.
I still love it.
I mean, not like Ralph Garmin loves it, where he has fucking a whole museum in his house.
Like, nobody's like that guy.
But yeah, man, that really is what made me
this direct line from Batman 66 to my love of comics.
Direct.
I don't think there's one without the other.
And, you know, my favorite version of Joker, which you've made fun of me before, is the Caesar Romero version of The Joker, still to this day my favorite version of The Joker.
I fucking love it.
Yeah, that's a tough one to say.
I mean, I like it too, but like, there's been so much more, like, crazier.
Like, you know, even Heath Ledger's Joker is just like, that's a great rendition of the Joker.
And it's not taken away.
Yeah, love it.
Love it all.
But if, like, you told me what I could watch more of, right?
It would, I would go for the Caesar Romero one.
He was great.
I have, remember, I hanging in my living room.
Get him got me that Cesar Romero autograph a few years back.
That's hanging on the wall in my living room.
But Batman, to me, is like something about that character is open to more interpretations than almost any other character.
Like all the different versions of Batman, they don't all work, but like when they work, it's just so basic.
And like, here's a guy.
And this is why I get annoyed
when people today are like, I find it so tiring and boring.
And just get the fuck out of my face when people are like,
he's like, Batman's a billionaire.
He could be doing more.
He could be doing more with that money.
could be, he's out fighting crime, beating up criminals.
He could be, and I'm just like, you fucking motherfuckers.
Like, it's just so he could afford the Batmobile.
Don't you understand this?
Like, nobody wants to read the story of a billionaire.
I don't want to read.
I don't want to read a comic book about a billionaire that takes his money and turns it to social programs.
Well, I'm sorry.
Bill Gates, isn't it?
Yeah, I don't want to read a comic book about me.
I don't want to read that comic book.
It's the most boring thing in the world.
Like, yeah, obviously, if Bruce Wayne,
took all his money and delivered food and waters to fucking starving villages in the middle of nowhere, it would be the better thing to do.
But you know what?
I don't want to read a comic about it.
Like, I want to read a comic about a billionaire that fucking makes cool toys and fucking ships and planes and then fights an insane clown.
Like, that's what it's all about.
It's what it's all about.
Like, so to me,
it's such a
up until recent years, it's such an unassailable
premise.
Rich guy
has all this money, spends it on fighting crime as a bad.
It's really like perfect comic book.
Perfect stuff.
I got one of those questions that you can only hear on iBuy Comics.
I think maybe, or maybe I'm getting too ahead of myself.
Is Batman too dark at this point?
They would never ask that on iSell Comics.
Ever.
Is there come a point where it's just become like it's too cliched?
It's like we've seen this
Batman now since the 80s.
Is there
room or is there a point where you're like, we should move a little bit back towards Batman with a little gut and smiling?
I'll tell you what, I'd fucking buy it.
I would buy that.
Yeah,
but I think there is room for that.
I do.
I think there's room for that interpretation of Batman.
Absolutely.
No, you turn the monthly Batman comic book.
You just don't go as dark as
the fans
demand it to be at this point.
Batman is back to having a dad, bud.
Yeah.
Okay.
I do.
I think they could pull it off.
I think they could pull it off.
For a little while.
For a little while?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think they could pull it off.
I would read it, and I wouldn't be angry about it.
I do like Batman as the smartest guy in the room who has a plan to take down everybody.
Like that JLA run where they discover, was it Tower Babel?
Which one was it?
Where
they found out that Batman, so, Brian, they're going through, it's like, I forget how, they went through his computer or whatever, but, oh, no, the bad guy, Prometheus, right, like broke into his computer and got it.
And Batman kept files on all his friends with
plans on how to defeat them if they go insane.
So he's like, all right, so this is Superman.
This is, you know, I got the fucking kryptonite.
And if I have to kill him, this is how I'm going to do it.
And he did that with everybody.
And his point was,
look, man, like, I'm just a dude, and all you guys may go insane.
And he was proved right.
I mean, fucking Hal Jordan went bananas.
He's saying, I'm not going to do it.
He's like, but you guys are all gods.
And if, like, you guys lost your mind and I had to take you down, like, I can't come up with that on the fly.
Like, I need that.
And he was on the, he got thrown out of the Justice League and shit like that.
And I always thought it was such a great idea.
And he also could bring up the the point: like, we live in a universe where every third supervillain has the ability to control minds.
Right.
So that's also a factor, you know, like if you get taken to possessed or taken over, you know, we need a way to shut you down.
But let me ask you something.
How would you guys feel if we discovered that Gidam had secret files on?
I was just going to say, Get him had a list how to defeat us.
Should we go insane?
I would want to read that list on a podcast.
Oh, I would love to.
In fact, can we ask him to do that?
