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Weeding down upon the underworld to smash gangland, come a friend of the unfortunate enemy of criminal. In a serious, all-powerful, callica, a problem to the police, but a true state of law. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the brand new Elspers Exchange.
It's all new and all different and basically everything you remember, but it's 2019. We're here. Hey, happy new year, everybody. Same to you, man.
Thank you very much. I just wanted to take a minute because it is the new year because it is a new show. It's a new time. I wanted to say thank you to everybody who's watching the show, who's made the show possible, who makes this channel possible.
But now you won't get to live the dream. I'm very happy. I walked into my office today and I was like, because I haven't been in it a couple of days because it's just been holidays and it's just nonstop. And I was like, man, this is my life and rocks.
And then I looked at my rent check and I got a rent increase. Real life plus fantasy life equals this. Real life comes at your heart. I get it.
But we get to do it, thanks to you. So we're talking about death and comics. I got a real, just a bug at my butt about death in comics because of years in crisis. It just came, newest issue came out this week today, in fact.
Also a man without fear, which is also dealing with the death of Daredevil. It is indeed. I skipped it because it seems disposable. Like I don't think it matters.
I'm sure that Zadarski won't be referencing it in any way. So it's just a stop gap until Zadarski's run starts and no. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't play that. But Joel loves him some Daredevil when he's a completionist, like he'll be reading.
This is why things you don't like keep getting published, by the way. So by the way, before we jump into the main topic, I wanted to say that if you see any like color boxes in the chat as you're going, those super chats, if you use them, you get your question asked on the show and it gets to be interactive. It also helps me pay the bill that it just got increased. So anyway, with that out of the way, Death and Comics, I was reading about, about Death and Comics recently because Heroes in Crisis, here, it didn't even occur to me.
It didn't even like phase me really, but I was looking back at the old, like one of the first two issues of Heroes in Crisis. The death toll is very high is like in the dozens. Yeah, it's way more than the storyline called extermination from Marvel. That one only had maybe three deaths.
Exactly. And most, if not all of them took place off camera or off panel. And the fallout of which are either not being felt because they didn't have their own books, they didn't have their own teams, or they're being felt in ancillary books in which those characters should be appearing but probably can't use them now because they're technically dead. Green Arrow, yeah, Green Arrow, perfect example.
So it's just kind of like, okay, you killed a ton of people to make a point, which I don't think is even really crystallized yet. The series is the first I will grant you that. But right now it seems that the death we're really focusing on is Wallis because he was the linchman of DC Rebirth, bringing him back to the main book slash universe was kind of like the point of the event really. It's a homecoming, it was a coronation.
And it was kind of like a big thank you and a big like, you're welcome to Flash fans being like your character back, even though we can't reconcile the fact that we rebooted him over here. Yeah, sorry about that. And we can't just like get rid of him, emerge of him, that would be weird. So here he is.
I mean, we do do it with Superman, but we can't do it again because then we'd be deleting one of the few prominent young African-American characters we have and we don't want to do that. He gets dicey when you bury him. So yeah, with that whole thing over with as a cloud over comic readers, I was kind of like, man, a lot of people died, not a lot of fanfare reverence or care went into it. You really could have just gotten the same effect if you killed one person, i.e.
Wally, and just trumped it up a little more. But instead, I feel like it's kind of like a commentary on where we are in comic books right now. Then multiple deaths don't even phase us anymore. It almost does in characters.
Off-staff panel. And as much as it sucks, it doesn't really matter. It both didn't matter and I would say that's also a greater problem with Heroes in Crisis, that it didn't matter. But it also felt malicious at the same time.
Like, hey, these characters know what's thought of in years that don't have books. I'm sure there's someone's favorite dead dead dead dead dead dead. Yeah, well, and we're also telling their story through the lens of them trying to improve and get better. These are characters who are second stringers, they're forgotten and or products of a specific time.
And then you give them humanity by having them try to reflect and get better and grow. And then you kill them and it's going to lean off screen. And it's kind of like, what are you trying to say? What's the point here?
What is it about? Is it about being gloriousness of death? Is it about the tragedy of being forgotten? Is it about how random and it doesn't care?
It doesn't take sides? I ask that in every Tom King story I ever read that wasn't a vision or a miracle. Right, exactly. But on that front, maybe that trope is tired and done, especially in comics.
And it's funny because comics are kind of like, comics went from, I remember reading, not because I was there because I wasn't alive in the 70s, but I remember reading about how death was permanent marvel, which is like joke now. Death is permanent at marvel. That's like... Try saying that without getting a laugh out of someone.
Exactly, you'll always get a laugh. But that was kind of like a policy they had. They were like, you kill a character, you better be ready to not use them anymore. Dead means dead.
