Warning, this podcast contained spoilers, mainly for Prey. We talk about I Am Groot on Disney Plus. There's no way to spoil that. We also talk about Harley Quinn, which is currently in season three. We talk about some plot stuff. But if you're catching up on Harley Quinn, you're in season one and two, or you just want to start season three and you're worried about it, don't worry. You can listen to this conversation, including our really really wonderful interview with Justin Halpern, and.
You will not be spoiled. Les listen on. You have been warned. Hello Miami, is Jason Bonzepcion.
Welcome to xt Ravision, The Crooked Podcast, where we dive deep into your favorite shows.
Movies, comics, and pop culture.
So many favorite shows this week in today's episode on previously on, we're gonna be talking about more WB Discovery drama in the airlock Oh, lots of stuff, including the delightful I Am Groot and the action packed Pray Watch it.
Now on Hulu.
In the Hive mind co creative Harley Quinn, Justin Halpern comes and sits down with us to tell a lot of really hilarious stories about Harley Quinn and it's great and it's a great time joining me today. For all of that is the number one comics historian, the number one comics reader, knowing more about comics, the characters, the plots, and all the weird stuff that goes on in there than any other human alive.
It's Rosie Dight.
Rosie, However, I'm so happy to be here to talk to you about all this stuff and to now have a career of all those things that you listed, which used to be something people would be like, please stop talking about that. Those are like a list of like please stop talking about it, But now it's like, hey, please talk about it. Bye.
Godzilla versus Batra.
Now you can purchase a BW.
You can purchase it at the local comic shop near you.
Let's get into the news because there's so much first up more WB stuff.
So we were talking about this story last week, and of course the earnings call that we were all expecting took place in the day after we recorded our episode, and it was a news packed earnings call. Rosie, you wantn't you take us through it?
Oo? Wow? So a lot of what we had talked about last week came true, which was essentially a big breakdown of what is going to happen. So that's On the Warner Brothers Discovery Q two earnings call, it was announced that Hbox and Discovery Plus would merge into one streaming platform to launch in summer twenty twenty three. We thought that would probably happen. The details are currently sparse, no name, no subscurrecription price at this point, though the
hint and implication was that it would be expensive. So it's going to be expensive. From what they were saying on the call, it seems like it will be based on the Discovery Plus app, which is a very popular, well rated app. According to David Zaslav of Warner Brothers Fame, during the very intense, and I wouldn't blame you if you turned it off because it was public. You could
listen to it. I listened to it. It was very numbers heavy, it was very financial, but there were some incredible moments, including when they put a slide on the screen that listed the two audiences of HBO Max and Discovery Plus. HBO Max, Skew's mail scripted lean in appointment viewing Home of Fandoms Discovery US female skew, unscripted, leaned back comfort viewing home of genre doums. As you can imagine, internet went wild. I still don't know what a genre
dume is, Jason, I still have no idea. Yeah, and it was basically lots of questions. There was some very interesting stuff near the end when a caller from Deutsche Bank asked about Batgirl and zaz Lav spoke quite extensively about his vision for DC. He called The Flash a terrific movie, but he also said that they could make DC better, which was not particularly well received during the call. So, yeah, it's been very interesting. And since then we've had a lot of other news.
So yeah, gosh.
So let's first start with the DC of it all, which we can come back to in a second or touch on, but essentially laid out a ten year plan to.
They said no, no, no, no, let's not give them too much credit. They said they were putting together a team to make it. So there's no telling you.
Let me, so let me start with the let me start with this. There's no doubt, right, and I think any fair observer will say this. Despite some notable successes and some notable box office successes, right that the DC properties have been mismanaged. You know, you could point to any number of indicators to let you know that that's the case. That said, and I've been consistent about this for a long time. I personally believe I don't know when this will happen, but DC will figure it out
because these properties are never going to do. Nobody's gonna stop king Batman, everyone movie. It's always everybody wants it. They're gonna want it thirty years from now, they're gonna want it two hundred years from now, assuming that we are here as a species thirty and or three.
Hundred years from now. That said, the stuff right now has is.
Mismanaged. You've got some successful stuff like The Joker that's going to get a sequel, but of course that takes place in a separate universe than the kind of shared universe that they've been trying to launch off the ground.
And then you have, you know, issues related to the cost cutting, such as Batgirl getting shelved, and all of that looks kind of funky in the context of what appears to be the continued support for the Flash movie Yes, which is which costs upwards of two hundred and fifty million.
Dollars for any kind of marketing, right.
Has quote unquote tested well whatever, We don't know what that means, but apparently it's been testing. Well, that's fine, And stars Ezra Miller, who is in the midd literally in the midst of numerous legal problems and a spin out that.
Is epic in scope.
Yeah, just and has been, you know, basically a fugitive for the last several months. That said, a holly recent Hollywood Reporter article has a really really nuts sentence towards the final paragraphs quote. Miller participated in regularly scheduled additional photography over the summer, apparently without incident, before being charged with burglary?
Was as Remiller not a fugitive? Were they not a fugitive at that point? From everything we know?
So apparently, according to the authorities, Asra Miller has been housing a family of which includes a woman and her children who Ezra apparently met in Hawaii. And this person had been posting on social media from a location that, according to this Rolling Stone article, people have recognized as the interior of Ezra's house in Vermont.
This was in July.
Yeah, and people had even reported that they had been there and seen the family there, and there was even reports of babies being around, a lot of open weaponry, a one year old who had a bullet in their mouth. There's all kinds of almost its bad.
It's very bad, and it's very bad and not good.
Yes, And the thing that Jason was about to tell you, which is really a very worrying situation that had been going on for a while. Rolling Stone reported on it around a month ago, but this week the Vermont Child Services had been trying to serve a protection order for those children and that mother and Ezra Miller is now claiming they don't know where the family is, they haven't been living there, and that doesn't seem to align with the social media posts which have now stopped. It is
an alarming situation for alarment. And even on the day of the Warner Brothers them highly anticipated, very buzzword heavy. I mean, Zaslav could have said synergy no more times. There was no more times you would have been able
to say it in that core. On that very day, there was more reporting that came out about Ezra reportedly running a kind of flophouse cult in Iceland and taking in vulnerable people, taking in people struggling with addiction problems and treating them very badly, And this just doesn't seem to be going away and only seems to be escalating.
And I still find it absolutely mind blowing that we're in a situation where there has been no statement from Warner Brothers on this other than the Flashes coming out. It's going to be out in June twenty twenty three.
I know that they say that, but it feels like it can't come out, That it can't.
No.
I know that we're saying that right now, and we're roasting Zavilavi and WB for the support of this, but there's legitimately no.
Way I can happen.
