Speaker 1: Warning, Today's episode contains spoilers for the graphic novel, which
Speaker 1: is a collection of several issues of Daredevil from the
Speaker 1: year nineteen eighty six. You need spoilers for Daredevil Born Again. Hello,
Speaker 1: my Nammy, Jason comes on and I'm Rosey Night and
Speaker 1: welcome back to Text Revision, the podcast where we dive
Speaker 1: deep with your favorite shows, movies, comics, and pop culture.
Speaker 1: Wi our podcasts, we're we're bringing you three huge episodes
Speaker 1: a week.
Speaker 2: In today's episode, it's finally time.
Speaker 3: Me and Jason are going to get to nut out.
Speaker 3: In our very first book club episode. You guys have
Speaker 3: been sending us questions, We're going to answer them. And
Speaker 3: today we're talking about dared Devil Born Again by Frank
Speaker 3: Miller of the mass a Calli Boom.
Speaker 1: Hey. Let's do a quick summary of this this incredible
Speaker 1: story arc. Setting the stage, Matt the law Firm, it's
Speaker 1: in trouble. They're shutting down, They're they're packing up the
Speaker 1: place because Matt and Foggy are very bad at running
Speaker 1: a business. Apparently so the the law firm is not
Speaker 1: doing well. And also Foggy has been hanging out with
Speaker 1: Matt's x Glory and you know, Matt is a very
Speaker 1: hard guy to get to know and Foggy is a
Speaker 1: very easy guy to get to know, and there's some
Speaker 1: feelings developing there. So that's kind of like where we
Speaker 1: start when this story begins. And the story begins with
Speaker 1: Karen Page, who is down on our luck and probably
Speaker 1: the weakest part of this story, then I think we
Speaker 1: both found to be I'll just pause for a second
Speaker 1: the recap to just say I was delighted to find
Speaker 1: on the reread. One of many rereads, but certainly this
Speaker 1: time the most recent reread. It's been a little while
Speaker 1: since I had read it. This story remains really good.
Speaker 1: It's great, it holds up, it's really good.
Speaker 3: I totally agree with you, and I think one of
Speaker 3: the most interesting things about this is when I first
Speaker 3: started my career in this industry, I would write extensively
Speaker 3: about misogyny and comic.
Speaker 2: Books, and this is a book.
Speaker 3: I think the biggest failing here is that Karen doesn't
Speaker 3: really get like much interior life outside of right things
Speaker 3: going very badly for her, which is kind of what
Speaker 3: we see, and the story opens with her doing something
Speaker 3: kind of unforgivable, and there is not a lot of
Speaker 3: great work on Karen's character, but generally because many books
Speaker 3: from this era in the in the late eighties war
Speaker 3: extremely misogynistic, generally, this really holds up as actually like
Speaker 3: a pretty fantastic story, and as some of our readers
Speaker 3: pointed out, there are interesting women within this story that
Speaker 3: don't fall into the Karen Page trope. So also, David
Speaker 3: Masacelli's art is like so unbelievable in this book that
Speaker 3: I think it just kept me engrossed on every single page.
Speaker 1: So Karen Page has been going through it. She is
Speaker 1: addicted to heroin, she has been engaging in sex work,
Speaker 1: which you don't want to do. And now finally, at
Speaker 1: her most desperate moment, she sells the thing that she
Speaker 1: has that she thinks is the world will find the
Speaker 1: most valuable, and that is the secret identity of Daredevil.
Speaker 1: Matt Murroch, the you know, hard scrabble street fighting lawyer
Speaker 1: is by night the crime fighter Daredevil. This information quickly
Speaker 1: moves up the criminal chain to the kingpin, who is
Speaker 1: like on a yacht somewhere with all those contenants fantastic
Speaker 1: looking incredible shorts, shorts, shorts, Wilson fisk and shorts and
Speaker 1: sandals love and.
Speaker 3: He yeah, I have to say, we're going to talk
Speaker 3: about our favorite panels. But I was going through when
Speaker 3: I was reading this on Hoofla and screen grabbing and
Speaker 3: that first shot of Wilson Fisk and it's pink and
Speaker 3: it is just it's so fantastic, and yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: what a book. I gotta say as well, Christy Shield
Speaker 3: on colors here just unbelievable colorists like and it's so
Speaker 3: similar to what's fantastic about Year one in the discord.
Speaker 3: I've been telling everyone, if you love this art, go
Speaker 3: and look at Year one because it's those saturated pinks,
Speaker 3: those wild giant speech that the wild giant sound effects
Speaker 3: like the huge blams and fill the panel. This is
Speaker 3: such a dynamic and engaging book, and it starts out
Speaker 3: as soon as.
Speaker 2: We see Kingpin.
Speaker 3: You think, oh, this is going to be something a
Speaker 3: little bit different. This is going to be something that
Speaker 3: people are going to remember. And obviously it has become
Speaker 3: that book. But tell us about Kingpin's plan because it's great.
Speaker 1: So we already mentioned that, you know, Nelson Murdoch is
Speaker 1: they're packing up like they're basically out of business. But
Speaker 1: the Kingpin decides We're going to strangle Matt slowly with bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: with all the corrupt ways that I can reach out
Speaker 1: and strangle Matt. I'm going to do it. He freezes.
Speaker 1: He has Matt's bank accounts frozen. He has his law
Speaker 1: license revoked, basically alleging causing a witness to allege or
Speaker 1: a witness, a twenty year police veteran with a spotless reputation,
Speaker 1: alleges that Matt bribed a witness. He's got his friends now,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, like even Foggy is like
Speaker 1: doubting him. And then while Matt is trying to unravel
Speaker 1: all of this and trying to figure out like what
Speaker 1: there must be some kind of mistake and how can
Speaker 1: this be? He returns home and just as he's coming
Speaker 1: back home, his brownstone is blown up. And while this
Speaker 1: is there's this incredible panel again we'll talk about our
Speaker 1: favorite panels. But like he's kneeling in the rubble, and
Speaker 1: he finds his Daredevil costumes, like basically the only thing
Speaker 1: that really survived the destruction, and he says Kingpin, like
Speaker 1: I never would have connected this to you. Nothing in
Speaker 1: anything that's going on, said organized crime. But you shouldn't
Speaker 1: have signed it. And now Matt is on a full
Speaker 1: downward violent spiral to like get back at the Kingpin.
Speaker 1: So step two in Wilson Fisk's plan is happening. Uh,
Speaker 1: just as he envisioned. Matt is steadily spiraling towards the bottom,
Speaker 1: and the Kingpin is deciding to just like put his
Speaker 1: meaty foot on the Matt's neck and continue to push
Speaker 1: him down. He Matt is seeing the Kingpin behind every interaction,
Speaker 1: behind everyone who he sees on the n sees but
Speaker 1: senses on the street, and he's falling very very quickly
Speaker 1: into a level of really terrifying paranoia and almost like
Speaker 1: almost drug induced like violent outbursts even though he and
Speaker 1: drug guy, Yeah, he's just he's.
Speaker 2: Losing grip on reality for sure.
