Hello, Well, yeah, I forgot spoilers. We don't have to, there's no spoilers. I'll just do it anyway though, warning this episode contains no spoilers.
That's it. Hello.
My name is Jason.
Concepcion and on Thursday night, and welcome back to the x Ray Vision, the podcast where we dive deep to your.
Favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture coming from.
Our broadcasts broadcasts proadcasting. We're bringing you three one, two, three Monday, well, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
Maybe episodes a week Baby Tuesday, Thursday for sure, and then the third episode anywhere from Wednesday to Saturday.
Yeah, Saturday's news. If you want to know what's guid on you to listen to us.
And in today's episode, the State of Animation, we are going to be doing a little short news section previously on talking about the Animation Guild contract which was recently ratified, and the impact of dog Man and its recent success. You might be like, what's dog Man if you don't have kids, but we'll talk about it because it's one of the most successful comic books in the world and now it is a very successful movie. And then we will be catching up with Harlequin season five, The future
of the DC Animated Universe. What's happening with that Blue Beetle animated series We've been promised, and we're going to talk about one of the biggest new series that's dropped recently called Common Side Effects.
But first previously on First Up in News.
The Animation Guild, which is the union that represents five thousand workers in the animation industry in the US. It's very important caveat only in the US, ratified its new contract with a voting quorum of seventy six point one percent in favor. And this new deal provides protections along with wage increases and stipulations about.
How, when and why AI could be.
Used, including the ability to consult with productions to identify alternative tools to generative AI.
Modes of creation.
This is obviously a huge deal, but also it's a again it's a relatively small deal in a world in which we're seeing a lot of animation take place.
Outside of the United States.
Yeah, and also as well, it's like any union kind of deal. It was ratified with seventy six percent, but the negotiators had included kind of more ambitious demands like allowing members to opt out of using AI or to opt out of having their work used to train AI, and that did not come through. It also did not agree to guild wide staffing minimums, which had been a big deal. But it is an agreement and it means people can keep working and are going to keep working.
And like Jason said, it's actually pretty interesting when you think about it in the context of this being five thousand jobs within the US, but when we're watching companies like Amazon with Invincible, and you know, other big companies go like Netflix with production IG Studio IG going to Korea, going to Japan, going to these different places. So yeah, interesting and notable for state of animation. But we'll see where any of us are by the end of the year, because who knows.
The comment from the Animation Guild Rep. Steve Kaplan says, in part quote, disagreement is the next step forward in our goal to create the strongest contract for our members. The advanced sins made here are plenty, but there's also much work to be done with regard to addressing the priority matters that were not fully answered, which Rosie kind of touched on there, including some more detailed AI protections and stuff about minimum staffing, which is something that the
Writers Guild is also dealing with. Next up, dog Man. You may if you've been to the movies recently, you've seen the trailer for dog Man, Yes, which is a adaptation of the comic book series by the same name, created by Dav Pilkey, who is one of them. He's, you know, one of the most successful illustrator creators out there right now. The story is about Again, if you've seen the trailer, you know about this. This is about It's It's basically the most cudly form of copaganda that there is exactly.
It's up there with Paul Patrol for like kids copaganda.
I think Paw Patrol is significantly more fascist than dog Man, but still it is like a cute and cudly version of coppaganda in which a doghead is placed on a cop body.
Yeah.
I like sadity of the fact that it's like a dumb cop and his very smart dog a blown up because the dog the cop is dumb, and the doctor basically put the dog's head on the CoP's body.
This is not me putting my projection of policing on this. This is literally, like the description, this is what the copies.
Yeah, and but dog Man can't talk, even though the other animals can.
That's right. And here's the thing about dog Man.
The kids be loving it. It's a hit, huge hit, both in book, both in book and movie.
Form, exactly like it's actually hard to put into words.
Yes, how popular.
In twenty twenty four, dog Man the Scarlet Shredder by Dad Pilkey, which is the twelfth book in the series.
It sold twelve million.
Six hundred and sixty seven and eighty copies in the US alone.
That's this man sells more.
Comics than X Men, Spider Man, all that stuff put together.
