So hello welcome to opinioneering place where we sit around and talk about our opinions and you can too just hit us up on our Twitter at opinioneering and our Facebook at the same exact name. Today we have our two sponsors that we could dedicate this episode to which is Bullet Bourbon and Jason what's that Kirkland? Kirkland Spiced Rum and Coke. Folks who had a nine at Costco.
They drew shout out to Kirkland. I am Danny. This is Colton and Jason. And today we have a special guest we have Caleb Schroffner, a good friend of ours that we've talked about before on our podcast.
And today he's just gonna be cuz Caleb actually came with us being Colton and Comic Con. He ended up showing up there so yeah we're just talking about comic concepts with Caleb say hi. Howdy everybody. So the first you know three episodes in our one-one shot we talked about like our favorite movies and something like that.
Just real quick. Your background on just comic books in general like where'd your love start? His mind was like was my older brother and my love for movies started with my dad taking me with his older brother and Jason was you know he was like he was Jason. He just started on his own.
He just like I paved his own way. So what about you? Like where's your love for pop culture in general? More specifically comic books.
Well it started I was a had an older friend a good friend of mine named Andrew Seymour. So having an older friend like that was able to introduce me to a lot of things that I wasn't maybe quite ready for. So I was exposed to Star Wars pretty quick and was like a huge Star Wars fanatic and so from there he was a huge collector of like Star Wars action figures like kept him in the box hung him up on the wall thinking he's gonna make millions of dollars from this kind of stuff. Still friends with this guy?
I haven't talked to him in a long time but the last time I saw him was a couple years ago and it was like we never see it to be. It was awesome. We like trolls and kids in Star Wars knowledge. It was really really great.
So I've always been a passionate player of action figures and so that's how I was exposed to comic books the first time around as a kid playing with X-Man and Fantastic Four and Spider-Man and Spider-Man animated series was my favorite as a kid growing up. And then as I got older while I was in college Netflix was coming to was rising in power and so I came across Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I was like oh cool this show was great. I used to watch this when I was a kid from the end of Buffy I jumped on to following the story in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic books and then that kind of got me into the comic book store and then from there I started getting into Marvel comics a lot from playing a game called Hero clicks. The table talking and so with Hero clicks being exposed to like a plethora of characters people I have no idea who they might be.
We're starting to be curious starting to use Wikipedia while I'm in the comic book store getting my Buffy the Vampire Slayer stuff starting to be like maybe I should read some of these things and now I know who this guy is that is my new like figure who totally rocks in this game when you learn more about him so then I start reading that and Marvel Civil War which I'm super pumped to be for Captain America but I was like pumped up. No Campus the Marvel Civil War who my friends bought either the novel ideas version one of the novel version and another one got the collective Justin hard back they will think all the campaign stuff so I read all that and that's from that Chris disclosures and i want to be a couple years later Marvel now started which was like the big jumping off point for like all the Number 1's so I picked up a ton of those from Marvel now and then I've gone back and bought and read tons and tons and a ton of other stuff marbles on like when they did their little reboot they're on like issue 27 art now I I think I went to shout out to Roger over at Horizon Comics. You my man. Roger shout out to him.
That guy is the bomb. He plays to go. Yeah, go on Horizon Comics.com. He actually can.
On 10th West. Yeah, 10th West and L if you're in the animal valley area. But yeah, check him out on his website. He can also get a pull for you.
He'll send to you. Check out his website. Big shout to Roger. If you ship to you, it's a flat rate of $4.
I'll use it. So it's great. So real quick. I'm going to rewind real quick and go to hero clicks.
Explain to our. OK, I don't know if you guys know this. But we have 27 subscribers. And we just put up episodes last week.
Congratulations. It's good. Yeah, for you 27. Thank you.
All of them are from Qatar. Right. But a quick shout out to a person who came to me personally with feedback. And that was Alfred Alopes.
I actually worked with him. I just love him. I just love him. I love him.
I love him. I love him. I love him too. I am his boss.
Yeah. And he came to me and said, I listen to you. He's amazing. He's amazing.
He came to me and said, it was great. He loved it. He loved it. And he loved it.
And I was like, thank you. Then I asked him. He said, I'm not just saying that to every boss, right? He said, he loved it.
OK, because I remember you saying, do this guy. He liked it. But he said anything about it. Because you said that he heard something about pop culture.
He never knew before. What was that one thing? Well, he loves music. He's really, he plays guitar.
He loves music. So he hasn't heard much of the music. So we haven't got it. I know that's Ganny's big side.
So he heard a lot of the comics that he never knew. He loves the Marvel cinema. But he's never read the comics. So he learned a lot.
Open his mind about more movies than comics. He's made him more excited about that. Cool, cool, cool. So go back to Shoff in his wide array of knowledge.
