Ryan Christopher (00:19):
We got there in the There go. We got there eventually. It is Monday night. It is time for another episode of Comex Recent reads. I’m your host Ryan. Joining me is Ciz, that Comex guy man behind the Comex Network Australia. Sean Craig, give us a wave. Sean, Justin McNamara and Judge. Good. Hello.

Nathan Judd (00:52):
Peace.

Ryan Christopher (00:55):
We’ll get it in frame. All right. So we’ve been reading some cool books this week, but as always we’ll start off with a wild card question and that today is a lot of us are drawn to comics through the artist or the writer, or a bit of both going to throw it out to you guys. Is there anything in particular that catches your eye first when you’re looking at a creative team?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:24):
I’ll go first. Everyone else is in there. Well, I don’t really look at the creative team to be honest. I forget half their names. So I just see the art on the cover and then I open it to make sure the art’s the same inside. I like that. I’ll pick it up and I’ll read it. If I like the story, I’ll get the next one. If I don’t like the story, I won’t get the next one. So it’s a bit of both.

Ryan Christopher (01:46):
Nice. The

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:47):
Art will get in, the writer will keep me there.

Ryan Christopher (01:50):
I know there’s a lot of artists out there at the moment that have that very problem with the whole market for variant covers right now because that’s very much a part of comic books, right? It’s like the cover is selling the book itself, but nine times out of 10 now, you could go to your local comic books store, pick up the book, and the artwork that’s on the cover is not even remotely the same as the artwork, the interior lipstick on a pig. That’s what it is. Lipstick on a pig sometimes. Sometimes it’s,

Nathan Judd (02:26):
Yeah, in two minds about it. I don’t mind it necessarily. I used to hate it, but now I expect it to be different. So maybe I just know better now. I’ve been jaded. I’ve been hurt too hard.

Ryan Christopher (02:41):
What drives you first?

Nathan Judd (02:45):
Because I’m an artist. I would say art has been the primary draw card for me, but I would say more recently I’ve been really struggling to find something that I’ve actually enjoyed reading that I read and go, oh, that’s actually good, and it doesn’t feel like a chore. So I’ve actually been swinging the other way and going, what’s an interesting writer with a story that kind of encapsulates or keeps me engrossed a little bit more because yeah, I’ve just been struggling to just even, cause I’ve been going through different books for this week and I was like, man, I read a lot of duds or I went back and read something I thought I liked and I was like, God, these are garbage.

Ryan Christopher (03:32):
Do you find by doing that, do you find by doing that, that you’re going back and reading some things where initially maybe the art style wouldn’t have grabbed you, but because of who’s written it, you’ve sort of been more willing to dive into

Nathan Judd (03:46):
The book? Yeah, I’m definitely more open to it as long as it’s not too abstract. Yeah, I think if the story is really strong, it’s going to carry. I think it’s always that thing. One’s going to kind of carry the other. In a dream world, both are really good, but because everyone’s so different in what they’re like, I feel like there’s always going to be one that’s a bit stronger for you. But yeah, I think recently, the last few months, maybe it’s because I have been focusing on writing and storytelling more, but it’s just trying to find something that keeps you engrossed in it. Especially if you don’t like the art, you really need that to carry. And this is also come from someone who’s like, oh look, I’ve got brigade. It’s fantastic, fantastic story. This is exactly, I grabbed this. I’m like, oh, it looks great. What story have we got in this one? Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah, no story. So I’ve been on both sides. I think it depends on where you are in that space. So yeah, right now I’m on the writer’s side, so Sounds good. Comment

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (04:49):
For you, Nathan.

Nathan Judd (04:51):
This is great art and story. I will, great character

Ryan Christopher (04:56):
Jeff. Good to see you back. Great personality. We always appreciate the comments. Sean, what appeals to you more straight off the bat story or the art?

Shaun Craike (05:15):
That’s actually a pretty good question for me. I would probably say both.

Ryan Christopher (05:22):
Having a little bit of trouble hearing you.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:25):
Have you changed browsers? Sean? Your sound’s gone like it was last time.

Shaun Craike (05:30):
Really?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:31):
Yeah. Or you’re just not close enough to the phone, one or the other?

Shaun Craike (05:34):
No, I’m probably not close enough. Can you hear me a bit better?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:38):
A little bit,

Shaun Craike (05:44):
Yeah, this is, sorry, your sound.

Ryan Christopher (05:57):
You might need to speak into the microphone just for a bit, Sean, because we’re just struggling to Yeah, struggling to hear you. Sorry buddy.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:05):
It was working so well before too,

Ryan Christopher (06:07):
Maybe. Is there anything that could be obstructing the microphone on the phone?

Ryan Christopher (06:14):
No,

Ryan Christopher (06:21):
I’m just seeing if there’s anything I can do on my end to increase the volume. Increases volume. I can’t increase it anymore than it’s already increased. Okay.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:39):
Maybe pick up your phone and talk into the microphone part.

Shaun Craike (06:44):
Yeah, hold on that please. Okay. Is that any better?

Ryan Christopher (06:50):
That’s better,

Shaun Craike (06:51):
Yeah. Okay. So yeah, with creative teams, probably both writer and artist, the team probably what I usually go for, I do go for either writer for artists, but the thing is just if I had to choose between writer and artist, probably the writer because if it’s got a good story, but the arts, if the art’s not very good, but if it’s got a good story, I can actually stick with that. But you got, if the art, the story just good, it just becomes a very difficult swab to read.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (07:44):
No, that that’s right. The

Ryan Christopher (07:46):
Little one that makes sense.

Shaun Craike (07:49):
It is. Usually I go for the team, especially when Gar Anderson, Steve Dylan, back when he was alive together, they were a great team. They make such great stuff and Brent Morris Morrison with Frank Qui.

Ryan Christopher (08:12):
Yeah,

Shaun Craike (08:13):
That was a great little team as well. You remember

Ryan Christopher (08:19):
That’s what’s so great about comics is you get those groups that work so well together and then put out a body of work rather than just one particular story. I think we get spoiled in that way when you get two creators that work so well together. The one that always comes to mind for me is that that Batman run that started with the new 52 and went all the way through, was it last night on Earth and Dark Nights of Metal and all that sort of stuff with Snyder and Capullo, a team that sort of hadn’t done anything together before, but then put out an incredibly iconic body of work that it was like you didn’t have to be familiar with what they were planning. You just had to go, okay, well I trust the creative team, so I’ll pick up the book and jump in. And there’s been so many people, like you say, with Ennis and Dylan Morrison and a number of artists where Mark Miller and a group of artists as well, where you can sort of trust that, okay, I’ve liked their work before. I’m going to like it again.

Nathan Judd (09:37):
Think, yeah, I could follow And s are both heavy hitters though. That’s both that dream team kind of territory.

Ryan Christopher (09:45):
I mean, maybe it’s just me. I wouldn’t say that Snyder, Scott Snyder, I wouldn’t say that he was necessarily a heavy hitter before Batman.

Nathan Judd (09:54):
Yeah, I guess I’ve come in after. So for me, he was always famous. I don’t actually like his most everything I’ve read from him, I like Ka. That’s one case where Chipolo has carried every single issue I’ve read from him, but a lot of people like him, so I get it. But yeah, to me he’s always just been this big enigmatic kind of writer, so must be something.

Ryan Christopher (10:19):
What do you think Justin?

