How Comic Books: Live from SXSW

a few more people here, but just make the room smaller. Yeah, that's the easiest way to go about things. So for those of you who are just coming in on the recording, we've already done the bantering, so we're gonna get to it, I think, yes, Chuck, And we'll have questions at the end, by the way, so yeah, we may replace the listener mail with the questions if they're good questions. Right, Okay, we probably should have included that before we started recording.

I don't have a listener mail, so we better have questions, Chuck. Have you ever heard of an actor named Nicolas Cage? Yeah? So do you have so, Nick Cage, um suffered some misfortune in two thousand, the beginning of two thousand. It was a rough time for him. He suffered misfortune long before that. No, this is this is I think the start of it. This is before. Um, I know what

you're gonna say. Okay, all right, Um, well, just indulgement. Um, So Nick Cage On January twenty one, two thousand, followed the police report because somebody broke into his house and stole his Action Comics number one. That's not what I thought you were gonna say, What did you think of? I thought that was the release date of ghost Ghostwriter.

That's what I thought you were gonna say. It's funny you bring that up, though, because he did Ghostwriter because he's a big comic book guy, and he would probably do any comic book movie that you asked him too, because he's big into it. He had an Action Comics Number one, which is the debut of Superman. Right. It was worth like one point one million dollars and it just vanished. And ten years later there was a guy

on the case. There's a detective who's working the case the whole time, and um, he got a tip finally from a comic book stealer that this one issue of Action Comics number one had turned up, and they were pretty sure that it was the issue, like Nicholas Cage's issue that had been stolen, and they they check all the identifying marks, the scratches, you know, like them the fold from like the mom who's like yelling at her kid that she she's going to throw this out. Yeah, um,

Elizabeth Shoo's lipstick. So they identify it as Nicholas Cages actually Comics number one. He gets it back. Um, they found it in a guy who bought a trunk from auction from one of those places that um that that that sells stuff found in storage sheds, you know or storage you store it places. So I guess the moral of the story is just go to those auctions because he bought one of the full bins and this comic in it. So he's just feeling loaded and then all

of a sudden, Nicholas Cage comes along. It's like that is mine, right, and he was very ecstatic to get it back. This was apriloven. He turns around and sells it for two point one million dollars. Makes a million just sitting there after he already collected insurance money. Yes, so it wasn't that special to him, No, and he he pretended it was. But the point is that if if this story fascinated you, as I hope it did,

it's coming out as a movie. But from the guys who created Reno n One, who played a Danglar in Junior, you get familiar with three and nine one one. Uh, they're making a movie about this whole thing, of the whole incident. Yeah, with Nick Cage as a character and everything. It's very like Sandberg and plan him. They don't know who's going to play me. Yeah he does. I don't know. If you've seen the SNL Sandberg it's pretty great, right, Yeah,

it's really good. So you know it'd be great, would be to see Andy Sandberg doing Nick Cage doing Elvis, Yeah, doing Tiny, Yeah, exactly tiny. So I say all that to ask you, Chuck, if you've ever read a comic book. Wow, that was a good one. You know I have because we have talked on the show. I can't remember which one. I was searching my brain when we were prepping for this.

We talked about our love or my love of Archie comics growing up because I was a good little Baptist boy and I wasn't into like, you know, all the action heroes, although I guess there was really no conflict there now to think about it. Um, but I had well we'll talk about the spire Christian comics, and um, I was into Archie and the Archie people were kind enough to send us a bunch of swag after we recorded that. I didn't get any of that. I did.

I kept because you said that Archie was like wossy stuff. I remember, So I took my little Archie boxer shorts and I went home. Yeah, but yeah, they did listen. That was very cool to know that they're still out there pumping amount. And I was into like Archie and Ritchie Rich a little bit of superhero stuff. But this

is the big, big disclaimer. I know we're gonna get murdered on this one because anytime we do a topic that is like religion to people like comic books artists on people, uh, we're gonna get killed for it because we are definitely not experts in comic books. That is a live version of c o A. That is that's very good stuff to cover our beat. So um, I'm talking about comic books today. Uh, are you guys fans

any really? They somewhat? I like that with spots. That's good because you're you'll you you'll be like that was okay. The people who clapped, I'm sorry. Are there any huge, huge comic book fans like that really know a lot about it? Because we'll probably ask you to come sort of? Okay, that's good. I was hoping for nobody. Let's get one guy is fine? I want like Kevin Smith in the background. I'm like, no, and I know I look like you,

but stay away. So we're gonna talk a little bit about comic books, about the history, how they're made famous, comic books, not Richie Richmond. That's it. That's the only mention of Ritchie rich Uh. I mean this is the time of like occupy. You realize you can't talk about Richie rich without people tearing you to stray. You're right. I will say that we can probably skip most of the beginning because they in this article from how Stuffworks

dot com is very thorough. So they whoever who wrote this, you know a guy named Nathan Chandler who I've never met or heard of, but he did do a bang up job. He did a bang up job. But he spends a full page talking about defining what a comic book is. And I can assume we all know what a comic book is, but I will say that I did learn that the little uh, the gutters. I never knew that the blank panels. They have blank panels to

fill in spaces, and they're called gutters. And I also always kind of took for granted the the the flow of the comic book. Yeah, a lot goes into um, the way your eye follows the comic book, you know. And if you ever look at a comic book, you know, sometimes the dialogues appear some of them's down here. Sometimes it's just action and the dialogues over here. But they put a lot of forethought into the layout of the comic book. I thought was gonna cool. And um, that's

why it's called sequential art. That's another name for a comic book. Um. And speaking of art, comic books are usually um lumped in together with jazz and the mystery novel as like a pure American art form. You oh yeah, I I kid you not. I believe it. Um. So I think that was a great explanation of the comic book gutters, and I think I think it's a good assumption. Everybody knows what a comic book is, generally, right, Um, but I think that the history is kind of something.