Absolutely.
Yeah, so I don't know, man.
I love Batman.
His rogues gallery, it's really tough to beat.
It is.
It's very strong.
It's interesting that you had Robin and not Batman so far in the list.
That's pretty.
I felt if I went to Batman,
I was treading into Deadpool territory.
Nobody wants that.
Yeah, but he took the pressure off you by taking Batman now.
Now you can, no one's thinking about your.
I'm looking down on him.
Yeah.
That, you know, because it's such a, you know, it's like it's the expected answer.
I know whose number one is, too.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Which is going to be tough, I think.
We'll find out in a moment.
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All right, boys.
Now, here we go.
The number ones.
I'm having a hard time guessing your number one because I thought it would have been Swamp Thing.
Yeah, like all these have been at certain points at different stages of my life.
These have all,
like, if somebody asked me, I would have given these answers, you know, as a younger kid, Spider-Man.
As a teen, young teen, Robin, older teen, Swamp Thing.
This one would have been just as I was becoming in my 20s.
I still love this character.
Not a popular choice, kind of under the radar, obscure.
Was an emotion picture, though, but that was not a good representation of the character.
Mine is Floyd Lawton,
Deadshot.
Oh, wow.
Deadshot.
Deadshot, yeah.
I love the costume,
but what I love more was the characterization that was created for him, a character that had no backstory, basically, until he was in the Suicide Squad in the 80s by John Ostrander.
He's on that team called the Suicide Squad, and he's the only member who is okay with dying on the mission.
He's almost like he's unable to kill himself, but suicide by mission,
he's totally okay with.
This was before, because my version of the character always had the daughter and stuff like that involved.
He didn't have that back in the day.
It's so dark.
I mean, he had a son, but his son was kidnapped and
sexually assaulted and killed.
Whoa.
Holy shit.
1988.
Comics codes.
Approved.
Approved by the comics code.
Who did the assaulting?
It was like this.
almost like a family,
like a mob thing.
And they paid this guy to, they wanted a revenge against Floyd, and they paid this
guy to
get back at Floyd and kidnap his.
He never even had a relationship with the son.
He was divorced from the mother, and
they kidnap the son from the mother, and he gets word that his son's been kidnapped.
And by the time he gets there, he's dead.
And before he's, as he's killing the
guy who killed him, you know, he admits to him that he was a pedophile, too.
You never saw or read such things in the comic books.
So it was just like, it blew my mind that the dark areas this character went to.
And again, that costume, that silver mask with the red bullseye scope
was so brilliantly designed.
And he was a Batman villain
in the 40s, but he wore a top hat and a monocle.
Then in the 70s,
Marshall Rogers, the artist,
gives him this costume, this red and yellow costume, but with this chrome pinball-like helmet that he wears.
And the design was so cool.
And then to have this, because everybody else
that goes out on a mission when Deadshot is pulled in for a mission is like,
why does this motherfucker keep getting his number called?
Because he's going to get us all killed because he doesn't care
what happens.
He doesn't give a fuck.
He should not be on the mission.
We want to go with people who want to get back alive.
And they were like, no, he goes.
He's too good at what he does.
And then he also revealed that points when he met Batman.
There was a suicide squad, Justice League crossover in the 80s, where Batman told him, he's like, he goes, I know that you've had me in your sights and you don't take the shot.
He goes,
so I don't, I don't have anything to fear from you because you won't kill me.
And the reason why you won't kill me is because you want me to beat the shit out of you and ultimately kill you.
He goes, but I'm not going to kill you.
I'm just going to keep throwing throwing you back in Arkham or Bel Reeve, wherever it was they were throwing him.
And he just has to admit that, like, he's so fucked up that, like, you know, he wants to
sabotage everything in his life.
Not even a good supervillain, you know, go out and rob a bank, but really only because that's what supervillains do.
So depressed and so fucking lost in his life.
I'm not, I've never had this version of the character in my, I guess it was this was a, and this was the 80s, Ostranders run?
Ostrander's running.
They're all on trade.
So you could get all 10 trade paperbacks.
Yeah, the first three are just so riveting.
It's like playing in the DC universe, taking all these obscure characters, all these obscure super villains, and giving them backstory, giving them
reasons to want to root for them.
It basically is the dirty dozen, you know.
Yeah.
But
the first guy that was like, hey, I'll just do that with the DC universe and with characters nobody cares about, and I'm allowed to do whatever I want with them.
And it was just really, really well done.
And that's why I was so excited for that movie, but I knew that movie wasn't going to be the first one.
Did you like that?
Oh, that second one was awesome.
So funny.
I just re-watched it to get into the Peacemaker.
Did you watch Peacemaker?
I haven't watched Peacemaker.
Did you like it?
I haven't watched it.