Justin MacNamara (10:24):
For me, honestly, I couldn’t give two hoots about the writer with most of my comics. I couldn’t even tell you who wrote most of them, but I could tell you every single time who drew it. I’m attracted a hundred percent by the art. And if it’s good art, no matter how bad the story is, put it this way, I bought John Burns the Babe. So I was completely there for the art. I wasn’t there for the story. And there’s a lot of good artists. There’s a lot of good artists that have had crappy stories, but the comics have still sold. Well, there is very few with good writing, but crappy art comics is a visual medium. No matter how good the script is. If the actors aren’t good, that movie’s going to fail. And I feel the same way about comics. No matter how good the script is, if the art isn’t good, it’s going to fail and you can stick as many lenticular or whatever covers on the front of it. Eventually people will open it and go, oh, this looks like crap. And half of the people will, I think would give a more forgiving for bad writing than they are for bad art.

(11:36)
There is a lot of artists who disappeared down the toilet very quickly after the whole image thing came and went because they were just emulating other people’s art and they’ve not been seen again. But like I said, as far as writing’s concerned, I barely noticed the writer’s name. I’m sorry to all of the writers out there. It’s not that I’m being critical of the thing, but for me of your work. But one of my favourite comics is the defenders from the seventies. There’s barely a good issue there, but gee, the art is consistently awesome all the way through. So yeah, I’m art all the way

Shaun Craike (12:23):
Version of defenders.

Justin MacNamara (12:25):
What was that?

Shaun Craike (12:27):
Did you get to read Eric licence version of Defenders?

Justin MacNamara (12:30):
Yeah, the worst comic book ever made. He printed that on the front cover. He had the worst comic book ever made on the front cover of the last couple of issues of it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:43):
No way.

Justin MacNamara (12:44):
Yeah, I watched Terry Dodson did. But yeah, again, I know that Dodson drew the fearless of defenders and I know that Larsson drew his run, but I dunno who wrote those. If it was Larson, yeah, maybe.

Shaun Craike (13:01):
Yeah, Larson was, I think Larson was writing that as well. I remember when it came out, when I was living with Brian Bella back at the time, he brought it because he’s a massive Eric Tonne, his God, and we were both reading it and we were just like, dude, this kind of book Dark Ball man, I’m a fan of, it’s trying to be funny. It’s funny beating the crap out of each other.

Nathan Judd (13:34):
That’s the whole thing about it is explosions.

Justin MacNamara (13:39):
I think there’s some,

Shaun Craike (13:41):
Lason was only doing it just to get the money.

Justin MacNamara (13:43):
Yeah, a hundred percent.

Shaun Craike (13:44):
Like Travis Dragon back at the time wasn’t getting as much money as it was back when it started.

Justin MacNamara (13:52):
I think there’s some artists who are good at writing their own art. Some of the stuff that Kirby did for DC was amazing and Burns fantastic four and stuff like that. But I think sometimes that sometimes artists can’t edit themselves very well when they’re writing their own stuff. I mean, image made a whole career out of it. But yeah, it’s

Nathan Judd (14:16):
Think we have to preface, we have to preface image now. It’s like we have to say early image now because it’s early image. Sorry. Yeah, I know, I get it. But I think other people will be image and it’s like, no,

Justin MacNamara (14:30):
Not the Walking Dead image. I’m talking the Brigade Wildcats image.

Ryan Christopher (14:34):
Yeah, because images is a beast of two different forms, meaning you’ve got

Ryan Christopher (14:39):
Walking

Ryan Christopher (14:40):
Dead Invincible Saga, you’ve got the Kirkman, the Brian K. Vaughn. Yeah, I’m certainly talking about earlier of Image, which is some of the most phenomenal independent comics that have been put out in the past 30 years.

Nathan Judd (14:58):
Only opinion I would put in, which is kind of a thing. I think it is a bit of a journey too, because you start at one place and it’s, for me it was like Jim Lee and No’s image and it’s like now I’m in a completely different place liking stuff. If you gave it to me 10 years ago, I would’ve gone, what is this? That eye isn’t exactly fully detailed and rendered. So I feel like it is a bit of a journey to just to diversify yourself and everyone is at a different place on that and it’s like, yeah, that’s the only thing I would say.

Justin MacNamara (15:35):
I think when Image started, they wanted to be Marvel comics, but they realised that they’re better off being Dark Horse.

Nathan Judd (15:43):
I think they just wanted to be rock stars.

Ryan Christopher (15:46):
For me it’s been,

Shaun Craike (15:49):
Yeah, it was probably better than Image back then.

Ryan Christopher (15:54):
Yep. Agreed. Sean. I think the,

Shaun Craike (15:57):
They’ve got create our own content and it doesn’t cross over and all that. Just delete that stuff that Marvel. They,

Justin MacNamara (16:04):
Yeah, a hundred percent Sean

Shaun Craike (16:06):
Client Find company that done. It’s always second rate. You’re just better off just leaving the superheroes to the two companies to do best.

Ryan Christopher (16:22):
For sure.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (16:24):
What about you, Ryan?

Ryan Christopher (16:26):
For me, it’s always been sort of, when I first started getting into comics, it was more art, but now it is more the writer and the writers in turn have helped me discover more artists that I like because I will go back and read earlier parts of their work that I hadn’t been exposed to maybe with other creators that I hadn’t been exposed to. And it opens up a whole new avenue of writers and artists to enjoy. If you like a classic example, you like Claremont X menus, so you’ve been exposed to Paul Smith, you’ve been exposed to John by, you’ve been exposed to Michael Golden, his iconic creators now. But then you can go back and explore some of the work that those people started to do with writers that weren’t Chris Claremont, which could then put you onto new writers, new artist combinations, things like that. It’s kind of likes a great web to fall down, but it becomes quite obsessive when you’ve got a bit of a completionist personality. You kind of want to read everything and then you get stuck on these constant sidebars constantly being exposed to these great new creative teams. And I dunno, it’s probably a good problem to have in the scheme of comics and never getting bored. There’s always something new to explore.

(18:04)
But that’s it. That’s it for me. It’s been good to hear what everyone else thinks, but I think we need to crack into our reviews for the week.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:14):
And this will be the fun part. I’m going to let the software decide who goes first. I don’t dunno what happens when I press this button. I, oh, it’s me. Oh, hang on. It’s not even bringing you guys over.

Ryan Christopher (18:38):
It’s still,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:39):
I’ll quickly get you guys over here first. Actually, I don’t know how, oh, here

Ryan Christopher (18:46):
We go. Here’s a recommendation from Ray. Haven’t heard of that one. I’m just putting it in my notes. Hey Matthew.

Nathan Judd (19:10):
Cool. I’m going to overlay.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (19:15):
Okay. I didn’t know it did that, so I just learned something. Okay,

Ryan Christopher (19:22):
Let everyone know we’re on a new platform. So we’re on new platform, we’re still working the bugs out, so we’re no longer using stream yard. We’re using, what do they call it? fm, is that how? Oh yeah. This has got a weird name, weird name, but it’s got a whole bunch of new features and bells and whistles and we’re still getting the kicks out,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (19:41):
Still getting used to it. Anyway, I’ll start with my book. I didn’t read all of it, I’ll put that out there, but this is the closest thing. I’ve got to a red book this week, so it’s this. Now it’s French, so I’m not particularly a hundred percent sure how to pronounce that, I would say, but I’m probably wrong by miles because it was originally written in French and it was only recently translated to English. I’m told, I dunno if that’s true or not, but that’s what I read anyway. It is. It’s a cool book that I’ve read so far. Basically I think Nick Apol, the main character, he is shot off into space for some sort of war crime as punishment and cryogenic frozen to not come out of being frozen, I guess for 20 years. And what ends up happening, he doesn’t know why, but 30 years later he crashed lands back on earth when he was meant to be shot out and land on some other planet.