Dead means dead. And while I understand that you can't have a character stay dead, if they are profitable and you don't plan on having your character's age, the idea of dead is dead is really brave and unused concept that I'm amazed even existed back then, much less could even be broached today. It's true. Hey, why don't we self-regulate our ability to do these kinds of things?
And we've seen it work in spurts there. You know, we saw it in the Ultimate Universe, we saw it with invincible. Right. And those are great examples because they're doing something a little different anyway.
The Ultimate Universe, it's its own thing, anything can happen. That's the selling point of the whole damn thing. So the character dies in that universe, you better believe they're going to stay dead. Because if they're not going to stay dead there, then it's open season everywhere.
Unless they're Peter Parker and unless the universe is dying anyway. He might have been a clone, but we don't know. And who cares anyway? No one likes that era of Ultimate Spider-Man anyway.
Everyone was already done reading it after- Which is a shame. It was a shame. I mean, Miles's run was fine. But when you started the shoehorn in Peter Parker again, that was a weird arc.
That was a really bad time. That's like, hey, everyone get off the ship at sinking anyway. Exactly. They're no fault of our own.
No. But that whole invincible owned by Kirkman, it's his character, he can do whatever he wants. Same deal with Walking Dead. I mean anybody who dies or something happens to them.
It's going to stay, it's going to stick. And that's because pretty much the buck stops with the one person who owns the property and writes the name story. There is no editorial for Robert Kirkman to tell him no. For better or worse.
Before we jump into the- Before we switch gears and move on from there, from that kind of point. Will I end up in the Super Chet's happy New Year guys? Happy New Year to you Will. Hey.
Derek M, I'm really getting bored of yours in crisis. I don't blame you. I feel like it'll be a very quick read when it's in trade. Because how long can you look at eight panels of the same image of the Super Hero?
As long as it takes. And Mr. Roboto Salondjull, our Superman Red and Superman Blue. Oh, the T-shirts.
Or Plano shirts. That's fun, I like that. Thank you pretty much for the deep cut there. So yeah, Death in Comics.
And my main hypothesis is it's I think it's time to stop. To stop killing characters, pointlessly or to just stop killing characters altogether. I think it needs to be a little bit of both. Because I think that it's hard to say, you can't put a thing on the walls that's only kill a character when it matters.
Or when it's poignant to the story. Because it's situational. You can argue that until the cows come home. I mean like when John Byrne killed Guardian in Alpha-Mute, was that for anything other than shock value?
They'll cover the book as someone in this character will probably die. Or someone in this book will probably die. And you don't expect to be Guardian and suddenly it is. By the way, horrible death stuck with me forever.
He's trying to fix himself. He's gotten hurt in battle. And he's trying to defuse this reaction within himself. And then his wife walks to the door and gets to him and he explodes and dies.
He comes back of course because Death in Meaningless. Because everyone comes back eventually. In fact, I think we can agree whenever a character dies anymore, it's never a matter of oh that's sad. It's okay, start the clock until they come back.
I give it six months. And that's the thing. When King killed half of the Teen Titans roster in Heroes in Crisis, no one was like, oh my God. People were surprised and upset because some people really take this stuff seriously and I don't blame them because these are our characters.
We have to be real to me, dammit. And I don't blame you. And I feel that way about certain characters and not so, not so way about other characters. But a lot of people said this is so and so's fault.
And not like Harley's fault or Booster's fault. They're saying this is Deo's fault or this is Tom King's fault. They're already met a reading the book. They're saying this isn't about what happened in the pages and how that matters.
We're talking about what's internally happening in DC Comics. And a lot of people are having that conversation. And it says to me that if you did that, you're hurting the book. You can start reading it the way you want it to work.
No one's reading it for these poor, forgotten characters. What was them? Let's talk about how we need to cherish the people we've forgotten. No, no one's having that conversation.
What they're having the conversation about is is it's Deo Hay Walli West. I think we know the answer is yes. But I think you hit the nail on the head even harder. If you're inviting this much meta narrative and meta reading into it, it's because people are bored reading the story and so they're inventing their own story in their head.
That's another critique of the book. It's just being like, well, I don't care about what's happening with the pages. Let's talk about what this book means to DC Comics. Are they trying to kill the rebirth era?
What are they trying to say? Exactly. Especially when you rebirth was, if it wasn't the most critical success in DC over the last five years, it certainly was the most fan favorite thing that happened between publishers probably. Oh, yeah.
There's a lot of love. Yeah, there's a lot of love there. There's a lot of hope. There's a lot of preservation or restoration and people really responded to it.
And when you do this deconstruction very soon after it, it's seen as kind of a slap in the face. And again, it invites meta narrative. It undoes the critical truth of your work. And it makes me wonder if there had been a policy in place or if there had been like an outward, hey, here's what we're doing over DC Comics.