This fascinated me, and like, man, I went to town doing like supplemental research on this. So just if I get a little off at any point to be like no, no, no, I love it. Okay, So do you do you know what the first one was? Well? I do. Um, it's right here in front of me. Two um. Generally credited as the first comic book is The Adventures of Obadiah old Buck. Have you seen it? Did you look it up? I did? And the first thing I wondered, what is

whether or not Obadiah? Wasn't it Obadiah staining from Iron Man Jeff Bridges in the movie answer him yes? Is that right? I just always I wondered if that was just a nod to that first comic Bookbaiah is not the most common name, so, um, but you did see it, It's just like panel after panel of action and there's like narration, like I don't think he actually talked in any at any point that I saw, So it's kind

of like a silent movie almost two. Um. And then it was just basically action if you can call like rowing down the river with your hat action. I mean like that was of like four panels, I think. Um. But it was the first time anybody ever put like, you know, sequential art and text together, and this was, you know, ostensibly the first comic book anyone's ever created. Yeah, and it was eighteen forty two. I know I said that, but let that sink in a minute and think about

eighteen forty two. What's going on? So it was a pretty modern thing for the time. I guess when you think it's pretty Swiss, well it was Swiss. He wrote Rodolpha top four. That's very nice. I was gonna say, Rudolph Tofer, I think that was nice too. Into that trouble. Yeah, he was a teacher and an artist in Switzerland. Uh was did he do this in Switzerland? I think so? Because he's were translated, I don't know. It says I made its first appearance in America. So and it's a

truly American art form in my own fact against me. Um, okay, well then yes it was American in origin. It was. Um, so fast forward from tofer right, um to with the appearance of a kid with what I did you see this guy, the Yellow Kid some sort of developmental problem or something like. He was also the predecessor of the shirt tails, apparently because a lot of the action and narration appeared on his shirt and it would change from

time to time. But um, the Yellow Kid was, um the first humorous comic strip, and UM, I use humorous like really really like liberally um because it wasn't funny at all. Comedy in eight was like if you weren't dying that day, then it was pretty funny. We don't have the play exactly. And so the Yellow Kid comes along and he's the first one where it's like, okay, you can pick up a newspaper and find something that I'll just take your mind off of everybody dying and

give you something to laugh about for a second. And it happens sequentially too, and there's speech bubbles or else he says something on his shirt and speech balloons that was They had used them in political cartoons before, but this was like where the speech balloon really like took hold as a comic. Well, they remember, they just like wrote everywhere in political card too. Yeah. Yeah, um, I

got a little nugget for you too. I don't know if Yellow the Yellow Kid, that the comic of the Yellow Kid was inspiration for the term yellow journalism evidently, is that right? Yeah, because it was first used by someone I think from the New York Times said this yellow Kid journalism, uh, because he was in a Hearst newspaper I think, and they were mocking Hearst, and that eventually came yellow journalism. Nice. Yeah, that's a good one,

thank you. So the ill Kid runs around doing this thing for another maybe like thirty five forty years, and then all of a sudden, the boring part of this podcast is over. People start figuring out that they uh that the people think the Yellow Kids funny. They took about forty years to like test the water, right, and

then find their like, people actually like this guy. So let's start making new characters, and all of a sudden you have like Dick Tracy, Popeye, um, who else was in the Little or Fanny And these are all like characters that are still resonating today obviously, right, And then right after that a little company named Eastern Color who um, eventually did you realize this Eastern Color became ec comics entertaining comics, which gave rise to Mad Magazine, which is

like end of story right there. Ec Comics is the most important thing that's ever happened to humanity. Yeah, right, So Eastern Eastern Color UM starts printing like all these comics that are appearing in newspapers, puts them together. You know, what's the first comic book? And they're all reprints, and Procter and Gamble pays for this and starts giving them away with I guess like toothpaste or some sort of weird toilet trees from the thirties, you know what were

they using back then? Um? And uh, that kind of gave rise to the idea that you don't just get your comics out of the newspaper. And you can kind of see like these things are like starting to these steps, these huge monumental steps are taking place, like closer and closer together. Because that was nine thirty three. I think it was five that somebody said, you know what, I'm tired of paying all these fees to reprint and all this stuff. I can just find some guys it's the

depression and pay them like next to nothing. Maybe assigned some arm guards to make sure they worked twenty four hours a day and just published like all new material. Yeah, they the East Eastern had given these away through Procter and Gamble, and they actually sold a few after that because they thought, hey, these are really popular. And then that's when they started saying, you know what, these reprints are getting old, let's come up with original material. And

uh in d C Comics, Uh, they were formed. Actually Detective Comics is what it stood for and stands for unless they changed that without my it's still And they were the first ones to put out something called New Fun Comics number one, and that was the it sounds like a Chinese restaurant or something, and um, should I not have said that? Is that? Okay, it's all right,

this is live, but it's not going out. Um. And that was the first time that there was a full comic book of new stuff as part of a sequential series that people could follow. That was ostensibly the first real like comic book was born. And um, the sixth issue. This the sixth issue, I'm very determined, Um of that comic book. What was a New Fund Comics number one? Okay, so number six put together two guys named Jerry Siegel and uh, what was the other guy's first name? Joe

Schuster and um. Within a couple of years, those guys put out the first superhero ever. His name is Superman. Let's get around with a plus exact. Superman changed everything. He was the first superhero, he was the first costumed one. So he said it's all right to wear tights if you can throw a car, right, um, and uh, he gave rise to basically comic books as we know today.

