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Waiting down upon the underworld to smash gang men, come a friend of the unfortunate enemy of criminal. In a serious, powerful character, a problem to the police, but a crusade of a law. Hello, everybody, this is Exchange. I'm Sal at Duke, and of course Jason Emman of Jawa Deezio, Axart Jason.
Thanks for joining us again. Dude, thanks for having me. I love doing our chats and it was so much fun last week that I'm excited to do again. Dido, man.
At the front of the show, before we get started, I know there's a bunch of stuff you're working on and I want everybody to know about it. Right off the bat because I'm very excited about it. I participated in one of these things. Yes, you did.
Please, Joe. So first off, today, the beginning of November, or whenever you're listening to this, hello, future people, I have launched the Jawa comic drive for Soldiers. It is my yearly comic drive to send this year with 22,000 comic books overseas to their Soldiers and their families. DC donated 10,000 comic books right out of the bats.
We're already halfway there. But if you have any old comic books or not really old and dusty comic books, but comic books, they were just sitting on a table, please send them off. And you can find all the information for that on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash Johnwin and also on Jawa. So please help out with that.
I was a veteran myself and I love getting comic books. And also speaking of comics, just got to shout it out again. My comic book, Jupiter Jet, is in October previews and it's in November previews. And you need to go to your little comic store and preorder it by November 13th.
If you want the awesome issue because we love comic books and the best way to support comic books is you can read them. It's Kim Yasuo, meets the rocketeer, Sal, same part of it. I'm certain he likes it. He's just lied to me a lot.
No, I don't have the first issue. I bought it. You're not the first issue, haven't you? I have it's great.
Give your review right now. I'm going to put you on the spot. I love the art. It is fun and useful without feeling kitty and juvenile.
It literally has shades of a little bit of ultimate Spider-Man meets something I've never seen before. I've never actually really, it feels like old school, at least Simon's and Power Pack. I'm down for that. It doesn't hold your hand or treat you like an idiot or a child.
It's just fun. It's just trying to do something genuine. There's no weird crap going on. Thanks, man.
So yeah, so there you go. It comes out December 6th, but comic shops need a preorder now and it really helps us make sure the series survives because we want to do multiple volumes. So there you go. Jupyter Jett and the comic driver soldiers.
Seriously, I like, man, I got to tell you, you must feel amazing. There are so many having published as well, not a publisher, but self-published. Having your book tangible in your hands is one of the greatest experiences of a career's life. Seeing your book in previews magazines, seeing it there, knowing that every comic book store in America is looking at your book and going like, should I order this?
Yeah, it's interesting too because we've been calling out a lot of local retailers and it's the idea that some of them have been like, oh yeah, I saw it in previews and you're just like, booooh. And that I think helps to maintain their legitimacy. I saw in previews. It's literally there and doesn't look like you bought a page in previews.
It looks like a book that's legitimately just being pitched to us to order. So yeah, if you want any of your books to survive, particularly for Jupyter Jupyter, you got to take your novel sort of word. Yeah, and also it helps you keep your local comic shop alive as well. That's true.
Yeah. So pre-orders keep them alive because they're on the hook for everything. That is right. That is right.
So there you go. Yeah, we got a super chat, which we had last week, but it's like a it's priority in the chat where someone pays a fee in order to get their comment like read on the show live. That's crazy. I know.
So you should be qualified for it if you're, you know, because you're we're neck and neck with our subscriber counts. We are. The games and guns said it's really hard to call both character buffs as very few characters are similar enough in power set and personality, except for young blood, of course, all for face. Yeah.
I mean, like that's what we're going to find out is like what the commonalities are between some of these people. But more particularly, we're talking about successful revolts, the characters that actually because there's a million revolts. Everyone has like, if you read a comic book, there's no doubt in my mind that you at some point, another drew a character you thought was totally original. That just looked like Wolverine.
That is a great point. Everybody's drawn their Batman or Superman character. Yep. I had a my character.
I think it was future man, which of course, most derivative type like boss. We imagine and he looked like a combination of spawn and iron fist. And I think my thinking was iron fist was so like low tier popular people wouldn't notice I was ripping off iron fist. I think mine was Captain Sagittarius.
That's solid. But it was like a joke. It was the idea. It was like it was a joke.
I can't help him like junior high. I remember but the other characters I can't really remember. No, but I do know I actually drew comic books on notebook paper and like stapled them together. And I even did a little corner box where I was like, this is 99 cents or whatever.