Death is death. When you do kill a character, it says I'm referencing the writing on the wall that I put there. I know you're meta reading my book. So read it thinking about what I said just a minute ago.
But I feel like DC right now is kind of in this weird place where they're like, well, let's just do whatever. Like, it's literally just let's just do whatever. Like, whatever you want. Feels a lot like the new 52 year all over again, doesn't it?
Well, I mean, how I wouldn't it, the same people who made me 52 are in the exact same positions they were in when you 52 was created. No one is there's no change in the guard. There's no alternation. Everyone who made the thing that you don't like or did like is still making the thing you don't like or do like.
Yeah. So don't be surprised if you see shades of those things. But but my point is like, hey, let's throw this out there. What would happen?
What would be your reaction to if Marvel or DC, we'll use DC because this is kind of like the impetus behind this example. Marvel is a joke. Like when Wolverine died, no one was like what? Well, I'm glad you mentioned the Wolverine thing because here's the thing when it came to Wolverine and Professor X's death, which are some of the more high profile ones.
My thinking was not, Oh, they'll be back in six months. My thinking was, Oh, they'll be back when they get the rights to the movies again. And we'll know that they're getting closer to getting the rights for the movies when they start coming back. But even with Wolverine, they're like, we can't not have a Wolverine in the Marvel universe.
We'll just make it all man Logan because we'll never make a movie about him. Exactly. No, absolutely. Yeah, the no one was like sad that Wolverine died.
They were all talking about the meta narrative of the politics, the movies, the Fox rights, everything. And you're actually right that like the Marvel that would play it safe by being like, we killed that Wolverine, but we've got like three other Wolverines. We've got like two more technically three or four depending on how you count. Exactly.
Honey Badger. We got Laura. We've got old man. Doc in the ultimate Wolverines.
I mean, like, yeah, weapon H James. Yeah, Jimmy Howlett. What the hell is his name was? Did they say by the way, if they retconned him?
He hasn't shown up again, has he? Like, because I mean, Miles doesn't remember the universe anymore. Does howlett know? That's a team book they need to do.
They need to gather up all the ultimate characters and put them on a team and see if they remember anything. Great. They can call them the ultimate boom. There you go.
Hey, the maker is running around and he seems to remember or at least lettering in his dialogue balloon. So he's clearly some of that. Kate's will tell us Kate's is using him and all this stuff. He clearly cares.
Yeah, Kate's and you and would do it. Yeah, which I finally reads other people's books. Yes, he does. Which is weird jumping into the super chats again really quick.
Super Luigi access. Happy New Year guys. Also, who's stayed dead longer in terms of like who has stayed dead the longest? I think Goliath is kind of up there.
Certainly in terms of superheroes like Uncle Ben. Yeah, back technically. He's a winter soldier had a long run. Winter soldier.
Yeah. But there's a lot of characters like that. But I think Goliath has been dead since 2006. So that's been a pretty good Jason Todd had a pretty good run of this.
Being dead, even Professor X this last time had a pretty good run of being dead from like Avengers vs. X-Men onward. Exactly. Over in a couple years.
That's true. And then again to you you got to count where it's like well did they cheat here and there because I know they had a story where the X-Men went to heaven and they met Xavier and then like he appeared in Psychic form a few times before finally coming back all the way. When do you count like they'd even take little breaks from being dead before being dead again? No, I think I think like once you once they appear again, they ain't dead no more.
Even if they're you know talking about how they should be left dead. Greg Demage flash death was awesome. Red Goblin felt like a real threat. Oh, he's talking about the Flash Thompson death.
Oh, yeah, he's been dead and dead for no reason to he was doing good. I think the only reason they killed him was again because of movie reasons because they were running with Eddie in the movies. So they needed to make Eddie prominent again and Eddie hadn't been prominent for so long. For me, it's funny.
I was thinking about like how I definitely read that issue. We're talking about of course going down swinging, which is a story in which Norman Osman gets the card and some of you. But I remember met a reading that book and being like, okay, I'm seeing a couple of reasons. And when you mentioned the whole like the flat or the new Venom book and how it's going to be about Eddie and how the movie Venom how apparently Marvel and Sony have like a real deal because like when Sony makes a Marvel movie, we get like whole solo series dedicated to those characters.
You spider gettons and everything. And when Fox made that's a movie, they kill Wolverine. So one of these things is not like the other. Who's beaks get wet in that situation.
Yeah, really. But for me, it was not necessarily about the Venom movie. Although I'm sure it was mostly about the Venom movie. For me, it was about Dan Slop being like, I loved Spider-Man.