You know everything you think about with with comic books and superheroes and um being able to take a bullet in the chest and have it just ricochet, which, by the way, are you familiar with the George what was the guy who played Superman? George Reeves and then Christopher Reeves? It was plural. No, you have it right if you ever heard the story when a kid came to one of his appearances, because George Reefs played Superman on TV in the fifties and some kids showed up with his

dad's gun to shoot Superman. Right, because in the opening credits of Superman, um, he like, some bad guys are shooting him and he's just standing there with his chest out in bullets of rickey. Then one of him throws

his gun and he ducks. But but a kids showed up after seeing all these, you know, many episodes of this and uh to like some publicity appearance, and um uh it was going to shoot George Reeves, and George Reeves or George Reeves said, um, kid, it would work if you shot me, but that bulletard ricochet off and hit somebody in the crowd and you kill him, and you don't want to do that. So the kid like the gun and then he went exactly yeah. Yeah, So

that that was a Superman aside. But Ben Affleck played him in a movie. Uh, George Reeve, h right, yeah, Hollywood Land. There you go. He was a pretty messed up guy. You no, you're thinking of a Bob Crane and auto focus. No, No, you really are. No, No, they were. They were messed up in two entirely different ways. Uh. So d C also gave rise to uh one Superman came out or Soup as we like to call him. Uh. They also gave birth to Batman and the whole Detective

comic series. In the Detective series is still going today eight hundred issues. Well by the time this was written, I'm sure it's way more than that. A hundred plus eight plus issues still going strong today, longest running comic title ever the d C series. Right, so there was nine that Batman came out. Um was a big year too, Wonder Woman came out and All Star Comics number eight, And anybody who listened to the Lie Detector podcast will know that the guy who invented the lie Detector a

psychologist was William Marston. I believe that sounds right. He also created Wonder Woman and really yes he did you know this? You know this? Um? And he uh he was a psychologist who lived with two wives and the children he had with all of them under the same roof, supposedly happily. But he was huge into women's live and truth telling, which is why one woman has that lass of truth. He created a lie of detects. Yes, you know, I don't think I remember that, Okay, I was like

zoning out on Linda Carter at time. I'm sure. Uh So, World War two came along, as we all know, unfortunately, and uh that was when superhero comics were really big. And not only that, but Walt Disney comics were really huge and they mentioned, um, Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse obviously, but the most popular of the Disney comics, and actually the most popular comics during the most popular period of comic books, was Uncle Scrooge McDuck. Yeah, he was like

the biggest. Yeah, but I remember I had a few of those as a kid. Yeah, I'd like the duck tails. That was a good show. Yeah, equally figured big into that one. It was. It was great. Um. But World War two, speaking of that was huge for comics because even before the US entered into the war, UM, comic book characters were beating the tar out of Adolph Hitler like on a monthly basis. Like Captain America he debuted his number one edition comic book had him like Sack

and Hitler in the face. It's a pretty awesome picture if you ever want to check it out, especially if you hate Hitler, you know. Um. But it's so that was that was par for the course for comics at the time. Like they just beat up on Hitler and the Germans or the Japanese every month or um. So that was kind of a big deal. Um. And speaking of Nazis and comics, do you want to mention HANSI, Yeah, did anyone grow up here in the seventies and read

any of the Spire Christian comics at all? You did? Alright? One other person? That's how popular they were. Uh. My grandmother god rest her soul. Grandmother Mills worked at a Baptist bookstore in Tennessee, and whenever I would go to this bookstore, she would tell me to pick out some comic books, which I thought was really cool, like free comics. However, being compapted this bookstore, the only thing they had was Spire Christian comics and they didn't have any superheroes or

anything like that. They didn't even have Archie at the Baptist bookstore, and Spire was really big at the time. Man named Al Hartley, he was a cartoonist converted to Christianity in the late sixties and converted like twenty five family members, right did he really? Yeah, Like he just went to town, he went to a prayer meeting, came home. I was like, that's it, We're all Christian. I don't

care what you have to say. You're Christian now. And uh he uh worked for Archie Comics and try to work in some of the Christian storylines through Archie, and then the publishers were like, you know, Archie's as clean as it can be, but we really need to tone this down on the religion thing. So like, wait, that's simmer In the publishers of the Archie Comics told this

guy to tone it down. Yeah, that is significant. It was pretty significant, and uh Lucky for him, a publisher called Fleming H. Revel came along and said, you know what, I want to start a full line of Christian comics. I will call it Inspire Christian Comics. And you can go to town, dude, as much as you want on whatever you want. And he did. He with Hans, who I will show this little picture that I wish we had that up on the h That's okay, this this is low fi. That is Hans the Girl who Loved

