Speaker 1: Warning, this podcast contains spoilers for Teenage Mutant, Ninja, Turtles,
Speaker 1: Mutant Mayhem, Turtle Power. Hello. My name is Jason Cepsion
Speaker 1: and I'm Rosey Night and welcome to x ray Vision,
Speaker 1: the crooked media podcast where we dive deep into your
Speaker 1: favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
Speaker 2: In this episode, starting with strike Watch, Gotta keep your datch,
Speaker 2: some wild news dropped just before we started recording, and
Speaker 2: we're happy to dropped before so we can talk about
Speaker 2: it in the airlock. It's the the oozy, gooey delights
Speaker 2: of and Mayhem. It's so good, but don't get milked.
Speaker 1: Don't get milked, folks.
Speaker 2: Don't get milked guys. And in ned out a question
Speaker 2: about Fly on the Wall conversations.
Speaker 1: Coming up next, strike Watch, Strike Watch. It was announced
Speaker 1: today Monday seventh that the workers at Marvel, the VFX
Speaker 1: workers at Marvel, about fifty on set employees, have voted
Speaker 1: to unionize, joining IATZI, the union that covers some of
Speaker 1: the crews that work on sets television sets, movie sets,
Speaker 1: and the workers are asking for an election for union
Speaker 1: positions to be held as early as August twenty first.
Speaker 1: So this is big news now, of course there are
Speaker 1: there are struct structural obstacles VFX, not just by Marvel Disney,
Speaker 1: but all the other studios are usually farmed out not
Speaker 1: only to their in house crafts people, but to studios
Speaker 1: around the globe. This, you know, as one a bid
Speaker 1: for efficiency and also two to make it harder to unionize.
Speaker 1: So there's a long fight that remains ahead of these workers.
Speaker 1: But this is a development that I think many can
Speaker 1: and should support.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's great news. I am really excited
Speaker 2: for them. It's going to be hard, but as with
Speaker 2: so many fights, it starts with one thing that can spread.
Speaker 2: So them being represented by IATZI and potentially having the
Speaker 2: election to see if that's possible, could be a great
Speaker 2: way to start thinking about how a wider unionization or
Speaker 2: labor organization effort could happen even with these separate places,
Speaker 2: which is kind of what happened with the Video Game
Speaker 2: Workers Union. It's something that Comics is still thinking about.
Speaker 2: So I think this is great. I think that, as
Speaker 2: Chris Lee said Vulture, on the heels of more than
Speaker 2: a year's worth of damning disclosures around Marvel Studio, systematic
Speaker 2: overworking and underpayment of visual effects workers. This is to
Speaker 2: be expected, and I'm very happy that hot labor summer continues.
Speaker 2: This is really wild that this came out on the
Speaker 2: same day that it was announced that the LA City
Speaker 2: workers would go on strike next Tuesday for a twenty
Speaker 2: four hours, which is going to be like the first
Speaker 2: strike since the eighties. So the strikes keep coming and
Speaker 2: they don't stop coming.
Speaker 1: To that end, we moved to South Korea where actors
Speaker 1: in Netflix originals want better pay, reports the La Times,
Speaker 1: and the company refuses to meet their union unbelievable comes
Speaker 1: on the heels, of course, of the revelation that the
Speaker 1: creator of Squid Game, whose story increased the valuation of
Speaker 1: Netflix by a billion according to some analysts, received in
Speaker 1: recompense for that residuals a salary but virtually no other
Speaker 1: ability to share in the massive profits that his story
Speaker 1: generated for Netflix. And of course, you know, Netflix is
Speaker 1: often talked about as the streamer that's best positioned for
Speaker 1: the current labor actions that are taking place. Right They
Speaker 1: have a lot of reality TV. They have like this
Speaker 1: vast of programming that comes from international that it's already banked.
Speaker 1: That's like comes from other places around the world, including
Speaker 1: a heavy bliance on the on the stories that come
Speaker 1: out of South Korea, and so this would seem to
Speaker 1: put pressure on that and a welcome development as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's absolutely welcome. I think this is great.
Speaker 2: It's the Korea Broadcasting Actors Union, and I just think
Speaker 2: this is a great, terrible, very prime example of how
Speaker 2: Netflix views international programming and how they obviously thought this
Speaker 2: was a space where they could have a yeah, a
Speaker 2: resource to be exploited. I mean, the Squid Game thing
Speaker 2: was so shocking because it was an original idea created
Speaker 2: by Quanggong Kuk, and yet when he signed the deal
Speaker 2: to make it, Netflix took all of the IP in
Speaker 2: a move that is very similar to what we've seen
Speaker 2: in the comic book industry, but is a lot rarer
Speaker 2: in standard traditional publishing or Hollywood. But Netflix, obviously, like
Speaker 2: you so beautifully put it, Jason, saw this as a
Speaker 2: resource to be exploited in mind, rather than a space
Speaker 2: to support creators. And the fact that Netflix is not
Speaker 2: getting back to the National Broadcasting Actors Union shows a
Speaker 2: lack of respect, in my opinion, for the work that
Speaker 2: is being done. But I would very much like to
Speaker 2: see some kind of labor organization happening in a way
Speaker 2: that could impact the way that Netflix is using this
Speaker 2: programming not only as a way to break the strike
Speaker 2: or not be affected by it, which is what they're doing,
Speaker 2: but also as a way to just let them know, like,
Speaker 2: this content is made by people. It's not content creators.
Speaker 2: It's artists, it's right as it's actors, it's directors, it's storytellers,
Speaker 2: it's production designers, it's set dressers. It's all these people
Speaker 2: that is always getting left behind in this era of
Speaker 2: like content and content creators. So I just think any
Speaker 2: movement like this is very positive and I hope that
Speaker 2: Netflix makes the correct decision here, but let's be real,
Speaker 2: in this summer, none of these execs are making the
Speaker 2: correct decision. So I'm not feeling hopeful that's great.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, like if this is a thing, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to dwell on this too long. But this
Speaker 1: is this is a structural issue. It's this is not
Speaker 1: this is not something that falls at the feet of
Speaker 1: any of the individual CEOs who run this country, these companies.
Speaker 1: This is an issue about how the economics of the
Speaker 1: space work and tech, which Netflix is a tech company
Speaker 1: essentially has long been hostile to unionization efforts, and you
Speaker 1: know that will that will only continue, So we watch
Speaker 1: this with interest. Up next TM and TA Mutant Mayhem,
Speaker 1: we're stepping out of the airlock and into the beautiful,
Speaker 1: aromatic and juicy sewers of New York City for Teenage
Speaker 1: Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem, which opened last weekend and
Speaker 1: is wonderful, delightful.
Speaker 2: Ten out of ten lovely good stuff.
Speaker 1: I gotta say before we get into the movie, who
Speaker 1: would have fifteen years ago, eighteen years ago, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: who would have picked Seth Brogan and Evan Goldberg to
Speaker 1: be like the powerhouses that emerge from Freaks and Geeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and not just that, but also the powerhouses
Speaker 2: to emerge from Freaks and Geeks to essentially adapt unadaptable comics.