I know in the first episode when we were talking about Colton and his knowledge, he did a shout out to Shoff because Shoff is even more knowledgeable in the Marvel universe than Caleb. I mean, then Colton said, I'm not throwing Colton at the bus. No, I actually do. If I miss a link somewhere, I go to Caleb about it and ask him, hey, man, what am I missing here?
What have you read that I haven't? Right, that's basically a comic-con. We say up to what? Do you hear me in the morning?
Outside our hotel room vaping and just talking about what? Yeah, we say up pretty late, talking about stuff. I was giving you the run down. The Jonathan Hickman run of Avengers and New Avengers, which is culminated in two secret wars.
Which I went to Roger and picked all my stuff up. I picked up all my cool and got one, two, three, four, I say seven graphic novels, three of them, which were hard cover, the Justice League ones. I got the 130 bucks I failed at this. And he gave me 13 tickets to the premiere of Ant-Man here.
And he's like, dude, not that many people have actually done stuff. You can very well get these tickets. And I was pumped. And it's some little girl guy because she got like a shot like a dollar something.
Her dad buck, I don't know. But shout out to that little girl. I don't know who you are. So hero clicks.
You mentioned hero clicks. I know we've mentioned before that Colton and I are very, and you actually play Pokemon with us. So what is hero clicks? The reader's digested.
What is hero clicks? Hero clicks is a tabletop mini game. So you get these little tiny action figures glued onto a base. And it's a strategy game where you're going to have a team of Avengers or Justice League.
Or you can even get as far down as some of the- You deal out of child's way. I was not interested in comic books. Right. So they've expanded it.
They're definitely starting to expand their market. They're big two are DC and Marvel. And I think that was a major appeal. It's like, hey, I can have my team of Avengers fight against the team of Justice League.
Or I can put a team with Batman, Captain America, Superman, and Thor all together and fight somebody with the opposites. So it's really cool that you can kind of mix and match with your players like me or somebody like Nightwing. And then somebody like Spider-Man, I can have both those guys on the same team jumping off of the building together. So what do you mean by- What?
Go ahead. I was going to be like, I like that. He automatically like paired Nightwing and Spider-Man. It's like, Jason's two favorite heroes.
All right. What do you mean by jumping off buildings? Like, this is a board game, didn't you say that? Right.
So we're looking at a map, I would say. Yeah, I probably should know better. But I think it's probably 32 squares long. And then I'm going to say 18 squares wide.
And- How big are these squares? Two inches. Two inches. Two inches.
Two inches. Two inches. So every character has a movement speed and attack value, a defense value, and a damage to the deal. And then it's called hero clips because on the bottom of their dial where you have their statistics, each statistic is also color coded to let you know what power they have.
So if you have a movement value of eight, then you might also have a green movement, which means your character is allowed to run and punch in the same move. Whereas another character might have an orange movement, and that just means they can jump around buildings. And so on your map, you're going to have levels of elevation and things like you're going to have a mountain, or a building, or a hole. Like from a crater.
So you need to go down and do a crater to hide from a guy who can go up on a building and hide up there and get a good view of the land. So you can hide. You can hide. You can hide.
A different elevation. So it's more like a, like a, so if you want to hit someone, can you hit someone across the board? You have to be with inside of that person or you have to be with a certain amount of squares of that person? Yeah.
So it's a fifth, uh, stat value is going to be range. So you have the value that changes is going to be your movement, your attack, your defense and your damage. But one value that stays constant on your dial is your range value. Unless you know there can be different circumstances on the character's card they might have.
You only have range on your first two clicks, something like that. So you're, you're going to have a printed range value of someone like Hawkeye is going to have like eight to nine range value and that guy just going to stand in. So then he can count eight squares from the square that he's standing in and he can take a shot at your character. And if he were to hit you, he might deal three damage to you.
And then on the bottom of your character where he has all these stats, it's a little little spin. So you guys play with like calculators handy because that just sounds like a. No, because just when he said like, if he hits, I played it once before or a couple of times before actually play a lot of clubs on the go, but say he does like a three, three damage because it falls through hits. The click on the bottom, you click to the left one, two, three.
So that's you going down, now once your dial runs out, once it's blank, your KO'd. I just mean like, so for instance, when we would play, what's the DC deck building in deck building game? What's DC deck building? Yeah.
What's the Spider-Man movie? Spider-Man? That's what it's called. Pretty straightforward.
When we play that, I would just have you try to take my turn and I'm like, okay, so like if I have this arena card and play, it's like add this, but then if I do that, then I automatically get a combo plus one of here and then I would like me to calculate like, okay, here's what I have to, I could buy this card in that card. It would just be too much for me. I think it's just takes time because there's something that like, I think the only thing I remember is acrobatics. Is that orange?
