There is a time and a place for emergency room lobby brawls, and Tuesday at noon is not it.
Doesn't seem the typical time, that's for certain.
Like. It's not it. Welcome to Tencent Takes, the show where we sweat through our shorts, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson, and as always, I am joined by my co host, The Heroic Heatwave Herself, Jessica Frazier.
Oh, I'm feeling sizzling hot.
God, it's been so fucking hot. Like, at least we're on the other side of like the 100 plus degree weather right now. Like, that was
Yeah. Prior to it getting really, you know, extreme in heat, I did decide to like purchase extensions. And of course it takes a few weeks for them to get in. And so by the time they were installed, it was like triple
I remember, I remember we were, we recorded an episode right after you got them and it was just like, good lord, I'm like, I don't know why you would do that to yourself.
So hot. But you know what though? Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of hot, I look hot as fuck with these extensions, so that's honestly that is why I did it. So no complaints, no real complaints. Minor discomforts,
star, no notes.
Beauty is minor discomfort, I suppose.
That's fair. Well, if you were new to the show, our main episodes drop every other week and provide in depth looks into interesting moments in comic books and how they tie into pop culture and history. But today is one of our dollar bin discoveries, mini episodes that we do in between those deep dives. We spend bins at local shops looking for interesting stuff. And while a lot of the issues that we find are fun and weird, they may not be enough for us to do a deep dive on.
That's just at the moment. We reserve the right to change our minds and come back and do a full fledged episode later on. Each episode will feature both of us talking about one random issue that we came across in the dollar bins, one that fits a theme that one of us chose. Tonight is my theme, which is Summer Days. That's it. We're recording this in the middle of July, and I was like, this seems like an appropriate topic, because, you know, we're trying not to die while the Earth gets hotter.
So,
almost like the heat is the only thing you can think about.
pretty much. so we've each brought an issue to the table tonight, we will talk about what it is, what goes on inside it, and why it's interesting. These are mini episodes meant to provide you with some weekly content between our more in depth discussions about the weirder and more interesting moments of comic book history. So, Jessica, you get to start off tonight. What is the Summer Days issue that you are bringing to the table?
So I'm, I'm going to confess something. So this isn't like strictly summer, but I feel like the dude himself is such a summer vibe and you will see why. And he's not wearing much of anything, like the whole thing. really feels like regardless of the time of year, even if it's raining, he is like, he is bringing
has a summer vibe. I'm diggin it.
He is such a vibe. So I brought Flexmentalo issue number one, and
Oh, yeah, okay. Like, I know exactly who this is. I know what he looks like. Okay.
Yes, I'm so glad. You understand now. You understand everything.
I
So this is titled After the Fact Part 1, Flowery Atomic Heart, published by DC Vertigo June 1996, Written by Grant Morrison. Art by Frank Quitely. Colorist was Tom McCraw, lettered by Ellie DeVille. Assistant Editor was Carrie Kowalski, and editors were Art Young and Stuart Moore. So, we start off with a mysterious man in a mask, hat, and trench coat with bandages covering his face and a pair of sunglasses over his eyes. And he is carrying a comically stereotypical bomb. It literally says bomb
Okay.
it. And it is lit. So, he becomes a drawing that is on an egg that is being cracked in an airport diner. Hang with me. So a buff and somewhat hairy man, wearing nothing but leather wrist cuffs, mid calf black leather boots, and a pair of tight leopard print shorts, orders breakfast from the astounded waitress. She is very impressed.
But as the man goes to enjoy his egg sandwich in peace, he sees a commotion as a man drops The bomb I've described, to the crowd's horror, so he has the choice to go after the man or try to get rid of the bomb, and he chooses the latter, flexing as the words Hero of the Beach light up like a beacon above him, then see, and now bring in the energy. But before he can do anything, the bomb goes out and does not explode.