Oh way put together.
Yeah, this has been.
The situation since day dot with both Captain Underpants and dog Man. Dog Man is a spin off of Captain Underpants, and he is just absolutely one of the people keeping the book publishing market and the comic book market afloat.
And it's very.
Interesting to then see how this movie, which outperformed what they thought it would made thirty six million dollar debut, get into the top ten openings of January of all time, and it also opened ten million dollars more than when they did the Captain Underpants movie, which was open to twenty three million dollars in twenty seventeen. So yeah, very interesting to see this. Another success for Dave Pilky. This
man is unstoppable. And if you are a comic book lover who has kids, then you've probably already seen it. But if not, Dave's Pilky. He's a he's a guy that the kids love.
They can't get enough. And there's a lot of.
Captain Underpants books enough.
They cannot get enough of dog Man.
So that's a huge win for animation and also a big win for Universal who made this movie, put it out there, and have now come.
Up with the biggest opening of twenty twenty four so far.
It's they basically found buried treasure with dark Man. And here's the great thing about about a dog cop that can't speak, can't lie up. Next, we're stepping out of the airlock to talk about the future of DC Animation.
Wow, okay, DC Animation, what's next?
Let's start with Harley Quinn Season five, which is ongoing right now. I believe it's on episode three on HBO and Max. I have not yet started watching this excellent and hilarious new season to an excellent hilarious series. But our super Joelle has been watching it, and so let's tap her in.
To talk about it. Joel, what's the update on Harlequin Season five?
Y'all?
It's so good.
What I really appreciate about season five so far, it's like you've been following this journey of it's really should be called Harley Quinn Poyson Ivy.
I really it's a little hardsome to me.
That's just called Harley Quinn. It's really about the two of them in their relationship, and you see, like a classic friends to lovers are from like seasons one through three and season four, they're officially together and they're like trying to figure out what the relationship looks like now that Ivy has moved on to become like CEO of the Legion of Doom, and Harley is trying to be a good guy with the Bat family, and they're like, our jobs are in opposition to each other. How do
we work through that? So keeps it always grounded in relationship, which I love, But they also never forget that they're in a DC world and so Gotham is going through it's like fourth Apocalypse since the show starts they've got giant rats knocking helicopters out of the sky and lakes of losing like green sludge that could turn you dead. So they decided to go to Metropolis to catch a break and to bring some new energy into their life
they're suffering from. We've been in a relationship the honeymoon periods over. What does our relationship look like now? But in Metropolis it's it's all steel and shiny and hyper clean, and there's something going on under the surface. Everything looks really good up top, but like, what's going on underneath? You get into some more of Ivy's backstory. How did she turn into poison Ivy? It's all really really good and fun, and I have so many questions about how
the show is still on the air. It confuses me.
Five seasons in five.
Seasons of an animated show is very long.
We are woman led show, mm hmm.
It's in the aut animation space of like it's varying towards Rick.
And moy for longevity.
Yeah, at this.
Point, like, which is very brad that we get shows like this? Okay, how do being moved to Metropolis got them? Such like a fantastic location for those first four seasons. How does being moved to Metropolis impact the season.
It's interesting to see them outside of their native home. If Gotham is the dark, edgy place where everyone really knows their name, that's the that's their home. They have long standing reputations that have really defined who they are as individuals. They could step outside of those reputations when they go to Metropolis, which is really fun. So there I've seen as like an inventor and somebody who just like loves the planet and wants to save it, and
that's great. So she's not a villain in the eyes of the people there, and it changes how she sees herself and for Harley, she's a chaos agent in a very sterile controlled world. And so far they have Lena Luther's introduced this season, and she's very fun. You could tell there's she's evil, but like how evil and to what angle?
You don't really know yet.
We're only a few episos, We're only three episodes in, but she sort of keeps protecting Harley from her own consequences and you're like, how long is this gonna last? And does she need Harley? And is she trying to drive away between my favorite.
I was gonna say, is this that turning into a like a love triangle like we had early on with Catwoman. I'm very excited because the third episode is called Floronic Man, so that means we're really getting into more swamp thing territory.