(20:52)
It’s 30 years has gone by, he finds out there’s been two nuclear wars, the place has ravaged from it. But in France, the Egyptian gods have come back and they’re back to, well, it’s not a hundred percent clear. I guess the last bit will tell me why they’re back. But they just get up to stuff and you’re not sure why they’re doing it. And again, I didn’t read all of it, so I probably would’ve found out why they’re doing what they’re doing. There’s one God in particular whose name escapes me, who possesses Nico Paul, sorry if I’m saying that really wrong and gets him to do all these things and it’s not really clear why he’s doing them. All you find out is that the Egyptian god who’s doing that is then punished by the other Egyptian gods for doing it apparently against some rule of bears. Explain what that is always. That’s

Ryan Christopher (21:54):
Always, sorry, gods are always not interfering. That’s always

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (22:00):
Oh yeah, not at all. But I don’t even know if it was because he was possessing him or the mission he put him onto. That was the problem. That said as weird a story as it is, and I love weird, so this really appealed to me. The art is gorgeous just to, it is a French comic, so I have to be careful not to go the nude pages. I dunno if you can see that, but it’s just probably not the best exam. It’s very heavy metal,

Shaun Craike (22:34):
Isn’t

Ryan Christopher (22:34):
It?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (22:34):
Page, it is just, oh shit, okay. No, I can’t show that one. This one’s sort of safe. It’s just the page opposite. I can’t show. Yeah, it’s

Justin MacNamara (22:54):
Heart’s amazing. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (22:56):
It’s just, and the screen’s not doing it justice. I can tell you that now. And I just enjoyed this so much and because it’s a collection of three comics, they’ve got some cool in process art in between, all that kind of stuff. So a bit of work in progress stuff to show you how the thing was made. But from what I’ve read so far, excellent comic, highly recommended, hard to get. I found it online being sold for around 200 to $300. I did not pay that. I found one person that was selling them for 75 and this was the second last copy they had. So I don’t know why theirs was so much cheaper, the whole thing, but I thought I was expecting to get it and it’d be like half the comic or something like that. But yeah, that’s a nice

Ryan Christopher (23:45):
Oversized hardcover. It looks as well.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (23:47):
Yeah, it’s an oversized hardcover as well. So yeah, it’s nice and big. And there’s heaps of-ish copies of the French version as well out there if you can speak French. But yeah, great story. I forget the name of the three comics that originally made it up, but yeah, Nico, Paul Trilogy I think will do the artist, if you can read that. NI don’t know, sorry, I’m horrible at pronouncing English names, so I’m even worse with foreign names. So yeah, beautiful art, imaginative story and when you see the art close up, it’s just like, wow. So yeah,

Shaun Craike (24:31):
France.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:35):
Awesome. Sorry, what was that? Sean, you have to speak closer to your microphone.

Shaun Craike (24:39):
France is actually pretty big into their comics as well, actually.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:48):
Sorry mate, can’t hear you.

Shaun Craike (24:51):
France is actually really into comics as well.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:57):
Oh yeah, yeah. Sorry,

Ryan Christopher (24:58):
I’m hearing you down here. I think per capita of France has a bigger comics market than the United States. If you look at it, dollar spent and per

Nathan Judd (25:07):
Not

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (25:07):
Down upon,

Nathan Judd (25:10):
I think they’ve actually got schools like a form of comic education. You can do a college thing.

Shaun Craike (25:20):
France very, so

Nathan Judd (25:24):
I say maybe Europe, I’ll say in Europe, maybe not France exactly, but Italy and stuff. I think there’s this one or two.

Ryan Christopher (25:34):
So Kiwi artist who lives in Australia, Colin Wilson, who most people probably know from 2000 ad, he has been working almost exclusively in French comics now for years and years and years. And the quality of the work that he puts out is phenomenal. And really the timeframes and the conditions that a lot of European publishers allow their artists and the creative teams to work under is a lot more flexible and a lot more advantageous with control like IP control and stuff like that than the US comic market. So I mean, imagine you could get paid well and only have to put out one graphic novel a year. It’s a pretty phenomenal system that they’ve got

Nathan Judd (26:29):
And have over a year to do it.

Ryan Christopher (26:32):
And they appreciate the, I remember having conversations with Colin about it, and he’ll do a show here when he used to do supernovas and stuff like that, and it was mainly sales here and there, but catching up with friends and other creators and sort of hanging out for the weekend. He goes to a French comic bookstore over there and does a signing and he gets mobbed. He’s there for hours and hours and hours signing books. So I think that’s really cool. It’s really cool that there’s this other, I suppose it’s the same with Manga and all the countless stories that get published internally in Japan and then very, very slowly leak out in English, like other markets here or there that they have an entire industry full of amazing names that most of us have never even heard of until books like Nikolai or Nicole P, sorry, I’m forgetting the name of the book that you’ve read.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (27:36):
Oh, my book.

Ryan Christopher (27:39):
Nico Apol trilogy. So until books like that do leak out and they start to get a bit of press or someone talks about them, you don’t really know. So it’s good. I love having stuff like that on the show.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (27:56):
What’s happening? I took my mouse away and it stopped doing what it was doing.

Ryan Christopher (28:03):
Lee Chalker the audience. We love you, Lee.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (28:07):
Okay, I don’t know what I just did then. Here we go. Hey Carol, that’s what can be next. Hello Mom,

Nathan Judd (28:18):
Actually Mom, thanks for that. I YouTube whatcha talking about? So I went through several options to try and get something good I ended up worth, I’m hoping no one’s done it, but Radiant Black, which I’m assuming someone here, I feel like Ryan’s going to be familiar with it. He knows

Ryan Christopher (28:41):
I haven’t read it, but I’m familiar with it.

Nathan Judd (28:44):
Okay. I’ve read it When it first came, when this first came out and then I was like really remember it. I don’t think I actually finished it and I reread the first two issues today. It’s pretty cool. It kind ties into what you were saying today, it’s like you like the writer or the artist? I’m not completely sold on the art myself because it is very kind of clean. It’s more of illustrative in the sense it’s carried a lot by the colour would be the way I would explain it. It’s very dynamic, it’s very clean. I was trying to give an example. Okay, who’s

Ryan Christopher (29:26):
A creative team? Just give us the

Nathan Judd (29:28):
Creative, I’ll show you that first. That’s a good example of it. That’s a crazy splash. Yeah, I should start with the creative team. So it is, so Kyle Higgins, he’s a writer and artist is Marcello Costa, if I’m pronouncing it right,

Ryan Christopher (29:46):
I think it’s a great night Wing run with the new 52. He started off doing Nightwing with Eddie Barrows. Fantastic

Nathan Judd (29:52):
One. I was going to ask you what he’s done. So for me, he’s carrying this, he, there’s a lot of dialogue in it, so there’s a lot of speech bubbles, but because he’s so good at creating characters and driving a conversation, he’s actually carrying the book for me, which is kind of what I expected from everything I’ve read about it before I bought it. In terms of what the comic is, it’s kind of like, I guess Power Rangers meets green. There’s a guy and he’s really down his, he’s like a rider and he’s out of money. He’s in debt, he is living in LA and he has to move across the country, back home with his parents because he’s got no money and he’s struggling. And then so he’s dealing with that, dealing with the, no one wants to be in that position. He feels like he’s zero, hasn’t achieved anything.

(30:50)
His books haven’t amounted 20 anything. So I mean I’m sure that writers put a bit of himself into that character as a creator. I think everyone can relate to that a little bit. And then his friend welcomes him back and they’ve got their own cool dynamic relationship. They’re very much opposites. He’s like, he’s not in the best spot, but his friend’s very outgoing, kind of positive, but to the extent that he gets himself in a bad situation. So you’ve got one guy who’s kind of more of the straight guy, a bit more withdrawn, the other guy’s pushing him out and then yeah, they’ve kind of been up in a bad situation after drinking one night and then a random black hole, mini black hole merges, and that kind of gives one of them powers. So that’s about as far as I’ve got and he gets a cool suit. So the suit design, and this is awesome. I will say that as much as I go, oh, I dunno about the art, but if you look at, and that’s why I say it’s kind of like Power Rangers meet green, if you see, yeah, I can see that. A sort of design, you can see it’s like you threw both ’em in a blender.

