Speaker 1: Warning. This podcast contains spoilers for the first episode of
Speaker 1: the new Halo series on Paramount Plus. Elden Ring kind
Speaker 1: of not really Shadow of the Colossus, which is a
Speaker 1: game that is almost twenty years old now but is
Speaker 1: well worth your time if you can play it Injustice
Speaker 1: and possibly more video games. You have been warned.
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 1: My name is Jasoncepcio and welcome to x ray Vision,
Speaker 1: The Crooked Podcast, where we dot d bien to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture. On today's action
Speaker 1: packed episode in the Airlock, we will recap the first
Speaker 1: episode of Paramount Plus's adaptation of the Halo video game
Speaker 1: series Halo, and discuss which video games we're currently playing.
Speaker 1: I'm playing only one and it's taken over my life
Speaker 1: and I need help help me. Continuing our coverage of
Speaker 1: the Batman, we're joined in the Hive Mind by the
Speaker 1: legendary comics writer Grant Morrison discuss their iconic career in
Speaker 1: nerd Out, a audience member tells us about Final Fantasy
Speaker 1: for Free Enterprise, and in the endgame, we rank our
Speaker 1: top three video game adaptations to do all of that.
Speaker 1: Joining us today is writer Comics Encyclopedia, brilliant creator, Rosie Night, Rosie,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm good?
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing well? What's what's going on? What's happening? What's
Speaker 1: happening with you? What's happening with the Well, let's talk
Speaker 1: about it. We've been teasing it. Oh, let's talk about
Speaker 1: it here. We've been teasing it. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: your comics project, which you can now safely announce. I
Speaker 1: can now love it if you'd denounce it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So if you've read any of my stuff we've
Speaker 3: had me on the show, you'll know that I love Godzilla.
Speaker 3: Godzilla's weell my absolute favorite things. And me and this
Speaker 3: absolutely brilliant artist called Oliver Ono, who you might actually
Speaker 3: already follow on Instagram because he's very popular, we are
Speaker 3: doing a Godzilla comic and it is called Godzilla Rivals
Speaker 3: two Versus Bachra, which is a very long name, but
Speaker 3: it's a really cool mash up comic. We're allowed to
Speaker 3: announce it now. They're finishing up final work on the
Speaker 3: cover and it is a forty page one shot and
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 4: Really really cool.
Speaker 3: It's set in the British seaside. Because I'm from London,
Speaker 3: and that was somewhere that Oliver actually spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time as a kid too, So we're just really
Speaker 3: excited about it. It's basically like Studio Ghibli meets Godzilla
Speaker 3: with a lot of Kaiju fighting action.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and not available when.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it looks like if you read comics or
Speaker 3: you have started a pull list because of us, you
Speaker 3: will know that comics are listed many months before they
Speaker 3: come out, so it should be around July, the beginning
Speaker 3: ish of July, we hope. And as soon as it
Speaker 3: is really available and we have a link where you
Speaker 3: can order it and stuff, I'll make sure that we
Speaker 3: put it in the show notes and people can have
Speaker 3: a look, and hopefully we'll talk about it more because
Speaker 3: all of us are is like, so incredible and definitely
Speaker 3: just go follow him on Instagram Oliver oh No, And
Speaker 3: it's just so exciting and I'm really happy that this
Speaker 3: is the first place I've gotten to talk about it,
Speaker 3: So thank you for asking.
Speaker 1: Well, that is fantastic, and we're gonna have to have
Speaker 1: y'all on to discuss your work. Now, let us step
Speaker 1: into and out of the air lock to discuss Halo
Speaker 1: oh Bomb bumba bumba Halo. Okay, folks, Paramount Plus's adaptation
Speaker 1: of Halo. It's been long for man. I remember Rosie
Speaker 1: back in like Halo three days. Halo three had an
Speaker 1: absolutely incredible promotional campaign that was like these really grounded
Speaker 1: action vignettes of Master Chief in his apocalyptic war against
Speaker 1: the Covenant alien races and it was really really cool.
Speaker 1: And it was around that time that people were like, Oh,
Speaker 1: Halo movie, It's gonna happen. Who will it be? Will
Speaker 1: it be Spielberg? Will it be Neil Blong, Camp of
Speaker 1: District nine? Who will be? And this has been We've
Speaker 1: been waiting for it, waiting for it, waiting for it.
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about it. I stopped playing Halo. I
Speaker 1: started playing Halo again. I stopped again, and then I
Speaker 1: started again. And now here we are. The year is
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and the Halo television series has now
Speaker 1: aired on Paramount Plus. We'll have it aired by the
Speaker 1: time you were listening to this, and we are going
Speaker 1: to recap now. Episode one of the Halo series, title Contact,
Speaker 1: written by Stephen Kine and Kyle Killen. The year is
Speaker 1: twenty five fifty two and first of all, congrats to
Speaker 1: the human race for making it that far. I didn't
Speaker 1: think it wasn't I didn't think you were going to
Speaker 1: get there. To be honest with you, sitting here in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, I'm not one hundred percent convinced that
Speaker 1: you're going to get there. But in this fictional world,
Speaker 1: you got there, and I'm kind of proud of you,
Speaker 1: even though you still be colonizing. But that's okay, okay.
Speaker 3: Human nature. And that's why they call it science fiction. Baby,
Speaker 3: it's fictional.
Speaker 1: The year is twenty five to fifty two. We are
Speaker 1: on the planet Magical, which is part of Unified Earth
Speaker 1: Government territory. It is a colony. Human colonists went out
Speaker 1: into various far flung planets of the galaxy where they
Speaker 1: would then mine for resources or what have you, and
Speaker 1: they would send that back to the central Earth government.
Speaker 1: And over time the colonists have been like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: being exploited by you, so Earth Government, and that is
Speaker 1: the state of affairs today. Magical is a planet rich
Speaker 1: and exploitable resources, populated by a diverse body of very
Speaker 1: restive human colonists. The ueg's relationship with its outer colonies
Speaker 1: is very bad for anyone who read the first Halo
Speaker 1: novelizations by Eric Nyland, you'll understand where we're coming from
Speaker 1: with that. When the colonies act up, when they insurrect,
Speaker 1: when they rebel against the UEG, the UEG sends in
Speaker 1: the space Marines, the UNSC United Nations Security something something
Speaker 1: I forgot what it was. Marines end the newly kind
Speaker 1: of newly created elite force of specially trained and equipped
Speaker 1: warriors known as the Spartans. They are widely feared throughout
Speaker 1: the colonies, and they are a subject of much propaganda
Speaker 1: by the UEG. So Kwan Hall is a colonist. She
Speaker 1: and her friends are exploring the landscape of Madrigal, where
Speaker 1: the various plants are rich with heavy hydrogen, which is
Speaker 1: very useful apparently as an energy source and also for drugs.
Speaker 1: Quan sees something strange in the woods. She follows it.
Speaker 1: She sees an alien ship near a cave where there's
Speaker 1: clearly some sort of mining activity taking place. Quan is like, okay, like,
Speaker 1: let's return to the outpost. We have to tell everybody
Speaker 1: what's happening, and her friends are kind of like, oh no,
Speaker 1: let's not do that, which is crazy, like why would
Speaker 1: that is there's an alien ship here, I think we
Speaker 1: need to go back. And then in that moment they
Speaker 1: are attacked by the Covenant, who are We're going to
Speaker 1: find this out of the course of the series, So
Speaker 1: minor spoiler, but this is like available information if you've
Speaker 1: ever played a Halo game, which is probably likely. The
Speaker 1: Covenant is an alliance of alien races who have bound
Speaker 1: together for religious reasons, and they are extremely adept and militaristic,
Speaker 1: and they have plasma weaponry and you don't want to
Speaker 1: fuck with them. Quan sends up a flare warns the outposts.
Speaker 1: The colonists, including Quan's father, swinging into action. They arm
Speaker 1: themselves with like this was crazy, with like assault weapons
Speaker 1: like from the twenty first slash twenty seconds, like three
Speaker 1: hundred year old guns, which I get it. If you're
Speaker 1: the UEG, you probably don't want your colonists having like
Speaker 1: really good weapons.
Speaker 3: But the gunned in they unbelievable fashion, unbelievable.
Speaker 1: They just have like antiques out here, So all the
Speaker 1: guns and all that stuff, it doesn't it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because the elites are like seven feet tall, incredibly strong.
Speaker 1: They have energy shields that just turn back the bullets
Speaker 1: with ease, and they are armed with plasma weaponry that
Speaker 1: just melt people. They easily brush the colonials aside, and
Speaker 1: just as the colonials are being completely wiped out, the
Speaker 1: unsse and four Spartans Sorein riz Kai and the Master
Speaker 1: Chief John one one seven arrive and they are bad ass.
Speaker 1: So they managed to check the attack. Uh, and it's
Speaker 1: it's another victory for the Spartans, minus the fact that
Speaker 1: every single colodial has been massacred, except.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of.
Speaker 1: Like it's a it's a you win some, you'll lose some,
Speaker 1: but listen, the colony has been defended. The Spartans set
Speaker 1: off to find out where the landing site is. They
Speaker 1: discover the same cave that Kwan had found, and inside
Speaker 1: that cave there is some sort of alien artifact that
Speaker 1: that the covenant we're trying to extract. Chief touches it.
Speaker 1: The device activates with this green light of sending out
Speaker 1: these interesting lines and patterns, and suddenly inside Chief's mind
Speaker 1: something unlocks and these long buried memories start emerging, and
Speaker 1: he sees like snippets of like some other plant, a dog,
Speaker 1: like some kind of crashed ship and then Chief snaps
Speaker 1: out of it. A cloaked Elite sprints out of the cave,
Speaker 1: knocking down Kwan, who has already been through so much today,
Speaker 1: and now Quan's knocked unconscious buying fleeing Elite, the elite escapes.
Speaker 1: Chief is like, hey, take this alien drop ship back
Speaker 1: to Fleet Command so they can look into it. I
Speaker 1: am going to go after the Elite to see where
Speaker 1: he went, and that's what I'm going to do. I'm
Speaker 1: going to get that artifact back. And that's what we're doing.
Speaker 1: And the Spartans are like, are you sure, that's kind
Speaker 1: of like not procedure. He's like, don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I'm the Master Chief. I worry you'd do this. On Reach,
Speaker 1: which is an important United Government world ten and a
Speaker 1: half light years from Earth, it's the home of UNSC
Speaker 1: Fleet Command, we meet doctor Catherine Halsey, who is a
Speaker 1: brilliant super genius behind the Spartan project and the secret
Speaker 1: programs of which we will soon learn about. And if
Speaker 1: you have read the Halo novelizations are played a Halo game,
Speaker 1: you probably can figure out where this is going. She
Speaker 1: sees something in the way that the artifact reacts to
Speaker 1: the Master Chief. She's watching like the security footage of
Speaker 1: this that interests her. Admiral Paragowski arrives at Halsey's lab
Speaker 1: and she is like the big muckety muck at Fleet
Speaker 1: Command and she arrives and she's like, listen, Security council
Speaker 1: might just cut your funding because of this magical debacle,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't look great. Yes, the Spartans defeated the Covenant,
Speaker 1: but like all the colonials did. And Halsey's like, forget
Speaker 1: about the colonials. We don't care. We literally don't want
Speaker 1: to talk about them on anymore. Let's talk about this
Speaker 1: artifact that that we found on Madrigal. And we learn
Speaker 1: through this conversation that the ug has been fighting a
Speaker 1: covenant for a long time, but apparently most colonials don't
Speaker 1: really they think the Covenant is like a myth. And also,
Speaker 1: after all these years, the UEG has no idea what
Speaker 1: the Covenant want. They have no idea what they want,
Speaker 1: so maybe this artifact will tell them what they want.
Speaker 1: Is the first time they've got any kind of indication
Speaker 1: that the Covenant wants something, so they know that they
Speaker 1: have to get this artifact. Halsey tells Paragowsky that listened,
Speaker 1: the artifact needs to come to my lab. It should
Speaker 1: not go to the lab of doctor Miranda Keys, a
Speaker 1: rising figure in the unsc and spoiler alert kind of
Speaker 1: well not really they say it in the episode, so
Speaker 1: I'll just tell you doctor Halsey's daughter. On her way out,
Speaker 1: Paragowsky tells Halsey to get rid of that, and that
Speaker 1: turns out to be some kind of clone, some kind
Speaker 1: of clone, probably for the Kortana project, but perhaps like
Speaker 1: trying to restart the Spartan project. What do you think
Speaker 1: that could be?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I definitely think And the thing is, it looks
Speaker 3: like it could be a clone of doctor Halsey. So
Speaker 3: there's definitely younger Halsey, younger Holesey. So there's come some
Speaker 3: kind of strange thing here. It could be something more
Speaker 3: intimate about trying to cure a sickness that's often like
Speaker 3: a sci fi thing, you need to replace yourself so
Speaker 3: your work can go on, or I think most likely
Speaker 3: because of the show and how much they're gonna it
Speaker 3: seems like they're leaning into the like conflicted nature of
Speaker 3: master Chief and the kind of realities of the Spartan program.
Speaker 3: I think it's like gonna be a spin off or
Speaker 3: a continuation of the Spartan program.
Speaker 1: We then go shockingly, I must say to high Charity.
Speaker 1: Another location from the video games, somewhere in uncharted space.
Speaker 1: This is the Covenant High Command megabase. The size of
Speaker 1: a planet looks like a gigantic jellyfish. A Covenant profit
Speaker 1: who is profits are part of the Alien Alliance and
Speaker 1: they are basically the leadership class in the Covenant is
Speaker 1: discussing with a human woman named Makey. They don't actually
Speaker 1: say her name in this, but from IMDb this is cheating,
Speaker 1: but m A k ee, So I'm gonna say Makey.
Speaker 1: I think that's right.
Speaker 3: This this scene, I just need to say this. We'll
Speaker 3: talk more about the general show. And like the opening
Speaker 3: really sets this kind of unexpected tone, but it fits
Speaker 3: into what kind of what I expected from a Halo show.
Speaker 3: Lots of action, like really great creature work. But this
Speaker 3: scene is so prequel Star Wars. It's so Amadala and
Speaker 3: it's so deep, hard bureaucratic sci fi, and I wasn't
Speaker 3: really expecting to get that.
Speaker 1: This was the scene that surprised me as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it apparently Machi. You again, they haven't said her
Speaker 1: name yet, so I hope that's right. Is a human
Speaker 1: that apparently was kidnapped by the Covenant and raised in
Speaker 1: their ways. So Machi apparently predicted where the artifact would be,
Speaker 1: and she was right about that, but not that the
Speaker 1: Spartans would arrive and foil the plans to snatch it.
Speaker 1: So the profit is being very very like snackety with
Speaker 1: Machi and in fact downright derisive towards her. More interestingly,
Speaker 1: we know that the Covenant has a nickname for master Chief.
Speaker 1: They call him a demon. Maki would like to speak
Speaker 1: to the cloaked Covenant warrior who escaped the cave and
Speaker 1: witnessed the entire incident and saw that the artifact reacted
Speaker 1: to master Chief with it, which the Covenant find very interesting.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The prophet then mock's MACKI for reading apparently like human
Speaker 1: literature in an attempt to know the mind of humanity
Speaker 1: on master Chiefs. Condor Kwan wakes up on route to
Speaker 1: reach she finds the Master Chief staring at the artifact.
Speaker 1: He's just obsessed with this fucking thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wants to know about that flashback like he
Speaker 3: was that conflict, like, wasn't he just always master chief?
Speaker 3: Who is this dog?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What where did.
Speaker 3: Where did he come from?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And that's that's obviously going to be the major seed.
Speaker 3: And I kind of think that the nod about MACKI
Speaker 3: reading like human literature hints that there's going to be
Speaker 3: some kind of conflict there that's relative of this idea
Speaker 3: of the Covenant and the humans and some kind of.
