[SPEAKER_02]: What is up everybody, welcome to Comic Book Club, I'm Alex.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm Justin.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Pete.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're coming to you live from a couple of places on the Internet where live on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitch, kick, of course, Instagram.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe you're listening later wherever you get your podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if that is true, if you want add free versions of this podcast and on the podcast we do, patreon.com slash comic book club.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also got a very active discord.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a lot of other things you can check out.
[SPEAKER_02]: it's a lot of fun it's a good time you guys are having a good time right you're having a good time on there everybody's having a good time oh sure yeah great well you guys are gonna be having a good time out in the audience because we have an amazing guest for you this evening he is an incredibly prolific comic book writer that's certainly how we know is stuff first but he has been an embarking on an amazing new project called The End Times
[SPEAKER_02]: which started as a newspaper of sorts will get it to more of what that means in a second and is now going to be collected and published with expand in material as a novel that is doing in collaboration with some guy named Stephen King that I've never heard of before, but it sounds like an up-coming writer so I hope to see more of his stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ladies and gentlemen, Ben Percy, Ben, welcome to show.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hey, thanks for having me on.
[SPEAKER_02]: very excited to have you here excited to talk about this project so this is something that we actually were talking about our discord a couple of us back when you first announced it but this is a new spaper that come maybe this is a bad way of describing it but it comes from like an alternate reality where there's been it apocalypse and it's chronically in that
[SPEAKER_02]: through articles and other things.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all fictional, but you slowly follow these characters who are reporting on the apocalypse through the format of the newspaper.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now, as I mentioned, in 2027, it is going to be collected.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're promising that there's going to be expanded material.
[SPEAKER_02]: from volume one that's coming from bad hand books, but let's take it back.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure you've talked about this a lot, but we know you as a comic book writer, so see you move to the printed page, the old Gray Laney, perhaps, was a bit of a surprise, why?
[SPEAKER_05]: Both time to move to new.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, what led to this?
[SPEAKER_02]: What was the first germ of the idea that led to the end times?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, who says journalism is dead?
[SPEAKER_07]: I started off as a prose writer, writing short stories, writing assays, writing novels.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'd only later made the leap to comics in 2014.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is somewhere in between, you know, it's serialized storytelling.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is showing up monthly in your inbox or at your house of your other print edition.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like you said, it's a short novel that over the course of 12 months, you know, adds up into the story of a community, a community that is, you know, facing horrors but also being reborn.
[SPEAKER_07]: you said it's a post-apocalyptic newspaper that's accurate and that it's 13 years after everything fall apart so people are rebuilding and finding their way again including the editor of this paper who you know an imaginary pool and everybody else is like I'm a farmer now I'm a scavenger I'm a hunter I'm a whatever right blacksmith she's has a really found her way but one day when she's digging through these old newspaper offices she finds an ancient printing press
[SPEAKER_07]: and decides like, this is how I can contribute.
[SPEAKER_07]: So it starts off as just her voice, and then she starts to invite others in, and by the end, you know, it's kind of a chorus of voices.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, and I describe it as a cross between our town and station 11 in that way.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_05]: Which skills should we pursue?
[SPEAKER_05]: Blacksmithing.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I'm assuming this is coming to us.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, there's there's actually a character named Paul White's in the paper.
[SPEAKER_07]: Who is in charge of the hammered you?
[SPEAKER_07]: Uh, he's up there and he's listening.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's trying to figure out what else is going on.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, the mostly static out there, but occasionally there's another voice, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: So, the perfect pivot for a podcaster, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Hi, that's all right.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I'm at cable tower with the ham radio.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm really curious how you begin to approach putting together a project like this though because I mean, you know this, I'm just saying this for the audience, but there's a difference between writing a prose novel and doing a newspaper that has multiple things going on at the same time.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can kind of read it in any order you want in a certain way.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how do you exactly like how do you control the narrative through that?
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, as it was actually one of the delights of it, is that I know that some people are going to go in a very rigid way from top left to bottom right and work through the pages and maybe the others are going to be like, I'm going to the comics first.
[SPEAKER_07]: It was on the last page, there's comics, and other people will float around some people like the sports section, you know?
[SPEAKER_07]: That's the only reason that we have the newspaper.
[SPEAKER_07]: We have no sports section, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_07]: But the way in which you take in this collage is up to you.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it's growing, right, as I mentioned, that's just the voices, but the coverage and her decisions early on, like the first, the first edition is sort of more monosolabic and that she's just kind of ranting.
[SPEAKER_07]: She's like, maybe nobody's going to read this, but maybe she's just for me, maybe I'm talking to myself.
[SPEAKER_07]: But then she's like, OK, there's going to be, you know, in the next issue, like, this weird thing's happening.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, this farmhouse that people disappeared outside of town.
[SPEAKER_07]: So just, you know, heads up on that.
[SPEAKER_07]: And, oh, over here, we're going to have it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, this guy's holding a strange concert.
[SPEAKER_07]: And these people need help harvesting.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then it starts to become more necessary.
[SPEAKER_07]: More people subscribe, more people are picking up the people producing more because it's a chronicle of a community, but it's also a way, and this is what I really believe about small town news, as opposed to national news.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think national news divides, but international news.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, it's polarizing, intentionally, and triggering, intentionally.
[SPEAKER_07]: A small-tailed newspaper is a beautiful thing.
[SPEAKER_07]: In that, it is meant to bring a community together and make them stronger.
[SPEAKER_07]: So that is the intent of this paper.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll just repeat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there is a specific paper you were inspired by, like a hometown paper you looked at for a model for the end times at all.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, you know it.
[SPEAKER_07]: I admit to not having a strong interest in local news until COVID, and all of a sudden, I was very interested in what was going on around me.
[SPEAKER_07]: And sort of poison by, you know, Google news and feeling helpless like everybody else.
[SPEAKER_07]: And poison by what I was putting my eyes every time I clicked up in a website or social media or grabbed a magazine in a newspaper.
[SPEAKER_07]: a small town newspaper by comparison like the north field news which are living north field Minnesota there's a lot of compared there's a cracked this town is a cracked mirror version of this town north field becomes north end the end times and some of the people in the town I've just changed their names lightly you know there are people
[SPEAKER_07]: and the map of the town with a map, you know, it's just like a few tweaked a few things.
[SPEAKER_07]: So anyways, like, you know, you see in a small town newspaper that this organist who works for the church for 50 years is retiring, or that a new restaurant is opening downtown, or that this quarterback at the high school got carried off the field at homecoming.
[SPEAKER_07]: Or there's an announcement for a fun fundraiser for a family that's, you know, going through a hard time and and and and and it's just I don't know during during the pandemic.
[SPEAKER_07]: When we're on lockdown it's just like all of a sudden I recognize that I can't make a difference on this larger scale, but I can make a difference in my own backyard.
[SPEAKER_07]: To be to this day, I find it very meaningful to engage with local news.
[SPEAKER_07]: go ahead Justin what was it like the partnership like with Stephen King did that how did that come about and what would say actual process yeah so while I was building this thing up you know it's thinking about King because well it's basically the world of the stand that I'm writing it
[SPEAKER_07]: So I really do just kind of, the sand is a really important book to me growing up.
[SPEAKER_07]: And that world is essentially where I set this.
[SPEAKER_07]: Think of it as like an ancillary story.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so I recently out of, because of that, but also because I read the Green Mile, you know, some people might not know this, but when the Green Mile came out, it was a serialized novel.
[SPEAKER_07]: It was Dickensian.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I was thinking about those two things.
[SPEAKER_07]: One of the other things, including how he, you know, the carries essentially in a pistol area in the oval, and he's taking some good experimental swings with some of the first ebooks that ever came out or books available through his website, originally, he knows kind of a maverick in that regard.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I figured, you know, who wouldn't hurt to just say, do you have any interest?
[SPEAKER_07]: Didn't know anything, and the worst you could say was no.
[SPEAKER_07]: He has five million people bugging him in there.
[SPEAKER_07]: I didn't want to be bugging, Stephen King.
[SPEAKER_07]: I do have a, I would say we are not BFFs to any degree.
[SPEAKER_07]: But he was very kind enough.
[SPEAKER_07]: One of his first tweets, when he first got on Twitter, I'm going to keep going on Twitter, was about my novel Red Moon.
[SPEAKER_07]: which was so generous of him.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's really supportive of younger writers.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: He, you know, blabbed a few other books of mine later on.
[SPEAKER_07]: I interviewed him on stage at a book festival in Minneapolis.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's really special for me to be able to meet him.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's literally my hero.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I'm not overstating that and so when he said yes, you know he asked me a few more questions and then he said yes, and I don't want to overstate his involvement.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's not like we're co-authoring this, but he is very generously like giving me a bunch of ideas and giving me a bunch of awesome passages that have totally changed the course of the story.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, including.
[SPEAKER_07]: offering up his pseudonym as Claudia and his Bachman.
[SPEAKER_07]: Claudia and his Bachman being the wife of you know, his pseudonym Richard Bachman.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Richard died of cancer with the pseudonym, floating on lips, so is he, by the way, I just want to say everything that you're saying really resonates with me because I'm in the middle of going back to the beginning of re-reading through King's books now and I'm just waiting for the stand to come through on the library.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, I looked at myself the other day and I was like, oh, right, the greedbile came out as those tiny little books.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: I was there as soon as they came out, but when his stuff comes in, I'm curious about like how it changed the narrative.
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it merely, was it that it was Stephen King?
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it that it was having a second voice in the book?
[SPEAKER_02]: What was the important part there?
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, I will just to give you an example, he sends me this passage from Claudia, that's all about trait village, trait looks a little bit like trap, so it has, you know, great implication already.
[SPEAKER_07]: This story mainly takes place in North End, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: But he invented this village that's a little bit outside of it, a satellite village, and bad shit is going on there.
[SPEAKER_07]: So it ended up being the perfect thing to create like,
[SPEAKER_07]: the shark is circling and getting closer, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: It all begins in trade village or beyond that, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: Because around this time that strange stuff starts happening, Claudia also shows up and down.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, and there are things like he, you know, as a minister hanging in this barn from the rafters of this barn slash church and the he's got a note on him and he's got, you know, there's buttons sewn to him and then he started invent the scarecrow stuff and he's dead rats and it just became like.
[SPEAKER_07]: immediately because he's king, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: The horror just like it's rare.
[SPEAKER_07]: Really eliminated.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, I'm trying to make a newspaper here because it's what it is.
[SPEAKER_05]: Journalism.
[SPEAKER_05]: Keep it around.
[SPEAKER_05]: The news is scary enough.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I did want to mention before I forget that every week on the show we have a professional chef out of New Orleans who will need Brett McGriss he works an amazing restaurant called Shift 100% please check it out if you're ever in New Orleans way he creates a cocktail based on our guest or the thing they're working on and this week he created the ink and
[SPEAKER_02]: And Ember, which is a cocktail in honor of your book The End Times, it's Rye Whiskey, Mescal, Amaro, Honey, Serap, Agrester, Bitter's, Paychowd's, Bitter's, and Orange Peel, and as he puts it, a few of these, and you'll forget what the word Apocalypse Even Beads.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: No, and this is, I mean, that really makes me happy.
[SPEAKER_07]: And one of the reasons I love it, too, is like, that is a drink I want.
[SPEAKER_07]: And we have that.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I love Miss Cowell, I love whiskey.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, yes, that's what you can't believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, excellent.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll check that out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you don't mind let's talk about some of the other stuff that you've been working on because you have a lot of stuff going on at Marvel as well Then we can loop back to the end times to give it a little plug-over room at the end there the big thing that came out the big news that happened in last week I think time doesn't have any meeting anymore, but Marvel announced midnight the new horror line
[SPEAKER_02]: that is going to be separate.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a new publishing line in the three books that they announced are midnight Spider-Man, midnight X-Men in the one that you're doing, which is midnight Fantastic Four with Kev Walker, which is awesome, love is hard stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know it's early days there, but what can you tell us about midnight Fantastic Four if anything?
[SPEAKER_07]: I got to be careful because, you know, I haven't done any press on this, and I'm not sure what I'm going to get you in trouble.
[SPEAKER_07]: Not, you know, I don't want to make you mouse to crash with a window here with a machete.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I break it, I'll go away the go though.
[SPEAKER_05]: Great way to go.
[SPEAKER_05]: What's more horrifying than a challenging an NDA to a major quote.
[SPEAKER_05]: True.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, I will say that this is, you know, it's own continuity.
[SPEAKER_07]: This is tonally, maybe.
[SPEAKER_07]: very different than what people are expecting, you know, this is a, this is an A24 joint right here.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, I'm really, I'm just elevated or it's really, really, really cool.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm not just I'm at my house, I'm at what Hickman's doing.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm talking about what Philip is doing, like, it's
[SPEAKER_07]: super i would be buying me but i would be pulling these books um because it's exactly my my wheelhouse and it's it's interesting fantastic four feels like maybe not the like top pick for a horror book well here's the thing uh you look at these titles
[SPEAKER_07]: Probably when people, oh, heard horror, oh, you know, we're going to do a man thing book or whatever, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: And we were taking titles that are not what you expect.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: And giving them, you've seen them through a dark land.
[SPEAKER_07]: So to me, they would have never let me write fantastic for, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: They would have never let me write Spider-Man.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, the way I could write Spider-Man was having my own continuity whenever a predator versus Spider-Man.
[SPEAKER_07]: No, because then I could just go and say, Alice, awesome, by the way.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm the, you know, the mouth breather who writes the very psychopaths at Marvel.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so they would have never let me write the first family.
[SPEAKER_07]: But in this case, right, this is lovecraftian horror.
[SPEAKER_07]: And is this cosmic horror terrible things are happening?
[SPEAKER_07]: And so it is exactly my thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh man, it's so scared now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, from the description, you touched on this a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it sounds like, I mean, it doesn't specify that it's read Richards, but it sounds like it is going into like the love crafty and a little bit piercing dimension.
[SPEAKER_02]: I imagine we're going to get a little bit of a renewed origin of fantastic for this in origin, clean your life.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, but like the side thing here, everybody is kind of curious about the different continuity thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Prodigy stroke.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what are we talking here?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like separate titles that may intervene later down the will intervene later down the line.
[SPEAKER_07]: Will venture separate.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, this is okay slow in patient You know, if you can't get about what Hickman was doing with X man and the you know Donna track over like
[SPEAKER_07]: There's a runway here.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's all right.
[SPEAKER_07]: Nobody's in the rush.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, obviously, about this is also very cart before the horse, but because you have three different, different titles, you have the body hard stuff going on in Spider-Man.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got the vampire, super natural stuff going on in X-Men.
[SPEAKER_02]: You've got the cosmic car, like you said.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we haven't talked as much to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've certainly spent a lot of talk to Phil Kennedy Johnson.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we know that he thinks like big picture, world, building, lore, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even though these feel like very desperate ideas, I imagine there's a bigger... Yeah, we're meeting every two weeks.
[SPEAKER_07]: We're all reading each other scripts.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, this is not something that's happening on a siloed basis.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like we're, you know, we have...
[SPEAKER_07]: multiple editors beyond just Jordan and Kate and who are editing the books.
[SPEAKER_07]: We have multiple editors you know, giving feedback and it's just like, the whole Marvel machines behind it.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's really fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it fun for you to read other scripts just to be like, oh my god, this gives me ideas or gives you energy just to kind of see the way other people write.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I think it's it's
[SPEAKER_07]: vice versa, like we're getting ideas from each other to pull into our books and also when we're talking about What happens in 12 months or what happens in 24 months?
[SPEAKER_02]: I do want to bring up we have a super chat here from YouTube.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is from Common Sense 5199 Mr. Percy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Love you run on ghost writer.
[SPEAKER_02]: What inspired creating exhaust and totally a question about final vengeance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Why Xarothos possesses other before hood?
[SPEAKER_07]: three questions yes thanks for diggin goes writer that was one of my favorite comics runs you know a lot of
[SPEAKER_07]: Villains in stories are dark mirrors of the character, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, you think a morey-arty is like a dark mirror of Sherlock Holmes, or has the same skillset, but uses if for evil and evil purposes, the same thing for like bellock, bellock in radar's velocity arc is Indiana Jones.
[SPEAKER_07]: You take those core elements and then you twist them, magnify them, warp them in different ways, exhausts, you know, sort of like an externalization of the scars that Johnny carries inside him.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, and he's this walking horror who leaves this wake of sort of trauma behind him.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, Taliyah, you know, I felt like Roxanne had been done and done and done and done and I just wanted something new, um, I thought Johnny deserved to go off girlfriend.
[SPEAKER_06]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's actually one of my favorite characters that have, have co-created at Marvel, really love that character and you know, the sort of jagged pieces of Johnny and the jagged pieces of Taliyah just sort of fit together and give you a sense of wholeness.
[SPEAKER_07]: Um, as for the hood, like, one of my favorite comic stories is the Long Halloween, uh, which is the godfather, set in Gotham.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, from the very first line you know this, the first line is I believe in Gotham, which is, oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_07]: An absolute hat tip to I believe in America, and uh, I wanted, so what I was thinking about is like, oh, I want to do something like that.
[SPEAKER_07]: I want to do like a crime horror story, and in my other
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, gangster movie besides the gunpowder is good for us.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so I was like, I want to do horror, good for us.
[SPEAKER_07]: And so that's why I chose the hood because he's the equivalent of the Rayaliotic character, you know, I always want to be a gangster.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, he's this low level dude who wants to be big time.
[SPEAKER_07]: But he's his own worst enemy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am curious just because we have a couple of people who are saying, wow, they're way more excited to hear about Midnight after hearing you talk about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's it like, it totally?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you're working on a lot of different projects at this point.
[SPEAKER_02]: So where, how are you splitting your focus between the Midnight universe between, you're doing Deadpool right now, you're doing Punisher, you're doing all of these little plus end times that we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, in times is mostly done.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, there's true of a lot of things that people see is like, oh, how are you doing all these things at once?
[SPEAKER_07]: Why, I wrote that seven months ago, you know?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Or this, I wrote a year ago or or or or and with comics even, you're sometimes like,
[SPEAKER_07]: Six seven months ahead of schedule.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, you know, but but the question in some facilities about shifting focus, having sort of like a cascading focus, and you know you really just need to like devote
[SPEAKER_07]: This week is fantastic for a week or, you know, these three days I'm only working on This on midnight or I don't know whatever whatever it is you need to do like you just immerse yourself and you get in that That zone of deep focus so that you can produce something I mean obviously we're talking a lot about horror Do you are you consuming horror when you're not working and if so like what are you watching?
[SPEAKER_05]: What are you reading what are you seeing?
[SPEAKER_07]: horror.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I'm a horror head.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, that's my favorite genre.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's, you know, I always feel kind of jealous of people who have like incredible passions and knowledge about things, you know, like I've got to.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, brother-in-law who's obsessed with farming.
[SPEAKER_07]: And he knows every damn thing about farming.
[SPEAKER_07]: I got another, I got a close one.
[SPEAKER_05]: He was close in the end times.
[SPEAKER_07]: Keep him close.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: The else you just knows everything about baseball, you know, stats, stats, stats, this is a psychopedia inside him.
[SPEAKER_07]: And even they have Marvel or a DC working there.
[SPEAKER_07]: There's some people like you run into Tom Brevework.
[SPEAKER_07]: That guy.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's Wikipedia.
[SPEAKER_07]: He knows everything.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, you can be like, Tom, what is she did?
[SPEAKER_07]: This might have died a long happened entry.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like, oh, 1969.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's a good top of the world, for me, that thing, no, I can't recognize, that's horror movie.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's my, that is my thing above all else.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I've always subscribed to Fangory Magazine.
[SPEAKER_07]: One of my earliest inspirations was Easy Comics.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I,
[SPEAKER_07]: have seen an American werewolf in London upward of 30 times, like I just, it's the thing I'm going to turn to constantly for comfort.
[SPEAKER_07]: I know that sounds weird to some people.
[SPEAKER_07]: And just escapeism.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, you know, Stephen King is my hero for a reason.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got another question here from the comments.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is, have you ever been approached or have been asked to do voice work?
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you could voice apocalypse with no profits.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Every of you people talk to my people.
[SPEAKER_07]: God.
[SPEAKER_07]: Hey, recorded one of my audiobooks, Red Moon, to Horanaut, where we'll novel.
[SPEAKER_07]: So if you're one of your ears to bleed, download.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got that base.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, just to get back to the comic book work for a second.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have a run on Punisher, there's a new issue coming out tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what are the big things we've been talking about?
[SPEAKER_02]: We were talking about this on our Punisher, one last kill podcast, a little bit, is all the different takes on the Punisher.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what is, I can feel Pete bristling a little bit because he's definitely our Punisher guy here.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like what is, what do you think the core of the Punisher is?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what is the most important
[SPEAKER_02]: key ingredient of the character.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well and just to elaborate on that like we were talking about the difference between the sort of like war-scard PTSD he was always this man guy and then the very meticulous like war journal Punisher who's just like he's got his punch list and he's moving down it and going through and he's he's much more in control.
[SPEAKER_05]: It feels like those are two different people but we've they're they're often put together as the Punisher.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm, I mean, I'm influenced by both of those characters, you know, both of those iterations.
[SPEAKER_07]: I love Garth NS as much as I love pots, you know, and so I'd say it's like so many other things with Wolverine as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: The influences are blended, and then you put your own special sauce on top of it.
[SPEAKER_07]: So, those versions of the Punisher exist in my mind, but I've done something that it gives me a little bit of freedom in that, you know,
[SPEAKER_07]: broke his brain.
[SPEAKER_07]: He said he's too many.
[SPEAKER_07]: No, in a way, I'm able to not ignore continuity at all because all that continuity exists to me, but instead give him a new beginning that still feels, you know, still feels like he's connected to those other Franks, right?
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, also having a new foundation.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I'm sort of treating him right now.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, there's that glimmer of a conscious conscience in him, but he's also kind of like a force in nature.
[SPEAKER_07]: He's kind of like a natural disaster.
[SPEAKER_07]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not to put you on the spot too much, but this is definitely top of mind with Jerry Conway sadly passing away recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was very outspoken about the misappropriation of the punishable and I was curious to get your take on it because Marvel definitely moved away
[SPEAKER_02]: for a while to the point that Frank just sort of disappeared went to weird world entirely, but you're the guy who's bringing him back, putting back to the world, it's more classic take on the Punisher.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what's your take on that?
[SPEAKER_02]: How does the Punisher, the Marvel Universe, gel with the way the real world sees him?
[SPEAKER_07]: My comment on that is that you know, there is a skull in this chest that belongs to Frank alone, you know, and it
[SPEAKER_07]: It captures the pain that has been inflicted upon him in the painting and flicks on the world.
[SPEAKER_07]: So it ends there.
[SPEAKER_07]: It doesn't, doesn't belong to anybody else but him.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good answer.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got another various specific super chat here that I wanted to bring up.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is again from COVID-19.
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, see, I was a lot of questions about the Ghostbrett or COVID-19, I believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: In final venture from this Fisto cast, Zarathos out of Jadi and Zarathos and others like Dager and the Brune before the hood can hood use power control them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you know what this means?
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, I think that just to speak to the hood, I think he's a really reckless character.
[SPEAKER_07]: and his control over the spirit of engines, you know, pretty feeble compared to, you know, what others, what others are capable of when channeling.
[SPEAKER_07]: I mean, it was supposed to, you know, the spirit isn't supposed to be permanently hosted in the hood.
[SPEAKER_07]: That was supposed to be a fun little spin off there.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I'm not sure what's happening with the hood right now.
[SPEAKER_07]: I think he's out there still making trouble.
[SPEAKER_07]: I ripped off his face to completely completely.
[SPEAKER_06]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_07]: It's a kind of thing that doesn't have the spirit in him.
[SPEAKER_07]: He still has this grotesque sort of like, you know, skullish appearance that, you know, the spirit left its mark.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay, this is the last one covered since I'll just bring this up because the sky keeps throwing us money Which is very nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really enjoy your health arena.
[SPEAKER_02]: Congratulations.
[SPEAKER_02]: It expands into an outgoing series Have read Doc and Dark Wolverine back in the 2000s?
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I mean, health arena is one of those situations where I couldn't believe it hadn't been done.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, I was lighting
[SPEAKER_07]: Punisher.
[SPEAKER_07]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm talking about another crossover.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm about to write.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I got a kind of microphone.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I'm writing, I'm writing Wolverine.
[SPEAKER_07]: And I'm writing Ghost Rider.
[SPEAKER_07]: How would I not put the two together?
[SPEAKER_07]: You just, you're required when you're writing two main line series that fit so many.
[SPEAKER_07]: You got to put like peanut butter and joy that better together.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then there's this, you know, opportunity to have flaming claws and a flaming skull head and Wolverine.
[SPEAKER_07]: Like,
[SPEAKER_07]: Hell yeah I'm leaning into that and I thought it was just going to be like a one off though like I wrote I wrote the story called weapons of vengeance and I was paired with Jeff Shaw on it Jeff Shaw you know is now a stormbreaker marvel I'm working with him on Deadpool awesome gritty style is the perfect person to pair with on the storyline but I thought that would be it it's like a it's like a seven-ish serial killer story with some supernatural elements
[SPEAKER_05]: I think people took one look at it and were like, oh, hell, yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: What is happening here?
[SPEAKER_07]: The stagnant cover, that's going for, that's a rare bird now, like that's going for two years beyond line, like, dang.
[SPEAKER_07]: I don't think anybody knew how popular it was gonna be, and there's that they made a toy, you know what I have on my show over there?
[SPEAKER_07]: It's really, every day I'm like, that's cool.
[SPEAKER_06]: Just enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_06]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_07]: So that's your ride.
[SPEAKER_07]: Anyways, they wanted me to keep going, but I couldn't just have,
[SPEAKER_07]: you know carry out the spirit of engines forever.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I wanted to I'd wanted to do something with Doc in for a long time because I felt like Doc was always in the shadow of his father and I wanted to give him a glow up.
[SPEAKER_07]: What better way to give somebody a glow up than the light among fire.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I had to kill him in Saber II's war to bring him back.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, with the spirit of this demonic parasite inhabiting him.
[SPEAKER_07]: So again, my new cool power set, I gave him sort of like his own journey and then I was like, all right, did my job and then I moved on to do my, I was really, really happy to write those issues though.
[SPEAKER_05]: I love the use of doc in there.
[SPEAKER_05]: I feel like I like the doc and character a lot this sort of like a little bit of a bad guy's at points But it seems to have a character philosophy at at all times Which I is rare in characters that are at a sort of his level.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I thought it was a great I hope that Helvering keeps lingering on him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I hope we'll run around making trouble.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly
[SPEAKER_07]: why we're taking a moment kind of talking about a little bit of your greatest hits it it does bring up a great point you've done a lot of cool amazing things and comics so thank you hey thank you i wouldn't be able to do that if people aren't reading them in the free trailers weren't carrying them so every day i said i'm i'm i can get stressed out but i'm never i always feel really lucky to be doing what i'm doing
[SPEAKER_02]: And you just signed another two-year exclusive with Marvel, is that correct?
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: Which is awesome.
[SPEAKER_07]: I can't believe that.
[SPEAKER_07]: Keep it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Let me, you know, play with this voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, speaking of which you mentioned when you're writing too big titles, you've got to jam them together.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're writing Deadpool and Punisher right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I might have said too much earlier.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, look forward to dead punishers or whatever it's called.
[SPEAKER_02]: To loop back to the end time, so that's not coming out collected until 2027, but they have said that there's more material that's going to be in it.
[SPEAKER_07]: Is that going to be more story material development material TVD?
[SPEAKER_07]: the the paper itself right we're going to maintain that format so when you buy this hardback which you can get from right you can pre-order right now the bad-hand books website you know it'll it'll it'll look just like the paper that's been arriving in mailboxes uh now each of those papers is you know it's all it only looks like a few pages
[SPEAKER_07]: four or five pages, but it's actually 15 to 20 pages in Microsoft Word.
[SPEAKER_06]: Oh, I know.
[SPEAKER_07]: If you think about 12 issues, each of them, between 15 and 20 pages, that adds up to a novel size story.
[SPEAKER_07]: even if it's contained within the magazine format and a little bit shrunken in that regard.
[SPEAKER_07]: So yeah, it's gonna be like a cool, I think it'll be just a cool thing to flip through and explore different parts of it.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it's not gonna look like any other book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what is it going to be like for you as a long-time fact when you get to see that printed book that says by Benjamin Percy with Stephen King on the cover.
[SPEAKER_07]: Well, you know, I again don't want to overstate shoving these involvement.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, I talked to him about he's like, can you just say contributions by so you can still still be there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can scratch out the other part with the Sharpie.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'm so, so, so grateful.
[SPEAKER_07]: I know Doug Marano is the publisher of BANAM books to giant Stephen King nerd like me, so we're both really delighted that, you know, he's allowed us to sort of shoulder up by putting Claudia in this.
[SPEAKER_07]: He allowed us to shoulder up to the Kingverse.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, yeah, that's what they call it.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is obviously a lot of stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a lot of stuff coming out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know just a plug one more thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have you have a novella called hotline that just came out if that's correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: I work and people check that out because I think.
[SPEAKER_07]: Right now you can check it out on Kindle.
[SPEAKER_07]: First vampire story in prose.
[SPEAKER_07]: Anyway, I've done some vampire stuff in comics, but the first vampire story in prose that I've written.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it's on Kindle right now or the at the Neo text website in about.
[SPEAKER_07]: a little more than a year.
[SPEAKER_07]: It'll be available in print as part of a collection of horn of Ellis.
[SPEAKER_07]: But for now, pretty much Kindle exclusive.
[SPEAKER_07]: And it's, you know, it's bloodthirsty but also character driven and has to do with a suicide hotline operator.
[SPEAKER_07]: who is a vampire, okay?
[SPEAKER_07]: So he's three other things he can to help people.
[SPEAKER_03]: He wants to...
[SPEAKER_07]: He wants to sleep in the lives.
[SPEAKER_07]: You know, but sometimes it doesn't work out.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then he goes to feed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh man.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's very dark, but very dark.
[SPEAKER_07]: And then he's basically a close from somebody.
[SPEAKER_07]: who he thinks might be a vampire as well.
[SPEAKER_07]: So I guess he stands for his own.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'll read that tonight.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll download that in real life tonight.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll, like I said, lots of stuff we talked about already.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anything else you want to plug before you wrap up here?
[SPEAKER_07]: No, I mean, thanks for plugging the end times, talking about that.
[SPEAKER_07]: And again, bad hand books is where you can pre-order it.
[SPEAKER_07]: I really hope people get on the midnight train because I've, I've, I've, yeah, this books, um, I mean, the excitement just in the comments.
[SPEAKER_05]: Where you talk about it for like 30 seconds is palpable.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I feel like it's going to pop off.
[SPEAKER_07]: I'll be able to talk more about it in the near future.
[SPEAKER_07]: But for now, I can just tease the shadows.
[SPEAKER_05]: Please, please come back.
[SPEAKER_07]: Yeah, please come back.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good night.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd love to talk more about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ben, thank you so much for coming on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And absolutely pleasure.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, there we go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Once again, I was Ben Percy, the couple of things to plug.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can pre-order the end-times volume one from bad-hand books right now on their website.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, there's a new issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: A puttisher that's coming out tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nick Knight is coming out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I really should have written this down.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I believe fantastic for our September.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe they're August September, October, or the three books.
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say that is as well as the fall and Wade Wilson Deadpool is ongoing as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: So check all of that out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Three.
[SPEAKER_02]: Lots to read.
[SPEAKER_02]: As well as Hotline, which I'm going to read as I promised later tonight.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now we're going to read the next thing we read on the show, which is your audience question.
[SPEAKER_02]: And for all these questions all you got to do is drop a question in the comments and we'll get to it It could be about absolutely anything and while we're waiting for questions come in What are you guys drinking tonight?
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Justin you make of one of those End Times cocktails?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, actually P could I grab one from you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, oh man, I was gonna grab that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got some Godzilla PBR.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, we're drink what Pete's drinking.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're drinking something.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the taste like Godzilla pisser?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's going on here?
[SPEAKER_05]: Come on, man.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, just sort of like a nuclear sweat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, delicious.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Great, Pete, what about you?
[SPEAKER_01]: A little lag when you does daytime, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: All right, there we go.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's night time, Pete.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, let's stay time somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did this question.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought this was for us.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I whatever, just read it and apologize.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is from Gary Robb.
[SPEAKER_02]: After Shadow of Ball of the End or one shot, any plans for more Star Wars content, we'll just give a plug.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a great idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: enter one shot that then put it out and here we got a question here from straight bullet.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you going to have time to read it, Alex, your podcast, you podcast all day, did you do it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that is true.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do several secret podcasts after this podcast, not a joke.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I edit those podcasts.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm usually
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know about you guys, but I'm usually like pretty jazzed after the podcast like I edit the stuff that I can't go to sleep for a while anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're all hyped up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're all pumped up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're all pumped up.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you're all pumped up.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, you're all pumped
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, Sam's he's yeah, sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was answering a question there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, oh, Gary Robbs is Alex you need to answer my question.
[SPEAKER_02]: The bed Percy baritone.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's still odd and he's cooking dinner, so I feel a little barricaded for the album.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, it was horrible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's Tom before it was much better than my bed Percy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, uh, Schrikler says, what are your favorite newspaper features besides comics?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I do love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I op-ed.
[SPEAKER_02]: What about you guys?
[SPEAKER_05]: Give me some of that penny safer.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to see people swapping goods.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's what I was when when Ben was talking about like being in a small town That's what it was growing up in a small town as well like there's a whole back section of the paper Where people are like hey, I need a bowling pin You're like I have one
[SPEAKER_01]: Pete, what about you, favorite, do you spaper feature?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, man, I mean, when I was a kid, it was always I couldn't wait for the comic section, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was usually on the back of the sports, so I'd wait for my dad to finish reading the sports section, and it was like, come on!
[SPEAKER_05]: And then eventually, when you had to fight him for it, and that's when you became a man.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's right, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, a passage in the little page.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what's weird is my brother won't fight his kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you're not doing a good job raising him.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, the kids have to fight the dad.
[SPEAKER_05]: I went at dad fights a kid.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a different thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: A different thing in time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Grader Grader says, What's our sneak peek for Pete's take on the new Punisher one shot show?
[SPEAKER_02]: So Pete, I don't know if you got a chance to listen, but Justin, I did take the thing about Punisher one last kill, but we promised people at the beginning that it was unfair to talk about this without you there.
[SPEAKER_02]: so that he would take a separate episode where is probably us team you up and then you talk for like an hour all by yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're asking for a piece of your take on.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm very excited to hear what you think because, well, you can hear what our takes were.
[SPEAKER_05]: But that's what prompted the question I had about the sort of split version of the Punisher because I think we get that in this special and it really made me look at the Punisher in a new light.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, for me, I think the Marvel Flip said that all was a real emotional roller coaster.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you were like, oh, hell, yeah, I know what this is about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the floor drops out from under, yeah, you know, and it gets kind of crazy real fast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if that's any piece.
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_05]: That was the smallest peak, but that's not a peak.
[SPEAKER_05]: That was like the peak.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is what you gave us.
[SPEAKER_02]: You gave us the peak flip of your opinion.
[SPEAKER_05]: Why are you keeping your opinion to yourself?
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you have a, did you not enjoy it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you not like the Punisher?
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the Punisher.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can meet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think John burnt those amazing as the Punisher.
[SPEAKER_05]: interesting to get answers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you got away from my hour take.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm I want to tee this up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know this whole thing got uh I got a whole space for that.
[SPEAKER_05]: To be fair, you've just been screaming this hour long take to your comic boxes behind you for the last week.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I excited to push you in front of a microphone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the Punisher sure is taking a beating, you know, over this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, yeah, interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow, shots fired.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the Punisher, I bet he had it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you watched it be great?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I am.
[SPEAKER_05]: And absolute rose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I've watched it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's right, bullies have talked about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we got a question here.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you had to cast one of your co-hosts for voice work, who would you cast them for?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, just a you do voice work, so I do a commercial for you a commercial good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I want you to get work.
[SPEAKER_05]: You've got to support I would love I would love that the voice work the best work in the biz Since I can find a microphone.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like this except you get checks in the mail.
[SPEAKER_05]: Nice
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely have Zalbin read the kind of side effects, you know what I mean that that part where people zone out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: On their top of medicine?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Side effects include dizziness, headache, stomach aches, nausea, a dizziness, a dizziness, throwing up, vomiting, pretty good.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm trying to think because like let's go mainstream like what are the like cartoons?
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean Pete.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to say foggy Nelson, but like feels like you would take that role.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that would be a role of a lifetime for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like you would actually do well on like an adult swim show, Pete.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that would be like some dream.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, some sort of this is nothing against you But like some sort of weird character who's just talks like a Relatively normal guy like it would just be your voice, but he's a blob of something It would go the neighbor was Carl was that Carl.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, Carl.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's a p-character That's who he is now Question mark town in Pennsylvania.
[SPEAKER_05]: We don't know if it's ever invited us, but like whatever town it is you are live in yeah
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're always welcome.
[SPEAKER_05]: Alex is frozen for a brief moment because he doesn't he?
[SPEAKER_05]: We went for him.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's so come after me man, so come after me.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, this is easy reader says, hey guys, I missed the show when absolutely Batman number 20 came out where your copy's badly damaged the copy I got was not as bad as I expected it to be No, I heard about that happening, but my local store in Brooklyn all the copies seem fine, so I'm not sure I'm sorry to anybody who got a damaged copy because it sounds widespread, but I personally did not see an issue
[SPEAKER_05]: That seems crazy for one particular issue to be damaged.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's just, I have not looked into this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know, but by guess would be there was so many different covers for absolute Batman 20 in particular.
[SPEAKER_02]: It probably shipped in its own boxes, and that's been shipping so many copies anyway, so that's probably why it was just that one.
[SPEAKER_02]: But real bummer, man, Zenman says, I've seen a few novelizations of Marvel stories or original novels based in the Marvel Comics universe, if you guys read those or DC based, and if so, what are your faves?
[SPEAKER_05]: Hmm, I will say I have not read a lot of these, but I do like the creators that end up working on them.
[SPEAKER_05]: they're like uh... people who are like uh... just really meticulous comic book writers uh... like uh... peter david's cage christoscage as a lot of the christoscage
[SPEAKER_02]: great Peter David did a lot of them back in the day yeah I this is a weird thing I can't really get into I can't real this is weird thing and I've never mentioned that before
[SPEAKER_05]: He just had gliding on the pictures.
[SPEAKER_05]: All this time we thought it was Pete.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, for example, when I just read that question, that was actually me going with my mouth, that there's the real Alex is behind me saying the words, because I don't know how they are.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like a real Alex.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you a human puppet?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a problem with like spin-off novels.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've never been able to read any of the Star Wars spin-off novels, the Star Trek spin-off novels, anything like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's something about it that I just, I can't quite get into them for whatever reason.
[SPEAKER_05]: Because you feel like they're one step too far removed from the main.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's probably what it is, which is kind of crazy because like you said there's a lot of really quality stuff going on there and I used to read like movie novelizations all the time back when I was a kid, but now I don't know there's just so much to read that I'm like I don't I don't need to read that too.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I think that was definitely true in the past.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think now because of the preciousness of all IP the novelizations are actually
[SPEAKER_05]: I think there's some real energy there and they aren't pushing story forward as opposed to being like Something someone is dashing off to just get on the stands as fast as possible
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, this from EasyReader.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you watched show called Aquabats?
[SPEAKER_02]: I just found out about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's lots of campy fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, what about this school?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, very fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: No further comments.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I mean, I was going to say that's a bit of an older show, I think.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I'm on adult swim, I think.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, there you go, I'm a wild man.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Stable, it's a chef question for R&D purposes.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's your favorite burrito?
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, Reggie, Trezo, Theresa, Theresa, but what else?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like there's, what else do you like Theresa?
[SPEAKER_05]: I like Theresa, wrapped in Theresa.
[SPEAKER_02]: And smart.
[SPEAKER_05]: Just like a solid block.
[SPEAKER_05]: Sorry, my wife came back and I'm reckless, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, hey, uh, congratulations.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I do usually order a Theresa, but you know, if it's an option for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do like a breakfast burrito.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's not them, like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And do you like the California burrito with French fries?
[SPEAKER_02]: That's always a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's a line for me.
[SPEAKER_05]: You can't do that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want french fries.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'll have them on the side.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll control french fries every Like you're in Chicago and they stuff it in the sandwich.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't that everyone's like how put french fries in it And it's like it's our local cuisine.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm like that's not cuisine Then like you made a mistake once and now it's a stop it It's like just saying I don't want you to be ready for it separately.
[SPEAKER_05]: They should be saying it's not too good It's not too good a lot of people like it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm just saying I don't want that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want it
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a weird line, bro.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Get out of here with French fried burrito.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ah, wait, I just, I like to get a burrito that's just French fries, it's just the tortilla of the sauce.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're eating McDonald's medium fry, Alex, that you think is a burrito.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to go pass it on the outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to go pass the fact that steak burritos are also really delicious.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, steak burritos are good, but that's based on your base.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, Stanley wants to know the locations for the boys finale.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I should mention as we're taping this in like an hour and a half.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's gonna start playing at movie theaters in 40X.
[SPEAKER_02]: They sold out instantly.
[SPEAKER_02]: They added extra show eggs.
[SPEAKER_02]: I saw they're doing like 40X would be a horrible idea for this.
[SPEAKER_05]: 100% against your asking.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, no, that's messed up.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna just get sprayed with some smells.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what I think deep it's gonna be in there So it's gonna be a weird like watering and spray teeth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, the deep the deep the deep I thought you were talking about like yeah, I just load it up with teeth We're gonna load it up with teeth teeth teeth people.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the boys
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, so they're doing that and that it's going to premiere tomorrow on Prime Video.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're definitely going to be talking about it on our boys podcastlets here for the boys.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you boys, expectations, Pete, what about you?
[SPEAKER_02]: We didn't get to talk to you about the last episode on things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was texting straight bullies about it, but the, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: Homelanders go to move is just if he doesn't like somebody's he's just going to straighten murder you so it's like man this is uh... just watching this happen one by one here so
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... yeah i i hope the boys can pull this off but uh... we will see i if mothers milk gave a great speech i felt very hyped i i was like oh come on uh... but uh... yeah i also love the the bit about like you know if you're too stone the mine readers can't get you know i mean come up that's hilarious it's hilarious no one's reading your mind my guy
[SPEAKER_01]: There's too many, too many voices still go on here.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm very excited, I feel like this episode that just happened was a real like everything just got still at the end and now it's time to spring the trap that's been waiting for so long.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was listening to it and interview with Eric Kripke and he was talking about they've had the last 10 minutes in place for years now.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh wow.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're locked in.
[SPEAKER_05]: he was talking really interesting the way they talked about he was talking about how writing this last season they had their like cards in the wall of all the characters in the sort of their journeys throughout the season so very And they're horrible deaths.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes, maybe a question mark.
[SPEAKER_05]: They but they also had like a bucket of like okay find me every loose thread
[SPEAKER_05]: in the series and so they had just this grab bag of like okay let's pull legend let's pull whatever character and be like oh maybe you can resolve this maybe you can resolve this pay off this long learning joke and that's really exciting
[SPEAKER_05]: But based on our comic knowledge and what I heard in this interview, I do think we're going to get a bad butcher situation at the very end.
[SPEAKER_05]: But the prime focus in this episode is about the Samuel Jackson, the fall of homelander, which is a long time coming cannot wait to see it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think he's just going to laser?
[SPEAKER_01]: I sound like he's just going to laser.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, little smiles, little smiles of smiles over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I mean, I could say that I've seen it and, uh, don't you don't you I'm not going to spoil anything Do you want to take me?
[SPEAKER_05]: Let me just read you, Alex.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know you're not high.
[SPEAKER_05]: Let me read your mind.
[SPEAKER_05]: You're excited and the urgency Little, uh, behind the scenes here.
[SPEAKER_05]: The urgency with which you said, hey guys, we have to review this ASAP.
[SPEAKER_05]: get booked us in for it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think you liked it, and I think you're excited about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Pete, you want any general impressions you want?
[SPEAKER_02]: I will murder you somehow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Take off your advance for one second.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll say like one sentence here.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's just protecting you, peace.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think they landed the plate.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people, there's going to be quibbles and there's going to be quubs and people who have said about things here and there and certainly I have questions, but like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I found it very satisfying.
[SPEAKER_05]: I did it all.
[SPEAKER_05]: The joke, no joke, what do you were like, hey guys, okay, so it's going to premiere here this week, I'm going to watch it and the morning, I'm going to talk about it and I was like, you bastard, it was great.
[SPEAKER_05]: I do as soon as you did it as great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Pete, you can put your headphones back on.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I'm so excited to watch it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've been hyped this entire season for this finale.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and we've been kind of like we were talking about this on the last episode of let's hear for the boys that like It's been really negative the blowback about it, which I've been a lot of people are not Yeah, and like people are like, oh, you know, I don't know and I like yes There's a little bit of like we're seeing similar beats, but I think that's a little bit the point and the satire is so on point and as I've said since the beginning of this season
[SPEAKER_05]: especially and even before like this is a playbook about pushing back against autocracy and fascism and they are doing that so well in disguising it so perfectly in the guise of an badass ultra violent superhero show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm worried about what's going to happen to the deep.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, your boy Justin looked in bad shape.
[SPEAKER_01]: I couldn't believe you didn't save that dude.
[SPEAKER_01]: The lean sideways or whatever you said swim sideways was a hilarious thing to shout.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would laugh my ass off and Samuel Jackson stole the show but I'm like yo, man.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, there is the deep, my prediction, the deep is the next one, let me see, you've been calling that for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have.
[SPEAKER_02]: We will find out tomorrow when it premieres will have our podcast up as quickly as possible, recapping the finale.
[SPEAKER_02]: And folks, that is it for your audience, question!
[SPEAKER_02]: Next up we're gonna turn to trivia.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it's right and for that, we're gonna go over to Pete LePay All right, let's apart.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll give back to you the lovely audience.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening We appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an opportunity to win $25 free dollars mid-town comics online Because if you had 25 bucks why not go to a comic book shop sport a local comic book shop?
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds like fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we did have Zenman and
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... digital dq kind of did it at the same time do you have a preference pe moment i mean well you gotta kind of go in order there it looks like them and did be all right send man uh... it is you digital deck uh... sorry about that hit us up next week and you come back time will definitely call you yes we'll remember work it at that uh... and peat take it away ready
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah sure, today's trivia is about the Kyle Book character Lobo and a small nod to the legend Sam Keith RIP.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for all the great writing and art.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, here we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Question number one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what Kyle Book did Lobo first appear is that A Omega Man number three June 1983.
[SPEAKER_01]: B.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fucking Greg that is a fucking cool-ass fan though or see Greg Vanzo Wow Were you storing that up did that take the entire couple of weeks whether you're gone to that's right But working on that tireless It's really it's crushing it's called writing Alan I'm going with a Yeah, that is correct well done
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, question number two, which team has Lobo once been a member of?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a the church of triple fish god?
[SPEAKER_01]: Be so amy, amy, what you're saying is, Dan is missing?
[SPEAKER_01]: See amy, Danless.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was less of a walk, I wanted to say.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ay, again, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it is.
[SPEAKER_05]: That is a good stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, here we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: There we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got less one.
[SPEAKER_01]: The current run isn't the only time we've seen a young adorable Lobo.
[SPEAKER_01]: What year was Lou Lobo?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it A in the year 2000, B?
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, nice.
[SPEAKER_05]: Great.
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, do you say it again?
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, it is again.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and going with hey again, I actually did the last one.
[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's what a coincidence.
[SPEAKER_02]: Congratulations.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to get a 25-daler gift card to midtown comics.
[SPEAKER_02]: Shoot us an email and we will get that off to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Pete, what is the secret movie you were referencing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was talking about the 1995 award-winning cult classic TV miniseries, the Max.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, absolutely tracks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you got to make tracks over to your comic book shop to pick up on this week.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you guys looking forward to, Pete?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well I tell you what I'm looking forward to one woman number 33 as well as absolute green arrow number one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in case you're wondering why absolute green arrow, it's because you had me a curky.
[SPEAKER_02]: Raphael, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a curky.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's right.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't mention we talked to Pornstack, Peter showed and Raphael Albuquerque about the title that is up in the comments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait, you talked to the curky?
[SPEAKER_02]: We did.
[SPEAKER_05]: We did.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, it's actually a great interview.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that's, I am, we've read the issue ahead of time and man am I excited for everyone to read this issue.
[SPEAKER_05]: I sleep or enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Justin what else are you excited for a lot of stuff coming down the pipeline going to have to give the almost standard shout out to amazing Spider-Man number 29 we're kicking into some new territory here I just feel like every new arc that Joe Kelly's doing is fun and exciting and
[SPEAKER_05]: pushing Spider-Man into new and different directions.
[SPEAKER_05]: Also looking forward to, we got an Odin number one from James Titan and Margarie Bennett.
[SPEAKER_05]: Very curious what this is.
[SPEAKER_05]: James Titan keeps JT4, JT4.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's busy out there, but he's partnering with really interesting people to make his comics and collaborating with them, and so very excited for that as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Last week on the show we had Chris Condon here and he talked about all the stuff that he is doing and he's got two titles tomorrow that I'm both really interested to check out Ultimate Impact Reborn for Marvel which is following up on Ultimate Spider-Man Encursion and also of the earth which sounded really fascinating from hearing him talking about it as a eco horror comic book yes Pete what is your question?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, it was a way for you to finish your sentence before, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, what's up?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's just that all these comics sound great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there any way that all these comics are on the stack that's going to be out tomorrow?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a great question, Pete.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are all good to be in the stack podcast that comes out just now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Say 9 a.m. both the comic book club feed and the dedicated stack feed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh, and folks, that is it for this week's show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much to Ben Percy for coming on to talk about the end times.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're just coming out in 2027.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, Punisher, Wade Wilson, dead pool, forgot for a second.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm midnight, fantastic for coming out in the fall and a bunch of other stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll always check out all of his stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Next week on the show, Kenny Porter and Tyrell Cannon are going to be talking about the new IDW title.
[SPEAKER_02]: Operation iron coffin that a vampire killing a bunch of Nazis on a train.
[SPEAKER_02]: That sounds fun time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, good comic book club news are daily news podcast Monday through Friday Every day of the week Marvel vision our Marvel podcast We did just talk about the Punisher and we'll probably talk about it again That's here for the boys our boys podcast wrapping things up tomorrow for good question mark patreon.com slash comic book club
[SPEAKER_02]: Sport this show and all the shows we do comic book club live calm this podcast many more until next time we'll see you at the comic book
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it on graphic cultures and they let us see good mood?
[UNKNOWN]: Have you seen nothing, they let us special guests speak?
[UNKNOWN]: To grab your ring, hand around, don't be late For a close, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair, fair
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks everybody, have a great night.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.