So we cut to another scene where a man is murmuring over some papers and comics and is, like, farting around with a blue and yellow striped device he calls the buzzer. And back with Flex Montallo, Strongman. He is being debriefed by a police lieutenant, and he is being told that there have been more of these bombs showing up around town, but they are all blanks, and they're styled like something you would find in a comic book. So they don't really, like, they just sizzle out.
They don't do anything.
Interesting.
Yeah, and they say that it has something to do with Faculty X, but nobody really knows what that means. So another piece of evidence is a card with the words, the fact is, that Mentallo immediately recognizes calling it a fact card.
Okay.
We then see someone else who has a similar card being found by a man made of wax, saying, the fact is, the game's up, wax worker. He says, this is impossible, when the mysterious man comes flying in on a rope and says that nothing is impossible, and then the action changes to a child's drawing of the same scene, and it shows that the man with the buzzer is holding a crumpled sheet of paper with a child's comic on it, showing the man defeating the wax worker in six panels. So, flexes then.
on the page and we see him in real life then afterwards. So we are told that Flex used to be a comic book character but that he was brought to life by a kid named Wally Sage who has psychic powers but that Wally Sage had like died in his arms.
Yeah,
We also see that Flex may have had something to do with the comic characters being out in the world. He had opened some box but we don't get much backstory so I don't know.
this is all very Grant Morrison esque, I think, in Animal Man, where, where Animal Man actually has a discussion, like, breaking the fourth wall as a, as a comic book character. Um, and, and like having a discussion with like, Grant Morrison themself, I think, um, don't quote me on all that, but like, I, I have vague memories of all this stuff, like it feels, it, it, anyway, it feels like a Grant Morrison story is all I'm saying.
feel like I might have some of the animal comics too, so, yeah, I'll have to check it out. So, we see the man that we had seen before with the crumpled papers. He's struggling. He wanders through the rain and into an alleyway. We then see Flex, who is helping the police with a man who was beaten up by a team of kids. And he holds up a pink and gold badge with a bee and a bird on it.
Flex asks the police officer for a fact, just any fact, and the police officer says, well, I don't know if it's going to help, but there's an old abandoned boy's school nearby, and Flex goes there, and we get a flashback and see that the man is talking on the buzzer like it's a phone. So he's called a helpline, and he's rambling about comic characters and how when he was a kid he saw this man in the doorway, insert Flex,
Okay.
and we see how he gets into comics after getting sick and almost not making it. And in present day, Flex starts talking to the janitor in the building who tells him, it's like abandoned, but there's a janitor in there for some reason. So the man tells him that it used to be a school for sidekicks. Of course, right? Obviously, but that it closed down. So now all the kids are just out there and they just like have all these skills and like know where to use them. So they're just out in the world.
And so then we see a kid within that group, because of course we see a flash of them. And, one of the kids has a badge like the one that the beat up person was holding. So, the janitor then gives Flex a crossword puzzle and tells him that the last word had made him a god when he said it after he'd solved the crossword. It was this whole thing where he got it from someone else and they're like, solve it, you'll be a god, whatever.
So But it had been too much for him and he wanted to pass on the power. So Flex is walking away with this crossword puzzle when he sees the mysterious man dropping another bomb. So he follows him to a photo booth. He like runs after him. And then we cut to the man with the buzzer who has told the helpline that he's taken a bunch of substances and a whole bottle of pills with the intent of ending his own life. But that he wanted to talk to somebody about the comics.
So back at the photo booth, Flex grabs the man's coat and he goes into the booth, but he feels it go slack as he goes in to find that there's no one in the booth. But the booth did take several pictures and on the back was written the fact in green ink. It was the mysterious man. Until next time!
Okay.
And he's like, flexing. I'm gonna send it to you. It's it's goddamn decent. That's for that's for darn tootin
Beefcake.
Right?! I mean, the man is mostly he's like he is he is both arms and legs today, but I gotta tell you, his top half, he is like a triangle up
Alright, yeah, he's an upside down carrot. I love it.
He sure is. So. Um.
That's great.