Speaker 1: Romance.
Speaker 3: How smell a romance across these two people who might
Speaker 3: know where they come from have been adopted in strange classes.
Speaker 1: I know, I love it. Miranda Keys holograms into talk
Speaker 1: to Kwan and Ken. She's like, hey, listen, I'm really
Speaker 1: really sorry that your dad and everyone you ever knew
Speaker 1: has been massacred by the Covenant.
Speaker 4: In front of your eyes brutally.
Speaker 1: That was really tough. But but but but if you
Speaker 1: were to like get on the twenty sixth century TikTok
Speaker 1: and be like, hey, hey, y'all, you know what was
Speaker 1: really cool the Spartans. They came and defended us, and yes,
Speaker 1: I'm the only survivor, but they did a great job
Speaker 1: and they are here to protect us. If you would
Speaker 1: go on, you know, do a media tour and just
Speaker 1: help us sell how what a great job the Spartans
Speaker 1: are doing for the colonials. That would really be a help.
Speaker 1: And Kwan's like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna sell out like that. She says that if
Speaker 1: she were to record such a video, she would just say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, the Spartans slaughtered everybody. What about that?
Speaker 1: That's what they did. And if you don't want me
Speaker 1: to do that, here are my demands free magic goal
Speaker 1: from UEG control and Miranda Keys is like, well that
Speaker 1: went badly and hangs up. We go back to Reach
Speaker 1: where Halsey is a studying Master Chiefs vitals. Everything here's
Speaker 1: you know, how your iPhone or your device gives you
Speaker 1: now hopefully gives you the option to like opt out
Speaker 1: of all your information being like sold to various places
Speaker 1: them onlier Armor does not have that. You can't turn
Speaker 1: of everything. Everything gets sent to unsc fleet Command and
Speaker 1: Halsey is studying Master Chiefs vitals and she notices that whoa,
Speaker 1: this artifact really did something to the Chief, like his
Speaker 1: biology is different somehow, And she notices that curiously Master
Speaker 1: she is not mentioned that he's feeling weird or anything.
Speaker 1: So that's a note of concern. She speaks with him,
Speaker 1: asks him about it. He says, listen, I touched the
Speaker 1: object and I saw stuff I saw visions of, like
Speaker 1: maybe my childhood. I saw a dog. And it's clear
Speaker 1: that Master Chief is very troubled by this. On Reach,
Speaker 1: doctor Keys talks with her dad, Captain Jacob Keys. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna call Captain Jacob about Miranda's unsuccessful attempt at diplomacy,
Speaker 1: at diplomacy with.
Speaker 3: Qualms like it was not good, badly timed. It was like, hey, sorry,
Speaker 3: your friends died, but could you just like do some
Speaker 3: cool propaganda for us, even though we've been messing up
Speaker 3: your lives.
Speaker 1: Just like go straight to camera, Just like if you
Speaker 1: could do just a video, something vertical and just go
Speaker 1: straight to.
Speaker 3: Camera content about this massacre.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, while her dad is talking to her about this,
Speaker 1: they're like dissecting covenant bodies around her, which is like
Speaker 1: not the setting to have this converse station anyway. Keys
Speaker 1: is frustrated at Halsey is stymying her career at every term,
Speaker 1: and here we learn that, to make things even weirder,
Speaker 1: that's her mom. So okay, that's an issues shocking. And
Speaker 1: then at the end of this conversation, Captain Jacob her
Speaker 1: dad again just very casually drops the news that hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna disappear Kwan.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 1: Yeah, We're gonna liquidate her. What Yeah, We're gonna assassinate her.
Speaker 1: What Yeah, We're gonna exit. We're gonna fucking kill her
Speaker 1: because the story, whatever story she has, we don't want
Speaker 1: that to get out. It's just much easier if all
Speaker 1: the colonists for Magical Die and Doctor Keys is absolutely
Speaker 1: fucking shocked at this. It's like, honey, how long you've
Speaker 1: been working at the UNSC is what we do?
Speaker 3: You know what? It's Uh, it's the moment when you
Speaker 3: realize that they're not going to shy away from the reality,
Speaker 3: which is they are the bad guys like they which
Speaker 3: I love.
Speaker 1: I that's the thing. I the books go there as well,
Speaker 1: because the colonials are restive as well, they have certain demands.
Speaker 1: The UNSC acts completely ruthlessly towards them. The Spartan program
Speaker 1: was in fact created and deployed against human beings if
Speaker 1: more often they're not. And I'm glad that they went there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool that they went there with.
Speaker 3: I think it's really interesting and we'll get to kind
Speaker 3: of the tone and the vibe. But like, I think
Speaker 3: it's really interesting to take what to a lot of
Speaker 3: people who haven't necessarily deeply played the games, or who
Speaker 3: haven't read the books, which I'm so gonna have to
Speaker 3: do now, like I'm gonna need it. I think I
Speaker 3: read the first one, but I think I need to
Speaker 3: go back and read them because I feel like this
Speaker 3: must be taking so much inspiration because there's so much
Speaker 3: depth to this first episode. But I think it's really
Speaker 3: cool that they essentially took something that a lot of
Speaker 3: people just know as kind of like a shoot them up,
Speaker 3: kind of like fast Pass sure, and I like, here's
Speaker 3: like a Star Trek level in depth exploration of this
Speaker 3: world that you've never seen. And let's talk about what
Speaker 3: it means to be colonists, and let's talk about what
Speaker 3: these government aids just sees will do to survive.
Speaker 1: I really love and am fascinated by the fact that
Speaker 1: they took a military shooter and made a show that
Speaker 1: is very critical of militarism.
Speaker 3: So that is very interesting and.
Speaker 1: That's when it's gonna keep me watching at this point.
Speaker 1: So on the back on Master chief Ship, Kwan is
Speaker 1: eating his Master chief sits there like a weirdo watching.
Speaker 1: He attempts a little humor and she's like, do you
Speaker 1: want somebody eat? He's like, yeah, I eat nuts and
Speaker 1: waltz and stuff, which is very funny. She's like, you
Speaker 1: ever take off your helmet, you know, Mandalorian style and
Speaker 1: he says like the Mandalorian. No, that's that is the way. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a different show. But still it's got all my
Speaker 1: you know UI and all the interface stuff in.
Speaker 3: The Mandalorian is.
Speaker 4: Well, that's so much Wars in this show.
Speaker 1: But yeah, she's and then Kwan is like, hey, we
Speaker 1: met you remember that? And he's like no, and she
Speaker 1: was like, so a bunch of colonists had got together
Speaker 1: to talk about like what the UEG was doing and
Speaker 1: how oppressive they were being, and someone called in a
Speaker 1: bomb threat and then the UNSC Marine Marine Force plus
Speaker 1: the Spartans responded and they wiped everybody out, including my mom.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that? And Master she was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, the orders were to kill the leader,
Speaker 1: but then in the middle of it, the orders changed
Speaker 1: and it was to kill everyone who is there. And
Speaker 1: by the way, that is, I might be remembering this wrong.
Speaker 1: It's been a number of years since I read Reached,
Speaker 1: the first book in the Halo series, but that is
Speaker 1: like the opening actions of Eric Nyland's Halo Reach, if
Speaker 1: I recall correctly. Anyway, master Chief and the rest of
Speaker 1: the Spartans to paraphrase him, were basically just following orders.
Speaker 3: And we all know where that's happened before and how
Speaker 3: I write.
Speaker 1: And just as he is getting done telling her this,
Speaker 1: an order comes across his visor that says liquidate Qwan Oh,
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, what was.
Speaker 3: Your name again?
Speaker 1: Yes, doub He like, doesn't He does it like a
Speaker 1: quick double check, and he's like you're Kuwan right, and
Speaker 1: she's like yep. He's like okay. On Reach. Alarm is
Speaker 1: growing because it's clear that Master Chief is acting super weird.
Speaker 1: Rather than kill Kwan immediately, he has killed the video
Speaker 1: feed from his ship, which is again quite alarming to
Speaker 1: UNSC headquarters. Halsey tells Paragowski and Captain Jacob that she
Speaker 1: thinks that Master Chief is accessing old memories, which Paragowsky
Speaker 1: is like, oh shit, like do we want our ultimate
Speaker 1: weapons suddenly being going off script and being like, hey,
Speaker 1: where did I come from? What have you done?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: We don't want that, And Halsey's like, this is exactly
Speaker 1: why we need the Quartana system to help keep them
Speaker 1: under control. And Paragrassy's like, here you go again, pitching
Speaker 1: the Quartana system in the middle of emergency. Stop cloning
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about Quortana, And she orders Halsey to
Speaker 1: get Master Chief under control. The UNSC cuts the oxygen
Speaker 1: level on Master chief ship, which is on autopilots. So
Speaker 1: the idea is they just fall asleep and the ship
Speaker 1: lands and then we can figure it out. The ship
Speaker 1: arrives in Reach space. But Chief is tough and he
Speaker 1: can somehow just like brute force himself through oxygen deficiency,
Speaker 1: and he like wakes up and tweaks the atmosphere controls
Speaker 1: in the ship and now everybody's able to breathe. Paragowsky
Speaker 1: orders a full military response to meet the Chief when
Speaker 1: he lands, but Halsey very very very very mischievously superses
Speaker 1: the order directly to the Spartan squad. She tells the Spartans, Hey,
Speaker 1: new orders for you guys, protect Master Chief no matter
Speaker 1: what whoever's trying to harm him, doesn't matter. You protect
Speaker 1: Chief and they're like does that mean like UNSC marines
Speaker 1: And Halsey's like figure it out, genius, and they're like okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think? Back on the ship, pulls a
Speaker 1: battle rifle on Chief, my favorite weapon from the Halo
Speaker 1: video game series, as I'm sure I'm not alone in that,
Speaker 1: and Chief is like, listen, I like the I like
Speaker 1: the Moxie, but that thing's not even going to scratch me.
Speaker 1: I'm like under an energy shield. Under that is like
Speaker 1: multiple layers of titanium. Under that is some other fucking
Speaker 1: futuristic shit. There's no way you can even hurt me
Speaker 1: with that, so stop it. Then he takes off his
Speaker 1: helmet and he's like, this is my face. You may
Speaker 1: have recognized me from season two of The Wire on
Speaker 1: the Docks.
Speaker 3: With Terrifying Moment.
Speaker 1: My name is Pablo Streamer. You've seen me and other stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's the right, here's the America Gods. Also, here's the deal.
Speaker 1: The UNSC wants to kill you and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: protect you. Now, do you want to put that three
Speaker 1: burst into my face? Or do you want to live?
Speaker 1: And Kwan's like, I want to live. Okay, So first
Speaker 1: things first, we need to disconnect disconnect the the AI
Speaker 1: control of the ship, and Kwan does that by shooting it.
Speaker 1: So master Chief then takes off, but then the uns
Speaker 1: cannons knock the Condor out of the sky. The ship
Speaker 1: is surrounded by marines and spartans. They're about to break
Speaker 1: into the ship. But then Master Chief here he goes again.
Speaker 1: He's just obsessed with his artifact. He can't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about it. He looks at it on the ground and
Speaker 1: he touches it, and more memories come to the four.
Speaker 1: Now he sees people's faces, different things, snippets of rooms,
Speaker 1: and more stuff, and the artifact releases a pulse and
Speaker 1: Fleet Command loses power. But interestingly, the Condor gets powered
Speaker 1: up and master Chief snaps out of it. He says,
Speaker 1: buckle up, we're out of here, folks, and they fly
Speaker 1: away and we're off into episode two. So, Rosie, your
Speaker 1: thoughts on episode one of Halo.
Speaker 3: It was very different than I thought it was gonna
Speaker 3: be same, And the more I think of it, I
Speaker 3: actually think that's like a good thing. I think it's
Speaker 3: really had to adapt something that is so much about
Speaker 3: the player's experience which is, you know the problem with
Speaker 3: every video game, but specifically a game like this where
Speaker 3: you are in the space and world and mind. And
Speaker 3: also like how much of the narrative people know of
Speaker 3: Halo is to do with how much they commit to it,
Speaker 3: so for some people that they don't. And I actually
Speaker 3: thought that it was really interesting and weird and slow Bernie,
Speaker 3: and also as well, like the production value was really great.
Speaker 1: I agree this.
Speaker 3: It looks so good.
Speaker 1: So I'm watching We're watching it on screeners. Okay, so
Speaker 1: episode one of the screener we get to give us
Speaker 1: the first two. I've only seen the first one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is it's clear that the vfx are are not quite
Speaker 1: all the way polished, but it still looks incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the the practical effects, explosions, the battle scenes, the
Speaker 1: elites themselves, Like there's just some like minor textural stuff
Speaker 1: that it's clear that we're going to fill in, but
Speaker 1: like Reach looks incredible. Yeah, High Charity looks incredible. Like
Speaker 1: all the stuff looks amazing.
Speaker 3: Something that I think is really cool that I enjoyed
Speaker 3: a lot about this, I think was something I didn't
Speaker 3: really get from the trailers. I think a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff that came out Halo. You know a lot of
Speaker 3: the movies, a lot of this stuff that came out
Speaker 3: in this era was very like Orange. It had that
Speaker 3: color grading of you know, war and sand and barren
Speaker 3: and the green of master Chief and stuff. But this,
Speaker 3: there's so many we get that classic opening, Like the
Speaker 3: opening is kind of very Star Wars Star Treki where
Speaker 3: you really get the feeling of the colonists before you
Speaker 3: see them being massacred sadly. But I just thought they
Speaker 3: actually did such a good job of showing all these
Speaker 3: different worlds and spaces and they all looked so different
Speaker 3: and were so visually easy to follow that even though
Speaker 3: when you're describing it, it's like then they're there, then
Speaker 3: they're there, but you know, from the cinematography, from the
Speaker 3: production design, you immediately know where you are once you've
Speaker 3: been there one time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree. And I and again like I'm
Speaker 1: a big fan of Starship Troopers me too. They love
Speaker 1: it as a like a satire of millistriism that and
Speaker 1: fascism that is so finely tuned that I think probably
Speaker 1: the majority of people who watch that movie or just
Speaker 1: when this is a great just action.
Speaker 3: When it came out.
Speaker 1: I think nothing deeper of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I have a name. I have a
Speaker 3: nameplate necklace like people get of their names, and mine
Speaker 3: says Viehoven because I love Paul Verehoven so much. And
Speaker 3: when that movie came out, people hated it. People were
Speaker 3: like it this is military fascist propaganda, which is what
Speaker 3: the book it's based on was. But actually it's such
Speaker 3: a searing, fucking brilliant, brutal satire and every time you
Speaker 3: watch it it still feels absolutely relevant. And I definitely,
Speaker 3: I definitely like that this. This is not as funny
Speaker 3: Starship Troopers is, like Hilario, Yes, but I love that
Speaker 3: this has that same intention of examining the idea of
Speaker 3: like a militarized action show and what it means to
Speaker 3: be a militarized force. I think it's it's a really
Speaker 3: interesting and unexpected Yeah.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that too, And it's kind of got this
Speaker 1: iron giant feel to it of we've lost control of
Speaker 1: our weapon. Yeah, you know, our our We've made this
Speaker 1: ultimate weapon, high tech. It is our last hope to
Speaker 1: like turn back the tide of whatever, whatever whatever, And yes,
Speaker 1: we are suspending space civil liberties and oppressing our colonies.
Speaker 1: We have to, but we have to do it, but
Speaker 1: then to lose control of the weapon because the weapon
Speaker 1: is like is this is this the right way to
Speaker 1: be doing?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 1: I love stories to it? And so I'm on the hook.
