Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone with Case Aiken
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone! Our host this week is Case Aiken!
SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts • Spotify • iHeartRADIO • RSS
Support us on Patreon! https://patreon.com/CertainPOVMedia
Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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
FOLLOW US: ▶ Instagram: @certainpovmedia
⏱️ YouTube Chapters
00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:58 Discovering Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone
01:49 Sharing the Book in High School
02:37 Adam Warren and the Art Style
04:26 The Cyberpunk University Setting
05:19 Witchy Poo and Reality-Bending Magic
06:18 Playing Superhero Tropes
07:05 Captain Thug and the Batman Upload
08:45 Prosthetic Glass
10:58 Dead Pretty Boy
11:47 The Kaiju War Machine
13:38 Why the Book Stuck
15:07 Where to Find It Now
15:50 Final Recommendation
16:36 Case’s Plugs
18:04 Submit to Trade School
18:28 The Word from Tomorrow Promo
Transcription
00:00
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade.
00:02
School, where each episode a different host.
00:04
Talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it. Hey, everyone, I'm Case Aiken, and yes, I am back for this episode of Trade School. This is episode 45. Wow. The series has been going a long time, and I'm really proud to produce it. It's a wonderful collection of people's stories about comic books and why comic books matter to them. And I wanted to do this episode about one that, I'll be honest, some people might dispute. If this is really a trade paperback, it's definitely a graphic novel. But I purchased it at Borders Books. I still have the sticker for it on here. So I would argue that this falls into the world of acceptable, even though this is fairly short. The thing I am talking about today is Titans, Scissors, Paper Stone by Adam Warren.
00:58
And like I said, it's definitely a graphic novel. A. I think I want to say, like, 48 page story, maybe 60, not sure the exact page count on it. But it's not a particularly long book, which is amazing because there's a lot going on in this book. It's a book I want to talk about because there's so much going on in it. And it has stuck with me over the years. I was first introduced to it, I want to say, around my freshman year of high school. So this would have been 1998. 1998, 1999 Was my freshman year of high school. And I was fascinated with it for a whole bunch of reasons. But then it was an experience of being introduced to way more reasons to be fascinated by it by virtue of sharing it with people.
01:49
Sharing comic books, especially trade paperbacks, was a big thing for me, especially in high school. And this was a book that I shared with my religion teacher from my freshman year. I went to a Catholic high school, so I had religion as a class. And my teacher, Mr. Lewis, was fascinated by this book because there's so many nerd references to, like, weird mythologies and mystic systems and so forth in this book. And I was not. I mean, like, you're aware that there's, like, symbols and so forth that are going on, but to know that they're actually, like, real symbols, like symbols to real systems and so forth and not just made up was a really cool experience to discover with this book. It's always cool to find out that something you enjoy has additional layers that are also cool and nerdy.
02:37
And Titans, Scissors, Paper Stone is very much a book with a Lot of stuff going on that you can dig deeper into and find out more about. So Adam Warren, the creator of this one shot story, is best known for his series Empowered, which is an adult book. Like it's. I wouldn't call it cheesecakey, but it's for an adult audience, like 18 plus audience, this isn't so much. There's a little bit of titillation going on in here. Warren has a very anime style. And in fact I was introduced to Warren's style before I read this book by virtue of him doing a section in a Wizard magazine article about drawing for anime. And so he has a very anime kind of approach to his look or very manga kind of look, replete with speed lines and facial designs and so forth. And this is.
03:37
Wow, this is a tour de force for his art. Like the. When I saw it, I immediately had to buy it just because of the art, let alone the incredibly interesting story that is going on. Interesting despite its simplicity. Like it is in. I'll go through the whole thing because it's not a very long book. But the art is just fantastic. It is kinetic, it is beautifully rendered with early computer graphics in terms of gradients and so forth. And it just looks really good. It is very cool and the setup for everything is very cool because this is a cyberpunk superhero story burying the lead there. It's a really cool future story that doesn't even know for sure if superheroes were ever a real thing.
04:26
And this is a group of to translate the language that they use for this all because it's this future world. It basically the story takes place on an asteroid that has been hollowed out and converted into a university. And at this university there's all kinds of Earth standard biomes that people live in and do research in. And it's about a bunch of students who find out that there is going to be some kind of cataclysm or as they say, a class that is going to occur. One of the characters is a witch. She has what they refer to as a niche and gene mage trait. Basically her magic is any sort of magic she can make real. Like she bends reality. And this is the most mystical aspect of the book. The rest is more in the. In the sci fi category.
05:19
But this is one where she is able to bend reality and to make magic systems even if they are contradictory or bad information. They keep saying bad nano, but that it's bad information that like they. This is a series that is very like dismissive of. Of the existence of magic as a thing, but still is fascinated by it all. And so the and all the names are so weird. I'm so the. The main girl who we will call Witchy Poo because that is ends up being what her. Her code name is. She's able to. To make magic work of any style. And so she at one point mentions that she augured a synthetic goat. And so it's just weird technology combined with. With. With liter.