Speaker 1: And and like multi like all around multi layered threats.
Speaker 1: Obviously Rogan in front of the camera, behind the camera, writing, producing,
Speaker 1: Goldberg writing, producing, and et cetera. But it's the track
Speaker 1: record at this point is really, really amazing, and it
Speaker 1: continues again with the wonderful Teenage Turtles Meet Mayhem that
Speaker 1: has their imprint on it with help, scriptwriting, help from
Speaker 1: Dan Hernandez and Benji Saman and director Jeff Row, but
Speaker 1: just really really fantastic, absolutely distills the what's kind of
Speaker 1: like magical about the DG E turnals for a new
Speaker 1: generation and see, yeah, listen, the animation style the action
Speaker 1: is so unique. I wouldn't even know how to describe it.
Speaker 1: How would you describe it?
Speaker 2: I think it it kind of swerves between like looking
Speaker 2: like somebody's sketches that you would see in the classroom
Speaker 2: next to kind of look yeah, and then also a
Speaker 2: kind of stop motion vibe. I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that they did that was the coolest is obviously
Speaker 2: this is a post Spider Verse movie, as we call them,
Speaker 2: more Aura is influenced by Spider Verse, but I will
Speaker 2: say I think this is one of the first movies
Speaker 2: to come out of this wave of post Spider Use
Speaker 2: movies that it understands where its strengths are, so it
Speaker 2: doesn't try to ape Spider Verse by doing like twenty
Speaker 2: different types of animation, which is obviously the part and
Speaker 2: parcel of what makes those movies so brilliant. Instead, they
Speaker 2: found one really unique animation style and stuck with it,
Speaker 2: and it feels so enjoyable and it feels raw, but
Speaker 2: it's entertaining. There's this very old school comics thing to
Speaker 2: it where all of the characters apart from April O'Neil,
Speaker 2: who I love played by the incredible Ioeta Berry, who
Speaker 2: we just love so much, but like, all of the
Speaker 2: characters apart from April and the Turtles are grotesque. The
Speaker 2: human characters are grow test, the mutant characters are grow tesque.
Speaker 2: That's very old school, that's very silver age superhero comics. Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: these characters are monsters, they're scary, they're weird. But then
Speaker 2: I love that at the center you have this kind
Speaker 2: of pure core group of the obviously the four Turtles,
Speaker 2: and then you have April, who are just really cool.
Speaker 2: And I wrote this in my lab Box review, but
Speaker 2: one of the things that I I really found quite
Speaker 2: profound about this movie is there's a picture I have
Speaker 2: of me when I was like three years old, wearing
Speaker 2: a nappy, holding like a Raphael Flush And I've loved
Speaker 2: the Turtles for that long. I love them when they
Speaker 2: were cartoons, I love them when they were playmates toys.
Speaker 2: I love the black and white comics, which when you
Speaker 2: discover them when you're old enough feel like a revelation
Speaker 2: compared to what they became on the cartoons. I followed
Speaker 2: them throughout my life. I love Pi A Led and
Speaker 2: Kevin Eastman like those are like icons to me of
Speaker 2: comic book creation. I love the original Jim Henson Suit
Speaker 2: movies like I've lived through the Michael Bay era, like
Speaker 2: I've seen so many stories with them. And to be
Speaker 2: here as like a thirty five year old and sitting
Speaker 2: in that theater and able to enjoy the movie and
Speaker 2: watch the movie and love the movie and feel like
Speaker 2: they're like my sweet, annoying cousins who I wanna protect.
Speaker 2: That is like an incredible feeling to grow up with
Speaker 2: characters and outgrow them still want to spend time with them.
Speaker 2: And this really does a great job of putting across
Speaker 2: the teenage aspect of the TMNT X ray vision will
Speaker 2: be Back.
Speaker 1: And We're back. Yeah, the teenage aspect of the Turtles
Speaker 1: is front and center. And you know, Goldberg and Seth
Speaker 1: Brogen have been pretty outspoken about that being the aspect
Speaker 1: of these characters that they really want to highlight, that
Speaker 1: they really wanted to drill down on. I think they
Speaker 1: did it wonderfully. You know, there's this wonderful moment where
Speaker 1: the turtles are just coming home after kind of like
Speaker 1: lingering on the edge of like this outdoor movie showing
Speaker 1: at Brooklyn Bridge Park and then come home and Dad
Speaker 1: is kind of like castigating them for like where have
Speaker 1: you been? And it's this wonderful like so uh, Jackie
Speaker 1: Chan plays Splinter incredible way, incredible casting, and it creates
Speaker 1: this layer of like they really resonated, like as the
Speaker 1: as the child of immigrants of like to have like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like the immigrant parent who's like, don't what
Speaker 1: are you doing, Don't go out, don't do this, like
Speaker 1: you know you're going to be influencing bad ways. And
Speaker 1: Splinter's version of that is humans want to kill you,
Speaker 1: they want to milk you, they want to trap you
Speaker 1: in a lab somewhere and do experiments on all of
Speaker 1: which is absolutely fair.
Speaker 2: I'm true, it turns out and true.
Speaker 1: But after that, you know, after they absorb this this
Speaker 1: speech from Splinter, they like go to their rooms and
Speaker 1: they're just like scrolling their phones and like talking about
Speaker 1: different things that they see on their phones, roast each
Speaker 1: other that they would do if they could, and it
Speaker 1: was just really really wonderful, Like it's same as you.
Speaker 1: I'm a longtime Turtle fan. I remember one of my
Speaker 1: classmates to like, did this happen when you were in school?
Speaker 1: Like kids would bring for absolutely no reason other than
Speaker 1: to like flex in front of the other kids. Like
Speaker 1: kids would just like bring comics and toys.
Speaker 2: Yea to class?
Speaker 1: Yeah, when like absolutely you just know that if a
Speaker 1: teacher sees that, like it's going to take away why
Speaker 1: is that here? But I I remember one of my
Speaker 1: classmates brought in the black and white teenage Vietnamese Turtles
Speaker 1: Eastman and Lared book. And now I don't know if
Speaker 1: it was a first printing or a second printing or
Speaker 1: what issue. I don't remember what issue it was, but
Speaker 1: I remember being knocked out by by the art. It
Speaker 1: must have been the first issue because I remember there
Speaker 1: being I remember the panel that really got me was
Speaker 1: like one when you couldn't really tell them apart it
Speaker 1: must I think.
Speaker 2: It was no, no, you can't tell them apart. It's black
Speaker 2: and white, they ware mosques, you can't really tell.