Speaker 3: I also think that you some one of the moments
Speaker 3: that you said that's like, I think is actually really
Speaker 3: smart in retrospect, is like how master Chief can weigh
Speaker 3: cup when they turned down the oxygen levels. It's like,
Speaker 3: don't be surprised. You literally built him to be like
Speaker 3: immortal infallible, like, and now what happens when that thing
Speaker 3: that you created to destroy other people? To destroy? This
Speaker 3: a you know how many you know, we're talking about
Speaker 3: video games, like what about you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: this is the route that this is going to go,
Speaker 3: but I love the implication of like that kind of
Speaker 3: Did you ever play at PlayStation one game Shadow of
Speaker 3: the Colossus? Oh? My right, so the whole time, Yes,
Speaker 3: of course I knew A.
Speaker 1: Shadow of the Colossus for those of you who don't know,
Speaker 1: is a game by one of the great art tours
Speaker 1: of video games for Meido Uta, and it is about
Speaker 1: a person who rides around this beautiful like fantastical landscape
Speaker 1: and is uh, that person's mission is to like kill
Speaker 1: these massive, very gentle beast.
Speaker 3: You know, you're meant to think because it's a monster,
Speaker 3: because you're playing a video game, right, it's a monster,
Speaker 3: and you are the person you've got to kill them,
Speaker 3: and you realize at the end that that you are
Speaker 3: the bad guy. You are not the.
Speaker 1: Killing these these gentle giants that are just like chilling
Speaker 1: in feelings.
Speaker 3: You're like part of the natural order of things. They're
Speaker 3: these beautiful and that is like one of the most
Speaker 3: visceral versions of that story that I think of so often,
Speaker 3: And I definitely feel like there's something interesting in what
Speaker 3: they're seeding here where it's like master Chief recontextualizing the
Speaker 3: people that he's meant to be killing and realizing that
Speaker 3: there's a humanity to everyone. And that's really I mean,
Speaker 3: obviously Pablo Schreiber, he's he's doing the master Chief thing.
Speaker 3: It looks incredible. The suit is like.
Speaker 1: Absolutely perfect perfect.
Speaker 3: But yeah, in har who plays Kwanha, I think that's
Speaker 3: the that's the human heart of the show. And I
Speaker 3: think even though you know, her whole family got fridged
Speaker 3: and her whole community I think that it's very smart
Speaker 3: to do that kind of man. It's like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's the body, it's the body, unexpected team up. It's
Speaker 3: the revolutionary and the military man. It's it's a little
Speaker 3: bit mandalorian ish, but you know, there's no child. It's
Speaker 3: just like it's hidden fortress. It's the two people who
Speaker 3: team up. It's a hero's journey. And and Yarinha is
Speaker 3: so good, like when she was she's great doing this
Speaker 3: great Quanha did this, like when she does the the
Speaker 3: speech to the doctor and she's saying, she's like, you
Speaker 3: know what, I'm just going to tell them that you
Speaker 3: did it, and she's so unhinged and angry, and You're
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, I wouldn't even blame you. Like they
Speaker 3: have their propaganda and you have yours. So I think
Speaker 3: that this added an unexpectedly kind of human element that
Speaker 3: I wasn't. I don't think that that would have been
Speaker 3: the story that got told if this show.
Speaker 1: Got was not expecting them to take this angle on it.
Speaker 1: And so that is the thing that will keep me
Speaker 1: watching because I'm really fascinated. But I'm glad you brought
Speaker 1: up shadow of the classus. Let's talk about some of
Speaker 1: our favorite video games. I just want to say about
Speaker 1: Shadow of the Classus. One of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: think Uita is brilliant and that game in particular is
Speaker 1: brilliant is that. So one of the mechanics of that
Speaker 1: game is you have to climb these massive closs i right,
Speaker 1: and then kill them. And killing them involves like following
Speaker 1: this like pattern of button prompts like uh, circle, ye, yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll be like circle, triangle, triangle, circle trial, try, and
Speaker 1: it'll be that these these strings of patterns for minutes
Speaker 1: and minutes and minutes, and you're like, why am I
Speaker 1: doing this? Why is this so hard? Like why is
Speaker 1: this boss fight like this? The reason it's like that
Speaker 1: is the game is making you complicit in the murder
Speaker 1: of these.
Speaker 3: Constantly and for a long time. Like even as you're
Speaker 3: there and you're thinking, why does it take so long?
Speaker 3: Why do I have to press all these buttons? You
Speaker 3: don't stop doing it. You just do it because what
Speaker 3: the game is telling you to do. It's what you
Speaker 3: were ordered to do. You. Oh, it's a monster, I
Speaker 3: have to kill it. That's the nature of video game.
Speaker 1: And that creates this really really like unique emotional feeling
Speaker 1: of It's one of the saddest games I've ever played
Speaker 1: in my.
Speaker 3: Life when you have the realization of what is happening. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the power. I think of those video games rather
Speaker 3: than film and TV. And obviously we love film and
Speaker 3: TV so much, and you know, I had nothing better
Speaker 3: than sitting in a cinema and feeling like you're immersed
Speaker 3: in that world. But in video games, you become complicit.
Speaker 3: You take the actions, and you make the choices. It's
Speaker 3: the ultimate pick your own ending story.
Speaker 1: What are you are you playing anything right now?
Speaker 3: Okay, so I I do have like a next gen
Speaker 3: system that I do intend to get eldem ring on,
Speaker 3: but this can't wait for you to Yeah, I'm so
Speaker 3: excited for it, and I know it's going to be
Speaker 3: really hard, like any any mission based game, but that
Speaker 3: allows you to kind of roam and do your own thing.
Speaker 3: I am the roaming and doing my own thing person.
Speaker 1: I literally good news. There's so I will never finish
Speaker 1: the game.
Speaker 3: I still haven't fully completed Breath of the Wild simply
Speaker 3: because all I do is go and cook. I just
Speaker 3: I'm very far and I could finish it if I want,
Speaker 3: but I just play it, and every time, I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: I could do this last boss, or I could just
Speaker 3: like I could just go and cook some food and like,
Speaker 3: you know, ride a deer. And I love that notion
Speaker 3: of it, but I have not yet done it. For
Speaker 3: two reasons that I love my Switch. I'm like the
Speaker 3: number one Nintendo.
Speaker 1: Switch big switch fan as well.
Speaker 3: I love it. And there are two games. There's a
Speaker 3: game called Ollie Ollie World, which is a skateboarding platformer
Speaker 3: that is just so addictive and the art style is
Speaker 3: really beautiful. It's absolutely inspired by Pendleton Ward and Adventure Time,
Speaker 3: and it has the most incredible You could just spend
Speaker 3: like three hours just modeling your character because it's got
Speaker 3: so many different unbelievable options. You can have all different
Speaker 3: kinds of looks and skin tones and hairstyles and tattoos.
Speaker 3: And then it's basically like a really simple but really
Speaker 3: really tricky game where you can play it kind of
Speaker 3: like Tony Hawk, where you can get a number of points,
Speaker 3: but you've always got to finish the course. So that
Speaker 3: and then I was like, okay, well I've played that
Speaker 3: a lot, and I love indie games. I'll always go
Speaker 3: back to it. And I was like, I'll get Elderly
Speaker 3: and then if you have the Switch Online expansion pack,
Speaker 3: which obviously I got for Animal Crossing because I love
Speaker 3: Animal Crossing. I'm a big They just uploaded I think, like, well,
Speaker 3: they uploaded two new sets of Mario Kart courses that
Speaker 3: have absolutely new for Mario Kart eight, which is eight
Speaker 3: new track. So that's it. That's just my life. I
Speaker 3: absolutely love it. I love Merica, and I was like,
Speaker 3: why weren't they make a new Mario Cup. But now
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, because they can just keep making new
Speaker 3: tracks for this, and I will happily take.
Speaker 6: Those new tracks, those free new tracks. I know for
Speaker 6: you it's only about one game, so tell me.
Speaker 1: Well, right now I'm playing so much elder Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: not been a big Demon Souls Bloodborn person, which is
Speaker 1: the from Soft, the publisher. Those are their previous games
Speaker 1: and the kind of games that were created under the
Speaker 1: stewardship and direction of Hitataka Miyazaki, who's also directed of
Speaker 1: the Solo series. So this game is like in the
Speaker 1: lineage of those games. But veteran Souls Born players will
Speaker 1: tell you that this is the easiest version. I don't
Speaker 1: know about that. It is still like early game is
Speaker 1: so hard. It's so hard, Rosie. It's like everything can
Speaker 1: fucking kill you. Little animals are beating your ends. And
Speaker 1: here's the thing so that this game is it's extremely
Speaker 1: popular and it's great. What do I love?
Speaker 3: Love?
Speaker 1: What do I love about it? I love that it's
Speaker 1: like Breath of the Wild. There is a feeling of
Speaker 1: the thrill of exploration, of just finding new dungeons, new
Speaker 1: corners of the map, new places, beautiful places, and really
Speaker 1: that's how to progress in the game, because the very
Speaker 1: first thing that happens in the game is you come
Speaker 1: out of the tutorial like catacombs, and you're presented with
Speaker 1: this huge night on a steed that you can't beat.
Speaker 1: You can't beat them. Maybe if you're a veteran Souls
Speaker 1: Born player, maybe you can beat them, but like one
Speaker 1: hundred percent, you can't fight this thing, and so your
Speaker 1: only option is to go off and explore, and through
Speaker 1: that exploration you can level up and eventually be able
Speaker 1: to fight these various bosses. So it's that kind of
Speaker 1: feeling of what else is there to explore. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many hours I'm into this game,
Speaker 1: but there has I'm there's still a whole section of
Speaker 1: the map that I haven't online.
Speaker 3: You were saying in Austin you were on like level
Speaker 3: seventy seven or something and it was still so hard,
Speaker 3: Like you have lost the hard pot.
Speaker 2: I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm level of right now ninety eight and
Speaker 1: I'm still getting my ass.
Speaker 2: Kid.
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting because there's this whole discourse has come
Speaker 1: up around this game. Part of what makes these games
Speaker 1: so difficult is there is there can how to play
Speaker 1: them is very opaque. There's all these features and tips
Speaker 1: and tricks that you really rely on the community to
Speaker 1: tell you. There's all these secret buffs and secret d
Speaker 1: buffs that you can get by like hugging in PCs
Speaker 1: and different things in different ways to like make your
Speaker 1: stuff your your your like weaponry and your and your
Speaker 1: power set like work better. But that's not explained to you.
Speaker 1: And so this is a real feature of these kind
Speaker 1: of games. And also like players can leave little messages
Speaker 1: for you and here there's like a secret passage here,
Speaker 1: and sometimes those are fakes. So what's been interesting is
Speaker 1: there is this whole discourse. Some publishers, some of the
Speaker 1: people the devs that worked on another game that got
Speaker 1: released it is also very good that I'm not going
Speaker 1: to talk about. But they're in America. We're like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, why do people like this? Why is this?
Speaker 1: It's so weird like taking shots at this game kind
Speaker 1: of like at a not directly, but at a weird angle,
Speaker 1: being like, oh, it's this huge landscape, but it's so empty,
Speaker 1: and like the UI is not good, like you don't
Speaker 1: it doesn't tell you all the stuff on the screen.
Speaker 1: And I agree with that to an extent. But the
Speaker 1: thing this game does, and this is a hallmark of
Speaker 1: the kind of not to like not to bundle all
Speaker 1: Japanese game devs together, okay, but like similar to Shadow
Speaker 1: of the Classes, there's a thing that elden Ring does
Speaker 1: that is kind of like this, uh, where they use
Speaker 1: the mechanics to kind of like enhance a philosophy. And
Speaker 1: the philosophy is, from my perspective, ask the other people
Speaker 1: playing how to play, yes, and so that's what the
Speaker 1: philosophy is. Don't ask us, ask the other players, create
Speaker 1: this community and through that you will discover how to
Speaker 1: play and I And whereas the more western style is
Speaker 1: here's everything you need right, and also like, if you
Speaker 1: need more stuff, you need to be better at it.
Speaker 1: Here's what you can might do micro chans. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you can pay, you can pay. They give you this
Speaker 1: Eldering gives you everything you need.
Speaker 3: You just need to know you need.
Speaker 1: To ask other people. And I think and there's something
Speaker 1: really uh it sounds hokey, but there's something I think
Speaker 1: really cool about that I watch. Let me, I want
Speaker 1: to I want to shout out this creator. Hold on
Speaker 1: a second, because I forgot what his name is, Like,
Speaker 1: I've been watching videos by I'm not I'm not going
Speaker 1: to pronounce this right, but I'm just going to say.
Speaker 1: The creator's name on YouTube is Vati Vidya, So it's
Speaker 1: Vaa t I v I d Ya. And this person
Speaker 1: like has a ton of content like dealing with bloodborn
Speaker 1: with demon souls and now elden Ring, and this person
Speaker 1: creates truly beautiful content that like really enhances the mythology
Speaker 1: and the wonderful like magic feeling of exploring the game.
Speaker 1: And the fact that that elden Ring the creator, velden
Speaker 1: Rings the from software, the publisher and Bandynamco like the
Speaker 1: fact that like they are empowering other creators to create
Speaker 1: this stuff around it. They are saying, hey, go and
Speaker 1: seek out these people because they will help you play
Speaker 1: the game. I think is really cool and it's part
Speaker 1: of what I find so magical about this game.
Speaker 3: I also think like it actually takes from people might
Speaker 3: not remember this because we're both kind of old and
Speaker 3: like gaming has changed a lot, but like it's like
Speaker 3: the odd is like we had, like we had to
Speaker 3: communicate with each other to get cheat codes to get
Speaker 3: extra lives. You had to have the friend who knew
Speaker 3: what the cheat code was for the specific really weird
Speaker 3: nichee again, and you always had that one friend or
Speaker 3: you know, you would you would have the one friend,
Speaker 3: or you'd all chip in to buy the Giant Game Guide,
Speaker 3: you know, and then you know all the difference she
Speaker 3: had exact place, And I kind of love that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't really know that was such an active part
Speaker 3: of Triple A games until Death Stranding, where they were
Speaker 3: literally allowing people to build new objects, and I just
Speaker 3: I love It's like what we talk about with comics
Speaker 3: all the time. I love the conversation between creators and
Speaker 3: fans and fans and fans, and that's actually what keeps
Speaker 3: this stuff alive so to me that just I love
Speaker 3: that that's an aspect of the game, because I actually
Speaker 3: think that's the joy of it is.
Speaker 4: That's why we do this podcast. That's why we love the.
Speaker 3: People who listen to it. That's why the people want
Speaker 3: to listen to it is because it's just people talking
Speaker 3: about stuff they love and if you can and it's
Speaker 3: even better if that is a reward based Like you
Speaker 3: if you're like I'm talking to you about this and
Speaker 3: guess what now, you can you know, not die for
Speaker 3: ten minutes longer because because I learned something, what do
Speaker 3: you know? And you can like share that. I actually
Speaker 3: think that's really cool. I love the aspect and.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful game. Like if you like the rest
Speaker 1: of the wild, then you will enjoy this game. Uh,
Speaker 1: just when you get frustrated, just explore. That would be
Speaker 1: my one little hint. Yeah, okay, now people a lot.
Speaker 1: Now for the slightly bummer part of this conversation, which
Speaker 1: people people have been asking, Hey, you're gonna play Hogwarts Legacy?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna play it? What do you think about it?
Speaker 1: How does it look? And listen, I've watched all the
Speaker 1: videos I have watched. The videos include some more recent
Speaker 1: ones of the more finished build. It looks great. It
Speaker 1: looks triple A. The magic system looks really cool. That said, Yeah, Rosie,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you feel. I'll say how I feel.
Speaker 1: I because of Jk's history of transphobia, semi recent, you
Speaker 1: can't even get history doing this. She's been doing this
Speaker 1: for now, for several years now. I just I can't
Speaker 1: give her any more money. That's a. That's it's really
Speaker 1: that simple. Like I've given her a lot of money.