So yeah, this was a fun read, and I'm interested to see where it goes in the future. The art was fun. I, as you can see, I liked how they jumped back and forth from real life to the child's drawings. It was a neat touch and a cool way to transition. So I know for a fact that I have number two, but I'll have to see if I have three and four, and if not, I'll just skip it. I'll just have to find them.
Oh, that's great. Like I'm Yeah, this sounds like a ride.
Yeah. The only thing that was tough was the mention of suicide, so if that's something that would trigger, would be a trigger, or, like, would, would be sensitive, like, I don't recommend it, but overall it was pretty good.
nice
Yeah. Well, how about you?
Well, in another moment of us being on the same wavelength, I am also talking about a DC Vertigo book from
Good lord. How do we do this?
I don't know, man. It's just like, there's a lot of weird coincidences with how our minds work.
This is a simulation. This is proof. Okay.
exactly. I am talking about The Books of Magic, volume 2, number 25, from June 1996, published by DC Comics Vertigo. It was written by John Ney Reber, art was by Peter Gross, the cover artist is Chris Boccolo, colored by Nathan Eyring, lettered by Richard Starkings, and edited by Julie Rottenberg. And before we go any further, I need to show you the cover, because this is one of my absolute favorite comic covers of all time.
Oh, I like that a lot. Wow.
so like Chris Boccolo is one of my all time favorite artists too, but this is really, it's the same general style that he does, but it's got kind of this more playful look to it because of the way that they colored and inked it. And this is actually the cover that they used for the first Books of Magic Omnibus. So,
cool.
so I came across this at Harvey Doss and I was like, ah, I need this. They had like the entire series and I was like, I can't justify buying like all 75 80 issues right now. I'm like, I can't do it because like, I have the omnibus. I'm like, but this one issue in particular, I really want.
Nice.
so we open on Tim Hunter, who is eventually destined to be the world's greatest magician. But the thing about the Books of Magic is that it is more focused on Tim's very own like coming of age story rather than him becoming that magician so much. It's more focused on him , learning magic and learning life lessons along the way.
I think Reber actually wrote the first 50 issues of the ongoing series and really seemed to capture the weirdness of being 14 and then also having this destiny thrust upon yourself. And I think this quote of his sums up why his run is so good. I don't believe that my soul is likely to be shuffled off to purgatory when I die. What would be the point? I've been 14 already.
Oof.
Like, I love it. So the story is called Used To Bes. Tim is at Brighton, which is a resort town in the UK in the off season, and he is wandering along the shore before he stabs his foot on a seashell. He reflects that he used to be able to find all sorts of brilliant stuff on the beach there. But now you can only find pieces of things.
It starts to rain, and so he takes shelter under the pier, and now the important piece of backstory is that Tim's childhood friend, Jimmy, was turned into this, like, plastic figurine by a villain in a previous arc, and Tim has been carrying around the figure and talking to it for a bit, and while he is under the pier, he continues this trend, and as he is talking to Jimmy, we get a flashback of a younger Tim and his family, and Jimmy, they are on holiday to Brighton,
and it's very much implied to be during the summer season based on the colors. And it's, it's a cute little scene with Tim's dad telling a story about pirates and cannibals before giving the boys money and letting them run off for a bit.
And then, back under the pier, Tim reflects more with Jimmy about how he now has all the freedom that he wanted as a kid, but it isn't making him happy, and he actually like, hits a pylon out of frustration, but he's, he does it with the hand that's holding Jimmy, and then he freaks out because he's afraid that he, he hurt his friend.
Okay. Right.
in the flashback, we see Jimmy and Tim at one of those claw arcade machines that you use to grab prizes, and Tim manages to get a metal Ankh, and Jimmy says that he'll trade him one of his knight figures for it. But then, there's an old fisherman on the pier named Skinner, and he offers the boys an all day ride pass on the pier in exchange for the Ankh, because he needs a new lure to catch the muddle moolah, which he describes as the arch fiend of the watery abyss.