the Swastika. That's the subtitle. Yes, from ninety three, and I actually did not have this one, but I did have no but I had the Johnny Cash Christian comic, the Tom Landry Christian comic, and the very awesome story The Cross and the switch Blade, in which a thug mugger is uh turned you know by the guy he mug He mugs a pastor, and the pastors like, come, come, come with me. Let me tell you a few things

that happens a lot. Yeah, but Hans was huge. She was a young girl in Uh Sue Sue dead in Land and the Germans invaded, and she was very glad the Germans invaded because they brought books for her to read. They took her to a Russian prison camp, and Uh they raped all of the women except Hans because she was too skinny, which I don't even know what to say about that. I don't know, but she was very fortunate to get out of that obviously. Eventually she finds

her way to an American camp. She's very pleased because the soldiers there treat her well, and uh moves back to America, finds a husband who introduces her to the Bible, right, and then it was all over. After that, she opens up halfway houses in California and doesn't age over the period of like sixty years. Now, that was the critics big problem with this one was that she doesn't ever age.

That was the problem with this comboy. But time still went on, so like sixty years later in the book, she's talking to people about where she started out and she's still teenage, Hauncy. So do you want to drop the bomb on the Uh? I'm not sure what you mean. It is based on a real story, Yeah, is it the bomb? I thought it would have a much bigger impact than that. That's why I called it the bomb. I would have been like, do you want to mention that last thing to him? Yeah? Thank you? Yeah. What

was her name? I can't find it? Oh yeah, Maria Anne Hirshman, like Hansi Moore. Yeah, hunt it's a very remarkable name. So world War two it was big for comics, whether you were beating up Hitler or publishing Christian comics about girls who loves swasticas it was, it was huge. Yeah, there were There were also some propaganda comics in the in the forties about communism. Um is this tomorrow America

under Communism? In which the Speaker of the House was subverted before assassinated, being the president and the vice president and smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary. So that's some serious propaganda going. I've got one for you, speaking of propagandas so um. Jerry Siegel, one of the guys who created Superman, um, because Superman beat up Hitler on such a regular basis. Joseph Gebbels himself called Jerry Siegel

uh circumcised physically and intellectually a beatle. So, man, if you take off Joseph Gebbels enough to say something publicly about you, you're doing something right. And I think they were. But so, the big thing besides beating up Hitler and coming up with HANSI that World War Two um did the comics was that it created like a whole new readership in g I's like the American government actually sent comic books out to the front, so you had a whole new group of grown up guys who are like,

this is pretty cool. I like beating up Hitler, but I'm also into like questerns and science fiction and horror and crime and just like more adult theme stuff. And I'll I want to see like some more nakedness that I'm seeing in comics, and like, I want to see the F word, not just like some you know, the dollar sign and an asterisk or something like that. So, um, it changed the readership of comics. So when everybody gets back from the war, uh, comics themselves changed to from

that demand. So you have horror comics you have Western comics, you have crime comics, and comics get like way more hardcore, way cooler than they were before. Right, agreed, But they actually step over the over this line supposedly. Yeah, because a man named Frederick Wortham, a psychiatrist in UM, wrote a book called The Seduction of the Innocent, and he kind of threw it out there that these comic books are what are leading our kids down this awful path

of destruction, and parents, of course bought into it big time. Yeah. Well, basically he was saying, like this is comic books are going to turn are all of our kids into serial killers like they're were, They're all doom, some are probably already killing, and you don't know what in your parents, So just pay attention to your kids and get rid of the comic books and actually bring him in New York had had a comic book burning based because of this book. I got a friend from there. He never

told me about that. It's a dirty secret among the hounds folk. Uh So the comic book um industry decided, you know what, we're gonna take a big financial hit here if we don't do something, so maybe we should self censor. Uh because censorship is illegal, right, and that what they say, And so they came up with what they called the UH, the Code Comic Code Authority, the c c A, and it was all self imposed, and up until I think last year, d C comics still

subscribe to this. Right, it's crazy Marvel stopped in like the seventies, I think. So this is way too long, but I'm just gonna red a few highlights. UM General standards Part A. The big thing was to not um endorse crime or to uh to make crimes seem like something kids would want to do. So you couldn't explicitly present unique details or methods of a crime. You didn't want copycatting going on. You could never show kidnapping whatsoever. The actual word crime could not be any larger and

font than any other word. UM General standards be no walking dead, no torture vampires. I don't even know what that is because they also include regular vampire is M so I guess torture vampires ismo are the worse kind of vampis. Those are not twilight, no ghoules, no cannibalism, no werewolf is um obviously not even a word yes under dialogue, no profanity, smut, no vulgarity, um precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities. Didn't want to

make anyone feel bad about themselves. Can Yeah, wherever possible good grammar shall be employed. Is that in there? Yeah? And did you see that religion? There's only one rule. Ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible. Nudity is prohibited. And this one is what I think personally inspired ar Crum to take up a pen. Females shall be drawn realistically, without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