Speaker 1: I've i have been part of a community of fans
Speaker 1: that loves these stories. But I just can't, in good
Speaker 1: conscience give her any more money. And I've got like
Speaker 1: a lot of games that I could do that I
Speaker 1: could easily play. Whatever other people want to do, that
Speaker 1: is their business, but I don't. I just feel like
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 4: I know, I totally agree with you.
Speaker 3: It's it's a it's a it's a huge disappointment, I
Speaker 3: think for lots of people. Yeah, Like it's it's one
Speaker 3: of those things that we are both people who not
Speaker 3: only have we like loved Harry Potter, have been part
Speaker 3: of amazing communities, but like that's part of why we
Speaker 3: get to do this because yeah, Jason's won my one's
Speaker 3: back there, Like this is part of why we get
Speaker 3: to do this for our job, which is amazing, is
Speaker 3: because that was something that we spoke about or we
Speaker 3: talked about or we kind of shared with people, you know.
Speaker 3: But I'm the same. I can't. I don't get any now,
Speaker 3: not only ethically do I not want to support, but
Speaker 3: I don't get any love out of it. I can't
Speaker 3: ignore it. I can't separate it really hard.
Speaker 1: I can't. I couldn't.
Speaker 3: It's active, it's it's harmful, especially in the wake of
Speaker 3: the kind of transphobic laws and anti LGBTQ IA plus
Speaker 3: laws that are going across that is having a massive
Speaker 3: platform and spreading that kind of hatred.
Speaker 1: It just the violence that that community faces, and it
Speaker 1: creates more virulce violent death. Like it's just it's actually
Speaker 1: not in any way. No, I couldn't. I couldn't. You
Speaker 1: give her more money.
Speaker 3: And there is plenty of like you said, there's magical,
Speaker 3: amazing games. Especially I think like the Switch for me
Speaker 3: really changed my life. And I've never really been a
Speaker 3: PC game mat so, so the Switch has changed my
Speaker 3: life because now there's all these incredible indie games made
Speaker 3: by queer creators, made by transcreators, and you can just
Speaker 3: access them on the Switch. The Switch has incredible sales,
Speaker 3: like I got Spiritfarer, which is easily one of my
Speaker 3: favorite games of all time.
Speaker 1: Game unbelievable.
Speaker 3: I got it in a Switch sale. It's a beautiful
Speaker 3: game about death and grieving and it's kind of this
Speaker 3: incredible platformer and it has the most unbelievable explorations of
Speaker 3: love and different kinds of love and different kinds of people,
Speaker 3: and it is just so wonderful. And to me, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I love Triple A gaming and it's so exciting. And
Speaker 3: I've got a much better I have terrible hand to
Speaker 3: my coordination, and I sucked at video games.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, but I've lost my son.
Speaker 3: Now you know I'm doing better. So you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm lucky.
Speaker 4: I'm an adult.
Speaker 3: I get to make my own decisions. That's not something
Speaker 3: either of us are going to decide to support.
Speaker 1: Before we move on, Have you played Celeste?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: I actually yeah, I uh yeah, Celeste. I almost got
Speaker 3: to write something very cool about that game, a project
Speaker 3: that never happened. But that's another a brilliant game about
Speaker 3: mental health depression.
Speaker 1: One of the I think one of the most profound
Speaker 1: statements about mental health in a popular format ever. Believe
Speaker 1: the video games Celeste, which is in a an extremely
Speaker 1: hard but rewarding in its hardness platformer with I think
Speaker 1: one of the one of the great like original soundtracks
Speaker 1: in a video game ever. It's really cool like electro indie. Uh,
Speaker 1: soundtrack by Lena Rain if you have a switch, and
Speaker 1: I think it's available actually in the in the in
Speaker 1: the game stores of most major consoles. Celest. Great story,
Speaker 1: beautifully told, wonderful art, great music. Try it out. Uh,
Speaker 1: next up, let's talk. What do you say we talked
Speaker 1: to the great, the legendary Grant Morrison.
Speaker 3: I mean, is there anything bad?
Speaker 1: No, is not. Let's do it. Welcome to the Hive Mind,
Speaker 1: where we explore topic in greater depth. Was a helpful
Speaker 1: an expert guest today, folks, let's get right to it.
Speaker 1: The legendary, the legendary, the iconic, incredibly influential Grant Morrison.
Speaker 3: Grant, it's so good to see you, and thank you
Speaker 3: so much for coming.
Speaker 1: It's just yes, so wonderful.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're welcome. I see I see this, I see
Speaker 2: this camera movement.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a free wheeling conversation.
Speaker 2: So important, spinning hitchcocky.
Speaker 3: It's our fourth guest. I mean it's our second guest,
Speaker 3: or four of us. But yeah, something we talk about
Speaker 3: a lot on here because we like love comics, like
Speaker 3: I make comics.
Speaker 4: Jason's a writer.
Speaker 3: We we love reading them. What was kind of your
Speaker 3: comic book origin. What was the thing that made you
Speaker 3: love comics.
Speaker 2: I just I was a little kid in the sixties
Speaker 2: and comics were always about and I was lucky enough
Speaker 2: that my mother was into science fiction, so she was
Speaker 2: a huge fan of sort of science fiction paperbacks and
Speaker 2: all those you know, kind of fifties, sixties, all the
Speaker 2: really cool stuff, so I had that around the house.
Speaker 2: I was very into the imagery, though I didn't particularly
Speaker 2: like the books, but comics were there as well. And
Speaker 2: it was my uncle Billy particularly. He was the same
Speaker 2: guy who got me into the occult later. But he
Speaker 2: had this huge family and cats and dogs and rabbits
Speaker 2: and stuff, and they had comic books about all the
Speaker 2: all the time, So it was it was the Flash
Speaker 2: was the one that always remember, I mean, the first
Speaker 2: the first comic I remember from when I was like
Speaker 2: three years old. Was actually a marvel Man, a British thing,
Speaker 2: you know, that the one that Alan now eventually did
Speaker 2: that became Miracle Man, But it was the very early
Speaker 2: stuff with Mcanngelo marvel Man, and I remember that was
Speaker 2: it was marvel Man beats Baron Minchausen and it was
Speaker 2: just this mad no, it was this mad story. I
Speaker 2: love that it's got like, you know, there's he ties
Speaker 2: his donkey to this kind of hitching post and then
Speaker 2: in the morning all the snows melted and the donkey's
Speaker 2: hanging off the spider the local steeple, and it was
Speaker 2: just it was all these weird, these weird Barren moonshous
Speaker 2: and stories, but with marvel Man involved in it, so
Speaker 2: that that was the one that stuck in my mind.
Speaker 2: And that idea of the costume the Superman, you know,
Speaker 2: seemed kind of intriguing, but it was the it was
Speaker 2: the Flash for me really. I found these ones when
Speaker 2: I was starting to get a bit more, you know,
Speaker 2: a bit older as a kid, like six or seven,
Speaker 2: and the Flash comics just really fascinated me. They were
Speaker 2: just so wild and psychedelic and colorful, and I just
Speaker 2: loved the idea that you could move at super speed,
Speaker 2: and of course if you moved at super speed, you
Speaker 2: would wear that costume, you know, and it's like the best,
Speaker 2: just the best costume and comics, the best boots ever invented,
Speaker 2: you know. So I kind of esthetically I loved the Flash.
Speaker 2: I loved the rounded buttocks of the Flash and the
Speaker 2: runners muscles, you know, and just this the sleekness of
Speaker 2: the whole thing. And so that that was it. And
Speaker 2: from there it was kind of I remember things like
Speaker 2: leading the superheroes and stuff. But it wasn't until I
Speaker 2: was twelve years old and I was in hospital for
Speaker 2: an appendix operation and my aunt Aina, who was Billy's wife,
Speaker 2: brought me in a big ton of comics and that
Speaker 2: was it. I became hooked for at that minute. And
Speaker 2: they just they kind of got me through that whole
Speaker 2: hospital experience and I was just so into it. I
Speaker 2: remember it was Action comics, Superboy and Flash for the
Speaker 2: three that really did it for me. So that was
Speaker 2: my kind of origin. Then I became just a classic
Speaker 2: fan boy, you know. I visited every store in Glasgow
Speaker 2: meet and my friends would sort of get together and
Speaker 2: we'd just do these like super like like forty mile walks,
Speaker 2: you know, to find every comic store and they be
Speaker 2: sinning because we didn't have dedicated stores back then, so
Speaker 2: you would have to go to every local news agent
Speaker 2: or you know whatever, a drug store or whatever you'd
Speaker 2: call it, and they all had different comics. Because the
Speaker 2: distribution was so spotty, we just we just kind of
Speaker 2: got whatever came in on the ships, so you would
Speaker 2: find all kinds of different versions of that month's comic books,
Speaker 2: and it was really it was kind of exciting. You know,
Speaker 2: you walk for miles and come home with this call,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it would be really boring, and sometimes you
Speaker 2: just get some of the best comics ever. So that
Speaker 2: was it for me, you know. Once I was a
Speaker 2: teas I got really into the whole collecting and fan
Speaker 2: boyish kind of aspect of it, and then just came
Speaker 2: about the notion of I always wanted to write. I
Speaker 2: love drawing, so wouldn't it be great to do comic books.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of trying to pursue that. Unfortunately, I was
Speaker 2: young at the time the British invasion happened, and the
Speaker 2: American editors were coming here to kind of find people
Speaker 2: to do their work. So I was in the right
Speaker 2: place at the right time to do something I love
Speaker 2: to do.
Speaker 1: When I think about the comics that you write, there's
Speaker 1: often a self referential quality. Equality of these are created
Speaker 1: by a comics reader who who understands the character and
Speaker 1: is in some way commenting on the image of the
Speaker 1: character through the story. Was that always something you were
Speaker 1: going for that just kind of happened organically as you
Speaker 1: were embarking on your writing career.
Speaker 2: I guess it happened as I got into it. But
Speaker 2: for me, it's honestly it's a literalism that will eventually
Speaker 2: be revealed as something that weird adhd or something. But
Speaker 2: you know, it was just a super literal approach to it,
Speaker 2: which I thought was was was useful to me was
Speaker 2: to just think, what's the actual artifact, what is the
Speaker 2: what is the exchange going on between me and the
Speaker 2: writer of account. It's very different from books or from cinema.
Speaker 2: You know, on television or cinema, you can kind of
Speaker 2: the director tells you what to do. You know, you're
Speaker 2: taking through the two hour movie. It's it's a fifty
Speaker 2: minute drama and you kind of have to stay with it,
Speaker 2: you know, it's possible to stop and start, but not
Speaker 2: in the way with a comic. It's super integrated. You know,
Speaker 2: the experience that the writers and the artists bring to
Speaker 2: it's tactile. You're holding it, you turn the pages, you
Speaker 2: can go backwards and forwards. You can if you've stuck
Speaker 2: in a bit of the store, you can go back
Speaker 2: and really stare at an image in a way that
Speaker 2: you don't do with any other format. So for me,
Speaker 2: that became the interesting thing is the actual the physicality,
Speaker 2: and they did the actual reality of what is Superman.
Speaker 2: Superman is that collection of thousands of thousands of pages that,
Speaker 2: when assembled, creates this concept of a character. And even
Speaker 2: though that character's personalities changed radically, and in the eighties
Speaker 2: of so years he's been around, I think everyone still
Speaker 2: agrees there's something about it that we all understand to
Speaker 2: be Superman. It's not just the sign, it's not just
Speaker 2: the costume of the colors. There's an essential character that
Speaker 2: is somehow I created over all that time. So I
Speaker 2: became fascinated by that. That not in the way that
Speaker 2: you know, I think some of my peers would be
Speaker 2: interested in telling stories, but what if it was real?
Speaker 2: You know, what if the Marvel universe actually existed, but
Speaker 2: it's six one six, you know, it's over there somewhere,
Speaker 2: whereas to me, it was never over there. It was
Speaker 2: right here. You could hold it. You could collect all
Speaker 2: those books and have the entire Marvel Us in a
Speaker 2: room if you wanted. And that was the real Marvel universe.
Speaker 2: It was physical, it was touchable, it's tangible, and it
Speaker 2: developed through decades, and it took like hundreds or ye
Speaker 2: potentially be now thousands of people who would give up
Speaker 2: their time and their creativity to sustain this hyper object.
Speaker 2: So for me, that honestly became the fascinating thing, and
Speaker 2: it was to take it super literally and to then think,
Speaker 2: what is what am I doing here? I'm not necessarily
Speaker 2: telling stories. Although I am telling stories, the stories also
Speaker 2: have to take into account the fact that the characters
Speaker 2: exist as these bizarre thought forms that have outlived me
Speaker 2: and will outlive you know, Scott Snyder, and will outlive
Speaker 2: you know, Frank Miller. It's like they're bigger than us,
Speaker 2: and in port way are they bigger than us? So
Speaker 2: the stories also then had to kind of address that,
Speaker 2: and I think what you see in my work that
Speaker 2: people call meta fiction. Baly, you think it's meta fiction
Speaker 2: is a much more concrete, tized attempt to grapple with
Speaker 2: the object and the way the characters expressed themselves through
Speaker 2: these specific objects, and how we relate to that. You know,
Speaker 2: It's a lot going on that we took for granted
Speaker 2: just just reading comics, you know, and the exchange of
Speaker 2: information and the way we allow people into heads who
Speaker 2: may have very different politics or ideas, but we just
Speaker 2: let them straight in there. So as you can see,
Speaker 2: that became a huge field of interesting of exploration. For me,
Speaker 2: was just that relationship, and it meant that they were
Speaker 2: real because I couldn't deal with them. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to just write fantasy stories of what would it be
Speaker 2: like if you lived in the New York Spider Man
Speaker 2: was there. That's meaning it's meaningless because I'm never going
Speaker 2: to go to New York Spider Man's there. It's utterly
Speaker 2: meaningless as a concept that we have created internally inside
Speaker 2: our universe, a simulation with Spider Man who's played out
Speaker 2: this immense over decades, and he's adapted his continuity in
Speaker 2: order to constantly seem fresh and going, what the hell
Speaker 2: is that? What is that organism? And then that was
Speaker 2: that was it? So I mean long answer, like sorry, convolated,
Speaker 2: but that's how I came at it was trying to
Speaker 2: actually have a relationship with it that was very real,
Speaker 2: and that they treated the characters as real, as treated
Speaker 2: the ideas and it as having a longevity that was
Speaker 2: beyond human And so what did that make them? You know,
Speaker 2: put them almost in the realm of gods or of
Speaker 2: ideas that have outlasted generations and going on for hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of years. And that was That's always been
Speaker 2: my kind of point of contact and what I wanted
Speaker 2: to explore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember I once did like a comics writing
Speaker 3: class with Mike Kerrey and he talked about The X
Speaker 3: Men in that way where he basically said, this is
Speaker 3: if somebody found every single issue of the X Men,
Speaker 3: they would think this was like the Iliad. I would
Speaker 3: think this was this huge human story that had been
Speaker 3: going on for So what was it like for you
Speaker 3: as a fan and a cartoonist and a writer when
Speaker 3: you started, when you had that realization that you were
Speaker 3: adding to that mythology and you were kind of part
Speaker 3: of that ongoing puzzle.
Speaker 4: How did that feel.
Speaker 2: I felt very interesting to see the least, you know,
Speaker 2: that was amazing. But you know I was young. I
Speaker 2: was twenty seven I think when I started an Animal Man,
Speaker 2: and that was my first attempt to explore that. That's
Speaker 2: when I really get into you can see those first
Speaker 2: few issues of me trying to do what was a
Speaker 2: traditional kind of superhero. Yeah, deconstruction of the day, you know,
Speaker 2: a Frank Alan, the kind of what if it was real,
Speaker 2: you know, it would be a bit like this, And
Speaker 2: I lost all interested in that very quickly. So no,
Speaker 2: and it's not I mean, I'm not trying to be
Speaker 2: rude about anyone. And people have explored that.