The Spider fans by and large gave me a really, really hard time and I'm leaving my mark. This is your this is your rap on the Knuckles. Yeah, like I killed Flash Thompson and it felt so wrong. It's like, Dan, you haven't been writing Flash for the longest time.
I don't think you deserve to kill him, honestly. I really felt unearned. Very much. I made a major anti-Vennum before I killed him too.
I do lots of things. I do lots of things just out of nowhere and then leave them alone to their own devices. Although it's funny as hard as it was for me to get on board with liking Eddie. I think Kate's because he's a good writer and he does read other people's work.
He's made flashes death and the fact that everyone liked Flashmore in a medicine actually be Eddie's defining motivation in this new book of being like, wow, I really suck. Wow, I got a lot of second chances. Man, they really love Flashmore. I need to live up to his legacy now.
I like Flash Thompson being Uncle Ben for Venom. He's literally Ben, Uncle Ben. In fact, they imply this idea too that the symbiote keeps a little bit of genetic material behind so if he's able to absorb some of it, he can turn himself into the Flash suit if he wants and assume it with other people. Which is a smart idea and I hope you see more of that because that's so fucking cool for Ben.
Hey, you like these costumes, guys? I can bring it all to the old costume. That's fair. So the real click for it says immortal Hulk is improved by meaningless deaths.
Immortal Hulk is a commentary I think about death and comedy. It really is. Which is brilliant. Who's writing Immortal Hulk is the only one?
Yeah. Is the right guy to do it? Boy, is he ever. That's particularly fair at the most recent issue.
I haven't yet, but I haven't. I'm super stoked. I am so sad that in 2018, Immortal Hulk was not on more best of the year list because I think it's one of the best things Marvel's putting out right now. It's subtle and understated and it has such great lore for the Hulk universe but also moves things forward.
And again, paid attention to other people's stuff. Absorbing Man had a really strong arc which references what happened to him in the Black Vault book and everything else. Totally. Aaron Burke, one of the seven Red Devil fans checking in, it's sad.
Oh, I'm sorry for that. Yeah, that blows. You were helping us out. Cam says, which comic character is the most deaths?
Who died the most? It's gotta be Jean. Jean, she's died about it. Absolutely, Jean.
Just the dozen that I can remember. I'm sure she died a bunch when I wasn't reading X-Men as well. I think there's at least three if not four or five. Luke S681, death was a shocker in the Ultimate Universe, Doc Ocken, the Kingpin were big ones.
I don't think either of those characters died in the Ultimate Universe. Did they? Or did they not? I mean, you know better than me.
I don't think so. But it certainly was a shocker when it happened. Unfortunately, like when it did, for the most part, it's funny actually, you can draw a lot of parallels and this is probably not very favorable. Between heroes and crisis and the ultimatum event?
Ooh, yes, you can. Where it's like, hey, let's clean house arbitrarily with someone who clearly doesn't have reverence for the material and will just kill them all and in like really like in glorious ways. The only difference is at least King gave like left them their dignity, some of them. Ultimatum was like, no, let's catch them with their pants down.
Let's eat them. Yeah. Michael Patterson, Ultimate Spider-Man, I feel did the best death story. Definitely, I agree with you.
Best Death in comics, I think. Really, really, it's really, really good. And Mr. Roboto, how about a list of deaths that matter in comics?
You can go to any comic book website and find one. We might have been. I think we did that. I think we did do an episode on death.
Not the importance of death and doesn't matter, but I think we did like some of the best episodes. Yeah, I think you're right. I think definitely there is an episode or two about that. 150 plus episodes in, it's hard to keep track.
So yeah. So anyway, my question was because I was reading an interview with Tom King about Heroes in Crisis and he's like, all of the deaths are permanent. Just like a big fat joke. Sure they are, Tom.
If he were like a long time veteran, I'd say he was doing it with like a wink and a nod and a tongue firmly planted in cheek. But I don't know if he's like fucking with us or if he's like, no, no, like treat them like they're permanent. I don't care about what editorial says because number one, I'm untouchable. Number two, I'm treating it like I'm going to kill these characters forever.
It's always not if he's dead forever as far as I'm concerned. And if he is treating it that way, okay, fair enough. But at the same time, you can't escape that meta reading that I was talking about. You can't escape the fact that like you are, when you kill Wally West, you're killing the Flash off panel in a world where the Flash, Barry Allen died to fight the anti monitor.
Yes, and save everyone. Like deaths have happened to these characters or to their legacy characters for a long time. And you can't just pretend like you're the first one to kill them and want it to be permanent. No doing that is the height of hubris.
And it's not even like Tom King is guilty of that. I've seen other writers do that. I'm actually right. Tom King is not like the first person to ever say that and also like.