Speaker 1: I think it was maybe Rath who said this, but
Speaker 1: like it's a panel they're fighting and one of the
Speaker 1: and the and the narration panel is like and we bleed,
Speaker 1: you know, and they have these little like they have
Speaker 1: these little scratches like all over their shells and all
Speaker 1: over their skin. And I was like, holy shit, this
Speaker 1: is amazing. And I went to the com book store
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it, and then eventually I found it,
Speaker 1: and then it was definitely weird. So like I'm of
Speaker 1: that era where when the cartoon really started hitting, I
Speaker 1: was like, well, this is like so different than the
Speaker 1: than the black and white version, but it's wonderful. How
Speaker 1: I think one of the great things about Mayhem is
Speaker 1: it really combines all of that stuff, like the cool
Speaker 1: martial arts everything, Yeah, the cool martial arts action of
Speaker 1: like the Eastman and laired a precolorized run and like
Speaker 1: the Cowabunga pizza fun of the teenage Bean Nugat is
Speaker 1: the nineties video game era, and it distills all of
Speaker 1: that and there's something that is really like truly something
Speaker 1: of its own. I had a great time.
Speaker 2: I thought I was amazing, And I think you bring
Speaker 2: up a great point. Like I wrote a piece of
Speaker 2: IgM that was kind of explaining about like this, this
Speaker 2: will have a this will be a spoiler, so like
Speaker 2: don't listen if you haven't seen it. Well, actually you
Speaker 2: can listen because it's not actually in the movie. It's
Speaker 2: just something I know because I've read the comics. But
Speaker 2: there is a the Maya Rudolph character, Cynthia Utrom. She's
Speaker 2: almost certainly crang. You can do a we were right
Speaker 2: for two years when they announced it because the utrom
Speaker 2: But the Eutroms are an alien race that are in
Speaker 2: like the second issue of the Black and White comics, right,
Speaker 2: and then all your Mutant Mayhem characters, the actual mutants
Speaker 2: are Ray Phile aka Man Ray. You know Genghis from
Speaker 2: a First Love. Yeah, Oh my gosh, he was so good.
Speaker 1: It's awesome. I post alone doing a jes.
Speaker 2: And like, you know, introducing Paul Rudd as Mondo, you know,
Speaker 2: the Mighty Immune Animals. That was a range of Playmates
Speaker 2: toys when they were really just selling so many. So
Speaker 2: it really does combine all of the different aspects that
Speaker 2: make the tolls great. You have April O'Neil and she's black,
Speaker 2: which in the original Black and White's comics she was black.
Speaker 2: So even that people forget going back, they forget this,
Speaker 2: and you know they and that goes back to the
Speaker 2: original era of the comics. I feel like they did
Speaker 2: such a brilliant job making it accessible. You know, my
Speaker 2: nephew loved it. My ten year old nephew. Now he's
Speaker 2: going back and he's watching Rise than Ninja Towles, he's
Speaker 2: watching the old cartoons, He's watching all of it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I love that it basically once again created an accessible
Speaker 2: jumping on point for kids, because this is one of
Speaker 2: the most consistent kids franchises. Yes, that has kind of
Speaker 2: always perennially been there, and I think that's why. You know,
Speaker 2: they were tracking it. They were like, oh, it's gonna
Speaker 2: make like twenty five million or something, but it ended
Speaker 2: up being closer. I think, let's find the final numbers.
Speaker 2: I'm I think it was like it was like forty
Speaker 2: five or fifty.
Speaker 1: On a budget of seventy million, which is so we're
Speaker 1: going to get there, Like, clearly this is going to
Speaker 1: be a money making movie, and I think we're exactly.
Speaker 2: We'll build just very delightful and I love to see
Speaker 2: it and I'm very happy. Yeah, forty three million over
Speaker 2: five days, and it's going to have long, long legs,
Speaker 2: Like this is a movie that opened well and it's
Speaker 2: going to be playing all the way into the fall.
Speaker 2: It makes me very happy. I love the idea that
Speaker 2: these kids are going to be able to, you know,
Speaker 2: find these characters that we love. And I also love
Speaker 2: this is the first one where you actually have like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the original Jim Henson Suit nineties late live
Speaker 2: action movie, some of the people who played them were
Speaker 2: teenagers who voiced them or were in the suits. But
Speaker 2: this is like kids. Miki who plays Donna Tello, he
Speaker 2: is a baby. When I see him in the interviews,
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, my sweet child. And you know, Shaman
Speaker 2: Brown Junior is my clanjo amazing, Nicholas Cantu the only
Speaker 2: Leonardo I respect. I am a Leonardo Heyer. He is
Speaker 2: a snitch in this movie, but he learns his ways.
Speaker 2: And Brandy Noon as Rafael, who is my all time favorite.
Speaker 2: I'm a Rafael Stan That's my of the four humors
Speaker 2: of the Turtles, I am a Rafael And like I
Speaker 2: just I loved it so much. And you know what
Speaker 2: else that they understood that I think a lot of
Speaker 2: the modern Turtle stuff hasn't understood. And this comes back
Speaker 2: to what you're saying in the comics. You couldn't tell
Speaker 2: them apart, right, because they didn't have the different color
Speaker 2: bandanas in the original comics, and then when they did,
Speaker 2: they had all red bandanas. It was all about personality, yea.
Speaker 2: And I think in the contemporary stuff, me and Nick
Speaker 2: talk about this a lot, like it became about how
Speaker 2: do they look different, what gadgets do they have? Like
Speaker 2: you need to know the weapons. Now, that's all still true,
Speaker 2: and they actually do that in a really fun way here,
Speaker 2: But the personalities are so defined, like you couldn't watch
Speaker 2: every every kid is going to have a favorite.
Speaker 1: Who was your You mentioned it, but it but expound
Speaker 1: as to why your turtle was your turtle?
Speaker 2: Okay, so my title, I think it's one. When I
Speaker 2: was a kid, I definitely had that tendency of like
Speaker 2: thinking like the darker characters were.
Speaker 1: Like cool, that's very that's very like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and Raf was like the tough guy, and
Speaker 2: he was really complex and he was kind of sad
Speaker 2: and emo, but he you know, I will say, out
Speaker 2: of all the titles, I feel like his representation in
Speaker 2: this movie is slightly streamlined, whereas I feel like the
Speaker 2: others get a really great kind of new elements. But
Speaker 2: you know what, it's time, he's growing, he's still he's
Speaker 2: just a chunky little boy who's angry. But you know what,
Speaker 2: I think it really was And this is so dumb,
Speaker 2: but this is like so defining in my life. I
Speaker 2: always remember, like in the I I used to love
Speaker 2: all kinds of weird old movies, and like I loved
Speaker 2: like Carry Grant movies when I was a little kid,
Speaker 2: and I love PI movies. And I always remember Raphael
Speaker 2: in the movie wearing like the detective jacket and the hat,
Speaker 2: and that to me is just one of the coolest visuals.
Speaker 2: I literally have a reference to that in the new
Speaker 2: graphic novel. I'm writing him the thing RoboCop does it
Speaker 2: when it first gets transformed. There's something about that, and
Speaker 2: I think that for me really cemented it. But I mean,
Speaker 2: then again, I literally have that picture. I'll try and
Speaker 2: find a link to put it in the show notes
Speaker 2: because it's really funny. I have that picture of me
Speaker 2: when I was like a baby and I had raft
Speaker 2: So I don't know, I guess it was just maybe
Speaker 2: it was because he was red, you know it well,
Speaker 2: But it's always throughout my life that's never changed. In
Speaker 2: the new movie. I would say Donnie's probably my favorite character.