I thought maybe there was a world. I was having conversations people when the Bat Girl news came out, and I thought maybe there was a world that they were scrapping in inverted commas Batgirl to build it in to the Flash, to move the emphasis off of that version of the Flash, and to bring in more of this younger, new, more inclusive Justice League, which apparently that film was going
to launch. But if they're going to follow the trend that recent reporting from tax filings revealed that Warner Brothers did take at eight hundred and twenty five million dollar right down on content that they canceled or didn't use. So if they're going to do that with Batgirl, which they have set a precedent for, then I don't think that they can use it in the Flash movie. So I'm just really I'm very confused about where this is, especially because the Batgirl cancelation news. I mean, DC Film's
president Walter Harmada, who I am. I have to say, I just need to put this out there. I understand that it's very hard to look at any film franchise about Superos in the context of the MCU and look at it and be like, well, this is good, because really the MCU did something unprecedented. Warner Brothers, I'm just telling you this now. You will not be able to copy it. You already tried. So this is going to be a Dark Universe, Universal Monsters Justice League all over again,
Like you can't replicate it. That was of a moment, of a mindset and of a despert oiration to get out of bankruptcy that created something absolutely incredible. And the thing that kind of blows my mind is I understand that it has been mismanaged, and the general overview does not support the kind of success that the MCU has had. But Aquaman made one point seven billion dollars and it was so great, and the new Suicide Squad movie was so great, and I absolutely loved Harlequin and Birds of Prey.
I'm not a fan of Joker, but that really worked for a bunch of different people. I think that there is a world where if they wanted to make the most successful version of the DCEU or whatever it will be called from here on out, they need to still allow directors to have a full creative vision and to do experimental, weird, unexpected stuff. Aquaman is so different from anything else, and yeah, thos people think it's corny. I
love It's one of my favorite movies. I love it so much in the world of the DC comics and stuff, and I think I would hate for them to lose what has made some of the movies so successful and so great. The Batman that is not a commercially viable movie in an MCU style situation, three hour long emo goth story about like a sad guy.
I completely agree with you, and I'd go a step further. You know, whether Hamada steps down or not, who knows, but I think there and this is not This has been opened and many people have said this, and even Zavilav has alluded to it.
They need a figure.
That they've always needed, that they who can who can.
Bring order to all of these kind of disparate stories. The strength of the MCU is that you can have a movie that is critically panned, right, that is not good. Throw the Dark World, the sequel to thor is, you know, arguably, and I think many would pick it as one of the worst, if not.
If you're ranking them, is that the love right?
But then what happened?
But then what happens Ragnarok comes after that, it's one of the best, And all of that stuff ends up still mattering.
All of the stuff from Dark World.
Still impacts the overall world, the overall story, the overall storytelling, because all that stuff happened. If they can figure out how to tie all of these different tones and different colors and grimness and lightness together from all these different characters and textures, it will lift the entire agree Because even if something sucks, or even if it's like background, maybe it didn't test well, it doesn't look high quality of whatever, You've still got the fuel.
For other stories, the fuel.
For the lore of the world overall, that can use to make the entire DCEU feel textured and populated in a place, you know, vibrant with all these different characters.
And that's really what kind of.
Needs to happen, like and so, and I think that they will get there again. I don't know if it's a twenty years or when, but I just think that one, there's too much money at stake, and two, these properties are too iconic for them to never It's like at a certain point, it's like just by brute force, they will figure it out. But that's really what they need is someone to sit atop all of this to kind of draw all the lines so that they intersect at the same point.
Yeah, I think that's the biggest question for comic book fans. I'm sure our listeners have thought about this, because even if you're not in the weeds on the business stuff, a lot of the business stuff for this is what gets us excited. Whether it's the comic book boom and bust that ended in the nineties, you know, whether it's the speculation market, whether it's how Marvel Studios was founded. But even if you're not really into that side of things,
you know who Kevin Figy is. Everybody does. And I think the biggest question right now is who who can be the Kevin Feige for Warner Brothers. They can call us. I think we'd do it, Okay, Joe, I'm like, yeah, that's a call. But I mean it's very hard. Figi had such a unique journey, and not only just the love of the comics, especially the eighties stuff, which I love because now he's really getting to dig into that, but he had a production history in making some of
the first contemporary superhero movies. You know, he was so ready to be in that place and to take on that role. So I will be very interested to see who they can find. And I think they need to think outside the box. I think they need to find someone who has a vision and a way because the thing is, as we've said many times on this podcast, DC really is the multiverse trailblazer. So it's not even hard for them to find a way to tie this together.
In fact, in that Holyrood Reporter article, very good article, they may mentioned that Harmada had kind of had this vision when they were going to put out three or four films a year to do a Crisis on Infinite Earth. So I think there is a big space to do that.
I found it very interesting. Another thing that was on the call that not only did Zazav say they wanted to make a tenure plan, which we recently heard FIGI say they were doing over at Marvel, but he specifically said that it's a very similar to the structure Alan Horn, former DC CEO, Bobby get and Kevin Faige put together very effectively at Disney. We think we can build a much stronger sustainable growth business out of DC. As part of that, we're going to focus on quality. We're not
going to release any film before it's ready. And then he said the iconic words that I'm sure will come back to buy him. D C is something we can make better as.
Well.
We will say, you know, I have a We talked about this in our pre pre meeting, but I just
want to put it out there. I think a kind of underrated part of the MCU's growth and how it managed to be what it is, which is the biggest, you know, movie UH dollar generator in the world, is the fact that when they started launching when they came up with the Iron Man, and then all of a sudden, the news started to break that, Oh, they're they're gonna they're gonna launch Hulk, they're gonna launch Captain America, they're
gonna launch Thor, and they're gonna do the Avengers. The response was kind of like, who who the Like, we don't nobody.
The response was basically, nobody cares about Thor. Yeah, Captain America, that's.
Iron didn't even like back then explain that was a deep cut character.
Yeah, these were thought of as like seed list characters, and I think that helped the MCU kind of sneak under the radar of expectations and take over, Whereas with DC, it's harder because it's like, fucking it's Superman, you know what I mean, Like it's it's Superman. The Daddy of Superhero is the guy. It's fucking Batman, it's Wonder Woman. And I think any attempt to do something with those characters is just feel so fraught before you even start.
And I think it's an underrated part of how the MCU was able to do it, because I think they were able to kind of sneak by everybody who didn't understand how cool these characters were.
And I think you actually hit onto something that DC Films and TV has already someone that already knows that that's a part of it. But as we're going forward, if DC can recognize that they can do the same thing, I'm gonna go back to Aquaman. That is a character barely anyone cares about. I love Aquaman, I love the campaigns and stuff, you know, but it's Ankleman, right, one point seven billion highest grossing DC Comics movie ever. Right.