Acrobat? Leap climb. Leap climb. Nightwing and Spidey usually have Leap climbing over buildings.
They don't have to like do an extra step to go on top of elevation and stuff like that. See, I want to have like, I'm right now appealing to Apple. I want to be able to like, Siri calculate my total. I just like read out my cards and that's just like, this picture of my cards in DC.
You have 12 power. You know what I mean? You remember in, you know, remember in Star Wars, a new hope when they're playing chess and those little dudes are walking, they have like a holographic board of hero clicks. You don't actually have to have clicks.
You just have it in the database on your iPad. It would be nifty but I also think having the clicks is the fun part. I'm a big collector. I mean, I play, I go to competitive tournaments but I know it's like, you know what's going on in Los Angeles?
You got first place? Yeah, a couple of weeks ago, we had a constructed tournament which means that you get to pick all your own, from your own collection. You get to build your own team and I luckily got to win the Black Lantern Necron was the prize for that for this weekend and it was like 800 point build. He's about five or six inches tall and then he gets on this even bigger base that has like the Black Lantern power battery and he makes it massive and he's super powerful and it's really cool.
Peace. I know, Colton actually just as past weekend went to Comic Con, he got a dorm ammo. Click. I had opportunities to buy it but pulled myself not to because I don't play clicks anymore but after I couldn't get some special dorm ammo for each other, I missed out on those.
I was looking for the Book of Ashanti everywhere and couldn't find it. That was like the newest hot commodity. Like, I was going for the magic cards to resell them which I ended up reselling them. Nice.
I ended up tripling my money. Awesome. Oh, I mean, I didn't do anything. I don't do that kind of stuff.
I cherish this collection. So he was looking for that everywhere. So it was sold out by the end of con. So he was like, screw it and he went and he came back with it.
It was like a dorm ammo hero clip. What is dorm ammo from? That sounds like Mark and Mindy or something. He's a...
Mark from Mark and his cousin, dorm ammo. He's pretty much like the devil almost at the Marvel Universe. He's one of Dr. Strange's main villains.
One of Mindy though. There are many hells. Yeah. One of the many...
Who will create him? dorm ammo as far as like writing? Yeah. I can probably go back as old as...
Shumagorap? Shumagorap. I like just Dr. Strange.
I mean he's one of those classic Dr. Strange guys so whoever originated Strange probably Kirby and Lee, I guess. Huh. So cool.
So yeah. So if you would have to choose your... Be quick. This is a real quick one like...
Ah, talk my head. Boom boom boom boom. We have it here. Episode 5, Common Quick Characters.
What would it be? In your head. Am I favorites or...? Before you answer, Jason Delves and the Video Games and Cheetahs.
Yeah he ch, I'm in the book for Video Game. My favorite characters, my favorite characters. My favorite, her fictional heros and characters. From just Videogames and Common Quick.
I thought Colton just called me out for Videogames. Yeah. Yeah I'm just saying because you... Since you did it he gives a dudy a...
Okay. See if you screwed up. He can do it too. Yeah, because I had women originally I didn't touch the DC.
You guys kind of screw me in the butt. Wait, you would not have switched to DC. I could have put someone in DC, yes. Well, big Superman fan ever since I don't know.
He was the only guy who I knew that was Superman. I was like, he used to be powers and I'm like, yeah, but he's so cool. I mean, I mean, I originally thought that was the point. That's right.
They're like, who's your favorite? The guy who can be someone else's ass is my favorite. So, okay, comic book and video games. Favorite characters?
Favorite characters, yeah. Man, that's tough. I'm going to start off with my favorite one. If someone were to ask me like, who's your favorite comic book character?
I would say, Jamie Madrocks is the multiple man known from X Factor. I'm a huge, huge, huge Peter David fan. And over the last couple of years, I've been completing my collection of all the Peter David X Factor investigation story. And it's just about, it starts off really like kind of film the war kind of situation where he's just a detective and the multiple man can make a duplicate of himself anytime he takes some kinetic energy.
So he just like stomps his foot on the ground and can create another version of himself and have him go. Can he clap his hands? Can he create? Can he manage it with himself?
Can he what? Clap his hands? His own kinetic energy? He doesn't clap his hands.
He usually just stomps his foot on the ground. Or somebody punches him in the face. Could he if he wanted to? I don't know if a clap can do it because it's just kind of bouncing off into him.
I think he needs to stomp because the pressure from the ground is pushing it back into him. Whereas a clap, it's just all still his body is my guess. I don't know. And then he makes another version of himself.
So he makes a duplicate of himself. And it's not super defined yet. It's actually like a really fun thing to discuss about multiple man. It's like, where do these people come from?
Like, are they different universes? Are they alternate timelines? Or is it really just duplicate? Because he could be holding something absolutely unique.