Speaker 1: No, no, it's just your own taste, very clear from them,
Speaker 1: run you know, absolutely, but people have explored, you know,
Speaker 1: what would it be like to.
Speaker 2: Be what psychologically what would be like? And honestly, my
Speaker 2: one feeling is like that seems like dilla tantish of
Speaker 2: relevant questions because the only formly exist is here, So
Speaker 2: what do they do? What's the function here? What? You know?
Speaker 2: So that so I was kind of with with Animal Man.
Speaker 2: I began to explore that and it was quite primitive then,
Speaker 2: you know, I sent in a little drawing of myself,
Speaker 2: and you know, the artists didn't quite understand the clothes
Speaker 2: I was wearing. I look like I'm wearing these cossack
Speaker 2: clothes and I'm doing this. The first page you see me,
Speaker 2: I'm on my chair doing this kind of Cossack Russian dance.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. So but this was, this was this little
Speaker 2: thing I sent in there, and it was what a
Speaker 2: later came to call a fiction suit, and it was
Speaker 2: the idea, well, okay, these characters exist, but I can
Speaker 2: create a representation of myself and actually talk to them,
Speaker 2: actually going to have dialogue. And even though it's like
Speaker 2: their responder, obviously i'm writing animal's words, but I'm trying
Speaker 2: to give it that as much autonomy. In my head,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking, Okay, if this guy is real, I've spent
Speaker 2: twenty five issues establishing a personality. He's got a family,
Speaker 2: is into this kind of music, he likes this kind
Speaker 2: of food. What would his answer to this question be?
Speaker 2: So trying to give him as much autonomy as a
Speaker 2: character of thinking, Okay, I'll just accept if Buddy's mad
Speaker 2: at me, then I'm going to deal with That's if
Speaker 2: he questions what I've got to say I'll deal with that,
Speaker 2: and again trying to always give the characters the dignity
Speaker 2: of outlasting me. You know, I was twenty seven where
Speaker 2: I did it. I was younger than him. Now now
Speaker 2: I'm a Rumbly's age and he like, give me the bastard.
Speaker 2: It's like, are you danswer my grave? So what am
Speaker 2: I talking to there? What is the scale of the
Speaker 2: creature of the entity express through the pages? So again
Speaker 2: I keep bringing it back to the esoteric. But that's
Speaker 2: what I was going with, and I know man was
Speaker 2: quite a simplistic way of doing that. It was like
Speaker 2: sending a little drawing of yourself and talk to the
Speaker 2: characters and make him understand that you're aware of your spatial,
Speaker 2: geometrical dimensional relationship to them, but that you're not necessarily
Speaker 2: privileged privileging yourself in relation to them. And see what happens,
Speaker 2: you know, see what happens, and then have animal I
Speaker 2: can see you, And I think that moment is still powerful, Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's real. It's a real moment. I wrote him
Speaker 2: to really see out of that comic book, so that
Speaker 2: actually happened to that character and he had that moment,
Speaker 2: and that that's what makes him who he is.
Speaker 1: You started with Animal Man in eighty eight, so this
Speaker 1: is post Crisis on Infinite Earth's kind of a reset
Speaker 1: for DC. And and it was, in retrospect, a pretty
Speaker 1: audacious choice at a character who I think everybody would
Speaker 1: agree with, you know, kind of like a minor character
Speaker 1: in the firmament of DC. And then you do this
Speaker 1: really original, kind of mind bending reflection on a character
Speaker 1: that not a lot of people had thought about. What
Speaker 1: was it that made you decide, Okay, animal Man, That's
Speaker 1: that's the character I want to explore right now at
Speaker 1: this stage of my career.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I honestly, it was the obscurity I
Speaker 2: think of Animal Man was the number one thing. And
Speaker 2: as I say, the vogue at the time was to
Speaker 2: pick up characters who weren't necessarily DC's a list, and
Speaker 2: they were kind of throwing them at British writers, you know,
Speaker 2: to Alan Moohood had very big success like making swamp
Speaker 2: thing work in a completely new way. And so the know,
Speaker 2: Neil Gaming came in and he took what had been
Speaker 2: Jack Kirby's sand Man does sand Man? You know, they
Speaker 2: were kind of realizing that we knew what we were
Speaker 2: talking about. So but as I said, the vogue goes
Speaker 2: very much to can you take a character from our
Speaker 2: catalog that just hasn't worked for maybe twenty or thirty
Speaker 2: years in d see any potential in that? So I
Speaker 2: knew that was I knew that's the way they were
Speaker 2: coming to it. And I always had this fascination with
Speaker 2: animal man. I just am I love animals, the big
Speaker 2: thing about animals since I was a kid. And here
Speaker 2: was this actor who could do this, and it seemed
Speaker 2: a very unique power that a lot of other characters
Speaker 2: didn't have. It was really specific, it was easy to understand,
Speaker 2: but he hadn't really made a big splash. And I
Speaker 2: also loved it because he started as a my greatest
Speaker 2: adventure story, so it wasn't even a superhero story, just
Speaker 2: so just this dude who goes out one day and
Speaker 2: gets animal powers. So I kind of loved that as well. Mate,
Speaker 2: it grounded them a lot more. Maybe you can you
Speaker 2: could imagine the movie that one. You know, I only
Speaker 2: just put on a costume, So going into it was just, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've got an idea about that, And I don't think
Speaker 2: you know Karen Berger or Ditchio Danna or Jeanette Canibell
Speaker 2: have even heard the name of animal Man in the
Speaker 2: last twenty years. You know. It's like when Neil Neil
Speaker 2: walked in with Black Black Orchid and they said who
Speaker 2: Black hartckead? So they I think in a lot of
Speaker 2: ways they didn't know what kind of characters they had
Speaker 2: and as long as they heard their interesting pitch. Then
Speaker 2: at the time, the desire for novelty was such that
Speaker 2: weigh down really good opportunity to do these things. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I just I pitched them on that, and I didn't
Speaker 2: have the so called meter fictional aspect at that time,
Speaker 2: but also the secondary thing that I loved with the
Speaker 2: animal rights thing. And again but again it was part
Speaker 2: of the old thinking because Swamp Thing was very much
Speaker 2: an eco comic and I love that aspect of it.
Speaker 2: So I thought, well, let's do this specifically because you know,
Speaker 2: I'm an animal liberation frunt supporter back in the days
Speaker 2: before it was illegal and all that, you know, Hunt
Speaker 2: Sabatur stuff, the whole thing. So I thought, he's my
Speaker 2: chance to do what Alan's doing with swamp Thing, you know,
Speaker 2: the ecal thing, but I'll talk specifically about animal rights
Speaker 2: and all this stuff I'm kind of involved in. So
Speaker 2: that was the secondary big thing with Animal Man. And
Speaker 2: as I say, it was only when I got tissue
Speaker 2: five and I thought, I just don't want to do
Speaker 2: this eco swamp thing kind of poetic caption stuff, So
Speaker 2: what can I do? And that became like, let's just
Speaker 2: do it. And I thought, people, people will hate this.
Speaker 2: If you put yourself in the comic, they're going to
Speaker 2: hate it. They're going to just you'll spoil the magic.
Speaker 2: I just knew that was that's what I wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about it. And I thought, what I'm talking about
Speaker 2: is the actual reality of this yeah DC universe. And
Speaker 2: I think ultimately that people will find that interesting, and.
Speaker 3: I mean they did, and that's become the the the
Speaker 3: author and in the books, the death of the author,
Speaker 3: sometimes physically on the page has become such a comic
Speaker 3: book trope. Now, So you really and obviously like I
Speaker 3: love that Animal Man kind of these pictures gave everyone
Speaker 3: this freedom to do this wild kind of esoteric stuff.
Speaker 3: But then like a year later, you you were like
Speaker 3: doing Batman with Arkhamisira, So like, what was it like
Speaker 3: to go from this one of the you talk about
Speaker 3: the kind of godly nature, the immortals of comics, these
Speaker 3: kind of new mythology. What was it like from basically
Speaker 3: getting to introduce a generation of people to Animal Man
Speaker 3: to taking on someone who's one of these three kind
Speaker 3: of icons of of DC comics and comics in general.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, they they came at the same time because
Speaker 2: when I went down to visit DC, when I got
Speaker 2: the invite to come and pitch some stuff on the
Speaker 2: day that they kind of signed everyone. So I went
Speaker 2: down and it was Animal Man was the one. I'd
Speaker 2: kind of come up with that on the train because
Speaker 2: I thought I'd come up with Animal Man was very
Speaker 2: swiftly created out of just here's what I'm into, Here's
Speaker 2: what I'd love to just write about. But Archiemasilam had
Speaker 2: been in my head for years and it been plotted out,
Speaker 2: and I had talked over with with a good friend
Speaker 2: of mine in Glasgow who was just obsessively into psychology
Speaker 2: and symbolism. So we went through this whole kind of
Speaker 2: process long before that. I've hold you do with Batman?
Speaker 2: How would hope would be a Batman story? And Lenn Wayne,
Speaker 2: who's probably my biggest influence in comics, had done a
Speaker 2: Who's Who in DC entry about Archem Asylum and he
Speaker 2: just had to invent this stuff from whole clause. So
Speaker 2: he talks about, you know, I'm as Arkham was the founder.
Speaker 2: The guy committed suicide, or I didn't commit suicide. He
Speaker 2: kills one of his patients after the stock market collapse.
Speaker 2: But there's just a line that says, after finding his
Speaker 2: wife and child, murthered and he commits suicide because of
Speaker 2: the stock market collaps And I said, well, well, let's back track.
Speaker 2: He's surely finding your wife and child. Bud might have
Speaker 2: tiggered the suicidal response. So but that one line was
Speaker 2: just like, Okay, let's tell that guy's story. That seems interesting.
Speaker 2: And I think I've read Arkham quite recently and I'm
Speaker 2: going to write a big piece about it again because
Speaker 2: I think it's been very misunderstood over these But I
Speaker 2: think that whole story of Ammade's arkm is really interesting,
Speaker 2: and that's what gives it the real Gothic Underton.
Speaker 1: Why do you think people have misunderstood.
Speaker 2: I think they misunderstood that from the very beginning. They
Speaker 2: didn't understand that what we were trying to do was
Speaker 2: like a European like one of those like Jan Schwankmeyer
Speaker 2: puppet movies. One was animated, something really cranky, like wood cut,
Speaker 2: like you know, like like Nosferatu, like what's his name?
Speaker 2: Like that, you know, the vampire guy, like I'm forgetting
Speaker 2: the names. But it was not not Branstoe. Yeah right
Speaker 2: more now. So that's what we were looking at and
Speaker 2: German expressionism. And we thought because I was, I was
Speaker 2: going to the cinema a lot to see kind of
Speaker 2: weird like you know, with my adrends messures of the
Speaker 2: afternoon and a lot of John Cocktails stuff which we
Speaker 2: loved as well, and fed into Batman, and we thought,
Speaker 2: can we do a Batman? It's like a Tarot card,
Speaker 2: that's like an exploded Tarot card. So then we took
Speaker 2: the idea of that the Moon Tarot, which was trumpeteen
Speaker 2: and it's a it's about trial and initiation, it's about
Speaker 2: illusion and intoxication and madness. So we took that. So
Speaker 2: what if we do it's almost like a Taro card
Speaker 2: folded out with Batman going on their journey through all
Speaker 2: the symbolism that Tarot club and plugging the villains in
Speaker 2: and so what I think people people after things like
Speaker 2: Killing Joke and after Dark Night. They were looking for
Speaker 2: another big, cinematic kind of American Batman, and we did.
Speaker 2: We did this euro Batman and himself. But it was
Speaker 2: also it was like that because they said to me like, well,
Speaker 2: the new Batman is he doubts his missions. This is
Speaker 2: the new way we're looking at him. This is the grounded,
Speaker 2: gritty way. So I thought, let's let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: But for me, it was always this was this was
Speaker 2: a dream that Bruce Wayne would have every week maybe
Speaker 2: and he would wake up from this. It was Alice
Speaker 2: in Wonderland, and it's structured like Alice in Wonderland. It's
Speaker 2: got Alice, it's got Carol coats at either end. So
Speaker 2: the whole idea was to do something was much more
Speaker 2: kind of left brainy or you know, poetic or is
Speaker 2: it left being a right brain remember, but you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. It was like we wanted to do
Speaker 2: this euro puppet, thea to Crag Silouettes kinder version of Batman,
Speaker 2: and I think it was constantly compared to things that
Speaker 2: were much more cinematic, much more Hollywood, much more blockbuster
Speaker 2: versions of Batman, which in themselves would not love these books,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't what we were doing. And I've rarely
Speaker 2: seen it critiqued, and in that, you know, I've never
Speaker 2: seen it critiqued as what's it like the cocktail, what's
Speaker 2: it like? What are they taking from Yan Schrankmeyer here?
Speaker 2: What is it? You know, it's like it's always critiqued
Speaker 2: in the ways that it's not like killing Joke a
Speaker 2: Dark Knight.
Speaker 4: The cast of releasing a book.
Speaker 2: Massive, but people, it's weird because it's the biggest selling
Speaker 2: graphic novel ever. I mean, I still get massive royalties
Speaker 2: from that one book, which were published thirty years ago.
Speaker 2: But there was always, even in dcar reluctance to admit
Speaker 2: to its success has really talked about in those terms,
Speaker 2: which are kind of fine, fascinating. So again, you know,
Speaker 2: it's an interesting one to me. I think it's it
Speaker 2: should be looked at from a different angle, maybe because
Speaker 2: I bling it's new did a lot of great criticism
Speaker 2: over the year.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that that story has a lot of elements
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of deep symbolic elements, multi layered elements,
Speaker 1: is kind of like psychological gothic horror feel to it.
Speaker 1: How was that received at the time, and just to
Speaker 1: piggyback off what you were saying, it's interesting that you
Speaker 1: felt like, oh, this story was out of step with
Speaker 1: the kind of like cinematic intent at the time, and
Speaker 1: yet a lot of that stuff has now found its
Speaker 1: way into cinema, into Batman movies, into The Dark Knight,
Speaker 1: into the latest Batman movie. A lot of that kind
Speaker 1: of tone and molic referential nature.
Speaker 2: Yeh, I think definitely, And a lot of those filmmakers
Speaker 2: grew up with that book. I mean, and I think,
Speaker 2: I mean honestly, initially I imagined it as a very super
Speaker 2: like focused thing I've talked about before us and I
Speaker 2: imagine someone not not necessarily Brian Bolland, but Gary Leech
Speaker 2: or someone in that you know, who would super draw
Speaker 2: every detail like Dave Gibbons. Yeah, I kind of imagine
Speaker 2: that this hyper sensitive, like super every every bit of
Speaker 2: dirt is in your face. When it came out, and people,
Speaker 2: people were very you know, the reaction was that was
Speaker 2: was quite negative, I think from generally from within the
Speaker 2: comic book community and not so much from outside. But
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, what Dave mc keen did, I mean,
Speaker 2: looking back, is that that's exactly the way the book
Speaker 2: should be. And that is why that's why filmmakers still
Speaker 2: love that book because of what Dave did. It's like
Speaker 2: he just took it to a level that I think,
Speaker 2: you know, anyone who's in the Batman comes in and
Speaker 2: that's one that's beyond all the others. That's the weird one.