It's so much fun, dude.
It is so funny.
Does he have a hand in it, Jeff?
Not Jeff.
The guy who directed the guy who did The Guardians.
Has he had a hand in the TV series?
He wrote every episode.
He directed the first three.
Oh, okay, awesome.
Yeah, it's so much fun.
It's a lot more comedic than the Suicide Squad movie was, but it's in the same tone.
Okay, cool.
I love it.
Yeah.
I like it.
I really like the show.
This new one.
Yeah, the second movie I love, Staro, fucking amazing.
You know, that line.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So good.
Watching it, and I remember being like,
I can't believe we're watching Starrow on the screen.
It's fucking nuts.
And I think that what the Suicide Squad, like, I love his art.
I don't mean this in a way to disparage anything, but it was a guy called Luke McDonald.
He did the artwork for the majority of the series.
He wasn't like a flashy, like a Perez or a Byrne or whoever was the hot name in the industry at that point.
He did, just told a great story, was able to tell stories, but
it wasn't that flashy kind of art that just made people want to read the book, you know, and it just, it had a good run, but
just never,
you know, broke into like the mainstream of comic book reading.
But it was just a very, that character, yeah, I love that character.
You eventually got to draw him, right?
Yeah, that's one of those, one of those things that when I got to do gyre and cacophony with Kevin,
he asked me, what character would you love to draw in this?
And I was like, oh, if you could throw a Deadshot in,
that would be the be-all, end-all for me.
It was more exciting to draw him than Batman.
That's fucking cool.
Yeah, that to me was like that page when I finally got to draw him was way more
amped than to do even Batman because I just loved that character.
What is that page today?
You're drawing?
It's hanging in the TSD offices.
Nice.
Yep.
It's hanging underneath Abena Costello, me, Frankenstein, and Giddam's thong.
So if somebody wanted to see it, they'd have to come to Airport Plaza to check it out.
Or buy the book.
It's from Cacophony issue one, where
he's breaking the Joker out of jail, and there's almost like a splash page of
or reveal it's Dead Shot who's breaking him out.
Nice.
All right.
So that's my final five in BQ.
We kind of know
it was going to be so much.
Maybe the ones who pay attention, though.
Yeah, I mean, I'm such a Superman fan.
Like, I'm beyond reasonable how much I love Superman
that there wasn't even,
there will never be a debate for me.
You know what I mean?
It'll always be the one answer is who's my favorite of all time.
It'll always be Superman.
I fucking love that character.
The big blue Boy Scout, as he's called.
And the more of a Boy Scout he is, the more I love him.
Here's your second clip.
Out of context, it may sound a little weird.
And I do love Kingdom Come Superman, Mark Wade's version of him, where he was, and that's a, I have that tattoo of the old depressed Superman.
I love that version of the character.
I do like,
I think he is a very interesting Elseworlds character when you do different versions, like the Russian superman or like because he
there's no one like him where you're like if you really think about the character like he's so powerful um
he could do anything he could destroy planet earth if he wants immediately and he's just such all that power in an alien creature that just happens to look like human is creepy man like there's a fucking creepiness to that that i that i don't think gets played enough in superman well i also he's also that character, though, that is the most moral, the most,
the most,
like,
the character that, like, is basically so good, he's just, he's not Jesus, but he's the next closest thing in terms of, like, how he cares and how he, he loves this adopted world and everything.
It's
that
strong moral character,
you know, is it, is it sexy in 2022?
It is not.
And even if you wrote out, if you took his name off it and presented to me and like, do you want to watch this character?
That is the definition
of good, of moral, of right?
I would be like, I don't give a fuck about this character and I don't want to watch it.
It sounds boring to me, but something about Superman has always like, I could, I mean, if I really want to give you guys something to make fun of, like, if Superman was real, if we lived in a world where Superman existed, like,
and I ever met him, I think I would just start crying.
Like a teenage girl.
He's your Tom Brady.
He's my Tom Brady.
Yeah.
Would you cry if you met Tom Brady?
Oh, my God.
I'd bawl like a baby.
Would you?
Oh, yeah.
Like, you know, when they, when people.
Security hustles you away.
You know, when people, you see, people who meet Elvis back in the day or the Beatles, you know, that they lose all their emotions and it just comes out.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I would need a couple boxes of Kleenex.
Wow.
Wait, for the crying, right?
Yeah,
there's something about, and when Superman's written correctly, and I think Mark Wade nails him a lot,
like he doesn't have to be boring.
You know what I mean?
Like, he doesn't, he can be conflicted, and he could be, like,
put out and fed up and stuff like that.
But at the end of the day, there's something so immovably good in the guy that there's not even a shot of anything getting around him the wrong way.
I don't know, man.