And then he can create a duplicate of himself. And it has if he were to pick up a 200 pound atomic warhead and he stomp his foot, he would then generate another 200 pound atomic warhead. So where did all the extra duplicates go? When they disappear, they just go back to him.
If they die, he reabsorbs him and gets the energy. Or not the energy. All of their thoughts, anything that they just learned, he just reabsorbs him after death. And so I was watching the other day.
It's kind of Batman the Animated Series. It's still a little too slow for my three-year-old. She's like, let's watch Batman. I'm like, OK.
But then she gets bored unless it's one of the more fun episodes. What's that one? Oh, the Brave and the Bold? Yeah, Brave and the Bold is a little more kid-friendly.
So she enjoyed that one a bit more. But they took it off Netflix. So on Amazon Prime, they're still Batman the Animated Series. We've been watching that.
But there's an episode where Batman and goes into this virtual reality thing that the Riddler set up. And then he like cloned the Riddler cloned himself over and over and over and over. Like there's like 50 Riddler's or something. And so how Batman gets out of the whole scenario as he's like asked for it.
Like how can you split yourself into 50 versions of yourself and have the mental capacity to run this place? And Riddler's like, oh, and then the whole place blows up and he saves the day. Oh, it's like you're saying like, if we can't hold him in. Yeah, like is he one guy controlling the mental processes of all the others?
Or is each one its own independent entity? They are their own person. It's a big storyline in probably like the first within the first five arcs that he's going around because at some point before X-Factor investigation begins, Jamie Madrock's creates upwards of 50 dupes. That's what they call them, the duplicate or dupes.
And he hasn't go learn things. And so he has one go with studies and he's like a Buddhist monk. And another one goes and learns to be martial artist. One of them goes and learn to be the best detective on the planet.
One of them goes to study electrical engineering. One of them goes to study. So then he goes on a quest and hunts them down. Or he calls them back really like in his mind, he can talk to the or like let the dupes know to come home.
But they are their own. So one of the dupes that he sent to go and... They don't question like who's the boss. They're not like...
Yeah, it's not like who Jamie Prime is. And so they... When they want to be their own person, they start to avoid him. Because there has been a couple of dupes that go rogue.
And this one dupe goes and creates his own family and goes and beats his own guy, James' name to James Madox. And he's just kind of like, I'm being my own guy, please don't absorb me. And so when Jamie comes to find him, he's like, please don't like I have a family. So then it was just a big kind of inner turmoil of whether or not Jamie Madrock should like reabsorb this dupe or is that kind of committing murder at this point because now this family no longer has a father figure.
So that was kind of how you start to learn that these people can... Or these dupes can be their own people. And a lot of them start to realize that they're a separate person and there was sort of like a fluctuation with his dupes for a while and they were like... Buddy heads, he would create them and then they would like hide what their personality traits are.
So that way Jamie might send them to go to this mission and one of them was like, I'm the tricky part of your persona. So like, I was waiting for you to send me to go help somebody and I just tried to kill them. I wonder if he's ever like put up a lost and found picture like, have you seen this man? And it's like...
What? I actually had a quick question. So say he's having sex with a woman. He has that conversation with himself.
Really? He's having a picture of it. It might be on my phone. And he's like one of the dupes.
Oh no, no, no. Like one of the dupes is like, hey, so if we had sex, would it be considered masturbation? And then Jamie, Jamie Prime just absorbs him. He's like, I'm not having this car so long.
So if he was like... I'm not doing that much. I'm not doing that much. I'm not going to say I'm having a bar like after a rough day and one of the dupes is like, hey man, if he had sex, is it considered masturbation?
He's like, what am I doing? So if he's totally going to town with this girl in Korea and is connecting her, is he talking about a lot of amount as he's doing her? No, I would imagine that he has a little bit more control over it if it's just like something like a simple as sex. When he was first hanging out with Charles Xavier, he was wearing a suit, a containment suit.
Who did you guys meet next man? He was never an X-man. He has been on mostly like an X-factor and he was hanging out with Moira McTaggart. Is that the name of the Simon Kellow Show?
X-Factor. This predates, predates that Darn Simon Kellow Show. But anytime I try to google some information about it, I'm going to go on like he had a double check. You mean Simon Kellow?
First I have to sift through the show. That's funny. So okay, that's number one. That was my number one.
My number two would be a clone of Peter Parker, Scarlett Swider. Okay, well, okay, well, okay. Okay, Parker. Sorry, not Ben Riley.
I love Ben Riley. But my number two most favorite... He's currently on the spider, right? Currently after Spiderverse, which is like the most recent Spiderman crossover stuff, was Kane sacrificed himself in there.
So currently he's out of comics. And when I was at Comic Con, somebody thankfully begged the question, what are you doing with Eddie Brock and what are you doing with Kane Parker? Axel Alonso was like, they get brought up a lot in conversation, but nothing right now. And I was ready to go.