Speaker 2: I loved him, but I'm still a raft girl. Who's
Speaker 2: your title?
Speaker 1: Dona Tello was my favorite turtle for various reasons. One,
Speaker 1: you know, as you were mentioning what you gravitated to
Speaker 1: at that stage of your comics reading life, I definitely
Speaker 1: went I was like, what is the thing that is
Speaker 1: not popular? And that's what I like? And so like Dontello.
Speaker 1: I mean, they make a joke about it in the movie.
Speaker 1: He just has a stick, you know, And I was
Speaker 1: so I was like, that's cool, that's like accept that's accessible.
Speaker 1: Like I can go unscrew the head off the broom
Speaker 1: right now and have the weapon that Donatello has. Plus
Speaker 1: he was like the more yeah, and like, so I
Speaker 1: can just beat don Tello right now if I just
Speaker 1: like unscrew the broomhead. And then he was he was
Speaker 1: the more like, he was very adept at technology. He
Speaker 1: was kind of like the sneakier one and the quieter one. Also,
Speaker 1: like everybody else was much louder than him, but when
Speaker 1: he did speak, it was like it seemed to have
Speaker 1: some weight to it. And then he beat He was
Speaker 1: the one I forget, which issue it is. I think
Speaker 1: it's the first issue. He's the guy who beats Tredder
Speaker 1: like he beats Shredder at the end of the fight,
Speaker 1: and so I was like, Donatello, that's my guy. I
Speaker 1: liked I played him in the video game. He had
Speaker 1: the longer reach, like you could hit the guys from
Speaker 1: across the you know, further across the screen because it's
Speaker 1: this longer stick. And so Donald tell that's my guy.
Speaker 1: And I thought she was wonderful in the movie.
Speaker 2: So good in this also, I will say, I feel
Speaker 2: like you that's gotta be the most fulfilling Turtle to love,
Speaker 2: because he definitely was like the lesser loved one before.
Speaker 2: But I feel like over the years, everyone who has
Speaker 2: created a Turtles show or a Turtles movie they loved Donatello.
Speaker 2: And then you get to this point where I feel like,
Speaker 2: for me, he was absolutely like the standout of the movie.
Speaker 2: That must be a fulfilling journey as to see this
Speaker 2: character you love get better back. And as we learned
Speaker 2: he I believe it is. It's Donna Tello who's wearing
Speaker 2: the JoJo's Bizarre adventurehoodie when they go into school. So
Speaker 2: there is like this is a movie full of pop
Speaker 2: culture references, but I actually found it quite charming and
Speaker 2: it didn't overwhelm me. I enjoyed. I enjoyed the kind
Speaker 2: of nods and the fact they're talking about endgame, Like sure,
Speaker 2: end games? Who in that universe? Like, I mean.
Speaker 1: That got huge laughs in the theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the same.
Speaker 1: That particular joke was one that like all the adults
Speaker 1: and all their kids could enjoy, and it was so funny.
Speaker 2: It's one of those fun things. I think, like the
Speaker 2: best references, Right, they either make you go like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's cool, or they open up your mind to, like
Speaker 2: as storytellers, as people who watch this stuff, as people
Speaker 2: who write theories, fans, whatever, they open your mind to, like, okay,
Speaker 2: so if the Avengers exists in this university, what does
Speaker 2: that mean to the universe? Like, what does it mean?
Speaker 2: And obviously also you get the the moment with the
Speaker 2: Ferris Bueller's day off when they're like watching it and
Speaker 2: all they want to do is like go high school
Speaker 2: so they can take over a parade. I love it
Speaker 2: when you learn that something. I love the implication essentially
Speaker 2: that this is our world. Yeah, I think that's really
Speaker 2: powerful and I think it's magical for kids.
Speaker 1: Uh teen teenage meeting Ninja Turtles Mt. Mayhem in theaters.
Speaker 1: Now up next more turtle stuff with an omnibus about
Speaker 1: the teenage mute Ninja Turtles. Welcome to another chapter of
Speaker 1: the omnibus where we're talking about the teenage mute Ninja
Speaker 1: Turtles and their origin and their deeper origin today. Popular art,
Speaker 1: as we have talked about on this podcast quite often,
Speaker 1: is a product of a dialogue between creativity and commerce.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are numerous examples of this, but
Speaker 1: I think that when you hear about the history of
Speaker 1: the teenager Ninja Turtles, you'll come to realize as I have,
Speaker 1: that the Turtles now and there fourth decade of pizza
Speaker 1: stained martial arts action existence are perhaps one of the
Speaker 1: most unique products of this dialogue between commerce and creativity.
Speaker 1: Created in nineteen eighty three by comics fans Kevin Eastman
Speaker 1: and Peter Laird, the Turtles and the Best Tradition of
Speaker 1: fan created art were a barely veiled ode to some
Speaker 1: of the most popular comics tropes of their day. You've
Speaker 1: heard Rosie talk about this lots of times. From the
Speaker 1: X Men came the word mutants. Mutants were big, and therefore,
Speaker 1: let's do something with mutants. Eastman and Laird taught you
Speaker 1: know what else was big. Teenagers were big at this time.
Speaker 1: The Teen Titans solo title had launched in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: and The New Mutants, the offshoot of the X Men team.
Speaker 1: The teen team of young Mutants over at the Xavier's
Speaker 1: Academy just going into the field on their own, had
Speaker 1: launched contemporaneously, with Eastman and Laird starting to create these characters,
Speaker 1: Frank Miller's pioneering run on Daredevil was mined extensively. The
Speaker 1: Ninja villains The Hand became the Turtles antagonist The Foot.
Speaker 1: Miller and artist Claus Jensen's gritty, blood drench martial arts
Speaker 1: tone was brought over basically intact in that early black
Speaker 1: and white run, and then, you know, for the kind
Speaker 1: of highbrow stuff, they turned to the Italian Renaissance with
Speaker 1: the artist Leonardo Donotelo Rafaela Micalandrew, who gave our heroes
Speaker 1: their name. In nineteen eighty four, using a family loan
Speaker 1: and some cash from a tax return, He's been and
Speaker 1: Laird printed three thousand copies of Teenage mun Ninja Turtles
Speaker 1: number one under their own Mirage Comics banner, founded in
Speaker 1: their living room, and with a you know, a turtle
Speaker 1: shell and a prayer, they bought an ad in the
Speaker 1: Comics Buyer's Guy. Then really the bible of how to
Speaker 1: get comics and how to see what comics were out
Speaker 1: there in the marketplace. And that's how Eastman and Laird
Speaker 1: entered the then kind of nascent direct market of comics publishing,
Speaker 1: by which local comic shops would kind of like cut
Speaker 1: out the middle distributors to buy direct from the publishers.