Speaker 1: And every step of the way as Matt, you know,
Speaker 1: like is like lashing out at criminals on the subway
Speaker 1: to the point like being much more violent than he
Speaker 1: ever has been, as he is going to various criminal
Speaker 1: layers and beating the shit out of people and screaming,
Speaker 1: where's the Kingpin? The Kingpin is getting all of these reports,
Speaker 1: getting all the video feeds, and he is watching it
Speaker 1: and is absolutely absolutely loving it. Finally men, he finally
Speaker 1: Matt is he is so weakened by everything that's happened,
Speaker 1: and his grip on reality is like almost gone. And
Speaker 1: he tries to like break up a robbery. Two like
Speaker 1: street criminals who Matt would have no problem taking out
Speaker 1: previously get the better of him and they stab him
Speaker 1: and he's just bleeding out. He's going to die in
Speaker 1: the gutter, but Sister Maggie, of a local nun, finds him,
Speaker 1: patches him up, takes him in. We learn that Sister
Speaker 1: Maggie in a shocking reveal that's basically just like a throwaway,
Speaker 1: that Sister Maggie is his actual old They just kind
Speaker 1: of drop that and throw it away.
Speaker 3: This is your mom she in case the Catholicism and Christianity,
Speaker 3: your mom is a nun. Also interesting to bring up here,
Speaker 3: as we're going to talk about this more throughout the episode,
Speaker 3: but we met sister Maggie in season three of Dead Levil,
Speaker 3: so this has already been deeply taken from Ben Urick,
Speaker 3: another major player in this story. He was obviously a
Speaker 3: huge part of Dead Devil season one. We spoke, we talked,
Speaker 3: we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2: In our rekit.
Speaker 3: He's fantastic, but his fate in season one means that
Speaker 3: we're probably not going to see him again here. So
Speaker 3: there's some very interesting conversation to be had about how
Speaker 3: much Born Again has actually already been adapted in the
Speaker 3: first three Netflix Dead Level series.
Speaker 1: But now the Kingpin with Matt Murdoch basically potentially dead
Speaker 1: and whereabouts kind of unknown, although the Kingpin is keeping
Speaker 1: track of now the Kingpin pushes it to he decides,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm going to now completely ruin Matt's
Speaker 1: Daredevil persona by finding like basically a psychotic like serial killer,
Speaker 1: having him released from a mental institution. Forcing Melvin aka Gladiator,
Speaker 1: the former street level jewel thief and villain who went
Speaker 1: straight with the help of Matt Murdoch and Foggy Nelson,
Speaker 1: force Melvin, who is a costume maker for heroes on
Speaker 1: the side, force him to make a exact replica of
Speaker 1: Daredevil's costume. They're going to give it to this crazed
Speaker 1: serial killer and just like set him loose and like
Speaker 1: have him now ruined Daredevil's reputation by committing murders. Matt,
Speaker 1: now healthy, goes, he fights this guy and he beats
Speaker 1: the Daredevil knockoff, and now the Kingpin, who's pushed it
Speaker 1: too far with this Daredevil knockoff, pushes it even further
Speaker 1: by having a general that he has in his pocket
Speaker 1: released to him. The latest and most troubling and most
Speaker 1: fascistic example of America's continued attempts to create other super
Speaker 1: soldiers like Steve Rogers. Nuke Nuke is an ultra right
Speaker 1: wing super soldier addicted to pills who has been working
Speaker 1: to destabilize various countries in Latin America. He is pulled
Speaker 1: out of Nicaragua and unleashed on Hell's kitchen with the
Speaker 1: hopes Kingpin hopes that he'll you know, kill Matt Murdock
Speaker 1: and everybody that Matt Murrack clubs because he's had enough. Well,
Speaker 1: this is really the thing that causes the entire scheme
Speaker 1: to unravel. Daredevil, with the help of some Avengers, beats Nuke.
Speaker 1: Captain America is drawn into this in what is one
Speaker 1: of the best cameos I think of a like major
Speaker 1: character in another story in certainly Marvel History, Like, you
Speaker 1: get so much of what makes Captain America like actually
Speaker 1: a great character in this. Yeah, he is so disappointed
Speaker 1: in his country in the continued obsession with super soldiers,
Speaker 1: with what they've done to this young man who has
Speaker 1: become nuke, and he helps Matt bring the whole thing down.
Speaker 1: In the end, Matt beats the Kingpin in his office
Speaker 1: in a tremendous fight, and he and Karen literally walk
Speaker 1: off into the sunset together, and Frank Miller then exits
Speaker 1: the exits the title with that final panel and does
Speaker 1: a thing that you never see in ongoing titles, which
Speaker 1: is create a hard stopping point of the story way
Speaker 1: that really causes troubles, Like if you're going to read
Speaker 1: this in the context of the of the Daredevil ongoing
Speaker 1: run when you get to the next issue, which I
Speaker 1: think Mark Runwald is the yest writer, because again Frank
Speaker 1: Miller was just like now I'm out. Fine. It's really jarring.
Speaker 3: As a kid when you get to the end of
Speaker 3: one of those arcs and their art changers and the
Speaker 3: writer changes, and suddenly you're like, wait a minute, like
Speaker 3: what happened? How how did this come to me? But
Speaker 3: of course then you know, I'm a huge proponent of
Speaker 3: the the JR jr. And an Inacenti stuff, so we
Speaker 3: get all these different great dead level talking points. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, and what a story to read this back.
Speaker 3: Also again Nuke, a character we saw in season one
Speaker 3: and two of Dad Devil. They've actually taken so much
Speaker 3: of this book for the Defender's kind of Netflix universe,
Speaker 3: which I found really interesting on reading it back, because
Speaker 3: it is issues to do so to basically, you know,
Speaker 3: two thirty one essentially you could get too thirty two,
Speaker 3: two thirty three. It's it's barely you know, twenty issues,
Speaker 3: and it is so influential.
Speaker 2: Jason, what was your biggest takeaway re reading it for
Speaker 2: the book club?
Speaker 1: How good it is? Like it has its reputation for
Speaker 1: a reason. You know, I was, I was. I was
Speaker 1: kind of feeling a little bit of trepidation going back
Speaker 1: and wondering, God, like, is it as good as I remember?
Speaker 1: And it is as good. It's as good as I remember.
Speaker 1: Why this was such a crucial graphic novel for me
Speaker 1: and my like love affair with comics because it really
Speaker 1: is literary in a way that many comics of that
Speaker 1: era were not. Like the descriptions, the way the way
Speaker 1: the writing worked with the panels, the layouts of the
Speaker 1: panel That's the other thing. If you're gonna read this
Speaker 1: on digital, I know, you know some people's eyesight, mine included,
Speaker 1: is not great. And sometimes you want to zoom in
Speaker 1: and do the guided view where you blow up the
Speaker 1: panel right and then you just swipe through. Don't do
Speaker 1: that because or if you do do that, allow yourself
Speaker 1: to look at the layout first. Because Masie Kelly's layouts,
Speaker 1: his layouts are amazing storytelling device.
Speaker 2: So Rosen's lettering is so incredible.
Speaker 3: There's this great moment when Matt is left on the
Speaker 3: ground and he is being rescued, and it's like you
Speaker 3: see Matt half down the side, and then there's one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 3: seven panels where it's just huge text in bright pink Son,
Speaker 3: can you hear me? Son?
