Sorry to hear this, Scott. As I'm in a similar situation, let me know if you'd ever like to talk.

Yeah, it's a little hard to hear Codystarbuck on this one, but still very cool to get to know him better.


5:18 -- I'm laughing right along with you. Is that 3 out of 3 guests who have answered that question with Grant Morrison??

6:42 -- Yup!

11:35 -- I wouldn't group Lobo in with those other anti-heroes. He had true character. I do agree with Codystarbuck that Punisher is pretty much just a straight adaptation of Mac Bolan, but it sounds like some compelling things were done with him in the MAX series. I still intend to read those one day.

16:45 -- The idea of Kirby introducing a new property in the '70s that was weak in concept is thoroughly depressing to me. I think this supports your conspiracy theory. Seems like Kirby knew this was going to be a one-shot and didn't want to give DC an idea he actually cared about. He was sitting on SO many concepts at this point that he hadn't handed over to DC.

19:46 -- Yup. You went there.

22:30 -- Kirby was a commodity. Codystarbuck pointed out this title seeming to be geared for collectors. Those folks were clamoring for more Kirby, so what better way to launch this series? The write-up seems appropriate in that respect.

23:45 -- James Robinson is up there with Grant Morrison in my book

31:18 -- It's weird how much of this pertains to Kirby's New Gods. The non-PC token black character (Flippa' Dippa') and the dystopian amusement park. I wonder if Simon and Kirby were influencing each other while reunited at DC.

35:15 -- Are we sure these weren't inventory stories? Did DC actually bring back the original Metamorpho creative team, or did they have an old story lying around from that team? I haven't read the story, so I have no idea if it's written as a debut issue or not.

39:40 -- Angie Dickinson The Comic? WOW. Now I want to read this!

41:13 -- Holy geez, that's a hell of an opening. Learning about this kind of stuff is precisely what I love about this podcast.

47:00 -- Of course, it could have been a Paul Kirk clone, not that this was the intention. We'll see the same thing at almost the exact same time when Kirby returns to Marvel and takes over Black Panther, completely disregarding what Don McGregor had done with the franchise.

52:35 -- Take it one step further. The entire premise of 1st Issue Special seems like an attempt for Infantino to cater to an audience he didn't understand, and that's precisely why it didn't work. Maybe Infantino was trying to prove something to DC management with this project. In a way, this is the death knell of the Old DC which was still stuck up its own ass and unable to understand the audience Marvel had been tapping for a decade.

55:47 -- I had no idea Batman Family was originally slated as a 1st Issue Special.

55:50 -- What were the sales figures for this series? A try-out series can't work if it isn't reaching an audience. Maybe DC was just trying to get material copyrighted and trademarked by the sixth issue, already having given up on anyone actually reading it.

100:00 -- Interesting point about Kirby's talent for visual humor. Yeah, it would have been really interesting to see him play a major role on Crazy.

102:00 -- Yep. Feels very similar to what he was doing with The Newsboy Legion, which was clearly for him and not for Jimmy Olsen readers.

105:33 -- I didn't realize this was The Creeper's first appearance. Never understood the character, but this sounds really amusing. Another issue I'll need to pick up!

106:48 -- Is this after Fleischer had his breakdown, though? His writing was never the same after that.

The first few Spectre stories in Adventure Comics are pure genius, and I regularly pull them out to re-read them, but the whole thing quickly falls apart once Fleischer allegedly has his breakdown in response to Harlan Ellison's criticism of his work on the run, Fleischer suddenly pushing for characterization and relationships that don't really work in place of the unapologetic gorefests he was bringing to the mag prior.

So much of the genius isn't the gore itself, but rather how Fleischer and Aparo skirt the comics code each time. Their content is so much more shocking than the stuff EC was doing in the Atom Age, but they're so damn clever about it so as not to get the book in trouble.

The Creeper story is just plain goofy, visually. Had it been done as a pure comedy, I think it would read a heck of a lot better. It's the kind of thing you can envision Ambush Bug stepping into the middle of and going all MST3K on.