Here, but kind of absolutely.
Yeah, I'm really excited.
Thank you so much for checking in, Jos And what would you watch your one line pitch for somebody who hasn't listened to it, who hasn't watched it yet and wants to watch it.
If you like queer women behaving atrociously.
Yeah, it's diabolical.
Limits You're violent, but super funny and yet somehow still grounded. And it's got some of the best second dary here's the real one. ALENTII plays clay Face.
Yeah, it's true, he's pop bad.
He's excellent.
All right, Thanks guys, Thanks to all.
Next up in DC Animation News, more Blue Beatles stories. The Blue Beetle movie didn't hit in the way that Warner Brothers was hoping it would, but they're not giving up on the superhero and are looking to continue his stories through animation. Miguel Puga has been working on the project since early this year, and we'll serve as the project showrunner, with director Christian Martinez said as writer, there's.
No real date yet.
No, it's exciting we get the Soolo Marduena, who plays Blue bet Ol Jaimehnandez in this. He said, I'm ready to come back with hitting hot, this anime, with this animated project, hoping to get it settled out this year to show everyone next year.
So fingers crossed. And I think it.
Is really really cool that this is like one of the only characters that James Gunn saw value in bringing back. And I totally understand because the movie is actually totally charming, fun suite, but it hit during the Jewel strikes. Sholo couldn't promote it, neither could anyone else. And I'm really happy that we're going to get to see how May come back Hi May rays and find his way in
this new DC world. And as we know from Creature Commandos, if we get him and animation, then it's likely that we could also see him come back in the live action stuff.
So I think that's very excite.
In other news, ongoing series happening right now on hbon Max. Common Side Effects created by Steve Helly, who was a producer and I think a writer. Also on the office end veep Uh and Joseph Bennett, who also created Scavenger's Reign. The whoa criminally criminally underrated animated series, only got one season at.
One of the best shows ever made.
Just truly unique.
Show, I believe on Netflix now you can watch right now. But the show is about the culture of an outlaw psychedelic drug entrepreneur who is being chased by the Feds.
Here's a quote from Helly.
We were interested in guys like Terrence McKenna and Paul Stammetz and Wade Davis, fringe figures who for better or
were start introducing new strange ideas into the world. This really tickled me because as a person who in college went to a lot of raves, I am very familiar with Terrence McKenna, whose those voice talking about the the the animal vegetable, when you take into your life the nosis of the light filled vegetable, the psychedelic plants that have stabilized the sane societies like I have heard that voice droning over ambient music in the back chill rooms
of raves so many times, and this show really captures something of both the wonder of that kind of culture and also the outlaw aspect of it of it too.
It's really fun. The art style is kind of like.
Nothing else I've seen, is very interesting.
I'm really happy that we're kind of moving away from the Rick and mortification where everything looked like Rick and Morty. Just like after Archer, people try to make stuff look like Archer. Rick and Morty is one of the biggest shows in the world. Everything starts to look like Rick
and Morty. This show has its own unique aesthetic and feel, and also, I think something that's really fun about it is it has this kind of, like you said, this outlaw tendency where it's like it's about conspiracy theories, but it's also about the reality of big farma, and it's also about people who are interested in weird stuff. And it's also about like what drugs become legal, what drugs
become illegal. There's a lot to it, and I think that if it keeps going as it started, this could become kind of up there and seen as like one of the great auto animation shows.
It's really really fun. Well, we're off Thursday, but we'll be back Friday.
With a reaction to the long awaited Captain America Brave New World.
He Taya.
We go into this film with a mixture of excitement and dread, and we'll be talking about the Yellow Jacket Season three, the premiere here it comes.
What's up?
Is it?
Is it good?
Is it?
To watch it? To watch it?
We have no idea.
And then we'll be covering the finale of the excellent Your Friendly Neighborhood spider Man with special guest show runner Jeff Tremil.
That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening.
Bye x ray Vision is hosted by Jason Sepsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Our executive producers are Joe Alminique and Aaron Kaufman.
Our supervising producer is Abuza.
Part Our producers are Common Laurent Dean Jonathan and Bay Wack.
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