(32:00)
So it’s kind of

Ryan Christopher (32:00):
Simple. I’m actually really digging the odd style.

Nathan Judd (32:03):
It sounds really cool. It’s very colourful. It is good. I’m sure once I’ve finished the run I’ll be like, this is the best artist. Got to let it simmer, got to let it. So yeah, it’s like at the start and I’m sure I’ll actually be like, here’s the best. But there is pages like that, which usually I would probably complain about. But because it’s so well done, because the writing is that good. Yeah, I don’t mind it. And I was quite happy to read it. But yeah, the premise is pretty interesting. That panel there. I say that and I haven’t even read this part yet, but that’s a cool panel. So yeah, I just think it’s very clean. I would like to see it, if you took the colour off it, I think 65% of the artwork would be gone. That’s the only thing I would say. I don’t know how well that would hold up on a page, but

Justin MacNamara (33:02):
You love of black and white comic, just showing Nathan.

Nathan Judd (33:05):
Yeah,

Ryan Christopher (33:07):
I’m just a little bit biassed with the black.

Nathan Judd (33:10):
Yeah, I do like my black and white art, so I can’t hide that. But yeah, no, it is fun. And it is image. Am I not wrong this time or is it someone else? It is Image. Okay. Not boom. Like mastering or something. Yeah, I definitely recommend it. I’m going to keep reading it and probably look at, hopefully it’s good and pick up the second issue. I think it’s up to 30 and I think I’ve built a hole. There’s some extra books surrounding it, so I’m pretty sure it’s doing pretty well. Yeah, I’m a little bit weary of universe building where I’m at now. I’m not, I don’t really care about universe. I kind of want character and that’s why I’m kind of like DC Marvel, I’m like, oh, I’m just taking a little bit of break. I’m over here this meet some interesting people. I don’t want to be standing up looking at the party up top with Kingpin. I want to be down there talking to them, finding out who’s the real criminal here. Bad analogy. But yeah. So yeah, I would recommend it. Yeah, I can’t give any spoils, so I literally dunno any, I do know one, which I remember from my previous read, but I won’t say that it’s a big spoiler. But yeah, I would actually, yeah, hard recommend it. Especially for you, Ryan, if you know the writer because you’re a RiNo focused guy, I think you’ll dig it.

Ryan Christopher (34:43):
Yeah, I think it’s one that I’ve been meaning to crack into for quite a long time now. But the reading pile is so large, but your review and having a better look at it and hearing a little bit more about it, it kind of makes me want to jump into it a bit more than I did before. I dunno about everyone else’s local comic bookstore, but mine, the comics are generally even the trades. Well the trades are generally bagged. So you can read the back, you can look at the front, you can Google some images, but for the most part you’re not, so

Nathan Judd (35:24):
You’re saying they bag the Floppies?

Ryan Christopher (35:27):
Floppies? No, no. The trades, like the trade paper bags, they’re all,

Nathan Judd (35:31):
Is that what that is? Is that what you call that? Like the graphic novel bag them?

Ryan Christopher (35:36):
Wow, the bag, yeah. Yeah. So sometimes it’s like I really want to flick through to have a proper look, but I always feel bad about taking stuff out. Maybe it says more about me. Maybe I’m just too polite.

Nathan Judd (35:51):
I think they comic stores.

Ryan Christopher (35:52):
I

Nathan Judd (35:53):
Think you need new comic store. I don’t think there’s any less.

Ryan Christopher (35:57):
But yeah, you’ve done half the job for me now as far as getting me interested in reading the book. So I think it’s going to happen soon.

Nathan Judd (36:05):
Yeah, I think the writer, yeah, I definitely think the, I haven’t read and that’s me saying I haven’t read anything else of him. But yeah, for me he’s kind of carrying that

Ryan Christopher (36:18):
When I was talking about discovering new artists through writers that you know, like, so I know that I like Kyle Higgins writing, so hopefully that’s going to be solid through that book as well. And then whether it’s the same artist that’s doing the whole series or whether it’s different artists that have jumped on for different volumes, I don’t know.

Nathan Judd (36:39):
Oh, it has to look.

Ryan Christopher (36:40):
That’s cool. That’s exciting to me.

Nathan Judd (36:42):
I think I looked before, it’s definitely up to 30, but the best thing about it is this cover to me is an awesome cover. I’m trying to hold it the right way. Yeah, cover is awesome to see it so far Zoomed out. And then I looked at the other covers and then I’ve done it where everyone else is, the different colours will be here along it as they add them in. I was like genius. Whoever thought of that, that’s cool. So yeah, that’s what Power Ranger like, I dunno. Power Rangers was kind of cool. I think it’s kind of cool now, but yeah, it’s cool to see it thrust into a bit more of a serious kind of comic.

Ryan Christopher (37:19):
Well, because Power Rangers has become nostalgia now, and nostalgia trips through the whole modern day culture now Pop culture is built on nostalgia.

Nathan Judd (37:27):
Yeah, yeah. I’ll put on my suit soon. That’s right. Yeah. That’s my review

Ryan Christopher (37:37):
At the end of the show. We will all combine into the Megazord Sweet.

Ryan Christopher (37:42):
The

Nathan Judd (37:42):
Mega nerd.

Ryan Christopher (37:44):
Yeah.

Nathan Judd (37:47):
Can’t wait. Can’t wait for that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:53):
Sorry. We ready you guys this? What were you saying? Are we ready for the next or is Nathan still?

Nathan Judd (38:02):
I’m done. I’m talked out. Can’t

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:04):
We talked out? I’ll replace you then.

Nathan Judd (38:08):
Oh no, it’s me

Ryan Christopher (38:10):
More handsome. Yeah, I knew it was you and that’s why I said your name, but I got confused between Richard with greens and the back end I should be looking at.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:17):
Oh yeah, look to the right, look to the right thought. What’s happening?

Ryan Christopher (38:20):
Always to the right. Okay. What have you got for us?

Justin MacNamara (38:27):
I’m continuing my love of horror comics for the Halloween month. It’s Christmas for horror nuts. So I have got something different now. I’m going to try, I’m going to experiment something here. Hopefully this will work. Let’s see how we go. There we go. So this is what I’ve got. This is, oh, it’s backwards, isn’t it? God dammit. Okay, forget it. I’ll go back to the normal camera. It’s being a jerk or is it? It is.

Nathan Judd (38:59):
I thought that was the comic.

Ryan Christopher (39:02):
This is one of those bugs we’re still trying to work out.

Justin MacNamara (39:04):
So what I’ve got is this is from IDW. It is Lovecraft, the myth of Kalu Ulu. Now obviously it’s written by HP Lovecraft, otherwise it wouldn’t say that word at the top. It’s not just a clever coincidence. This is the first three tales that Lovecraft did based on the Cthulu mythos, which is, I’m going to have to, I know it’s the festival. We call it Kalu. And of course, I can’t remember the other one, which is the nameless city. It’s art by Esteban Moroto, who was v Perella, creepy Erie. I think he did War Lord of Atlantis, maybe for DC in the seventies as well. But it’s beautiful, exquisite. Hopefully that’s not got too much shine on it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:01):
No, it’s good.

Nathan Judd (40:03):
Nice black and white art there.

Justin MacNamara (40:05):
Yeah. Something for you Nathan. I knew that you’d like this.

Nathan Judd (40:08):
Thanks, Matt.