So our chrome was like what oh really? Yeah, and we mentioned that because uh, joking aside, this is what actually gave rise to underground comics, because comics from that point on sucked yea And actually, um, I think sales dropped between nineteen fifty four and ninety six. Yeah, And this is the comic book publishers doing it themselves. They came up with this code, they established this authority, and anytime you finish a comic book you had to send

it in. The CCA would be like change this, change that, and then we'll approve it. Um. So then yeah, it drove everything undergund because it's like uh, sordidness can neither be created nor destroyed. So I have to go somewhere. And it went, like you said, like into our chrome, right, it went into underground comics and comics is spelled with an X just to kind of separate it from other comics, and you know, because they're X rated, which they were

proud of. Uh. This was the nineteen sixties, um, and so all of a sudden they were tackling with underground comics, the really good stuff, sex, drugs, politics with cats though yeah, well Fritz Catt was one of the big ones. Um. But along with all these sordid tales, UM comic books that also grew in respectability because they started, you know, like real literary works. All of a sudden, we're being created. Like the arc got better them, the storylines got a

lot better, yeah, the writing got better. Yeah, because it was like, hey, we were back from World War two, we want mature comics, and here they are another band. So it's people wanted that and if there's demand with anything, like, you're gonna get it. So. Um. The other thing that underground comics created besides um our crumb stuff, Harvey P. Carr was another big one that was a great movie,

wasn't that? Um? Was? It kind of proved that you can take something like in comic book form and add like real literature to a real art to it, and that eventually gave rise to the graphic novel thanks to a guy named Will Eisner. A Contract with God is generally considered even though they had used words like graphic before, which they don't like. By the way, they don't like graphic novel because it sounds a dirty you know what I'm who doesn't like that. The comic book people apparently

never liked the term graphically. Yeah, that's what I hear. Um and a novel like a drawn novel had been used, but Will Eisner actually printed on the front cover a graphic novel by Will Eisner, and he thought he coined the term, but apparently it was some fan who had

like years before. Yeah, but everyone says Will Eisner, we'll go with that, so that that gives rise to um this whole idea that like you can create something that's longer than twenty to thirty pages and it has like real meaning to it, where like the characters are just messed up, including these people who are supposed to be heroes, because that's something that's been simultaneously evolving to Will Eisner was the first person to create a superhero, the Spirit, Yes,

who was just deeply flawed, like he didn't always he wasn't always successful at fighting crime, like he failed, he had problems. Um, So him coming back and creating the graphic novel is not really surprising. It was almost like he was sending a precedent for years later. But it gave rise to like Art Spiegelman's Mouse, um, the Alan Moore's Watchman, which is the only graphic novel I've read. Is it good? Is awesome? I've not read it. Yeah, it's way awesome. Uh did something just gasp? It is

gasp worthy? I think. Uh. And then Frank Miller, I have not read any of his stuff, but I have seen Since City. Yeah. I enjoyed that, and he did he did three hundred two right, Yeah, it looks like it. Yeah. And then in that movie Man he did he did the Uh for those of you who aren't here, Chuck

just waved the sweat off. He did the Dark Knight returns to which gave to like all the Batman movies that we know and love now because Batman also originally kind of started out flawed after the Spirit and then he turned into like just this, um well, he turned into the sixties TV show Batman, which was awesome in

its own right. But if you were in the comic book industry and you're trying to prove that comics are legitimate art forms and Adam West is doing his thing on TV every week, like, it's really kind of undermining your case, right, So there were no as you know, it was flab Oh and speaking of so we talked about the guy who wrote The Seduction of the Innocent. One of his big problems with comics was that UM

Robin and Batman were clearly homosexual. Robin was drawn often with bare legs, frequently spread apart while he was standing, and he was I think clearly only attached to Batman or something like that. That was one of his big problems. Well, I think they were the inspiration for the Smigels. Yeah, yeah, and he started It's one of my favorite things ever.

He talks about it all the time. Um stan Lee was actually one of the one of the first people UM to start having flawed superheroes as well, but they weren't like completely messed up like uh in The Watchman now. But he was stan Lee, who was like one of the founding guys at Marvel, as everyone knows, I'm sure, um, he was working within the structure. Like the underground comics guys, they didn't have anybody to answer to. They could do or say whatever they wanted to. But stan Lee, you know,

he was working for Marvel. It was a major publisher, and he had confines to work with him. But he was trying to kind of push the boundaries here there, and he was doing it with Flood like um, Spider Man, like he's he's just a total screw up. Well, he was the first guy to kind of um introduce characters that uh, their their powers were a curse and not so much a blessing like he had the Fantastic Four, who three of them, it was a big blessing. But

of course the thing I always want to be human. Um, But you know, Tony Stark was a big jerk, as everyone's scene in the Iron Man movie if you're not a fan of the comic book, and he was forced to become Iron Man to live, you know, to keep living with that punishment. That thing, I don't know what's called the Yeah, the flex capacitor and his chest and uh,

of course Spider Man. He didn't choose that. And he was a little nerdy kid who got beat up and got bit by a Spider The Hulk very tortured character. He didn't want to be the Hulk. He hated be in the Hulk. He hated being lu Fregno, yeah, he certainly did. But it's it's pretty cool that stan Lieber actually was his original name and Stanley was his what he became. But um, he kind of took it to a different level, even further than Eisner, I think from

what I interested. He Um, he also helped create the like the shared universe, like all Marvel characters live in the same universe that cross over a lot, and that was like groundbreaking when he came out with that, Like everybody takes it for granted now, Um, but does a

big deal. Yeah, and it's the guy. I can't remember the article that I read, but um, the guy um that I read talked about, uh, the sharing of character, and he said other people had had people appear as guests and other comics, but um, they were the first people to really build this universe and have this carefully constructed forethought to where you felt like, at any given moment, a different person could show up and it wouldn't be like, oh wait a minute, there's whole call of a sudden,