Speaker 2: The doctors they say you'll be fine, Son, You're a
Speaker 2: hero boy.
Speaker 3: Really, it looks unlike anything else, while still feeling very
Speaker 3: akin to that kind of mid to late eighties style because.
Speaker 2: Of Miller being Miller and mas Kelly being mass Kelly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I also, something I really loved that I had never
Speaker 3: kind of revisited in the same way is that every
Speaker 3: I didn't realize how much intentional repetition there was like
Speaker 3: every issue opens with Matt laying down and he kind
Speaker 3: of he starts off relaxing in his bed, and he
Speaker 3: ends up, you know, curled up in the fetal position
Speaker 3: in an alleyway, and it's kind of this transition just
Speaker 3: shown through one thing, how comfortable he was in his
Speaker 3: beautiful New York apartment, in his nice probably like you know,
Speaker 3: two hundred count Egyptian sheets or whatever, and then just
Speaker 3: by Wilson Fisk's sheer malevolence and scheming, he ends up
Speaker 3: you know, homeless on the street. And I think there's
Speaker 3: so much interesting visual narrative storytelling in this book that
Speaker 3: just really stands the test of time and also feels
Speaker 3: mad simply influential on the people who are making comics.
Speaker 1: Now, Oh yeah, this is clearly a remains a touchstone.
Speaker 1: Pieces I want to talk about, like when another thing
Speaker 1: that I really loved is just the again the Captain
Speaker 1: America stuff, when he comes in, like there's this moment
Speaker 1: where he's like he throughout his very brief appearance in
Speaker 1: this story, it's like an issue basically little less than
Speaker 1: an issue. When he's working with Matt, Miller is able
Speaker 1: to like put in so much pathos where you realize
Speaker 1: that Captain America is like, he's like they people don't
Speaker 1: believe in this shit anymore. They think it's dumb, like
Speaker 1: that what am I doing? I'm doing this and nobody
Speaker 1: believes in what I'm doing anymore. Look at like what's happened.
Speaker 1: Look at this guy Nuke, look at what the country's become.
Speaker 1: Look at the General's fucking lying to me, lying to
Speaker 1: my face about like what they're doing. Nobody believes in
Speaker 1: what I'm doing anymore? What is this all for? And
Speaker 1: I found that like so affecting. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 1: It's like it's just like really amazing how good this
Speaker 1: story is and how many things are in here that
Speaker 1: feel like if I was writing a story today, I
Speaker 1: might use this device, I might use this plot point.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I would like I would hope to make
Speaker 1: a scene that is in this style that is as
Speaker 1: good as the scene when Wilson Fisk is like seducing
Speaker 1: Nuke into working for him, Like he has his office
Speaker 1: tricked out with all the American paraphernalia. Yeah, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you know they don't our boys have been downtroden. Nobody
Speaker 1: respects our soldiers anymore they don't respect the flag anymore,
Speaker 1: but I know you do. And the way he seduces him,
Speaker 1: like Jesus Christ, this feels like twenty twenty five, like
Speaker 1: it's it's just incredible. What were your thoughts, what were
Speaker 1: your takeaways upon rereading this?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with all of that.
Speaker 3: I think the nuke stuff feels just horribly relevant right now,
Speaker 3: even though this is a book that is literally decades old,
Speaker 3: Like the book is older than me, and the nuke.
Speaker 2: Stuff feels so relevant.
Speaker 3: Something I thought was deeply cool that we often don't
Speaker 3: get in comics. I loved how much they showed the
Speaker 3: Kingpin growing his strength and.
Speaker 2: Kind of like working a king out.
Speaker 3: And I just thought that was really interesting because often
Speaker 3: with a character like you know, the Blob or the Kingpin,
Speaker 3: they're just like, this is a fat character, and maybe
Speaker 3: he's strong, or maybe he's just really fat. I kind
Speaker 3: of loved the way that they showed Kingpin's prowess and
Speaker 3: they showed his strength, and they showed him beating the
Speaker 3: share out of people. Also, on a hilarious note, I
Speaker 3: don't think there's ever been a comic that used the
Speaker 3: sound effect FAP more than this comic that's a different meaning.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: It's so funny because they Yeah.
Speaker 1: The notable one to me is is Matt's nightstick hitting
Speaker 1: like Kingpin's belly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 3: Also, I thought, I love the kind of use of
Speaker 3: silence in this comic and how often Frank Miller for
Speaker 3: being such a kind of scene as such, like an
Speaker 3: autor style creator in this book. As a writer, he
Speaker 3: understands the power of days of David Masikelly's art. There's
Speaker 3: lots of silent panels. There's lots of massive splash pages
Speaker 3: that begin and end the issues, which I love. I
Speaker 3: do think, you know, I I would love to have
Speaker 3: seen a world where, you know, when we're talking about
Speaker 3: something like The Dark Knight Returns, another one of Frank
Speaker 3: Miller's very famous books that came out within like a
Speaker 3: year of this, which is completely ridiculous, but you know,
Speaker 3: he was with Lim Valle at the time, who was
Speaker 3: a colorist, and you got this really cool representation of
Speaker 3: Carrie Kelly as you know, a female Robin and I
Speaker 3: do I just I know Christy Scherr was working on
Speaker 3: those colors, and I just I don't I wish there
Speaker 3: had been someone who had been like, hey, let's give
Speaker 3: Karen like.
Speaker 2: A little bit more to chew on, like this idea
Speaker 2: of her.
Speaker 3: As just like a drug addict, and also the kind
Speaker 3: of weird moralistic idea of like people who have addictions
Speaker 3: can't be trusted and there is like levels to that,
Speaker 3: but it's very black and white. But I will say
Speaker 3: rereading this as someone who is looking at it with
Speaker 3: a more critical eye, with a more thematic eye, I
Speaker 3: did find it very interesting how much kind of Catholic
Speaker 3: and Christian kind of story thematics there are here, with
Speaker 3: like resurrections and downfalls and the importance of the church.
Speaker 2: When Matt gets found by system Maggie, he's.
Speaker 3: Kind of laying in that reclining Jesus position that we
Speaker 3: know so well when he awakes in the hospital. So
Speaker 3: I think in that way, having this kind of more
Speaker 3: black and white sense of what morality is makes sense.
Speaker 3: And also, you know who else is going through it
Speaker 3: in this book, Matt Murdoch, Like that man is going
Speaker 3: through it just as equally as bad as Karen, and
Speaker 3: I kind of love as someone who loves a tragic romance.
Speaker 3: I do love the way that that allows him and
Speaker 3: her to kind of still connect throughout this book no
Speaker 3: matter what. They kind of have that tragic romance, which
Speaker 3: I am a fan of that trope.
Speaker 1: I found myself really drawn in a way that I
Speaker 1: don't remember remember being in the past. To the Ben
Speaker 1: Urick scenes. I think this is the best Yuruk there's been.