Speaker 2: That's what all of you read after we got to
Speaker 2: that one, you know. And I think, honestly, all that Dave,
Speaker 2: and it says why I've gone back and I've been studying.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of loving it again because I was so
Speaker 2: anti that the negative reaction was so strong. I really
Speaker 2: was like, oh no, honestly, nothing to do with me, folks.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when I worked in a comic bookshop in London
Speaker 3: and that was one of our perennial you've got to
Speaker 3: read this, and then it was horror comics people, and
Speaker 3: it was film people and it was super.
Speaker 2: But do you think visually, I think it really brings in.
Speaker 2: The Directors always love it, like you.
Speaker 3: Know, all the time, it's like storyboard, Yeah, but it's not.
Speaker 2: It's because it's so internalized. It's like inside that man said,
Speaker 2: it's not like well, what if he was real? You know,
Speaker 2: yeah it wasn't real. Yeah, but it wasn't What if
Speaker 2: this was Bruce Wayne's dream and all you had to
Speaker 2: do was have them going to sleep at one end
Speaker 2: and waking up that and it's like you're not allowed
Speaker 2: to really tell that story. Oh it was all a dream.
Speaker 2: But here's the story that is a stage play. It
Speaker 2: would work. It's like that is and that's why I
Speaker 2: think it draws, like you know, it draws filmmakers, particularly directors.
Speaker 2: You always hear them that's the favorite, but that's honestly,
Speaker 2: that's Dave and it's Dave's staging. He was just like,
Speaker 2: that was like getting the best director I could have
Speaker 2: hoped for because my vision for it was too small.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and something that's kind of I guess something that
Speaker 3: if I'm really interesting about that, I think I would.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited that you want to write about it
Speaker 3: more because now we have an accessibility to stuff like
Speaker 3: Spank Mayer. You know, the Jabbawaki's just on Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: just on YouTube, and a lot of people, I think
Speaker 3: they haven't seen that stuff. They haven't read Bandedestinae before.
Speaker 3: They hadn't.
Speaker 2: But also it's stuff they would love. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think all that all that stuff is like, you know,
Speaker 2: people who are into the genre movies, they're going to
Speaker 2: love the spank wild stuff. It's just it was avant
Speaker 2: garde in the eighties or the nineties, but right now,
Speaker 2: I think it's like people's imagine have been broadened by
Speaker 2: all kinds of television shows and films. Everyone's been walking
Speaker 2: up to science fiction and fantasy and horror. So I
Speaker 2: think things like that that once we're completely outsider kind
Speaker 2: of stuff would easily fit it. Like it's show these
Speaker 2: you know, spank mass Alice and all the early stuff.
Speaker 2: It's it's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also, I mean you can watch if you have a
Speaker 3: library card, you can watch Cabinet of Doctor Caligary for free,
Speaker 3: you know, on the on the streaming services and stuff.
Speaker 3: So I think it would be really cool to I
Speaker 3: mean that book, like you said, it's like the most
Speaker 3: successful like graphic novel ever, so people can read it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Crazy, And I feel weird because I've always been defensive
Speaker 2: about it and I've stopped. I've decided no, I'm out,
Speaker 2: and that was a great thing. You know, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be defensive anymore.
Speaker 3: I'd love to see people get to recontextualize it with
Speaker 3: that knowledge and those kind of touch points.
Speaker 2: I mean, who knows if they will, but I think
Speaker 2: they should look at it that way. It's like theater.
Speaker 2: It's like, it's not comics, it's not it's like after all,
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, it's those influences, aware of what
Speaker 2: made Afterhan Asylum, And I've never seen it kind of
Speaker 2: studied in those terms. I've always seen it compared to films,
Speaker 2: something else that was not influenced.
Speaker 1: By About a year ago, Tim Silly, the artist Tim Silly,
Speaker 1: shared a panel from your run on Batman. I think
Speaker 1: it's Batman six six six, and it's Damien, and around
Speaker 1: Damien are these text bubbles that are the television news
Speaker 1: like that he is listening. Yeah, and it's like temperatures.
Speaker 1: Temperatures rose for a record breaking one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: third day. Quarantine receptions remain, but yeah, China epidemics which
Speaker 1: claim more than eight ten million lives will soon be
Speaker 1: under control, say Chinese health authorities. And this is two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. And it's interesting because when people talk
Speaker 1: about your work, they often talk about this kind of
Speaker 1: far flung almost predictive quality. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: I think if you look back, you're just drawing very logical,
Speaker 1: rational lines from things that were happening at the time.
Speaker 1: How do you feel about that stuff? Now?
Speaker 2: It's just weather. It's just like seeing how the weather works,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, you know, as I've always said one
Speaker 2: when I talk about magic, you know, one part of magic.
Speaker 2: Back in the days of the Pharaohs, you would be
Speaker 2: considered magic if you'd worked out how the nile works,
Speaker 2: and what's how the season's work, and sometimes that fertilizes
Speaker 2: the valley and sometimes it's dry. To the pharaoh, your
Speaker 2: knowledge is magic because he's not thought on these scales.
Speaker 2: He's not studied those particular patterns. So it's just onnest.
Speaker 2: It's just a case of here's the pattern, here's what
Speaker 2: it's obviously going to play out, here's how it's played
Speaker 2: out before in history, and here's how it's likely to
Speaker 2: play it again. Because these things tend to fractal in
Speaker 2: the same ways, and this is what it's likely to
Speaker 2: be like in ten years time. So it's not hard.
Speaker 2: But like I said, magic sometimes looks like magic to
Speaker 2: people in the same way the weather looks. Weather looks like, well,
Speaker 2: how do they know what the weather's going to be
Speaker 2: in LA And yet they can tell you to the minute.
Speaker 2: They tell you the clouds will pass at twelve eight.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, the clouds just passed. So it's it's just
Speaker 2: it's just observation, you know, and seeing where the strands
Speaker 2: are going to play. And that's that's why I'm very
Speaker 2: concerned that I live four miles from NATO's number one
Speaker 2: nuclear target. Yeah, I'm in I'm in the red zone,
Speaker 2: the actual red bit wherever thing is obliterated. So yeah,
Speaker 2: think about that.
Speaker 1: It's fun.
Speaker 4: It's fun.
Speaker 3: Kind of I guess, like in the in the something
Speaker 3: that I feel like kind of combines that predictive nature
Speaker 3: and that kind of that more esoteric, but also links
Speaker 3: into like talking about how you originally imagined Arkham as
Speaker 3: this super detailed, hyper detailed thing. Let's talk about X Men,
Speaker 3: because New x Men, you know Frank's work on there.
Speaker 3: That is a book that I feel like it ended
Speaker 3: up predicting a lot, It ended up shaping how the
Speaker 3: X Men existed for decades on screen in comics. What
Speaker 3: was it like for you? You take your DC Batman like
Speaker 3: that you've done that pillar. What was it like for
Speaker 3: you to take on the X Men, who have this again,
Speaker 3: that is a mythological amount of space to play with
Speaker 3: and stories to add to. What was your kind of
Speaker 3: approach there and how did new X Men come to be?
Speaker 2: Well, it was the jok aside called off and they said,
Speaker 2: do you want to do a Spider Man at the
Speaker 2: X Men? Like spiderbout? I just have no conation, never
Speaker 2: had any canation that kind of feel nothing about Spider Man,
Speaker 2: not like the movies. But I had nothing for Spider Man.
Speaker 2: But I like team books, I like ensemble books, and
Speaker 2: I like, you know, different characters kind of clashing with
Speaker 2: one another. So I said, I'll do X Men, And
Speaker 2: then thinking about it was just like what can we
Speaker 2: do with XHn? I hate the kind of the persecuted thing,
Speaker 2: you know. I thought it was time and it seemed
Speaker 2: like time again. It's like the nostalgia, the poignancy of
Speaker 2: the past. In about two thousand, you know, everyone thought
Speaker 2: we're really doing it. Here's been ten years since the
Speaker 2: follow the Berlin Oh wow, globalization is a good one,
Speaker 2: not a bad one. You know. There was this sense
Speaker 2: like there was a potentially the twenty first century it
Speaker 2: come and then everything really changed and it's got just
Speaker 2: more and more of Bussett. But The X Men was
Speaker 2: kind of coming after the Invisibles, and the Invisibles had
Speaker 2: been very topian, and I began to see the different
Speaker 2: strands that would the utopian vision might not be you know,
Speaker 2: that might be a bit sixties, a bit you know,
Speaker 2: you were taking a lot of extacy. Of course, everything
Speaker 2: looked wonderfu so there was that sense of where where's
Speaker 2: it going to go next? And but what I did
Speaker 2: want to do, like I say, was I really saw
Speaker 2: the eyes of Greek culture so that there was going
Speaker 2: to be superhero films. Now there's going to be a
Speaker 2: retreat into almost infantilism, where culture would back off from
Speaker 2: the future because the future was suddenly scary. It was
Speaker 2: we don't want to go there anymore. It's like, oh no,
Speaker 2: it's it's dystopia. They used to be Star Trek. Now
Speaker 2: it's it's the Walking Dead. And even though there was
Speaker 2: Walking Dead, wasn't around that time. But that's that's my man.
Speaker 2: These are my two polarities, you know. And at that time,
Speaker 2: it was like, oh, let's let's not face the future.
Speaker 2: Let's let's talk about the past. So you get in
Speaker 2: music recycled. Everything was recycled, and children's comics from the
Speaker 2: sixties were being turned into blockbusters. So it was about
Speaker 2: that and I thought, well, that's the it's the idea
Speaker 2: of the Greek culture. And they had culture, the underground culture.
Speaker 2: Goss all of us who were alternative suddenly get exposed
Speaker 2: to the light, you know, and said of Clayboy bunnies,
Speaker 2: suddenly it's suicide girls. It was like the alternative was
Speaker 2: sexed up and sold and so that was annoyingly but
Speaker 2: I thought, I have to kind of reflect the fact.
Speaker 2: And in a way that means wy we poisoned them,
Speaker 2: we colonized them. So but we never knew what to
Speaker 2: do with what we've done. But yeah, they you know,
Speaker 2: it's true our food, they watch our movies, they love
Speaker 2: our characters. So we we won, but we kind of
Speaker 2: they were creepier and weird doing us, so they kind
Speaker 2: of messed up. But X Men was about, well what
Speaker 2: if they won? Because I was fed up with the persecution,
Speaker 2: the effort. I thought, what if humanity finds out tomorrow
Speaker 2: that we have an extinction gene. It's done it's like,
Speaker 2: you guys are like a cancer. It's been nature just
Speaker 2: shut you down. And the reason Homo superior exists is
Speaker 2: in order to carry this forward in the same way
Speaker 2: that you carried it for from Neanderthals, whatever your story
Speaker 2: you tell yourself is. And it became I thought, the
Speaker 2: others this potential there, because then you can create the
Speaker 2: idea of mutant culture and notion like because the idea
Speaker 2: of humans fighting mutants, I thought, it seems a bit
Speaker 2: like punching down if the mutants are just a persecuted minority.
Speaker 2: But I thought, what if they become like they're coming
Speaker 2: for you. They are your children, they are the future,
Speaker 2: and all the things you believed are abit to be
Speaker 2: overturned by these beautiful young freaks. And so it was
Speaker 2: kind of like I said, it was me talking about
Speaker 2: what was happening at the time, but it was like,
Speaker 2: so what if they suddenly you found out you are
Speaker 2: it's over? And it was because to me, that's the
Speaker 2: reality of growing older. It's like there's other people coming,
Speaker 2: move on. And so rather than the next men being like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're under the thumb, and it's the sentence, it's more
Speaker 2: they're winning that would really make the war intensify, and
Speaker 2: I thought that what gives it more drama. You know,
Speaker 2: It's like humans are now reacting to potential extinction, but
Speaker 2: we can imagine that the nice mutants will probably figure
Speaker 2: a way to save so you have this great drama.
Speaker 2: And that that was it. So I thought, I always
Speaker 2: my favorite X mem was just the whole Chris Claremont
Speaker 2: John Burns thing when I was a kid, so you know,
Speaker 2: that was the one. It was just like he was
Speaker 2: hitting every note and it was very progressive for the time.
Speaker 2: So I was looking back at that and I thought,
Speaker 2: and in the way that the Justice League was the
Speaker 2: kind of mythology it was like folk tales of larger
Speaker 2: than life figures. The X Men is is soap opera.
Speaker 2: You know, it's always about soap opera. So I thought,
Speaker 2: it's got to have evil twins. It's got to have.
Speaker 2: It's got to have the Joan Collins bitch. It's got
Speaker 2: to have, you know. It was just all I had
Speaker 2: built it like dynasty, you know, like dynasty, and that
Speaker 2: was where I thought, So it's got to be Soper
Speaker 2: was good, constantly falling out affairs and like screaming matches
Speaker 2: so yeah, so that that was where it came from,
Speaker 2: and I just built tied that. And then the weirdness
Speaker 2: of kind of almost predicting what in ninety eleven that
Speaker 2: we had that issue that is not like but you
Speaker 2: can feel it. You can feel it like I see
Speaker 2: the weather, you can feel it coming. So there was that,
Speaker 2: and then it was kind of became this post ninety eleven,
Speaker 2: you know, here is the future. How you deal with it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very interesting. I want to unpack something you said,
Speaker 1: because I find it fascinating. I think most many creators,
Speaker 1: many storytellers, would think, okay, let's start our characters at
Speaker 1: this at at a kind of low level, and then
Speaker 1: you know, in fits and starts, let's get them to
Speaker 1: finish somewhere higher. And you said something very interesting, tapping
Speaker 1: into the kind of feeling at the time, late nineties,
Speaker 1: early two thousand's, pre nine to eleven, the idea that
Speaker 1: Western capitalism is won, we won, Russians are done, Communism
Speaker 1: is done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the end of history Francis VII.
Speaker 1: The end of history, right, And so you plug into
Speaker 1: all of that and say, okay, the mutants have won.
Speaker 1: They're actually like gods that walk the earth. The celebrities,
Speaker 1: they look beautiful, they're extremely powerful, they're incredibly rich. They won, and.
Speaker 2: Then you.
Speaker 1: And then you found the drama through this and what
Speaker 1: comes after the victory was was that? How did you
Speaker 1: pitch that to Marvel or was it just and and
Speaker 1: what was their reaction to that when you said, I
Speaker 1: want to do it where they win, where you know, Joe,
Speaker 1: I want to do it where they win.
Speaker 2: No, even everyone was fine with it because they just
Speaker 2: wanted to shake the thing up. And there was you know,
Speaker 2: I had, I had the whole proposal I sent and
Speaker 2: from beginning to end, and that they changed a little bit,
Speaker 2: but not much. And the whole Zone review is right there.
Speaker 2: You know, you can read it. It's it's there. But
Speaker 2: they were fine with it. It was only afterwards. But suddenly,
Speaker 2: let's make them the League of Minority again. I just thought, well,
Speaker 2: you know, and then that scarlet, which wonder, my wife,
Speaker 2: this is the vision you're talking to this plastic monstrosity
Speaker 2: as the vision. No so, and then she just like
Speaker 2: waits Morow again, which was a weird, but it's what
Speaker 2: you can do. And that's what happens if you're living
Speaker 2: in a fictional universe you never reality and or someone
Speaker 2: could just say no more mutants and all that story
Speaker 2: potential disappears as.
Speaker 3: A creator, because I mean, I like how you're like
Speaker 3: you you accept that that's how it is. Perhaps you
Speaker 3: have such a great philosophical, kind of esoteric way of
Speaker 3: looking at these stories.
Speaker 4: But how does it feel.
Speaker 3: To you when you see that kind of thing happen?
Speaker 3: Like is it part and parcel? Is it two sides
Speaker 3: of the sword of you being able to create something
Speaker 3: incredible as someone else can take it away? But how
Speaker 3: does it feel for you, as the person who birthed
Speaker 3: those ideas along with your artistic collaborators, to kind of
Speaker 3: see them changed or erased?
