Ryan Christopher (00:05):
I

Ryan Christopher (00:05):
Think we’re, Hey,

Ryan Christopher (00:09):
Welcome to another episode of Comex Recent Reads. I’m your host Brian, and we’ve got a great panel today. Up in the top, we’ve got the Man Behind Comics Network Australia, siz in the Middle. Shannon Browning

Shannon Browning (00:25):
In Wide screen.

Ryan Christopher (00:27):
In Wide screen, panoramic Shannon. Nice. And last, but not least, the Man with the Most. Justin McNamara.

Justin MacNamara (00:35):
Howdy. Hang on. Is this recent, this read? So I thought it was Beard Club. I thought we weren’t supposed to be talking about Beard. I’m on the wrong show. Okay. I’ll do this anyway. It’s all good.

Ryan Christopher (00:47):
This is a crossover episode. All right. So we’ve all been reading some cool stuff this week, and like I’ve said in the last episode, it’s spooky season, so a lot of us have been diving into the weird, the wonderful, the unnatural, the horrific. So before we get started, I wanted to ask, what is your favourite movie? Monster?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:19):
I’ll start.

Ryan Christopher (01:19):
Anyone want to? Yeah, go for it, sis.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21):
Cool. I’d have to say out of all the monsters I’ve watched, the one that scared me the most and creeped me out the most when I was a kid was the Blob. I still remember that thing coming up through the sink and sucking that guy down through that sink hole freaked

Justin MacNamara (01:37):
Me out. Like the Steel McQueen Block movie?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:39):
Yeah, the really old one. The old just went around dissolving people.

Justin MacNamara (01:43):
Yeah.

Justin MacNamara (01:44):
Wasn’t the Sink one, the Chuck Russell one from 89? The one that had Sean Smith in it?

Shannon Browning (01:52):
Yeah.

Justin MacNamara (01:53):
Really? I mean, it’s still really old.

Ryan Christopher (01:55):
Yeah. Oh, okay.

Shannon Browning (01:56):
Yeah, that was the remake. I think

Ryan Christopher (01:57):
It all mixed up. I never know how many I, I dunno. Three major feature films. Four of the Blob?

Justin MacNamara (02:06):
Yeah, blo of Blob. The Blob and another one.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:12):
Oh, wow. Okay.

Ryan Christopher (02:16):
Shannon, what

Shannon Browning (02:17):
About you? I’ve only ever seen, I’ve seen the original Blob, which had one of the greatest opening theme songs ever, and then there was the Chuck Russell remake in the eighties, which is, it’s up there with the thing and the fly. As far as movie remakes go, it’s a really, really good film.

Justin MacNamara (02:39):
Yeah, they’re the three, the remakes.

Shannon Browning (02:43):
Yeah. Everything else sucked,

Ryan Christopher (02:49):
But do you have a favourite movie Monster?

Shannon Browning (02:53):
Well, as you can see, this side, I’m kind of a fan, but my personal favourite has always been a creature from the Black Lagoon.

Ryan Christopher (03:03):
Nice, nice, nice.

Shannon Browning (03:07):
That movie, they’ve been trying to do a remake of that for so long and have just never gotten around to it. I even started writing a script for it at one point, but I’ve heard that James won is taking a crack at it at the moment, so we’ll wait and see if they actually get that off the ground.

Ryan Christopher (03:31):
One of my favourite things about that movie is Rico Browning. So the guy who was actually in the monster suit was a Navy free diver or something like that when he was younger, and he could hold his breath for a ridiculous amount of time. So all those underwater scenes are actually him in the suit swimming around. For real. There was no, let’s pretend we’re underwater. No, they actually dumped him in the water and they got him to swim down and hold his back and do all those scenes, which is pretty cool.

Shannon Browning (04:04):
Yeah, there’s a great documentary about the making of it. It was on the DVD release when it came out, and they interviewed Rico and he spoke all about it, about being in the suit. He was taking them around doing some location scouting and they were filming underwater, and they would say to him, look, jump in and swim around in front of us. So we’ve got something in the shop for some scale. And one of them just said, you know what? I like the way you swim. You can be the monster. He was the underwater monster. There was another actor who was the above water monster, so they had two suits made from the same mould. I think Ricko had a thinner chest, so they had to take chunks out of it in the middle. Unless you see him side by side, you wouldn’t really notice.

Ryan Christopher (04:58):
And Rico only passed away a few years ago, so

Shannon Browning (05:02):
He passed away either this year or last year. Like

Ryan Christopher (05:06):
The last remaining Golden Age monster

Shannon Browning (05:10):
Was pretty cool. And as you said, his full name, look closely at my last name

Ryan Christopher (05:16):
Browning.

Shannon Browning (05:19):
I remember finding out that the creature from the Black Lagoon had my name when I was a kid and just flipped out. I don’t, stuff like

Ryan Christopher (05:25):
That is cool. When you’re a kid though, it gives you some connectedness.

Shannon Browning (05:29):
Yeah.

Justin MacNamara (05:32):
What

Ryan Christopher (05:32):
About you Justin?

Justin MacNamara (05:34):
Boy, I’m a big horror guy, so this is a really difficult question. I think if I’m truly talking about there’s designs of the classic ones and all the rest of it that are just beautiful things. But I think if I’m going to go monsters, that surprised me and I love them because of the surprise. I’m going to be that guy in Pick two. One of them is what Shannon mentioned before, the thing from John Carpenter’s, the thing that was such a great monster that just continually evolved throughout that film and it’s spectacular. And the other one’s a little bit more obscure, but in creep show two, there’s a story called The Raft and there’s an oil slick that eats people and it’s the most surprising monster in a film ever. And even though it’s not like this beautifully designed piece of art, it’s literally just like a black plastic bag covered with egg in a swamp. What it actually does makes it such a spectacular monster. And the end bit, and I’m not going to spoil it, but the end bit of that film is such a great surprise that you sort of stand up on your chair and just clap your hands. It’s such a great surprise and I think that the best monsters are the ones that really surprise you. And I think that that oil slick from creep show to the raft story is amazing.

Shannon Browning (06:57):
Yeah, very close cousin to the blob.

Justin MacNamara (07:01):
Yeah, a hundred percent.

Shannon Browning (07:02):
But yeah, like you said, Justin, the simplicity of it, it was literally just a tarp that were pulling through the water, but it was all the reactions of the humans and a bunch of other things that happened as well that made it scary as hell. I remember that was one of the few things I saw as a kid, and yeah, that creeped the hell out of me. I don’t even remember any of the other stories from creep show too, but that one, yeah, that sticks out.

Justin MacNamara (07:28):
Oh, come on, Shannon, the Hitchhiker. Thanks for

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (07:33):
The ride lady. Oh yeah.

Shannon Browning (07:39):
What was she bragging about? Seven orgasms or something like that.

Justin MacNamara (07:44):
Amateur.