Like I mean, oh, I got a whole other name. But to go to games and guns, comment, I honestly would say I don't know. I think more characters are rip offs than aren't in some form or other because think about it. Batman only exists because the publisher asked all of its writers to be like, we need another Superman.
Yeah. You know, so like in some respects Batman is a rip off of Superman. I definitely agree. I think that I think the Batman is more of a shadowed wolf.
Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, he's the fact is that Superman is like the primary lose from which all superheroes spring forth. Yeah.
The fact that like, you know, sure, I want to do a shadow story, but I also need to get like, I got to get in on that superhero action. No doubt the cape and the utility belt. Any of the accoutrement make Batman a superhero come from Superman. Yeah.
And it is interesting thing like somebody brought up in the comments and I think they were their comments rolled away real quick. Oh, Nimrod, Canada. That's a great name. So are we at the point where there can be nothing that's original anymore?
And to be honest with you, I kind of almost think we've been at that point since the invention of television. Interesting. You're gonna start a television because I think that you would go as far back as like the 17th century. Oh sure.
Like there's a lot of different arguments. I guess that like where does the Silver Age begin? Exactly. You know, you know, I don't know because I think there was enough television was enough of a change.
And I do think that Superman is kind of unique. Yeah, really? And you could almost say that almost every superhero after Superman is a copy of Superman. Because and you brought up.
Yeah, Batman is definitely like a weird amalgamation of like Sherlock Holmes, the shadow, Zorro. Yeah. All these characters that exist in front of him. And there is that idea that model that there are only is it nine or seven stories that exist.
Right. I remember that. I reject that as a English degree holder and as a writer. I'm like, no, there are a million stories out there.
And they all can be if you are if you apply a cynical or a like narrow view point to all stories, sure, you can narrow the down like four to nine. But I think that the originality comes in the telling of the tale, the characters within and sure. There's pluck and trimes that you also require to make the story wholly unique. Quintarantino is like one of a modern example.
People who are like, I've never seen a story like that before. It's like, you mean to tell me you've never seen a story about people who are betrayed by one of their own? Like I've seen a thousand stories like that. But I've never seen it like that.
And so it earns its place in many stories. I don't mean to inflate Quintarantino particularly in light of the hard ones. Yeah, let's not do that. Let's not talk about QT.
But like, but there are many talented creators out there who take something that you could argue is unoriginal, but but make something unbelievably true. I mean, like, look at a look at the design scheme. I don't think I've ever really heard anyone ever say that spawn looks like Spider-Man, even though he looks exactly Spider-Man to Kate. Well, yeah, he has his little white pieces on his face.
He's on the face are Spider-Man eyes are basically Spider-Man slash venom eyes. They're the exact same thing. And then you go like flash forward 2004 when they created the new venom and they gave him the little eyes within the big thing. I'm like, that's spawn space.
What's happening? Like everything is a derivative of itself. And if you live long enough to meet yourself success, you might find it your derivative work becomes someone else's derivative work. Yeah, I don't know.
But I see I'm on the other side of that where I do think that those nine stories are all they are. And it is and the interesting thing is what you said is like how each writer twists that. That's where it becomes interesting because it's the same idea as like, I mean, how many superhero movies do we have right now? And the idea is how differently are they pulled off from that same origin story.
Yeah, I mean, let's throw out an example of a character that would be considered rip off and was successful technically and how they're different, how disparate it is and how it's like, it almost isn't even fair to say they're rip off. Look at Namor and Aquaman. Sure. Namor was created during World War II, but Namor was in 19.
Like, I think I think it was I think he technically is a 30 is a superhero. And Aquaman. I think you're a name or is any correct. Yeah.
And Aquaman comes after that two dudes who rule Atlantis who breathe underwater who look like regular people superficially same character. Or was 1939. There you go. Arguably, Aquaman is much more iconic.
And oh, yeah, then he transcends the idea of whoever was, if DC was DC back in 1941 being Aquaman. That's 1941. Yeah. There you go.
Like the fact that if DC was DC, I remember if they had changed their name at that point, but no, they were like national at that time. Right. Like the publisher that made Aquaman books, I'm sure they were like, I know, Fishman. Yeah.
But how I don't know, they did something right where everyone was like, yes, I want that guy more than Namor. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, that those are you probably right because they probably are rip offs, but it's an interesting thing because I don't look at those two as rip offs. The one that I want to talk about the most, it is probably a successful, it's probably, I would say the most successful rip off.