Speaker 1: In this case Mirage and Eastman and Laird. Teenager Ninja
Speaker 1: Turtles number one sold out, all three thousand issues gone.
Speaker 1: A six thousand issue reprint followed it sold out as well.
Speaker 1: From this, Eastman and Laird pocket at a tidy two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars profit, not bad for you early eighties money. So,
Speaker 1: realizing that their little lark of a small business project
Speaker 1: was resonating, perhaps indicating a deeper vein of interest in
Speaker 1: these characters, Eastman and Laird went back to the literal
Speaker 1: drawing board and about a year later, Teenage Mutant Ninja
Speaker 1: Turtles Number two went to print. Now this by the time,
Speaker 1: the characters were a grassroots sensation, and of course retailers
Speaker 1: seeing that thought, well, listen, you can't just send us
Speaker 1: number two when number one is sold out. You also
Speaker 1: have to reprint number one, right, And so they did
Speaker 1: that and thus began a new run of Teenage Mit
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles, and all the issues sold regularly into the
Speaker 1: five and occasionally six figures, which are just incredibly huge
Speaker 1: numbers for an indie, Like huge numbers for an indie,
Speaker 1: like if you're.
Speaker 2: Talking six year, if it happens now.
Speaker 1: A big deal of it, absolutely a huge deal of
Speaker 1: it happened now. And some of their issues like we're
Speaker 1: flirting with numbers that like you would get it the
Speaker 1: big two, like at some of their medium range books,
Speaker 1: like this was huge, huge stuff. And seeing this, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, Playmates Toys came calling, a subsidiary of
Speaker 1: Hong Kong based Playmates Holdings. The company had a plan
Speaker 1: to turn the Turtles into a line of merch appealing
Speaker 1: to kids. So their plan first was to see the
Speaker 1: marketplace with an animated television show that would run in
Speaker 1: various markets, you know, kind of a limited run television
Speaker 1: show that would kind of like build up the hunger
Speaker 1: amongst their targeted fan base for all things teenage muant
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles. But of course, before they did that, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the stuff, some of the things in the
Speaker 1: black and white original run needed to change from day one,
Speaker 1: Eastman said in an interview with The Comics Journal from
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, the first meetings at Playmates, they wanted changes.
Speaker 1: The early issues had violence, but not graphic violence. He continues,
Speaker 1: Playmates said, our specific audience is four to eight year olds,
Speaker 1: so you can do the math on that, right. A lot
Speaker 1: of stuff needed to change, a lot of the violence
Speaker 1: needed to be toned down. Some of the language, which
Speaker 1: was never really that explicit in the original run, but
Speaker 1: like did kind of, like I guess, kind of dip
Speaker 1: a toe into explicit language. Some of that needed to
Speaker 1: be dialed down. And of course the Turtles had by
Speaker 1: this time already transitioned to color, as Rosie mentioned, all
Speaker 1: red bandanas. But as we start to enter the animated space,
Speaker 1: certainly things are going to need to change more significantly.
Speaker 1: And here is where the Playmates marketing team really made
Speaker 1: their imprint and really let their influence be felt. And
Speaker 1: this is where that conversation between art and commerce really
Speaker 1: becomes a very even sided conversation. So the Playmates marketing
Speaker 1: team are the reason that we have differently colored masks
Speaker 1: for the Turtles, for instance, in order to tell them apart.
Speaker 1: They are the horse of any number of catchphrases iconic
Speaker 1: catchphrases from the teenage m Ninja Turtles animated series, including
Speaker 1: Turtle Power and of course the legendary Cowabunga. Now the
Speaker 1: latter Cowabungo was the focus of a five million dollar
Speaker 1: lawsuit by Buffalo Bob Smith, the host of the Howdy
Speaker 1: Do Do Show, which ran from nineteen forty seven to
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty. Buffalo Bob claimed that, hey, the Turtles stole Cowabungo,
Speaker 1: which we used on the Howdy Doty program back in
Speaker 1: the back in the forties. Sure, and how dare you?
Speaker 2: Sir?
Speaker 1: At Eastman and Lair decided that, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is not worth the trouble, and they eventually settled for
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars on the five million. Oh also, pizza
Speaker 1: came from Playmates. Can you imagine like this, what more
Speaker 1: iconic thing could come out? Can you associate with the
Speaker 1: Turtles than pizza? And that was part of the contributions
Speaker 1: from the playmates execs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking a lot about this when I
Speaker 2: was writing my Cynthia Eutron piece at IGN because David Wise,
Speaker 2: who has spoken a lot about how involved he was
Speaker 2: with this, he actually created Krang, who I would say
Speaker 2: is probably the most well mystery, the most well known
Speaker 2: Ninja Turtles villain probably is Krang. And that didn't come
Speaker 2: he didn't come from the comics. He was influenced by
Speaker 2: the Eutromsey's kind of brain looking aliens. But even that,
Speaker 2: when I was like kind of revisiting it, it is
Speaker 2: such a unique space in this cultural idea of like commerce.
Speaker 2: And also this is why Turtles became so popular. It
Speaker 2: was already a comic shop, but like, this is how
Speaker 2: kids found out about it, this is how it became
Speaker 2: a global phenomenon. And this is how many many years
Speaker 2: later Peter Laird would sell the Ninja Turtles to Nickelodeon
Speaker 2: familiar that not enough money, not enough money, and he
Speaker 2: didn't not get enough money.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the overall soft of the Turtles aesthetic and
Speaker 1: various story elements was a you know, as you can
Speaker 1: see from the fact that we're talking about the Turtles
Speaker 1: and the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty three extremely lucrative,
Speaker 1: resulted in numerous television programs, various spinoffs of those programs,
Speaker 1: several waves of toy crazes, multiple video games. Of course,
Speaker 1: the movies, various comics runs across three or four different
Speaker 1: comics companies. But the changes didn't necessarily go down smoothly
Speaker 1: with the creative team. Kevin Eastman said in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight with the Comics Journal quote, it probably affected Pete
Speaker 1: more than it did me. He was really upset about it,
Speaker 1: and even today he's very much of a purist as
Speaker 1: far as the Turtles go. But it was something we
Speaker 1: both agreed to. We'd have long, long talks and ultimately
Speaker 1: say we can live with this. You know, all this
Speaker 1: stuff was done in nineteen eighty six, in the early
Speaker 1: part of nineteen eighty seven, while developing the toys and
Speaker 1: the cartoons, even and through that whole period, we never
Speaker 1: really believed that it was going to happen. And of
Speaker 1: course it did happen, and they became very, very rich,
Speaker 1: and here we are now. Rosie mentioned it in two thousand.