Ryan Christopher (07:47):
My own is probably the Xenomorph from the Alien universe, just because I think mystique gets me as well. So there’s so many monsters out there. We know so much about Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf man as created beings, but then there’s still so much mystery around the how, where, the what and the why of the Xenomorph. Even with all the expanded stuff they’ve done now with Romulus and Prometheus and the prequels and the sequels and all that sort of stuff. But it’s still, to me, one of those just eternally creepy monsters. You can’t go past it. And the fact that now it’s in comics and it’s in every other avenue of entertainment has had a sort of spillover from this creature. I mean, they’re doing Xenomorph versus Avengers now that Marvel’s got the licence. So yeah, it’s probably my favourite. That and the Wolf man.

Justin MacNamara (09:10):
Are you the wolf man? Because you’ve got the same bid that’s a beard club all over again, isn’t it?

Ryan Christopher (09:19):
No, but I did get obsessed by, I’ve watched it like 15 times the Marvel mini movie Werewolf by night. I still haven’t watched that.

Ryan Christopher (09:29):
I keep forgetting about it. Yeah, that’s really good.

Ryan Christopher (09:32):
Yeah. Yeah. And it also introduced man thing, Elsa Bloodstone man thing. How giant

Justin MacNamara (09:40):
Size was he?

Ryan Christopher (09:42):
Oh, he’s a giant sized man thing.

Shannon Browning (09:48):
A much better cinematic experience than his original cinematic experience.

Justin MacNamara (09:53):
Oh, how dare you. That had Emerson Bailey in it. How dare you say that, that had Jack Thompson and Emerson Bailey in it. How dare you talk foul of

Shannon Browning (10:00):
That girl. Yeah, it had Bill Bailey, it had Jack Thompson. It didn’t have Man Thing in it. Man thing literally shows up for about less than 20 seconds in the last five minutes of the film.

Justin MacNamara (10:14):
But there actually is a reason for that. It was an ma film and in an MA film, you can’t show a man thing for too long. They were like,

Shannon Browning (10:28):
You can have one shot. Oh God, he’ll be here all week. Tip your waitress.

Ryan Christopher (10:38):
Alright, should we get into some reads?

Shannon Browning (10:42):
We elevate the conversation a bit

Ryan Christopher (10:45):
Before we get into that, just remember to share, subscribe, help us grow the channel, help us make recent reads everything we want it to be and more and let us know what you think of the new format. So we’ve switched over from Streamy Yard to F Marks whole different group of settings and features. We’re still trying to get our heads surrounded ourselves. So tonight’s show is a little bit more bare bones. We’re not going to have any of the videos and special effects and all that kind of stuff, but we’ll get through it the best we can and hopefully we’ll have it all shiny and fancy by next week.

Justin MacNamara (11:24):
It doesn’t need special effects when you’ve got performers like these four really do you

Ryan Christopher (11:30):
We’re the special effects this beard’s not real

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (11:37):
One neither. This is all just my come image.

Ryan Christopher (11:46):
I like it. I’m just going to check some comments before we get started. See who’s in the room.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (11:56):
Oh, that’s what it looks like when you bring them up. I was curious about that. I didn’t want to bring one up in case it blocked all of us or something.

Ryan Christopher (12:04):
Thanks for joining us again, Jeffrey. We are going to tell you how to spend your money. We’re going to tell you how, where and why. Carol, thanks for joining us. Hello, mom. Nick May in the house. Thanks for joining us, Nick. Hi Nick. Twilight of the Dark Master.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:31):
That might’ve been the monster.

Ryan Christopher (12:34):
That may be a monster that might have something to do with Creepy. Not sure. Sp in the house. Get Hey mate, digs. Hello. Seeing people joining us from different places as well, which is fantastic to see.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:51):
Yeah, this gave me the option to put it out to more places than the old thing.

Ryan Christopher (12:58):
Ah, thank you Shawnee. Appreciate it. I like the new layout as well.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:03):
Yes,

Ryan Christopher (13:04):
And it is a lovely colour purple.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:07):
It is, isn’t it? Lots of purple. I went crazy.

Ryan Christopher (13:11):
Thanks for joining us Andrew. Andrew did some phenomenal work on Drink and Draw on Friday night, so make sure you jump on the socials and check out all the awesome Crow artwork that was dropped for drink and draw. Other than that, let’s move into some reviews.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:34):
I have a surprise. Oh, Dave’s di. Oh, Dave DI’s in there. Good stuff. He was asking where we were earlier. We started a bit late.

Ryan Christopher (13:45):
Oh, right. Here we are. Does anyone want to jump in with their review?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:53):
I can because it’s really easy.

Ryan Christopher (13:55):
Yeah, go for it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:56):
Anyone guess? Can anyone guess

Ryan Christopher (13:58):
You didn’t have time to read something?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:00):
I’ve been so flat out this week. All I’ve read is a textbook for my class, so I won’t show that I’ve done that before in recent reads. It was funny once. I don’t think it’ll be funny twice. So yeah, that’s me. So this show’s going to have three reviews, sorry to say. Well

Ryan Christopher (14:19):
Maybe take a moment,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:20):
Something that I’ve read a long time ago and I’ll come in at the end with that. How’s that?

Ryan Christopher (14:25):
Tell everyone where they can grab some awesome Aussie comics.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:29):
Oh, well of course, because we haven’t got the ad anymore. You can go to the Comex shop, you can put in Comics Shop, and that’s a redirect to the real shop. Or you can just go to comex net au and that takes you to the site that will have everything on it and the shop is one of those things. So top right menu is Shop

Ryan Christopher (14:54):
And there’s a lot of books that we’ve talked about in the past couple of months ready to ship out. So they’re just sitting there in the store waiting for you, just

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (15:02):
Sitting there behind me. Actually, that’s what you can see. That is the Shop. Oh, and there’s a few over there as well.

Justin MacNamara (15:11):
Nice to see a big box of Poo Heads behind you there, sis.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (15:14):
Yeah, you can see that. Can you? Good stuff. I haven’t bothered putting, they’re more protected in there than they are in there because they’re the wrong size for those black boxes.

Ryan Christopher (15:24):
Fantastic. So Shannon and Justin, does anyone want to go first with their review?

Justin MacNamara (15:31):
Shannon, you go. Let’s go down the list.

Ryan Christopher (15:35):
We’ll keep it linear.

Justin MacNamara (15:37):
Yeah.