Speaker 2: So honestly, it's disappointing, as you might imagine and or
Speaker 2: buy this same time, it's it's part of the parcel
Speaker 2: of the compact that has made ye where there's tons
Speaker 2: of us making this quilt, you know, and something, so
Speaker 2: it's slightly differently and I can't and it's it's not
Speaker 2: you know, I'll just look at things that I've done
Speaker 2: of other people do versions of them, and it's, oh,
Speaker 2: you don't get it. I don't get it. I'm sure
Speaker 2: they feel exactly the same because it's all it's all interpretation,
Speaker 2: So you have to remember that it's just it's like
Speaker 2: a role like I had Batman, you know, with with
Speaker 2: Dick Grayson was says, it's just a role you've got
Speaker 2: to play, you know. Being the X Men, you take
Speaker 2: on that role for a few years and you hope
Speaker 2: that your version of your portrayal of that is remembered fondly.
Speaker 2: But there will be other portrayals that seem to to
Speaker 2: you know, to kind of contradict that, like the difference
Speaker 2: between Jaquin Phoenix's Joker and you know, the other boy
Speaker 2: what's his name, I've forgotten Jardtime as well. They're all
Speaker 2: very different, and I think you just have to in
Speaker 2: long running superhero universes and continuities, you have to understand
Speaker 2: that everyone's got to take in some of the teakes.
Speaker 2: You'll go, you don't, don't we all get it. You
Speaker 2: haven't read that book. You don't understand that that game
Speaker 2: meant that when he said that, what she meant that
Speaker 2: when she was writing. So you kind of just have to.
Speaker 2: I tend not to read them afterwards because it is
Speaker 2: a bit like, you know, it's like you know, it's
Speaker 2: just seen someone else getting out of your yes, your
Speaker 2: love you go he okay, I'm wish you guys all
Speaker 2: the best.
Speaker 3: But you kind of actually lean into something that we've
Speaker 3: been talking about a lot there, which is like, we
Speaker 3: are living in an unprecedented time as people who grew
Speaker 3: up with this stuff who it wasn't or it was
Speaker 3: on the fringe, it was radical, it was subversive, and
Speaker 3: now we're living in a world where all these corporations
Speaker 3: are talking about multi verses, different versions of the same characters. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know what, what how does that feel to you
Speaker 3: to be living in this space where people can imagine
Speaker 3: the things that you've been saying and the way that
Speaker 3: you understood it as these different characters living alongside each other.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of like, what's it like to see
Speaker 3: that become real in this kind of modern day space.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not so much it's become real as I
Speaker 2: think what you're what you're saying is it's become commodified
Speaker 2: in a way that before it was seen as as
Speaker 2: non commodifiable. But we made the multiverse commodifiable to everyone
Speaker 2: wants one, you know. But but you kind of think
Speaker 2: that through and I've always talked to the multiverse. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: corporations would love this because it's like, you know, it's
Speaker 2: like orange kit cat, coffee kit cat, k cat, it's
Speaker 2: like coking up kit cat. They love to take a
Speaker 2: basic idea and then just smear it out across a
Speaker 2: spectrum of possibilities that is quite limited, and so they
Speaker 2: love the notion of the multiverse. It's seen as I'm sure,
Speaker 2: quite a limited potential, but you can have you know,
Speaker 2: here's your red Supman's, your blue Man's, here's your here's
Speaker 2: your original cocapila, Here's They love versions of things to
Speaker 2: sell you the same rubbish over and over again. So
Speaker 2: I think the multiverse definitely appeals, but higher in a
Speaker 2: higher sense then that. I like the idea that the
Speaker 2: notion of the multiverse is becoming accepted because I always
Speaker 2: think when a concept starts to become accepted, the walls
Speaker 2: of reality becomes thin, and that concept maybe actually starts
Speaker 2: breaking through the possibilities for it being real, maybe start
Speaker 2: to be noticed. The next thing I think we'll hear is,
Speaker 2: you know, our telescopes have discovered a weird dark matter
Speaker 2: fluctuation that suggests the close by universe and that's all
Speaker 2: we can hope for. I think the fact that people
Speaker 2: are getting into it is something coming as a notion
Speaker 2: of this, this absolute fragmenting into all possibilities, which I
Speaker 2: think could be you know that my might break down
Speaker 2: a few categories when we expanded every possibility.
Speaker 1: I wanted to link back to something you mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: in the interview. You use the word hyper object to
Speaker 1: describe this kind of vast catalog of comics stories, both
Speaker 1: metaphysical and physical. Hyper Object is the word that was
Speaker 1: invented by the environmental philosopher Tim Morton to kind of
Speaker 1: describe plastic Yeah, the process speak is.
Speaker 2: A hyper object. Where there is a hyper object, is
Speaker 2: a hyper object. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to if you could just unpack the idea
Speaker 1: of the hyper object and what what it means to you,
Speaker 1: uh visa e comics.
Speaker 2: The hyper object is it's it's an object of physical
Speaker 2: object that's so widely distributed it's hard to see it
Speaker 2: in its entirety. So we don't necessarily recognize the fact
Speaker 2: that it's a singular thing, right, you know, so I
Speaker 2: can actually the entirety of the of the history of
Speaker 2: life is that, you know, but we're talking In the
Speaker 2: terms of comics, the DC universe is a high probject
Speaker 2: is distributed across decades. It's been added to by multiple
Speaker 2: voices and multiple generations, but it still holds its same
Speaker 2: basic shape. It's like a coral that keeps the same
Speaker 2: because there's only so much you can push it before
Speaker 2: it's the Marvel Universe or before it's it's Archie, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's a higher p object basically in that sense
Speaker 2: that I first described it as. It's distributed so widely
Speaker 2: that it's hard to see it as a singular thing.
Speaker 3: I could just talk about this kind of conceptual stuff
Speaker 3: all day. I'm like, okay, so how I just wonder
Speaker 3: how you feel like?
Speaker 4: I love the way that you.
Speaker 3: Talk about like interacting with comics and that comes through
Speaker 3: with your work in this kind of fictional space. How
Speaker 3: do you feel like, do you feel like that power
Speaker 3: of those conversations and the reality of comics still exists
Speaker 3: in the space where we have all these different movies
Speaker 3: and and there's sort of that expands the idea of
Speaker 3: them as hyper objects, Like do you feel like even
Speaker 3: if there's a commodification and there's a there's a very
Speaker 3: corporate aspect to it. Do you feel like there's a
Speaker 3: way that it's actually expanding people's understanding or people's access
Speaker 3: to these kind of stories and thoughts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I think, And that's that's what we were
Speaker 2: saying earlier, you know, the sense that if you can
Speaker 2: sit to Avengers endgame, then you've been asked to consider
Speaker 2: like beings from another world and the center if all,
Speaker 2: you've been asked to consider the potential like crystals could
Speaker 2: somehow can you know, contain energy of a scale and
Speaker 2: substance that could all to the universe. People have been
Speaker 2: asked to accept really weird things, you know that rob
Speaker 2: but then the junior could actually survive the impact, And
Speaker 2: that's you know, it's so Yeah, as I say, I
Speaker 2: think the boundaries of imagination have been pushed much wider,
Speaker 2: and not just by by Marvel movies, but by by
Speaker 2: everything that people are consuming right across Netflix shows. And
Speaker 2: they know it's vampires, it's it's God, it's demons, monsters.
Speaker 2: It's that there's more demand for that. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: there's way less of anything, though there is a niche
Speaker 2: for it, it's way less event It's like say seventies
Speaker 2: oh two cinema. But there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: was once the province of comics and of geeks and
Speaker 2: of of you know, of people arounto. Genre material is
Speaker 2: is way wider now, it's much more mainstream. So I
Speaker 2: do think that people's imaginative envelopes have been stretched, you know,
Speaker 2: but they're still there, are still fed at a limited
Speaker 2: diet of particular things. But it's it's way more than
Speaker 2: back in the day when people would have thought, what's
Speaker 2: it's a show but aliens, no way, I'm not watching
Speaker 2: it's about magic. It's about that's the people would't even
Speaker 2: have those conversations there. They would just watch it if
Speaker 2: it was cool, and it was you know, you could
Speaker 2: binge it.
Speaker 1: So much of the texture of your work and the
Speaker 1: way people respond to it is that kind of referential,
Speaker 1: predictive almost, this feeling of prophecy within the story of
Speaker 1: a world, you know, drawing these lines to a world
Speaker 1: that seems like it could exist sometime in the future,
Speaker 1: and oftentimes that seems dark or or somewhat twisted, or
Speaker 1: or almost dystopian.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then I think of your work of All Star Superman,
Speaker 1: which is so optimistic. What what do you what is
Speaker 1: Grant Morrison optimistic about in twenty twenty? Grant, we need
Speaker 1: something right now.
Speaker 2: That's the one optimistic, not just honestly, you see people
Speaker 2: in the inhale, you know, almost TV are still still fighting,
Speaker 2: are still standing up for whatever they are standing up for.
Speaker 2: It's like some some power within is to resist tyranny
Speaker 2: and monstrosity. But that you know, it's it's it's hard
Speaker 2: to be optimistic. And the more optimisticy are, the more
Speaker 2: people throw things in your face to prove that you
Speaker 2: shouldn't be optimistic. So I'm very guarded about it. Honestly,
Speaker 2: I've always been optimistic, even living four miles from number
Speaker 2: one target should world go free break out? I just
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know. It's like maybe it's just me.
Speaker 2: I don't know about what about what I don't know
Speaker 2: about the best in us triumphing, about the fact that
Speaker 2: we keep writing this story because we know it's true,
Speaker 2: And when are we going to just like play it out?
Speaker 2: Why we're writing what? We don't need to write that story?
Speaker 2: You and I know there's lots of other stories, but fundamentally,
Speaker 2: the other story is doning serve us very well moving forward.
Speaker 2: So was the forward momentum and the fact that so
Speaker 2: to me think that's the kind of duty of fiction.
Speaker 2: And it's where I kind of depart from people who
Speaker 2: think that fiction should show what life is like. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's kind of shit. You'll kind of be
Speaker 2: end up disillusioned. You know, comics will break your heart, kid,
Speaker 2: and all of that's true, But that's not the truth
Speaker 2: because even within that, I notice that we always, we
Speaker 2: always look for something to keep going, you know, we always,
Speaker 2: we always favor magic. Nihilism is beat out by magic
Speaker 2: because at the bottom we always find meaning. We even
Speaker 2: find meaning and nothingness. So our desire to find meaning
Speaker 2: continues to make it positive, if that makes sense. And
Speaker 2: we always no matter what you do to people, what
Speaker 2: you bring them down, and they'll look for meaning, They'll
Speaker 2: keep finding a reason to tell a story, they'll keep
Speaker 2: finding something in it. And I think that ultimately is
Speaker 2: like if we could just if we can just expand that,
Speaker 2: if we could hold onto that little flame that Promethean
Speaker 2: moment and expand that, like we can make meaning with us.
Speaker 2: Magic is just making meaning. It's just like why is
Speaker 2: it not other than why you know, why can't you
Speaker 2: do that? Why you try it out with it? Why
Speaker 2: they way that person five and kill them? You know
Speaker 2: anim will live? Why don't you? And it's that's all.
Speaker 2: I'll go off and the line you know, I'm just an,
Speaker 2: I'm just a person just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Well, hopefully that's enough. Grant Morrison, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us.
Speaker 2: No, thanks, that was gay as I enjoyed the conversation.
Speaker 1: That was wonderful. Thank you so much, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Grant up next nerd Out and this week's nerd Out,
Speaker 1: a recurring segment where you tell us what you love
Speaker 1: and why. Sean pictures us on Final Fantasy for Free Enterprise.
Speaker 5: My name is Sean from Phoenix. My nerd out is
Speaker 5: an open world randomizer of a thirty year old video game,
Speaker 5: Final Fantasy for Free Enterprise. The original Final Fantasy four,
Speaker 5: released as Final Fantasy III on the Supernintendo in the US,
Speaker 5: was my introduction to JRPG's I was fascinated with the
Speaker 5: game as a kid, A high fantasy story of a
Speaker 5: dark knight trying to save the world and discover the
Speaker 5: hero within himself. The original game story was wild and emotional,
Speaker 5: but it's pretty linear. Members come and go it's at times,
Speaker 5: and he bounce from one mission to another. The story
Speaker 5: is about as straightforward as you can get when your
Speaker 5: story involves a giant robot and flying a whale to
Speaker 5: the moon. That's where Final Fantasy Iour Free Enterprise comes in.
Speaker 5: You start with the Airship Enterprise, which opens up the
Speaker 5: entire world. Bosses, key items, treasures, and quests are randomized,
Speaker 5: allowing for millions of options. You can hunt for the
Speaker 5: crystal you need to defeat the final boss Aromas, or
Speaker 5: you can set yourself to earn it through completing objectives.
Speaker 5: Along the way, you get to revisit the characters that
Speaker 5: made the game so compelling in the first place. The
Speaker 5: dark knight Cecil who knows that he must save himself
Speaker 5: to save the world, the spoony Barred Edward, the Twin
Speaker 5: Magic users, palam and Porum, and so many more. Free
Speaker 5: Enterprise makes quality of life improvements like the ability to
Speaker 5: toggle random encounters, but the charming sprites and art, the
Speaker 5: Spirit and Heart, and the Killer Yuimatsu's soundtrack remain. I
Speaker 5: came from the nostalgia, but I stay for the endless
Speaker 5: customization and replayability. Anytime is a great time to roll
Speaker 5: yourself a seed and give it a try. But now
Speaker 5: as a perfect time to join the community. The spring
Speaker 5: speed racing tournament, the adam And Cup, runs from early
Speaker 5: March through May. Races are broadcast on Twitch dot tv
Speaker 5: slash free Enterprise. All the information needed to get started
Speaker 5: and to join one of the most inclusive communities on
Speaker 5: the Internet is at f F four f E dot com.
Speaker 5: Thanks Jason, Thanks x ray Vision, and remember wish everyone.
Speaker 1: Thanks for submitting Sean. If you want to be featured,
Speaker 1: send your nerd out pitch to x ray at crooked
Speaker 1: dot com instructions or in the show notes up next
Speaker 1: to the Endgame. Folks were in the end Game. Now
Speaker 1: and today we are ranking our top three video game
Speaker 1: adaptations and why we love them. Rosie, are you ready?
Speaker 4: I'm definitely ready.
Speaker 1: Okay, you want to go first?
Speaker 3: Yes? My first pick is ye. Most people have probably
Speaker 3: never seen this movie, but you should go and watch
Speaker 3: it streaming on every free streaming service. It is Double Dragon.
Speaker 1: I love Dragon video game. I loved Double dragonar movie.
Speaker 3: Yes, oky but fun, one of the best, most fun
Speaker 3: and accessible video games that also spawned like every great
Speaker 3: video game like that, Like there are so many brilliant
Speaker 3: walk along, beat them Ups, and I love them. But yeah,
Speaker 3: the movie is so good. It stars Mark Dekaskos, who
Speaker 3: I love and will literally watch in any movie. He's
Speaker 3: also in the incredible Crying Freeman adaptation, which is a
Speaker 3: great manga adaptation. Alyssa Milano is in it. Scott Wolf
Speaker 3: is the is the brother of in hilarious fashion, and
Speaker 3: it's like it's one of the funnest things because now
Speaker 3: it's twenty twenty two, but the movie's from the nineties
Speaker 3: and it's set in two thousand and seven when.
Speaker 7: Like an earthquake has destroyed Los Angeles and everyone's like
Speaker 7: a post apocalyptic punk and Alisa Milano has the sickest
Speaker 7: look she's maybe ever had in her whole.
Speaker 3: Career, and it is just like it's so hokey, but
Speaker 3: I this nineties era of video games, I actually love.