Deadpool is a rip off of Deathstroke. And in the most like flagrant and identifiable way, it's the cover of his episode. Yeah. There's no question.
Even Rob Lyfield has said that he has wanted to write Teen Titans in control, Teen Titans for years. And DC has never given him the shot. Which is mind bending given that they gave him the fact that Rob Lyfield is still working. Hugging Doug when they were launching a 52.
And then we're doing new shit. But also, Scott Lodeil's still going to write stuff. And Rob Lyfield is going to launch these two carefully. If you were going to give Rob Lyfield a book, if you're new 52 relaunch, why not let have a crack at the Teen Titans at that point?
Well, to be honest with you, I would give Rob Lyfield a crack at any book that he wanted to. Because eventually, I mean, for at least the first six issues that book is going to sell. Right. And then he'll stop drawing anyway because he can't be done.
Yeah. At least for those six issues, it'll sell. And as a publisher, if you're a business, no matter how you want to look at it, you got to sell the books or else it doesn't matter. At the first six issues, I would test it out because that's the other thing too, is remember when we took over like Grifter and Hawkman in that corner of books?
Like they sold for like the first, you know, I don't know, five or six issues, but then they didn't and then they knocked him off the book. Yeah, absolutely. You know, but like give him the shot. So like he, so he created Deadpool basically and the new mutants into his like version of the Teen Titans.
Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I was just thinking about, um, I'm Algon Comics.
And like, did they do an amount of new mutants at Teen Titans? I don't remember. They did like JLX, but I don't think it is. JLX, they did X Patrol.
Did they have a Deadpool character in Algon? I don't know. I don't think so because I don't think Deadpool was, I don't think, I think they forgot about him during that era. I must say, I'm going to say, let's see what the book, Deadpool, a Malcom character.
Yeah. They had to, they had to have done something. Because that, that is the, that would be the most peculiar. It's actually interesting.
Isn't there like a Batman Superman book where Batman Superman meets a Deadpool version of Deathstroke? Yeah. It was Superman, Batman, annual, uh, in that first series. And they re-did like the first appearance of, um, of their, how they met.
Yeah. Um, and they had this weird multi-bridge, Joe Kelly wrote it. Yeah. Yeah.
And it was basically said it was Deadpool, but it wasn't Deadpool. Yeah. So here's the thing I looked up. There is no Deadpool, a Malcom character, but there is a Deathstroke.
Oh, yeah. They merged him with, uh, Elektra? Daredevil. Daredevil.
And they made, and they turned him female. So he became Dara the Terminator. Oh, that sucks. Yeah.
Slayed Murdoch. Dara the Terminator. Whoof. No.
What is the opportunity? But I don't know. If you were to say most successful, I think Deadpool is the, yeah, you're right. That's the reason why you made him a cover.
It's probably Deadpool. Easily. No, Deadpool is the most successful, most obvious, actually funny how he represents the most successful and the most obvious riffle. Mm.
Especially in the early days, especially when you saw how popular Deathstroke was at the time, in no way. Mm-hmm. Oh. What about, what about this one?
Like, you got up this awesome list from CDR that we're kind of looking at. Yeah. And they make the claim that Vision is a rip off of Rhettornado, which I had never thought about before, but it says in here that Rhettornado predates Vision by like two months. Yeah, I feel, they're in the same year, which is when I was like, eh, like, I feel like there's no question because, what year was that in the 60s?
Uh, 68. There you go. I think that, um, one thing that comic book fans forget, or don't acknowledge. Mm-hmm.
One thing that the industry has kind of shied away from in the most recent decade is that they used to, DC and Marvel, were like on the same neighborhood, in the same neighborhood, and they all knew each other. And they kind of all were, they didn't collaborate, but like, Carmine and Fentino and Stan Ries get lunch together all the time. Yeah, and there was a, uh, sorry, there was a, I don't know if this is time, but Len Wien was roommates with another big, um, all look it up. Cause there's, there's, speaking of this, after you tell your story, we're talking about this, Len Wien was roommates with some Marvel employee.
And there was a time where one of them was writing Justice League, and one of them was writing Avengers, and they secretly crossed over the books. Yes, they did. I think, uh, Barry Allen died in crisis, and then they put him in the Marvel universe. And he's like, he's tooling around in there.
Yeah. I don't know what that ever goes. Anything, anything, he's an alien. Oh man, check that out.