it would like make sense exactly. So I thought it was pretty cool. Um, and I think it was Comic Cube that you got that one from. Yes, so Marvel household name obviously, so DC comics they account for eight out of every ten uh yeah, yeah yeah, which uh total, that whole ten accounts accounted for four and seventeen million dollars in sales in two thousand and eleven, which is substantial if you ask me, Um, that ain't nothing on manga, manga, manga,

mangame whatever. These are comics in Japan, and we're covering the United States pretty much exclusively, but they are huge in Japan, and uh in two thousand seven, they total sales were three point six billion dollars in Japan alone, you know, and that same year a hundred and seventy five million of Japanese comics in US and Canada. So they're popular over here as well. Yeah, you mean, I went to Japan and everywhere you go where there's manga

being sold. There are eighteen kids just standing there reading. I'm like, totally cigarettes. No, no, they're all wearing like school. Now, this is like a whole country of good kids. They don't smoke cigarettes yet, um, Like they wait till adults and then everybody smoked. Um. But you know they're all wearing like their little shorts and their blazers and everything, reading manga like this crazy stuff. Yeah, and those are generally black and white, is that right? Yeah? Okay, yeah,

I'm not the manga expert. I've just been to Japan once, so that's more than me. My friends. Um so, uh, we've talked about the history of comics, we've talked about manga. What else is there to cover. Let's talk about some of these uh, some of the top artists in and because the part on how they're done is really not super interesting, No, no, I think I think it bears mentioning that it's not one person isn't creating a comic.

There's um, there's the writer, there's the the penciler Joe's Russ sketches, the anchor who comes in behind and like substantializes everything, the person who does shading, the the well, there's a colorist yes, uh and then the letter yeah, and the letterer. I thought that was kind of cool. Actually, yeah, you know think about the font that much if it really matters if it's bold or something. You know, they make these decisions of these choices, but really it's like,

is it bold, not bold? Or squiggly? It's kind of what the That's what the letter is coming up. Squiggly means fear, right pretty much, or or intrepidation. Trepidation, Yeah, I think it's the word. Uh. Yeah, so we did. We searched a comic cube and um, I'm not sure what this other one was, but because I didn't know who people generally considered the top artist and writers of

comic books. But this dude has stan Lee in the Marvel Gang, including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, the people who created Spider Man, Fantastic four, Hulk for Iron Man Silver Surfer number five. Yeah. Yeah, this guy's I don't know much, but I thought, come on, dude, he was clearly drunk when he made this list. Well he has Harvey Kurtzman is number one, and Kurtzman was famous for for his military comics, and they were not very pro

military at all. They were very much that showed the downside of war and showed the ugly brutality of war. But he is the man who went on to later create Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad, which became Mad Magazine, which Josh and I had were, you know, huge fans of. He also oversaw Tales from the Crypt because that really that was East that was Eastern color. I thought I heard a gasp about Tales was that you gasps and one podcast that is uh gas than we used. It's

actually uh goodead. You know, I don't know where you were going. Well. I thought i'd covered some of the artists too, because the writers get a lot of do but you never hear a lot about the artist. And um Lou Fine one of the first big stars in the nineteen forties. They got him at number ten, not bad. And Frank Frazetta, who I didn't think I knew until I looked him up. He was a comic book artist for a very short time and then was one of

the few guys to go onto mainstream art. And I was like, I still haven't heard of this guy until I clicked on Google images, and then I went, oh, the guy who did the Molly Hatchett album covers and he did all those awesome fantasy uh fantasy paintings. It was really cool stuff. I'm a fan of Yes and Ages album covers and Iron Maidens. I think Iron Maiden has the best album covers. Who did those? I don't know. There was a sol okay a small clapp for Iron Maiden.

Uh Neil Adams they have listed at number three. He was the guy who brought along um modern techniques, like from the commercial art world, and he applied it and he's sort of revolutionized. And people generally say that as far as arts concerned, you have the Kirby Area era and then you have the Adams era. So he was. He was that important. And Kirby is number one Captain America, X Men, Hulk, Fantastic four, forget about it. What about

Steve Bilko? Who Steve Bilko? That's be confused, Steve Ko, Dicko. You're thinking Sergeant Billko the Steve Martin movie. No, I was thinking of Steve Ko, Steve Dio, Yeah, Dicko, he could be confused. I think he he co created Spider Man and I think was the first guy to draw Spider Man. Yeah, like the comics we drew we grew up with. It was um Steve Dickko and Jack Kirby. Yeah, like, I'm sorry the comics I grew up with where Jack Kirby and Steve dick everyone else in this movie said

to you, Uh, you got anything else? We should talk about mouse maybe for a second. Yeah, that was a big deal. That was Art Spiegelman, and he was He won a special pullitzerprise for his comic book Mouse m A U S. And it told the story of he and his father in uh Nazi occupied Germany. And he used a very tried and true technique of uh using animals as people. So the Jews were mice, Germans were cats, of course, and uh poles poles were pigs. And I

did I thought, what was that? Tried and true? And I thought, oh no, every Disney movie you I've ever seen has animals not as people. And again shirt tails, Yeah, duck tails, short tales? That was it. I don't know short tails, you don't remember short tales? No, we got three gasts. What was shirt tails? Oh? Was a like some crime fighting um menagerie of like a panda and

like a fox and like moose. All they all they lived in this tree and then they all jump into like a like something akin to the Great Space Coaster, fly off to like handle the problem, solve the mystery. But they would like whatever emotion they were feeling with like flash on their shirts. That was their game. And this is a cartoon. Yeah, it was a great cartoon. I don't know how I missed this. I was in the Baptist bookstore. I think I think your your grandmother

would have been okay with shirt tails. You never know, it was not where the shirt tails tucked or untucked. They weren't even wearing pants. Now they forget about it. Maybe not. It's all over. Yeah, I got nothing else. Actually, Watchman, uh you keep you keep saying that, and then following Dome, there's but we should say. Watch Me was so great. It was named one of the one hundred best English