And won't be the last. Yeah, he won't be the last. But it's also it's not just fault for saying that because I think he's trying in some way to get ahead of it to be like, yo, like please stop comparing my run to identity crisis. Please stop blaming plot devices in my stories on someone who doesn't really have anything to do with my book.
It please stop comparing these characters to like runs that happened that I clearly didn't read. You read the book as it is. And it's like, you don't know who you're dealing with here. You can make like a really killer episode of a show and like find that hundreds of thousands of viewers found it all on its own merits and just to show it for what it was.
But you're in comics, maybe. And most of these people, most of these people because of their long memory and like to if they don't, at the very least they read it because they all did the research and if they didn't do the research, they at least ask somebody else who did the research. Or watch some of the great YouTube content put out by Tom Popp and Kate. Why not?
Right. I mean, there's there's there's there's any incentive to do so. But like you're you're writing for a different kind of audience. It's not a crime novel.
It's not a movie. It's not a TV show. It's a comic book, which has like a long history and a bazillion fans who are all informed. And all different levels of obsessive.
It's true. And I'm not saying you need to cater to those people but you need to be aware that they exist. And that by and large those are your people who are reading the book. Now if you're trying to get new readers, I get that your your superiors all desperately want them and have done everything but throw the kitchen sink at trying to achieve that.
But at the end of the day, the numbers are there that say the people who read the comics for the last like 40 years, the people who read the comics today. And that you know, you know, let the numbers speak for themselves. I mean, like I don't know how the sales of the heroes are going. But like at the very least be aware that like your audience is aware of what's happening and is metar eating and regardless of how badly you want to change the industry, like, you know, you can't change the world.
But you can make a dent. You can make a dent Sheldon. I just watched that again last night when you talked about, Hey man, how come there's no Blu ray of this? I'm like, man, I got to go watch my standard.
Dev DVD. Yeah, that's all you can do. By the way, if you haven't already go out and watch Death the Smoochie, you can probably get it for a dollar to find streaming somewhere. It's an incredibly underrated movie and it's hilarious and it's on right.
Boy, let's give this the else world's exchange bump. Let's see something happen. Definitely on Blu ray tweeted Danny DeVito tweeted one of those entertainment tell me what it wanted. What is with this strange bump in buys for this movie out of the blue?
What happened exactly? Luke S six and eight one says Mysterio killed Kington and Norman killed Doc. Cool. MV five three five seven.
It's cheap that they killed poison ivy to make Harley mad agreed. Yeah, there's so many better ways you could have gone about that and worse still it does not gel with her development as a character, but she's like, no, I'm not hung up on the man I loved anymore. I'm gonna let that define you as a person on my own activated woman. Oh, no, you killed the woman I love now and now that's upsetting me.
I don't even really get her emotion. Like I know what she's thinking. And I think I know crazy. You know, I don't have to write anything that makes sense because she's so crazy.
Crazy 88. That's as many West the new black flash. Why not? Right?
There's a rumor shooting around actually that again, none of the deaths and heroes in crisis actually matter while he is coming back and that when he does come back, he's going to go to the much long rumored Azorello suicide squad book and he's going to be leading that team. It's funny how like DC can't, it's almost like they can't help themselves, but always go dark. Can you imagine a flash on a suicide squad? They had the reverse flash there who was actually like Wally two's dad and he didn't know, but then he did find out, but that made him mad because the suicide squad in the Adam Glass run were being jerks to him even though they had no reason to be and that's why Wally two is darker and grittier now on the Teen Titans team that lock people up in a secret jail.
Yeah. Yeah. That looks weird. It's weird.
They'll make your heart, but if you let them, that's the thing. Gabriel Torvo says here's a pitch DC Marvel crossover world heroes that affixed the old death and return of Superman because Superman's the lynchman to why death is meaningless and also that's the reason for Doctor Man has motivation. And that's what it all comes back to, right? The death and return of Superman and how that broke death in comics forever.
It really did and it's funny because like I can't blame them for killing Superman. Oh, he's an American icon and a massive cash cow. Not back then. No back then he wasn't.
But, but the motivation of like, hey, they greenlit this idea of killing Superman. How can we sit by and do nothing? Well I say to you, John Hammond, that's just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. The death of Superman was a sales juggernaut, though it didn't beat X-Men number one.
And during a time when both those books came out around the same time. And it was also a cultural phenomenon, stories, comics, songs and articles written about the subject and it was funny because like at no point did anyone who was writing or working on that book or publishing those comics, they'd say to themselves, oh my God, what are we going to do now? Superman's dead. They're thinking how are we going to bring him back?
Yeah. And so even then they were like, oh, death is meaningless who cares? At least it took a while for Clark to come back. It did.
I was going to say, but they pulled a Wolverine where immediately four Superman showed up and occupied all four of those titles. But here's the thing, I don't want to put too much blame on that agreement because it did a lot of things right. Killing him with a big stupid monster from space, you know, whatever. You know, if you like wrestling or Michael Bay movies, I get it.