Look up, uh, buried alien. That was what he, that's the name he remembered in the Marvel universe. But, uh, these guys are friends. And the concept of like, hey, we're making this, uh, this robot, he's a man, but he's a robot, he can make tornadoes and check, he's red.
I can imagine Marvel being like, okay, cool, we're gonna do art, we're gonna do our guy. Cause there was enough room in the pool for everybody. Everybody was kind of like, sure we're competitors, but like, all our books cost a quarter. You know, it's, it's no real competition in as much as we're all kind of supported by ourselves, which actually I've been doing some major research for upcoming video that we're working on, um, that supports that claim today that the industry is supported by both companies.
Um, but yeah, I can see red tornadoes slash vision being the product of two creators. We're just like, I'm doing a red robot. Oh, I'm gonna do a red robot. No, what's a red robot gonna do?
Like, it really feels like to me, like the Marvel guy saw red tornado was like, we can do that. Yeah. Well, I'm saying like, it could be that they like looked across the street and said, red robot, screw that, we're doing red robot. But it goes literally to be like, hey, I'm gonna red robot.
You should do one too. Like, hey, let's see how, which, which robot of ours sells better, you know? Yeah. Like just more over than it is like, over.
But uh, so I looked up buried alien. Yeah. And you're so right. I've never heard of this character before.
It's so great. This character called runner that Marvel put in their series and like, he couldn't remember who he was. He was a speedster. And the last thing you remember was his death.
Yeah. Um, so that's, that's pretty amazing. Well done on that Marvel. He totally appeared in Quasar.
That was pretty cool. Which is how new he existed because it was pretty quick. Yeah. The thing about the thing I was talking about was Steve Inglehart, Len Wien and Jerry Conway had an unauthorized intercompany crossover.
There you go. And it happened in Avengers 85 and Justice League of America 87. Okay. And basically it was the idea that these characters all went to the same location, the same town for the same event.
Okay. And they like passed each other. They both went to the same like parade. And that's how they like technically had the same crossover.
Like that. Yeah. It's really cool. I'm trying to look it up right now.
I was like, I'm looking at the pages for it right now. And they both go to the same town during the same celebration. That's awesome. In the same month.
I love it. And I like that like it's interesting that Justice League and Avengers had were only two issues away from each other having the same number of issues. There was before, um, Justice League Avengers happened in the early 2000s when Kirby's like George Presley doing it again. When Mark Wade was writing Justice JLA and Kirby's was writing Avengers, they very closely became CAD in their titles crossover.
Yeah. It was like the four. Yeah. It was crazy.
So like you would have seen Avengers happen to show up in like JLA 60. And you would have seen the Justice League show up in like Avengers 40. Oh. And you're like, whoa.
How awesome is that? Yeah. I mean, and I like, I was loved those moments. I know that in I think after JLA Avengers, the Corona turns, yeah, Corona turns into like an egg, but then the Justice League take the egg and bring it back to their universe.
And they're like, well, after we have to go with those guys, we're going to do this. I'm like, whoa, they reference their own, their own thing. Marvel. Yeah, they did quite a while.
But yeah, another big rip off I think we should talk about. And this one's a pretty obvious one as well is Green Arrow Hawkeye. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Hawkeye being a group of Green Arrow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, come on. Like, you know, like when Stanley was making the Avengers, which I know, because Just League of America was selling at the time and his editors were like, we need a team of books. You know, like, Stanley was just like, all right, we need our arrow guy. Yeah.
I mean, absolutely. There's no question that Stan was like, we need a team of people. So we won't cannibalize our own books who are made almost specifically for the team book. I know that JLA was selling well because you literally kids were thinking to themselves, I'm, I've only got 50 cents.
And I'm going to buy the book that has the most characters in them because I get more bang for my book. So that's why JLA was selling so well and why the Marvel guys needed to boost up their game. I got to make a team book, but what's funny is of course, like, JLA had the team of characters that all sold their own individual books. And there's like, yeah, here's a bunch of characters like this.
Shit. Yeah, he was a customer. You've never met before all one book. Yeah.
Here's Hawkeye. He was just who in the JLA Avengers crossover is referred to as purple arrow, which I think is amazing. You know, Clint Barton would not put up with that shit. But yeah, he's, he's.
I love how this by the way, I got to point out this, this idiot in the comments, because Dr. Meeball, wow, they realized Robin who was a thing or green arrow was it a ripoff. I'm sorry, Dr. Meeball.
No shit. Green arrows are rip off a Robinhood. Yes. We're talking about characters about each other.