Justin MacNamara (40:09):
So essentially it’s those three stories from Lovecraft, which is what other people, other writers of the time sort of forged into the whole kullu mythos. And this is where it all started, but it’s beautiful. It’s those three stories from what I can tell. The only stuff that’s been taken out of Lovecraft’s original work is the descriptions of things. Obviously because it’s a visual medium and you can see the pictures. You don’t need to have a description of something that is labelled, that is drawn, I should say. But yeah, it’s very seventies art, which you would expect. It’s got a brief history at the beginning, both of the Kaul Mythos of Lovecraft and a little bit of pose riding and of Moroto himself. Mordo talks about why he wanted to do this and his attraction to horror comics and stuff like that. And then there’s a preface as well just sort of talking about how important horror comics are to the comics genre in general.

(41:17)
But one of the things I like about Moroto is also, and I’m probably horribly mispronouncing his name there, but it’s similar to Jji. ITOs in so much as the juxtaposition of the beautiful art with such terrifying content really holds my attention. It’s very easy to do a, and I say easy, but it’s comforting to watch to see a romance comic with beautiful people or a horror comic with horrible looking things in it. But when you’ve got beautiful people in horror, I think that that makes the horror so much better. And he does sort of take his influences from other places. Like in Kingsport Festival there’s possibly a little bit of Vincent Prize’s, Dr. Fis in some of the artwork.

(42:13)
But yeah, it’s just from cover to cover. It’s stunning. One of my criticisms of a lot of modern artists sort of post the early nineties is that detail is just the lines that they use instead of they’re afraid of putting black in. So they put hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of little crosshatching lines instead of just doing something black. I think that they’re afraid of blocking the blackout and that’s mistaken. Those lines are mistaken for detail when you’ve got the artists from this period doing detail. It’s detail, it’s like the actual intricacies of the product, not just like, I don’t want to draw a shadow, so I’m going to draw lines. If I’m to say that I’m disappointed about this book with anything I feel like IDW just dumped it with let’s just Whack Hellvetica in the top left hand corner.

(43:15)
They really felt like they didn’t give us stuff about it and they just threw it out there. And they’ve got Lovecraft, which is perpetually popular. You go to the board game industry and one 10th of every board game that comes out is Lovecraft. Most horror movies are influenced, or a good volume of horror movies are influenced by Lovecraft. There’s a lot of comics that have lovecraft elements to it, and they just decided, let’s just whack some font that’s sitting in the computer instead of setting, getting somebody to actually do it. That’s my only disappointment with it. But it’s a stunning book and well worth, it’s only thin, it’s not too big and you’d get it, I think it’s like 30 or 40 bucks, but worth it just for, it’s worth it both for the prefaces, they’re just interesting summaries of the art period, the comic period, and of the writers and artists. And then the stories themselves are classic Lovecraft stories and Otto’s art is just, you’d have to put a tissue to your mouth drool for most of the time that you’re looking at it because it’s stunning. But yeah, so that’s my continuing Halloween read with that. It’s a must buy.

Ryan Christopher (44:27):
I love when comics come with the prefaces and things like that. I think that someone like Lovecraft we’re at that point in history now where context is so important. The idea of when and why he wrote these stories, who the audience originally was, what the controversies are around the now, all that sort of stuff is so important to actually being able to actively enjoy the work.

Justin MacNamara (44:54):
Yeah, yeah, agreed. I came to Lovecraft backwards. I didn’t read the books first. I actually saw the 1986 film Ator first, and that film blew the top of my head off. It had all of the stuff that I love about horror in it. It had zombies, it had a mad scientist, it had crazy experiments. It had an amazing male lead and a beautiful female lead. It’s easily my favourite film of all time. I could sit down and watch it. It’s on my pile of movies in my lounge room. It’s always on the top because it’s like if I dunno what to watch, I put re animator on, I’ll put it on while I’m vacuuming the house. Instead of listening to music, it’s become my background noise. And I then went from that to the novels and then started seeking stuff out and reading about him. And then you sort of backwardly finding out that HR Guyer was influenced by his work in his art and stuff like that. And even down to, I collect board games and a lot of my board games are Lovecraft inspired because the horror of Kulah is a very easy thing to adapt into all sorts of situations.

Ryan Christopher (46:15):
I mean that early beginnings of what became the weird as well weird literature it’s found in Lovecraft as well. So for any literature or English literature, cannon buffs out there, you’re seeing foundational blocks of hundreds of renowned creators that came after Lovecraft as well.

Justin MacNamara (46:44):
Yeah, well, I mean him and Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne were like the birthplace of horror detective sort of stories and science fiction. There’s so much stuff that we have today in all sorts of pop culture that we wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for those three names. Three super important people. And it is a shame that the others don’t get more of a crack of the whip. I’d love to see someone like hard case crime through Titan Comics, do some post stuff. I had love to see somebody take on Jules Vern and do something other than the League of Extraordinary gentlemen with some of his characters. I think that there’s a lot of opportunities there that are being ignored and having an artist, if someone like, I don’t even know if Pete Craig Russell’s still drawing, but if you had somebody like that doing something like 20,000 legs under the sea, I’m sure that a rendition of the Nautilus by him would be just the most stunning thing ever.

Ryan Christopher (47:49):
Imagine Jeff Darrow jumping into something like Vern.

Justin MacNamara (47:55):
Yeah. Oh wow. Yeah. Good choice. Yeah, that would be amazing. I want that now. I don’t want this anymore, I want that. But

Ryan Christopher (48:08):
Yeah, that’s my thing. You somehow see this Jeff Darrow, please. You have

Nathan Judd (48:12):
Washington in Italy or wherever you are right now.

Ryan Christopher (48:15):
Someone get listen into the Jeff Darrow. You won’t have to the right. It’s Public domain.

Justin MacNamara (48:20):
Public domain. Just jump on it. But yeah, if you love horror comics, you love creepy and eerie and stuff like that, and sort of the seventies style art, grab a hold of this. Ignore the bad masthead.

Nathan Judd (48:37):
It feels bad. Calling seventies style art, I feel like looks like me. Oh no. Thank you Justin.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (48:45):
Thanks Justin. No problem. Thanks Justin. Okay, here we go. We’re going to give this a try. See if you can hear. We can hear you, Sean.

Shaun Craike (48:56):
Okay. I’ll hear a bit more louder.

Ryan Christopher (49:00):
What have you got for us tonight?

Shaun Craike (49:02):
Okay. Okay. Alright. Yep.

Ryan Christopher (49:10):
What

Shaun Craike (49:11):
Have you got for us tonight? I’m going to be a bit more loud for this. So as Justin, good with Halloween thing going, I’m going to be going Halloween two. This one is PCSD Radio is a horror and there’s actually two volumes. This is actually two volumes. One, and I’m actually covering this one because there’s a bit of a legend of this. I would say on the internet I couldn’t find, I found very little information about the creator, but he actually ended up, was forced to quit this theory and he hasn’t been heard from again because he actually got strike with this serious disease. But also there was some odd paranormal stuff that was happening in the studio while he was making this serious

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (50:29):
Creepy.

Shaun Craike (50:31):
Yeah, it is. So this whole thing is actually roughly about a Go’s purse is actually about hair. The a horror anology. And how it reads is it starts off, you think you reading short stories that comes from the past and the present, and then they’re all different characters, but along the way you start realising that they’re actually connecting. It’s like a puzzle and then it starts finally forming.

Ryan Christopher (51:12):
That’s cool.

Shaun Craike (51:13):
And unfortunately it didn’t get finished because at the end it left on the two panel.

Ryan Christopher (51:19):
Oh really? Yeah.

Shaun Craike (51:21):
But I will show a bit of,

Ryan Christopher (51:27):
Does it feel like an intentional cliffhanger or does it feel like

Shaun Craike (51:31):
It

Ryan Christopher (51:31):
Was just that flip’s kind of cool. That’s awesome. That’s really nice.