That is what you can do when you do something with a character that people are not too worried about. That is what you can do when you find a director like James One who has a vision for that character, a story they want to tell. So I think you're onto something. If DC Harlequin, now people do love her. She has become what they call the fourth pillar of the DC after Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. But again, you can do something a little bit out there. You
can do an raed TV show. You can play with the conception of who this is. It's why the Suicide Squad works so well. Poka dot Man. No one was out here like I need a Poka dot Man movie. But David Desmolshin made that character unbelievable and James Gunn bought its life in a way that somebody could find something really special in it. And same with Ratcatcher too. You know that the Taika Waitit t has the most
unbelievable cameo in that movie. That's just everything, And I think that you've really hit the nail on the head. I love talking about that side of the MCU, about how I know you don't believe it, but once Captain America was not an A list character. You know, people don't know, but it's true, we don't remember that. Yeah, but I think you've here. If DC can find a visionary who understands that Superman, Batman, the Justice League, that's something you work too. That's also I like, I loved
the Batman movie, the recent one. You can let maybe let those three exist outside of your main world until you've got five ten years in. You can do all kinds of stories. You can tell all kinds you know, Blue Beetle that is apparently still on the cards for next year theatrical. Let's keep yeah, you know, Sauce Plastic Man like there's so many different weird atari r gool movie Like, there's so many different weird cool things and so many characters. You could do rogue movies. Joker did
really well. You could do all different kinds of things. I think you hit the nail on the head. Let's leave Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. Let's let them sit for a little while. Let's let them get that legendary status, and let's build a world that is something unexpected and that can go a little under the radar till it hits and becomes that, you know, fertile ground for something more.
I remain on the record, they will eventually figure it out. Definitely, don't ask me when. And by the way, I just started. I've been reading Aquaman Andromeda on the Black label DC SQUA.
Yeah, that's all right, ram V.
And Christian Word really really great for the for those who are Aquaman curious.
There's so many great Aquaman books. Kelly Sudiconic did a great Aquaman book recently. There's Yeah, there's a lot of fun to be had there. Yeah, you should check out Aquaman good stuff.
Before we get into the airlock, I just want to announce that we're gonna We're gonna be running, or ask the Master House of the Dragon, say meant going forward, it's going to be coming up in coming weeks. If you have a question once, House of the Dragon starts rolling on August twenty first, Sunday, August twenty first. You have a question, what happened?
What is this place? Who are these people?
What's going on? Hit us at Askthemaster at gmail dot com. Ask Themaster at gmail dot com and we may answer your question on the air up next the airlock. With less than one hundred days until the midterms, it's safe to say midterm madness is setting, and right now you can find all new votes Save America merchant the Cricket Store.
A portion of every single order on the Cricket Store goes to vote Riders, the leading organization focused on informing citizens of their state's voter idea requirements and helping them secure the documents they need to vote. So check out criocket dot com slash merch for the latest drop, then head to vote Save America dot com to find out
how to get involved and do your part. In the lead up to this year's midterms, we're stepping out of the airlock and onto the Benattar to discuss the exploits Baby Groot, plus.
The really really.
Excellent addition to the Predator franchise, Pray. Let's start with I Am Groot, written and directed by Kirsten Lapour, incredibly talented animator partner of Daniel kwan Oh of Everything Everywhere, All at Once, Fame, Power Couple, Folks, Power Couple Folks, a voice acting by Vin Diesel. Of course, Bradley Cooper's
rocket James Gunn makes a little cameo. It is five really really short vignettes for a total runtime of something like twenty something minutes, and let's just let me It basically tells the story of Groot after the events of the first Guardians of the Gas Galaxy. Grout has sacrificed himself to save his friends and has been reduced to nothing more than a twig. And then eventually that twig takes Root and what happens Then what happens before we catch up with Groot as a as a surly team
in the events of Guardians of the Galaxy too. This is what happens. I Am Groot is what happens, and it's it's in almost like a like a stop motion style but not.
And it is just really really wonderful, like really fun.
It's such a showcase of animation. It is Disney reminding people that this is what their company was built on. Like it definitely harks back to that old era of Disney shorts that're so iconic now and I absolutely love to see that. I love to see experimental animation. I love to see anime is getting to have fun and push things to kind of the limit. And each episode has such a different visual texture and tone, but really don't feel the same. I mean grout. They all have
really funny names. I didn't realize. I assumed it was like any show on Disney Plus where it's I Am Grout and then it's a series, but it's not. Each one is listed separately on Disney Plus. So when it came up on my Disney Plus, I thought that the whole show, because I have an English Disney Plus account, I thought that the whole show was called I Am Group the Little Guy, And I was like, what this
is so cute. I was like, this is definitely some weird European thing, but that's just the name of the episode. But yeah, Grout takes a Bath. That was my favorite episode.
Oh that's my favorite one.
Great beautiful animation, looks gorgeous, so many funny physical comedy beats, like this is predominantly nonverbal, yes, storytelling. I think this is a great They've been doing this with like the Spark shorts and stuff. I think Disney plus this is a really great platform to bring short animation, unexpected animation, non linear narratives and stuff. I think this is a very cool way of using the platform, and it's something that not any really, no one else can do it.
And to your point about like early Disney animation, like Steamboat kind of style that is there, Like there is this there is this weirdness, this wonderful strangeness that you see in a lot of that kind of like early twentieth century animation of just like strange things that all of a sudden are alive and acting in different ways.
And you know, all of that tied together with this character you already know, Groot, it just is kind of magical and there's like a really childlike bit of wonder to it that translates because you're like, oh my god, what what thing is going to start moving next? Like what is this flower going to be? And again it's not stop motion, but it's the textural and simple.
Yeah, it's influenced by and it something that I find really it's very like Silly Symphonies as those old a
lot of the old Disney cartoons. I definitely had this moment because there was a big TikTok trend maybe a year or two years ago, which was the Silly Symphonies skeleton animation, which you know is like one hundred years old or something now, and I was when I was watching this show, I was just thinking, like I could definitely imagine in like a hundred years kids watching these as that kind of like, oh, look what animation was like back then. Also on a slightly more cynical but
also just very clever level. I have to I have a niece and a nephew, actually have many, but I have two who are young, and they both predominantly watch YouTube and short animation and short videos. So I also just think this is a really interesting cyclical. Back then, it was short because of the nature of the business and how much you could animate and how much you could want to pay people to actually make an animation, so you could only do it for so long because
of the technological developments at the time. Now that same format is actually the format of choice, especially for babies and little kids and stuff. So I can imagine that there's going to be a lot of parents who are going to be watching these five episodes a lot.
Yeah, do you have kids, put them in front of yam group, they will absolutely love it.
Up.
Next, What a tone Switch? What a What a content switch? Prey on Hulu, directed by Dan Trachtenberg of ten Cloverfield Lane, starring Amber Midthunter as Nehru, Dakota Beavers as Tabe, Dan Di Liegro as the Predator. This is a Predator prequel. It is so seventeen nineteen, and a young Indigenous woman is kind of bucking the culture of her tribe in being an you know, wanting to hunt, being an active hunter.