You know, even going back as far as Batman, like that is a book with the shadow. Yeah, technically, I would say that since Robinhood is in the public domain and is in the cultural consciousness since, I don't know, for the last hundred years, or more. And more. In fact, as the green arrow was inspired by Robinhood, you know, like sure, we're the DC people, like we got to make our own Robinhood, probably.
I mean, even Batman's a ripoff of Robinhood. Yeah. Like being the vigilante that goes against the show. I mean, come on.
Yeah. Like so many superheroes are ripped off of Robinhood. I mean, but to be honest with you, Intel, the Neil Adams costume. Yeah.
It wasn't like so direct. But yeah, of course it was Robinhood. I mean, even to be honest with you, Batman, Robin of Batman and Robin is a ripoff of Robinhood. That's where they got the name.
That's where they got the name. That's right. What's ironic is my favorite acknowledgement of that is actually in All Star Batman, Robin Wonder. Yeah.
When Dick Grayson chooses to become Robin, or he calls himself the hood, and then Batman takes the hood and covers his face with it and says, lose the hood, you're Robin. I'm like, that's gold. Then I see Damien adopt the hood and I'm like, well, when is he going to pull the hood? He's going to get a shove it over his head.
That's the first thing that anyone would do. And I'm like, you know, I got to give it to Frank. That's not wrong. It's technically right.
Yeah. We've been dancing around with the biggest ripoff because... What do you see as the biggest one? I think Shazam slash Captain Marvel is one of the many, obviously, vegetables that make us, but I think that Shazam slash Captain Marvel is such a ripoff that within the context of his creation, they literally were just like, we got to make a Superman.
And as you pointed out in the last episode, he was out selling Superman, so he's like, oh, no, or whatever DC was. They're like, oh, no, we got to sue them into oblivion, own the character, and then not know what to do with it forever. We have a big comment pop up there. We did super chat from Keith Wunch on this.
Plastic Man, a long-gated man, Mr. Fantastic. Hell yeah. Yes.
The stretchy guys for me have all, like, especially when I was, as a kid growing up as a Marvel fan, when I saw... When I was a plastic man, I'm like, right on, I can see the differences. He feels kind of Mr. Fantastic, but I can argue plastic man is different from Reed Richards.
Then I find out about it elongated man. I'm like, okay, we got to put the brakes on this one. It's funny, we just did a geek history lesson on a long-gated man, and we learned that the only reason a long-gated man exists is because the people that created a long-gated man, I think it was Carmine Infantino, I believe. I could be wrong on that because he shows up in Flash.
And he didn't realize that DC already had a stretchy character. I see that. Yeah, but he wanted a stretchy character and he was like, well, I don't think we have a stretchy character. A long-gated man.
Right. First of all, worst name. Yeah, it's pretty terrible. You might as well just call him the stretchy man, but the elongated man, and he never dropped it.
They never like, 95, like 90s-ified him. Extreme, gave him a hood. It's just so, yeah, I've never been a huge fan of long-gated man, but Mr. Fantastic is a weird one because there's many stories that Mr.
Fantastic doesn't ever stretch. Yeah. But they only gave him those powers because again, it was a thing of staying, leaving like, I need a stretchy guy. Oh, Excelsio.
They all have to be different. They all have their own thing. And all those things can't be duplicates of things we're already doing unless we did them 20, 30 years ago, in which case the human torch could definitely be a thing. Yeah, it's also like, you mean, it's also a thing about like, Stanley's responsible for a lot of these, by the way.
Oh, you mean to Rivet of Ripoff's about the time. Well, because Stan looked at it the way that many publishers do. It was a business and he's like, we gotta make money. We gotta get these characters out.
And he didn't have reverence for the process, the way that we do for his process. He is literally just sitting there in a room going, like, uh, there's a spider on the wall, a spider guy, like spider man. All right, there we go. Like, now he took it and he took that concept.
We're actually, it's funny in the chat earlier in the conversation. We thought that somebody mentioned that Stanley died. He didn't, but we were like, oh, shit, we gotta change the whole show. Yeah.
We actually lined up, you know, you'll utilize him to do it anyway. But, um, but Stanley, I think the genius within Stanley is that he took, he is a, he is in a sense a little bit of a corpus stooge. And yet he infuses this exuberance and life and originality where he's like, spider guy, right? He's a spider man.
But then goes like, but what if he's also like a Robin? Like if Robin were a superhero, like a kid, teenager who has the power. Oh, yeah. I'm not saying like Stanley is very successful at this stuff like that.