Shannon Browning (15:38):
Okay. I wanted to talk tonight about DC’s Doomsday Clock. Nice. Now, doomsday Clock was the official unofficial sequel to Alan Moore’s Watchman. It was written by Jeff Jones, art by Gary Frank. And this is a story, I really enjoyed this. Now there were a lot of people who refused to read it and complained about it because what DC did to Alan Moore and what DC did to Alan Moore in regards to Watchman was bullshit. They managed to find varied in unique ways to screw him over so many different ways When it came to Watchmen that it almost destroyed his love of superheroes. It was so bad of what happened to him. Yeah, look it up if you want to and check out exactly what was going on. So from that point of view, yes, I can see what they were doing, but as someone who loves Watchmen as a story and loves the characters, I thought this was actually a really good story. Extraordinarily respectful, very well done. This is the story where they bring some of the Watchman characters into the DC universe. So you get to see things like Rorschach interact with Batman. The comedian gets brought back and is interacting with different characters. They introduce a couple of new characters called, I think they’re called Punch in Duty. That’s them there. That’s very reflective by the way. But yeah, that’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (17:36):
Them. They’re shiny,

Shannon Browning (17:41):
But they also explore this thing they come up with. They’re exploring the question of why are there so many superheroes and super villains in America as opposed to the rest of the DC Earth? And this whole conspiracy is levelled out that foreign interests are funding and arming individuals to become super villains, to cause as much problems in America as they possibly can to destabilise it so it can help their interests overseas. And it comes down to not really a battle, but more of a battle of, it’s not even a battle of wits, it’s more a battle of perspective between Dr. Manhattan and Superman at the end. I think it’s a really good read. I mean, Jeff Johns is a very talented writer. He did a terrible job of running a cinematic universe, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

Ryan Christopher (18:53):
We don’t have to give him the benefit of doubt on that tar and feather.

Shannon Browning (19:00):
So glad it’s Dan. It’s sucked all. Anyway, I had a friend of mine ring me up last night just to wish me a happy birthday and we spoke for an hour and a half just slagging off Zach Snyder and what he did to all that shit. But we’ll go into that. But who was, how does Gary Frank, who I read his Supergirl run back in the day, back in the nineties when they melded the matrix version of Supergirl with a human girl and she turned out to be an earthborn angel and all that sort of stuff made more sense when you actually read it. But his art, I think has always been beautiful. And his artwork is also very similar to Dave Gibbons from the original graphic novel. So they’ve used a similar sort of panel grid, so they used the nine panel grid for telling the story.

(20:06)
The whole thing is extraordinarily respectful to the original run. I just mentioned that Rorschach in it and spoilers, and I apologise, you do find out there’s a different identity for Rorschach. So it’s not like they just, oh well, we’ll just bring him back from the dead. Adrian VI is in it after he did his giant weapon at the end. They play on the fact at the end of Watchman Rorschach’s Journal was given to that newspaper. So the whole world’s out to hunt down Adrian vi. They found out that he lied. Yeah, I think it’s great. I really, really do enjoy it. I invested in, they had it come out in two trade paperbacks and they sold the first one, they sold part one and it came with this hardcover slip. So I bought that and then I think it was about eight months later, they came out with the second part. I don’t know if the two parts are still available with the hardcover, but I highly recommend it and if you get a chance to read it, read it with an Open Mind. Watchman is one of those titles that everybody thinks, oh, can’t be touched, shouldn’t be going anywhere near. But Alan Moore just created such amazing characters and they worked so well in that story that you did want to know more about them. And he also, he led up to a point where you want to know what happened after that point at the end of Watchman. And I think this is a really, really good, whoops. Really, really good follow on to that. But that’s my opinion.

Ryan Christopher (21:54):
Well, I remember from reading the lead into it and DC they did a great, they teased it out so well with the lead in to the Watchmen joining the DC universe, that whole rebirth era, like the button question and all that sort of stuff

Ryan Christopher (22:16):
That

Ryan Christopher (22:16):
Kicked off in the storyline, kicked off in the Flash I believe,

Ryan Christopher (22:22):
And

Ryan Christopher (22:22):
Then it evolved from there and I just thought they did a great job of actually hinting at it before it even dropped. So I know that I was super excited for, what was that?

Shannon Browning (22:35):
That was a good two or three years before that came out, they did the thing with a flash and they set up the button and they hinted at Dr. Manhattan being in the universe. But yeah, it was a long time before Doomsday Clock finally came out and they started giving hands.

Ryan Christopher (22:51):
Well, they did that whole rebirth error and then they got to the end and then they sort of scrapped it and you realised that it was like this whole,

Shannon Browning (23:01):
Yeah, it was Dr. Manhattan experimenting.

Ryan Christopher (23:03):
It was like everyone got reset. That was the great thing about it. It gave DC an opportunity to sort of include them and go fresh at the same time.

Shannon Browning (23:13):
Yeah.

Justin MacNamara (23:17):
Shannon, do any of the Watchmen get to meet their Charlton counterparts?

Shannon Browning (23:22):
Dr. Matt Manhattan meets Captain Adam.

Justin MacNamara (23:25):
Fantastic.

Shannon Browning (23:26):
Yeah, that’s the one that I remember. And then I’ll point out, I don’t remember if many of the others did.

Justin MacNamara (23:37):
I’d love to have seen R Shark in the question beat up each other.

Shannon Browning (23:42):
I would like to see R Shark in the question debate each other. I think that’d be much more fun than watching ’em trade blows a hundred percent.

Ryan Christopher (23:53):
There was some fantastic episodes of the HBO series. I thought it was great. Yeah, really epic and scope.

Shannon Browning (24:01):
I thought that was brilliant. I thought they did that really well, especially because it was the sequel to the comic book. They didn’t do it as sequel to the movie.

(24:13)
That series didn’t take away from this, and this didn’t take away from that series at all. It was just two different depictions of pretty much the same event. But yeah, I think there can still be a lot done with Watchmen, but it’s the fear of any franchise. You think with what happened with Terminator, the first two Terminator movies were brilliant and revolutionary and it was a great story and stuff, and now they announce another Terminator movie, you’re almost sigh like, oh, give it a rest, just let it die. And you don’t want that happening with something like this. So if they do another story every 10 years or every 15 years, I’m good with that.

Ryan Christopher (24:59):
Got a question for you, Shannon, from Jeffrey.

Shannon Browning (25:04):
Is it as stoic and poetic as the og?

Ryan Christopher (25:11):
It’s hard to replicate.

Shannon Browning (25:13):
Yeah.

Ryan Christopher (25:13):
Alan Moore language,

Shannon Browning (25:16):
They continued on. They didn’t try to speak in Alan Moore’s voice and Alan Moore really made a lot of that stuff Where the Stoicness and the Poeticness came from came from Alan Moore. This is a Jeff Johns story. Jeff Johns loves interconnected stories. He loves the minutia of what’s canon and the theology and the theory and all that sort of stuff of it. So that’s a little bit more what this book is in. Alan Moore was just, he wanted his daughter said once upon a time that Alan Moore just loves superheroes so much that he wanted everyone to take them as seriously as he did. And that was the mentality of going into Watchmen. He just said, these are fascinating characters, but if they were in the real world, they would be damaged.

(26:21)
It does show the damage of the Watchman characters, but it also does show the damage of a lot of the DC characters in it. There’s this whole subplot with firestorm that is really interesting to read as well. I don’t want to spoil it. It shows elements of Batman and his interaction with Alfred. It shows some of the characters from the Golden Age, so the Justice Society and that sort of thing. And some of the stuff that they had to go through moving forward, especially because nobody remembers them. They existed but they didn’t exist, but they still have memories of what happened sort of thing. What’s her name? Satin Girl from the Legion of Superheroes. She’s a major character in it, but she doesn’t have her costume, she doesn’t have her flight ring, she’s not swooping around or anything like that. She’s this girl that’s in an asylum because she keeps on telling everybody that she’s from the future and she can read minds and if someone showed up and said that to you, you wouldn’t immediately go, oh, well who wins the election next month? You’d just go, sure, you’re nuts. I’m just going to back away slowly.