That means within the next year, because when I went to the panel for Scott Snyder's Batman last year, someone asked about Cassandra Kane and he's like, yeah, she's not in any ideas right now. And then now they bring back his own shame like next month. Okay, awesome. They just named Kane Fanon.
They do that every once in a while. So, Kane, I know there's a kickass story about Kane taking off Wolverine. I told him this story. Yeah.
So, and like one of the first few arcs of Scarlett Swider's series by Chris Yowes, who I think is one of my favorite writers at Marvel, he meets up with the League of Assassins, picks their butts for a little while, and gets him to leave him alone basically. Short story. I would like you to go and support Starliss Biders, one of my favorites. Go, start.
Come back. I think somewhere around, issue somewhere in the teens, the League of Assassins comes back to Kane and they're like, hey, you know, we left you alone, we sat like we let you and your friends go. We need you to do a favor for us. And he was like, alright, like, yeah, I made that deal.
Like I would do a favor for you. I'm totally kickass assassin type character. I have a stealth suit. I got spider strength.
I'm even stronger than Peter. Like what do you need to do? And they're like, we need Wolverine dead. So, he goes, he has at this point, he's kind of got this sidekick girl.
And so she has some kind of like mind powers. So she gets some kind of telepathy stuff, helps Kane get into the X Mansion. He kind of confronts some X-Men fights off beast and storm a couple people for a little bit. Comes face to face with Wolverine and he kills Wolverine.
He has these spider stingers in his Spider-Man suit that Peter had created. Alright, he might even have them internally. This is something that I've never totally known for sure because depending on the artist and the writer, it's sort of altered whether or not they are his. But anyway, he has these spider stingers.
So he pops those out and he gets it in between Wolverine's ribs and severs his heart. That's his heart and half. So even with Wolverine's healing factor, there's nothing pumping. So he can't heal.
So if he runs over and doesn't CPR or something, you know, bangs on his chest, helps Wolverine. Get started because I think you start able to regenerate, but the heart stop beating. So then beast kind of smacks him around, gets his heart beating. So Wolverine comes back to life.
You later find out that it was sort of a plot his telepath friend to telepath in a jingray and to all of the other X-Men. Like hey, we're trying to do this big plan. We need the League of Assassins to think that Kane just killed Wolverine. So Wolverine kind of knew to throw the fight in a way, but Kane was able to kill him.
Like yeah, we're faking this death, but I did kill you. I knew how to do it. Like I shopped your heart in half of my spider singer and I was able to get it through your ribs. So it's just an impressive thing.
Is it like a predator blade? Like I'm kind of aware of Peter would be shooting like webster on that. Yeah, like in a satisfactory blade. I would say think more of the awful Ryan Reynolds death will in X-Men Origins.
Like that one sword that comes out. Oh yeah. It's kind of similar to that situation. Okay.
Okay. So my Wolverine knowledge, I have like, yeah, I've read comics of Wolverine or whatever, but it's primarily mainstream. Is he, we're talking about healing factor and you mentioned his heart getting severed. What else could block that?
Like is he one of those like, oh, you know, like you blow his head off and then in there. But the thing is, Adam Antium's skeleton, so I think he can't blow his head off. Well, it's just, what if Magneto is like crunch? Magneto has on a couple of occasions.
Yeah, I've done that. And you know, has ripped the Adam Antium off of his skeleton before. Right. Yeah.
I remember reading about that. I think it's the same concept like, you know, like Crushed to Skull or something. Well, remember, bro. Remember, like everything needs to die if one Adam survives and he can regenerate.
I think what happened, I think the answer, so say you crushed his, so he, he would be controlling his skull, crushed his skull into his brain and crushed everything up there. Right. I think that his head would be generated with normal bones around it. It wouldn't be able to recreate the Animansium, but his head would come back.
Just he would not have Animansium skull anymore because he crushed the Animansium. You know what I mean? But it has to have to stand for somewhere. So would the bone grow up on the end?
I mean, and this is all just like us talking about. It's fun. I would assume that his healing factor regenerates, you know, whatever his DNA code is, whatever the DNA code is that you're supposed to be six, well, for not, we're not six-foots. I'll really, but if it's you, you know, like five foot one.
Yeah. I mean, he's supposed to be definitely one of those like hunched over small. Whatever his DNA says, this is what you look like. We're going to make you five foot set.
Like if he is a five foot seven character that weighs under 90 pounds, your head goes up to this point. You know, your DNA has all of that stuff reprogrammed. I think his body would be like, yeah, we're just going to keep making this like the first time we made your skull. We're just reworking it now.
You know, your code says right now that your skull has, you know, this diameter and we have your nose pops out here and your ears and your eyes. So I think his healing factor would just be reproducing this piece. It would probably take him a long time. I think it would probably get a whole skull ahead.