Speaker 1: Eastman sold his steak in the Turtles to laird, who
Speaker 1: you know, in Eastman's telling was kind of the more
Speaker 1: passionate and originalist of the purest. Yes. Now, the laird
Speaker 1: then turned around and sold the rights to Viacom, and
Speaker 1: of course, you know, you can follow the kind of
Speaker 1: corporate restructuring and machinations that follow here. But through Viacom,
Speaker 1: the property eventually landed at Nickelodeon, which is how Teenage
Speaker 1: mun Ninja Turtles Mute Mayhem comes to us today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and Pa Led sold it in two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine for sixty million dollars. Now I understand that
Speaker 2: a normal person, that is a lot of money. That's
Speaker 2: a life changing amount of money. But I am saying,
Speaker 2: I'm talking if you're selling Star Wars or Marvel for
Speaker 2: like four billion. Yeah, right now, it's not it's not
Speaker 2: that level. I'm talking. I'm saying five hundred mil. I'm saying,
Speaker 2: I think you kill minimum the amount of money that
Speaker 2: Nickelodeon has made off these off the live action movies
Speaker 2: that they've done since then, Off this movie, like it
Speaker 2: was not enough. But I love I love that Peter
Speaker 2: did it in a pure way. And now you know,
Speaker 2: Kevin is doing the last row, in which was a
Speaker 2: huge success for IDW and that was based on an
Speaker 2: idea him and Peter had. There was a great documentary
Speaker 2: made about the Ninja Turtles. I believe it's called Turtle Power,
Speaker 2: The Definitive History of the Teenage Man and Ninja Tals.
Speaker 2: It's now on Paramount.
Speaker 1: Plat Turtle Power, and that has a really great art
Speaker 1: about their journey as friends, as collaborators.
Speaker 2: The way they broke people off at Mirage Comics in
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties are the creators like Stan Sakai.
Speaker 2: They would bring the characters that they like Saga your Jimbo,
Speaker 2: and they would put them into toy production so their
Speaker 2: friends could make money. And there's a really great arc
Speaker 2: about Peter and Kevin, and they even have a kind
Speaker 2: of reunion between the two of them that kind of
Speaker 2: led on to where we are now. So yeah, also, Jason,
Speaker 2: I want to hear about that the reasons that you
Speaker 2: think they resonated, because you have some great thoughts here
Speaker 2: about like anthromorphic kind of storytelling.
Speaker 1: Question isn't it right? Like why was it? Why the turtles?
Speaker 1: What what happened? And I'll get to that, but I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that's interesting to me about
Speaker 1: the turtles on an intellectual level is how they are
Speaker 1: part of this kind of fundamental human by human, I
Speaker 1: mean like Homo sapien, like us as a species, storytelling
Speaker 1: kind of storytelling adaptation that we have, and how they
Speaker 1: are part of this tradition and of anthropomorphism in human creativity. Anthropomorphism,
Speaker 1: which is the technique of kind of combining animals or
Speaker 1: objects with human characteristics, is of course a staple of
Speaker 1: popular culture, you know, like point at any Disney movie, right,
Speaker 1: And in particular this is a feature of content that
Speaker 1: is aimed at kids throughout history, like literally going back
Speaker 1: into the far reaches of prehistory, even the low inments
Speaker 1: figuring the so called lion Men of Holsteinstadl is an
Speaker 1: ivory sculpture of a person with a lion's head, and
Speaker 1: it's the earliest example of anthropomorphism and is dated anywhere
Speaker 1: from thirty five thousand to forty one thousand years old.
Speaker 1: And when you really think about, like what an incredible
Speaker 1: example of like cognitive flexibility. This is we see an animal,
Speaker 1: we imagine ourselves as that animal in order to understand
Speaker 1: what it's doing. This is really something that is unique
Speaker 1: to people archaeologist Stephen Mithin, in a really wonderfully caddy
Speaker 1: response to critics in a December nineteen ninety six issue
Speaker 1: of the Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, noted that quote
Speaker 1: anthropomorphic thinking does appear to be an effective means for
Speaker 1: predicting animal behavior. In other words, his idea was that,
Speaker 1: you know, Stone Age hunters, in order to figure out
Speaker 1: the migrations of say, herds of Ibex or something like that,
Speaker 1: would wonder if I was an Ibex, what would I do?
Speaker 1: What would I do? Where would I go? Where would
Speaker 1: I sleep? And through this process eventually found success in
Speaker 1: hunting Ibex. In that same journal, myth And theorized the
Speaker 1: reason for children's interest in anthwerpomorphisms throughout history is perhaps
Speaker 1: because quote from birth, they are surrounded by material artifacts
Speaker 1: that are intentionally designed to cause cognitive fluity. We don't
Speaker 1: we kind of like overlook this about the way we
Speaker 1: were raised as kids and the way we interact with kids.
Speaker 1: About how confusing when you really think about it. You know,
Speaker 1: you give a kid a doll that is a tiger, right,
Speaker 1: that is the picture of a tiger, or the picture
Speaker 1: of a teenage ninja turtle right, and it's not a turtle,
Speaker 1: but you expect them to understand that it is not
Speaker 1: what it is, but it's something else. Right, This is
Speaker 1: like we are intentionally confusing kids so that their minds
Speaker 1: become more fluid. And I think, what this what this
Speaker 1: all brings me to is I think for me, the
Speaker 1: reason that the that the turtles resonate and what I
Speaker 1: think was so wonderful for me about this movie was
Speaker 1: the way the turtles uh kind of activate empathy, particularly
Speaker 1: for kids. Right, Like, you're a kid, You're concerned. It's
Speaker 1: hard now as an adult to kind of like reach
Speaker 1: back and get into contact with what a day to
Speaker 1: day like wilderness, going to school was as a kid,
Speaker 1: and it's like everything feels like life or death, and
Speaker 1: it's like do people like me? And if they don't
Speaker 1: like me or make fun of me, everything's going to
Speaker 1: fall apart, and like you're living minutes to minute and
Speaker 1: day to day. And one of the cool things about
Speaker 1: the Turtles is it empowers kids empathy. Right, you see
Speaker 1: yourself as these special martial arts turtles who are also outcasts,
Speaker 1: and what do they want? They just want to be
Speaker 1: like every other kid, every other normal kid. But of
Speaker 1: course they can't be because they're turtles, but because they
Speaker 1: are anthropomorphic turtles, it allows kids to interact with their
Speaker 1: empathy in a way that protects them from kind of
Speaker 1: like the more occasionally troubling aspects of empathy, which is
Speaker 1: the questions that arise from uh, you know uh your
Speaker 1: own relationship with the with your other classmates, or let's say,
Speaker 1: you know bullying. Uh, where does one stand in a
Speaker 1: power dynamic between a bully and and the and the
Speaker 1: target of the bully? How or how am I being
Speaker 1: a bully to someone else? All of these kind of questions,
Speaker 1: how do how does? How does empathy work if someone
Speaker 1: looks different than me or believes something different than me? Right?
Speaker 1: All of these questions are really complex and can can
Speaker 1: get really naughty and make you question a lot of
Speaker 1: things about the way you were brought up in your experiences.