Ryan Christopher (27:43):
That’s true. Alright, thank you Shannon. You’re welcome. The thing I wished with Doomsday Clock, if I could just change one thing about the whole story, it would be, I wish it was coloured by John Higgins. I wish it had that same total continuity between the original Watchman story and Doomsday Clock. If it was all coloured by John Higgins, I think that it would just be so much more seamless. But you can’t have everything you want.

Shannon Browning (28:19):
And once again, it’s almost a legacy sequel rather than a sequel. It’s like what they’re doing nowadays where they do, I was about to say Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, that’s a bad example, but alright, we will get one or two of the characters from the film that you loved and we’ll give them sort of cameos or moments, but we’re now telling a whole new story. So it’s a new shooting style, it’s a new directing style, it’s a new art style, even a new colouring style. I think Ghostbusters afterlife is probably a good example for that, where it’s just like, all right, yep, all of that happened. We’re going to drag the old guys in at the very end because they’re old and they’re too damn expensive. But we’re telling a different story in a different style that just happens to happen in this universe.

Ryan Christopher (29:13):
Cool.

Shannon Browning (29:14):
Yeah, that’s my opinion.

Ryan Christopher (29:16):
Cool. I agree. I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said about the book, and I believe it is collected in a few different ways now. So I’m sure if viewers go to their local comic book store, they’ll be able to get you a version of Doomsday Clock somewhere along the lines. If you want to check it out, Justin,

Justin MacNamara (29:42):
That’ll be me.

Ryan Christopher (29:44):
Yeah. What have you got for us?

Justin MacNamara (29:45):
Well, it’s still a horror fans Christmas, so of course I’ve gone for another horror comic. I’m a big fan of classic horror stuff, have been for years, and I’ve got a bunch of these collections, and this is creepy. Presents Bernie Wrightson. Now Bernie Wrightsons probably the guy that most horror comic artists wish that they were. And if they don’t wish they were Bernie Wrightson, they need to go back and read some Bernie Wrightson. But quite simply, Bernie co-created Swamp Thing with Len. We, he did an amazingly beautiful illustrated version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus, whatever you want to call it. And I think he illustrated Stephen King’s cycle of the werewolf as well.

Ryan Christopher (30:32):
Sure did.

Justin MacNamara (30:34):
His art is spectacular. And in this creepy was from Warren Magazines. They’re also responsible for Erie, like I said before, I think they did 1984, which was a science fiction mag. And of course Van Perella was, that was where that started. Now this book is a collection of the work that he did for Creepy and Eerie. It’s got a forward by Bruce Jones, who he worked with quite frequently in these years. And then it’s got collaborations with Nicola Cutie, bill Bay, Howard Chakin has got some work in there, Carmine Infantino, so some real classic comic people. And then there’s also an adaptation of a HP Lovecraft story and also an Edgar Allen po story. I think that for me, the highlights were, there’s a story in here called, so he does an adaptation of Edgar Allen post the Black Cat. And just an example of the work, this is, if you like, black and white art, my friends, this is black and white art at its fine.

(31:45)
This is an amazing use of blacks all the way through it. So that’s the black cat, which is the guy who murders his wife and hides her in the wall of the basement based on the classic detective story. My favourite story in here is a story called Jennifer. I actually put bookmarks in here so I didn’t have to search them. And of course, the bookmark that I wanted has fallen out. Jennifer, some people might know Dario Argento directed a TV version of the story for a TV series called Masters of Horror that shows probably 15 or 20 years old now. But it had Daro Argento, who’s of course the director of Superior Inferno and things like that. And it’s about a man who finds a guy in the woods about to kill a young girl with an axe.

(32:47)
The poor girl is horribly deformed and he saves her only to find that she’s not right, if you know what I mean. And just as an example of some of the amazing work that writes and does, he did a version of HP Lovecraft’s Cool Air, and you look at the detail in this. So this is the opening splash page of the story. Cool air, like double windows, every single slat in the Louvre windows. It’s just stunning work with just so much detail in it. And his work is somehow cartoony, but still horrific as well. He also did a story he called the Muck Monster, which is very much his love of Frankenstein is obviously in it, and it’s a real good precursor to swamp thing. It’s very much like the swamp thing, if he was more human than anything else. And Wrightson did a whole pile of So because Creepy and Erie were very much that anthology comic, it had comic hosts. And so he did a lot of the introductions that had, there was Uncle Creepy and Cousin Erie. And so he would do these magnificent portraits of these characters that are, again, absolutely terrifying, but beautifully cartoony as well.

(34:25)
This is a book from a series of books that I think Dark Horse produced. Yeah. So Dark Horse produced these. There’s also a Richard Corbin one, there’s an Lsid one,

Justin MacNamara (34:36):
There’s a one and there’s another one. And my Brain has jumped out of my, there’s also a few series of electric volume of Creepy and Rie. They’re like

Justin MacNamara (34:52):
A good 10 or 10 to 15 issues worth all bound together in an omnibus. And I think there’s each comic, so Vampirella, creepy and Erie, I dunno if they’ve done 1984, but you can actually get all of them in as a series of books. So you can have the entire volumes of these things, but they’re just stunning it. And Zen’s work, I say all the time with my own drawing is that there’s artists who, I look at their work and I think, why am I bothering Just Give Up and Wrightsons one of those people where whenever I try to do a pen and ink drawing and use a brush to ink my work, I’ll get halfway through it and it’ll be like, this isn’t like right since, I should just stop now. But yeah, it’s stunning. His work is just astounding. And the stories are, even though they are that they’re quite cartoony, as you saw by what I showed you, they’re actually quite terrifying stories. And if you can track down that Masters of Horror episode of Jennifer, it’s worth a watch because it was, I think it’s peak argento. I really, really love it. And Argento hadn’t really had much of a hit since sort of the late eighties. And for him to come back in that TV show and do an adaptation of a Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson story in such a magnificent way, it was totally worth it.

Ryan Christopher (36:20):
I think that Wrightson is one of those illustrators that just transcends comics very much like your Frank Frazetta, your Jack Kirby, his style, his influence on the medium sort of transcends comics into just art and illustration in general. A hundred

Justin MacNamara (36:42):
Percent. I mean, you look at the making of Return of the Living Dead, I think it is, I think it’s William Stout who designed the zombies in there. And when you see those initial artworks that he did, they’re dipped in Wrightson and Stouts are a great artist in his own. And to have a look at his work on Return of Living Dead in those very preliminary drawings of trash as a zombie and the tarman and stuff like that. I mean, even the tarman realised as an actual costume looks like something that writes and would’ve done.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:23):
That’s awesome.