Yeah. Cause like Joseph Elders brought up in the chat. Stanley literally ripped off the human torch off of the human torch. He's correct.
And if you think about the Hulk as a sort of a rip off of the thing, a big time, you know, kind of like the wrong characters. Yeah. Like, you know, so like, yeah, there's a lot of them. Um, you know, but he, he was able to, um, he, he was able to make a lot of them very original.
He, you know, Stanley has a lot of successful comic book ripoffs. Yeah. That's true. But, uh, you know, you know what?
I think it's actually a really, really big one. What's that? Uh, Thanos is such a rip off of Dark Side. In like the most flagrant way.
You know, way that actually is really hurting DC's movies right now. Because they're like, obviously we should do Dark Side. But you're already, you've already been building towards your purple grip off of Dark Side the last like 10 years. There's no way we could start with Dark Side.
And it sucks because when Avengers ended and fricking Thanos turns around, I was like, God damn it, Joss, we need to screw everything up. Yeah. That was the big thing I thought too. I was like, damn it.
Now when Dark Side shows up, everybody's going to be like, Dark Side to rip off of Thanos. Yes. And I like Thanos in as much as I don't really like Thanos, but he has interesting stories, I guess sometimes. But God damn do I like Dark Side?
And he has a lot of really, really great ideas. And he's never portrayed in like a really obnoxious way. Never did Dark Side have a Dark Side copter in an awful Spider-Man joke. Ah, I remember that.
I mean, you know, it's just, but Thanos is just so derivative. And what's amazing and funny is how protective Jim Starlin is of Thanos, of this rip off character. And now every time that Thanos does anything original or interesting, or like separate from Jim Starlin, Starlin shows up and then writes his own Thanos book that either contradicts it, undermines it, or goes completely in the other direction of what you're doing with that character. So I mean, Robert DeBlanc, also what about Mongol?
Who wrote a rip off character of both of those guys? Yeah. Is Mongol, I thought Mongol was, I'm going to look at that. I didn't think Mongol was a Dark Side rip off.
I thought Mongol was a Thanos rip off. Oh really? Wow. Like I thought it was like, rip off upon rip off upon rip off.
Like, do you want to know who created Mongol? Jim Starlin. Jim Starlin. I'm right for eating now, but I still want him to write Thanos.
Yeah, Mongol is the rip off of the rip off. Yeah. Unbelievable. But I would argue Mongol doesn't qualify for the list because he never really was successful.
No. As a kid, as a villain, accepted one story. And of course, you had to drag Alan Moore out of the cave to get Mongol interesting, even then Mongol is a plot device. What if we give Mongol a plan?
Yeah. We would have got to go, we could punch Superman. If we fought Superman with the plant. Yeah, exactly.
The interesting thing too is, I'm looking on CBR here in this article that you share with me. And it says, if anything, when Jim Starlin came up with the idea for Thanos, it says here, this is from Jim Starlin's own quote. He said that he initially wanted to make a character more like Metron. But then his Marvel editors told him to beef him up.
And if you're going to rip off the new gods, rip off one of the good ones. Rip off Darkseid. That is really funny and not wrong. Yeah, it's crazy.
So he even is converted by Marvel. He's a direct rip off of Percio. I mean, like they're not wrong. There is no dark side equivalent in Marvel, except for Thanos.
Yeah. You don't really, and that's the thing about the rip off characters in general, is you don't need an analog for everybody. No. Not everyone, not every original character needs its derivative rip off that also might cannibalize some of the success of that guy over there.
But it's funny how much we like to see a lot of things line up, because of our human brains. We like to see patterns and faces on the numbers, and we can find things and see parallels. Man, isn't it fun to see that loss of engines versus JLA crossover comic, where you see all the quick, oh, look at that. It's Adam versus Ant-Man.
Well, look at that. It's Batman versus Captain America. I think Darkseid, and then it's a meat like Marvel versus DC too. They do.
It's a wasted opportunity. It's a wasted moment. And then they did another crossover with Silver Surfer. I think it's, oh no, it's Galrainer.
And Silver Surfer. And that one I think had Darkseid in it. I don't remember. I think you're right.
I know. The one I'm thinking of actually was Darkseid and Galactus meeting up, which is like, if you're going to have the Darkseid, I mean, somebody have it be Thanos. Don't do Galactus, dammit. I think it's called like Darkseid, Galactus, the hunger or something.