Language novels in Time magazine in two thousand FIBs. I should say it all, even though the movie I liked because I like the book so much, wasn't so great. Did you watch it the movie? The Watchman movie? No, No, it was good. It was faithful. Well, I just remember like just a big sense of depression just kind of settled over America for like two weeks after that movie came. So I'm definitely not an uplifting story. But no, no, I meant because it like wasn't as good as everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I think you're right. Uh So let's see if you guys want to learn anything more about comic books, we actually have a bunch of comic books stuff on the site. You can type in comic books C O, M, I C space bookay s in the handy search bar how stuff works dot com, and that will bring up this article. And I said handy search bar. I didn't even just say search bar, said handy search bar, which means it's time for Q and ah. Yeah, unless no one has

any questions, thank you learning it? So does anyone have any questions that have nothing to do with comic books? I'm just kidding. Okay, Hi, what's your name? Oh wait, we got a mike. Yeah, we can hear you. Well, now we're recording for the recording. Also, by standing up, you releases from any kind of liabilities for using your voice.

What if it's too late now, pal Um, what type of screen process did uh you Josh go through when you were kind of picking out your co host because before you had podcast for five minutes long, you had different few people that went to house uf works dot com. I mean, Chuck just start working here and like, hey, let's do a podcast or I need somebody to do thirty minutes of podcasting with me. How that work? So we For those of you who don't know, Chuck and

I haven't always been together. Um there was a there. I know there's a dark time pre Chuck. It's just it's crazy. I want to forget about it. But um, but no, so uh it very much came about the way that the podcast came about, where I have a boss who came along and said, hey, why don't you get together with Jerry and um make a podcast. It doesn't matter that you don't know what a podcast, which is that you've never heard one, just good to it.

So we did. We tried a few people, Um they were editors at the time, that's how they were picked. And then um, all of a sudden, Uh, I think you went to Connal, didn't you, And you're like, dude, I want to know. Well then just out of the blue, Connor was like, hey, let's do this with Chuck, and we tried it with Chuck, and man, it was like the first moment he sat down, I was like, this

guy smells good. Like things just seem like different now that this recording is like, I'm not sad, Like everything seems cool. And then he opened his mouth and it was like, why it works, dude, I can I don't even know how to interpret that. That's how it started. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean we were we were buddies at work and had similar sensibilities and it just sort of made sense. I'm frankly a little shocked that they didn't pick me to begin with, to be I

am as well. I mean we're buddies already at work. We knew each other to work, and we like piled around and everything. But um, yeah, it was I think it was just kind of like a baptism by fire and then they're like, it's Chuck time. Uh we got number two? Yes, Hi? Hello. Um So I'm curious what a topic is that. Maybe you guys keep saying, oh, we need to do this, we should do this, we should do this, and you just never get around doing It's something that you'll probably say the same thing I

would say is scientology. Sorry, was that what you're gonna say, I mean that scientology is one that we have been asked to do many many times that we want to do. Um, but they are very litigious group, and um, we don't have that much money. Yeah, I think we're scared to do one. Yeah I am. I mean John Travolta is in George right now shooting a movie, so they could

just send him over to our house. Yeah. So yeah, I mean there was a there was a moment where it was like, may maybe we will do scientology because the FBI was investigating him. There's all this stuff on public record, which is the big the big problem is like every every source that we would come across would be um, just about hearsay from disgrunt old people, ex members, whatever,

and it's very very one sided. Um. So, all of a sudden, like there was a possibility that we were gonna have all these sources from like FBI investigations, and then it just stopped and we're like, well, if the FBI is not doing it, we're certainly not gonna do it either. They have guns. Yes, over there in the glasses. I think actually, if yeah, this person over here is your next started ten minutes Greg Hi UM, my name is his Car and I live in Guatemala with my

husband and we're big fans of your country. We've been we loved your podcast. Those two pods cash you did in Guatemala were awesome. For those of you don't know, we went to Guatemala with Jerry Um. We were invited by a group called co ed Uh. It's a nonprofit you does great work down there, and they paid for us to go down there and it changed our lives

in some a lot of ways. And you know, I want to compliment you on it because you you did the history section really well, which most people don't do UM. And one thing that I want and actually Brad was like, man, I wish I'd gotten this before I went to Guanamala, you know, because it really served as kind of like

a like a dummies on Guingamala. It was really great. Well, you know, one thing that I wanted to ask you, UM is you know if were there some stories or some other things that you left out, like how you went about I mean, you know you talked a lot of them your second Guatemala podcast about how there was all this material that you didn't include UM or things

that you could have included, but you didn't. And I guess I'm wondering, like, was there like one thing in particular you didn't include that podcast, like maybe you could talk about probably had to do with Ronza Copa Rama, probably the Nectar of Guatemala. It's good stuff. Um. I think there was just so much that went on. There wasn't anything in particular. But when you're there for how long were you there? Like four or five days? I think five days? Five? Yeah, it's five days and six nights.