Ryan Christopher (37:27):
If anyone watching’s got any questions for any of our guests about what they’ve read, just shout out comments

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:38):
While we’re testing this. Can the people in the audience see their comments on the left of the screen here? I’m just curious if you can read it because my screen’s tiny, so I can’t read it.

Shannon Browning (37:49):
I’ve got it open in a different window and yes, you can see it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:52):
Okay, cool.

Shannon Browning (37:55):
I also just realised that we have our logos beside our name there.

Ryan Christopher (38:00):
Yep. We can do, yes. Yeah,

Shannon Browning (38:03):
I didn’t realise that. I saw it while Justin was talking. So

Ryan Christopher (38:08):
Yep. Got a lot of yeses from the crowd.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:12):
Oh, good stuff.

Ryan Christopher (38:15):
Remember to subscribe, share all that Keeps us going, grows the channel and gets us access to more toys down the line. Alright, I guess it’s onto me. So this week I wanted to sort of pay tribute to one of the previous hosts of this show, and I got into the first three issues of Ed Kiley’s Radical.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:50):
Oh, awesome. Well, radical

Ryan Christopher (38:54):
It is radical indeed. Phenomenal book set in Melbourne about a new vigilante superhero who’s on the beat, max Masterson trying to figure out who he is and what his powers are and where he fits into the vigilante world. It’s got so much going for it. This book, it’s got huge early ditco Spider-Man vibes, that young guy unsure of himself and his abilities trying to overcome obstacles and just get through his life, but sort of keeps getting into trouble every time he turns around and then throw in the comedy of a Mark Miller kickass story. So it sort of treads that line between being quite a traditional earnest coming of age superhero sort of book with a violent, funny bit of filth thrown in their superhero comic in the vein of kickass. So this one is completely created, written and drawn by Ed. Ed Kiley with Colours by Cat, Melvin. And the art is really great.

(40:51)
It’s high quality for just a small scale indie book being created predominantly by a single creator, but he encounters characters. The first bad guy that he encounters on his patrols is dressed in a gimp outfit. And when you hurt him and cause him pain, he gets aroused and he gets stronger. So you kind of get to go on the journey with Max as he figures that out, which is wonderful. You learn a bit about the relationships to people in his life and he sort of fights a villain, tries to figure out how he can take him down because his powers are brand new. He kind of doesn’t really know what he’s doing.

(41:52)
I picked up the first three issues at the same time because I knew that I was going to want to keep cracking on with the series pretty much straight away. So I got issue one, issue two, which he teams up with another vigilante. I read them so I quickly because I wanted to get through them, but I was excitedly reading. There’s a lot of things that didn’t really soak in at the time, but issue two, he wakes up in Mexico, he doesn’t really know how he gets there. And the story sort of transitions between him being in Melbourne on the beat and then him in Mexico trying to figure out why he is there and how he got there, which may involve having explosive diarrhoea. But in Q2, he takes on a fantastic villain named Laser Balls

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:12):
Who shoots lasers from his balls. I love that. That’s my favourite villain ever of any comic ever.

Ryan Christopher (43:21):
All the heroes and villains have nods to preexisting heroes and villains from comics law, but then they tweaked. So they’ve been made weird and there’s something so very Aussie about the way that it’s done as well. There’s a female vigilante villain and she’s got giant hands and a mullet, and she’s called Slapper. That’s a classic. But he ends up finding out that there’s a lot of heroes out there. He’s not alone, and maybe there’s more to the picture than meets the eye. Maybe there’s something bigger coming down the pipeline. And he sort of develops a bit of a mentor and the mentor’s telling him, you need to be prepared because something’s coming.

(44:32)
One of the things I love about the world that Ed’s created is we find out that the old Gods, so the gods from ancient Greek and Roman history and things like that, they weren’t Gods. They were just superheroes of that time. So they were just people that had powers. And when the Gods died out for a long time, there were no more people with superpowers. And now they’re starting to come back and they’re all kind of localised around Melbourne for some reason. And part of the big thing that I think is going to get explored in super issues is exploring how that fits into the wider narrative and how that is going to, how are they eventually going to have to team up to overcome this coming darkness. But that’s the cover to number three as well. And they’ve all got the fantastic superhero covers. They’ve got the covers that you want in a superhero comic. And because Ed’s an amazing guy and I back his Patreon when I bought all three books he threw in a sketch cover. Cool, cool. That’s radical. I’ve been bugging constantly about one of his work in progress books that he’s putting out a extended and completed version of Final Dragon, which you can pick up in Comex Presents one, two, and three.

(46:19)
But he’s putting it all together into a single issue and it’s sort of got heavy double dragon vibes, which was a massive part of my childhood. So I’ve been bugging him because I’m so keen for that book. It’s outrageous. So he sent me this amazing sketch cover of one of the final Dragon characters, but he’s dressed in sort of a radical inspired outfit. He’s too, and if anyone wants something like this, you can head up Ed, because he does have blank sketch covers for radical number one. So if you do want to grab some original art support, a great Aussie creator, jump on it because I know to his Patreon and subscribe to his Patreon as well. You get behind the scenes access to all the different projects that he’s working on. You get to have your say, you get to chip in, you get to say what you like, what you don’t like, and sort of have that conversation. And Ed’s a pretty easy guy to talk to once you get him talking. But he’s an open book as a creator, so he is more than willing to share his process and thoughts with you as he sort of goes through the motions of getting a few more projects into print.

(47:39)
So yeah, that’s been my favourite book that I’ve read probably in the last month or so. Actually,

Justin MacNamara (47:46):
The comic store has skateboards too with

Ryan Christopher (47:49):
Radical

Justin MacNamara (47:50):
As well,

Ryan Christopher (47:51):
Doesn’t it? Yes, you can get a limited edition radical skateboard.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (47:56):
Yeah, I’m not sure how many are left because they’re all stored down at Ed’s place. I only have the one that’s mine. It’s mine. You can’t buy it. But there’s still a whole bunch in the store for sale. Different sizes too. I didn’t even know skateboards came in sizes, but there you go.

Ryan Christopher (48:12):
I believe last time we spoke to Ed about it, he said he does have some still in stock. Yeah,

Justin MacNamara (48:20):
That’s

Ryan Christopher (48:20):
Cool. That’s pretty cool. You could be the coolest guy in the playground

Shannon Browning (48:27):
If any of us were in a playground, someone to call the cops.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:34):
Now we’ve got a surprise if you’re finished. Ryan, are you finished? I’m not interrupting.

Ryan Christopher (48:38):
Yeah, yeah, I’m done.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:40):
Well, we had someone not be able to get on because of technical issues and then there was a bit of a mix up. I thought he was on next week. He thought he was on this week, so what the hell he’s on this week. We have Dave die. Hopefully he can hear us and we can hear him. Oh, there’s the man himself.

Shannon Browning (48:57):
Hey

Dave Dye (48:58):
Dave. Goodday everyone. Hey Dave. Finally got on air. Sorry buddy.