And you know what, I bought as a kid and I thought it was totally dope. And I was actually really, really cool. Didn't we all? I appreciated that it wasn't like Lex Luthor making him dive into the sun because back then I didn't have all types of all sorts of Superman and I would have been too stupid to understand that.
But like, say we will about how Superman died, but the way that they leveraged it and they created new characters and catapulted new people's careers or old movies like new careers, steel, great character, super boy, Connor Kent, some people's favorite version of Superman, still cyber Superman, great use of the Hank and Chuck character and amazing looking villain and long history of great. Doomsday himself has actually managed to get some mileage out of him being a one note character. And of course the death of Superman being like an icon within the universe and without the universe is really cool. They constantly go back to that well and the red Superman symbol dripping blood in the statue and him lying there, broken and dead in the cape on that little stick and everything there.
That's the classic imagery that we as comic fans all share and all instantly know. Yeah, and it actually, it's funny, why didn't Metropolis build a statue until he died? Like hey, and every once in a while you'll see it in the foreground or in the back of the room, like a wide shot of some like big battle or some long talky park walking scene. And you're like, I remember when they built that statue.
But the death of Superman as a thing, it destroyed death in comics in its own way. And even they leveraged it into something productive because here's the thing, it's easy to break something and it's really hard to create something. Yes. And you if you're going to break something, you got to build something, intention of building something new or building something fresh out of the thing you broke.
Absolutely. Again, you talk about leveraging death in comics. I think the last time anyone really did a commentary on it that made sense and made it good was Jeff Johns in Blackest Night by saying, no, no, no, there's a reason heroes keep coming back to life. And that's because, you know, Necron leaves the door open a little bit for them because this has all been part of some epic long colon to take over the world with super zombies.
It's funny. That is such a good idea. It's fucking brilliant. But it's also the last idea.
It really is, isn't it? Because now if you defeat him, death should matter again. How do you explain death after that? You can't have it be like, oh, you can't kill death or something.
I mean, like you could, arguably, or like Necron can't truly. The lesson of the end of death of Blackest Night should be like, death will catch up with us all. It's inevitable. You can't stop it.
You can't like sometimes we can cheat it. You know, and Necron abused it. He didn't respect it. What the hell.
But like, like a remembrance and reverence and blah, blah, blah, keep you alive and I don't know. But like, make it a meaningful thing about the commentary of death and comics, but also death in real life. I don't know. But it's funny because it's such a great idea.
And again, like, how can you not do that? Especially when like the top selling book barely breaks 200,000 units. Unless it's like a stunt or a crazy like, or Frank Miller's doing another Batman book or there's our sequel to Watchmen. You know, like, oh, Batman might be getting married, but then oh, I pulled the rug out from under you and he's not really looking away.
400,000 units suck it. Which really like Batman number 50, I think sold like 400, 500,000 copies. Or 100 very, very disappointed people. At least 250,000 unhappy people.
Very unhappy people. But yeah, really quick. I just want to jump into the super chats again. Emperor's Venetian says, tune in and the view count was at 616 coincidence.
I think not. I love that. That's fine. YouTube knows what's up.
Happy New Year to the comic book and I suppose Joel Winkyface. Oh, I suppose. Oh, thank you. I love you all.
That's very nice of you. Thank you man. And Bernadette Ewards back says, King would have been better if they just let him write crisis with a C and a D list care and use D list characters. Both from the story and not the will they stay dead concept.
I mean, he excels at the D list characters as I think we've seen because they're characters with less baggage, which means he doesn't have to rely on a bunch of research. And it also means a lot of the more obsessive comic fans are like, well, sure, even I didn't know that. Right. Right.
I mean, really all you need to do is just like Google most obscure Titans members. And I just go like, Jeff, anybody do you use these characters in the last 10 years? Which actually they did. And that's the fucked up.
Yeah, we had a whole big thing to try and bring them all back and fix it after we broke it in the new 52. Ah, god damn it. Oh, I'm gonna kill him anyway. But you can't kill the cave boy.
I sure can. I sure did. And the artist will mess up and have the cave boy be at Arsenal's funeral, even though he shouldn't be. No.
And of course, Debbie is saying Connor can't super boy die twice. No one cared. I'm worried the Bendis may ruin my favorite character, Jonathan Ken Superboy just to bring back Connor. It'll really depend on whether you like both of them being teenagers and one of them being directly related to Superman.
Yeah. That's the case. You know, what I suggest you do is go find all the people who don't like Damien and hang out with them because like they've already been there and done that and asked them about Tim Drake sometime. Here's my question with the Superboy thing.