Speaker 1: But when you have answeromorphic turtles, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all of that stuff becomes much easier to play with
Speaker 1: and much more relatable and much easier to grab a
Speaker 1: hold of. Right, the outsider noess, the need to bel long,
Speaker 1: the desire to be special but also to be like
Speaker 1: everybody else. All that the turtles give to us by
Speaker 1: the fact that they are turtles with the personalities of people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think do you think the turtles resonate?
Speaker 2: I love that so much. I mean, it's hard to top,
Speaker 2: but I would just say I think you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: I also think they're essentially like a gateway to other
Speaker 2: analogous storytelling. So like when you're a kid, the turtle
Speaker 2: aspect of it all makes it less terrifying to consider
Speaker 2: these ideas of empathy. They make it less obviously analogous,
Speaker 2: less obviously about you and your experiences, and they also
Speaker 2: give you a hero wish fulfillment. Yeah. I might be
Speaker 2: an outcast, but I can do something good. And what
Speaker 2: I love is then you know, you go from reading
Speaker 2: the Turtles or watching the Turtles on TV, and then
Speaker 2: you see the X Men, and that becomes more obviously
Speaker 2: about the human struggles, but you still have that same
Speaker 2: analogous storytelling that comes from from science fiction traditions, that
Speaker 2: comes from the idea of using stories for the power
Speaker 2: that they can impart. So I mean, I cannot top
Speaker 2: what you said because I absolutely love that theory and
Speaker 2: I think you're so right. But I think one of
Speaker 2: the coolest things and the reason that they've resonated for
Speaker 2: so long is these are almost a starter set of
Speaker 2: characters and a starter set of tropes and a starter
Speaker 2: set of stories that will inevitably lead to other art
Speaker 2: forms and other comic book storytelling. And I think that's
Speaker 2: really cool. And I think the fact that both of
Speaker 2: us watched it when we were kids in here now
Speaker 2: talking about this stuff every week is great proof of that.
Speaker 2: Like two people from two different sides of the world,
Speaker 2: and the Turtles was still one of those first things
Speaker 2: that got us into this space where we found these
Speaker 2: stories about characters that we wanted to know more about,
Speaker 2: that we wanted to care about, and that taught us
Speaker 2: lessons as we went into our life. I think it's lovely.
Speaker 1: Turtle power up next nerd Out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in today's nerd Out, where you tell us what
Speaker 2: you love and why e theory you're excited to share
Speaker 2: or a quick question we can answer, Chris asks a
Speaker 2: fly on the war query. Now, Chris, I love this
Speaker 2: because you are big thinking here. This is almost existential
Speaker 2: and I adore this. Hi, Rosie and Jason, I love
Speaker 2: the podcast, even though I know little about the many
Speaker 2: deep dives that you two take. But that's precisely why
Speaker 2: I love listening. I've always found so much enjoyment being
Speaker 2: a fly on the wall listening to two experts discuss something,
Speaker 2: the more specific the bell, Like I have two friends
Speaker 2: who build elevators for a living. Even though the nuances
Speaker 2: of their discussions are well over my head, I find
Speaker 2: it fascinating. That's how I often feel when listening to
Speaker 2: certain parts of X ray vision. So my question for
Speaker 2: the two of you, what specific topic would you enjoy
Speaker 2: just silently listening to as a fly on the wall.
Speaker 2: This is such an epic question.
Speaker 1: I you know, you go first because I have I'll
Speaker 1: just go through my YouTube history and all like what
Speaker 1: I use it for. But what's what would a topic
Speaker 1: be for you?
Speaker 2: For me as a fly on the wall, It's very
Speaker 2: hard to imagine it being something outside of the sphere
Speaker 2: of what I love, because, for example, things that I
Speaker 2: listen to and love to watch that are not in
Speaker 2: my sphere of knowledge. I watch a lot of NHK,
Speaker 2: which is like the national Japanese broadcast channel, and they
Speaker 2: have incredible episodes of a show called Trails to Oishi
Speaker 2: where it's basically just like, how do you pickle a
Speaker 2: radish Like I love stuff like that, Like I want
Speaker 2: to know the exact way to ferment the perfect piece
Speaker 2: of soybean, Like I do love that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: But if I was to be a fly on the wall,
Speaker 2: I would be like flying back into comics history. I
Speaker 2: just want to be a fly on the wall, Like
Speaker 2: listening to Jack Kirby coming into the Marvel office when
Speaker 2: he finds like Stanley crying because they're going to shut
Speaker 2: down the office and he's like, don't worry, kid, I
Speaker 2: got this, Or like I want to be in the
Speaker 2: room where Todd and Jimley and Rob Leifeld and all
Speaker 2: the crew are like talking about founding Image, Like I
Speaker 2: think for me it would be getting to hear and
Speaker 2: experience like these unbelievable historical moments that you sort of
Speaker 2: can't really even conceive because in the moment, nobody knew
Speaker 2: they would be important. That to me would if I
Speaker 2: was truly a fly on the wall, those would be
Speaker 2: the things I'd want to revisit, some of those incredible
Speaker 2: conversations and historical moments that no one kind of knew
Speaker 2: would become that at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for me, it's always people in some sort of
Speaker 1: creative sphere talking about how the nuts and bolts of
Speaker 1: how they do the stuff that they do. For instance,
Speaker 1: now I'm going through my YouTube history. I recently went
Speaker 1: through a late night I read I do a lot
Speaker 1: of writing at night, a late night like ABBA phase. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I love I think they're I think that they're used
Speaker 1: to clearly the greatest music group to come out of Eurovision.
Speaker 1: Uh and so like I've I just threw on the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two ABBA documentary and just like had that
Speaker 1: going in the background. It's like very interesting to me
Speaker 1: to listen to these creative people, to couples, you know,
Speaker 1: two married couples who got into music because they were
Speaker 1: just they would just like hang out and sing together,
Speaker 1: talk about how they created really some of the most
Speaker 1: like perfect earworm pop songs. It's so weird that call
Speaker 1: on Like when when when I hear the term like
Speaker 1: white culture, I think ABBA in the best way, like
Speaker 1: it's pop music all yeah, like pop music. Water is
Speaker 1: a great example that calls on like this, like deep
Speaker 1: like European musical tradition with the big like a classical
Speaker 1: almost Shastakovich sounding like piano chor and the like wonderful,
Speaker 1: like almost folky melodies, like it's great stuff. I love
Speaker 1: doing that, or like another thing that I had here
Speaker 1: is just a conversation with David Milch, the TV writer
Speaker 1: who created Deadwood and wrote for Hill Street Blues and
Speaker 1: created NYPD Blue. Just him talking about, you know, his
Speaker 1: creative process. Anybody talking about like their their creative process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with another person who is like steeped in the particular
Speaker 1: history of whatever space that that creative person applies their
Speaker 1: trade in is. I'll listen to that. I'll listen to
Speaker 1: that conversation ten times out of ten. It doesn't even
Speaker 1: have to be anything that I particularly know how to do.