She recognizes that there is something out there in the woods that is not a bear, It is not French trappers, it is not a mountain lion. It's something else. And then she goes head to head with the Predator in an.
Action packed story.
Super This is such a surprise, like one of those really really fun surprises that you know, I was not sitting around going, oh, I can't you know a Predator movie. I can't wait for the next Predator movie. And it just kind of like snuck up and is great.
Yeah, it's really great. I was sitting around waiting for a Predator movie because I just absolutely love this franchise. But objectively, this is such a surprising, thoughtful, brilliant, stripped down way. It's not a requel, there's no original returning characters, it's not meta. It's just this absolutely stunning. The cinematography in this movie is just mined flowing for.
You know, for a smaller budget, mid budget movie, you don't feel it at all.
I wish i'd seen this. This is a classic situation, I think, especially because it's now. They released the numbers and this is who lose biggest launch for a movie ever. I think they're probably wishing they put this in the cinema now, I know.
Until Miguel Wants to Fight by Chase Rano and Jason Sepsio, directed by Ozrodriguez some time it's twenty twenty.
Three, that's definitely gonna be the biggest. We're gonna make sure of it on this podcast. But like that, I would have loved to see that on the big screen. They did a limited for Beyondfested a couple of screenings that were free. I didn't manage to make it out, but it is so good, and I think something that's really great about it is it's very subtle and slow in its beginning. It has this really why a feel to it. I love the idea of kids and younger
women watching this movie. It's very much this journey of growth, this journey of rebellion, but for all the right reasons. It's a slow story that lets you see the world of these Indigenous people and their community. Trachenbub was joined by Indigenous producer Jane Myers, who had a big role in making sure that the movie was authentic and showed real Indigenous life alongside the horror action of Prey. And there was a lot of work that was put in to make it feel authentic and real and not just
be like, here's the predator in this space. Yeah. And also but when it kicks up and it gets to that action, it's just so good, which doesn't surprise me to talk because Dan Tracktenberg, I love ten Cloverfield Lane. It's so so good and it very much has that slow, mysterious journey before you get to that wild action and Dakota Beavera's and Amber mid Thunder are just so good.
They're kind of revelations.
Yeah, there's something about there's something really invigorating about a story about indigenous people in North America that is not a meditation on the horrible genocide.
That was perpetrated against them.
That is.
People in their element, living at like the midst of their culture, amongst each other, amongst safety, amongst complete understanding about who they are. That part of it is really cool. And to do it as a genre movie, you know, with this kind of alien interloper that comes in just adds like so much spice to the stew. There are wonderful callbacks to the original Predator that fans of that movie will recognize, such as the moment that nauru Is
falls into some quicksand and then pulls herself out. A bunch of moments like that. But this is really a movie that stands on its own in a really fascinating way, and it's a cool moment for indigenous storytelling, like kind of like writ large what with reservation dogs, other stories that are centering Indigenous characters. Amber Midthunter has been outspoken about you know that she doesn't take period pieces. She doesn't want to do that kind of the tragedy of
what happened to indigenous people in North America. And man, this is a really really fun action, freaking action pat movie that takes a lot of surprising twist and turns for an action movie.
Yeah, and Amber mid Thunder's Naru is like, that's a final girl for the Ages because not only is the action great, and it's very much in the story. She already training to be a warrior. She has all these skills, but you get to these parts in the movie where her smarts and her wit and her planning are just
so good. That is like you will literally be responding out loud because her planning is so smart and it's so quick, and it's very much in that horror movie tradition of smart the monster, whether it's Jason or Freddie or Michael Myers or whoever, or the predator, and this is the first time we've gotten to see that dynamic. Really Yeah, Alien Bus, Predta Sana, she outsmart at that, But that's different kind of movies. But this is this is so much fun to watch and the final act.
I loved all the movie. I love the pacing, I love a slow burn, but that final act where you really get to see nuruin Tabe in this space with the predator, who, by the way, unbelievable predator design. It's a kind of really it's a different design. They actually managed to make the predator look scary with the mask off, which has never been done before. And yeah, I just I thought it was so much fun. If you love horror, I would say watch it if you also just love
adventure movies. I have a very high tolerance for horror, so it might be a little bit gory for some people, but in general, I think this is like a really great adventure action movie that just happens to have a little bit of gory. Predator glad.
I'm glad you mentioned the horror, because this movie does a thing that great horror movies, particularly great slasher movies, do really well, which is the monster at a certain point becomes like the sword of justice. Yes, our hero is absolutely at under threat from the predator, as is her beautiful dog sorry is absolutely like threatened by the predator at every turn.
You're wondering, like, is she gonna make it out of this. But also like the assholes who.
Don't think she can hunt, yeah, yeah, yeah, you pay the price, the French trappers who are abusing the land and don't know how to how to respect the land. In the same way the people who live here do and take Nauru captive and are indeed like torturing her to try and get her to help them hunt the presdtor. They will pay the price. Everybody who is, you know, morally out of line will pay the price. Is such a theme that I love about horror.
But you know what I love about this that you make such a good point, as like in especially original eight slash of Horror, which is so much one of my just absolute biggest passions, that morality is very Christian and heteronormouy and repressive. But here that is subverted to be about the real morality. It's it's the colonizers, the people who are destroying the land, it's all these different it's the people who, like you said, couldn't believe it.
It's the violent men who attack how there And in that way it becomes very cathartic.
Yes, it does. Love this movie.
If you haven't seen it, watch it now you can watch it on Hulu, and you can watch this. When you watch it on Hulu, you will have the option of watching this all in the Comanche dub version. Up next, Hive Mind with Justin helper Welcome to the Hive Mind, where we explore a topic and more detail with the help of expert guests. And this week we have a big time expert guest. We have Justin Halpern, co creator of the super super funny Harley Quinn.
Justin, thanks so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me. I am very very excited to be here.
Tell us about how did Harley Quinn begin as a project? How did this start?
I wish I had like this really amazing story that is about, like, you know, creativity and its inception. But literally this starts in the most kind of sort of like bureaucratic, large company sort of way, which is that I was under an overall deal with my partner and an overall deal Warner Brothers, and an executive for Warner Brothers Susan Rogner, who's now the head of Universal, called us and said, hey, would you want to make an
R rated Harley Quinn cartoon. We don't know what it would be about, but do you want to make it? We were at the time, we were like totally like in this. It was this is twenty sixteen, so we're like in this, like we've only been working in network TV right there isn't like a bazilion streamers.
It's like everybody's like, oh, could we get a Netflix show?
Like that was the only place, you know, And I was like, Wow, the chance to do like an R rated show when I'd only ever done like Vet.
Dead for CBS, and like she.
I was like, oh my god, yes, like please, Like it was like hearing the choppers come take me out of the prison camp.