Ryan Christopher (49:07):
I’ve got to start out, Dave, by asking you the same question that I asked everyone else to kick off the show. What’s your favourite movie? Monster?

Dave Dye (49:17):
I’ve got movie Monster.

Shannon Browning (49:20):
No, from Showgirl

Justin MacNamara (49:27):
Or parts of her?

Dave Dye (49:28):
No, I dunno. I dunno if I have one. I suppose Frankenstein’s the old Frankenstein’s good, but maybe Dracula. Dracula. I’ve probably seen more Drac movies than anything else. So he’d probably be a favourite in his many renditions via different actors, et cetera. You’re talking about movies, aren’t you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, a week or two ago, I’ve watched a show for the last few weeks and all that sort of thing, and I was thinking I could have a go at that. I reckon. I reckon I could get on there and I could dribble as much shit as you’ve rest of you bloke.

Shannon Browning (50:19):
It’s a gift. Dave, we practised for years.

Dave Dye (50:23):
Yeah, well I’ll do. I’m pretty good at dribbling shit anyways.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (50:32):
Good stuff.

Dave Dye (50:33):
I’ve had years of practise. Anyway, what I thought I might have a discussion about is a comic series that I’ve recently reread, and I’ve got my camera here so you can actually see what I’m going on about

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (50:52):
Always getting fancy,

Dave Dye (50:54):
Fancy, get the right camera going.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (50:58):
Let’s hope it works with this software. Oh, modern technology people. Don’t you love it

Dave Dye (51:08):
There? Oh, here we go.

Justin MacNamara (51:10):
Yes.

Dave Dye (51:13):
Right. Okay. So this originally was, I had to look up Google and that to find out a little bit of the background info behind it. This is something that as a lot of, I’ve got a military background, so I’ve sort of drawn to this style of genre drawn in more ways than one, I guess you might say. That’s a joke. So this was originally a series that went from 1986 to 1993. There was 84 issues. Now I didn’t realise it was that went for that long and it was that huge. It was originally started as the fifth to the first was the germ, the seed that germinated into the nam or the Nam, as I sort of say it.

(52:14)
The fifth to the first was a sort of a small three or four page strip or comic that was in a comic called Savage Tales. The editor was Larry Hamer. He was approached by Jim Shooter of Marvel to create a bigger comic, have its own run. And this is how the Nam started. So Larry Hamer was the editor and Doug Murray was the writer. Now both Larry and Doug were Vietnam vets. They’d both been over there, so they knew what it was all about and they enlisted the services of Michael Golden to do the pencilling. So there you go. This was envisaged. I think it was just going to be a short run, but it proved to be quite successful. And this is a collected set that I’ve got here. It came out as individual comics monthly in this set that I’ve got here. There’s four issues in each one, and they’re the covers there all drawn by Michael Golden. His work is superb.

Ryan Christopher (53:39):
You can’t get much better than that error of Michael Gold.

Dave Dye (53:44):
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Well, he loved drawing technical stuff because the helicopters and the rifles, the equipment tanks, APCs vehicles are all drawn to a very high standard. Look at that. That’s the cover there for issue number two. He also did the colouring for this, and I’m not that impressed with the colouring. I think it could have been probably done by someone else and it might’ve been done a little bit better. But anyway, he did it and that’s what we’ve got. But it’s still a very good comic series representing life for an American soldier in Vietnam.

(54:37)
This was going to be, well, the way they set it out is every issue was a month in the heroes or the main characters tour of duty. So this is the main character, ed Marks, PPFC, ed Marks. So each series, each issue I said is a month. It represents a month. So for the first 12 issues, it’s the story of Ed Marks and the characters he meets, the things that happened going on Leave Saigon and meeting ladies who sort of, they take him down an alley and he gets hit over the back of the head and robbed. That sort of thing. So not just what was going on in the boonies, but also what was happening in the camp. Now it’s very interesting here you’ve got this top sergeant who works in the orderly room, this big American, black negro American, African

(55:57)
American, and he’s got the gold teeth and all that sort of stuff. And he’s after kickbacks. If you want a cushy posting, you drop him a few barks and you are posted elsewhere to a nice cushy posting. But Ed Marks doesn’t know that. So he just, I’m not giving you money. And he ends up in the frontline unit. So anyway, he gets his comeuppance in the end he gets caught. But that hasn’t happened until there’s a few issues into it. It’s a very good, well-written, well told and excellent art. As you can see, these covers are fantastic. Yeah, look at that. Beautiful.

Ryan Christopher (56:54):
Yeah, that’s wonderful.

Dave Dye (56:55):
That’s

Ryan Christopher (56:56):
Wonderful.

Dave Dye (56:56):
So the first three that I bought covered the 12 months of his tour, but actually they snuck in one extra issue in there, which dealt on the background and the Ve Kong story, the North Vietnamese story. So Ed Marks didn’t actually march out or end his tour until episode 13, so that’s where this one, and so it was on the 12th issue that he left, and there he is. This has got shinier pages, so it reflects a bit, but that’s him just getting on the plane there and leaving. But all in all, it’s a great series. I really enjoy it. Maybe I’m not sure, a lot of people don’t like war stories and that sort of thing. I know Roger Stitch always tells me he’s not interested in reading war stories. Maybe you’ve got to have a special sort of bent to your brain to be into that sort of stuff. But I love him and so I recommend this to anyone who wants to find out a bit more about the Vietnam War. It’s not all glory stuff. It tells the good and the bad. So yeah, that’s my little review on the nam.

Ryan Christopher (58:30):
Wonderful, wonderful, and smart marketing by Marvel Comics. To put that tail end bit into the fourth trade, it sort of makes you pick up the fourth one just so you get that ending, that proper ending. The character.

Dave Dye (58:51):
That’s right. I don’t think they’ve released the whole 84 issues in trade paperback. I think they’ve only, they’ve got this one. This is a different set. Initially it was just these three I think, and then they came out, they’re not printed on glossy paper. It’s more matte sort of stuff. But then maybe people probably said, Hey, you haven’t got the episode, the issue where he leaves. So then they may have re-released these as a separate, you can see that’s a more painted type of cover, a different style. There’s actually six issues in, I think six issues in this one. No, there’s 10. 10 issues. 10 issues in this one, 10 issues in the companion and they brought out a third, which has another 10. So there’s 30 all up. I dunno if they’re going to bring out another one or not.

Ryan Christopher (59:56):
Cool. You’re going to have people hunting through the bins at Supernova next month in Brisbane and find back issues and for them.

Dave Dye (01:00:09):
Yeah, that’s right. Well, yeah. Well if you like Michael Golden Art, he’s got an interest in style. And I can relate to this because I’m a bit the same. The figures are quite cartoony pretty soon, quite cartoony. But his backgrounds, his hardware, the helicopters and everything like that, very realistic. So you’ve got a contrast between the two styles of drawing styles of art. Some parts are very tight and others quite loose and cartoony. But it works. I like it.