Speaker 1: Urick is still like an active character, of course, and
Speaker 1: then in Marvel Comics most recently. I think he's probably
Speaker 1: most recently notable for being part of Orcus's scheme against
Speaker 1: the x Men and the krakoa era that said, like
Speaker 1: Uric his bravery in the face of constant threats against
Speaker 1: his life and his family's life by the Kingpin to
Speaker 1: pursue the Kingpins story and doggedly reveal that Matt Murdoch
Speaker 1: was framed by the Kingpin, despite the fact that like
Speaker 1: Kingpin calls him at work, or the assassin the Kingpin
Speaker 1: hires calls him at work and makes him listen to
Speaker 1: the murder of a witness, like attacks him in his home.
Speaker 1: Like There's so many things that happen to Ben and
Speaker 1: he follows through, and it's very difficult for him to
Speaker 1: follow through.
Speaker 2: I think that part of it was very powerful in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. It's so powerless.
Speaker 1: It's really powerful stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought it was amazing. Okay, So one of
Speaker 3: our first questions from Discord, which I think is a
Speaker 3: great question, it's basically like, first if you asked, what
Speaker 3: is the legacy of Born Again outside of the shows, like,
Speaker 3: did the run out of any influences on comic books
Speaker 3: both inside and outside of Dad.
Speaker 1: Everl Well, I think we first have to zoom out.
Speaker 1: It was hugely influential, but I think beyond that, this
Speaker 1: is thes came out in eighty six and eighty six
Speaker 1: I think is what a yeah, baby, you're talking about
Speaker 1: one of the best years in comics ever, and Daredevil
Speaker 1: Born Again is part of that. There's also the X Men,
Speaker 1: like the X Men were franchised off into X Factor
Speaker 1: like New Mutants and X Men like it became they
Speaker 1: became a crossover sensation where Marvel kind of like was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we realized that X Men is like our biggest franchise.
Speaker 1: Let's really blow it out. You had Watchmen and The
Speaker 1: Dark Knight Returns.
Speaker 3: Crazy that you had those two seminal books. This is
Speaker 3: the dark and Gritty era.
Speaker 1: The latter being also Frank Miller, so like that you're
Speaker 1: really seeing like the literalization, like the adultification, if you will,
Speaker 1: of comics, particularly with Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns.
Speaker 2: Their late seventies. Throughout the eighties there were these great books.
Speaker 3: Denny Cohen's The Question was one of the early ones
Speaker 3: that really turned things kind of to this dark noir,
Speaker 3: huge space. But eighty six eighty seven is seen as
Speaker 3: a massive sea change for comics. You get Watchmen, which
Speaker 3: goes on to become, you know, the biggest selling and
Speaker 3: most continuously selling comic of all time. Due to the
Speaker 3: nature of the contract, which meant that if the book
Speaker 3: goes out of print for more than a year, Alan
Speaker 3: Moore and Dave Gibbons and John Stewart would get the
Speaker 3: rights back, so that book has never been out of print.
Speaker 3: Dark Knight Returns obviously seen as one of the seminal
Speaker 3: Batman stories of all time, with unbelievable work with Frank Miller,
Speaker 3: Lim Valley on those wild colors, class Jansen inking. It's
Speaker 3: like it's a team that you could probably lightning in
Speaker 3: a bottle. But interestingly, another book, Dark Knight Returns unbelievably influential, not.
Speaker 2: Only on comics, but also on movies, TV film.
Speaker 3: Every single person who adapts a Batman story, whether it's
Speaker 3: Tim Burton, Zack Snyder, or inevitably James Gunn Matt Reeves,
Speaker 3: they always mention the Dark Knight Returns. Christopher Nolan mentions
Speaker 3: the Dark Knight Returns. So this era was so influential,
Speaker 3: and I would say in general it becomes a very
Speaker 3: influential book on comics because many of the people who
Speaker 3: are working in comics now are people who grew up
Speaker 3: reading those books, and Born Again is regularly offered up
Speaker 3: as one of those if you've never read a comic,
Speaker 3: read this. And I do think actually, and this was
Speaker 3: another first of her kind of note that they mentioned
Speaker 3: in the discord. They said, as a naive comics reader,
Speaker 3: I was surprised that Dead Devil's powers and origin I
Speaker 3: sort of re explained in every issue and how the
Speaker 3: comics in general handle onboarding new readers right. And I
Speaker 3: actually think, out of all those books Watchmen, the Dark
Speaker 3: Knight Returns, this book, I actually think that Born Again
Speaker 3: is probably the most accessible jumping on point, because when
Speaker 3: you tell somebody who's never read a comic to read Watchmen,
Speaker 3: you are offering it to them as a literary book
Speaker 3: because it was in Times one hundred best Novels of
Speaker 3: all Time. But to understand Watchmen, and to truly love Watchmen,
Speaker 3: you probably need an understanding of comics, superheroes, the nature of.
Speaker 1: PSS understand and superheroes society.
Speaker 3: Exactly what you've got to know that like the Minutemen
Speaker 3: and the Watchmen are commentaries on these other things, and
Speaker 3: if you even want to get deeper, their reimaginings of
Speaker 3: Charlton characters. So they're actually a very contextually heavy book.
Speaker 3: But born Again, as first for pointed out, this is
Speaker 3: very old school, like you are constantly being reminded, Hey,
Speaker 3: this is what happened, this is Matt Murdoch, this is
Speaker 3: what he does, this is how he got his pals.
Speaker 3: I mean, the end of the book in what I'm
Speaker 3: interested to think about, whether it was an editorial edict
Speaker 3: or Frank Miller just being kind to the next person.
Speaker 3: The end of the book essentially ends with a status
Speaker 3: quo where it's Matt and Karen and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 3: I'm dead, evil, I live in Hell's kitchen. I try
Speaker 3: and keep it clean. That's all you need to know,
Speaker 3: and it's like boom, okay, So then the next person
Speaker 3: can hypothetically just kind of jump on. What do you
Speaker 3: think of it as a jumping on point? Like would
Speaker 3: you give this to someone who's never read a comic before?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I would, And I think I think you make
Speaker 1: a you make a very salient point, which is particularly
Speaker 1: comics of this era. This was an era in which
Speaker 1: unless you had a pull list at a comic book shop,
Speaker 1: you were getting them on the news stand. Yeah, on this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: on the spinner stands at the burber shop, Like you
Speaker 1: would just buy it because you know, kids would just
Speaker 1: buy it because they love the cover. They wouldn't know
Speaker 1: what the story was, and you had and in that
Speaker 1: came the responsibility of the creative team to explain where
Speaker 1: we are, who these characters are, what the setup is
Speaker 1: every single time. Like it's kind of it's crazy to
Speaker 1: read back those old X Men things where it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Logan is like my healing factor kicks in, you know,
Speaker 1: like he's got to telling every single time, like what's
Speaker 1: going on?
Speaker 3: And when they didn't do that, you would have notes
Speaker 3: being like edits note like go check out you know issues.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Seventy seven of Uncanny or whatever, like they would kind
Speaker 3: of direct read us because there was so many books
Speaker 3: coming out, and that was actually something I did love
Speaker 3: about the experience of reading this book alongside or the listeners.
Speaker 3: A lot of people were kind of like whoa, Like,
Speaker 3: I'm just starting this issue and I'm jumping in and
Speaker 3: I don't really understand any of the context or the
Speaker 3: back issue of what's been happening in the previous stuff.