I was like, yes, we want to.
Let we want to do this, and so they said, well, you got to come in and pitch it. Pitch your take, you know, because I think if they didn't like our take, they'd go to somebody else. And uh, you know, being a huge fan of sitcoms, my partner I were just like, let's do the Mary Tyler Moore Show but with Harley Quinn.
That's the center of it. And that was kind of how it started.
Yeah, I love that so much. I mean when post the pitch and kind of getting into the show, did you. Obviously, one of the biggest takeaways here, and one of the things people love so much about in an overarching sense, is that Holly and Ivy relationship. How early on was that a key part to your kind of long running plan for the show.
It was always in our heads to Hander because Harley. Our feeling was Harley herself doesn't feel like she can be the like lead of a show without someone to bounce off of.
So we looked at it.
When we went into the pitch, we said, it's gonna be Ferris Bueller and Cameron Fry, and she's Ferris, She's Ferris, and Ivy is Cameron Fry, and we knew we wanted that to be the dynamic, and we listened to, like so many great actresses read for Ivy, and it wasn't really until we heard Lake Bell that We're like, that's our Cameron Fry right there, Like we want.
That, and so we knew that that was the dynamic about.
You know, it was these two friends who love each other dearly, who the world has sort of given up on in different ways, and they're sort of all each other has, and one of them realizes that which is Ivy and the other one doesn't. She thinks the world all like loves her, and so we always knew that
was gonna be that dynamic. And then we knew we wanted to get them together, but we wanted to make sure the first season, which is like very much about Harley's like, you know, self discovery and of who she is outside of her relationship with the Joker, we were like, this is just you can't tell that story. She just immediately starts dating somebody else, especially her best friend, right after. And so we set our role for the first season
was there's no Harley love stories. There's no dating with Harley in the first season.
You mentioned Blake Bell. Can we talk for a moment about this cast. It's like not even a Murderers Row, It's like two and a half Murderers rose.
From Kaylee Cuoco is Harley.
I mean, you've got Christopher Maloney delivering to us what I think is the best James Gordons, James going in DC questioningly volenteutic, playing multiple characters, notably Clay Face.
We could go on and on.
Michael Ironside for the old school eighties sci fi heads, Tom Hollander, Alfred Pennyworth, Jason, Alexander, Ron Fun just how did this all come together? Andy Daily Vis It's like you could just go on and on. It's actually insane to look at how did this cast come together?
It feels insane to me too when we look at it, like I'm like, why don't all these people want to do this? I think it was this thing where Okay, so it's a couple of things, right, Like I've worked with actors my entire career, and there's something about being able to do when you're doing a vocal performance. It's like you come into a booth, you you're just like, you do not have hair and makeup, You do your ship,
you have fun, and you're out. And so first that first layer of like oh am I really going to fucking sign up for this is.
Kind of removed, right because they don't.
Have to go anywhere. A lot of them can't even do it from their homes. So there that let layers removed. And then I think this is really sort of a testament to Kaylee and Lake was that after we got Kaylee and Lake to sign on, when you're pitching to somebody, you're like, hey, do you want to do the show?
The leads are Kaylee Quoco and Lake Bell and then they're like, oh, well I'll read it then, where normally you're like they're like, well fuck off, you know, but Kaylee and Lake like brought this legitimacy to the project, and so we just kind of went on this run. We called it like our sort of like Vegas hot streak, where we'd be like, okay, now go out to June Carlos Posino, He's like, he said, yes, let's keep going. Let's keep going. Let's go out to Jason Zanders. He said, yes,
let's do it. You know. So it kind of became this thing where it was also you know, we were trying we wanted every character in the show to be what we call like a home run hitter, where it's kind of like, because no actor wants to come and do the show, whether it's like they're always doing expository lines right like, it's like, well what do you mean by that, Steve, It's like nobody wants nobody wants to
be that. But in this show, we were like, let's make it a point that everyone who comes on this show scores and they get to have fun and they get to be funny and they get to build this
character with us. And also in animation there's not usually a lot of improv, but for our show, we were like, have fun in this booth, go crazy, you know, and people just don't usually get to do that in animation, and so it felt like this place where like, you know, John Carlos Azito gets to walk off the set of Better Call Saul, and then he gets to come and be Lex Luthor who's talking about shitting his pants and it's fun.
That's truly. That sums up the magic of this show, like absolutely and something kind of talking to not only is it this you know two and a half Murders Rowse of incredible cost the amount of freedom that you have within the kind of harlequin Gotham world. How much fun is it? And has it been kind of dig really deep into everything you can go as deep cut as some weird you know, kite Man is a major part of this show before we even get to like cameos.
And by the time this episode's out, episode five will be out. So you also have you know, swamp thing, Constantine, quart of Owls, Like you're getting to do a lot of really cool stuff. What's it been like to kind of dig really deep into that and utilize that cost to bring these DC characters to life in a way we definitely haven't seen before.
I mean, that's been one of the coolest things about the show, right. It's like it's sort of like somebody like let you into their room that's filled with toys that normally they don't let anybody play with, where it's like, yeah, you have to brush my Barbie's hair this way, you know, and instead it's like, hey, have fun, do whatever you want.
And I think part of the reason that that happened was because I think DC at the time in twenty sixteen, when this thing was coming about, DC had sort of they had that real stigma right of like we take ourselves super serious, we have no sense of humor, and we're not fun. It's like that was like the how
the world was kind of like that. They had that stigma, right, and so when they came to us, they literally were like, that's not us, I swear, you know, like we're not those people like make a funny show and show people. We're not those people. And so DC really kind of like let us go. I mean, to their credit, like you know, I have no idea what it's like to work at Marvel.
I've never worked at Marvel. I'm only work to d C.
But what I can tell you about like DC is that they give you the rope to hang yourself, you know, and sometimes that that, you know, ends up allowing you to create something that you never would have gotten to
create anywhere else. And so for us, it was like, oh man, it's awesome, Like we can just go through some of the you know, and we borrow from some of their big stories, like we didn't No Man's Land in our season first first seasons, you know, so it's like we really tried to like do a show that comic book heads would like, but also if you've never seen a comic before, he could enjoy the show.
Were the takes on the characters kind of always there? I mentioned the wonderful Christopher Maloney is Jim Gordon, who begins, you know, is kind of this super super cracked out on caffeine like schlubby guy and has since evolved into like a kind of proto fascist who's like running for mayor.
Were those takes always there or.
Did it kind of evolve over time as the talent would come in and give voice to these characters.
So some of them did, some of them didn't.
We a lot every time anyone in the cast came in, they helped us build that character further. Like Chris Maloney was like, I mean we had said before him, we were like, look our Commissioner Gordon, if that person actually existed, he would have the most severe PTSD of any human being. A lot like there's no amount of therapy that would fix this broken man. And so telling that to Chris Maloney, He's like, great, and he could go to a dark place.