Lady Cop has a good idea at the center and some intriguing elements; but, it feels like someone tried to mash a mystery/police action story with a stereotypical romance comic plot, while trying to add social messages on top. I think a writer like John Ostrander could have made than work; but not Bob Kanigher. He handles portions well; but, some of it seems at odds with the rest. The goofiest part is a venereal disease PSA stuck in the middle that can't even name the malady! I can only imagine the explosions if DC had tried to submit Death Talks About Life to the CCA. AIDS would never have been mentioned, the condom demonstration would have been covered up, and there would have been no mention of sex.

The audio issues seemed to be at my end. My web cam/mic isn't exactly top of the line and nothing seemed to fix a hum that was coming through. I have also been told I have a softer voice and get mistaken for a female, over the phone. I can't sustain my drill deck voice long enough for something like this.

Slight accent?  Hunh; that's a new one.  Nope, born and raised in central Illinois.  I spent 4 years in South Carolina, in the Navy, then back to central Illinois, where I still live.  I do occasionally play around with accents, for a joke.  My wife is from the Chicago area, so maybe it is rubbing off.  My father was from southern Illinois and his family has rural accents, similar to a Kentucky accent (where he grew up is near the southeastern Illinois/Indian border, and Kentucky isn't much further away).  His wasn't very prominent, unless he spent a few days down there.  Then, it came out more.  Might be some of that rubbing off.  I grew up in a farm town, about 20 miles from Decatur.  Decatur, then, was a mixture of agri-business and several factories, including Caterpillar and Firestone.  Our school was a mix of two towns and surrounding farms; so we had farm kids and factory kids, mixing rural and urban accents.  There are rural accents in Illinois, not quite "southern", but definitely rural.  It's not something that gets represented in the media.


My sister, who has lived in the Carolinas for over 20 years now, has developed a definite Southern accent and tends to "Y'all" us quite a bit, when we get together.  I tease her about it.  My cousins in southern Illinois have a definite "twang" to their accent.  My mother's family is from East Central Illinois and have a slight mix of rural and Chicago-esque.  They were farmers, until moving into the city, in later years.  The parts of the family that continued farming (my mother's uncle and cousin) had a more rural accent), while the rest got more urbanized.

The best way I can describe accents where I grew up is the Andy Griffith Show.  Some people sounded slightly Southern, some neutral, some rural, some urban, some more formal.  If you notice, on the show, only Andy and a select few characters had real Southern accents.  The rest were variations or definitely other areas.  That's a mostly how people were in my hometown and surroundings. 

Ah yes, I believe that's what I was hearing. Fascinating, especially your Andy Griffith analogy. Thanks!




To be totally fair, I only know Robinson's Post-Starman work. I'll probably read Starman eventually, but his later work for DC was such a thorough turn-off for me, especially his work on Superman.

I'd agree with that. Jack Knight was a guy who mocked everything; his older brother David, his father, the business of costumed superheroes. He had no time for the now, living in the past of 40s and early 50s noir music, Bakelite radios, art deco chairs, Viewmaster reels, and other collectible ephemera. He has herodom forced upon him, when a new Mist murders his brother and goes after him and his father. He finds allies in the strangest places, including The Shade, one of the Flash's enemies, in the 40s. He gets by on luck, at first. Slowly, we start to see the man underneath. We discover that he actually idolized his father; but, his father was a bit distant, due to his work and mental issues, following the war. He adored his mother, who died, while still youngish. As the series progresses, he rises above survival and self interest to find true altruism. We see the love he has for Opal City, his home, and how it mirrors his father. We see his reverence for the JSA. he and David come to terms, after David has died, as he appears every year, as a ghost. They have a conversation and a bit of fun, culminating in the ultimate Talking With David, at the end of the series, which also answers a mystery introduced at the beginning. He finds love and goes into space for it. He faces a deadly enemy. He makes strange friends, even gains some justice for his father's deadliest enemy. In one adventure, he gets to meet his father's old comrade, Wesley Dodd, the original Sandman, and his idol, Dian Belmont (for her writing).

Tony Harris is promising at the beginning and grows into a star, during. Unfortunately, he leaves, over creative differences, with Robinson. