Episode 82 - Miracleman: The Neil Gaiman Run - with JD Martin and Angela "Bones" Bullock
We are joined by Neil Gaiman experts, J.D. Martin and Angela "Bones" Bullock, from the "Fables & Reflections" podcast to talk about the unfinished arc of Miracleman by the bard of comics himself.
SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts • Google Podcasts • Spotify • iHeartRADIO • Stitcher • RSS
Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/CertainPOVMedia
Men of Steel Full Episode Originally aired: January 14, 2022
Edited by Matt Storm
Scored by Gen Moonen
Certain Point Of View is a podcast network brining you all sorts of nerdy goodness! From Star Wars role playing, to Disney day dreaming, to video game love, we've got the show for you! Learn more on our website: https://www.certainpov.com
Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/wcHHer4
PODCAST SHOWS:
▶ Men Of Steel - https://www.certainpov.com/men-of-steel
FOLLOW US:
▶ Instagram: @certainpovmedia
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Disclaimer
02:42 Welcome and Guest Intro
03:26 Neil Gaiman’s Miracleman
05:48 Miracleman’s Publication Problems
07:32 The Birth Scene
10:43 From Alan Moore to Neil Gaiman
11:38 Life in Miracleman’s World
17:16 The Climb
24:55 Reactions to Miracleman
27:42 Miracleman and Nuclear Fear
37:04 Jason’s Survival Guilt
40:40 Computer-Matched Relationships
44:04 Skin Deep
47:26 Miracle Woman as Venus
50:21 Rebuilding the Natural World
54:21 The Miracleman Children
01:01:50 Notes from the Underground
01:03:25 Andy Warhol and Emil Gargunza
01:07:28 Rebuilding Gargunza
01:14:33 Systems of Control
01:18:25 Winter’s Tale
01:23:32 Winter as a Terrifying Figure
01:29:52 Spy Story
01:33:14 The City of Spies
01:37:45 Cold War Paranoia
01:41:34 The Carnival
01:47:18 Miracleman’s Gift of Flight
01:50:43 The Unfinished Run
01:53:29 Miracleman’s Legal History
01:58:46 The Silver Age
02:03:20 What Might Have Come Next
02:06:17 Final Thoughts on Miracleman
02:12:54 Angela’s Final Thoughts
02:18:43 Guest Plugs
02:22:03 Jmike and Case’s Plugs
02:24:35 Post-Show
02:24:57 Comics Quest Promo
Transcription
00:00
Case
Hey everyone, this is Case coming in before the episode drops on YouTube to note that this is a classic episode and it's one that initially came out in January of 2022, which in a lot of ways was a simpler time. And unfortunately at the time we didn't know a lot of stuff that we do now about Neil Gaiman, who is the main author that we are talking about for this section of the Miracle man books. And it's unfortunate, it's a good conversation about Miracle man as a whole because our guests hadn't had a chance to talk about the Alan Moore years. And you know, it's even before the Silver Age came out, which I hate to say it was a pretty good read, but unfortunately this is just an artifact of history that I didn't want to eliminate.
00:51
Case
But we have to be honest, we're very effusive with our praise for Neil Gaiman in this. And since then we have found out that he is a monster. He has done terrible things to women. And I am sorry for anyone that is triggered by that. And I don't want. I, you know, I'm giving you warning to skip this episode if that's going to be an issue. But it is, it was part of our conversation about the Miracle man books and the. It's just an artifact of its time. So with that, here's the episode. But I just wanted to give that bit of a heads up that again, this is from January of 2022. So, you know, we know.
01:37
Jmike
We, we.
01:38
Case
We know that he's a monster. We. We didn't know at the time. And I'm sorry. And here's the episode. There's a lot going on. Also that panel is particularly interesting because, like, it is from it is cut from the neck to the, like the thigh. So all you're looking at is the boobs and the dick of this individual, which is f. Like all cool. But like as, like my hand, my head is like panning. I'm like, oh, that's. Those are naked boobs and a penis.
02:05
Bones
Yeah, yeah. It's like, yeah, because like the, yeah, the way you read a comics page, you gotta like go from the top.
02:11
Case
You go top to bottom.
02:13
Jmike
Okay.
02:14
JD
Taste the way you said that. Like, oh, and a penis.
02:42
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken and as always, I am joined by my co host, Jmike Folson.
02:50
Jmike
I am here. I am alive. It's good to be back.
02:52
Case
You're alive and you're not in under space. Right. You're here in the. In the mortal plane.
02:57
Jmike
After reading this book, I have no idea anymore, I'm guessing. So it's a slight maybe.
03:03
Case
Well, it seems our numbers have increased, as is the way when you introduce a catalyst such as the thing that we're talking about today. Today we are joined by the hosts of the Fables and Reflections podcast. So we have returning to the show, J.D.
03:15
Jmike
Martin. Hello.
03:17
Case
And making their first appearance on Men of Steel, we've got Angela Bones. Bullock.
03:21
Bones
Thank you, thank you for that eloquent introduction.
03:26
Case
And today we are continuing a conversation. And you know, it's fitting to have Neil Gaiman fans here because today we are talking about the Neil Gaiman side of the Miracle man run, which is.
03:37
Bones
Was cut short due to shenanigans.
03:41
Case
Oh yeah, and we're going to talk about that because I dug up the companion that was put out around like 2000 Komota. The. The official Miracle man companion, which has a whole bunch of interviews including with the editors from Eclipse and with Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham and we'll have some fun talking about that towards the end.
03:58
JD
But yeah, and also I want to point out that if whatever I say, I did not think of it myself. I got it straight from a book that I will continue to reference for the rest of my life, which is Prince of Stories, the Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman. I don't know if any other copies exist in the world. It's the only copy I've ever seen.
04:17
Bones
I like the title of that book mainly because it seems as like if you look at a Young Neil gave it, he doesn't look that much like Morpheus, but like as he's gotten older, he's just like, he just like turning into a real life Morpheus.
04:30
JD
Well, there's a reason why when we commission Nikki shout out to Nikki Burger for our wonderful art. Whenever we commission her to do that, like we said, like, we should have like more the Morpheus like eye gleam in Neil Gaiman's eye. There's kind of a reason for that.
04:46
Case
I just can't wait for his hair to go fully gray and then he just becomes Daniel once he gets like some Botox in his face and it'll be great.
04:51
Bones
There you go. Yeah. Yes. Well, real quick before we get much deeper, I just want to. I got to shout out this on. On Fails and Reflections as well to my local comic book shop, Velocity Comics in Richmond, Virginia Versus they attempted to order the. The last two volumes of the four currently released Miracle Mans. But it's out of print again. And so they weren't able. Yeah, and so they weren't able to. And as well as just being extremely understanding with me wanting a bunch of books that I could not afford until I was recently employed again, including ordering the massive 14 volume 30th anniversary set of Sandman, which I just picked up today.
05:37
JD
And I have that.
05:38
Bones
Yeah. So my.
05:40
Jmike
Wow.
05:40
Bones
Yeah. So my. Shout out to Velocity Comics if you're ever in Richmond, Virginia, give him a visit. Amazing. Amazing crew over there.
05:48
Case
Nice. All right, so it's out of print again after. And we'll talk about the print issues. We talked about it a bit last time, but we'll certainly discuss it because we'll talk about the comic and then we're going to talk about the reasons why it is an incomplete story. And that is going to involve a lot of the legal nightmare that is this book from start to finish. But like it's an unfinished story in that regard.
06:10
Bones
It's the legal troubles are quickly approaching. 80 Years old kind.
06:16
Case
Yeah.
06:19
Jmike
80 Years.
06:20
JD
Are we ever going to see a conclusion? Who knows?
06:23
Case
Yeah. And I, I'm just checking because I also have it on Comixology, but now I'm like, wait, is it available on Marvel Unlimited?
06:31
Bones
No, it is not. It is available in Comixology. That's where I picked up the last two volumes. Because like I even like talked to my comic shop guys about that and they were like, yeah, it's because, like they don't have to worry about actually keeping it in paper. And I was like, oh, sure, I guess so. Yeah, yeah.
06:46
Case
I was, I was curious if something had to do with like yet another shake up in rights because I, I've got the nice hardback ones that they put out in my 2014.
06:55
Bones
Yeah.
06:55
Case
For, for all four of them. Which is, which is great. Finally had a reason to dust them off and read through it from start to finish for this run. But I had also purchased them on Comixology and now I was also curious. So they've got the tease. Like you can look up the issues and it's there on Marvel Unlimited. You just can't read them. It'll say this issue is not available at the moment.
07:17
Bones
Yeah.
07:17
Jmike
Oh joy.
07:18
Case
Which is so mean.
07:21
Bones
Well, I also mentioned, especially with the digital first push they're doing currently, they're trying to make it a little bit more friendly family content. So I don't know how much their mature material they're gonna push on.
07:32
Case
Yes, certainly not issue nine of this book, which is the full on birth scene.
07:37
Bones
Just right up in there. Yeah, yeah, it's so.
07:42
JD
I remember I knew about that before reading it because Grant Morrison talks about it in Super Gods and I was just like, there's no way. There's no way. And then reading the comic was like, oh, no. They actually went for it.
07:56
Case
Oh, yeah, okay.
07:59
JD
That was Alan Moore just going like, oh, you want adult superhero comics? Well, here you go. We're going to get right up in it.
08:04
Case
It's. It's really interesting reading the Komota companion book because, like, they've got everyone talking about it, so. Because it was one of the most controversial things that happened during the run. Yeah, until. Until more stuff happened. But when it came out there, you know, there were a lot of like, par who were being like, kind of upset because comics had traditionally at that point been for kids, which is a thing that we have to talk about with this book in general. Like, it is a. It is one of the things that set the stage for the modern deconstruction of comics and making it an adult medium after the comics Code had very much restricted it to being a thing that was for children.
08:41
Case
So to have a book where Alan Moore apparently having seen the birth of his child was like, all like, man, birds are magic and like, wanted to express that to the world and weave that out there. Like, that's. Yeah, that's so crazy. And I get it. I. I get it. It's. It's beautiful.
08:57
Bones
Well, that specific scene, like, that is what makes it not like, icky or anything.
09:04
Case
Like.
09:04
Bones
Yeah, because like, you can say like, oh, this, like, this man is a father and like, that changed him. And so he's writing about it, you know, like, that hasn't happened to me yet personally. But like, yeah, like, I could imagine just that world shakeup and especially like being in the room there and just like there's a lot of sex scenes that Gaiman writes and in his books I say. Well, I say a lot. There's a couple of infamous ones, but it's never. Can't think of a better word than gross right now. But it's.
09:33
JD
It's exploitative.
09:35
Bones
Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's not exploitative or anything. Like, it actually there is a romanticism in some of his. In some of the sex scenes. Game and rights. And I feel like the same thing that there is with this where, like, yeah, it does get. The art gets Right up in there, just about like, what, six panels of winter slowly coming out.
09:56
Jmike
Yeah.
09:56
Case
Crowning is not a term we normally think about as being part of four color comic books, but there it is.
10:03
JD
Here we are on a podcast talking about it.
10:05
Case
Yeah. Yeah. Rick Veach, the artist for that issue, talks a lot about how, like, Alan was very excited to express this part about the story. And it's so crazy to think about, like a 29.
10:20
JD
Don't understand. Rick. We. I, I can't tell you my excitement about. I don't know why my Alan Moore is like, I don't. Why is that my Alan Moore voice?
10:30
Case
That's honestly not terrible. From the interviews I've heard. Yeah, you need to be a bit gruffer.
10:37
JD
Let me go smoke like, half the pack of cigarettes I have in my car real quick. I'll be right back.
10:43
Case
Sure. And when you do. Last week we talked a lot about the wizard of Comics with Alex when we talked about the Alan Moore run. And that is a very big run. Sixteen issues, if you want to call it issues. Three books, you know, because the initial story arcs were coming out in Warrior and it was like five to eight page chunks. So, like, what, you know, whatever you want to describe it as. But the, the full arc of those 16 issues, that's a lot to talk about. But we should move on to more. The, The. The Bard of comics. We need to move on to the screenweaver, which is Neil Gaiman, who, you know, right from the get go, we're talking about a much more kind of poetic style. There.
11:22
Case
There's a beat and a rhythm that is uniquely Gaiman for all of it. And I, you know, I think we should just talk about it issue by issue. Like, whereas the. More stuff is one continuous story about Miracle man, this is the book about the people living in the world of Miracle Man.
11:38
Bones
Exactly.
11:39
Case
And I think it's incredible in that regard.
11:41
JD
It.
11:42
Case
It made me. I didn't actually put this together until I was reading it for this podcast, but it feels like Astro City. But taken even further, because it's a world that has been fully, irrevocably changed by the nature of super beings in this world. And the decision to have that be reflected in the impact on this citizenry is a really cool one. Like, that's a really creative thing because apparently when the book was being handed off, Alan Moore said at the end of issue 16, the world will be perfect and there won't be any possibility for stories anymore. Can he handle that? And he said sure. So this is what he did Neil.
12:18
JD
Gaiman just be like, oh, yeah, sure. Alan in his mind is like, what the am I gonna do? I had to follow Alan Moore now.
12:26
Bones
See, I imagine him just cracking his knuckles like when he's saying there's no possibility of stories and just like no game and just try me. Yeah, just like, all right, let's, you know, let. Just warming up the writing.
12:37
Case
Oh, yeah, these are massive figures in the like, major pillars in the world of comics. But when this happened, they were like 29.
12:45
JD
Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, like by the time Gaiman took over, I mean, Alan Moore was like the king of comics. Because Watchmen had already been out for a couple of years by that point. This was Gaiman, like still at the beginning of his career. I mean, he had only put out the Duran biography that I will never shut up about now that I know that it exists. His.
13:08
Bones
Which Duran is mentioned in his issues.
13:12
Case
When you live with it enough, eventually.
13:15
JD
Look, when you have to live with. When you have to live with the fact that your Duran biography did not sell at all, that just kind of sticks with. I feel like that sticks with you.
13:27
Bones
What I. Yeah, like, what I did really end up liking about Gaiman's issues is you. The subtitle for the. The collection is the Golden Age. Because it is like this. It's like, what is it? There's. I forget the. The philosophical term or I think it's philosophical, but where no matter the how well the world, like how much technology progresses, there will always be dissatisfaction in some way. We'll just find new ways to be dissatisfied. And that's how Kind of Futurama explores that idea to a certain extent because it is this future. A thousand years of the future. And so much. So many problems have been solved by. But so many problems have been added. And I wouldn't even necessarily say problems arise in these issues, but you. You still see people be human.
14:24
Bones
Like, there's that one kind of asshole that ends up having a kind of a. An affair with Miracle Woman. And it ends up he's just a superficial asshole. And that's why he'd like left all of his previous lovers. And it's like, oh, this, you know, this perfect being, this. This superwoman. And like, I get to her great. I get to finally get perfection. And then once she realizes that she's like. She then turns into her human form is in more words than this tells him he's an. And then just pieces out which I. The reaction to no traditional conflict. Being in the world isn't. Was interesting to see because there still is, like.
15:19
Bones
There's still marriage troubles, like you saw with like, the screenwriter, I believe she was, and like, who had one of the super babies that he's just has women apply for, which is insane.
15:33
Case
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we'll get into some of the weirder undertones in that, but. Yeah, but, yeah, like all the weird sub conflicts, you know, like, there's. There's also this whole element of, like, trauma being a huge part of it. Like the. Yeah, it's. It's just a really interesting world to explore. I. And I do want to go through story by story and because there's not that many of them, so we can talk about, like, individual thoughts on that. But I think it's such a cool approach being like, all right, this is a world that has been marked by London where there's this huge amount of, like. It's a trauma inflicted upon everyone. Like the. The paradigm of the world has shifted, you know, completely by virtue of the existence of super beings.
16:10
Case
And now they have built this colossal pyramid that rises into the heavens and you can see from space that they live upon and are actual gods. And everything is just different now. Like, there's not like, no state of humanity is. Is ever going to be the same, but humans are still humans. And now it's just like dealing with that all. Yeah, it. If you're familiar with Neil Gaiman, you can feel it. Like this is the kind of stuff that he revels in. But I usually don't see him doing it from such a broad perspective. This is like the side stories in American Gods or something, rather than the. The central arc, you know, like there are. There isn't a singular protagonist in this, and eventually we will get to one when we move past the Golden Age, sort of. We'll talk, we'll get there.
16:57
Case
So why don't we start with. Why don't we start with the first story? J. Mike, you were not familiar with the Miracle man stuff before we started this all?
17:08
Jmike
No, I was not.
17:11
Case
So I'm assuming you're still not familiar until we read this for this. What happens in the first chapter, the Climb.
17:16
Jmike
Oh, man, gosh, she's sorry. She put me through case. So there's a group of people, they all come from, like, different backgrounds and things, and they all decide to make this ascent up this giant pyramid skyscraper thing. And there's. I forget, is the girl. The black girl who's narrating?
17:36
Case
No, it's the. It's the guy who's narrating.
17:41
Jmike
It goes from different perspectives. I'm like, wait, okay, is it her? Is it him? Okay, cool. And so they're making a climb the way up. And they have to go from, like, the different layers of the atmosphere. They're climbing their way up. They stop and they talk a little bit, and they climb up even further, and they have to put on spacesuits. And eventually, like, they make it to the summit. And Miracle man is like. Floats down from the heavens and, like, his godly form, he's like, sparkling everything. He's like, hey, what can I do for you guys? Why are you guys here? The first guy's like, die. And he shoots him in the face. Nothing happens. And the guy shoots himself. And I was like, all right, this is how we're starting out.
18:17
JD
Cool.
18:17
Jmike
Yeah. The second girl, she wishes to be an artist. And she's. I think I'm summarizing, but she's like, I have all these great ideas, and there are things, but I can't really draw. I'm not really that talented. Is there any way you can make this possible? And he's like, sure. Cool. I can do that. And she's like, thanks. And the third guy is like, hey, my daughter died. Can you bring her back? He's like, nope. And, like, flies off. And he's like, wait, wait. What are you talking about? You can't do this. You. You making her. You're gonna make her an artist, but you can't bring back my daughter? And he's like, no. And the girl tries to console him, but, like, oh, you know, it's a matter of perspective. Maybe he just knows something that we don't know.
19:02
Jmike
And I kind of like, walk away. And I was like, wait, what the heck am I reading, Case? Darn you.
19:12
Case
Yeah, so. So the climb that occurs. So there's apparently regular pilgrimages to the top of Olympus, which is the. The giant pyramid that extends into space that the. The miracle people have. And they require at least groups of four. And as they ascend this. This. This tribute to the Fortress of Solitude, you're seeing, like, all these crazy things that Miracle man is putting into the world that are very Superman Fortress esque. You know, there. You know, there's. There's one level which is just like. There's polar bears and shit. There's like a. A museum of, like, neon fossils of dinosaurs that there's all this, like, crazy visions as they go up. There's a room of mirrors that show different realities. Like one where, like, someone's holding up a sign where he's not in the real world and one where he's naked in that world.
20:00
Case
Maybe we don't know. And like, there's a level where all the miracle babies are there. Like these like, weird cherubic angels just, like, messing with people and people go crazy. Like, it's not an easy climb. It apparently takes a really long time. One person gives up part way and then jumps. And that's not cool. Yeah. And they get to the very top where there's an artificial atmosphere to better foster the plants on this, like, upper level. And that's additionally mythic in kind of construction, you know, like climbing to the tallest tower. But up in the plane of the gods, like, you can breathe fine. Like, that's all kinds of crazy. But. Yeah. So the daughter, she's not even dead. She's brain dead at this point.
20:45
Case
We, like, we later find out she dies in the book, but she's left or she's, she was wounded during Bates's rampage and I don't. They never explain why he can't do it because we know that they have figured out how to bring people back from the dead.
21:03
Jmike
Yes.
21:03
Bones
Well, kind of, sort of.
21:05
Jmike
Yeah.
21:05
Case
There are limitations to it. Like, they are stuck in this, like, underground Hades.
21:09
Bones
Yeah. And they're like, they're very explicitly like, no, you're not back from the dead. You're just a robot that thinks that he, you're this person. Sure.
21:20
Case
Yeah. It's like an echo kind of. Yeah, it's kind of like a Gola from Dune.
21:26
Bones
Yeah.
21:30
Case
I might make, I might make some more Dune references because there's some God Emperor stuff going on here.
21:34
JD
Listeners take a shot every time Case mentions something from Dune. You'll be plastered in the next 10 minutes.
21:42
Bones
I, I, I got, I went to see Dune at the, my local IMAX with a couple of friends of mine, and one of my one friend was just like, yeah, like, you know, she was enjoying it and everything. And then I told her a little bit about what I know, I think happens later. And then she just glared at me and it's like, you ruined this for me. Like, I was vibing and they're just like, just what happens.
22:13
JD
I do have to ask, since I wasn't able to see it in imax, I might try and go see it in MX at some point, but I just saw it on a Nor on a quote unquote normal screen. How was it seeing Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa in imax?
22:31
Bones
It was pretty awesome. I would mainly say the. You definitely feel the. The sound design or like the music design where it's like that 2000, that 2010s. You feel that in your chest. Every time that happens, it's just like. It's like. It's like 300 every time that happens, just boom. Just.
22:58
JD
I just. I just want to see Jason Momo on imax.
23:01
Bones
I was upset when he shaved.
23:08
JD
What's wrong with him? Like partially with a five o' clock shadow.
23:13
Bones
I was only cool with him shaving once and that was when he was announcing his can water company and he was. He shaved on screen anyway.
23:27
Case
Well, that sounds like a work of miracles. And this whole book deals with an age of miracles.
23:33
JD
Yeah, that is true.
23:34
Case
Case, I like this first story for kind of explaining very much from the person on the ground perspective what the world is like. You know, we. We even get hints at the music that is popular at this time. How, like how science is changing, how the world is changing. How are. I mean, even creativity is changing. Like how, you know, beyond just saying, like, oh, everyone can get superpowers. Like, this is in very real ways putting those things together and in place and having a person suffering still poke through. Like, he still has loss and like, that is still going to haunt him for his life. I mean, you. You never move away from the scars. Like, at best you learn to live with them.
24:17
Case
And I mean, the character still has an optimistic side to it, but in terms of like introducing us to this world, it's also nice because, hey, here's a story where we actually get to go see Miracle man, which you actually won't a lot in the golden age. Like, he's not a big player in the actual stories that we see. It's the world that he has created. And so this is probably one of the easiest ways to introduce him. But now he's in that role of being that like, God that you climb a mountain to go, like, make wishes of as opposed to main character who's going to be fighting the bad guy. Yeah, and that's a big change for a Superman type.
24:55
Bones
What I also kind of like about it is especially the ending when you see the reactions because, like, the only three of them get to the top, like we discussed. Like, one of them goes insane and he's like, yeah, like I figured it out, I'm Miracle Man. And then, yeah, that just jumps off the pyramid in his delirium. But then you have see, like, yeah, you never really get the backstory of the guy that brought the gun. But you wonder, like, does he think he's a demon? Do you think he's like a Lex Luthor type where, like he feels inferior and doesn't know how to handle that anymore? Like, but of course doesn't have super science to battle him. Do you? Yeah, like, you, like you don't know his. But yeah, like, not everyone would be okay with just this creature.
25:49
Bones
Like, like in the beginning of the series, the military people call them monsters. Yeah, people wouldn't be okay. Not everyone would be okay with them showing up and just shifting the paradigm of what is possible and what is known. So I feel like in a microcosm it does a really good job of showing not only the day to day that changes, but just the foundational way of thinking that changes that are. That, that would change in terms of religion, philosophy, our place in the universe. If there's an immortal being, then, well, why can't I, you know, why can't I be.
26:36
Case
Yeah. And not just an immortal being, an immortal, opaque being. You know, he doesn't ex. He just says no when he denies the wish. Man who's lost his daughter. He doesn't explain himself, he just floats away. And like, you're left to infer from the man, like, shouting out, begging for it all, like, this is not a God who explains himself to the world, at least not to the common person. Like, maybe to, you know, political leaders or something like that. And so it is a world where, like, everything is being done for them in such a nice way. And like, it's such a wonderful era, but at the same time it is purely being given with no say if anyone actually wants it. And there's no explanation for how it works.
27:22
Bones
Yeah, I also do like that, him yelling at Miracle man. Because it's not often when you're mad at your God, you're sitting face to face with him yelling, well, why aren't you doing this?
27:34
Jmike
Right?
27:36
JD
Literally yelling at God, fulfilling my teenage rebellion years.
27:42
Case
So next up, we had one that honestly kind of reminded me of a Neil Gaiman story that you all covered recently on Fables and Reflections. It actually kind of reminded me of the ocean at the end of the lane, which is. We have a story from the little boy that Miracle man meets earlier in the book, like six or seven.
28:01
JD
This is my favorite issue. This is my favorite issue of the Neil Gaiman issues. This is my favorite.
28:08
Case
Yeah, this. This one, like I said, feels or felt very much like other stuff I've seen with Neil Gaiman without necessarily conforming to the format of this larger series that he's working as a part of. Like, this one felt like a chance to sort of express. Yeah. Just kind of like that childlike wonder in the face of the impossible. And then, like, how we look back upon it, which I thought was really nice. I mean. J.D. You want to, like, sort of go in and sort of explain what happens in this issue.
28:35
JD
Yeah. So this young man, most likely in, like, his early 20s, has just had his. Has just had sex for the first time. And he's sitting in bed and, like, he's like, oh, I. I not only did get that, like, I had sex for the first time. It's like, now I get to have, like. I get to the first time that I'm gonna have a cigarette after having sex, like in the movies. And he's sitting there, like, casually talking to the woman he's. He slept with. And he tells her the story of when he met Miracle man as a boy. And he's like, I don't care if you don't believe me. Like, I know people probably don't believe me, but just know that it is true. And he's just recounting the story of when he was in the forest playing.
29:24
JD
By the way, kids, stay out of the forest. It's dangerous out there. And Miracle man floats down from the sky. And the kid asked him, you know, are you a superhero? And he's like, yes. I'm like, yeah, I think I'm a superhero. Like, well, prove it. So he just, like, destroys a rock, like, all right, you're probably a superhero. Like, you can do that. And in the Boy and As a Boy, the. He asks him, well, if you're a superhero, will you protect us from nuclear war? And Miracle man says, I don't know, but I'll try, and then leaves. And that has stuck with him forever. And that's essentially the end.
30:13
Bones
I wonder what it was about this generation of Englishmen, because comparatively, like, there's. I feel like there's just, like, some nuclear references in, like. But I feel like most of the, like, the, like, the major comic stuff that talk about, like, the fear of nuclear war are all part of the British Invasion.
30:38
JD
Well, I definitely know for Morrison. Morrison, it was a lot. It was. If it was very personal for them, because not far from where they grew up, there was a. An American military nuclear testing site.
30:54
Bones
Yeah.
30:55
JD
Or not. Testing site, but like where they kept nuclear weapons. And also his. Their father had fought in World War II and had PTSD and essentially became a, Like a, Like a soldier for peace, essentially, and would regularly bring along his wife and his kids to these peace protests. So from a small. From a very young age, Morrison was very anti war and anti nuclear from. From a very young age. So I've. And. And that wasn't. But that was in Scotland. So.
31:35
JD
But, But I have to assume that, like, they were all kind of brought up that way, that all these soldiers returning home from war with ptsd, you know, and all these people who are suffering from the effects of war are now raising their children to essentially and teaching them that, you know, war is a terrible thing and nuclear is even worse and we should do everything we can as citizens of this world to prevent it from happening.
32:10
Case
Yeah, I mean, I think there are three big things and they go with what you're saying, which is that it. If we're talking about the British Invasion, the. We are talking about people who, if they either lived around London or any of the areas that were bombed During World War II, there is a lot more of a visceral, visible sign of reconstruction than what America experienced. Like, there's very little damage that occurred to America during World War II, whereas, like, London was bombed like crazy. And even if you weren't alive for it, you either see areas where it's like, oh, that building used to be there and we're building a new one now, but it was bombed, or you would hear stories about it.
32:44
JD
It's like the, you know, a massacre. That kid, Miracle man, that is depicted in the final arc of Alan Moore's Miracle Man. It's that just perpetrated by a super. A super villain.
32:59
Case
Right. Well. And then while Britain is a nuclear power, the Cold War is mostly highlighted by the. The conflict between the US and the ussr, who are not, you'll note, Great Britain, which means that the main people growing up in this era have to deal with the. The possibility that not even their own government is going to be responsible for them being wiped out in a nuclear winter. Like, it is that feeling of impotence and the inability to actually enact change, because it's not even your government. It's like you can't even, like, get in that way. Like, we're talking about being a pawn in a large. On a battlefield that is made up of much larger players.
33:36
JD
Yeah.
33:37
Case
So there's that.
33:38
JD
And they're physically caught in the crossfire as well too.
33:41
Case
Exactly. Caught in the crossfire of two other people's fight. And this is the 80s and this is Thatcher era. And most of these writers did not really care for Thatcher and the.
33:51
JD
Because they were all working class British and Scottish lads who were like, no, fuck the government. They don't actually care about us.
33:59
Bones
Right.
34:00
Case
Yeah. So, so this is an era of people really wanting to say, hey, this sucks a lot. Why don't we talk about that? And, and honestly, like that kind of comparison you can see talking about how kid Miracle man was able to just waltz in and murder half of London. Like, that is the exact. And like you can't do anything about it. Your government can't do anything about it. Your army can't do anything about it. Not like no gun that you own can do anything about it. You're just, you're just going to have to suffer it. Like that is the fear, like that is the fear of a nuclear war right there. Yeah, like a, a fear that you are just completely powerless in the face of this destruction.
34:38
Bones
Yeah, that is true. I also, the more I read about Thatcher and more people I read talking about Thatcher, I wonder how close she is to Nixon for us, where it's like clearly at the time course was, you know, pretty popular or at least with a good chunk of the country. But as time goes on, no one really wants to say, yeah, I, I love Thatcher. Like, no one go like, no one who was old enough to vote is like, loved Nixon.
35:10
JD
I mean, and the thing is like nowadays like the names kind of invoke the same feeling. Like if you're here in America, you say the name Nixon, people kind of recoil and discuss like, yeah, gross. If you go over to the UK and you go to England and you say the word, you say the name Facture, they're gonna get the same reaction. Just like, gross.
35:31
Bones
I, I love the video of that old Scottish woman. The day Thatcher's funeral was. They're interviewing her and she's like, I'm glad she's dead. It's like, you know, like, you know, that's a very nice. You're supposed to speak, you're supposed to be, not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Too bad, too bad. She could run in hell.
35:53
JD
That's gonna be us. Like I'm gonna go on the record right now, that's gonna be me. When a certain orange haired face dies,.
36:03
Bones
That's gonna be three quarters of the country. Let's be Honest, That's.
36:06
JD
That is true. And I will. I. I'm gonna be in that three quarters of the country if.
36:10
Bones
If. If election day was any. Was any indication. I will throw a party when the world.
36:17
JD
I will throw a party and you're all invited.
36:19
Bones
When the world cheers that you lost your job. I think you done fucked up.
36:24
Case
Yeah, well, yeah.
36:28
Bones
The world collectively just parties because you've lost your job.
36:33
Jmike
Oh, man.
36:34
Case
Yeah.
36:35
Jmike
Yeah.
36:35
Case
There's certainly that feeling of powerful people who we don't care for being allowed to get away with shit. And it's good, good to stop that at times.
36:44
JD
There's a reason why in. Why in Miracle. In. Toward the end of Miracle Man, Alan Moore, like, has a scene where, you know, Miracle man is like, yeah, he just shuts down Margaret Thatcher and she's like. Well, we're like. It's like, can we allow this time? He's like, what do you mean, allow? Like this is going to happen and you can't do anything about it.
37:03
Case
Oh, yeah.
37:04
Jmike
I love it.
37:04
Case
I called it out during the last episode because it's such a good moment. But staying on this story, I do want to focus on some of the other details here. So, like, one of the big things going on here is Jason's survival guilt. So it's not just that he met Miracle man when he was a child.
37:18
JD
Right. I totally forgot about this part.
37:20
Case
Wasn't in London when it happened and he, by all rights, should have been.
37:24
JD
Yeah.
37:25
Case
And that it was just like, kind of a fluke that he wasn't. And he kind of attributes it to Miracle man being like a guardian angel, even though we know that's not the case.
37:32
JD
Yeah, no, like, he. He, like, goes to visit his aunt, like, on the countryside, and his best friend stayed behind in London and then died in the attacks.
37:44
Case
There's a really visceral wording that when I was rereading this, I was really struck by where they never. They never identified Sharon and Dave. I think about them. They could have been part of the mess in Oxford Street. You know, all the bits. And I can just hear that in Gaiman's voice. Like the. All the bits part right there, like that. Just thinking about, like, oh, God, there's just, like, hands and there's like. Like little portions of people over. Like, the Massacre of London isn't just, like, the. The atrocity of how many people died. It is like the. The sheer sadistic cruelty in every part of it. And, like, that. This is. This is our best view of that component like, you know, the previous chapter had a man whose daughter was hurt.
38:29
Case
And we've seen, you know, we saw the excellent John Toddleben art from. From issue 15 or 16 where you see London and just how terrible it all is. But these are moments here where it's like, oh, yeah, this is what it feels like and why a lot of these people are never going to heal.
38:46
Bones
Yeah, it's. I, I feel like the. What Gaiman is doing with these stories and I feel like, yeah, the Survival Guild does it is bringing the human reaction to something like that because they. Even. Because he talks about. Yeah, the. The bits. Like when I was about to go to college at first I, I'd like. I initially went in for anthropology because I wanted to be a forensic anthropologist. And yeah, like, mass graves are a. To go through and match everybody up at. With all of their bits. And yeah, like they. I'm not surprised. Like the. What do they mention it later as the killing fields that they've just kind of left as is. Yeah. And. Well, and then also.
39:42
Bones
And I mean, of course Gaiman could not have known this at the time, but I think there also is something to the idea of leaving that as is just like the 911 memorial being just the empty foundations with a fountain now in it. Just having those two. And then having beams of light at night coming from the bottom of the fountains, from those. Those two scars of those buildings now being gone and. Yeah, because I'm sure there was a lot of people that weren't able to be fully identified there either. Just that, you know, utter show.
40:22
Jmike
Yeah.
40:22
Case
Or to go back to bringing back the nuclear comparison, like Hiroshima, for example.
40:28
Jmike
Like.
40:29
Bones
Yeah. Oh, just being shadows. Yeah. Just.
40:31
Case
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is like really trying to articulate how a world would process something that's, you know, frankly, impossible but like has analogs in the real world.
40:39
Bones
Yeah.
40:40
Case
The last thing I want to call attention to in this story that I thought was interesting is that Jason mentions that he was paired with this lover that we don't see in this she's. Or we find out later it's a she. But. But it. We. We see nothing of that. Of this other person. They have a sheet over them and you never see anything besides like, they talk. But they're like rolled over precise. They're paired up by computer.
41:05
Bones
Yeah.
41:06
Case
And I find that an interesting component as well that society itself is now being sort of programmed.
41:12
Bones
It's.
41:12
JD
Yeah. And that's something that crops up a lot in science fiction. Like it Even it's still showing up today with. I have to. I mean, I'm on a podcast, so I have to bring this up. Steven Universe. There is a story in season four, Steven Universe, where his dad Greg gets, like, kidnapped and taken to a human zoo out in space. And it turns out that this human zoo is, like. It's actually filled with, like, the descendants of this. Of these people who were taken from Earth like a hundred. Like, hundreds of thousands of years ago. And they are. They have this thing called the Choosing where the. Where, like, they will just like the.
41:55
Bones
The.
41:55
JD
The voice above. Like, it tells them, like, every. Like, throughout the day of, like, it's time to eat, it's time to play, it's time to exercise, now it's time to go to sleep. And every once in a while, they have this thing where they will pair two people and they will then come together and be together for the rest of their lives.
42:15
Bones
The. The computer pairing people up gave me a lot of Brave New World vibes.
42:22
JD
Yeah, that too.
42:24
Case
Yeah. Certainly.
42:25
Bones
Especially. Well, especially when I know. I think directly. Even more so Brave New World, because then there's that moment when later on we see kids talking about sex education. They're like, yeah, my dad said they didn't have sex education when he was a kid. And they're like, wait, what? How. How could he not have sex education? And he's like, yeah, he said they had it, but they didn't have sex. He's like, well, how could you have. And apparently, like, which is. That's also a plot point in Brave New World.
42:53
Case
So anyway, yeah, no, I. I actually was getting the same kind of vibes. And it's interesting here because usually the.
42:59
Jmike
The.
42:59
Case
The counter narrative that you do in those kind of stories, like the, oh, look at this dystopian utopia kind of element is like, but is that love? And apparently all the pairings that we see here are actually very much so happy with the pairing that we've got. Like, they remain when. When we come back around to Jason and his partner, like, they're very happy. Like, everything is like, yeah, it's. It's being programmed and they're being told what to do, but it's actually exactly. It's choices that they would never have made because they never would have had the right circumstances, but it's still. It's the outcome that they would have wanted if they had, like, an infinite number of possibilities.
43:34
Case
Like, yeah, this is that, you know, like, this is that thermodynamic miracle in terms of their Pairings like this is the like air spontaneously turning into gold kind of level of improbability of matching them up. And it's still and it's perfect because this is the time of miracles.
43:51
JD
So does that mean case, that we now have to have a T shirt that says Love us Thermodynamics?
43:57
Case
We might, if we can figure out a good design elephant.
44:00
JD
Maybe, maybe a good pun to go along with it.
44:04
Case
Possibly we'll workshop that one. Why don't we move on to Skin Deep, which Angela, you had brought up already a little bit. And why don't you explain what happens in this story.
44:14
Bones
Well, part of the changes of the world are pretty much all of the electricity, all the power of the world is now windmills through air turbines. And so there's this one caretaker of this small towns. It's like actually historical. It's like several hundred year old windmill but it been converted to make power for the modern grin, but still needs to be upkept like a old one. So he takes care of it and it's very isolated so his job doesn't allow him to get out very much. And then we saw like slowly learn about his previous life before he became the caretaker of this windmill. And during one storm when he is taking like doing his job and like taking down everything so like it doesn't get blown over like that Walt Disney cartoon. That's actually a very good one.
45:16
Bones
It's one of, I think it was the first one of his to win an Oscar. So it. And that's. And he sees Miracle Woman up in the sky and he just like whispers I love you. And of course she's super. She hears him say that and it's.
45:30
Case
Like over a crack of thunder.
45:32
Bones
Yeah, yeah, over a crack of thunder. And she's just like oh, you horny. All right, like let's go.
45:40
JD
It was the equivalent of a you up text.
45:43
Bones
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, so then they start this affair where like every once in a while, usually during a storm, she shows up. And through that relationship we hear him reflecting, we see him reflecting on his previous ones and yeah, just how shallow he is. Talked about this disgusting molecule on and the sagging belly on his first wife and now this one woman, he didn't even remember her name but Miracle Woman does because she's psychic. And so then, yeah, then that's when he called, that's when she calls him out. She says Kimota turns into her human form. They have sex one last time. And then in the morning she leaves. But when she had shown him her human form, she was like her fingertip was on his shoulder.
46:45
Bones
And so he has a scar from the energy of her transformation on his back. And he says, that's how I realized that everything was real. And then he does the computer thing again, or not again. He. He calls the computer hotline or whatever to. For a matchup. It is his first wife and they start seeing each other like every once in a while again. And he makes the comedies like, you know, it's like. Yeah, it's. I don't think it's. I don't think this is going to be as ever going to be like it was, but it's working for us now or something along those lines. This is. Is like the last comment he makes.
47:26
Case
Yeah, I think this is a really nice illustration of. They describe Miracle Woman in Olympus as being Venus as opposed to like a Hera type figure. And I think that it's a really interesting element here where she, I mean, she does heal this man by way of like, loving him and at the same time making him question the, you know, the superficiality that he had sort of like, put up as an impediment to his own happiness and then marks him in this sort of divine way. And I, I think it's all a really cool kind of like, encounter with a God kind of story that shows their desire to heal things. And also. Yeah, as you mentioned, they're creepy and psychic and have perfect memory and can hear everything. Yeah, yeah. It's very much like a human interacting with a God kind of story.
48:10
Case
And it's, you know, it's perfect for. For Gaiman, like, that's exactly the type of thing I want out of him.
48:15
Bones
Yeah. Which. And, well, and then that's another thing is that this feels like mythology. Yeah, no, definitely does, but like a little bit more modern. Because the thing about, like the OG versions of a lot of. I mean, speaking of Venus, like OG versions of. Of Venus myths and stuff like that. The gods are forces of nature. They're not. There's not any type of wisdom to them. They're just kind of like rip, you know, good, you know, good Greeks or good Romans and we won't smite you, but otherwise we don't really care.
48:54
Jmike
Like, as long as you worship us, we don't really care.
48:57
Bones
Yeah, yeah. Don't. If you don't kill family members. Give us dead sheep and you're good. But yeah, this one was.
49:07
JD
Put it on a T. Shirt.
49:10
Bones
But yes, like, this one was very good because, yeah, like you said, it's a, yeah, like a modern myth. Like, I know that, like a lot of people have said, like, oh, superhero stories are the modern myths, but I think so, because it does. Gaiman is using this story to promote what he feels the values of our society are, like, what the ideals are of it. And it's like, yeah. So, you know, it does a what, 10 page story of don't be a shallow.
49:43
Jmike
Yeah.
49:43
Case
With like this hint of eroticism. Because we do actually get some sex scenes and a awkward kissing panel in there. Like the first shot of the making out. I'm just like, oh, that's. And their lips look weird. That's all I got to say about that. But with, you know, like all this like amazing imagery, like talking about how like her skin lights the room when they have sex. You know, like they talk about their memories. They, you know, he, like, she honestly seems to care for him and like, is interested in what he does and all this stuff because, you know, these are not just like superheroes. Like, they're supposed to be like the full on the ubermensch.
50:21
Case
Like, they're supposed to be like this like perfect rendition of humanity and that includes like this desire to uplift us all in that process, which is part of the story of the golden age here. So, yeah, it's, you know, just very nice from, you know, a human perspective. We get some nice story beats. Like there's a spot where everyone's being pulled if they want to reintroduce wolves into the woods of London or not of London, of England. And it's that he votes yes and it's like, okay, cool. Like all this reconstruction effort, they are sort of like feeling out the people around them and there is a system in place for it, for the wonders that they're working, at least once they got to a certain point. That's, that's kind of intriguing.
50:58
Case
And like there's a green new deal where everyone gets new jobs working at windmill plants.
51:02
Bones
Yeah.
51:02
JD
I mean, look, once you abolish money, there are a lot of opportunities that pop up.
51:07
Bones
Yeah, well, speaking of wolves, it's interesting if it just said that's just a small little tidbit because, like, they did reintroduce wolves into Yellowstone about 20 years ago now, maybe not that quite that long, but it ended up changing the course of the rivers because the riverbanks weren't as safe to get water anymore. So there was less erosion from the deer and elks footprints on the side of the banks. So there was less erosion of the rivers because of the wolves being there. Because it was just real easy to just pick off a bunch of. And so the deer stopped going there. And so like there's. Yeah, that. That's what I thought of. Which is like. I know it's like kind of this throwaway pan of like, all right, we're like, yeah, like rebuilding the world.
52:11
Bones
But we've, you know, it literally we have done that for. But also at this point, you talk about the people around them. There's a lot of controversy because they're of the people that live on the edges of Yellowstone now because the wolf population has grown so much that they're starting to nip at livestock at the edges. And there was even this one famous wolf, this one famous she wolf that like, had a. I think was like. Was one of the first. And she ended up going like, almost at one point she went off the edges. And like, there's hunters at the edges of Yellowstone that know, like, all right, you cross this line, bam. Like this happened to this one. Radio. I think Radio lab did a episode on that. On that particular wolf in Yellowstone. But yeah, anyway, it's that.
53:16
Bones
That was a interesting, real comparison in terms of like, what's interesting about writers. If they read enough, like not even just necessarily fiction. If they read enough like real world.
53:29
Jmike
Events, they tied into their stories.
53:31
Bones
Well, they tied it in their stories. But like they're able to like to predict was like stuff like this.
53:37
Case
Well, yeah, because there's going to be small examples that then aren't the big ones that catch the public. Public consciousness. But if they're reading about it, they might be able to infer those kind of things. And I mean, you know, any sort of big terraforming project, like homeostasis is difficult to maintain. And like, this is right when like biodomes are becoming popular in terms of pop culture. Pop culture. And like, that is exactly the kind of thing you're gonna be thinking about. Like, how do you make it all like fit together in this terrarium. Last thing I want to talk about from this story is that the main character never speaks. Like it's entirely narrative boxes. Like it's. He has dialogue with characters. Like he talks to Miracle Woman, but his are all of his thought boxes as opposed to word balloons.
54:21
Case
And it's like kind of an interesting story element there. Like he's. He is recounting his story. And like the His. His parts never feel truly diegetic. They're never, like, part of the scene. He's recounting it, and everyone else is acting to him, which is just of a cool element. So next up, we've got the sort of a cartoony story about the kids that we alluded to already. And this one we got Shout Out Mark Buckingham, by the way, for changing his art style at every single issue. Like, every single thing is different, but it's always the same artist, and they are wildly different from Michigan.
54:56
JD
And I believe that, like, he was gonna stay on for the whole run.
55:01
Case
Yeah, he was saying that he. It sounded like. I read the interview with him, that he was going to sort of, like, balance out the art style and have more of, like, a house style for the remainder of the run. That was mostly for Golden Age, where the viewpoint is shifting around every issue that it was going to be so different. And he talks about how in the. The two issues that came out and then the last issue, he was, like, trying to, like, find the happy medium of everything and, like, actually define his style. But so this one is, like, a bunch of kids, and one of those kids is a Bates, which we found out at the end of the Moore era. There's a bunch of, like, the counterculture scene are people who are obsessed with Bates iconography.
55:39
Case
The way that we have, like, skinheads and, like, punks and like, that. Like, all of these, like, different movements over time who have tried to, like, be, you know, like, that, like, Satanist kind of stuff. Like, all of this is, like, going off of that. In this case, it is going off of baits. So they've got Kid Miracle man jackets, and they've got pendants that have, like, a dude with a girder sticking out of his chest and that, like, the whole story of this is this girl trying to convince the. The Bates boy to show it to her.
56:06
JD
It almost feels as though it's not. It's not just, like, punk and. Or skinheads or Satanists. It also almost feels like, serial killer groupies.
56:19
Jmike
Yeah. Okay. I can definitely get that vibe.
56:22
Bones
Yeah, it's. Well, yeah, because for a little bit, I was gonna confuse. Because, like, he has the crew cut and everything and black hair and everything. So, like, I thought it was like, his family or something, but I guess, like, no, because I don't remember that they are. He wasn't. Or like, all of them. All the miracle people were orphans. So, no, I guess that couldn't be his family, but.
56:45
Jmike
Right.
56:45
Bones
Yeah, because they. Yeah, because they don't use any other day for this kid. Just Bates boy. Or at least I can't remember any other.
56:57
Case
Yeah, they all. They all identify as, like. Because I'm a Bates, is what they keep on saying. And they. I mean, I. It's an assumed identity. It's not like they just happen to be. They're not all just like people with the mark of Cain on them, but they are people who choose to bear it instead. And we see the girl we see later is more dressed up as a Bates girl later on. So it is like this, like. Like I said, counterculture scene that is growing.
57:21
JD
Yeah, it looks like she's a bit older, too. So this feels like almost like this is. I mean, they do jump throughout the. Throughout time, throughout this arc. This, like, this takes place like, a couple years after. Like, it starts out as, like a couple years after the events of the previous run, and then it jumps forward in time.
57:42
Bones
One thing that freaked me the. Out a little bit was the first date that they give on the very first page is exactly my brother's birthday.
57:54
JD
No.
57:54
Case
Oh, yeah.
57:55
Bones
I was like, what the. What? Yeah, like, that's when they gather and like, that's when they start their ascent. Yeah, on that first.
58:04
Jmike
In the first chapter.
58:04
Bones
Yeah, yeah, the. Yeah, the first page, like. All right, credits. First page of dialogue.
58:09
Case
Third 1987.
58:11
Bones
Yep.
58:11
JD
Well, happy birthday, Sean.
58:14
Case
Yeah, I mean, it does. It does jump around. And this. These are kids who are growing up in the era of the Miracle Man. Like, you know, it's like, as we alluded to, they talk about, like, well, sex ed. Obviously you're going to have sex. Like, that's just makes sense to them because the world has changed and they're growing up in this changed world. Like, they can't even fathom the time before.
58:31
JD
Yeah, yeah.
58:32
Bones
Kind of like gives us talk to Zenals about the time before Internet.
58:39
JD
Yeah, exactly. That's what I was saying. Like. Like, Neil Gaiman has talked about how, like, one of the things he wanted to discuss was the disparity between generations and how, like, one thing that seems completely normal to the new generation, the older generation cannot even fathom. Like, for example, like. Like you mentioned, like, how, like the current generation, like, the. The. The current generation, like, cannot think of a time it does not know of a time without social media, without smartphones, without, you know, the. The pervasiveness of the Internet and then being watched all the time. Whereas, like, I can remember, like, even as a small child, I can still remember a time when, you know, I couldn't just go look up something on the computer. I couldn't just go look up something on my phone.
59:26
JD
And you know, a cell phone was, you know, something you call someone on. That was about it. Like if you wanted to text someone, it was an ordeal.
59:33
Bones
25 Cents. 25 Cents.
59:36
JD
And you had to text and you had to pay for texting. And like, even today we still get like the, like these like charges may apply for text. And it's like everyone has unlimited text, unlimited texting on their plan. Like their phone plans now. Like that doesn't even so. And I can only assume that like 15 year olds who see those texts are just like, what does that even mean? Like, I've never heard of that. Whereas I can go, well, even at 23, I can go like, I know exactly what that means. But like, I can. I'm like, I'm kind of stuck in between. Like you had generations.
01:00:13
Bones
You had to pay when someone sent you a text, which was real fucked up.
01:00:18
Jmike
Yeah.
01:00:18
Bones
Like.
01:00:19
Case
Yeah.
01:00:19
JD
No, And I remember, I particularly remember a story with my grandmother where she once got a text from my uncle. Like she was like, she was telling him something and then he just sent back K the letter K to say okay. And she's like, I'm paying 5 cents for you to send one letter.
01:00:39
Jmike
What the hell?
01:00:42
Case
Well, I mean, paying any money for that is ridiculous because it's just the pinging of the phone to the tower.
01:00:46
JD
Exactly.
01:00:47
Case
It doesn't make that allows that basic medical. Anyway, we're going to go way deeper now these days. The point is this is a comic about, oh, kids these days. They don't know or. And also that they have a totally different perspective on things. So it's showing that the passage of time is going to get weird. And like, I think it's overall just kind of a cute story trying to.
01:01:06
JD
Show like each perspective and show the show each general generational perspective and have us try and just see their side of it and try and understand their side of it.
01:01:17
Bones
Right.
01:01:18
Case
Yeah. But I think it's like kind of a cute enough story. Although it is like kind of creepy that this girl who's had family that died in Bates's rampage is like flirting with becoming a baits herself. I don't know, it's kind of weird to think about.
01:01:31
JD
Like I said, I get real serial killer groupie vibes.
01:01:34
Bones
Yeah. Although just real quick since we did mention my older brother Sean, talented musician who wrote our theme.
01:01:44
Jmike
Yeah.
01:01:45
Case
For Fables and Reflections.
01:01:46
Jmike
Awesome.
01:01:46
JD
Yeah, hire him to do stuff. Sean's cool.
01:01:50
Case
So moving on to the next story, which deals with death in a different way. J. Mike, do you want to tell us what happened in Notes from the Underground?
01:01:57
Jmike
Oh, gosh, sure. First I want to say, was this guy. Was the guy in the cloak, was he a robot or was he something else?
01:02:04
Case
No, this is Mors. He's introduced at the end of Olympus. It is a. It's a Kees. It's a member of the alien race that has the body switching.
01:02:13
Jmike
Oh, that's him. Yeah.
01:02:16
Case
God of the Dead.
01:02:17
Jmike
Cool, cool, cool.
01:02:18
Bones
Do we call him God of the Dead or the aliens also call him the God of the Dead?
01:02:23
Case
So I'm calling him God of the Dead because all of the sketches for Moors that John Toddleman did for it all have say, God of the Dead underneath it.
01:02:33
Bones
I was getting Charon vibes.
01:02:35
Case
Yeah, no, it's. I mean, like, there's. We're definitely designing the character and the fact that he has his own, like, underworld of a giant basement underneath this huge pyramid. By the way, this whole huge pyramid does kind of feel like the last redoubt from the Night lands. And having a giant field underneath it is very much like they're like giant growing fields that they have lots of sci fi stuff going on in all of this. But in this sci fi world, they are able to animate the dead by way of taking skin cells and then having sort of like cellular memory imprinted on artificial beings. Yeah, yeah. So that. So Morris does that. He figured out how to like bring souls back into putting them into automatons at the end of the. Of the More run. And jma, what's happening in this one?
01:03:25
Jmike
We get Andy Warhol being kind of one of them. Yeah, one of the many Andy Warhol robots being kind of like a mentor to. What's his name? I forget. I can never pronounce his name.
01:03:36
JD
Emil Gargunza.
01:03:37
Bones
Gargoonza.
01:03:38
Jmike
There you go. And I kind of like being his spirit guide, which, by the way, the.
01:03:46
Bones
I just want to comment on the. The brilliant cheekiness of having like 16 Andy Warhols just walking around.
01:03:58
Case
Yeah. It was such a good throwaway line in the last issue of Moore's Run. And then he's like, ran with it in this whole issue. Oh, man, this. This whole issue is crazy. And it's easily the most famous one of this whole run.
01:04:10
Jmike
Yeah, it was like the entire time, like he's asking him, like, hey, do I have a soul? What's the Purpose of living here if I'm already dead, Can I get out of here? He's like, no, you're just here. You know, that's what we do here at the bottom of the basement, in the basement of the pyramid. And yeah, this is a really weird chapter.
01:04:31
Case
All the art is done in the style of Andy Warhol.
01:04:34
Jmike
Yeah.
01:04:34
Case
Like, either as like chalk on a black paper kind of style, or you get these, like, mass produced prints.
01:04:41
Jmike
Yeah. I was like, oh, gosh, this is weird, but let's see if I can paraphrase this. Yeah. So they have all these deep conversations. He's asking, like, what's the purpose of me being here if I can't leave? He's like, I don't know, just exist, explore. Do what you're gonna do. Like, I just walk around and do stuff. And eventually Emil starts asking him questions. Like, he starts to remember things that happened to him. Well, him, but not him before.
01:05:10
Bones
Yeah. The fact like, when Miracle man chucks him through the atmosphere.
01:05:18
Jmike
Yeah. Like he remembers the point of his death. Yeah, exactly. He remember. He said he remembers being lifted up off the ground and like, him being shot up through the atmosphere. He remembered seeing the earth and he remembered Miracle man kissing him and then chucking him back. Chucking him back down towards the Earth. And he's. But how did they get skin cells from that, actually? Because it was like.
01:05:45
Case
Oh, they pelvis. There was like a little bit, I think they got off of like a femur or something.
01:05:50
Bones
Yeah, no, the pelvis that is shown at the. In those, like, last panels, like, that's all that's left of them is. Is the, oh, perfect pelvis. Which actually, I can tell you from personal experience, there is a lot of great DNA there. I. Because of different health issues you have had the past couple years, I've had to have a lot of bone marrow biopsies. And they go in through the iliac crest, and there's just a bunch of bone marrow and nice DNA liquid in there.
01:06:22
Jmike
Well, now I actually like. The more, you know, then you hear. Exactly.
01:06:29
Bones
That's the summation of just hanging around me for more than 10 minutes. I just, like, my brain gets triggered and I just start saying random facts.
01:06:40
Jmike
Yeah.
01:06:41
Case
You're in good company.
01:06:41
Jmike
Yeah.
01:06:43
JD
There's a reason why.
01:06:45
Jmike
What?
01:06:45
Case
We have a podcast.
01:06:49
Jmike
Yeah. Like, eventually Emil builds his own little. Little. What you call it? Little device that lets his. Lets him escape through the. Out of the pyramid.
01:06:59
Bones
Yeah. A portable cestation field.
01:07:03
Jmike
Yeah.
01:07:04
Case
Yeah.
01:07:05
Jmike
And he's like, all right, I'm out. Peace like, where are you going? He's like, I'm leaving. I want to go out to the world out there. And they're like, no, you're staying here. He's like, no, I'm going to leave. I want to explore. And then the God of death, like, taps his staff and shuts down his machine. Emil collapses. And Andy Warhol is confused. I want to say a little bit.
01:07:28
Case
Yeah. So throughout this whole issue, we see Emil, like, sort of building to this idea, both with his conversations with Warhol, like, kind of discussing, like, wait, someone went up to a party upstairs? Like, how did that work? Like, how does all these things work? And then when winter shows up.
01:07:47
Jmike
Oh, yeah, forgot about winter.
01:07:49
Case
You know, it's revealed that, like, oh, yeah, Miracle man and woman are actually, like, kind of afraid of Emil Gargunza. And Garuna wants to. Wants to leave and is. Is curious why, but apparently this is not the first attempt at resurrecting.
01:08:05
Jmike
No. Yeah, after he collapses, like the God of death andy Warhol, like, take him back to, like, this back laboratory and there's like, a wall of failed Emil gargoons or automatons, and they're, like, hanging there. He's like. And he's like, oh, well, this is. This was a try. We'll try better next time. He's got a wonderful mind. Like, we got to find the balance between not so crazy and kind of crazy, kind of sane.
01:08:32
Bones
I love how they hang him up like a coat. That's what it reminded me of. It's just like a closet of cocoonses. And it's just like they're all hung up. Clothes hangers.
01:08:43
Case
Well, it's a keys. It makes sense because you know that we get one of the funniest lines in this whole run where Warhol asked Moors, does your kind have any art? And he's like, we create specialized bodies for ourselves to inhabit. And like, yeah, it's like, oh, neat.
01:08:58
Bones
Yeah, that's. That's our creativity is. Yeah. Designing bodies, which. Yeah, it's where we get to the.
01:09:07
JD
Point where we just have a closet full of gargonzas.
01:09:10
Jmike
That reminded me of. Of what is it? Ex Machina. The end of Ex Machina movie. And I was like, oh, snap. This scene. So familiar.
01:09:18
Case
Yeah.
01:09:19
Bones
Yeah, I. I really liked it because you do kind of like. Because I remember I was. I crammed all these in the past couple days. So, like, I don't know if it's this issue or in the. More stuff, but when they were talking about the reason they brought him back was. Or like just like his. They were impressed by what he did.
01:09:43
Case
They said it was in this issue.
01:09:45
Bones
Yeah, it's. Yeah. So it's the line of. Yeah, it's like, oh, you know, Winner says it to him. It's like he says like. Yeah, it's like if a monkey got a hold of a record player and then reversed engineered and built a recording studio.
01:10:02
Case
Yeah, it's. That's a great point right there. And I wanted to bring that one up because.
01:10:08
Jmike
Yeah.
01:10:09
Case
So Winter has a lot of insight from the Keys. So we get some from her and also from Morris who actually is Keys and we get to see their perspective what was going on with Gargunza because like we talked about this on the last episode, that Miracle man and Woman are actually an impressive work out. They're not just like a, A, A low rent version of the Keys technology. Like their superhuman nature is apparently really impressive. Like Gargunza did stuff with the Keys technology that they did not necessarily know how to do themselves, creating this like truly impressive like force field based superhuman. Like they like the Keys hive mind reflects on how their DNA spirals are like very attractive. And that's all fine tuning their email gargoons a day.
01:10:54
Bones
Yeah, I also, I. And what. And in terms of the parallels of the going from Captain Marvel to Marvel man to Mr. Merrick to Mr. Miracle or Tomorrow to Miracle Man. Yeah. Gargonza being like. As soon as I saw Gargonza, I was like, oh, that's Savannah. Like that is. Oh God. It's like just the, the teeth. Like the whole, like the whole lip overbite that they have him drawn as almost all the time.
01:11:35
Case
But, but truly a brilliant mind that Winter refers to as her grandfather.
01:11:40
Bones
Yeah.
01:11:41
Case
And like. Yeah, yeah. I mean like it's that it is that classic Mad scientist from all those old comics. Like, and they're trying to articulate like there. No, there is still merit. Like Lex Luthor would be valuable in this world.
01:11:53
Bones
Yep. I do love that they, that the backstory they give him is like all mad scientists a former Nazi.
01:12:08
Case
There was a lot going on in those particular issues.
01:12:12
Jmike
Yeah.
01:12:13
Case
But yeah, so this Cargon's is a failure. But they're gonna keep on trying because they have to get the right balance of. Of evil and nice. But because they want to use that brain for something because it's really impressive and. And I have to wonder if that's like one of the main goals for more is to like really mine the Greatest parts of humanity and, like, bring it to this modern era. Like, we don't see a lot. Like, this is really our only story with Moors. Like, we don't see, like, a lot with him. He shows up in the epilogue of the More Run. So, you know, he's not like a. He's not like one of the Warp Smiths or the Fire Drake who are, like, active players in the final battle.
01:12:46
Case
Like, it's just like, oh, yeah, we've got a God of the dead. Moving on. Why did I.
01:12:52
JD
Why does it sound like you just were describing a D and D game? Warp Smiths and. What was the other word you said?
01:12:58
Case
Fire Drake.
01:12:59
JD
Fire Drake. Yeah, you're describing. You're just. You're describing DND characters.
01:13:04
Bones
I mean.
01:13:04
Case
Yeah, well, I mean, those are fantastic characters in a world of fantasy. And this is our world becoming fantasy by way of super science.
01:13:11
Bones
Yeah, is. Well, yeah, because they do talk a lot about. I do like the aspect of the story. It's not as much explored in this one, but. But it wasn't Moore's run. It was just the whole idea of, like, having his cake. And then you get two where it's like, all right, all of those 50s and 60s comics did happen, but they were all dreams to control these guys.
01:13:40
JD
The ultimate. It was all a dream.
01:13:42
Bones
Yeah. Yeah.
01:13:44
Case
Well, so this story brings up in this volume the. Some real Matrix vibes. And, like, the part like the miracle man will always have, like, elements of that because of that sort of dream conditioning that I think is there but like, this. And then we've got other stories in this that. That feel like we're taking it even further. Like they're trying to get right the correct email. Gargonza, like, they're rebuilding him, constantly tweaking him, each time putting the right stimuli around him to try to make a productive Emil Gargonza, like, that feels like Dark City, you know, where they. They take the memories and putting them in different people and change the circumstances around to sort of test out humans in control groups. And, like, I feel like that's what's going on here and, you know, bringing back that whole, like, element of control.
01:14:33
Case
And it's interesting that it's happening to Gargunza, who was the person who instituted this in the first place. But we'll see that becomes a recurring theme about the world that they are creating, that they are programming society from who you love to have, like, who your friends are, and then ultimately how you can break away from misanthropic tendencies and There's all these elements of control that are subtly in the background of these stories.
01:15:00
Bones
Yeah, well, I mean, it can also be argued, like, the whole thing of, like, how much do you know, the macro question. How much do you hold a criminal accountable for what he does because of the circumstances that led to him doing what he did. You know, like, if. Are you gonna blame a hungry man for stealing food if you don't feed him? Different stuff like that. So I. It is especially, you know, being Americans, I feel like it. It is. Goes against like, it's like, oh, gross. They're like, yeah, controlling people through subtle manipulation and all this different stuff. But I think one thing that the world that the miracle people are building is instead of a system, instead of a core system that like, creates competition and haves.
01:16:03
Bones
And haves knots, they're creating a core system that like, everyone's fed, everyone has the opportunity of happiness if they want to grab it. I mean, because we saw that like, with the, like, yes, that computer re. Put him together with his wife, with his ex wife, but like, he still made that choice to pick up the, you know, to pick up the phone or send the email or whatever and with the. The windmill taker. So, like, yeah, it does. It does feel wrong because, like, oh, they're manipulating these people. But it's like. But in a lot of ways we're manipulated to do shitty things or to do, like, different things because of the systems we have, like, in terms of like, racism or queer phobia.
01:16:55
Bones
It's because we're in a queer, phobic, racist society and we kind of have to like, consciously wash ourselves of that instead of the core being utterly different where, like, that doesn't matter anymore and like, it's pushing you in a different direction instead of that hateful direction.
01:17:16
Case
Yeah, I don't mean to say that this is necessarily worse. It's just interesting that we are bringing up some of this iconography and this concept of systems being put in place to. To have macro controls over the world that are more subtle than just direct action by great people, you know, like, that there is bigger stuff going on to shape society as a whole and that we're seeing testing areas for that. We're seeing more obvious areas for that. It, like I said, it's just interesting. And like, obviously the world that we live in currently is also the future where we have weird computers that tell us who our friends are and match this up appropriately and all. All that jazz. Like so many of you I know from The Internet.
01:17:55
Bones
Yeah,.
01:17:57
Case
But like I said, I just find it interesting here and the fact that there, this is a very scientific moment of that. Like they keep testing like versions of Emile until they get him. Right. Because they want, they know he's valuable.
01:18:08
Bones
Yeah.
01:18:08
Case
They want to make sure they get a version that works, but they have to keep trying. And so it's like when Morris finds out that he escaped, it's like it always happens this way.
01:18:17
Bones
Six months to the day.
01:18:19
Case
Why don't we move on to the next story? J.D. Do you want to give a description of Winter's Tale?
01:18:25
JD
Winter's Tale. So we mostly. This is really from the perspective of a film director who. She's. I don't think she's married to this person, but she's, she's with a, a man who has a child from a previous marriage. She, at the beginning of the story she's talking about how they are like essentially everyone's in therapy and they all have to like no, essentially like not hold back the truth and, and speak the truth. And this is coming off of, you know, how she, you know, the, the her partner told and told her that he cheated on her while he was like on assignment in Japan. And then she in turn like revealed that she like scratched her. Like, like a record of his and he's like a big vinyl collector. And. But they don't, but they don't like bring it up after that.
01:19:31
JD
It's that they just tell each other the truth and then that's that. And then that night her child Rachel, or is that her name? Or is this Mist. Right, her, I believe her name is Rachel. The, the, the woman that we're focusing on the story is Rachel. Her daughter Mist, who is one of the miracle children shows up and it's the day before Winter's day, which is the anniversary of winter is, is Winter's birthday. Miracle man's daughter with his wife, with his first wife. And it's like that, it's her 10 year birth. It's her 10 year birthday. So like this is like a, even more of like a special event and she's come back like cuz she's passing through and staying there. And she and Rachel's stepson Glenn, they sit down and read a bedtime story.
01:20:36
JD
And the bedtime story is Winter's Tale, which is a storybook in this world by Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham. And it tells the story of Winter leaving Earth to encounter the Keys and her journey and encountering them and. And. And all the other life forms that she encounters along the way and, like, relatively, like, positive experiences the whole way as well. Like, it's like a tr. Like, it's a. Like. Like a extremely positive fairy tale. And by the end of the night, Glenn is being put to bed. Mist is about to leave.
01:21:17
Jmike
Or.
01:21:17
JD
No, I think she's. I think she stays the night. But she tells Rachel that her. Her partner is going to leave her and take Glenn with him to go be with the woman in Japan. And she's just like, oh, okay. And confront. And then, like, confronts him about it, and they just, like, come to agreement. Like, they are, like, fairly civil about it. Like, all right, I guess, like, this. Like, this relationship is over. I'm gonna sleep on the couch. And, you know, this whole story just about Rachel wondering, like, you know, almost kind of wondering, like, why? Like. Like, why did I do this? Why did I. Like, why. Why is why. You know, I thought that, you know, this. That there's this empty feeling I had inside me.
01:22:08
JD
I thought a child was going to fill that void, but in actuality, it's just made it worse. Well, especially when you have a child who you can't really take care of because they have evolved past you.
01:22:23
Bones
Yeah, that's. That's the thing is, like, her comment is like, yeah. Like, when. When Rachel goes to sleep that night, she. She dreams of. Of. Yeah, of mist needing her. And. Yeah, so it is like, yeah, that. That. That would screw you up because, like, this is not a normal child.
01:22:47
Jmike
I don't know.
01:22:48
Case
That's a gut punch right there.
01:22:49
Bones
Yeah. And it's like, I also don't, like. I would say, in terms of the creepiest things about this new world, him having a breeding program of, like, all right, ladies, apply if, you know, want to have a super baby.
01:23:06
JD
And then those super. Then the super children are just aloof and they want to have these connections, but because they just evolve so quickly, it's difficult for humans. For normal human beings to connect with them.
01:23:27
Bones
Listen, they're baby Dr. Manhattans, okay?
01:23:32
Case
Yeah. Kind of in that ballpark. Can we just talk about how winter is the most terrifying thing in this entire series? Like, reading this child story, like, which has plenty of asides and so forth. I can't help but wonder, like, how many people she murders that they just don't talk about in all these stories. Like, oh, they just give her ship. Oh, here you go. Oh, isn't it a nice Ship and she takes it to travel to the Keys.
01:23:54
Bones
Bye Bye.
01:23:55
Case
So there's that part, there's the part where I, I wonder if she's time traveling because they note that The it takes 15 years for the Keys to reach Earth. So for her, she goes to the Keys and comes back in like a five year time span. It's, I, I, I don't know what all of her adventures actually are because she does so much and she's out there and it's, you know, her flight speed's only like it certainly doesn't exceed the speed of light.
01:24:25
Bones
Yeah.
01:24:26
Case
Because this is not that kind of a world. So if you're going to do it, you have to do some kind of warp or like going through under space, which they, that used to describe where they house the bodies. But I just keep on thinking like, oh yeah, did she murder people to steal their ship and then traveled and had all these adventures and then worked backwards in time because she's frozen herself at the exact age she wants to be, minus the fact that she used her aura to mimic the skin of a warpsmith.
01:24:51
Jmike
Yeah, that too.
01:24:52
Bones
Yeah. Well, so we already know the consequences of godlike power to a child with Kid Miracle Man. Like once authority leaves, it's like, all right, well, I'm just going to rape and pillage the world because no one can stop me.
01:25:16
Jmike
So.
01:25:16
Bones
Yeah, you gotta wonder how much Winner gives a shit about just blowing up a planet for a ship.
01:25:24
Case
I, I don't know. And that's the scary part here. Like, this whole story feels like it's what they're telling kids to be like the sanitized version of a story.
01:25:31
Bones
Yeah.
01:25:32
Case
And that makes me wonder like, what the unsanitized version of the story. What is the Miracle man version of this Captain Marvel story?
01:25:39
JD
Winter. No, Winter's Tale is the old Marvel man comics.
01:25:43
Bones
Winter is space. Christopher Columbus. That's what, that's what Winter is like. She does really fucked up things, shows up, everyone calls hero and they just don't talk about what she actually did and teach kids. Like, yeah, be like her. Be like Christopher. Yeah.
01:26:07
Case
Like, remember she comes back to Earth after traveling through space and doesn't, she's like, oh, did you do something to the planet? When you know everything has been restructured. Like, there's a giant pyramid. All everything is different. London is half destroyed. And he's like, yeah, I redid everything. Do you like it? And she's like, you decided to keep the sky that color, huh? Like, we are talking about a person who is so outside our realm of understanding of things. Who by the way, is actually the perfect fusion of the keys in the warpsmith worlds because she is Gargoon's interpretation of the Kees technology and is able to emulate the warp smith abilities by way of their micro skin or microderm technology, whatever it is. And she's able to engage in keys activities of switching out bodies. So she is like this like ultimate being.
01:26:58
Case
Truly the star child from 2001 Space Odyssey.
01:27:00
Bones
Yeah, yeah. Like probably more advanced or skillful or however you want to phrase it than. Yeah. Like her dad.
01:27:11
Case
Oh, by far. Far the only one I might question is like, I wonder how kid Miracle man would. Would be up against her because he's. He actually is inventive and creative with his powers in terrible, sadistic ways. And Winter is not only being born with it, she is so far beyond her father, weeks into it. Like it's very clear that she is the God to him, being a titan in the cyclical God story that they're telling.
01:27:39
Bones
Yeah.
01:27:40
Jmike
With.
01:27:40
Case
With these beings. But she's also more advanced than all the other babies. Like, she's the only one who can warp. She's the only one who does all these like, really experimental stuff. They're all. They all look to her as their big sister to follow.
01:27:50
Jmike
But.
01:27:50
Case
Yeah, so that's. It's just kind of a. It's a weird interlude in this whole thing that.
01:27:56
JD
Yeah.
01:27:56
Case
Like I said, if you. If you look at it being like they just gave her a ship. Did they just give her ship?
01:28:01
Jmike
Is that.
01:28:01
Case
Is that actually what happened? And once you start that down that path, you're like, how. How are these stories actually playing out? I feel like there's a lot of death.
01:28:10
Jmike
Also. She got married too.
01:28:13
Bones
Yeah.
01:28:13
Case
Yes.
01:28:14
Jmike
Yeah.
01:28:15
JD
Oh boy. There is so to star. So much weird.
01:28:19
Bones
To sorrow, essentially. Like.
01:28:22
Case
Yeah. And all the while we are seeing in juxtaposed mist, like how much like that her mom wants to be a part of that life. You know, like, this is our. Our, like Winter is the representative, you know, is the most famous member of these miracle babies. With these miracle babies are the next evolution of humanity. And it's kind of crazy to think about where that's going to go and how little they care about where they came from.
01:28:47
JD
So something I want to reiterate from my show. Comics are weird.
01:28:52
Case
Yeah, yeah. We never see in this the whole, like they're also able to give people miracle powers, like Miracle man style clone Bodies which they hint at or not hint at, they say flat out that they can do.
01:29:08
Jmike
Yeah.
01:29:09
Case
At the end of man or of the moron of miracle Man. So I'm curious how those would kind of stack up. Like, I, you know, I. I think it's interesting to imagine a world where there are more people who also have the touchstone of humanity and miracle powers. But none of them would be able to compete with these miracle babies who, again, can freeze their aging and learn how to warp. Yeah, like, we're like, if I all of a sudden developed miracle powers, I would. I would fail at warping real hard.
01:29:37
Jmike
I would.
01:29:39
Case
It'd be like when I tried to take neuroscience in college, like, it'd just be like, why'd you. Why'd you even bother? That was a mistake case.
01:29:46
JD
With the amount of science fiction, fantasy, and comics that you consume, I think you'd be doing okay.
01:29:52
Case
Well, I mean, that's just interpreting media. And why don't we move on to the next story, which is all about twisted interpretations of media. Angela, do you want to give this one a go? Spy story.
01:30:01
Bones
Oh. Oh, God.
01:30:03
Jmike
Yeah.
01:30:04
Bones
So for a good chunk of this, you don't know what the hell is going on. It's, like, very vibe. Like, don't, like, don't pay attention to the details. Just go with the vibe for, like, the first. First 3/4 of this story where it's this spy woman, like, trying to go to this drop, and, like, she's debating, like, well, should I take the first cab or the third cab? Because, like, you know, like, you never take the first cab you go, so they'll expect you to take the third cab. So should I take the first? Actually, take the first cab. And that's. That's a. That's like a whole two pages, her debating which cab to take. But well written and kind of funny in an absurd way in terms of just the.
01:30:56
Bones
The oddness of, like, all of the codes and double switches and everything in this woman's life. And then you eventually realize that she is in a world. She is in a city of spies. Literally 100% of the population is spying on each other. Because apparently the basic distrustfulness of spies did not allow for a peaceful transition into the world Miracle man built. So they all just put them in this city they built like. Like that Jim Carrey movie, the Truman Show. But instead of a sitcom, it's. It's a spy thriller is essentially what it is. So she figures this out, and the ghost of. Of Cream shows up, who has apparently been Put in charge of this.
01:32:11
JD
One of my favorite characters come back.
01:32:14
Case
Yeah, I know. I was really happy to see him pop up again.
01:32:17
Jmike
Thank goodness he's back.
01:32:18
Bones
Yeah. And he's like. And she's like, wait, I remember everything now. You're dead. And he's just like, correct, I am, but not really.
01:32:29
Case
Now it's like, yeah, I am dead, isn't it? Radio.
01:32:35
Bones
So she. Yeah. So he's. He gives up the ghost, pun intended, About what exactly everything is. And so he's like, now you. So you figured out the full nature of the city, which means if you want, you can leave and go back to the world. And she's like, cool, let me do that, please.
01:33:06
Case
Yeah, you can take the red pill or you can take the blue pill and go back inside. Yeah, like, this is the other one. I needed to talk about being very Matrix, like.
01:33:14
Bones
Yeah.
01:33:15
Case
Oh, my God.
01:33:15
JD
We found yet another thing that the Wachowskis read before they made the Matrix.
01:33:20
Bones
Yep. Still.
01:33:22
JD
Yeah.
01:33:23
Case
Well, people talk about Miracle Man a lot just because of the. The.
01:33:25
Jmike
The.
01:33:26
Case
The programming for the three miracle boys at the start of the series. Yeah. And how. That's exactly the Matrix, but this is another one. And, like. Like, of all the stories in this book, this one, I think could be adapted into a short film and have the only change you do is you take out the Miracle man part and just say, we are fixing society. And now, you know, and, like, have J. Edgar Hoover or, you know, some actual famous spy ghost.
01:33:51
JD
You say that, and I'm already on the phone with some friends and we're gonna make that short film.
01:33:57
Case
It's real good. It works real well. For that, like, it'd be hard. You need the internal monologue. But, like, yeah, it's it. This is the most standalone story in this entire book.
01:34:06
Bones
Oh, yeah, most definitely.
01:34:08
Jmike
Yeah.
01:34:09
Bones
But like, it for a while, like, with. With the shift despise. And I was like, what the hell is going on? Like, this is still Miracle man, right? Like, what is this? And then. Yeah, then you realize, like, oh, that's where they put every. That's what. That's where they put all of the world spies. They just routed them up the west.
01:34:27
Case
City, north city, all in the city.
01:34:30
Bones
Yeah.
01:34:32
Case
This dark city.
01:34:34
Bones
Well, that's what I love, where she's like, what's the city's name? And her partner's just like, it's the city. Where is the city? In the city.
01:34:45
JD
In the city.
01:34:45
Bones
Yeah.
01:34:47
Case
It's where we live, silly.
01:34:49
JD
We are a society.
01:34:52
Case
Yep.
01:34:54
Bones
So, yeah. And then like, we get a little bit of a clip of her having returned to the regular world, but then she's like, I can't shake this feeling that I'm in another simulation like I was before.
01:35:09
JD
Yeah. That's also another thing of, like, they, you know, like, yes, the whole point of the city is to, like, break the spies of the habits of. Of, you know, complete distrust of everyone. But it breaks them in the way of, well, am I. Am I still in the city or am I in the real world, or am I in yet another completely different simulation, like, what is what? And then completely questioning reality at this point? Yeah.
01:35:40
Case
Is it a matrix within a matrix? And like, that actually makes you ask the question about the whole series we've been seeing so far. Is it a matrix within the matrix for Mike Moran?
01:35:49
JD
Layers upon layers, especially when we find what we'll be getting to later when we find out about what was supposed to happen in the Silver Age, in the Dark Age.
01:35:58
Case
Right. And of course, like, this ends with, like, a little mind at the end with like a.
01:36:02
Jmike
The.
01:36:03
Case
The sign has the same call number that she has called by world. I do like that we continue to like, oh, she gets set up by the computer with a love interest and it is a gay character. Like, it's two. Is two women together. Which I do like that detail, like, considering how early in comics this is like that, like, flaunting those kinds of relationships, I think is a really nice, progressive step going on in this.
01:36:24
JD
Yeah. And that's something Gaiman did a lot like, again, we'll get to it again. But there's also something that deals with. With. With that. With it with, you know, a gay relationship in the Silver Age. And also, you know, in the Sandman, he was, you know, he, Like, a lot of his characters were gay or queer in some way.
01:36:44
Case
Yeah, Like I said, I just want a lot. It, Like, I think it's. It's cool. I think it's neat.
01:36:49
Bones
Yeah. It's like, well, and in terms of, like, that subtlety. Yeah. Specifically our Sandman episode, we briefly talk about in the 24 hour diner where you see this woman in a leather jacket, like, calling and then you, like, solely through the dialogue, like, not like her just yelling, I'm gay. You just. You have to read the dialogue and, like, realize, like, oh, she's a lesbian. And, like, calm and like, yeah, like, she's trying to, like, get back together with her girlfriend because apparently she beat her girlfriend last night.
01:37:28
JD
So, man, that issue is still so hard to think about.
01:37:32
Bones
Yeah. I.
01:37:33
JD
Let alone read.
01:37:35
Bones
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Not. Yeah, not for that scene, but for.
01:37:38
Jmike
For.
01:37:39
JD
Yeah. Not.
01:37:40
Jmike
Not for that.
01:37:41
JD
It's for everything else that happens in it.
01:37:43
Bones
Yeah, it's a. That's a tough one.
01:37:45
Case
So before we move on from this issue, I just want to finish up by saying, like, I think it's really a fun issue. Like, if you're. I normally. Spy stuff is not normally my genre, but I think this was such a great one because it's just showing all the absurdity of, like, I'm gonna look through the classified ads and see if they're code words that I can find in this. And, like, oh, my old contact is now we're selling newspapers at this stand. Like, like, we. We each give nods and not the appropriate call signs or, you know what? Like, all this stuff going on there, just, like, playing on, like, spy tropes is so much fun. And, like, you know that a lot of that. That Is that Cold War paranoia that were talking about earlier.
01:38:16
Bones
Yeah. Yeah. Because this would have. Well, because Cayman's Run would.
01:38:20
Jmike
That.
01:38:20
Bones
Would have been. Would that. Yeah. So that was just the end of the Cold War.
01:38:25
Case
Yeah. You know, what we know from actual history is that all the people in the intelligence communities coming off the Cold War are a lot of the reasons why we got, like, thrown into the forever wars that we have become a part of now. Because we just couldn't give up on, you know, we just couldn't give up on the sort of military industrial complex that had defined the 20th century and now is the formation the bedrock of the 21st.
01:38:49
Bones
Yeah, yeah. The. With Russia is utterly explained when you realize that, oh, Putin was a KGB operative for most of his younger days. Like.
01:38:58
JD
Yeah.
01:38:58
Case
But I mean, that goes for everyone. Like, George H.W. Bush was the head of the CIA.
01:39:03
Bones
Yeah.
01:39:03
Case
And he ushered in the. The era post Cold War.
01:39:06
Bones
Yeah.
01:39:07
Case
I mean, not to get too political, but this is a book that. It is very much dealing with politics, even though it's an alternate reality. And so, like, I just think it is appreciative of the fact that, like, yeah, probably we have too many spies guys.
01:39:18
Bones
But. Yeah, see, the thing about, like, say, oh, I don't want to get political and everything, it's like the basic core of politics because we live in a society is. And I know I just said that, but bear with me.
01:39:33
Case
Yeah, you're in a safe space.
01:39:37
Bones
Is like, that is our everyday. Like. Like, that's why there's such a big fight about like bathroom rules, where it's like, if with. With trans people, if those rules are bent in the way that trans people are fighting for, then that means that there has to be an acceptance and a world change that people don't want to accept. In. In all fairness, it is not that big of a deal. I don't care who's taking a shit in the stall next to me. I'm gonna be in my little space and take my shit and wash my hands and go like, so, like. And I feel like that's where the culture wars are, like, so visceral is because it's not about politics in the abstract, because politics can't really be abstracted.
01:40:33
Bones
Whether you talk about, like, with the Black Lives Matter movement, where it's just like this. Them black people screaming to be seen and to be recognized as. As being, like, human and not just background characters that scare, you know, suburban Karens. It's so like to say, like, yeah, it's. I don't think you can separate life and like. Like. Like sitting back and say it like, oh, when did Captain America become political? It's like, excuse me.
01:41:12
Case
Since the COVID of his first issue. Yeah.
01:41:14
Bones
He punched a world leader in the face on issue one.
01:41:19
Case
Yeah. What I just meant by saying I don't want to go too far is that it is a jumping off point into lots of conversation about the current state of affairs, which I don't necessarily think we need to know when we're talking about a comic book from 22 years ago.
01:41:30
Bones
Yes, correct.
01:41:32
JD
We're on a podcast called Men of Steel.
01:41:34
Case
We're two hours into it, but I know that J. Mike has to go and know it's. We're already running a decent amount of time. So let's move on to the last issue of this trade, which is the carnival. It might be two issues. Like, the last story that happens.
01:41:50
Bones
Yeah, I. I think it is a little bit longer.
01:41:53
Case
Yeah, it's. It's either a double size issue or it's two issues that are one story. Either way, it is one story about all of the characters we have seen so far coming together at a big celebration, the anniversary of the adversary attacking London. And everyone going through this huge ritual of observing the mourning period, like. Like traveling. Like, they walk through London, they walk through the killing fields, and then they have a giant party. And we get to see different perspectives and all the art changes from who we're looking at, which is interesting. We see a lot of going on that I think is really interesting. We're talking about trans people before. I don't know if it's just a hermaphrodite that we see or if it's something trans or if it doesn't matter, because again, they.
01:42:34
Case
This is a society that is being influenced by a race of people who can change their bodies at will.
01:42:39
Bones
Yeah.
01:42:39
Case
So like, maybe we're just coming to the acceptance of that. Your mind is way more important than necessarily the physical body that you inhabit. And that's one of the things that's going on in this book.
01:42:50
JD
Gender don't mean shit.
01:42:52
Case
There's a lot going on. Also that panel is particularly interesting because, like, it is from. It is cut from the neck to the, like the thigh. All you're looking at is the boobs and the tickets. The dick of this individual, which is f. Like all cool. But like as, like my hand, my head is like panning. I'm like, oh, that's that. Those are naked boobs. And a penis.
01:43:12
Bones
Yeah, yeah. Because like the, yeah, the way you read a comics page, you gotta like go from the top.
01:43:18
Case
You go top to bottom.
01:43:20
Jmike
Okay. Taste.
01:43:22
JD
The way you sit there, like, oh, and a penis.
01:43:25
Case
Yeah. I mean, it's all cool, but like, you know, I was surprised because at this point I was still figuring out like, oh, okay, we're in the, you know, we're in the midst of the story because, like, for example, we see Jason's lover for the first time who we hadn't seen before. And I, you know, again, this is less of a big deal at this point in history, but it is a mixed race couple, which I think is a cool detail, even if it's less courageous at this point in history than where. Than other stuff that's going on here. But we check in with everyone, even though we don't see one of the Warhols, their T shirts are being snuck up as like from. From hell. They're being, you know, sold up on the street level.
01:44:08
Case
Which is like such a fun detail right there.
01:44:10
Bones
Well then what I also love about that detail is because, like Andy Warhol's song, like it. The. The Warhols beneath are like talking about like, yeah, like, wish money were still a thing. Because, you know, these are big sellers. Like, you know, we move a lot of these T shirts and then. Yeah. And then like, they make a comment about like, yeah, we're gonna make a kill. And it's like, are you. Cuz Bundy doesn't exist anymore?
01:44:35
JD
Like, yeah, but now. But they, they've gone back to bartering and, and trading.
01:44:42
Bones
Yeah, you know, I guess. Yeah, I guess that would be.
01:44:45
Case
Which going back is a weird term, but. But yeah. And this issue has a lot of like, referential stuff going on here. So in addition to the fact that we're getting callbacks to all the issues that we've seen so far, there's lots of shit in the background that's really interesting. Like Captain Britain shows up at one point.
01:44:59
JD
Yeah, I saw that.
01:44:59
Case
There's also Marvel Properties show.
01:45:01
JD
You can see Spider man show up.
01:45:02
Jmike
Spider Man, Yeah.
01:45:04
Case
I was very all over the place.
01:45:05
JD
I was very happy to see Captain Britain. I was like, oh, that's a nice little like, nod to Alan Moore there.
01:45:10
Case
Yeah. And Alan Davis. Oh, side note, in the previous episode I mentioned that Alan Davis was the co creator and I kind of. I fucked up because I forgot that Alan Davis actually came on issue three and like got the rights from Gary Leach, who was the artistic director for the story in addition to the artist for the first two issues. Sorry, the. The rights of Miracle man are weird and they got passed around a lot. So like, I got a little mixed up there because Alan Davis then did a bunch of Miracle man stuff, including all the covers for all the trace.
01:45:38
Bones
It is documentary worthy. Truly. Just the insanity.
01:45:44
Case
And we have to talk about it in a minute, but I do want to get through the. The story. So we see more of the babies. We see that's going on. We see a resurrected woolly mammoth, which is a lot of fun there. We see talking badgers who don't they talk in like the Wii3 style of talking?
01:45:59
Bones
Yeah, oh, yeah.
01:46:00
Case
You know, yeah, it's super limited, but like, Brock is good for like the badger Mist shows up to talk to her mom, who's standing next to a dude dressed up as Wonder Woman. And it's interesting because the mom is really in a terrible spot. Like, Rachel has not experienced like a great life at this point and like now feels super alone because all the babies have gone. And this is hinting at the future of like the plans for the babies. You know, we see some more with Jason. We see more with all these people. There's a person who some people claim is supposed to be death. This, the spaceman, the.
01:46:37
Jmike
This like, is that what that was supposed to be?
01:46:38
Case
Fortune teller.
01:46:39
Jmike
It's hard.
01:46:40
Case
No one's like, sure if it's just like a look, it's the same style of a thing that Gaiman does. Or is it actually supposed to be an illusion? But it seems to be a real Fortune teller. Because there's a page where Miracle man himself goes to her.
01:46:54
Jmike
Yep.
01:46:55
Case
Which I found interesting. But everyone wants to. Oh, yeah, just turning through. There's like a Starfire and Nightwing hanging out and a Mr. Fantastic One page. Lots of references all over the place.
01:47:07
Bones
I was about to ask if it was another dick just.
01:47:14
JD
And a penis.
01:47:18
Case
And we see all these characters kind of like coming to. To this place that they're at now where there's, like, generally speaking, healing, even if some of them are left lonely and reflecting on the. On the past. The. The Fire Drake, whose real name I forget at the moment, sets off this giant fireworks display, which everyone finds amazing. And then they have this very 1984 style message from Miracle Man. But the message that he's sending is really good. So he shows up and it's. It's, you know, he's like this. This creepy dictator who rules the world, but he's like, hey, everyone, I want to know. I want to let you know that we've been working real hard and we appreciate all your effort, and we're going to give everyone the gift of flying. And it's like, yeah, that's empirically fucking awesome.
01:47:58
Jmike
Yeah.
01:47:58
JD
And even says, like, you know, like, look, I can, like, I can like, bore you with all the tech details, but, like, look, I know you don't care, and I don't even care what I wanted to. I just want to, like, kind of keep it real with you.
01:48:09
Bones
It's kind of like, well, criticism. Grant Morrison's Green Lantern Run. Where. Where the shepherd. Yeah. Just gives everyone powers in one issue. And they're like, but he's gonna eat the planet in like, 200 years. And they're like, we got superpowers. We don't care.
01:48:30
Jmike
Dude, I got superpowers.
01:48:32
Bones
Yeah. Yeah.
01:48:33
Jmike
Doesn't matter to me. In 200 years, I won't be here.
01:48:36
Case
And it's a little weird that the way he distributes these. They're pins. They look like campaign pins for politicians. And then there's this, like, very nice moment of, like, their balloons that they hand out to, like, actually give enough lift because, like, you basically turn off gravity and the balloon pulls you up and then you release it and you have just enough. You have feather fall.
01:48:57
Jmike
You.
01:48:57
Case
You slowly descend to.
01:49:00
Jmike
To the.
01:49:00
Case
To the terrestrial plane. And, like, that's kind of just a beautiful image of just, like, the world, like, all everyone rising up into the clouds holding balloons.
01:49:09
Bones
Yeah.
01:49:09
Case
Like, who else but Neil Gaiman would put that in their giant Superman book?
01:49:13
JD
No one has the balls.
01:49:15
Bones
Or the balloons. Or the balloons. I also just want to say that we're real close to also bringing back woolly mammoths. So the company that's doing it is saying within five years they're gonna have a baby. Yeah.
01:49:27
Case
Although that's some interesting ones going on there because, like, they're. They're working with elephant DNA.
01:49:31
Jmike
Yeah.
01:49:31
Case
I mean, it's true. It's science. Again, woolly mammoths not only existed, but they existed during the lifespan of civilizations that we have written works for. Like Sumeria rose and fell before the last wily mammoth died. We have written work from that time. Like, that's how recent it is. The world is crazy.
01:49:53
Bones
Yeah, it's. It is.
01:49:54
JD
I want to write a woolly man.
01:49:55
Bones
So. So Case, what you're saying is the. The masterpiece that is 10,000 A.D. was historically accurate.