06:08
You could imagine going into them figuring out that there's going to be this sort of incident and she recruits a bunch of people along with her ex boyfriend. He.
06:17
He.
06:18
Well so he ends up being. Because they have this whole idea that what they're going to do is they're going to imitate a superhero story and that will allow her magic power to make it so that it conforms to the tropes of the story. So it's a very like meta kind of adventure where this group of students that she assembles are all going to play act as superheroes. And in doing so it's going to prevent anything from going too wrong because they're trying to conform to superhero fiction and they're trying to play act as the Titans. And specifically it's. They're doing Raven, they're doing Cyborg Robin slash Nightwing, and they are doing Starfire. So they're doing the new Teen Titans, you know, sort of the core roster. It doesn't really matter.
07:05
But they're assembling this group to emulate this all and so to do so Witchy Poo's ex boyfriend Alex, who is a big jock. They repeatedly refer to him as being a dumb jock on a athletic scholarship for Jiu Jitsu. So he's in shape and quite capable of fighting innately. They upload him with a synthetic consciousness that is Batman. And in it Batman, who they don't acknowledge for like for real being Batman until the very end where she says goodbye Bruce. But yeah, it's. So it's an artificial consciousness that understands that he might not be real. He might be like completely a. Like a fictional consciousness, but it takes control over the body of her ex boyfriend. He becomes Captain Thug and plays the role of the Robin slash Dick. You know, the Dick Grayson which they play.
08:05
They have a really good joke where it's like you need a dick. As in Dick Grayson, Robin Nightw. But he's very funny because he plays like Batman who's completely over this shit. And it is just a delightful take on the character as he has to sort of just deal with the fact that he's in a world that he does not understand because it is a crazy sci fi world with weird gravity and so forth. And I'll get into more of those details as we talk about the rest of the team. Because they assemble a crazy team. Even though there's only four of them. They have wild things going on. I mean, like I said, Captain Thug has an artificial consciousness that's uploaded into his brain via a port that is on his neck.
08:45
And Witchy Poo has the ability to render all magic systems real. We also have a cyborg character who. So this is, it's like ghost in the shell kind of stuff going on here. She is a character that is like, her body was like injured and she was put inside this military grade robot supposedly by one of her moms, quote unquote. And so considering this is like 1998 when this came out, or 1997, somewhere in that range, like this was fairly progressive in terms of everything. Like, like they went for like whatever thing was outside of societal dorms now, but you could see it being a thing. That's the way it is in this all.
09:22
Anyway, so the girl has a, an artificial robot body and because one of her moms has like military clearance, like it's like a really dope military robot body but with all the weapons taken out and like put in like low power mode. And because Witchy Poo has the ability to access all kinds of magic, she's able to bypass the codes or get access to those codes to turn them on combat mode. And thus we get a character who has just an insane robot body. They, they establish that this character Gabrielle, who they call prosthetic glass in it, she's super strong, super fast. Vents heat through like thermal slits all over her body, which is really interesting. And then she's able to vomit like plastic explosives because she's able to.
10:11
Or like she like, it's a robot body where like everything is under control of it and it's like really cool with like line work all over it. Her hands like open up and reveal grappling hook launchers that she uses to swing around. And she's super effective. And I'll get into like the whole story is told juxtaposed between the rounding up of everyone and them being used in combat scenes. And I haven't actually described the threat. It's a monster. We'll, we'll get into the details later. But it is, it's them fighting a monster with like sub monsters. And so she's really good against the henchmen like that there. She's. She's really like the. The or they're not. They're not the big monster. But she's really good against the like the sub monsters like better than anyone else and is.
10:58
Everyone plays a really big active part in this is what I'm trying to say. But yeah. So this. So the cyber tech stuff, really cool. It's very ghost in the shell. Like very fast paced with like speed lines and it's all very cool. Then we get Hikaru Mono who is dead pretty boy and he is the Superman analog for this. For this group. They. They actually shouted out. Captain Thug says that Clark would be impressed when. When comparing him as a. A omnipotent alien demigod. He is very cool. So he is a. A person who was killed presumably by an alien energy space entity. Like the kind of stuff that they would encounter in Star Tre. This thing is using its body as a like as a conveyance method while it is traveling outside of the. The galactic center where it.
11:47
Where it's like environment is. So it's using a human body as a host for. For conveyance and that is animating this guy. And while he is animated by the. The energy entity inside of him, he is still incredibly powerful with plasma, gravity, all kinds of energy. Like they said, little bit of fusion. He. He has a. Behind him and he's able to take on the big monster. So the big monster it is a. It is a scientific monster. What happens the big event that accidentally occurs is that the university was supposed to have this like. I think they described it as like a gene whale transferred over to it basically for the research programs that they do because it's a. It's a big space university and accidentally they get sent this military grade weapon of war that includes these like sub drones that.