Getting some guns. I think you're exactly right. Getting some guns also jumped in and Super Chat says, speaking about what about all the watchboard characters being rip offs. That is out of necessity, because they were like, we want to do this thing.
And he wanted to write about the original characters. The drop characters. The drop characters. And DC was like, nope.
And so he's like fine. I'll just make, literally those characters, but you can own them. He was actually, yeah, he was actually too far. He was quite a ways into the series.
Yeah. And at that point, DC got a little scared about doing that, doing some of these very adult things at Blue Beetle. And so they changed their mind. And he basically had to make them all analogs.
And to be honest with you, I don't mind that because, yeah, he did create some original characters, but like that. And this one of the things I like about Doomsday Clock is that Jeff Johns bringing some of the original Charlton characters that we haven't seen before into Watchmen. Yes, which is like no brainer and cool. It's great because it allows the characters from Charlton that like do work.
Yeah, to work. And it allows you to also use the Watchmen characters that could have legs and be applicable to the DC universe. But those guys in there. Sure.
I mean, like what's too bad is like, I really like the question. I think it's a really cool character works on his own, but I think Rorschach's more popular. You know, I think you're probably right. And that's the sad thing about it.
I think you're probably right. Yeah. Because I don't think that the question is quite as much as I can. Because Rorschach is.
Yeah, he, you know, I would say the question is probably the biggest part. The most popular question has ever been is just as League Unlimited. I thought, yeah, just the show. Yeah, I was going to say for the two.
But 52, yeah, as well. Let's think about some other ones. Ooh. Ooh.
Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say like this list also claims, I mean, Ultron and Brainiac. There's a stretch. I think it's a stretch.
Because I think there's a, there's a, there are everything about both those characters is totally different. Like Brainiac, depending on which origin you use has, then none of them are that like Superman made him. And then he flew back. I mean, Kryptok, the Kryptonian's making him big in the end.
It's serious. That was a great origin for Reniac. But still totally different from Ultron's origins. Yeah.
The roles are totally different. I think Ultron is a rip off of like, you know, sci-fi comic bookie robots. Yeah, I think that's just, I wouldn't even call him a rip one. I think it's just like, how about like, how about just an evil robot?
Yeah. I mean, look at the original Ultron, when he first showed up with like a refrigerator on wheels. And like, damn, like if he's being ripped off, like you might want to start at the drawing board. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, he's more rip off of like just old sci-fi movies, I would say. Just was robot. Just, it's basically like a Frankenstein story. Yes.
You know, I created this, I created this thing that's my son. It's a monster and blah, blah, like you could, you could argue that. Yeah, you know what? That's a great call.
Sal, that's probably exactly what it's more a rip off of his Frankenstein. Thank you. Good call, man. Well done.
You know applause for that. That's some great insight. I'm seeing a lot of reminders about the the sorcerers and we're actually having a discussion about that internally because somebody, this amazing artist drew the entire top out crew, and shivvy versions of ourselves. And like, it's really cool.
They look awesome. She tweeted them out to me. But like, I'm wearing a spider-man shirt and Ben's wearing a real-layer shirt. But Tiffany is Dr.
Strange in his outfit, just casting spells. And I was like thinking about our DC equivalent. I'm like, what would I wear? What would be the wear?
But then I'm like, okay, but Tiffany would have to just be that character. I guess it would have to be Dr. Fate because Dr. Strange is technically a wall off of Dr.
Fate. Well, that's a tough, this one's kind of a stretch for me as well. I agree. I get that they're both doctors.
That's where I think the rip off begins and ends. Yes. Is the doctor name. Because they're so different.
Like Dr. Fate is about getting this magical item that takes control of you. And Dr. Strange is about just becoming like a sorcerer guy.
I think, to be honest with you, I kind of get the feeling that when they were coming up when Stan was coming up with Dr. Strange, he was like, oh, what do I call this guy? There's a Dr. Fate.
Well, he could be a Dr. Doom. That's what I really think it is because they're not even Dr. Fate serves the Lords of Order.
Dr. Strange sort of serves the ancient one. I don't know. I think it's a little bit of a stretch.
I agree because otherwise I think Dr. Fate would sell better. But he's somewhat relatable and he's so esoteric and difficult to connect to it. It's just the only thing, the best thing about Dr.
Fate is the design. And that's why when they you algomize them, the only thing they kept was the freaking helmets. Yeah, but it's also too like he's like, they're the biggest equivalent because of the most mystical characters together. Right.