Like,
I wish,
dude, I just fucking wish something like that existed in the real world.
You know, like, I think we all do.
Yeah.
And, and, and he's the strongest.
I mean, but now you want to go to like a comic book character that you could beat up.
You could do anything to him.
You could put him in any storyline because, like, if it's a mystery and he's got to use his brains, and as much as I love Superman, you know, you know, he's not on Batman's fucking level of figuring shit out.
Like,
you could find the weaknesses in the character.
Kryptonite, is there a better fucking thing to use against someone than Kryptonite?
Like, it's such a great weakness, man.
Like, it's a rock.
It's a radioactive rock from his home fucking planet that landed here and it could kill him.
Like, it's such a well-thought-out thing.
It's not even like, like, we need him to have a weakness.
What is it?
What is it?
What is it?
It's just like.
And these are all things that just came into the mythology over a period of time, though, which is cool, too.
It wasn't like they had it all figured out with Action Comics Number One.
It was like, no, all this stuff came organically over a period of time that became our
mythology, like, you know, like with the Greek gods.
Like, you know, this is, these are the current myths.
Yeah.
And it just worked.
There's been very few Superman storylines that I've not liked.
Like, I just love reading the character in things.
And I don't know, man.
His costume is fucking dope.
Like, it's the only one that I would put up there really with Spider-Man.
Like, as undeniable.
Like, I love the S-Shield.
One of the most recognizable icons, probably, in the history of the human race, I would say.
I bet if you go to a fucking village in the middle of Africa and you show him a Superman symbol, one of the kids is going to be like, oh, yeah, that's...
That's Superman.
I believe the batch symbol, too, they would recognize, too.
Bat symbol.
I mean, the idea of...
And then you look at Clark Kent, and he's also a Paul Surprise-winning fucking author.
You know what I mean?
Like, he's kind of like got his professional shit down, too.
And he never casts a like, well, I'm Superman, so maybe I can use my powers to make my life a little easier as Clark Kent.
Nope.
That's how good he is.
Yeah.
I don't know, man.
There's got to be something.
There's got to be something he could get canceled over there.
There's not.
There isn't.
And it's just like, I very rarely
feel
inspired by
things.
But there is something, even though he's a made-up character, it's just like there is something to Superman's inherent goodness that I'm going to say it, and it's going to make me sound real fucking weird, but like, Superman actually makes me want to be a better person, if that makes sense.
He, he really does, man.
Like, he, he, he gives me this weird ideal.
He's losing his fucking mind.
I'm not.
I'm not.
And I'm not.
It's just like, look, man, it's like, you could say that you read a book that inspired you and made you, you know, act a certain way.
Like, if I really think about Superman, I want to be more like him.
You know
how good Superman is?
There was, for the longest time, for decades, there were stories about Superboy.
You know,
he never, I mean, could you imagine a Superboy never using his x-ray vision to look at like a pretty girl in class.
No, I cannot imagine.
Could you imagine that?
Like, that's how that is, that's the be-all-end-all right there.
There's no other thing that there's nothing else to talk about.
He never did.
You're absolutely right.
I'll tell you right now: if I had x-ray vision, I would like to say that I wouldn't do it.
But I mean, I just.
But as a young teen, you, how could you?
Yeah, I would be like, what the fuck's going on here?
My eyes
constantly be that.
They would have that weird blue around.
Like, oh, he's fucking staring at my mom.
Yeah, Superman to me is
just, I would actually go on to say he's probably my favorite fictional character of all time.
Yeah.
You got the tats.
You know, you're committed.
You know,
you're not talking the talk.
You're walking the walk.
I walk the walk, man.
I fucking love this motherfucker.
I love him.
I got to get a buddy Bradley tattoo to
A lot of popular choices from BQ'd Erica.
Deep pulse, TransMet,
Spider Jerusalem,
Spider Jerusalem, even Cow, you know, I don't know.
I don't care what people think about it, though, you know?
I got to be true to me.
I mean, personally,
if I were to go at the list of characters that I recall and like
liked, you know, reading as a kid, I would have to lean towards you.
Oh,
I would have to lean towards you.
Swamp Thing Thing Alone.
Swamp Thing Alone.
Yeah.
Sure.
I get it.
And that's a great thing about comics.
Yep.
Everything to everybody.
It's not a competition, bro.
Not at all.
I never liked Superman.
At times, again,
I've really enjoyed Superman books, really enjoyed them, and I could see where he's coming from.
But, you know, like I said, I always, like I said, these characters, the ones I brought up today,
there are maybe five different ones if we were to do this a year from now.
Right.
That's what the beauty and how wonderful the world of comics is.
Yeah, like reading Superman, like it would give me these weird feelings of wanting to be a better person, and I just had to push them down.
Tell him, Steve, Dave.