12:40
That release like gases and so that do stuff. And so it's this huge Kaiju sized war machine with these drones flying around. These five really hulking kind of war drones. And then like I said, they have gases that incite people to go into a riot. And that's what Captain Thug is handling them because being an artificial consciousness, he is not affected by the gases. And meanwhile witchy poo is like. And prosthetic glass are dealing with the drones and Hikar Ono is dealing with the like the central like Kaiju. And so it's a. It's a good team situation. Now it Turns out that some aspects of the superhero fantasy is not as copacetic as what they were hoping. And so things don't go perfectly because not all superhero comics go perfectly. And so it ends on this downer note where the characters say superheroes suck.
13:38
But like it's. It's a really fun book that you should absolutely check out. It is gorgeous. It is super worth. There's so many references. Like throughout the language is really interesting. Like I've referenced this before, but like the. The language is all kinds of crazy, like cyberpunky kind of future speak. You know, they say what the sheol? Instead of what the hell? And it really appealed to me because this was, it appealed very well to someone who was learning a lot about like religious studies at the time because of like where I was in high school. And it had a lot of really cool like cyberpunk like concepts and like stuff, you know, science fiction kind of concepts, like the like. And they're all distinctly different kind of sci fi concepts, which I think is really fun.
14:22
And they all fit into this crazy world where everyone is wearing clothes that like have like the colors changed so that they can have like, you know, graphics like literally like videos play on their T shirts and stuff. They talk about how the artificial sky is like different artists will do. And so like Gabrielle, the prosthetic glass girl, like did a previous sky as one of like as a storytelling point when they're where they're discussing things like she's an artist. And I don't know, it just feels really. It's a really fun story about a group of young cyberpunk superheroes in a crazy like manga future setting kind of thing. It's really cool.
15:07
Now that said, it is, you know, I picked this up for 4.95, I can tell you that for sure at Borders books back in 98, but it's not available that way anymore. It is available, however, online if you are looking for the DC app and I guess if you're looking for the trade also what you're looking for is DC Elseworld's Justice League Volume 1. So this is why I was saying it might not qualify as a full trade for people these days because the most prevalent way to get it is in a larger trade paperback. And I don't want to disqualify people from talking about that trade if they wanted to in the future just because there's a lot of good stories in that. But specifically this story I know was individually presented in its graphic novel form.
15:50
But like I said, if you're looking for it nowadays, you have to find it as DC Elseworlds Justice League Volume 1. Unfortunately, if you search for the story on the DC app by itself, you won't find anything. The searches don't include trades, don't include stories that are within trades, which is really annoying. But that is neither here nor there. The point is, we are talking about a really fun book and I would really highly recommend it. I know I've kind of spoiled a lot of the story, but I still think it's worth it. And, you know, the action's really interesting, the relationships are really well expressed considering how short a story it is. You know, there's a lot just really jammed in there, and it's an impressive work of tight, economical storytelling.
16:36
Considering how weird of a world that they set up for it all, and how coherent of a world that they set up for it all, it's really worth checking out and I highly recommend it. So with that again, I'm Case Aiken. I'm the producer of this series. I host a bunch of podcasts, but this is My Baby where I get to collect everyone's experiences of being fans of comic books and collecting story arcs and trade paperbacks and all that. And this is one that meant a lot to me back in the day. So yeah, you can find me on the Certain POV podcast network. I host a bunch of shows including Another Pass and Men of Steel, but also the recently run Word From Tomorrow, which is a celebration of the series. Trans Metropolitan is a good one to check out.
17:22
You can find me on the Certain POV Media YouTube channel. You can find me on the Certain POV Discord server, which you'll find a link in the show notes or on our website certainpov.com those are all great places to find me on the social medias. You can find me at Case Aiken on most social media platforms except for Instagram, where I'm holding on 4 dear life to my aim screen name from high school, which is quetzalcoatl5q u e t Z A L C o a T L5 so that is the places to find me. If you want to submit, please do. I would love to hear more stories from people about comics. This has been running for now 45 episodes and that's incredible. So I'm really excited about the series, but I want to hear your stories.
18:04
So reach out to me on any of the social medias or on Discord. That's great. Or you can email me directly@case.aikenmail.com so yeah, please reach out. I would love to hear your story. And with that, please check out this one and hopefully Happy reading.
18:28
The world is getting stranger every day, and somehow Trans Metropolitan saw nearly all of it coming. From weaponized misinformation to political theater to tech that reshapes our lives faster than we can process, the series future feels uncomfortably familiar. The Word From Tomorrow is a new read along podcast digging into that uncanny prescience. Hosted by Case Aiken and Keith Letinen, each episode welcomes a guest to explore how Warren Ellis, Derek Robertson's dystopian satire mirrors the world we're living in now. Across 10 episodes, we walk through the entire series, its politics, its media chaos, its dark humor, and the way it continues to hit with starling clarity. Listen@ certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
19:15
Cpov certainpov.com.