Speaker 3: I don't really understand how some of this correlates when
Speaker 3: you're just reading the issues, and that is such a
Speaker 3: big experience of being a comic book reader. I always
Speaker 3: talk about another book that came out in this eighty
Speaker 3: six eighty seven Corridor, The Killing Joke Brian bolland Alan Moore,
Speaker 3: obviously deeply famous, deeply gritty, deeply bad treatment of women.
Speaker 3: But that book, it's like it that is a fantastic
Speaker 3: book because it is so singular and essentially like an
Speaker 3: Elseworld style title, right, But when you compare that to
Speaker 3: something like a death in the family, which is such
Speaker 3: a big deal Jason Todd die, it's huge, She's killed.
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: The next issue the Joke is like, hey, guys, I'm
Speaker 3: taking over the UN and he's dressed in like a
Speaker 3: funny costume and he's just like trying to take over
Speaker 3: the UN. And it's that difference between a book that
Speaker 3: is contained and a book that really was part of
Speaker 3: that massive, ongoing comic book continuity. And it was really
Speaker 3: fun to get to see our Discord listeners and a
Speaker 3: Discord people and our members and our community of Extra
Speaker 3: Vision really come together on this kind of like WHOA,
Speaker 3: how crazy is it to just read an iconic storyline
Speaker 3: but that came in the middle of a bunch of
Speaker 3: random issues because that's how comics are. So I kind
Speaker 3: of love that this gives you a taste of that
Speaker 3: experience without feeling too overwhelmed, Like most of our Discord
Speaker 3: listeners really came away from this book like us just
Speaker 3: kind of in love with what it did well. And also,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna this is a fun question from Animal Mother,
Speaker 3: which was Miller is often challenged by his One day
Speaker 3: mentioned the depiction of women, which is very true. As
Speaker 3: Animal Mother points out, they generally fit into the molds
Speaker 3: of kind of victim or prostitute.
Speaker 2: We see that in Sin City.
Speaker 3: We also see that he loves like a badass chick
Speaker 3: who is broken but as animal mother Dark.
Speaker 1: Knight, Dark Knight Night, weirdly being the only being, the
Speaker 1: only story of this of this time in which he
Speaker 1: breaks that mold.
Speaker 3: It gives you, so then he returns back to it
Speaker 3: in the Secret returns to it. But Sister Maggie is
Speaker 3: a welcome deviation from the norm. Her presence in this
Speaker 3: book is brief but significant, and it opened a door
Speaker 3: to a more complex exploration of faith, Catholic guilt and responsibility.
Speaker 3: After Born Again, where does the story take her in
Speaker 3: her relationship to Matt Well.
Speaker 2: Jason, As you mentioned, she's his mom.
Speaker 1: Crazy, she's his mom, I mean, they basically crazy, Mic,
Speaker 1: they will give you this massive reveal that here's where
Speaker 1: Matt's mom is. She apparently, you know, clearly her and
Speaker 1: Matt's dad, their relationship was not long lived or filled
Speaker 1: with love, and clearly she's very religious on her own
Speaker 1: and because of the things she was going through, clearly
Speaker 1: abandoned the family. And it's amazing to one realize that
Speaker 1: she's been close by this whole time, perhaps keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on him, clearly keeping an eye on him in
Speaker 1: some way. Yeah, but also this it's kind of a
Speaker 1: one and done, like you dropped this massive reveal on
Speaker 1: you and that's it.
Speaker 3: It's really fun.
Speaker 1: I kind of love I love.
Speaker 3: It because she and the funny thing is she is
Speaker 3: still in the comics, but not really as his mother,
Speaker 3: you know, not at all. There is a very interesting
Speaker 3: and strange story where Matt is looking after a baby
Speaker 3: that he suspects is the Antichrist because of comics. He
Speaker 3: almost threw the baby off the roof of the church
Speaker 3: because he was sure of it. And then it turns
Speaker 3: out that he meets back up with Sister Maggie. They
Speaker 3: they stay in contact and often when something terrible happens,
Speaker 3: she will be there and kind of as animal mother.
Speaker 3: Noticed is this representation of a more complex look at
Speaker 3: religion through the eyes of a nun. She really goes
Speaker 3: through it though like her fellow nuns get killed at
Speaker 3: some point by like bullseye terrible hate to see it.
Speaker 3: And also she kind of stays involved with Matt and
Speaker 3: kind of trying to be his almost like a counselor.
Speaker 3: And then she's there for him when he loses Karen.
Speaker 3: And it's it's really interesting, but I would love to
Speaker 3: see where it goes. We do get some different versions
Speaker 3: of her in the comics. In What If, there's an
Speaker 3: issue where she kind of protects Karen Page and tries
Speaker 3: to after her. We also see her attend Jack Murdock's
Speaker 3: funeral in one Most interestingly, in Spider Gwen Law, Maggie
Speaker 3: actually doesn't abandon Jack or Matt and he's raised together.
Speaker 3: But though she becomes paralegal, she actually ends up getting
Speaker 3: comatose from the same drug of chemicals that blinds Matt.
Speaker 2: So not going great for her. But I'm very interested
Speaker 2: to see if we could.
Speaker 3: See sister Maggie return in the New Dead Evil series,
Speaker 3: because she really is a huge part of his law.
Speaker 3: But it's kind of funny that in the comics it's
Speaker 3: like she's his mom, but they don't suddenly like create
Speaker 3: a familial relationship.
Speaker 1: It's so true some other questions that were really good.
Speaker 1: Miles Tag in the Discord says, I was not expecting
Speaker 1: the Karen story to be so dark. It's true. I
Speaker 1: think about reading this as a kid, and I just
Speaker 1: like was like, Okay, I imagine it must have been
Speaker 1: pretty controversial at the time. I'm seeing Cap and Tonia's
Speaker 1: instruments of the US Military Industrial complex like nakedly. Part
Speaker 1: of it was wild, but as always Cap comes around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think let's talk about the Cap elements because I
Speaker 1: think that, first of all, the appearance of the Avengers
Speaker 1: in this story is so cool because you get them
Speaker 1: through Daredevil's the perspective of Daredevil's senses, and you realize
Speaker 1: like how fucking powerful they are. It's like, that's not
Speaker 1: a man, that's a god. Like he's commanding lighting. I
Speaker 1: can feel it. When Tony arrives in his in the
Speaker 1: fucking scarlet Centurion eighties armor. He uh, you know. Matt
Speaker 1: is like I can feel the circuitry like hum around him,
Speaker 1: and it's you feel their power. But also, like Miles
Speaker 1: is right, like throughout all of this story, Cap is like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck have I gotten myself into? It?
Speaker 2: Always like what I'm doing?
Speaker 1: Matt says like or someone says, I forget, like oh,
Speaker 1: your bosses, and he's like, I don't work for them,
Speaker 1: Like that's not what this is. Like It's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: prove it, like you know, and Cap does his own investigation,
Speaker 1: which he you get a little bit of a download
Speaker 1: of the Super Soldier history of the program. You realize
Speaker 1: it's ongoing, Cap realizing it's it's still ongoing, and that
Speaker 1: this guy Nuke, which you know talk about the complexity
Speaker 1: of Nuke. Nuke really is like the kind of like
Speaker 1: the sub villain of this series, like a major antagonist.