Basically, he says the only way to defeat the muddle moolah is to catch it and pull it out of the depths and then spit in his eye. And the boys make the trade and they run off. They're kids, like, whatever. So. Back in the present, Tim is wandering along the pier and he's talking to Jimmy about how they're going to track down John Constantine to restore the figure back to its human form. And then Tim will live with John Constantine and learn magic from the guy.
He heads towards the Ferris wheel and then we get another flashback about how it actually broke while they were riding it the first time and they fantasize about creating their own country within the Ferris wheel pod if they were stuck there forever. It's kind of this cute little scene. It's like, it's very much about kind of like the infinite possibility of childhood.
then we return to reality and we see Tim looking at the shut down Ferris wheel and he goes from manic to maudlin in a second and he starts reflecting about how everyone hates him and even John Constantine wouldn't want him around.
He turns the corner and then he sees death from the Sandman comics sitting on top of the claw machine and she's talking to Skinner, the fisherman, who is enthusiastically telling her about the muddle moolah, and as he's talking, we see Skinner's body and he's like clearly dead, but he is. leaned over the rail and he's gripping his fishing rod. So, yeah.
Skinner explains that he's been after the Muddle Moolah ever since he was a kid, and that he had encountered the monster under the pier back then. It took a piece of his finger, and so he's been trying to spit in the Muddle Moolah's eye ever since then in order to get his life back. And the three then walk down to the beach, and Death volunteers Tim to go find the beast.
She also tells Tim that she'll take Jimmy, but then there's this like heartbreaking moment where Tim says, You can say it, I've known all along, it's not really Jimmy, not anymore. And he puts the figure down on the beach and then heads under the pier. So, like, that's the moment where Tim accepts that his childhood friend has died, and that, he had this fantasy of, like, bringing him back, he's accepted that he can't.
And so, Tim does find the muddle moolah, but it's just like a normal sized crab, like, he picks it up and, like, you know, both his hands, and he reflects about how Skinner let this thing ruin his life, but he also notes how things seem bigger when you're a kid and when they're attacking you. So, Tim returns to Skinner in Death, and he tells the fisherman that he has everything sorted out, and Skinner can come spit in muddle moolah's, and he leads the man back under the pier.
And when Tim returns, he's alone. Death thanks him, telling the boy that Skinner needed that, and then she asks Tim if he's had breakfast, because she knows a place that does great pancakes. That's it. It's like, it's like a little one shot. I loved this book. Like, it's, it's beautiful, and it's bittersweet, and it feels incredibly nostalgic just reading it. Like, the vibes it gives off.
It not only captures that angst of youth, but it also does this really wonderful job of conveying what it's like to return to the places from our past, and then, like, when we try to recapture the feelings and experiences we had there.
And, you know, from what we remember, like There's this shopping center up here in Corte Madera that my family used to hit when we lived in San Francisco, cause You know, it was easy to get to and it's actually where they had like a big event for the movie Willow when it came out. Like, I remember my whole family going to go see it back in, you know, the 80s
Yeah.
like they had, they had people dressed up as characters from the movie and all that. There's that little like Corte Madera cinema right next door to it, like the one, the one screen theater, you know, that's no longer in existence, they shut it down.
Mm.
there was this little tower that you could go up and like you could view the wetlands and the bay from it. And we would always like, Stopped through there when we were driving up to Tahoe or anything, because that was the way out of town to get up to 37. And I loved walking to the top of that tower and then just reading books in this very serene, calm setting until it was time to go. And after college, I went back there with some friends. I was like really stoked to see the tower again.
And it was way smaller than I remembered. And it was like in pretty serious disrepair. They actually tore it down not long after, but it's like,
Okay.
It was kind of the sad experience because I felt so let down, like, after having all these wonderful nostalgic memories, so, so yeah, this book kind of reminded me of that, it was, it was just, , it's kind of the vibe of like, trying to recapture summer's gone, and how it never quite works out like you expect it to be, so, yeah. that is our episode for tonight. We will be back next week with a full length episode. I don't know what it's going to be. We're recording these all out of order.
But after that, we'll have another dollop in Discovery. And until then, we will see you in the stacks.