Speaker 3: It's so much fun. They weren't afraid to do weird stuff.
Speaker 3: This has like, this has cool. This, this does what
Speaker 3: the Street Fighter movie doesn't, which is this actually like
Speaker 3: leans into the supernatural of it all, which I think
Speaker 3: is really really fun. And yeah, this is just this
Speaker 3: is like a great movie. Also, apparently the story was
Speaker 3: by Paul Deani, which is just why I know, like
Speaker 3: unexpected Paul Dany Batman Animated series creator like one of
Speaker 3: our favors. We talked about him a lot. So yeah,
Speaker 3: it's just it's this is a bunch of fun. This
Speaker 3: is like one of those things where I'm like, just
Speaker 3: go and watch it and you will have fun. If
Speaker 3: you think it sucks and it's badly made, you will
Speaker 3: still have fun watching it, but you might find it's
Speaker 3: like a it's like a solid B movie.
Speaker 1: Gem M I like it. My first pick will be Injustice,
Speaker 1: the comic series and the animated comic movie streaming now
Speaker 1: in HBO Max, which is an adaptation of the hit
Speaker 1: video game of the same name, YEP, which is a
Speaker 1: beat him up, fight him up video game based around
Speaker 1: the idea that Superman just flips out because he's been
Speaker 1: spoiler alert tricked into killing Slain and he goes nuts
Speaker 1: and the heroes of Earth kind of like split along
Speaker 1: certain lines and they have to stop them. It's for
Speaker 1: a comic adapted from a video game.
Speaker 3: Unbelievably good. Like everyone, it's good.
Speaker 1: It's like it shouldn't be good, but that ran.
Speaker 3: Like shout out to Tom Taylor, who was the writer
Speaker 3: who has given that unenviable task and suddenly made that
Speaker 3: one of the biggest comics in the world. Like the
Speaker 3: depth that the adaptation the video game is great. I
Speaker 3: love Nether Realm. I love Mortal Kombat, so I love
Speaker 3: the the fighting styles that they use to Injustice, and
Speaker 3: I love the evil characters. But like to then turn
Speaker 3: that into a legitimately engaging, deep story and not just
Speaker 3: adapt it to comics, but also adapt it to a movie,
Speaker 3: an animated movie.
Speaker 4: That's just that's powerful.
Speaker 1: What is your next?
Speaker 3: Okay, So my next one I actually so I'm going
Speaker 3: to stick all I'm going to go all nineties just
Speaker 3: for it, because otherwise it's hard for me because I
Speaker 3: actually like a lot of a lot of video game adaptations,
Speaker 3: even though I would argue there hasn't been like a
Speaker 3: truly magnificent like five Star. I agree with you, but
Speaker 3: I actually love a lot of them. So my next
Speaker 3: one is going to be Street Fighter. I This one
Speaker 3: goes above Double Dragon, only slightly. Also nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: directed by Stephen Desuza. I really love this movie. I
Speaker 3: rewatch it all the time. It's so funny, it's really silly.
Speaker 3: It doesn't lean enough into the supernatural. I think there's
Speaker 3: a it's you know, Jean claud van Dam for some
Speaker 3: the they always do this with this, the characters they
Speaker 3: choose to be the main characters. You're like, why would
Speaker 3: you do this? Like Kenna Layu first of all, the
Speaker 3: guy they cast as Ken, that is like one of
Speaker 3: my most annoying I'm still annoyed about that casting, you know,
Speaker 3: twenty years later. But like Ken and Ryu are comedy,
Speaker 3: they're comedy relief. In this movie, it makes no sense,
Speaker 3: like why would Nothing about it makes any sense, but
Speaker 3: it is like so fun raw. Julia plays m Bison
Speaker 3: and he is just unbelievable, and he he choose up
Speaker 3: all the scenery and he did the movie because people
Speaker 3: were like, why would you do this movie? It was
Speaker 3: so trash, and he did it because his kids loved
Speaker 3: Street Fighter and he wanted to do something his kids
Speaker 3: would love. And he has this like on real line
Speaker 3: where she says to him like it's him and Chanley
Speaker 3: and and she says she's asking him if he remembers
Speaker 3: when he killed her family, and he's like, you know, God,
Speaker 3: the day I graced your village was you know that
Speaker 3: was the most important day of your life. But to
Speaker 3: me it was just a Thursday or something. Jesus, it's
Speaker 3: so good and it's so fun, and you know Kylie
Speaker 3: Minoga's in it. Also there's like a there's a yeah,
Speaker 3: Kylie Minoga's in it, as Cammie I think.
Speaker 1: So it is like, what was It's been such a
Speaker 1: long time as I've seen the when I forgot what
Speaker 1: was the excuse for this split? The John Claude van
Speaker 1: dam split in this When when did he do the split?
Speaker 3: Oh? I mean it happens more than once. And also
Speaker 3: there's there's like a really famous and hilarious interview that's
Speaker 3: been doing the rounds recently with Oh yeah, and mengnaw
Speaker 3: Wehm plays Chanli, which is like unbelievable casting. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: it's Damian Chapa who plays Ken, Like why did they
Speaker 3: do that? But Byron Man plays He's wonderful. But there's
Speaker 3: a really famous interview that's going around at the moment
Speaker 3: virally again with Stephen Desusa, the director, where he talks
Speaker 3: about how like Jean Claude was just like coke out
Speaker 3: of his mind the whole time, and when you watch
Speaker 3: the movie, like you can see it and one of
Speaker 3: my favorites. This movie is not in my top three,
Speaker 3: right the Street Fighter is, but Street Fighter Legend of
Speaker 3: chan Lee is not. But I will say that movie
Speaker 3: has an unbelievable bathroom fight scene and a very famous
Speaker 3: cocaine fueled performance by Chris Klein, so it continues the legend.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Street Fighter nineteen ninety four another movie that
Speaker 3: you'll have a lot of.
Speaker 1: I love it. I am going to pick for my
Speaker 1: second pick a recent release Arcane, Netflix's Arcane, which is
Speaker 1: the adaptation of Lore from Legal Legend. Now, this is
Speaker 1: very interesting in the sense that I've never played Legal Legends. Yep,
Speaker 1: I don't know the law at all. I don't usually
Speaker 1: like the move in a video game adaptation, right is
Speaker 1: they always give you that scene that is a wink
Speaker 1: at like the way the game is. So for instance,
Speaker 1: in the episode one of Halo, when Master Chief touches
Speaker 1: down on Madrigal and starts slogging away against the Covenant,
Speaker 1: there's a moment where like you go into his visor
Speaker 1: and you see the first person view of him aimings
Speaker 1: gun the whole thing, And if that happens in Arcane,
Speaker 1: I have no idea. I don't know. I just know
Speaker 1: that it was great and I really enjoyed it. I
Speaker 1: thought the art was amazing, the characters were really great.
Speaker 1: I just really really liked it. It looked almost too
Speaker 1: real at times like that.
Speaker 3: That's a show that I think, not only is it
Speaker 3: like a stunning show, I've never played League of Legends either,
Speaker 3: and it's but it's like the rare adaptation. This is
Speaker 3: probably actually one of those five star if we're talking
Speaker 3: about a video game adaptation, like it not only pushes
Speaker 3: the boundaries of what a video game adaptation can be,
Speaker 3: but also the format of animation. Like you said, like
Speaker 3: when you're watching it, you spend so much of the
Speaker 3: time going how did they do that? Is it rod
Speaker 3: to scope? Is it two D? Is it CG? They
Speaker 3: use so many formats, it feels like it feels a
Speaker 3: bit like the first time you see spider Us.
Speaker 1: Completely agree, it's like that there's like this hard almost
Speaker 1: like hard edged like cell shading kind.
Speaker 3: Of look different line weights, and yeah, it's.
Speaker 1: Like it's just really really cool. I love it. What's
Speaker 1: your next pick?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm absolutely really happy that you went for like
Speaker 3: legit quality ones because I'm really going for that this
Speaker 3: is the triple bill of nineties classics. So my first
Speaker 3: one and I do legitimately love this movie is Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 3: which came out in nineteen ninety five, directed by Paul Anderson,
Speaker 3: who would obviously go on to do Paul W. S.
Speaker 3: Anderson would obviously go on to do like a lot
Speaker 3: of video game adaptations, but this is my favorite. I
Speaker 3: love this Mortal Kombat movie. It's campy as hell.
Speaker 1: It's so gay.
Speaker 3: It is like so enjoyable, and I think that like
Speaker 3: Robin Show as Lou Kang is like one of the
Speaker 3: all time best castings see and the martial arts are
Speaker 3: actually really good. It doesn't it doesn't do well. It's
Speaker 3: a PG, you know, PG thirteen, Isn't that always the way?
Speaker 3: So you don't get that brutal bloodiness of the video games,
Speaker 3: which Mortal Kombat is probably my favorite video game of
Speaker 3: all time. So, but there's just something about this movie
Speaker 3: that I love. This soundtrack is full of unbelievable bangers,
Speaker 3: Like it's so good, and it has every great character
Speaker 3: you know, it has oh yeah, carry hiroy Key Togawa
Speaker 3: as a shangsung and that's such popular casting that they
Speaker 3: actually bought him back for one of the video games
Speaker 3: recently because it was like so iconic Annah. And I also,
Speaker 3: I would say I also did enjoy I think this
Speaker 3: is this was on Netflix, but I think it's on
Speaker 3: HBO Max now. And I did enjoy the new Mortal
Speaker 3: Kombat if you want a more R rated one. Also
Speaker 3: another great lu Can casting there. And yeah, I just
Speaker 3: I love Mortal Kombat. And this movie is like probably
Speaker 3: one of my most rewatched movies because it's just so
Speaker 3: much fun.
Speaker 4: What's your number one?
Speaker 1: Oh god, So this is a cheat and I don't care.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it. And with a caveat of this
Speaker 1: movie came out in nineteen eighty four, so it might
Speaker 1: be problematic now, and I haven't seen it since I
Speaker 1: was for a long time. I've seen it since I
Speaker 1: was a kid. But as a kid, I loved it.
Speaker 1: So if it's problematic now, apologies, all apologies. The Last
Speaker 1: Starfighter from nineteen eighty four. Now here's the thing about
Speaker 1: The Last Starfighter. It's not really a video game adaptation.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a story about a kid. It's a
Speaker 1: story about an alien, a genocidal alien war where the
Speaker 1: very very very hail Mary last option of this dying
Speaker 1: up against the wall alien civilization that's about to be
Speaker 1: wiped out is to create a video game and send
Speaker 1: it to I guess like all the inhabited planets of
Speaker 1: the galaxy, but in particular Earth, and that video game
Speaker 1: will like search for talented fighter pilots and if they
Speaker 1: are good enough, if they beat the game, that means
Speaker 1: they are skilled enough, and they will then be picked
Speaker 1: up by a Starfighter like this unique, very very last
Speaker 1: high tech, super top secret Starfighter the last hope of
Speaker 1: this alien civilization to defeat the enemies. And it was
Speaker 1: it was like it's super fun, like you know, as
Speaker 1: a kid, it was like any kind of story that
Speaker 1: was like actually, like if you get good enough at
Speaker 1: video games, it's actually really good, Like it's actually beneficial.
Speaker 4: For your life.
Speaker 1: How about if you save not even just your world,
Speaker 1: but the galaxy other planets. I was like, I'm all
Speaker 1: the way in, so the Last Starfighter, I'm I'm I
Speaker 1: thought about The Last Starfighter like a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago because it seemed like one of those properties that
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, they haven't rebooted this yet, Like they
Speaker 1: haven't figured out a way to make this ten episodes
Speaker 1: of a TV show, or they haven't figured out how
Speaker 1: to just like make the movie again and release it
Speaker 1: on Disney Plus. Wow, I'm really surprised at that. So
Speaker 1: the Last Starfighter, I don't know if it's problematic again,
Speaker 1: it came out in nineteen eighty four. It might be,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry, but the Last Starfighter that's gonna be
Speaker 1: it because I just loved it.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm gonna do I. I want to do a
Speaker 3: special mention then, because my other one, if we were
Speaker 3: doing it like movies, it would be Tron. That's like,
Speaker 3: I love the original Tron. That was such a revolutionary
Speaker 3: movie for me. So shout out to Tron. Love that
Speaker 3: weird old movie.
Speaker 1: That's it for the Endgame. Let us know what you
Speaker 1: think and use hashtag xrvia Endgame to give us your pick.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Grant Morrison, Rosie, thanks again for joining us.
Speaker 1: It's been a delight anything to plug plug it again,
Speaker 1: plug the comic book again.
Speaker 6: Yes, I am writing a Godzilla comic with Oliver oh No,
Speaker 6: the incredible artist who is doing the inks and the
Speaker 6: colors and the pencils and everything. I'm sure the letter
Speaker 6: will also be amazing and I will shout them out
Speaker 6: when I find out their name.
Speaker 3: That is my plug. You can find me Rosie Marks
Speaker 3: on Instagram. Also on letterbox where you can see all
Speaker 3: the bad movies that I I watched a lot of
Speaker 3: bad movies in.
Speaker 4: The hotel at Austin. So that was, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: They wish they showed die Hard or No Live Free
Speaker 3: or die Hard. They showed it like five times into
Speaker 3: and that was actually quite fun. And justin Long and
Speaker 3: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who I love, who's also in another
Speaker 3: great video game, non video game movie, Scott Pilgrim. I
Speaker 3: also watched that Peter.
Speaker 6: Jackson King Kong movie on the morning when I was packing,
Speaker 6: and that is a wild movie.
Speaker 3: That's very problematic, and it's from.
Speaker 1: Like the Zai opening. Let me just say the opening
Speaker 1: of that movie. You're like, can we do this?
Speaker 3: Like is this okay? It happens a lot in that movie.
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, I'm I'm like, I'm surprised they
Speaker 3: haven't edited this show yet, but.
Speaker 1: Like, is this okay?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's that is wild, But Adrian Brody give him
Speaker 3: some more romantic leads. The other thing I will plug.
Speaker 3: It's not me, but it is our co host, superstar
Speaker 3: Cody Ziggler. He has a new comic coming out, Spider
Speaker 3: Punk Number by Cody Zikla. It's out April six. That's amazing.
Speaker 3: He teams up with this brilliant es called Justin Mason,
Speaker 3: this unbelievable colorist Jim Chara Lampitas who is just adds
Speaker 3: so much vibrancy, and Travis Lanham is the latter and
Speaker 3: those las like that's probably the best use of lettering
Speaker 3: I've seen in a comaic for a long time. So
Speaker 3: just good, good stuff. That's gonna be a big one.
Speaker 1: Well, folks. If you want to learn more about what
Speaker 1: we explore in each episode, check out our listeners guide
Speaker 1: to all things x Revision in the show notes or
Speaker 1: on our website. Catch the next episode not this is
Speaker 1: Legit No April Fools on April first, and again send
Speaker 1: your nerd out submissions to x ray atcrookad dot com.
Speaker 1: Also check out our videos on the own Cultured YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: Last week, Rosie did a really, really unbelievable and incredible
Speaker 1: and well worth your time video on the impact of
Speaker 1: Glynn Barley and Richmond Lewis to women that helped create
Speaker 1: a unique visual style of Batman in the Dark Knight
Speaker 1: Returns and Batman You're One and Don't Forget Star ratings
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcast, rate us with the five
Speaker 1: star ratings on Apple Podcasts on wherever it is. X
Speaker 1: ray Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is
Speaker 1: produced by Chris Lord and Saul Rubin. It is executive
Speaker 1: produced by myself and Sandy Gerard. Caroline Ruston and Carlton
Speaker 1: Gillespie are our consulting producers, and our editing and sound
Speaker 1: design is by Vasili's Photopoulos. Thank you to Brian Basquez
Speaker 1: for our theme music. See you next time.