Justin MacNamara (01:00:57):
Yeah, all of the tanks and the guns and everything in it are drawn with such technical expertise. It’s amazing.

Dave Dye (01:01:04):
Yeah, I was trying to, he really does a great job on these helicopters and he gets ’em from all different angles. Have a look at this helicopter that’s all getting hit by a ground fire there and it’s just getting obliterated. But he’s got all different angles underneath from on top, from in front, three quarter angle from the back, looking forward, just amazing. But even they take, a reporter goes out with ’em on one issue and the camera look at the detail in the camera and that. Very good mate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:01:50):
Awesome,

Justin MacNamara (01:01:51):
Dave.

Dave Dye (01:01:52):
Alright, that’s it.

Justin MacNamara (01:01:55):
It’s so funny. You should have brought that Dave. I’m literally, I’ve just dug out all of my individual issues of them to read.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:03):
Oh no way.

Justin MacNamara (01:02:07):
Is the full set. And I’ve been slowly going through them.

Dave Dye (01:02:12):
Yeah, right. Yeah. That is coincidence, isn’t it?

Justin MacNamara (01:02:17):
We moved recently and I discovered them while we moved and had completely forgot that I had them all and decided to stuff ’em from scratch.

Dave Dye (01:02:25):
Oh yeah, okay. Yeah. Well you enjoyed, I haven’t read ’em for ages and I dunno what’s inspired me, just the other day, I must have just picked it up. I actually picked it up for reference for the comic I’m drawing at the moment, and I’ll grab that out and have a look at how, and then I thought, oh, I just started reading it. Stop work I’m reading. So I went through my whole lot in a day and a bit. It was good.

Justin MacNamara (01:03:13):
It’s a hazard of collecting, isn’t it? You start to reorganise something the next minute, it’s two hours later and you’re laying on the floor reading something you haven’t read for 10 years. Yes, I know that so well.

Dave Dye (01:03:23):
Yes, I know. Yeah. It’s a pleasant hazard, I guess you’d say, isn’t it?

Justin MacNamara (01:03:28):
Hundred

Dave Dye (01:03:28):
Percent.

Justin MacNamara (01:03:29):
Hundred percent.

Ryan Christopher (01:03:31):
And what’s great as well is, so Larry Hammerer also very famously did the GI Joe comics for Marvel as well. So very, very much into war comics from every angle. So you got the more serious side of things with the Nam, and then you’ve got the more action orientated stuff with the Marvel comics.

Justin MacNamara (01:04:01):
And then as well, he did a Call of Duty comic based on the video game for a dark horse about five or six years ago as well. He was also, believe it or not, in mash.

Ryan Christopher (01:04:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Justin MacNamara (01:04:15):
Did

Dave Dye (01:04:16):
He played a degree culture in Mash? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Very versatile.

Ryan Christopher (01:04:22):
Yeah. He’s sort of one of those legendary comics figures now. He He’s had a million Lives in one.

Justin MacNamara (01:04:30):
Yeah, he was in a band in the seventies and

Ryan Christopher (01:04:33):
All of that sort of stuff. He’s done it all. He’s been in martial arts films, he’s been in all sorts of things. Wow.

Dave Dye (01:04:43):
I think he’s native born American, but he’s Asian descent.

Ryan Christopher (01:04:50):
Yeah,

Dave Dye (01:04:51):
Harma. That’s probably Japanese descent. Harma, that’s something. Yeah.

Justin MacNamara (01:04:59):
Yeah. He posts stuff on Facebook of his entire comic history constantly. And he’ll just casually post a photo, me and the gang. And it’s like every single legend of Marvel comics from the seventies, all in one photos and you just sit there and go, I would’ve liked to have spent just two minutes in that room with you, Larry.

Ryan Christopher (01:05:20):
Yeah. He’ll post a photo and it’ll be like him, Howard Chakin, Bernie Wrights and Bill St. Kevi, all these people just together in the same room just hanging out.

Justin MacNamara (01:05:33):
And it literally is usually titled Hanging Out and it’s like,

Ryan Christopher (01:05:39):
And there’s always someone not wearing a shirt. Yeah, always, always.

Dave Dye (01:05:46):
Okay, what’s going on there?

Ryan Christopher (01:05:49):
Seventies? It was the seventies,

Dave Dye (01:05:52):
Man. Oh, you never know. One day people might look back at this. Oh, you remember the old Ryan Christopher and Shannon Browning and Sizzle and Justin. They’re all sitting there around Gibbon used to see ’em getting together and they’re legends of the time, mate. I reckon this time next year that’ll happen. And

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:06:13):
Scis always taking his shirt off.

Ryan Christopher (01:06:20):
And that’s the thing that no one knows about Scis is that beard goes all the way down. It’s a black beard under the grey. It’s likes like a Dickie just goes all the way down the front.

Shannon Browning (01:06:32):
Excuse

Justin MacNamara (01:06:33):
Me, Dick too is

Ryan Christopher (01:06:35):
Dicky.

Shannon Browning (01:06:39):
He sometimes likes to weave it in with his leg hair and play it like a harp.

Justin MacNamara (01:06:47):
And it’s some that disgusting and hilarious at the same time.

Ryan Christopher (01:06:58):
It’s that time of the night that we fall into depravity. It’s like all the work’s been done.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:07:06):
Even way, all my secrets. I’ll shut up now.

Ryan Christopher (01:07:10):
As always, if you want to be on the show down below, head to the Link Comex Show slash Interest. Fill out the form. There’s a couple of different shows that you can express interest in being on. So there’s Friday night drink and draw. There’s, let’s Make a comic. There is the Oz Comics Show.

Ryan Christopher (01:07:34):
Yeah,

Ryan Christopher (01:07:35):
Sorry. And I believe that Chinwag is still in hiatus, but keep an eye out for all the different shows are coming down the line because we’d love to see you involved. We’d love to see you on here. It doesn’t take much, it just takes you reading a comic and being willing to tell everyone about it. I just realised something that I kind of wanted to do as well because s Shannon, Justin, you guys have been on the show with me a couple of times now, but Dave, this is the first time having you on the show with me being the host. So I just wanted to actually just take a moment and just say if you wanted to tell everyone just a little bit about you, a little bit about your history with Australian comics and where they can find your work.

Dave Dye (01:08:34):
Alright. Okay. Well I’ve been part of Comex for since How long sis?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:08:42):
Since the beginning. Since the beginning. You are one of the first.

Dave Dye (01:08:46):
Yeah. So we got, thank goodness that Sizzle got the calendar organised way back when it happened a few years ago. And so I’ve been with comics ever since and it’s been a fantastic avenue to meet other like-minded comics creators. And I highly recommend anyone who’s just happened to be watching Join the club, get in here and get involved because there’s a lot of great people here. So we’d love to see anyone. All new faces are welcome. We’d love to see ’em on the shows.

Ryan Christopher (01:09:24):
Agreed.