And then in some cases, like with Baine James Adomian, we didn't know what kind of bane we wanted.
We were listening to.
Takes a Bane that were all over the map, and James Adomian came in and he was like the two things happened. James Domian came in and started doing his version of the Tom Hardy Baine, and I was like, this is this is because he was like this guy, if he actually talked like that, he would be like his whole life would have been ridiculed.
And that's why he works out so much. Right, It's like beat a bullet.
And then the other thing that had happened at the same time is when we were doing the character designed for Bane, we had a whole bunch of different characters signs. We talked to a character signer, this guy Shane Glins, who did like the original Batman the Animate series, like this amazing artist bruised him disciple and Shane drew this, He drew our Bane that we saw and I was like, Shane, this is really funny, like why did you choose that?
And he was like, well to me, and is a guy who doesn't ever work out his legs.
He always leg day.
Yeah, he doesn't do leg day because he just wants to look good up top. And I was like, fuck, that informs the character so much, like just hearing that thing. And so that character was built by Shane in us and James o'domian and you know, that was how that one was built. So so we try to kind of like come in with the take of who the character is and then let the actor kind of build from there.
Yeah, and you you mentioned, you know, Batman the Animated Series, there's such a formative piece of art and creativity and TV show for so many of us. And obviously that's where Harley comes from what's it like to now be kind of redefining or reimagining who Harley is in this animation space, you know, decades later.
I mean for me, it blew my mind because, like you know, we look at if you look at Batman animate series now, I don't think you can fully understand how insane in groundbreaking it was when it There was literally nothing like it on TV.
Kids.
Cartoons didn't look like that, they didn't tell stories that way. Nothing was like that made the animated series it completely broke the mold for animation for kids. That so for me as a kid watching it, I was like, this is unbelievable, Like I couldn't. I was just like they made this for me, Like I can't believe this, Like they don't think I'm stupid, they think I'm smart, you know, Like it was like a TV show believing in me that I could keep up with it as like a
you know, nine, ten, eleven year old. So to be able to like build off of that in this show and to take hardly to a place that like you know, at the time we were doing it hadn't we don't be really taken her there yet it felt like being able to like realize things that I had kind of dreamed about as a kid. I mean, you just like so rarely get those opportunities in this business to like actually work with the things that inspired you. So it's been an unbelievable.
Experience for me.
You work on this alongside your writing partner Patrick, who together you also launched the critically acclaimed to abvid elementary Watch it now on ABC. How'd you to start working together? And what is that relationship? Like?
Man, we took around. We've been together.
I've been married for eleven years, but I've been married to my partner Patrick for twenty. Pat and I met we were interns at a band Apart Productions, which is Quinn Tarantino's production company.
Yeah, in two thousand and one.
We were working on commercials and music videos and band Apart was like the biggest commercial music video place they did. Pat I met right in the office when they were doing Instincts Bye Bye Bye video.
Yeah, that is unbelievable moment in time.
Yes, I tried to steal shit off this like that they had brought back from set for the INSTNCT video so I could try to sell it somewhere else. So broke and so we met there and we became friends, and that was of how our partnership had started. And we you know, we probably didn't make any money writing until probably like eight or nine years later, but you know, that was that was how our partnership had started, how we met, and we've stayed.
Partners ever since.
Yeah, how does that kind of inform you talk about the original idea of Harley and Ivy as friends and that kind of symbioic friendship that evolves over time. Obviously not romantic with you and Patrick, but like, how does that inform this story about two friends that's so key and then getting to work alongside it with your friend and partner for so long.
Yeah, it's funny.
I feel like it's kind of like infused into the show a little bit of our dynamic, Like Pat is much more Ivy and I'm much more Harley in terms of like And what I find when I talked to fans of the show is that they'll say, I'm in a relationship.
I'm the Harley, that's the Ivy.
You know, It's like it is a pairing that kind of like exists in the real world, you know, different obviously not to the degrees it does in the show. But but you know, I think like it is something that comes out in our writing. A lot of times work into these stories about like two people who have a deep friendship but also drive each other fucking insane sometimes, you.
Know, as Pat and I do.
And I think that's always the thing I tell people are always like, oh, I'm thinking about getting into a writing partnership. I'm like, well, you should say that in the way that you would say I'm thinking about getting into a marriage. It's like, well, you've got to like get into those organically, because you have to be able to have, you know, really intense arguments and disagreements and still like love the other person and come back from
those things. And if you can't do that, then that shit.
Is going to fall apart.
The relationship of Harley and Ivy's one that I think is deeply pro fans have you what's the feedback been, Like.
It's and crazy. We went, like the people send us like tattoos they get of stupid jokes that we made in the show, Like we have this joke about we have this joke where Ivy orders a cop salad.
To impress cat women. Yeah, and even though.
She's vegan, and and she's like, we should get a word of the cops squad, we get cops alls together
with the top squad. We should get tattoo, it says Cops Squad, Like it's a stupid joke, and then somebody got that tattoo and I was like, Okay, in real life, I'm like, this is the pinnacle of I think, you know, it's it's really like, uh, you know, I am a straight white dude, but I have heard a lot from the queer community that like this relationship being a like solid relationship between two people where we're not just kind of like having them break up and get back together
and it's fallatile in that way has really meant a lot to them. And like we had somebody come up to us at Comic On this year and say like that this, you know, seeing this relationship finally like realized in the comic book world and not like hinted at or something like that was just like in a really emotionally moving thing for them that helped them kind of like do the same thing in their own life. And I'm like, fuck, I'm just making dick and far jokes
like this. The fact that the fact that it did that is such a like an amazing thing to hear when you're just you know, and it makes you remember that like, oh right, like you make these things, but they have they have a life of their own as they go out into the world and like, let's put out shit into the world that we think is good, like you know, And I think that it's been really amazing to see the response to those two together.
Yeah, I think that kind of the dick and fart jokes thing is actually part of why it feels so profound, because it's like they get to be in a normal R rated adult comedy, but they yet to be queer. And I think like that and also, like you said, like for a long time that was implied then it became textraal, but really the show is the first place that gets to explore it in this kind of long
form way. And something that I think is really cool that you know, you guys talked about a lot, is this notion of as long as you're running the show, Harley and Ivy aren't going to break up. It's not something you're interested in. But now that we're there and we're in that space, Honeymoon period's kind of over. What kind of challenges does that bring to you on a storytelling level?
It's funny.
I actually kind of like looked at it in a different way. I almost looked at it as a feature, not a bug. Like when we were telling stories. When we were telling stories when they were apart, and we couldn't tell romantic stories between the two of them because they hadn't gotten together yet. There were so many stories where I was like, ah, fuck, we can't tell this
one yet because they're not together. And so as they're together, it brings up this opportunity to tell all these stories that we didn't get to tell the first two seasons because they work together, right, And it's like, to me, it felt like, oh, you know, like anytime you make a show with the will they won't they, the fear is that as soon as they do, the show sucks.