Shaun Craike (51:36):
Like I said, the guy in a quitting said, I don’t know how we would’ve finished it, but yeah, that this guy would’ve given Gundo run through his money. I actually like the art better than Gundo. I like because coming from the fifties old is new again. If he sold, this one’s got a bit more touch with these expressions of the people.

Ryan Christopher (52:17):
That artist is so cool.

Shaun Craike (52:19):
Yeah. Horror comics don’t really do anything for me. I don’t get scared out normal that, but it still gives a pretty freaky vibe even just

Ryan Christopher (52:37):
Oh wow.

Shaun Craike (52:47):
Yeah, I definitely recommend it to even out there, but it’ll never be things. But that little legend with the book,

Ryan Christopher (53:07):
I suppose there’s so many of our sacred shows

Shaun Craike (53:10):
Because I kind of find that happens at the end. It says make you wonder, make you think what would actually happen next.

Ryan Christopher (53:20):
Yeah, I was just going to say, so many of your favourite shows get cancelled, so you do the same thing with that. So it doesn’t mean you can’t go back and watch and enjoy the show for what it was, but yeah, sometimes it’s the fun of it.

Justin MacNamara (53:37):
Sometimes cinema like that works best when it’s left with the ambiguous ending. Sometimes it’s just like sometimes horror cinemas at its finest when at the end you’re not quite sure exactly what the result is. Sometimes that’s where the terror comes from. So I you’re talking about not necessarily a bad thing. Could you hold up the cover again please, Sean? We didn’t quite see the cover that in my mouth.

Shaun Craike (54:02):
This is the first one. Oh,

Justin MacNamara (54:03):
Okay. Now I

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:04):
See it.

Justin MacNamara (54:06):
Wow.

Shaun Craike (54:07):
This is the second one.

Justin MacNamara (54:11):
That’s amazing.

Shaun Craike (54:12):
And that’s the last one. Covers call $4 each. You’re getting two and one. Okay. So these are actually reprints, but I dunno if they’ll ever reprint the gun or not. So if you do see them, definitely grab it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:34):
Definitely the big thick books, aren’t they? Because you’re just showing ’em from the front, but they look like they’re actually quite thick. So there’s a decent story in each. Yeah.

Shaun Craike (54:47):
Oh, nice.

Justin MacNamara (54:48):
Chunky.

Shaun Craike (54:53):
Oh

Justin MacNamara (54:54):
Wow.

Shaun Craike (54:58):
There’s a lot of creepy. That was the car. It’s just like with the patch, it’s all like in megahertz, so it’s like you turn it into the radio, post traumatic. The radio

Justin MacNamara (55:30):
Sounds like the worst radio station ever. Yeah, that artwork’s really, really good. It reminds me of Hadi Heno a little bit, not so much he’s regular art, but certainly used to do these. ETO does. They’d be big single pieces of artwork that were more detailed than the rest of it. And yeah, I dig that. I think that’s going to be on my list of things to look at.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:03):
That’s wicked.

Ryan Christopher (56:07):
You can see so many of his influences.

Shaun Craike (56:12):
The forties and fifties. That’s what I reminds me of all old stuff.

Ryan Christopher (56:16):
Yeah,

Shaun Craike (56:18):
That’s what

Justin MacNamara (56:24):
I am adding to cart as we

Shaun Craike (56:25):
Speak.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:35):
Tempted to do the same, but

Shaun Craike (56:36):
I’ve been material like,

Ryan Christopher (56:40):
Oh

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:41):
Wow.

Ryan Christopher (56:42):
Fantastic. Once again, recent breeds claims another person’s bank account.

Justin MacNamara (56:53):
Thanks for nothing. Sure. Now I can’t eat for a week.

Shaun Craike (56:58):
Glad to put you on a diet.

Nathan Judd (57:01):
I made it. I made it. I made it

Shaun Craike (57:06):
Gold.

Nathan Judd (57:07):
I’m staying out of this conversation. That’s cool. Well, I get attacked.

Ryan Christopher (57:18):
Thanks for sharing that one with us, Sean. That was really good.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:21):
Yeah, thanks for that buddy. Where’s my name? Oh, there it is. I’m going to pop into this window now. Oh, hang on. I haven’t actually popped into the window. Now it’s your turn.

Ryan Christopher (57:36):
It is my turn,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (57:37):
Yes.

Ryan Christopher (57:40):
All right. So I went down the horror trail this week myself, and I had a few books that I was keen on, but then one I kept coming back to because it really caught my eye kind of into werewolves right now. I mentioned a bit last week when we were talking about our favourite monsters that the Wolf Man is one of my favourites. So a bit of background. So DC launched a black label sort of sub set of comics called Hill House Comics a few years ago. And so they were partially written and then curated by Joe Hill, who’s a Stoker award-winning horror writer. His movie Horns was made into an adaptation starring Daniel Radcliffe. Nos Ferra two was made into a television show starring Zachary Quinto and Lock and Key got three or four seasons on Netflix. So that’s a comic series he did with Gabrielle. My dog not going to go with the name. I’m going to forget. Anyway, if you collected all of the Hill House comics from the first run, they all had a snippet of another extra story called Sea Dogs. And that’s what I’m reviewing today.

(59:17)
So it’s set in 1780 during the Revolutionary War in the United States. And it’s sort of a naval combat story. So it starts off with a Europe board, one of the colonial Navy vessels, and there’s a British warship called the HMS havoc, which has been wreaking terror across the seas and has really been taking it to the colonial navy. They’ve suffered horrendous losses and they’ve attributed this ship, the HMS havoc as being involved in some of the real life biggest losses that America sustained during the Revolutionary War. So this book picks up about a year or two after a horrendous loss in Charleston, North Carolina. And so they’re sort of coming up with this way, how can we take down the h hm s victory and hopefully swing the tides of war in our favour? And the way that they come up with is what if we took three werewolves and convinced the British Navy that they were men enlisting to serve on the HMS havoc? So they managed to sneak through going through the story. You don’t know which of the people you encounter at any time are werewolves. It kind of gets done under the cover of darkness. And then you just see people joining this new crew on the HMS havoc. And part of the fun is trying to figure out who amongst the crew is the actual werewolves as the entire ship is being torn apart and decimated every night as soon as the moon. That’s cool.

Nathan Judd (01:01:44):
Wow, that’s really

Ryan Christopher (01:01:46):
Cool. So it’s, I recently watched the Voyage of the Demeter, which was the newer Dracula film, and it kind of had that vibe of this ship that’s out there in the middle of nowhere. There’s nowhere to run, there’s no one you can turn to and all of a sudden you’re being stalked by these beasts every time the moon comes out. And it is kind of cool because contextually, the book takes place. So 1780 is a crucial year in the Revolutionary War because victory is not assured. It is very much still a war in balance, but the most heavy losses have recently come to America. So they’ve had raids, they’ve had massive bombardments, they’ve had whole fleets of ships be scuttled and sent to the bottom of the sea by the British Navy. And so they don’t know for sure at this time whether the war is even winnable, especially with ships like the HMS havoc out there patrolling the seas. And so this idea of taking these monsters, putting them on this ship and hopefully everything goes the way they want it to, is such a cool story.

(01:03:24)
And who doesn’t love seeing Colonial Britain? Just Cop one. It’s absolutely fantastic. There’s a fantastic essay in the back of the book too. So you read all the way through and then there’s a former Coast Guard in US history teacher who writes about the Civil War and he’s also into comics. He sort of wrote this essay in the back of this book where he goes into significant detail about different battles that were taking place at this time and sort of what the prospects were like for America becoming an independent nation prior to, what did they say? It’s Yorktown Battle of Yorktown, which ended up being a massive American victory, which I think takes place in 1781 or 82 and the war is very quickly over after that point. But yeah, it’s fantastic to see history be messed with. I kind of love when, and comics seems to be a great medium for that. They’ve done it so many times where they take real historical events and they kind of roll the dice on them and they change a few things up and they insert monsters or they insert superheroes or they do all sorts of things to make things a little bit different. But this one is definitely one that I’d recommend for werewolf fanatics and horror buffs. The Art is by Dan McDade. Dan McDade is a British artist. He’s come out of 2000 ad Dunno how great this, that’s awesome. Wow.