01:50:04
Case
Oh, God. We might have to deal with that on another passing someday.
01:50:08
JD
You mean 10,000 B.C.
01:50:10
Bones
B.C. Yeah, after death. Anyway, the rappers was gotten.
01:50:16
Case
Yeah, I knew what you were talking about, BC I wanted to make sure.
01:50:21
JD
Because I was like, is there another.
01:50:22
Bones
Movie called 10,000 A.D. not that I know of.
01:50:26
Case
No, I knew. I knew what she was talking about.
01:50:28
JD
Okay. I wanted to make sure. I just want to make sure.
01:50:30
Case
I. I didn't think there was a movie that was 10,000 Anno Domini year of our Lord. You're of Miracle Man. This Golden Age.
01:50:37
Bones
Yeah, I mean, the cat. The calendar probably would restart, wouldn't it? It's like, all right, this is year one of the.
01:50:43
Case
Probably. Yeah, yeah, because you would. You'd probably track it from the. The appearance of the adversary, which is how that all works. Then the trade, we get a little bit of supplemental material. It's not quite as much as the previous ones. We've got the. The very basic outline of what is going to go on in Neil Gaiman's like, total plan, which is to say a lot of detail for the Golden Age. And then it's all blacked out for the Silver Age. And then the Dark Age just writes. Things go bad very quickly. So this trade, like I said, doesn't have a whole lot. It has some sketches and stuff and there's some beautiful art. The covers for this run are gorgeous. Like, there are these, like, really interesting painted covers with, like, mixed media. Really cool stuff. Like.
01:51:27
Case
Like both the trade that came out, but just in general, like, look up any of the art that was going on for that, like, really incredible stuff. Then the book continues on and has two issues that have never been reprinted and have never been collected and are $100 right now online. And I have them sitting in my cart and I'm just like, do I pull the trigger? Do I pull the trigger? I don't know. Because the story got. Eclipse Comics, which was at this point had fully taken over publishing. They took over during or at the start of Olympus, the end of the Alan Moore arc. So this whole era has been purely Miracle Man. These comics were never Marvel Man. It has always been this way. And it was being published through an American company. It folded because it was not a.
01:52:16
JD
Great,.
01:52:18
Case
A well maintained company. Apparently there was a lot of like shady in terms of artist royalties and so forth that were going on. I read a lot of the interviews today that Mark Buckingham had, Neil Gaiman had and then editor for Eclipse Cat Yon Wood. Iron Wood. Iron Wood. I'm not sure but she's the one that I mentioned. I had that random issue where she just stopped the issue from turning into a flashback and being like, hey, I'm just gonna admit we're running behind on schedule. Here's a, here's a reprint of an older story.
01:52:47
Bones
I was about to ask if that was her.
01:52:50
Case
So she has a lot of thoughts about it. A lot of her interview is her saying like that's not how it happened. It actually happened this way. And I get it that she was probably wasn't the money. And she talks about how like one of her business partners basically like off with like a lot of people's money and like the whole company collapsed. But this just brings up that Miracle man has been a, a minefield of legal rights from the beginning. Apparently Warrior never properly got the rights to Marvel man in the first place. But it was kind of sort of in the public domain by virtue of the companies collapsing. But like a lot of people involved, they just sort of paid off so that it wouldn't, no one would raise a stink because no one knew who could win.
01:53:29
JD
Yeah, I, I, I found out how to pronounce her name.
01:53:33
Case
Okay.
01:53:33
JD
It's pronounced Ironwood.
01:53:36
Case
Ironwood.
01:53:36
Jmike
Okay.
01:53:37
Bones
Okay.
01:53:37
Case
Yeah. It has a Y. It's not, it's a Y R O N which, and then it's W O D E. I was looking.
01:53:44
JD
Into her and she is fascinating. The fact that like she grew up in like a back, like back to the woods hippie commune and she practices folk magic and she's still a like a writer of novels.
01:53:58
Case
That makes sense as a person who would hang out with Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman.
01:54:01
Bones
Yeah, that's.
01:54:02
JD
That just Iron One's kind of cool.
01:54:04
Bones
That just makes that, that just feels right in terms of the, like, I, I don't know nearly as much as. As UK's in terms of all the interviews and stuff you've read. But I just love even just knowing the broad strokes of this insanity because you have Fawcett Comics creates Captain Marvel, which outsells Superman national publication, then sues Fawcett for publishing Captain Marvel. They have to stop publishing Captain Marvel. And that finally is about like, what, 1954, 55, somewhere in that ballpark. Yeah. And so they do. They. They give up the ghost and they stop. They stop publishing Captain Marvel stuff. That is when so the reprints dry up in England. So that's when they just said it. We're just gonna call Change from Red to Blue and call him Miracle Man. And so then, yeah, then they just as.
01:55:09
Bones
As Neil Gaiman puts in that interview I sent earlier, just elegantly rips them off once they lose the rights and starts just publishing Miracle Man.
01:55:20
JD
Well, first it was Marvel man, and then Marvel sued them.
01:55:23
Bones
Yeah.
01:55:24
JD
And they had to change the name.
01:55:26
Bones
Yeah. So then there's that aspect of it and. Yeah. And it's just. Oh, it's so.
01:55:32
JD
And then it gets even crazier from that when Todd McFarlane buys Eclipse.
01:55:37
Bones
Yeah.
01:55:37
JD
And there's a legal dispute between him and Neil Gaiman.
01:55:40
Case
Yeah. Lots of bad blood on that. Like, it's really interesting to look at Alan Moore's thoughts on it all, because Alan Moore is, like, known for being like, this curmudgeon with, like, you know, like, grumpy about, like, how he's been burned by every studio he's worked at. But he very. He actually, like, was thinking a lot about how he can, like, pass on rights so that he only holds the rights to the stories that he wrote, but the character rights move on to the. Each creative team kind of thing.
01:56:04
JD
Yeah.
01:56:05
Case
And they're like this whole thing for, like, Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham to, like, have these rights and so forth. And he's all very curmudgeony, but at the same time, like, he was like, most of it was just like, he wanted to make sure everyone got money. Like, he was like. Like he felt better about it when he found out that Mick Anglo, who was the writer artist on the original stuff from the 50s, was getting paid for all these reprints and so forth. He's like, okay, if we cut a good deal, there and everything. We'll move on. It's interesting to look at how Neil Gaiman is actually the more litigious individual in this scenario because part of that is the. The feud that he has with McFarlane that kind of sort of was resolved at some point around.
01:56:43
Case
So the purchase happens in like, 2005, I think is. No, pardon me, 95. Yeah, it's like 95, 96. When. When McFarlane buys the rights to Eclipse, when they completely fold for $50,000. Which is crazy.
01:56:57
JD
Yeah, it's. It's kind of disputed. It's been said between 20 and 40, but Neil Gaiman says it was 50.
01:57:03
Case
Well, because, like, a lot of it was being sold piecemeal for, like, here's the rights for X character for 5000 kind of stuff. And so I believe McFarlane would. Would be able to just drop 50 grand, especially for rights like this.
01:57:14
Bones
Like, especially in the 90s.
01:57:15
Case
Not very much.
01:57:15
Bones
Especially the mid-90s.
01:57:16
Case
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like 95, 96. McFarlane. Yeah, he had the money to do that. He still has the money to do that. It's Todd McFarlane. He's the. One of the greatest success stories in terms of, like, actual financial success in comics.
01:57:29
Bones
Yeah. Sell them. Selling those statues and action figures.
01:57:34
Case
Yeah. But so these rights were all over the place. Marvel had some of the rights. Like, there was like, just weird shit across the board. And in 2014, Marvel finally got together. You know, I was thinking it was 2000, because 2009 there was like a. Marvel consolidated a bunch of the rights. And so by 2014, they were finally able to do the reprints that they did, and they put it up on Comixology and it suddenly became available for the first time. Which is why when I was a comic fan growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, I had to, like, go to random stores to find issues. And like, that's why, like, the Golden Age stuff. I never. Because I, I read them out of order and there's. They're not in order. I couldn't.
01:58:13
Case
I was always like, oh, yeah, I read that story and I read that story. But, like, there was never like, oh, this is chapter one. This is chapter two. Versus the more stuff I was, like, slowly collecting. But, like, you know, I just never picked up the actual fight issue because that's one of the hardest issues to find. I had never read the Warhol story because that's a really hard one to find. Like, you know, it's just hard to get it all. And then they Made it available and that's really cool. And it was like, all right, Gaiman's gonna come back. And Buckingham wants to come back. Because they only got through two issues before the book collapsed. They did have the art for three finished. And so I have seen some of the panels and it's interesting.
01:58:46
Case
I'm really curious where they're going with it. But the Silver Age was going to focus a bit on the coming. The second coming of young Marvel man, young Miracle man, who had died off screen between the 50s stories and this. He was Bucky.
01:59:01
Bones
Yeah.
01:59:02
Case
You know Bucky.
01:59:04
Jmike
No.
01:59:04
Case
And you wake up and he's dead.
01:59:06
Bones
If Bucky got blown up by an atomic bomb.
01:59:10
Jmike
Yeah.
01:59:10
Case
Infused with himself.
01:59:12
Jmike
Yeah.
01:59:13
Case
We got two issues of that where young Miracle man is resurrected and Miracle man kisses him. Because they. They want to be openly sexual about this all, like, being like, oh, you always love me. And I'm open to this now because I've evolved. I'm Miracle Man. And he doesn't react well to it because the world is dark and. Or rather, he's coming from the 50s. Like, he's having so much culture shock on this one. And he was. He was a closeted homosexual who wasn't out with himself yet. And so he rejects it. And that's basically the end of the second issue. And we don't really see what happens next. It hasn't been published. We will never. We'll never know for sure unless it actually concludes.
01:59:51
Case
And supposedly, then the Dark Age is going to be set hundreds of years in the future when all the miracle children have left Earth and Earth is basically left to be, the primitives left behind. And humanity has ascended beyond that point and gone off. And maybe it is a second coming of Mike Moran as some sort of prophet and maybe Johnny Bates shows up again. But.
02:00:12
JD
Yeah, and you were showing us to say. Yeah. And when you were showing us earlier in the Kimoto book, they had, like, panels from the unpublished 25th issue where you have young Miracle man meeting what looks to be Mike Moran.
02:00:29
Case
Yeah. Or more accurately, it appears to be Dickie Dauntless meeting Mike Moran, which is a really interesting moment and may not be real. Like, I don't want to say it's necess.
02:00:38
JD
It could be a flashback, it could be a dream sequence. It could be any of those things.
02:00:42
Case
Yeah. Definitely not a flashback, because it's old Mike Moran.
02:00:45
JD
Right.
02:00:46
Jmike
It.
02:00:47
JD
So it could be like a dream or like a simulation of some kind.
02:00:50
Case
Yeah. So Dicky Dauntless, who has missed this whole thing, is a child a 50s child superhero who all of a sudden wakes up to a world where humanity is subservient to his best friend, who is now set up as their God and is shooting out his sperm literally into the wild to spawn more Wonder Childs. And it's a weird world that he's waking up into. Everything he understood is gone. It's totally been remade.
02:01:18
Bones
I'm sorry. The fact that there's an application process for like there's a wait list, like there's bureaucracy for this for beer comparison super sperm.
02:01:33
Case
Well, like Alex brought up, they use the phrase eugenics program a lot in this whole series, which is an uncomfortable phrase coming from. They're all both the Nazi stuff and the pre Nazi stuff that informed it all.
02:01:47
Bones
And then all of the uber babies are blonde blue eyed star children.
02:01:52
Case
Yeah, I think we see a couple in the tower that are not. But they, but yes, they are all these like crazy beautiful children.
02:02:03
Bones
I do love, I do love in the previous in the more run where you had the Germans, the younger Germans working with.
02:02:16
Case
Sorry. So we so actually looking at the babies in the climb we do see that there are some other races out there. But yeah, the two that we spend some time with are like little blonde hair, blue eyed little girls.
02:02:29
Bones
But I, my favorite, one of my favorite moments is in the Alam Moore run when the German, the younger German soldiers working for the. The professor are like talking about like one of them. He says like we've been like when he transforms into Miracle man, he's like we've been waiting for you our entire life. You are the ubermensch. And then he just takes them. Yeah, they just say above his head, just clashes their heads together into pulp. It's amazing stuff.
02:03:03
Jmike
It's like starlight Starbright. Oh yeah, I see tonight I was like, oh wow.
02:03:12
Bones
It's his pelvis hitting the earth in a streak of fire from the atmosphere.
02:03:20
Case
Yeah. So as it stands that's as far as we know what happens. Gaiman, I checked, doesn't really disclose all of his thoughts for the future. He's indicated that Bates comes back in some form and that possibly Mike Moran comes back in some form as well. But we don't know really much beyond that. Like we're kind of left with the golden age. I think ends on a note. That could be the end of the series and it would be an interesting end of the series. Like it would act as an epilogue to the Mora Run and you know, seeing all the viewpoints of all the people and it'd Be rather nice. And then the Silver Age stuff is really frustratingly cut off exactly in the middle of the story. And that's a bummer.
02:04:02
Bones
Yeah, it's like. Well, it's one of those things where it's like kind of, I think, a classic. It sounds like it's kind of a classic thing of the Camelot always falls. Like, there's always, like, internal strife that brings down the paradise.
02:04:21
Jmike
Yeah.
02:04:21
Case
I mean, there's certainly this cycle of gods kind of thing. Like, the implication is that Winter eventually will ascend and remove, like, take the place of her father. Like, I think that Miracle man makes sense as the God of humanity. He was once human. He shares an understanding of humanity in a way that. That Winter never will. But when once enough has transcended into superhumanity, eventually Winter will take the. The point. Like, she is the greatest of the.
02:04:47
Jmike
Of.
02:04:47
Case
Of these superpowered beings. And I think this will be like one more of those, like, cyclical God cycles, and it might end violently. Like, I think that is kind of the implication that the Winter Children or, like, the Miracle Children leave completely and that the people who are left behind also include the. The godly Miracle man and so forth. Like, and possibly the people we don't see, which are the humans who've been transformed that way. Yeah, they. They can't keep up with Winter. Like, honestly, the Warpsmiths can't keep up with Winter. The Keys probably can't keep up with Winter. She is. She is something new. And maybe that's part of the Dark Age. Yeah, we don't know. We, you know, we never see it. And again, Winter is the most terrifying character in the series. She is.
02:05:31
Case
She's cold and she has a blue orange morality that I find unsettling. And she is way more powerful than a lot of people give her credit because she's a baby. Like, she can bend time and space and probably could kill London in a second.
02:05:44
Bones
Yeah, it's what, like, within, like, 30 seconds of being born, she starts talking like.
02:05:49
Jmike
Yeah.
02:05:50
Case
And mind controlling her mom.
02:05:52
Bones
Yeah, that's fucked up.
02:05:53
Jmike
Yeah. Forgot about that part.
02:05:56
Case
Yeah, she is.
02:05:57
JD
I think we all kind of forget about. Very scary about the. This. The subtle, you know, mind manipulation of her mother.
02:06:05
Bones
Yeah, it's like. Yeah, it's like, is this postpartum depression or is my child a psychic who knows.
02:06:14
JD
That gets one yike from me, dog.
02:06:17
Case
So that's Miracle Man. I. I am so glad to reread this series with y' all and reread Slash, like, kind of read for real. Like I had read so many of the, of parts of the stories I had missed. Like I knew everything that happened. But like, as I was saying last time when I bought these trades, I was like, someday I'll have a good time to like sit down and read from start to finish. And it took this to finally force me to do so. So like, I had never actually read the whole fight issue with Bates. I had never, I, I had seen the big, you know, big two page spread of London. I had seen like the Good Kid Johnny moment there.