You know, like it happens.
It happens, right, If your whole show is built around will they won't they? And then they do a lot of times, your show is just like, oh, now they did, and they're a fucking boring couple.
Can't stand up.
And so I think for us it was like we kind of felt like, Hey, our show is not built around the will they won't they? So let's not put uh, let's not put that kind of pressure on the show, and instead, let's allow ourselves to tell, you know, the kind of stories you might tell on.
Any show with two with you know, two people are together.
Let's let's talk about the jokes for a second. I opined the other day on social media that that Harley Quinn has probably the highest joke per minute rate of a show currently on TV. I think people might quibble with that, but the jokes come fast and furious. What is the what's the philosophy there behind just absolutely spraying us down with jokes.
I'm gonna tell you a secret.
I think that it is built upon insecurity and self loathing.
Uh Like, come on, because here's why.
Because every time, like uh, I write a joke, or somebody, any good joke writer I think, writes a joke, they think, oh, this joke might be a total piece of shit, hacky joke. So if you write a thousand of them, then you're like, but if you hate that one, there'll be a different
one coming up next. And if you hate that one, there'll be another one that comes up next, and if you hate that one, and so so on and so forth, and so really it sort of comes from, like, you know, like I think probably we all have like that friend who like literally is always making self deprecating jokes and too many jokes, and you're like, fuck, dude, just calm down a second and believe in yourself for one minute.
And if and and but you know, in the writer's room, like you want, you always have that feeling of like, ah, but what if this one's not good? All right, let's write another one, you know. And I think that that's that's kind of where it was born from. And also just like the writers and Patrick and I like the shows that we loved growing up, like The Simpsons and Seinfeld and thirty Rock, Like those shows were all built on like a joke. Every two lines, you know, which
is a joke is just happening, happening, happening, happening. And I love those challenges in joke writing. It's just like so fun to see something that really hits. And so that's kind of why we built it that way.
Yeah, And I mean, I think that you will take such a brilliant takes such brilliant advantage of kind of the amount of good jokes there are to make about this stuff, like whether it is you're you know, like I've talked about this a lot. I actually talked to you about San Diego. So sorry for repeating myself, but I still I've watched the season. I think it's brilliant. I still can't get over like the Rube Goldberg machine death that introduces you know, we'll rap bat or batra
rap Bruce Wayne, you know, things like that. Where So could you talk a little bit about how how much? Because I just imagine it's the most fun but kind of that building those many many jokes in, but also always bringing it back to that comic book place, because that's why the jokes are so good. It's like so many of them feel like jokes you just make with your friends if you read these comics.
Yeah, I mean that's you know, it's funny.
Like I would say, the makeup of our writer's room, it's probably half the people are hardcore comic book fans and half the people maybe don't even read them at all.
Yeah, you know, And I think that.
We wanted that kind of split because we we wanted to make sure the show wasn't too insular, It wasn't too inside inside baseball, and I think that, you know, so a lot of times what we do is like, you know, somebody's making and somebody pitches a joke, we talk about percentiles right of who's going to get it right, and we're like, is this ten percenter?
Is this a forty percenter?
And it becomes one of those things where I'm like, it's either got to be a sixty percenter.
Up or it's got to be a one percenter.
And because that one percent, And what I've found is that, like you know, especially with that sequence you were talking about right, which for those who haven't seen you, it's like the mayor is killed in this crazy way, the mayor of Gotham City is killed in this insane Roupe Goldberg kind of way. And during this killing, a rat family is a rat family that is dressed to go
to a show, much like the waynes is. The parents are killed and the young rat holds up the mother's pearls like Bruce Wayne did when his parents, and we're seeing the origins of what would be this rat becoming batman, and I think that just became I remember in the moment we were talking about Batman, and we were like, how many fucking times are we going to see this man's parent stuff? How many times? And then I was like,
you know what this is. We actually made it into an episode this season, coming up, episode eight, but we were like, let's kill this guy's fucking parents so many times this season.
Then they never do it again that it's.
Just that we've ruined it for everyone else, Like let's absolutely just beat the audience to death with the amount of times we kill Bruce Wayne's parents.
And then we're gonna kill little rat Bruce Waite's parents. We're gonna anytime we.
See Bruce Wayne's parents, we're gonna fucking kill them because we just want this to be this like oversaturated thing where we're kind of like poking fun.
And again, to DC's credit, DC was like, do it. We love that rat.
I think, you know, as a when you're just watching TV as a pure audience member and you see, you know, an episode is written by so and so, directed by so and so, maybe created by some other names, it might be hard to kind of like grasp all the hands that everything tell us, like what, you know, how collaborative.
Harley Quinn is creating this show is Oh.
My god, it's insanely collaborative.
I mean, one of the things I point out is like, you know, we've gotten a lot of like goodwill about the queer relationship and the show, and I just want to be really clear that if it were left to be and Patrick, we would have fucked.
Up the reship.
I love accountability, love accountability, we.
Would we would have done a bad version of that. And the reason that we didn't is because we had queer writers on the show who were like, this is your idea is bad. Here's a better way we should go with it, you know, And I think that that's the thing is like a lot of times you see the written by credit but where you see the showrunner or whoever, and it's like.
But really, the thing is, it's like these things.
Are built in a room with everybody's voice, right, and then you write an outline and it's everybody's chipping in jokes, everybody's throwing in story ideas. Everything is, you know, everybody's putting in stuff. And so by the time it gets to a script and then you just rewrite and people are putting in jokes and people putting in new stories.
And people have different ideas and so it really is like I feel like, if you're in a good writer's room, you have a lot of different voices who all come from different perspectives, all helping like build this thing together in the best way that can build. And that's why you can have a show that, if left to the two dudes who you know ran it, it would have had a shitty love story that was probably not at all what people wanted to see at the core center
of it. But instead we're able to kind of like get it to a place that feels like it hits it because there's so many different people that are helping make the show where it is.
Yeah, and that is so much more, even kind of expanded in this case of animation, where you also then have everybody who's animating it and it's life. Like I make comics, and one of the best feelings in the world as a writer who is terrible at art is to get back those pages and see somebody bringing those stories to life in a visual way that I could
never do. So how does it feel, after the first part of that collaboration to then sit down and see these jokes and these characters and these kind of archetypal figures who inspired you in that format then come to life in animation. What's that like?
I mean this my favorite thing is like a lot of the animators who work on our show. Previous to this, they worked on like kids' shows. But a secret thing, a secret a secret thing about animators is they are so fucked up there. They have the most twisted minds of any human beings I've ever seen.
And so when you actually it's like when you take an animator who.