I think. Yeah, it's hard to encapsulate that in two hours. There was definitely nothing we were covering up. No beautiful country though, do you know? Do you know I went, I gave a sacrifice to mashamon Um with a cigarette and some some cane liquor, and um, I quit smoking like two years this may so that's fine, but definitely how so it works? I guess that's to answer your question. Yeah, over there, I think she had a question and she's like, no,

not anymore. She's She's like, it was about Guatemala. Yeah, so, um my question is related to research. So, um, we pretty much live in a world now where most people, including like if you're in school will do research, I guess on the internet. So I was wondering for each topic, like a, if you're doing research online, how do you try to validate a particular fact? And then also do you ever go outside of the internet for I don't know, validation or more research, and if so, what are your sources?

It's almost all internet research, which is kind of the way it is these days. It is. Um. I've written one article where I went to the library, and I've written a few hundred articles for House of Works, and I actually had to go to this rare books library to find the one book in print as I was writing about Liz with bath rooms, this Hungarian countess's like the world's most prolific serial killer. Um, And it was it was really hard to find like any good stuff,

like decent sources on her. But I knew that there's this one book either. So I've been to library one time and I'm like, not right exactly. I was like, what is this all these weird books? Um? And it smells there's pencils, um. But that was pretty much the extent of it. Um. There's so much good stuff online. I think it's five, six, seven years ago. You could really put somebody down and said that they just do

their research on online. There's so much good stuff, especially if you know what you're looking for, what you're looking at. If the fact you're kind of looking up appears in almost the same wording and source after source stuff your source, well then you need to go find something else. And yeah, that's actually it's always very good to just find a couple of sources for a fact, especially something that's just

kind of outlandish. It's a lot of common sense and then it's a lot of like knowing who you're who you're getting your sources from. UM, we have since virtually stopped writing UM since we've been working on the TV pilot and since we've been UM podcasting so much lately.

UM that we rely on how Stuff Works articles and UM that so well, like all of our articles are based on just the house Stuffs article and then we do supplementary research and UM, I guess all that's all we need, like is the house Stuff Works basis because we know that there's the same amount of attention and dedication has kind of gone into the research to write that article. That very rarely do we run across one

where we're like this is just flagrantly wrong party. And when we do check out the dinner party, when we tear that poor kid apart, I remember, But when we do, we call them out like because it's bad research, and we hate bad research because it makes us look like jackasses and we hate looking like jackasses. So um, but it's almost all online. Thanks were more perfect. Man, this is petering out nicely. I love your podcast. I listen

to it all the time. Um, I was just wondering what a day in the life Josh and Chuck looks like you said, you don't write as much anymore, but um, how many podcasts you do per week? Um? You know, what's the pilot gonna be like on your schedule? And what's funny you should ask? This is not a plant, by the way, great question than uh we I mean yeah we Um. We record uh between two and four a week, and we released two a week. So we tried to build up what we call a kitty like

Jerry likes to call it. So like when we go out of town or when we're shooting TV stuff, you know, we can still release on a regular basis. Because if anyone wants to start a podcast, everyone always asked for advice. You always have to release it very regularly. The biggest mistake podcast make starting out as they'll release one and they'll wait a few weeks and release another one. But that Tuesday, Thursday, man, people count on it coming out. And um, so we record two to four we do.

We have a little video podcast now, Uh this kind of fun and we record twelve of those a month, um that we alternate every other week. So generally a day in the life is us uh you know, researching and uh studying. We call it studying. It's it's a lot of a lot of reading and Josh memorizes way more than I do. But um, we take a nap on carpet scores a two pm show two pm every day,

butter cookies and juice the martini time after that. But since you did mention the TV thing, we would like to invite everyone here tomorrow to uh fidox Irish Pub on Fourth Street and we are having a variety show slash premiere party for the TV pilot that Science Channel has gone out on them and been really awesome to let us do. And uh it is at five o'clock.

It starts goes till nine and um we have John Hodgment will be there, our old Budden and uh I guess for John or just a clus Okay, John will be there, and comedy from a Eugene Merman who's very hysterical stand up and our buddies, the Henry Clay people will be playing music and local band Crooks will be playing music. And Lucy waynewright Roach who plays Jerry on the show, will be playing music because she is also a very talented singer, songwriter, guitar player, and uh, it's

gonna be fun. First hundred people get a free drink, which is always nice and out right and gotten lighted. But oh so yeah, it's gonna be a good party. And we thank Science Channel because they are super awesome and have really stuck their necks out to give us a shot at a TV pilot, which hopefully we'll see later on this year. And uh, it's good at that, thanks man, getting better at it? Yeah, anything else, I'm good? Did anybody else have any questions? We have one minute? Man,

this was perfect. As a matter of fact, everybody, give yourself around. Thank you for coming, very much for coming. Uh let's see if you want to contact us, you can reach us on Twitter at s y s K podcast. If you don't follow us, it is a jam uh Facebook dot com slash stuff you should know. Also quite the party. They could have gone and seen William Defoe right now, by the way. Thank you, everybody, Thank you. I wish you had a five dollar bill to give to everybody. Um or you can email us at Stuff

Podcast at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the re invented two thousand twelve Camri. It's ready, are you