Speaker 1: But even though he's not depicted with anything like any
Speaker 1: kind of you know, positive qualities, you don't feel in
Speaker 1: any kind of way that he's like this human being.
Speaker 1: He's so far gone and using drugs to like enhance
Speaker 1: his violence. It's you see his humanity through Captain America, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is an incredible storytelling device. It's like Cap is
Speaker 1: the only one who's like, I understand what this guy
Speaker 1: has been through exactly. He's a victim of all of this,
Speaker 1: and he's the only one who is like willing to
Speaker 1: help him and to offer him up as evidence of
Speaker 1: the government's wrongdoing. It's an incredible turn and yeah, big
Speaker 1: reason why I think Cap is like again, I think
Speaker 1: it's an incredible cameo by Captain American.
Speaker 3: I think as well, it's a really really smart choice
Speaker 3: on the part of Miller, which you know, hearing me
Speaker 3: celebrate Frank Miller is really going to be shocking to
Speaker 3: many of you.
Speaker 1: He has many he's good.
Speaker 3: He's good, he's you know, he's terror he's always saying
Speaker 3: fucked up shit, and like I often know, critiquing, but
Speaker 3: I will say, you know, one of the storylines which
Speaker 3: I know we have talked about and I think was
Speaker 3: so influential on this story is the Steve Engelhart Captain
Speaker 3: America storyline from seventy four where Capp basically decides to
Speaker 3: quit being Captain America. And it's to reflect that disillusionment
Speaker 3: with the government people felt and with the fact that
Speaker 3: the military industrial system is killing people around the world.
Speaker 3: And there's that very famous panel where Captain America is
Speaker 3: like Captain America must die, that kind of splash page.
Speaker 2: But I was thinking of that so much.
Speaker 3: Here because Cap understands his place in the culture of
Speaker 3: the world, and he understands the danger that America can
Speaker 3: put people into, and he understands that even while he
Speaker 3: wants to be a symbol of hope, that is not
Speaker 3: always the case. And I think the nuke stuff is
Speaker 3: really interesting because at this point he is a super
Speaker 3: soldier kind of run off from that, but in the
Speaker 3: Grant Morrison stuff later on, it would be revealed that
Speaker 3: he's kind of part of a weapon plus program similar
Speaker 3: to Wolverine. And I think there's so much interesting, dark,
Speaker 3: dark truth about the way that experimentation has pushed forward
Speaker 3: science and pushed forward military techniques, and how so much
Speaker 3: of that in the nature of Captain America he has
Speaker 3: created through Nazi technology, Nazi experiments, that is how they
Speaker 3: get to the super Soldier serum, And that is so
Speaker 3: real about many of the hugest scientific, you know, discoveries
Speaker 3: in American history came from Nazi science. And I think
Speaker 3: that just makes this story feel so real and so resonant,
Speaker 3: and that feels like a cameo that had so much
Speaker 3: thought put into it that Yeah, if you read a
Speaker 3: comic book, if you've never read a comic book before,
Speaker 3: you know who Captain America is, so it hits. But
Speaker 3: if you do know Captain America, you're like, yes, that
Speaker 3: is exactly what my guy would say, Like that is
Speaker 3: who That's exactly.
Speaker 2: He is, you know, And I think that that is
Speaker 2: really really cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also was very interested in the kind of
Speaker 3: conversations that were going on in the in the discord
Speaker 3: about like the covers for these issues and kind of
Speaker 3: how the art is represented, so like Eric Blakeney actually
Speaker 3: sent this email in which really spoke to that, which
Speaker 3: was how important is the cover artwork for comics? I
Speaker 3: noticed in the discord that a few of the members
Speaker 3: have different variations of the comic, and many of them
Speaker 3: have various covers. Is this a licensing issue where at
Speaker 3: a point in time they have to change the cover
Speaker 3: or they can change it. How important is it for
Speaker 3: an author artist to expose the art style to a
Speaker 3: potential reader or just put what they think will help itself.
Speaker 2: So this is a huge question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the huge question.
Speaker 3: Because back then I think that having art on the
Speaker 3: cover that represented the interiors of the comic was massively important.
Speaker 3: And really with a book like Born Again, the reason
Speaker 3: you're seeing so many different covers is because the book
Speaker 3: has been reprinted so many times, and they want to
Speaker 3: make people who are completionists feel like there's different reasons to.
Speaker 2: Buy it with new back matter or new.
Speaker 3: You know, layouts that you've never seen before, or are
Speaker 3: really nicely design new cover. Though that very famous stained
Speaker 3: glass cover really I think is the iconic one. Nowadays,
Speaker 3: I actually think that having art that is different on
Speaker 3: the cover has become a major selling point. Most books
Speaker 3: which sell hundreds of thousands of issues, are so and
Speaker 3: they often don't really have much to do with the
Speaker 3: story or the style, Whereas something I loved about reading
Speaker 3: this book on hooflo, where they show you the covers,
Speaker 3: you really get a sense of what is going to
Speaker 3: happen in the issue. The God and Country cover with
Speaker 3: you know, the burning American flag on Nuke's face, And
Speaker 3: for me, I felt like this that era of eighty
Speaker 3: six eighty seven, they did a great job of letting
Speaker 3: readers know exactly what they were going to get tone wise,
Speaker 3: and I think it's I I remember working in a
Speaker 3: comic shop, you know now almost ten years ago, but
Speaker 3: we would have people who bought back variant covers, especially
Speaker 3: at the time, you know, Scottie Young was so huge
Speaker 3: with those cutesy, chibby kind of takes on these heroes,
Speaker 3: and then people would read the book and it would
Speaker 3: be a much more kind of standard superhero big two
Speaker 3: house style, and they would come back and say, hey,
Speaker 3: I wanted the book that looked like the cover, you know,
Speaker 3: And I think we've moved past that now. But it's
Speaker 3: an interesting question. And Eric also asked like, how did
Speaker 3: me and Oliver choose what we featured on the Godzilla
Speaker 3: Rival cover, and that was definitely us going back to
Speaker 3: this old style where we wanted people to know when
Speaker 3: they looked at that cover, when they saw the little
Speaker 3: girl in the yellow kind of wet jacket, this fisherman's
Speaker 3: jacket looking out and the kind of huge impact of Godzilla.
Speaker 3: We really wanted people to know, like, this is how
Speaker 3: the book is going to feel, because I think that
Speaker 3: for many of us, what drew us to comics in
Speaker 3: the seventies and the eighties was the fact that the
Speaker 3: covers were so cool and then when you looked inside
Speaker 3: the covers it looked like that. You know, that's what
Speaker 3: drew me to X Men. It was those badass covers,
Speaker 3: and that's what drew me to you know. When I
Speaker 3: think about the comics I loved so much, it was
Speaker 3: wanting to see art that spoke to me, and I
Speaker 3: think the covers really put that across. And I think
Speaker 3: in the case of a book like this, the covers
Speaker 3: are actually very contextually important and they say, hey, this
Speaker 3: is what is happening here. And so I think in
Speaker 3: the older school, like Watchmen, stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 3: Watchmen had these very interesting kind of close up covers.