Dave Dye (01:09:26):
Please get involved with us. We’re not cliquey. We’re quite friendly and we like to have a bit of a joke and we’re very welcoming. What else? Set for sea? I said send me the link. Si. And he said, yeah, no worries mate. And the night comes along and he ignoring me. Tell him what happened. I sent you the YouTube link. Anyway. Anyway, that’s history and that’s part of it. Nobody tell Dave, nobody tell Dave I was starting to get a bit paranoid. They don’t want me on classic. It’s all good fun and don’t take anything too seriously. It’s all good. What have I been doing? I’ve got a comic called Amazing Tales. This is amazing. That’s one of them. That one’s, this is the recent one, the most recent one out that’s available in Comic Shot. They’re all available in the comic

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:10:45):
Shop. Yep. They’re all in the comic shop. True.

Dave Dye (01:10:51):
I’ve been doing comics since 2016 or something. I did 2000 before that. I did the Anzac Legend, which is a book, a hardbound book about the history of the landing at Gallipoli, which is a graphic history. So I don’t know if I’ve got that one of them in the portal handy. No, can’t find one there. This is what I’m working on at the moment. You might be able to see, I do all my stuff on paper, all my work. Hand lettered and nice hand lettered hand inked. I use a brush and Indian ink. That’s the page I’m working on today is a page I did the day yesterday or the day before. Oh cool. Wow. Well

Ryan Christopher (01:11:52):
That’s really nice, Dave. That’s amazing.

Dave Dye (01:11:57):
Little bit of action and humour. You can see the military side of it involved there. That’s why I, that’s why. So yeah, that’s what I’m working on at the moment. That’s amazing. Tales number nine, which will be out when I finish it. Can’t wait. I can’t tell you when that’ll be yet. Maybe another month or so.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:12:24):
Dave. Top. Top.

Dave Dye (01:12:26):
Okay. Alright, that’s it. See you later. That’s you for me.

Ryan Christopher (01:12:30):
Thanks

Ryan Christopher (01:12:31):
Dave.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:12:34):
We’re fighting over who gets to take. We’re

Ryan Christopher (01:12:36):
Fighting over the button.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:12:37):
Fighting over the button.

Ryan Christopher (01:12:39):
And you can find Dave’s work in the comic shop so you can find copies of amazing Tales. I’ve read the Amazing Tales. Beowulf loved it. Thought it was a great book. They did a great job of breaking down an incredibly complex piece of English literature into an easy to digest comics format that gets the moral of the story. It gets all the beats, everything that you need and the artwork is fantastic. So if I can give you a recommendation, it would be definitely pick up a copy of Amazing Tales Beowulf at a bare minimum. But you’re going to love any of Dave’s work. A lot of personality goes into it. It’s fantastic.

Dave Dye (01:13:22):
Thanks mate.

Ryan Christopher (01:13:23):
You can often catch Dave on Friday night drink and draw as well. And I know as a long time watcher, it’s always a pleasure to watch you draw live. I think that the quality of the work that you do sort of under that microscope is very high and it’s a pleasure to watch.

Dave Dye (01:13:47):
Thanks mate.

Ryan Christopher (01:13:48):
You’re welcome.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:13:54):
So this is where we’d normally play a video.

Ryan Christopher (01:13:56):
We would, we’d normally have a video that would tell you where you can buy some freshly inked inspiration. And we tell you to go to the comic shop. So that could be Comex shop, so that’s COMX Shop or comex net au. Both those links will get you where you need to go and you can pick up, honestly, some of the best Indie Australian comics that are going around. I don’t think that there’s anything you can pick up where you’ll be disappointed. You can pick up books by a whole bunch of creators that have been on our show over the past few months and

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14:49):
I just got a count on them. And we are at 126 different issues.

Ryan Christopher (01:14:55):
Wow.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14:55):
26 comics, 126 different issues.

Ryan Christopher (01:14:59):
See Dave’s holding up some there, detective. Yeah, there’s some from the shop

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:02):
There that Dave’s holding up

Ryan Christopher (01:15:03):
Nick Cleary.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:05):
And if you in Australia, it’s $9 flat rate postage. So buy one comic, buy a dozen comics.

Ryan Christopher (01:15:12):
You held up a copy of that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:14):
Everything. Buy 126 comics, $9 postage. How’s that?

Ryan Christopher (01:15:20):
Blade Whip.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:22):
Oh, blade Whip. I love that one.

Ryan Christopher (01:15:27):
Is it Blade Web? That’s the name, right? It’s Blade Web.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:29):
Yeah. Blade Web by Sean Craig.

Ryan Christopher (01:15:31):
Yeah, Sean was going to be on the show tonight, but we had some technical issues. So hopefully we’ll get Sean back on the show next

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:38):
Week. I’ll try to solve them over the week. He could be on Next. Oh, presents

Ryan Christopher (01:15:47):
One of the books. I was siz

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:48):
And finally send them. Oh gee. Well,

Ryan Christopher (01:15:51):
And then Sizzle and Doug.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:53):
Yeah, I love that one.

Dave Dye (01:15:58):
Oh, we going to go through the whole list, mate. We’ll be here all night. Oh wow. You’ve gone,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:16:02):
I know you’ve come to the shop a couple of times. I didn’t realise it was that often.

Justin MacNamara (01:16:06):
That makes

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:16:08):
For nine bucks. You are now not only the best seller in the shop, but looks for you’re the best customer for the shop.

Dave Dye (01:16:17):
I’ve got another order in there. I hope you might be packaging up this weekend.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:16:21):
Yeah, it’s right there.

Dave Dye (01:16:22):
I’ve got to send it out this week. Good on you. Thanks mate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:16:26):
Yeah, we love that guy.

Ryan Christopher (01:16:30):
So that brings us to the end of the show, another great week of recent reads. Thank you everyone for letting us know what you’ve been reading, what you thought. Thank you everyone for tuning in and thank you for your comments, like share, subscribe. Like I say, we need to grow the channel and we need your help to do that. So if you’ve got a friend who enjoys comics, just share the link.

Ryan Christopher (01:17:00):
Yeah,

Ryan Christopher (01:17:00):
Hook us up on YouTube. Give it a share. There we go. Nathan Judd, personal message for Shannon Browning. Shannon missed

Ryan Christopher (01:17:14):
It.

Ryan Christopher (01:17:15):
You’re going to miss him

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:16):
For a while. Opposing shows.

Ryan Christopher (01:17:22):
If you want to go back if few episodes, you can watch a sidebar where Judi and Shannon go on a 45 minute side by exposition into the world of

Justin MacNamara (01:17:34):
Transform. They literally transformed the show. They did exactly what was on the, they did both.

Shannon Browning (01:17:42):
There was more to that met the eye. But anyway, but we love you both.

Ryan Christopher (01:17:49):
Anyway, you can catch us next week, 7:00 PM Australian Eastern Standard Time, 8:00 PM Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time. Until then, check us out on YouTube, watch the back catalogue, like, subscribe, comment, and let us know what you want to see. But until then, we will catch you next week. So thank you

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:13):
Night. All

Ryan Christopher (01:18:14):
Good night. See.