(01:05:27)
Let me find one of the,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:05:29):
See I’m not even horror fan. I want this book down.

Ryan Christopher (01:05:32):
The only bummer about this book is that it originally wasn’t intended to be published as a standalone trade. So you either had to buy all the individual issues for the entire Hill House comics run separately in order to get all of sea dogs, or you’ve got to buy the Complete Hill House collection, which it’s a box set of trade paperbacks and it includes all the individual series that were published and then they put sea dogs in there at the end as a bonus. But where are we? Oh wow. That’s awesome. He’s choking a guy with his own intestines.

Justin MacNamara (01:06:25):
Nice. Good as you do. I have to say, getting all of the Hill House comics isn’t a bad thing. Basket full of heads was amazing. And the sequel, which I can’t think of what it was called, but Basketball of Heads was amazing and the Dollhouse was

Ryan Christopher (01:06:41):
Refrigerator full of Heads was the sequel

Justin MacNamara (01:06:43):
Refrigerator full of heads.

Ryan Christopher (01:06:46):
What’s amazing, the axe from Basket full of Heads makes a cameo appearance in Sea Dogs. Awesome.

Justin MacNamara (01:06:56):
I like the little subtle tip of the hat to Shakespeare in that as well. Absolutely. Because what it’s cry havoc and let’s slip the Dogs of War, some werewolves on a battleship called Havoc. Yeah, that’s pretty, that’s

Ryan Christopher (01:07:10):
Not very fun. I can’t remember specifically, but I believe they may say exactly that in this book at some point. But yeah, I mean as Justin said, the Hill House comics collection is worth its weight to pick it up. I think if you can still get it through your local comic bookstore, I think I paid about $189 for the box set.

(01:07:37)
That’s not too bad, but you’ve got some fantastic, Kelly Jones has got work in there. Stuart immanent, Joe Hill himself writes multiple stories in the collection. And Dan McDade, anyone who has read the Firefly comics would probably be familiar with Dan mcd Dad’s work. He worked predominantly on Firefly. So there’s lots to love about the book, especially I kind of love, this would’ve been kind of cool even if it was just a naval battle book set in the Revolutionary War. So you can imagine how much cooler it is when you throw some violent werewolves into the mix as well. So that’s what I

Justin MacNamara (01:08:35):
Was reading. It sounds like a civil war version of the film Dog Soldiers from 2003, which is taking regular soldiers up against the supernatural, which is always a fun element, two fun elements to mix together in a sort of horror idea.

Ryan Christopher (01:08:55):
Yeah, I agree. I think that some of the best stories now are taking the monster out of their element and putting them into another situation. And I think that’s, I mean that’s so appealing about Dracula. It’s not when Dracula’s at his castle in Transylvania, it’s when Dracula comes to London that we get absolutely drawn into the story because he’s now out of his element. It’s when Frankenstein tries to move amongst the people that the story becomes interesting. The beginning is just him and a castle being mistreated by his creator. So once we take these creatures out of their natural environment, put them somewhere weird, gets more interesting. Yeah, that’s what horror is all about. Let us know in the comments if you’ve got anything you want to know about any of the books that we’ve talked about tonight. Dave dies in the house. We love Dave.

Nathan Judd (01:10:02):
Hi dad.

Ryan Christopher (01:10:07):
Other than that, what? Go for it sis.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:10:11):
I was just going to say the truth there I think was brought up when you said about the Colonial Britain getting,

Ryan Christopher (01:10:17):
Yeah, when we were talking about slicking it up with the British got that

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:10:20):
Truth. British to everyone over in Instagram, thanks for joining us as well. We can’t see your comments unfortunately, but I can see your comments. But yeah, we can’t see your comments on the main

Ryan Christopher (01:10:36):
Thing’s, keeping them to himself. I’m keeping ’em to myself. Secret Instagram, you’ve got any messages specifically for Ciz, go to Instagram, send them through. But if you want to be on the show, you want to come on, you want to talk about comics with us, head to the link just below me comics show slash interest. There’s also seas pointing at something.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:11:09):
No, I’m not pointing at anything. I’m being silly.

Ryan Christopher (01:11:14):
But you can flag your interest for any of the shows in the comics network, library of shows, whether it’s drink and draw, recent reads, the Aus Comics show, or let’s make a comic book and you’d just be interacting with a great bunch of people. You don’t have to be a professional in any means. You don’t have to be a creator. Even when it comes to drink and draw. I mean if you’ve got a pencil, if you’ve got an iPad, draw, if you want to draw and you’re happy, if you happy for people to see what you’ve draw. As

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:11:47):
Always say, sorry, I just got to interrupt because of what Justin said there. Drinking is, oh, hang on, I can’t remember what I said now. Drinking is optional, but drawing has to be done. I can’t think of the word now. Optional. Optional. My brain’s turned off because we’re live. You see, that’s what happens. We go live and this turns off.

Ryan Christopher (01:12:13):
Going live is the worst thing that’s ever happened to humanity. I was so much happier before humanity went live. We could

Nathan Judd (01:12:22):
Deep, let’s just explore this a bit more. She second.

Ryan Christopher (01:12:26):
Let’s have a deep dive into

Nathan Judd (01:12:28):
My, what is it about humanity being more connected? You just don’t like, I’m here.

Ryan Christopher (01:12:34):
Well, let me tell you,

Nathan Judd (01:12:40):
Man, he’s like out of this one now. I didn’t mean it. Now there’ll be a formal apology. You

Ryan Christopher (01:12:47):
Ever have those moments driving home in the car where you go, oh my God, I should have said that. When you’re live, you miss it. There is no going back. It’s like that compulsory that’s of being live is like being on that car ride home wishing you’d said the thing. That’s just me. You brought me back

Nathan Judd (01:13:11):
To the car ride. Would you rather have a prerecorded drive home? Is that going to be more fun for you?

Ryan Christopher (01:13:18):
I’d love a prerecorded drive home actually. Would

Nathan Judd (01:13:20):
You just sit through that? Oh yes.

Ryan Christopher (01:13:23):
I can’t wait for self-driving cars. To be honest. I’ve had enough. If you live in ow you to deal with Toowoomba drivers. You’ll get sick of it too.

Nathan Judd (01:13:33):
You guys, you have cars out there, so it’s pretty done all.

Ryan Christopher (01:13:37):
Well, the thing is we maybe we don’t necessarily have that many cars. Horses, roads

Nathan Judd (01:13:43):
Got horses, right?

Ryan Christopher (01:13:44):
Driving

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:13:44):
Horses. There you go.

Nathan Judd (01:13:47):
See, they were already doing it. Already had sent in transport back then. It was nostalgia all over again.

Ryan Christopher (01:13:55):
Maybe

Nathan Judd (01:13:55):
That’s what

Ryan Christopher (01:13:56):
I need to do. I don’t need a self-driving car. I just need a horse.

Nathan Judd (01:14:01):
Not wrong. Not wrong, mate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14:02):
Yeah, those comments really take a while to come through.

Nathan Judd (01:14:08):
Yeah, some good. I feel like you have to do a manga. You have to do a manga thing at some point. Eh? Little manga.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14:16):
Yeah. We haven’t done one for a while. We had a few people come through and do them.