02:06:52
Case
I had seen a lot of the Andy Warhol stuff, but I never read the issue because like, who could find it, who could afford it?
02:06:56
Bones
Yeah.
02:06:57
Case
And then it, you know, I wanted to start, go start to finish on this one. So I'm gonna go around and see people's thoughts on this one. But I just want to say for me this was a lot of fun to look at. I think it is a remarkable piece. Sometimes the lens of remembering how important it was at the time it came out is a big part of this conversation because it's so influential, but like so many things have ripped it off. Like Alex Ross talks about Kingdom Come was in part inspired like the finale of Kingdom Come. He directly wanted to have it be like the fight with Bates. I talked about how the Wachowskis, I mean with the Matrix in general, but the mate, the fight with Smith actually has a lot of like elements of that.
02:07:36
Case
Kevin Smith has talked about how the ending of Dogma is based on the fight with Bates. You can see how this kind of work brings a lot of people together. Put, you know, put a lot of teams in place that would go on to do stuff like John Toddleben and Alan Moore were doing Swamp Thing coming off of Miracle Man. Mark Buckingham worked with Gaiman for Sandman, stuff like that. All these people circle around. Rick Veach works with Alan Moore all the time, you know, and Alan Davis came on to Miracle man working with Alan Moore on Captain Britain.
02:08:08
Case
So like you see all these creative teams like coming together, interacting with each other, starting to think about comics in new ways and then that having a ripple effect on other comics, you know, like, what would the 90s dark age of comics be like if it didn't have Alan Moore's Miracle man series to inspire all these dude bros to be like, oh yeah, they can be violent too cool. Like, and I'm not saying it's all for the best, but it certainly had an impact on history.
02:08:35
JD
Yeah, we discussed that for three hours.
02:08:37
Case
Yeah. So I, I, like, I, like I said, I, I love this series as a whole. I think it's really interesting. I think that there's a lot of creative hurdles that they had to get go through between the years in production, gaps that occurred all throughout the run, the fact that it's never been completed. But I think it, I, I think you can't have a conversation about the Superman archetype without looking at this, which is like the deconstructionist example. And the gaming stuff, I think is such an interesting element of the people on the ground. It's like Astro City in that regard. Like where you're getting all these individuals and that's so cool.
02:09:12
JD
Cool.
02:09:13
Case
So that's my take. J Mike, you had never read this, any of this before. I had just gushed about it a lot to you. We talked about more last time. Now, looking at Gaiman, what are your final thoughts?
02:09:24
Jmike
Oh, gosh, the things I do for this show.
02:09:28
Case
I don't know if you can say it that way when we're talking about one of the legendary comic runs.
02:09:33
Bones
There's some weird shit in there.
02:09:35
Case
Yeah, that's also true.
02:09:39
Jmike
But it was a very eye popping, catchy comic series. Like, I, I doubt I would have, like, I would see it on the shelf and like, oh, that's kind of cool. And I would keep moving, but I don't know, like actually getting to read it, I'm like, wow, this is actually pretty cool. A lot of the concepts in this series were pretty cool. My favorite character, as you know, Mr. Cream, he's great.
02:10:03
Case
Let's see, the scream is the blue teeth.
02:10:05
Bones
Yeah.
02:10:05
Jmike
I was like, that's awesome.
02:10:06
Bones
The sapphire teeth.
02:10:08
Jmike
The first time he saw him a smile, I was like, that's awesome.
02:10:12
JD
But don't go getting any ideas.
02:10:15
Jmike
J Mike, you're not my dad.
02:10:18
Bones
I was about to say the Ultimate Grill, but it's not a, it's not even a grill. Like, it is his teeth.
02:10:22
Jmike
It's a sapphire.
02:10:23
Bones
Yeah, he replaced his teeth with sapphires.
02:10:26
Jmike
It was, it was really cool. Very strange in certain parts. Kind of sad. Like the story Winter's Tale was kind of like a sad story to have to read through. Yeah, this is a really cool series. Thanks, Case. I can't say that very often, but I'm saying it this time because some of the stuff you read, I'm like, wow, this is interesting. But this is, yeah, this is a great ride the entire way through.
02:10:57
Case
Awesome. Is there any particular takeaway from the game and run that surprised you? Anything? I mean, I know you didn't expect it in general, but like, is there anything that caught you off guard in a really interesting way?
02:11:10
Jmike
Interesting? The ex machina with. How do you say that? Yeah, that guy. I keep wanting to say gorgonzola. I don't see it.
02:11:22
Bones
Delicious cheese.
02:11:24
Jmike
Yeah, yeah. The countless clones of Emile.
02:11:29
JD
The.
02:11:31
Jmike
What was the other story I saw that I didn't quite understand the kid's story until like hearing you guys explain it to me because I was like, I don't know what they're talking about. I'm just gonna read through this and get to the next part. Also, the balloons part, that was actually a fun way to. A fun send off for everything. I thought the balloons were like, I thought they were gonna fall back down to earth, honestly. Because I'm like, nothing ever ends peacefully or happily in these comics. So I was like, wait. Waiting for the next shoe to drop splat. But yeah, I was like, oh, that's kind of, that's a kind of a cool fend off for everything. So yeah, all right.
02:12:03
Case
J.D. Had you read these before and like, what are your takeaways?
02:12:07
JD
So this was my first time reading Gaiman. I didn't reread the Alan Moore stuff. I, I still remember the large majority of it, but this was my first time reading the Gaiman run and I like it a lot. I, you know, through the, through fnr, I've been able to, you know, fully like delve more and more into Gaiman's world and it's fun to dive into a, dive into something that he was extremely passionate about but never quite got to. He never, he never got to finish it. He never got to get to the point where he was completely satisfied with it. And yeah, it's really fun to get to these kind of pieces with a writer like Gaiman.
02:12:54
Case
Fair enough. And Angela, I know you just read a whole bunch of this.
02:12:59
Bones
Yes, this is.
02:13:00
Case
Yeah. How are you feeling about this series?
02:13:02
Bones
This is, I'll be honest, technically I wasn't able to finish the more run and I saw like 10 pa. 5 or 10 pages left of Gaiman's. I do have them all. So I, you know, got the gen. The native. 90 Of it. What I'll say about it is I feel like it has the maturity that a lot of comics want nowadays. And what I mean by that is not necessarily the gore or the sex or the close up panels of women giving birth, but the kind of subject Matter of. Of it. Because like, we. We talked a little bit on. Through private messaging of. I feel like a lot of these older comics or what I say from kind of like that British Invasion era of like the. Of the Dark age of comics hit different.
02:14:08
Bones
When you, like, you root for Rorschach when you're, you know, when you're 16. Right. Like, but when you reread it at 29, 35 and you're still rooting for Rorschach, that's a. That's a problem like that you're not able to. To read deeper into the subtleties of everything. And I think the two most. You know, the probably two of the most subtle writers in comics are gay men and more. And I think this is kind of them. It's semi creative owned work. So they're just, you know, really stretching their. Stretching their powers to the limit on this one.
02:14:52
Case
Yeah. Again, looking at the. The Superman fantasy that we talk about on this show, like, this is such a. Like, how far can we push it and have it still be true to a 1950s superhero archetype? Like, that's still his backstory. That's still Miracle Man's story. And this is how far it can go where he is the God king of the world as his. As his spawn migrate out through the galaxy. It's crazy, but it's still true to it. And I think that, you know, we. We talk about how we are so tired. Dark Superman. And I think I went on the same terror last episode, like, where it's been done to death. This is the birth of that. And I think this is such a wonderful first look at that kind of thing.
02:15:38
Case
And it's incomplete and there's ideas that maybe weren't fleshed out enough. And some things are kind of rushed. Like, Olympus is clearly when you're like, oh, I need to finish up my story. Like, that's how you tell that. That's how you do it. You tell it all in flashbacks and you move through quickly. And, you know, like, there's some Edge Lord tendencies, you know, for both of them, particularly for more. But like, you know, they're. They're still. They're young and they're raw, but there's such vitality to the work.
02:16:06
Bones
Yeah, no, exactly. And. And then even with the, like Dark Superman, there's still a core to meet what Miracle man does in terms of trying to better the world. Like, I mean. Yeah. In terms of his power level, actually stretching his. His powers in the real world. Yeah, sure. Of course he would Become a God after a certain point. Like, but otherwise, like, his, that. That original programming. Like, yeah, he's gonna destroy Bates because of what he did. Like, he's not just gonna, like, Joy and him are like, yeah, these peons, I agree with you. Like, they kept us at a lab for eight years and everything. Like, he's not Homelander. Although I do like the immaturity of Homelander, where he's just this child that once that was not loved. But. Yeah, so is it. Yeah, it's not. It's.
02:17:08
Bones
It's definitely the birth of that. But I think it's the good version of that, I guess you can say in terms of its darker tendencies, because it's a. It's a dark story, but it's. Here's the phrase I'm looking for. It's a dark story. It is not a dark superman, I don't think, like, in terms of, like, what he wants to do.
02:17:30
Case
Yeah, I mean, there are consequences, I guess, is sort of the bigger part with it. Like, the Superman gets into a fight. All of a sudden the city's leveled and half of it is dead is what happens here. You know, like, he's. He's still trying to be good, although he becomes less human as it goes. And it seems that he is becoming more and more divorced from that innate good that he was trying to be at the beginning. And part of that is the human release valve that, like, he's lost. Like, he loses touch with humanity over the course of this too. But. But yeah, he is definitely trying to be good. He's trying to do the right thing. He is benign, he is wanting to be good, and he is truly great. Like, he is an awe inspiring figure.
02:18:08
Case
So make of that what you will.
02:18:10
Bones
I. Well, I actually, that actually brings me back. I love. I freaking love this line from the first episode of Sherlock where he said. Where one of the cops talking about Sherlock says, like, yeah, like, he's a. Sherlock is a great man, and if we're lucky, one day he'll become a good man. That there's. That those aren't necessarily the same thing. And I think this probably shows it, especially towards the end, how you see him evolve.
02:18:43
Case
All right, I, We. We have gone for almost three hours now. It'll probably get cut down a bit, but we've been going for a while. So. Angela and jd, thank you for coming on. J. Mike, thank you for letting me subject you to another comic. Angela, this is your first time on the show. Why don't you give some plugs, like Say who you are where people can.
02:19:02
Bones
Well, of course you can find us every other Friday on the Fables and reflection podcast on Cpov.com and wherever you get your podcasts on social media at FNRpod, on Twitter and Instagram. And then also I am making a concerted effort. I'm gonna restart my Instagram, which is at little bitsofhistory show. Just like random interesting bits about people or events or places. Kind of like that Instagram info thing that was kicking off last year. The info Insta. Is that what we called it? I don't know. I feel like that's appropriate.
02:19:42
Case
I'm not sure I am 37. All the social media stuff.
02:19:47
Bones
Well, last summer, like it turns out, like to explain a bunch of concepts they Instagram was a big uptake for that of having photos slash just blocks of text in the pictures. Anyway, add little bits of history if you want to learn about history. There you go.
02:20:06
Case
Okay. People should check that out. Thank you for coming on and I'm so glad that you're part of the network now.
02:20:13
Bones
Thanks for having me in both instances on the show and the network.
02:20:18
Case
Meanwhile, JD is no stranger to the show and has been a part of the network for a little while now. But I'm also glad that Fables and Reflections has been a part. And J.D. Do you want to give some plugs, talk about what you got going on?
02:20:29
JD
Yeah. So right now we're so of course, Fables and Reflections. You heard all that? Comics Quest is finally back. I have taken my break. I'm still not going to therapy. That is on me. Maybe, maybe one day I will. But until then, I am currently into season three on Comics Quest Case. When is this episode coming out?
02:20:54
Case
This is probably going to drop a couple months after we record it. So we're recording this at the end of October and it's probably going to come out at the end of December, maybe even the beginning of January.
02:21:05
JD
Okay, cool. So by that point season five will have been well over and I'll be getting ready to do season six by the time this comes out. So yeah, check that out. We're on Twitter ComicsQuest show.
02:21:18
Bones
And yeah, if I'm remembering my scheduling correctly, then that means you may have already been on for our Beowulf episode possibly.
02:21:26
Case
So we'll see how this times out. But being a bi weekly show and that, we're doing a bunch of episodes on the Legion of Superheroes right now. We're, we're not dropping this in the middle of that. So it Kind of depends on how many stories we end up reading. And basically two. Two episodes turn into a month when with bi weekly. So it's just. We get pretty far ahead sometimes. So it's a good problem to have.
02:21:49
Bones
No, bake it. Banking is the hardest part of any creative project.
02:21:54
Case
Oh yeah. It's a challenge that we often have, don't we, J Mike? Yeah. Now, J Mike, where can people find you?
02:22:03
Jmike
Oh, man. I am not on Instagram, but I am on TwitterMike101. I can never find anything to put on Instagram. Like I tried. I'm like, I can't. I don't take pictures. I don't take very many pictures. I tried, but I failed.
02:22:17
JD
It's okay.
02:22:18
Case
I just have like show art and then like one picture from my wedding.
02:22:23
Bones
I just do my cats in comics.
02:22:26
Jmike
That's probably try comics next time then. But yeah, I'm on Twitter, Mike101. I do hilarious memes and I respond as much as I can.
02:22:36
Bones
There you go.
02:22:37
Case
And that's all anyone can ask.
02:22:38
Bones
Yeah.
02:22:39
Jmike
Yes.
02:22:39
Case
As for me, I am on Twitter at Case Aiken. The show is on Twitter at men of steel 14 because I am dumb and I did not write podcasts when I was putting the name of the account in. And it just assigned me a random number and I wish it had at least given me the choice of numbers, but it didn't. It just made it 14. I'm sorry, guys. Men of steel 14.
02:22:59
JD
Can you find like a reason to like connect it to Superman in some way?
02:23:03
Case
The 14? I may. I can. I can try. It's gonna be hard because like 13, at least it'd be like Brainiac 13 if it was 5. Like my. Like my Instagram handle, which is quetzalcoatl5. It would be like Brainiac 5. So that could be fun.
02:23:15
JD
I vote the Krypton is the 14th planet and it's system.
02:23:18
Case
Let's go with that.
02:23:21
Bones
Who, who to tell us different.
02:23:23
JD
Exactly.
02:23:24
Case
Fair. Fair point. But you can find more episodes of the show@ certainpov.com you can find more episodes of Fables and reflections. Certainpov.com you can find a link to our discord server@ certainpov.com we're having this call on Discord right now. It is a great time. Just come hang out, share memes, goof off, talk comic stuff with us. We love talking comics and it's. We've had some lively discussions recently, so I'm really excited about all that. So come check out all of that and then, yeah, stick around. Listen to some more good episodes. We got sneak peeks coming for things that are coming. If you hang out in our channels, just be engaged with us and you'll find out what's coming ahead. And yeah, come check it out.
02:24:09
Case
We'll organize appropriately and then possibly take control over the super means of production in this world of miracles. But until that happens, stay super man.
02:24:35
JD
JJMAIC don't you know that all fables and reflections hosts are required to have cats?
02:24:41
Jmike
I had one. I miss my cat.
02:24:44
Case
I used to have cats. I miss cats too. Carter's allergic to cats, so I can't. No, I know. I grew up with cats. I love having cats. No cats. No cats for me, no cats for you.
02:24:57
JD
So I have a question. Have you ever wanted to get into comics but you just didn't know where to start? Well, welcome to comics quest. I'm J.D. Martin and every week I sit down with a guest to talk a comic that I think anybody can pick up and start their comics reading journey. We take a look at psychedelic sci fi, fantastic action, heart wrenching love stories and of course superheroes. So check us out@certainpov.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
02:25:27
Case
CPOV certainpov.com.