Has been working on like Pepper Pig or like you know, Unikitty for six years and you free them and allow them to be there like really twistedself, then you start geting stuff that is just like unbelievably.
Our team le Jeffer.
Coyle, Sessieronovich, the all, all of our directors like the there their team just goes for it, you know.
Like we have that in season.
In the fourth episode of this season, there's an orgy happening at the Court of Owels, right, And there was like a couple of times in the script where we like specified what was happening in the background, but mostly we put there's disgusting fucking happening in the background and a lot of weird squishy sounds was like kind of what we said, right, and we realized after we got back the first bortomatic of the show, the animators, the like disgusting ship that was in the background of that
episode was so vile and so like just like so discussed the sex acts that were in it were so upsetting that like we were like, wow, you can't you can never again stated animator like people are fucking in weird ways in the background because they.
So they bring with it. I wish you guys could have seen the very first got that.
Even even hwo Max was like absolutely not.
I love that they bought that because it's that episode is so it's so eyes wide shot. So I'm glad that they bought that nefariousness to it, even if we didn't get to see it.
Yes, there's the animation team. I mean, they bring so much to it. They add so many jokes too, like things you'd never that are not the script at all, are just like you know, put in in later on in animation because the animators just love having this like sort of like playpen where they can do what they want.
You're running for the board of the WGA, the Writers' Union, and you've been really vocal about getting animation workers animators.
Rights under the union. Walk us through that that argument.
Yeah. So you know, it's funny.
I have two We have you know, Harley, and then we have now this spin off of Harley, this Guide Mann you know show, and both those shows are not Writers Guild shows.
And that is a.
That is a function of the fact that I was incredibly naive when I came into the negotiations for these shows when we sold them. We came in and we we sold these shows, and we said, hey, we're Writers Guild members, so they're going to be writers skilled shows. And Warner Brothers, you know, the executors we were dealing with Warner Brothers were like, well, we'll run it up
the flag bowl. We'll see because they had never done a primetime animated show before Warner Brothers Animation had never done it.
They'd only done kids animation. It wasn't like Fox.
And when we were like three months into our our development of the show, they were like, hey, and we're down the road. We've hired you know, we're starting to hire people. They're like, we can't. We have to do the SCIATZI, which is the Animation Guild, right, which just the animation Guild. Great guild for animators, terrible guild for writers because the minimums that they pay writers, the script fees that they pay writers, everything is treated like it's
nineteen forty five. And while at Disney's screaming at them, you know, fuck you, you have no rights, You're a fucking pieces. Yet you know, it's like, that's how that's how writers are treated. I believe, and I think that Writers Guild needs to be covering that, right. But the only way we can make that happen with the studios is because it's so much cheaper for a studio to make a show IATZI because it means it means they can pay everyone on the writing side way.
Way way way way less. Right.
So the only way we're going to get all these studios to flip is if we, as an entire union collectively say we're no longer going forward, We're no longer going to create new shows that are animated that are not covered to our writers. Our writers are not covered under the guild. The animators can be covered under ass it's totally fine, yeah, but for our writers, they need to be taken care of by a writer's guilt. It is a guild for writers.
Justin thanks so much for coming on and talking to us about everything you're doing. And Harley Quinn please come back again.
Wow, thank you, thank you so much for having Rosie. I knew I saw you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was like, but I was like, I have to ask about that game because I listeners need to hear you explain it because it's like so good. It's what I also love. I deeply love swamp Thing and Constantine. So I was feeling very pandid too in episode five.
So yeah, I was.
I was worried about that a little bit because it's such a different Sam Richardson voice the swamping.
Yeah, he's so good, he's great.
And it's such a different version of swamp Thing than we have seen before.
No sexy boyfriend swamp Thing. You're going to be getting a lot of fan art for that one. Oh my god, I'm questioned, man, Bun swamp Thing. I gonna love it.
If I could just tell you one quick story about yes please Okay. So I didn't realize when we did the show the level of fan art I was going to receive sent to me on Twitter on a daily basis, and to the point, so so to the point I've gotten the craziest shit sent to me, to the point where I found out that sharks have two dicks because of a fan art that was sent to me where
it's King Somebody's drooped. They were like, hey, love your show, and then they drew a picture of King Shark in a straight jacket with wire wrapped around his balls and his two erect penises shooting out, and I was like, oh, I what this is insane. But also this is how I learned that sharks have two penises.
I guess this is coming from this.
Like the fan art is so nuts and so crazy and the weird it is the more I love it. But yeah, it's I'm hoping to get some good swamp thing din.
Art justin thank you, thank you again, and thank you for giving us the two dick story.
Well it's the story we need.
Thank you guys for having me.
Huge thanks to Justin Halpern, and of course to the great Rosie Knight for being here with us on X Ray Vision, Rosie.
What have You Plug?
You can find me on Rosie Marx, on Instagram and letterbox where I am this year updating every movie I watch, including lots of bad movies, so you can follow me there and judge my movie taste. You will be able to find articles about many of the things that we've talked about. I wrote an article I'm very proud of recently in regards to another horror movie we haven't talked about, which is Nope. So if you watched Nope and you are wondering if there's really an alien invasion themed electronic
store in Burbank, I wrote an article about it. It was real, Rip Fries, I love you. Yeah, you can find me ign Den of Geek, Polygon, all those kinds of places. You can still go to a local comic shop and see if they have a copy of Godzilla Rivals Versus Batchrup. Some places are selling out. That's been a nice surprise. Want to give a big shout out to Secret Headquarters. They did such a brilliant job facilitate in giving away copies of the comic. They are out now.
You guys really showed up, So thank you for that. And yeah here obviously every week with.
The additionally, we have ten yes, we have ten issues of Godzilliversus Batcheler to give away.
Hit us at x ray at crooked dot com.
Tell us why you would love to read this issue. Hit us with your address as well your emailing address, and the first ten respondents can get a free issue of Godzilver's Batra by the wonderful Rosie Night and Oliver.
X ray Vision is a new home.
The Takeline, YouTube and Twitter channels are now dedicated to all things xtra Vision. So go check out at Xrvpod on Twitter and x ray Vision on YouTube. Plus, we have an x ray Vision discord. You can find the link in the show notes. Our next episode will be on August nineteenth. Remember, send your House of the Dragon queries to Askthemaster at gmail dot com. And the five star reviews, we gotta have them, we love them, we
need them. If you're going to leave a review, please leave us a five star review, and starting now, if you leave us a five star review, send us the text of that review at our email address x ray atcrookad dot com and we will read your five star review on the air.
X ray Vision is a Crooked Media production.
The show is produced by Chris Lordensaulrubin the show is executive produced by myself and Sandy Gerhard are editing and sound design. News by Vascillias Phatopoulos. Dylon Villanueva and Matt Degroup provide video production support. Alex Rellaford handle social media. Thank you Brian Vasquez for O theme music.
See you next time.