Speaker 1: It could be like woodworking or something, and I just
Speaker 1: find that, oh yeah, I really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: But like slow, like woodworking trains. I listened to a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff like that. But you know, I have
Speaker 2: to share, Okay, so I think you'll write. I think
Speaker 2: that is the key. And I was lucky enough many
Speaker 2: years ago now. One of the set visits that I
Speaker 2: did when that was still a thing pre COVID, I
Speaker 2: visited the set of the first series of What We
Speaker 2: Do in the Shadows and it was in Toronto, and
Speaker 2: it was freezing cold, and we got to go to
Speaker 2: the X Mansion where they were filming a big thing.
Speaker 2: But that was one of the most mind blowing, like
Speaker 2: fly on the Wall experiences, because you're there as press
Speaker 2: and that was a very lax set, so I just
Speaker 2: got to spend I have so many unbelievable memories of
Speaker 2: just like a guy who was creating like a non
Speaker 2: toxic gel for setting himself on fire, and he just
Speaker 2: talked to him about it for like thirty minutes and
Speaker 2: kept just setting himself on fire, and he was like
Speaker 2: a viking. And it was also twelve women on the
Speaker 2: set visit, which you never get, which was incredible. The
Speaker 2: guy who was doing all the wirework stunts, he just
Speaker 2: came onto the coach where we were chilling outside and
Speaker 2: gave like a whole speech on all these different ways
Speaker 2: that they were using wireworks. We had the guy who
Speaker 2: was making the fake vomit. It was one of the
Speaker 2: set visits that I've been on that had the most
Speaker 2: amount of specific knowledge based the dresser, the person whose
Speaker 2: job it was to go to like the charity shops
Speaker 2: and buy old vintage stuff that would look like it
Speaker 2: fit into a vampire's house in New Jersey. That was
Speaker 2: a really mind blowing time because it was like getting
Speaker 2: to be a fly on the wall and hear the
Speaker 2: ins and outs of how things got made. And it
Speaker 2: also this was probably six years ago now or something,
Speaker 2: but it kind of blew my mind and opened my
Speaker 2: mind to just how many different jobs there are in
Speaker 2: filmmaking and how much I wished as a kid i'd
Speaker 2: have known that your job could be like dressing the set,
Speaker 2: or your job could be like somebody you're just some
Speaker 2: cool guy in overalls and you're like hammering together like
Speaker 2: a shelf that goes on the set. Like that's like
Speaker 2: a dream, you don't And then that was very profound
Speaker 2: to me. And that was definitely the time that I've
Speaker 2: felt most like, I know that that guy's just going
Speaker 2: around setting himself on fire talking about that gel to
Speaker 2: anyone who's on the set because he's a genius and like.
Speaker 2: So that was definitely the most fly on the wall experience,
Speaker 2: and honestly, it was amazing. I think about that all
Speaker 2: the time, So I think I would like to be
Speaker 2: a fly on the wall more. Actually, Chris, that was
Speaker 2: such a good question, wonderful question. I love it. If
Speaker 2: you have theories, passions or quick questions you want to share,
Speaker 2: hit us up at extra at Crooked dot com. Instructions
Speaker 2: are in the show notes.
Speaker 1: That's it for us, Rosie and he plugs.
Speaker 2: I am going to plug a piece of mine that
Speaker 2: went up at IgM. Piece though that's great, I wrote
Speaker 2: a piece. I will say it this way. I have
Speaker 2: been working on a piece of IgM for four years
Speaker 2: about the boom and bust of the comic book industry,
Speaker 2: and I was delightfully surprised this weekend when my brilliant editor,
Speaker 2: Scott Klaura reached out and was like, Hey, I think
Speaker 2: it's time, like, let's run it. You know, I'm really
Speaker 2: happy it went up. It's six thousand words. It has
Speaker 2: interviews with Tom McFarland, Louise Simonson, Jim Lee on the
Speaker 2: record talking about Image, Bob Layton, who really was an
Speaker 2: unbelievable source and gave some unbelievable numbers about Valiant. Is
Speaker 2: probably the piece I'm proudest of. I want to turn
Speaker 2: it into a book or a TV show or something
Speaker 2: because there's just such a great story to be told there.
Speaker 2: But for now you can read it on IGN, and
Speaker 2: I'm super proud of it, Kevin van Hook from Valiant
Speaker 2: also giving some great insight and because it's ended up
Speaker 2: coming out this year. There's also a great little chat
Speaker 2: with Ryan Skinner from Polp Fiction, which is my local
Speaker 2: comic shop in Long Beach about how there was actually
Speaker 2: like a mini boom and bust during COVID, which we knew,
Speaker 2: you know, as collectors, kind of there was this speculation boom,
Speaker 2: but it hasn't quite turned into a bust, but it's deflating.
Speaker 2: So just if you like the ins and outs, if
Speaker 2: you like business, if you like numbers, if you like
Speaker 2: Louise Simonson saying that they the only reason they did
Speaker 2: Death of Superman was because they were pissed off at
Speaker 2: DC and they just decided to kill him, you're gonna
Speaker 2: love it because that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Catch the next episode Friday, August eleventh for an all
Speaker 1: Superman and Lois Lane themed episode.
Speaker 2: Woo perfect timing, and you can watch full episodes of
Speaker 2: the podcast on YouTube. Also check out Twitter and x
Speaker 2: mbi pod and on Discord hang Out with a ton
Speaker 2: of Cool fans.
Speaker 1: Five stars ratings, five star reviews we got out of them.
Speaker 1: You gotta give him those here's one from Jay Love
Speaker 1: ninety two Open Apple for the first time for this review.
Speaker 1: This podcast is like going back in time to watch
Speaker 1: anime and play video games with friends after school. Perfect.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's all we're going for. We're going for
Speaker 1: g Thank you, Jay Love ninety two. Xtra Vision is
Speaker 1: a Crooked Media production. The show is produced by Chris
Speaker 1: Lord and Saul Rumin and executive produced by me Jason Concepcio,
Speaker 1: and our editing and sound design is by Facilis Fotopoulos.
Speaker 1: Video production by Delon Villanueva and Rachel Gayeski. Social media
Speaker 1: by Awa o'clatti and Caroline Duncan. Thank you to Brian
Speaker 1: Basquez for a few See you next time. Whether you're
Speaker 1: a diehard comics fan or just getting into them, you're
Speaker 1: gonna love Comic Sans. Comic Sans is a podcast about
Speaker 1: comic for those who are sands knowledge. Join Yon, a
Speaker 1: comic reader, writer and lover, and Nat, who knows absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing about comics. Each episode, Yan introduces Nat to one
Speaker 1: of their favorite comics like The sand Man, Saga and
Speaker 1: Laura Olympus and shares what makes that comic special, and
Speaker 1: then Nat gives his thoughts on the comic, which only
Speaker 1: sometimes causes Deando freak out, but it's worth it every time.
Speaker 1: It's a podcast that comic lovers, haters, and undecided rs
Speaker 1: alike can enjoy, and you can binge the first season,
Speaker 1: including bonus episodes on Across the Spider Verse and Comic
Speaker 1: on Right Now. Find Comic Sans on Apple, Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.