Yeah, there was actually an ultimate X-Men. I just read the graphic and I was just following free. They take on Xavier's son, who is like, okay, like totally OP. Legion?
Yeah. Yeah. He's totally OP and he like run, he like destroys Wolverine and runs him over with like a semi truck and anything. And I like it's really bad.
And the way the artist drew it was really good. But it was funny because I think Kitty was like, Professor Professor, come here. His vocal cords are finally starting to come back and then you just get like all gargled like that kid scares me, Professor, kind of a thing. So it takes time for him to be back.
I think like, I think depending on the wound, because gunshots against Chicago, no problem. But I think depending on how, what the damage is taking depends on how long it'll take from the recover. So number three, we have Kane and then Kane, multiple man. Man, I'm not really ever really really good thought about it.
I would like to think that I can incorporate some people from a video game or something like that, but I kind of felt out of video games a while back. Another person that I definitely follow in the comic books is Havoc, Alex Summers. Pretty much whatever he's popping up in, I like to go find Havoc in the comic books. I read, I like it went back and back like the apocalypse storyline where Palares becomes one of the horsemen.
Havoc is a major character in that one. And then when he goes out into space after the Emperor Vulcan stuff, the third Summers brother. And then he goes in and joins the Star Jammers and his apartment in Warf Kings. And then I track down, I was already reading X Factor, but then he comes back into X Factor, hanging out with multiple man.
And then at some point during that, and he leaves to go join the Uncanny Avengers. I read that whole run of Uncanny Avengers by Remenders because I was like, oh cool Havoc is the quote unquote leader of this team. It was not Captain America. I'm not writing.
Is that Uncanny? The new? My brother had the graphic novels I saw in his life. Current Bendis is X-Men.
I mean going forward he's going to write this Iron Man in his Guardians. But Bendis really came to fame with secret invasion and stuff like that. Somewhere between 2007 and 2009 where Bendis was writing these major crossovers. He's also the guy who created Ultimate Spider-Man Miles Morales and was the architect of the Ultimate.
Did I just do it like Miles? Yeah, I haven't read a whole ton of his stuff, but the concept of him I think is cool. I mean especially being a Mexican kid into superheroes. I think you longed for somebody you could identify with.
So here's a vibe. But somebody who was really loving Spidey, loving Nightwing, wanting somebody who could relate to me. Oh that kid is like me. He's half Hispanic half Black.
The idea behind Miles Morales was really cool. One of the great parts when I was in Comic Con and I was sitting in on this Spider-Man and his amazing friends panel was this guy got up and he was like I was told somewhere between two and three year old daughter in his arms and he was just saying like and I come across a lot of people on the internet and it's the internet so they say whatever they want to say. But just the whole PC attack. Marvel's being two PC.
They're changing all their characters to be politically correct. But this guy just had a great point of saying like thank you Marvel. I really appreciate it. I'm really excited that there will be characters that look like my children.
And I was like wow that's like what a great sentiment. It's definitely something that I've thought about. I'm pro PC movement stuff like that. But to have heard somebody say that to Marvel and see him and the gratitude that he had on his face.
And he was just so excited. He's like my kids are gonna grow up and they're gonna be reading comic book characters. And as iconic as Peter Parker except that Peter Parker is gonna look like them. It's never been an issue for me being a white male.
But it's like I'm glad that that's happening. I mean that's really really cool. And just the gratitude on this guy's face. I was just like man this is a sweet moment in this room.
Yeah it is. One of my favorite things I've seen on Twitter coming out of Comic Con was a picture of Apocalypse looking like Ivan Who's. That's a close number two. That's a close number two.
Meaning that Apocalypse looks like a number two. Got him. Got him. Got him.
But I was gonna say there's a picture of this little girl. And I can only assume she must have been maybe she was Pakistani. But she's something from that. She's like her heritage is from that region of the world.
And she's just like Miss Marvel. And you know like the current Miss Marvel is Pakistani right? And so it's just a really cool like thing seeing her standing with one of the writers of the book and like the girls mom. And they're all just like beaming like wow this is really cool.
That here's her daughter able to have a superhero she's able to identify with. And I don't know I think that's really important for kids because we all have our heroes that we look up too. But it just means that much more when you have a little bit of you can see a little bit of yourself kind of. Yeah.
I like how they're doing it like I have mixed thoughts about it because I don't like it when they change a character just to not make a certain demographic mat. I like it when they change a character to make a certain demographic happy apart of the family. Not like a lot of crap we have to make a Muslim Green Lantern now because you know they're you know they're you know or whoever it would be upset. I don't like they preemptively do that just to appease people but I like that they do that to make people happy.