Speaker 3: Often it had the smiley face with the blood, but
Speaker 3: it still had that Dave Gibbons John Stewart art where
Speaker 3: you're really getting a sense of this kind of.
Speaker 2: Hyper detailed world.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I thought that was really cool to see
Speaker 3: people having those conversations about, like, why does this book
Speaker 3: have a different cover than mine? Honestly, because this book
Speaker 3: has been in print for like forty almost forty years,
Speaker 3: and throughout that time it's going to have gone out
Speaker 3: of print, it's gonna be back in print, and there's
Speaker 3: gonna be different trades, different versions. But I think that
Speaker 3: We're born again, You're never going to see a cover
Speaker 3: that it's unlikely to see a cover that doesn't have
Speaker 3: Frank Miller and Christy Shiel's art because it's just so iconic.
Speaker 1: Finally, what do you think it is that has made
Speaker 1: it so that this feels like a touchstone piece of
Speaker 1: comic book literature. It is one of those graphic novels
Speaker 1: that even if you don't like comics, if you're not
Speaker 1: a comics person, you might find this on a person's bookshelf.
Speaker 1: What do you think it is, Rosie that makes it
Speaker 1: so continually relevant?
Speaker 2: So I think ironically, a lot of this stuff at
Speaker 2: the time was just like.
Speaker 3: Hey, here's a dude, and he's good at doing this,
Speaker 3: and they were like, and here's the book he's written,
Speaker 3: so it must inherently be important. And that's not to
Speaker 3: say there wasn't brilliant, you know, comic book critics and
Speaker 3: people who are in these books with a critical eyeback then,
Speaker 3: But I think the reason that it's stood the test
Speaker 3: of time so much is one because it has parenally
Speaker 3: been in print as a collection, very easy to access,
Speaker 3: and two because I.
Speaker 2: Think that Daredevil represents what people.
Speaker 3: Often are most moved by in Marvel comics, which is
Speaker 3: a street level hero who has real problems and real
Speaker 3: issues and is not, you know, a godlike figure like
Speaker 3: Superman or Wonder Woman, and is instead a real person
Speaker 3: doing their best to try and help their community. And
Speaker 3: in this case we get to see that juxtaposed with
Speaker 3: the kind of hyper super soldier storylines. So there's a
Speaker 3: melding there that I think is really important. And also,
Speaker 3: I think if you're somebody who loves Daredevil and you
Speaker 3: love the Catholic imagery and the complex representations of faith,
Speaker 3: and how much of Matt is driven by Catholic guilt.
Speaker 3: This is a story that really digs into that. I
Speaker 3: also think that the infamy of the infamy of this
Speaker 3: book is a huge part of it. We often would
Speaker 3: talk about this book when I was in the comic
Speaker 3: shop and talk about carm page representation and how women
Speaker 3: at this time were not getting good representation on the page.
Speaker 3: But then that also led me to find other books
Speaker 3: like the Anni Nasenti Jrjr. Typhoid Mary stuff and kind
Speaker 3: of realized that actually those complex representations were there in
Speaker 3: different stories told by different people. So I think that
Speaker 3: combination of infamy but also the incredible skill and artwork
Speaker 3: of David Mazakeli, that eye catching opening pages, I just
Speaker 3: think that it is a kind of perfect.
Speaker 2: Storm of.
Speaker 3: Scandal, talent, and also being in this essentially one to
Speaker 3: your period.
Speaker 2: That change. It changed comics forever. This was where it began.
Speaker 3: You know, there's New York Times articles saying bif Bang
Speaker 3: pal comics aren't for kids anymore. You know, this was
Speaker 3: a sea change that we are still grappling with as
Speaker 3: we get into a space where we're making Disney Plus
Speaker 3: shows more violent. That is still a throwback to that era.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's what a book, What a great way
Speaker 3: to start book club.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. I think for me, I think what
Speaker 1: makes this story and collection special is it grapples with what,
Speaker 1: to me is like the essential like superhero comic question
Speaker 1: is like why is this necessary? Why do this? Like
Speaker 1: obviously a in a story like The Boys, there's a
Speaker 1: different and perhaps more realistic answer to what a world
Speaker 1: with superpowered individuals in it would would probably look like.
Speaker 1: But I think the thing that's so affecting even now
Speaker 1: about Daredevil Born Again is its depiction of a world
Speaker 1: that is kind of like fallen. Like the military is
Speaker 1: not trustworthy, they're out for themselves, They're looking to line
Speaker 1: their own pockets. You've got people generals, You've got generals
Speaker 1: like running secret missions like in Latin America for reasons unknown.
Speaker 1: The Kingpin is able to reach out and get any
Speaker 1: favor he needs from any political figure, any military figure,
Speaker 1: and move a million different kinds of levers. He's able
Speaker 1: to silently and from the shadows, ruin a guy's life,
Speaker 1: but you know, put his business, you know out, have
Speaker 1: him evicted from his home, destroy his home. He's able
Speaker 1: to do all of these things and that's a person
Speaker 1: with a secret identity and powers and connections in the
Speaker 1: superhero world. And so throughout this series you're faced with
Speaker 1: heroes like Matt Murdoch, like Captain America, who are like, fuck,
Speaker 1: is it even is it worth it? Is it worth
Speaker 1: doing this shit anymore? Like should I even be doing this?
Speaker 1: Is it necessary? What am I really doing? And then
Speaker 1: the answer is you're the only thing that's actually standing
Speaker 1: between people in a fully fallen world in which the government,
Speaker 1: the military, crime figures, all the powerful figures are just
Speaker 1: like a raid against regular people. No one is there
Speaker 1: to save them except for you. And that's the thing
Speaker 1: that that's the answer that is laid out at the
Speaker 1: end of this and I think it's still a tremendously
Speaker 1: powerful answer. Like it's a fantasy, obviously, but it's a
Speaker 1: fantasy that we all want to participate in. That there
Speaker 1: are people out there who are willing to put their
Speaker 1: bodies and lives on the line just to protect normal people,
Speaker 1: not for any reason of you know, economic benefit, or
Speaker 1: because of and a cruel of power to them, but
Speaker 1: because it's the right thing to do. It's a wonderful fantasy,
Speaker 1: and it's and it's displayed, so, you know, viscerally in
Speaker 1: this book, where Matt, like time and time again, is
Speaker 1: given the option to just like opt out, don't do
Speaker 1: this anymore, don't take the beatings, don't you know, don't
Speaker 1: just walk away? Yeah, like why why do this?
Speaker 2: Also?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he will give you money to leave, like
Speaker 3: if you were cool with it. Yeah, like you could
Speaker 3: do some scammy stuff, you know. Okay, finally, uh, what's
Speaker 3: your favorite panel? M Why?
Speaker 1: Oh god, there's so many and it's really hard because
Speaker 1: again I think massa Chili is he did this, He
Speaker 1: did Born and he did Batman Your One, also with
Speaker 1: Frank Miller, which to me feels kind of like a
Speaker 1: sibling step sibling to this story. And then he really left.