How on earth are we going to explain this because the disappearance and seeming deletion of Connor Kent Superboy from the canon was a huge sticking point of the ozz effect and of that big detective comic story where it's like no, no, no, no, it's not just that he disappeared. He was deleted. Right. I just Bendis know that.
Has someone explained that to him? I would bet money that the answer to both those questions is no. The answer is shut up and don't think about it. That's right.
The answer is if I hear the thing about Bendis, about stunt writers, about people who do things that are controversial or try to get away with something in comics, if I do something that really sucks, but I really, really want to do or I know is going to be unpopular. That's how I should put it. I know is going to be unpopular. I'd better give equal proportion to something that a bunch of vocal fans are going to really want it anyway.
So if I bring back Connor, but undercut ozz effect, but give tindrake his old Robin costume, I won't even hear that I get a criticism. I'm balancing the carbonic scales. Yeah. And all of a sudden they're going to have to start picking their battles and being like, I, no one but Bendis could bring this back because of his clout.
But if Bendis had just done the research, he could have had both, but he doesn't want to do that. So he's a busy man. He's writing five comics a day. That's the proliferation of comics aren't a money making industry.
No, and the people who do make money again, as we said, are usually writing five things at once. Exactly. Or they're creating new characters that are then used in movies and TV shows that they can then get a kickback for. You might notice some of these things if you read comics long enough.
Joe D saying, glad you guys aren't taking the day off. Thank you very much, Joe. The Els Well, you're never going to see that story, but you might see it in an Els world's book. Yes, that's a good Els world's page right there.
Or like a future story. Like, I know there's going to be a just like story where like a bunch of characters in the future are going to attack the just like from today. They could come from an alternate dark future where that happened. Yeah, the Titans of tomorrow future.
You could do that. I mean, like, there will be a, there could be plenty of stories where that happens. There will never be an incontinuity story where that happens within the pages of a Batman book. You know, we just can't upset the status quo that much Batman is the number one selling book that DCS and probably always will be Superman is not and never is.
So like Superman, you might see it happen, but like Batman never. And it's just like, that's just in a world where like you would have seen like, listen, one time Batman got beaten by a roidot luchador. See a crazy fundamentalist lunatic in a silly fireman costume with knife fingers. Nice fingers replaced Batman for like a year.
Yep. Because Gen 13 sold 2 million copies with issue two. So like the closest thing we got in recent memory is, Hey, Batman disappeared for a little bit. Got amnesia and Jim Gordon became Robo Batman.
But even then they were sure to show you right away. But he's not dead. People were mad. Yeah, I remember.
So, you know, but anyway, oh, and Steven father, father, he's saying Bruce Wayne came back to you soon. I like Dick as Batman. Listen, I did too. A lot of people love him.
I was a great run. I loved him with Damien. I thought Dick and Damien actually made for a great tag team. Hell, if you want to do something new with Dick Grayson and not shoot him in the head and call him Rick, you could have just had two Batman books.
That had been fun. One word Dick Grayson is Batman in Detective Comics. Like Tamasi or something. I mean, like, that's a book hell put Damien on that book.
Now you have solo Bruce Wayne, but like action going on. We haven't had a Batman and Robin book for a bit. So that would actually be nice. And all they sell is that book is always in print.
So let that be the motivating factor for you. We haven't had a Batman and Robin book for a while. We're talking about Death and Comics here. Right, mainly how do we fix Death and Comics?
How do we fix Death and Comics? And so my question is with you Joel, what's the solution? How do we make Death mean something in comics again? I think we might be too far gone.
The more we talk about it, I'm just like, no, it's unequivocally broken. Like you could tell us tomorrow like no, new mandate, death is permanent now, anyone who dies stayed at it and we'd laugh in your fucking face about it. And we'd be like, I'll give this six months until you start bringing someone back. We'd all be counting and we'd all be taking back.
Who's the first one to come back and when? Yeah, I would like to see some data that's set because you know how every event someone dies nowadays? Yes, because it's not it's not a big summer event unless there's one death or one return. Right.
It would be funny if I would see some data unlike exit polls, you know, like on you bought your book where realms did you know that someone dies in it? Like, yeah, yeah, I read that. Would you have bought it if he didn't? Mm.
It's like, yeah, it's a huge Marvel event. I would have bought it. I want to know what's going on. Right.
So like if that's some very interesting. I like that a lot, actually. Because I think that Death and Comics is not a selling point. No, or if it is, it's a very kind of like hollow hearted like, all right, we need to up the numbers for this flag and book.
I guess we'll kill someone or we'll threaten. We'll kill him. Yeah. I don't think I do think that like it's funny actually I was thinking about like older books, you know, like in the 80s when it was like one of these characters will die and it was like, yeah, they did for like a few seconds or they did it.