And also we want to open up the family to like everybody can be these superheroes kind of thing. I just don't like that they do it to appease. I just like they do it to make people happy. It's also going to help the comic writers themselves and the universe sell better.
They're going to meet everyone. Yeah it's going to meet because I mean like an African American person may like to. I don't care about these characters and then all of a sudden you've come across some of like Miles Brown some like that or anybody who they can. Sam Wilson Captain America.
Yeah yeah yeah. So then now they're like oh wow I want to read this because it's similar to me. So now they've just earned more buyers and more viewers people who want to go. I think that's important because one thing that I'll say that I feel like when it comes to comics not not you know comic book characters being portrayed in movies but specifically comic books.
I think anyone of us goes into a comic shop and let's be honest probably the median age of customers in there is like mid 20s to mid 30s. I mean it's all like adult dudes who grew up with this stuff and are now still invested in it. But as far as getting like fresh readers and fresh you know fresh blood and I keep the thing going like for future generations it seems like it's like really fading and the movies are doing a good job of exposing to a broader audience. But I feel like the comic book publishing side of things is just like in order to sustain themselves they're jacking up prices like DC books like the average monthly going for $3.99, $4.99.
That's killing people you know. Crossovers every three months. Yeah when you read an arc you read a massive event you got to get all the crossover. For instance like I was reading Infinity just till the kill was reading Infinity catch ups catch back up and then go back and read some more.
So I was just recently reading Infinity and that is technically only like six issues long. The core story is six issues long. Ties in with both Avengers and new Avengers. So then total you have 22 comics but over half of them don't even they're not part of the core stories.
Now you're like like for me I didn't buy some of the other ones so now I got to go out and get those extra you know. That's also another factor. One of my favorite things I read recently though was talking about especially the new Miss Marvel was that they're like we're not just creating this character just because we wanted to I mean they did and they didn't want to make like a brand new Pakistani character. They're like we didn't just discover this hidden pocket of Pakistani readers that we never met before.
They're like we just created this really great character that everybody could identify with that now many characters or many readers who had previously not had a character that they just like could love the same way that some of us love you know like apparently around this room like a night wing or something like that. We all really identify with this. Not only the only one that we all agree on that's like just the most badass one. Yeah he's a man.
He's a good one. Yeah he really is. But so you know they weren't like we didn't write this because we know that there were secretly a hundred thousand pack of sand people waiting to read a comic book. They're like we just wanted to tell that story and I've been coming across a lot of things recently just kind of by happenstance that every generation they create somebody that they call their new Peter Parker.
That's just constantly something that everybody wants at Marvel to do. They're always like okay so we created Peter Parker he's huge. We let that character grow up though he's not perpetually some age like Captain America is always forever I don't know somewhere in his 40s as a badass you know. Now he's super old you're right but Peter Parker is somebody who started off at 16 and then four years later they're like now you're in college and now you're an adult and currently runs Parker Industries.
So every decade they create somebody new so their first one was Nova Richard Ryder he was created in the exact same vein. Peter Parker you have Richard Ryder an alliterative name he was supposed to be the young kid who's learning his powers on his own. There's nobody here to tell him how to do it and they have Richard Ryder and then they had dark hawk in the 90s and they're like this guy he gets to come across this amulet and he puts this on and he's nobody here to teach him and he's going to go be dark hawk and then so every generation they're thinking they're going to do that with somebody new and so now it's Kamala Khan or the new Nova same Alexander. These guys who are just like you're going to go be a superhero and you're going to be goofy and you're going to make mistakes and you're going to be a kid and you're going to be identifiable and everything that you go through is going to be something that we all went through.
And it's just like that's what we're doing and it just happens this time that it's a Pakistani girl and it's connecting really well with fans and it's really working and that's fantastic. But they're like we can just secretly discover Pakistani people love comic books and we never had a character before. The only other Richard Ryder thing is I'm saying that he's not back. Yeah he's boom that's my next favorite character Richard Ryder.
But he was my number one but yeah he is huge. Everything that I've read with him has been a total blast. Dan Abbott and Andy Lanning, commonly known as DNA, riding Marvel cosmic from 2006 to when everything was imperative ended was awesome and they were definitely like the revival of Richard Ryder, the guy who was supposed to be the next Spider-Man went and joined the new Warriors kind of faded off and they were like we're going to bring this guy back. We're going to give him a major push and they nailed it.
They rock everything that Marvel was doing. When did he make it debut? I'm going to say he's a 70s- Yeah it was a long time ago but he never really played. Classic new warrior stuff he was definitely the bucket head, the gold helmet.
I'm not sure. Whoever was with the genius stuff. He's got a lot of like so who wrote that? No no no no no no.
He's really testing. He's like oh he's got a comic book guy. You better know who wrote this guy. I remember talking about him because you were looking for his comics all throughout comic That's what I did.