Nathan Judd (01:14:21):
I’ve got it. But I read romantic manga. I read the stupidest kind of manga, so I’m You can review it. I’ll do it. I can’t because it’s embarrassing. I’ll do it, but you’ll see how much I enjoy it and it’ll be too scary, so I can’t

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14:41):
No, no.

Justin MacNamara (01:14:41):
You’ve already told Valentine day episode, huh? Save it for the Valentine’s Day episode. We’ll all do a

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14:49):
Yeah,

Nathan Judd (01:14:49):
That’s true.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:14:50):
I’ll make sure you’re on that one.

Nathan Judd (01:14:52):
Sweet. Yeah, put a little outfit on too. It’ll be nice. Going to be lovely. I like it. I’m scared. I’m excited. But yeah, so

Ryan Christopher (01:15:09):
I suppose that brings us,

Nathan Judd (01:15:11):
Get me out of the situation.

Ryan Christopher (01:15:14):
What? What? No, no, no. You dug yourself into the hole. You can dip yourself out

Nathan Judd (01:15:19):
Just to prove it. Here we go. Smoking behind the search market with you. That’s a glimpse into how good my manga taste is.

Ryan Christopher (01:15:30):
Cool. Because we honestly, we’re going to stay live until Judi showed us his romance manga collection.

Justin MacNamara (01:15:36):
I’m not going to show. I don’t get romance ones. I get something a little bit different. Yeah. I wonder what that could be. We only peculate xxx. That’s for

Ryan Christopher (01:15:49):
I’d say

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:50):
Comex after the dark.

Ryan Christopher (01:15:51):
We were going to stay live until we saw Justin’s collection of books with nude women in them. But I think that we’d be here next week.

Nathan Judd (01:15:57):
Yeah. He’s just into big personalities. That’s the thing about Joe Ray. He’s got to know that. So this is what I’ve noticed. Love me some manga. See people want the manga.

Ryan Christopher (01:16:17):
Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:16:19):
I forgot you.

Ryan Christopher (01:16:20):
I have some manga. So we can do that if people want to, we can do that. We can do a manga episode.

Nathan Judd (01:16:28):
Manga march. Manga.

Ryan Christopher (01:16:31):
Especially when you get some new faces, people out there, you get some new manga faces.

Nathan Judd (01:16:38):
Suddenly you get the inbox fill up with little fresh people like, yeah, I need you do mgo. I’ll come on. Now that you’re saying it wrong, which I probably am. I’ll come.

Shaun Craike (01:16:49):
I dunno.

Nathan Judd (01:16:54):
But yeah, I’ve had a couple, but I actually, I stick to comics on here. But yeah, because I’ve been mostly reading manga lately. So very different.

Ryan Christopher (01:17:04):
I didn’t talk about manga. That’s

Nathan Judd (01:17:05):
Fine. No, I don’t want to derail comics. Alright. It’s not Manga X. That’s different. Realise now that I say that. I understand why it’s not called

Ryan Christopher (01:17:16):
Com. X is a studio. Recent reads is the show, so it’s what have you been recently reading? Recent reads. What have you read? Read. It’s got words and pictures you can read. You can talk about it. Words and pictures.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:28):
Okay.

Ryan Christopher (01:17:28):
Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:29):
Words and pictures. Sequential art. That means comic,

Ryan Christopher (01:17:32):
But it’s got to be a little bit more than like See Dick Run, run Dick, run, run Home Dick. It’s got to be a bit more than story books. Where have

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:46):
You taken?

Ryan Christopher (01:17:48):
No one else knows that old story.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:51):
No, no. It just sounds funny. It sound like a story to me,

Nathan Judd (01:17:54):
Man.

Justin MacNamara (01:17:57):
It sounds like one of my manger actually.

Ryan Christopher (01:18:00):
Yeah, I probably got a couple. When you’re learning to read, they all work in repetition. Dick and Jane.

Nathan Judd (01:18:06):
Yeah. Yeah, that’s

Ryan Christopher (01:18:08):
What I’m talking about.

Nathan Judd (01:18:12):
Don’t Google it once again, don’t you?

Ryan Christopher (01:18:14):
You can just Google. Just Google it.

Nathan Judd (01:18:17):
Don’t Google it.

Justin MacNamara (01:18:19):
Google

Ryan Christopher (01:18:20):
It.

Justin MacNamara (01:18:21):
Don’t

Ryan Christopher (01:18:21):
Google

Justin MacNamara (01:18:21):
Dick Run whatever

Nathan Judd (01:18:23):
You do. Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:25):
It doesn’t sound like it’d be pleasant,

Nathan Judd (01:18:27):
But if you type run Dick, run and Google. It’s okay. Or is it not? Okay? I

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:36):
Didn’t think either. You wrote the same word twice. I don’t know. How does it work?

Nathan Judd (01:18:42):
This is one of Ryan’s stories. I’m just kind of here for the

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:45):
Deal. I’m going to just quickly throw it out there while we’re doing all this nonsense. Remember, if you like the video people subscribe to the channel. If you haven’t been here before, that would be awesome. It helps the community grow. It helps us grow as a show and as a channel. So that would be awesome if you could do that.

Nathan Judd (01:19:05):
Well, I can subscribe.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:19:06):
Yeah, like what says here, manga is just a Japanese word for comic, so it’s totally fine.

Nathan Judd (01:19:12):
Is it actually? I feel like it’s not. It has a slow for minute. Rick, stop the show. The comments are

Justin MacNamara (01:19:18):
Going to go crazy now after that.

Nathan Judd (01:19:20):
Is that actually like we Google it? Is it?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:19:23):
Yeah,

Justin MacNamara (01:19:24):
It’s just

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:19:25):
A Japanese

Ryan Christopher (01:19:25):
Workroom comic. Maybe that’s what we’ll do now to boost our engagement. We’ll just make broad generalisations about comics culture worldwide and then is wait for the comments to roll in

Shaun Craike (01:19:40):
The manir as well.

Nathan Judd (01:19:44):
I’m actually an illustrator, so I can’t be seen with any cartoonists around here. Yeah, they’re going to get lit off about that. You wait. That’ll trigger white people.

Ryan Christopher (01:20:04):
People are going to be hate watching the show now.

Nathan Judd (01:20:07):
Fantastic. Clip Studio is better than every other one. It’s better than Photoshop and procreate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:20:16):
We’re going for hate now are we? Lovely

Nathan Judd (01:20:17):
Going after everyone now. Still. They’re going to be triggered. Let’s go.

Ryan Christopher (01:20:23):
This has gone off the rails.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:20:25):
This gone off the rails. Probably a good time for me to figure out how we end it. Who wants the intro again? Yay.

Ryan Christopher (01:20:35):
Well, before we do that, thank you everyone for joining us tonight. We hope that you’ve enjoyed we hearing about the books that we read this week. Hopefully there’s something in there for everyone. Catch us next week. My God, my computer just went black. Oh, no

Ryan Christopher (01:20:54):
Way.

Nathan Judd (01:20:57):
I’m just going to unplug myself in the chat. I’m

Ryan Christopher (01:20:58):
Awesome.

Ryan Christopher (01:21:08):
Are we showing? We’ll talk about more comics. Jump in, have some fun. Let us know what you think and we’ll get back to you.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21:18):
Okay.

Ryan Christopher (01:21:19):
Bye.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21:19):
Comics podcast show slash interest. If you want to be on the show. We want to talk to you about what comics you love as well.

Nathan Judd (01:21:25):
Please replace me. I’m our captain.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21:28):
Yes. We’re still looking for Nathan’s replacement,

Nathan Judd (01:21:30):
Please. Every second week. Help me

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21:36):
Anyway. Hang on that note. I’m going to say goodnight. Sees everyone goodnight.

Nathan Judd (01:21:42):
Bye. You haven’t turned it off yet, have you?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21:46):
Damn it.