Speaker 1: He went to academia to teach art and stuff and
Speaker 1: worked in the like the corporate world, And I think
Speaker 1: this is it's just magnificent in many ways. I would
Speaker 1: say for me, I could choose a million different things.
Speaker 1: But the shot of Matt, so he's been stabbed, but
Speaker 1: he's like kind of just running on fumes and obsession,
Speaker 1: staggering around the city. He finds himself at a boxing gym,
Speaker 1: Fogwells Boxing Gym, and he's standing in front of the
Speaker 1: the heavy bag, and oh, I love that.
Speaker 2: I love that page.
Speaker 1: The writing on the glass of the window of the
Speaker 1: place is reflected on the floor and on his back
Speaker 1: as he's standing in front of this heavy bag, and
Speaker 1: the shot is like kind of from above, and it's
Speaker 1: Matt like returning to the thing that he knows, the
Speaker 1: thing that his family knows, just fighting, you know, the
Speaker 1: thing that his dad knew. And it's just really great.
Speaker 1: Like I think Mazic Kelly for all of the really
Speaker 1: impactful scenes of like superheroes and fights and violence, and
Speaker 1: like I think of the scene of the intro is
Speaker 1: new because he's like jumping off the helicopter, like all
Speaker 1: these amazing things. To me, what makes him be like
Speaker 1: beyond beyond a master is just like the normal the
Speaker 1: way he lays out normal scenes, mad in his kitchen
Speaker 1: making phone calls like yeah, that, the way the angles
Speaker 1: he uses he's he's incredible. And so it's it's really
Speaker 1: really hard to pick a favorite panel, but I would
Speaker 1: pick that one Matt in the boxing gym. What's your favorite?
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go just because it was the first one
Speaker 3: I took a screen grab off and it was like
Speaker 3: immediately I was like, will I get a tattoo of this?
Speaker 3: So I'm gonna go with Wilson Fisk in his shorts.
Speaker 3: I think that the colors are so cool. I think
Speaker 3: that it sets him up as this almost like he
Speaker 3: feels very international in that moment, like he could be
Speaker 3: on his yaw in that Italian riviera dealing with the mob.
Speaker 2: He seems so cool and casual.
Speaker 3: About absolutely destroying Matt's life, which is his plan.
Speaker 2: And it also establishes the visual language.
Speaker 3: Of the comic, with that massive blam behind him in
Speaker 3: the panel above, and the stuff that I find most exciting,
Speaker 3: which is when they veer more into that Batman Year
Speaker 3: one color palette, those Richmond Lewis inspired.
Speaker 2: Deep pinks and strange surreal hues, and I just I
Speaker 2: love that panel so much.
Speaker 3: The other one, I will say, which is a bit
Speaker 3: of a cheat, but I do love every opening splash
Speaker 3: page where he's laying down and you see.
Speaker 2: Him laying in the bed, and then you see him
Speaker 2: laying in you know.
Speaker 3: The trash, and you see him laying on the floor,
Speaker 3: and then at the end you see the bag, the
Speaker 3: heavy bag on the floor and he's standing above it,
Speaker 3: and you know, he's kind of resurrected. I just I
Speaker 3: think that stuff is just so deeply cool. I mean,
Speaker 3: I could just keep talking about this book, like, what
Speaker 3: a great pit for the for our first book club.
Speaker 2: I'm so stoked we did it.
Speaker 1: Finally, let's do a little bit of fun to a
Speaker 1: Dungeons and Dragon style character alignment chart for Matt Murdoch
Speaker 1: and The Kingpin King. So, I think Matt Murdoch is
Speaker 1: unsurprisingly perhaps lawful good right there left corner. I think
Speaker 1: he's a lawyer gray, He's a good man.
Speaker 3: He's the most good, even though for the most part,
Speaker 3: like he does have chaotic elements. I think the fact
Speaker 3: that he continues to always be a lawyer as well
Speaker 3: as a nighttime vigilante, and he's always battling inside of
Speaker 3: himself to be the best person.
Speaker 1: I do believe he's.
Speaker 3: Lawful good, though I do think you could lean him
Speaker 3: a little bit more into neutral simply because he does
Speaker 3: go out beating people up at night.
Speaker 2: But I generally think you got to give him the
Speaker 2: lawful good because he's a lawyer.
Speaker 1: King pin he might be. I mean, if you put
Speaker 1: his romantic life into it, he almost goes into chaotic.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say that imagines of Matt Madock, where
Speaker 3: that man is very chaotic, Like he's not always.
Speaker 1: But in this book as.
Speaker 3: Active data, let's get in the streets, he doesn't know
Speaker 3: about Okay, okay, what about Kingpin?
Speaker 1: I think the Kingpin is lawful evil because rules and hierarchy,
Speaker 1: the system as it exists, is really important to the Kingpin.
Speaker 1: He's not looking to like overthrow the government, the world system,
Speaker 1: take over the world. He likes the way things are
Speaker 1: going right now and the and the existing uh law
Speaker 1: and order archetypal hierarchical relationship, because like a spider in
Speaker 1: a web, he places himself perfectly in the middle of
Speaker 1: all that. He needs all of that structure to keep
Speaker 1: running so that he can continue to be the Kingpin,
Speaker 1: Which is why I believe.
Speaker 2: That he is what is No.
Speaker 3: I think you're right, because as much as I would
Speaker 3: love to say, you know, he has a chao, he does.
Speaker 3: I love a chaotic character, and I do think occasionally
Speaker 3: he vis into that. But generally this man works absolutely
Speaker 3: within the laws of society as we know it to
Speaker 3: make himself rich, to enrich himself, to give himself more power,
Speaker 3: whether that's as we are going to see as the
Speaker 3: Mayor of New York, or whether that's as the very
Speaker 3: good businessman who everybody believes in, the philanthropist, the art lover.
Speaker 2: He uses the legal.
Speaker 3: System and the expected morals of society to hide his evil.
Speaker 2: So I think he's a lawful evil too.
Speaker 3: That's a very interesting combination and maybe why the two
Speaker 3: of them have kind of enchanted readers for so long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this has been a wonderful first edition of
Speaker 1: book Club. For our next book club meeting, we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking about He's short story from Ted Chang's
Speaker 1: excellent collection of short stories, his most recent excellent collection
Speaker 1: of short stories, Exhalation. It's the first story in that collection,
Speaker 1: called The Merchant and the Alchemist Gate. It's just lovely
Speaker 1: and we won't yeah clarryings now, But that's it for
Speaker 1: this episode. Thank you for our book club listeners, thank
Speaker 1: you for everyone who took part in the book club,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can't wait.
Speaker 3: And if you've got any books that you want us
Speaker 3: to cover, comics books, whatever you think could be a
Speaker 3: good book club inclusion, make sure to hit us up
Speaker 3: in our discord or email us at official xarb pod
Speaker 3: at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: Bye Bye Bye.
Speaker 1: X ray Vision is hosted by Jason Concepts Young and
Speaker 1: Rosie Night and is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3: Our executive producers are Joelminique and Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Our super Rising producer is Abuzafar.
Speaker 3: Our producers are Common, Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bay Wack.
Speaker 1: A theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
Speaker 1: songs by Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and
Speaker 3: Heidi our discord moderator