I dragged down. But I didn't land. I'm going to give credit where credit is due. The creator of the guy.
Thanks for creating him. But it's really Abbott and Lanning, revolutionizing what this character can do because what they did was they broke down. Why do we like this guy? Why do we like this Richard Ryder character?
And so then you're like okay so this is why I like Richard. But then it's like who is he? Is he as important as Cloak and Dagger? Which like really great characters?
I think Cloak and Dagger are fun to read. But it's like what are they doing in Marvel Universe? One can teleport and one throws Light. No but it was always like I'm a part of the new warriors.
I can fly really fast and run into stuff. Are you important when it comes to the Avengers? Like I was there when we fought Thanos. I stood in the back.
People drew me because I was currently relevant. But what Abbott and Lanning did was they gave him all the power. They said you are the Nova Force now. There's no more Nova Force.
So they exponentially raised his power level. And they said you can hang and fight with any character in the Marvel Universe. If we need to put you up against Thor, Marvel's version of Superman Century. Like you're going to fight that guy.
You can hold your own. You're going to grab a metric pulses and you're going to fly super fast and you're going to go super liminal. They make him unbeatable but they pretty much made him. They put him in the playing field of most powerful characters.
Now you have this related character. He's only human. He's given New York. Comes across his helmet kind of in a way like Green Lantern.
I'd say the Nova Force is sort of like the Green Lantern Corps. And so some guy is like hey here's your helmet. This is somewhat something kind of like the ring. And so now you have power of the Nova Force.
Boom, there you go. You're a Nova character. Wow. Do you guys see that?
I already have a thunderstorm going on right now. Outside. So you guys here? Outside back here.
Yeah. In the back here. So Richard Ryder. Boom, big thunder.
Yeah. So Richard Ryder, he sounds like... Oh, where's Matt? He's like what?
Called me up? So you're number five. Oh man. I could probably use your help here.
You know me instantly so you could let me know. Whoa. What is that? It's like a very close friend.
It's like a band-hand kind of thing. One time outside my house I found a cold thing upset when he was 11 years ago. Oh, I was literally crying. I was going to fight with somebody.
I was really late. Was it 14? No, it was actually this guy Sean. Yeah.
We live across the street. We had met each other to that point. I was outside playing some baseball and then I was like, hey, yeah. I want to play.
Are you sad? Yeah. I was like, I was like, kid, why are you hanging out in my front yard? He's like, I'm just waiting for my friend to get home.
I was like, that's great. Why are you in my face? I was like, well, he has a trinkling. I love trinkling.
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much how I started. But number five, if I knew you best and I had just...
I would have to say Dick Grayson. I do like Dick Grayson. I can't believe I'm a little shocked that he wasn't higher up the list. He probably is.
If I reworked Dick Grayson, I actually just ordered an OP kit hero clicks of three Dick Grayson's. It's Robin Nightwing and Agent 37. Currently a member of Spyro. I just got that in the mail four days ago.
Dick Grayson, a major, major, major player. So I let you borrow Black Mirror when Dick was Batman. Did you like that story? I absolutely love that story.
I went on to go buy Battle for the Cowell. I bought, I wish I could think of what the title is now, but I bought another Dick Grayson as Batman story after that. It definitely like sent me on a love for like, oh, yeah. Dick is Batman.
Oh, Dick is awesome. when he's taking when when after dick has officially become Batman there's a two-face story What was that would call it Jay? When remember Dick Grayson's flying through his casino and he's like that's not that's not Batman. That's a different Batman Oh, yeah, because he's really like in the photographs.
He smiles. He's smiling when he's taking people to ask this and stuff like that So he's like yeah, that's a good story to fish in those singles of those and I sat down like two summers ago Red everything we talked about black mirror. I know another one when he was as Batman I'm not sure if this is the one I bought or just another one that made borrowed from you the one where it's like the Gotham bridges And it's like oh Yeah, that was a really great one because it was all about like you to push me with you This isn't even an issue All of these facts Six days ago, what did you read about I've read some of porta vowels like when it was happening? I was like saying current with like some new fit or I went backwards in time actually when death of a family happened I went and read all Batman stories like one through I think that was going on around issue 12 So I read every you know anything that included red Robin red hood night wing The thing with the cord of ours is funny cuz I almost I didn't boycott but I like did not read that I like Colton Barra Jason let me borrow and then I was like hey Jay I live a guy named Colton Barra is like okay cool literally like a year And I had a book he just sat on his shelf a year.
I read four pages I don't know I had a lot going on. I just was like oh yeah, I never read to be Batman But I never was like I love all the Batman's children. I'm a super fan that fan guy So I almost actively avoid Bruce way But once I finally read quarter valves it was an extremely good story and I give props to Scott Snyder Scott if you ever hear this We love you man. You did tweet you right?