It's the same idea. Like a lot of people are like, well, you know, when you when you combine Batman, like who is Batman's equivalent in the Marley universe? Some people argue Moon Knight. I would argue Daredevil.
Big time. Now, I, you know, that's why the Batman Daredevil crossovers are so disappointing because both creators missed it because they, the reason why actually I'm glad you brought that up because this week's back issue is Daredevil Batman. Whoa, really? Yeah.
By D.G. Chichester who did Daredevil, Fall for Grace, which is arguably one of the worst narrative stories out of Rhett. Yeah. But completely, like all you want to see is these two driven regular dudes who put on like costume.
Like people make, Tumbler has made a whole career or some of the people that made careers out of just making the observation of like, isn't Daredevil more of a Batman? Like you're blind like a bat. So shouldn't you technically have the bat costume? Like what's going on?
There's so many parallels between Daredevil and Batman. I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah.
Moon Knight, I don't even know what Moon Knight came from or why they would want to do. Like the idea of there, I mean, like, I think that the, like using your parlance begins and ends, Moon Knight's rip off of Batman begins and ends with a dude who's scaring the stalks tonight and has like up all the bullshit, the, the moon Knight copter, the butler. Oh, but Batman's butler's British. So this one's French, you know, and the moon blades, like all the crap that like all the superficial stuff that moon Knight has is definitely a Batman rip off.
But when you get to the characters, like moon Knight could wear a suit and be written by war and illness and be freaking amazing and Batman could never do that. Like, yeah. And also the weird multiple personality thing. Yeah.
I mean, you could argue like Bruce Wayne and Batman, but that's, that's just a secret identity. Like, they didn't even, I don't think anyone, I don't think Bill Finger was thinking of himself like, no, no, we're going to do a story where like this guy really wants to be this like he thinks he's Batman all the time. The, the, the, the billionaire is the best. Like, no.
Yeah. So we're thinking, um, let's also talk about, I mean, this is a super obvious one to me, uh, Quicksilver Flash. Yeah. You know, that again was, I think, Stanley, we need a fast guy.
Yeah. Go. What's the rest of the socks? Can we say that?
Can we say Quicksilver socks? You know, yeah, I'll give it to you. I mean, he's just, he's so, the worst is like, there are, there are so many great analogs between Marvel and DC, but flash has no equal in Marvel. No.
People, people do see the parallel between Quicksilver and Flash because Quicksilver's fast. Yeah. But there's nothing about Quicksilver that is in any way, Barry Allen, Wally West, even Bart Allen. Like there's no connection between anything like what the flash has like a mythology and a legacy and an iconic design.
Quicksilver just never had a good storyline either. Like, and I'll fight anybody on that because he's never had, he's never led a title. No. That was any good.
Like, yeah, he's been good as a supporting character, but like, what is his most common theme? Like, oh my dad's a evil guy. But even then they, they read on that out. So it's like, you took away the Megadoke connection?
What do you have left? Yeah. The most interesting thing about that character you just got rid of. Yeah.
It's because you're mad at Fox. Yeah. It's just, you know, I don't know. Like Quicksilver is like, I always like the Quicksilver when he's with the Avengers.
Yeah. Because he's a foil because he's like a dick. It's like having Dr. Placian in the Enterprise.
Yeah. But otherwise I'm just like, yeah, he just doesn't work for me. He really doesn't. No.
And I remember when they did the Marvel DC crossover, the 90s one, it was like, you know, take the page real estate away from those two and just put it in a crossover I want to see. Seeing Quicksilver and Flash, like Flash is just inherently faster. Yep. That also was during the time when Wally West was like hitting light speed.
Wally West is never there's no one faster than Wally. And damn, I love that moment. Wally's faster than Barry, everybody. Deal with it.
Yes. The other thing I really like, I will say that's curp use it, man. He knows his shit. He really makes it work.
When he did have to do the crossover comparison between Flash and Quicksilver, when Quicksilver's in the DC universe, he is like, man, he's like, I can tap into your speed force too. Yeah. You're like, that's kind of neat. Like, I like seeing Quicksilver kind of like brought down being like, I'm not the fastest alive.
And like, the only way that you're able to be fast is by tapping into something inherent like mystical thing. And like, because I can imagine being a speedster, being like kind of intrinsically drawn to it and finding some kind of like, like almost like finding a god and wanting to worship it and being like, I'll tap into it and rejecting you and having no interest in your bullshit. Because you have even power that makes you fat. It's just, no.