It didn't matter. Who cares about them and they stayed dead because it didn't matter. They were trying to create a new character. But like, I wonder how the sales were affected by like covers that said someone in this book will die.
Well, as people who work on the internet, I think we know quite well the effects of click baity titles and alarmist titles and everything. I think they do very well because human beings are just programmed that way. Unfortunately, I know you and I try not to do it because we're not shameless. Right.
Nobody right. I mean, like I, but I feel like even in the, in an event where like it's not about death, don't kill them. Like, don't kill some like just don't. And I think that like a good way to show good favor is faith is by being met about it as being like.
So we had an internal meaning. We're just we decided death is permanent at DC, you know, or Marvel. And we're not going to kill characters for at least like, or we're not going to kill people. Like it's hard to tell.
Like, how do you even like, how do you even declare something like that? We're not going to kill them for at least two years. It's true. They're making it sound like a New Year's resolution.
Our New Year's resolution is to kill any fan below a character for at least a year and a half. You know, like, but I think that it's at least worth trying because you've tried everything. No, let me ask you this. J.
Heroes count or villains except exempt from this. Can we like kill a villain? I think here's the thing. You can put on the cover to sell it to increase sales.
You got to get that out of there. No, that's a doctor do the same deal. Like you can resurrect characters, but you can't kill them because like, again, creation. It's all about like building up.
It's all about like saying like, Hey, why don't we bring this? Like, why don't we bring Bobby Moore's the mockingbird? You know, I mean, like, and by the way, we did nothing with her. But you know what?
Like we can use her again. Hey, we put her on that shield show and, you know, she had a book for a couple for like a little while and we really set the internet on fire with her for a little bit. For a little bit. Oh, just remind me.
Yeah, she was on the show. She was so popular. They were going to give her and the other guy spin off and the spin off wasn't picked up. So they just wrote them off the show for no reason to other more popular characters.
Exactly. Oops. Well, they were right now the show because they're getting their own show. Yes, that didn't get picked up, but then I canceled and then like she was like, well, I'm I'm busy now.
I'm doing other things. I'm good for her. I liked her. Yeah, she was good.
She was fun. No costume, but still no. This isn't the days of small villainy more everybody. You can put them in costumes.
We like it. We like it with the DC and it works to some effect. Yeah, some of the DC stuff looks really good. Hocking dove looked dope.
Yeah, why do hocking dove look so good? Hocking dove have no right to look as good as they do. I agree. Why do hocking dove look so cool?
But like you can't make green arrow look like green arrow. That that drives me insane. I pull my goddamn hair out all the time. Yeah.
Banshee looks amazing on the super girl show. She looks 100% how she's supposed to. But red tornado doesn't. Right.
Why? Hey, we got a well actually in the super chat. I haven't seen a well actually since the comment section. Ooh, do tell.
If you haven't gotten a well actually before, well, actually someone wants to correct you, but also sound like smarter than you. Gabriel Torbos says, well, actually with no Superman or I'm just gentle ripping by the way, we're just a but like I hate the term. We have fun here. We have fun here.
But like with no super man or Batman movie inside it as actually more possible to retire the characters now than ever before, I say in A, the DC movies do not have nearly as much effect on the comics as they really don't and they certainly don't have as much effect on the culture as you think. We're only kind of seeing that like now where they're kind of trying to play the Marvel multimedia game. We're like, oh, we have an Aquaman movie coming up. What we need a new Aquaman wrong.
Jerkins has been on it for too long. We need a fresh start with a new writer. Yeah, exactly. I get that.
Like I get like, okay, there's a movie put out a book. But just because there is no movie doesn't mean that Batman is the most selling the most most popular highest selling book that DC puts out. You can't change that. Like it's all about numbers.
It's all about making the Benjamin's and they're not going to do that. Like they're just not going to do that. I'm sorry. Like they'll they did it.
Here's the thing they did it with super heavy like Joel said and it sold pretty bad and they made it go away really fast. In fact, if you watch our interview with Scott Snyder, he talks about how he's like, they gave me three months. Oh, you know they did. They told him Scott Snyder three months.
The Golden Boy. And they were like, you may be able to get away with it for three months. And he begged them and just basically said screw you over to six. And had the whole line not been in trouble.
He probably would have been allowed to go on a little longer too. Yeah. And some people really like that story. But I like the detective comics more because it was just a backdoor way to get Gotham Central back because it was just all about the cops solving crimes.
Oh, I agree. Emperor's Venetian's best death could be Rorschach. He's not coming back. The death means a lot.
And it goes back to the highlight of different views of him. Matt, Matt, and Knight Owl. I don't know what happened to me there. But here's the thing about Rorschach's death.
Because it's about it. OK. You were right. It happened in a comic.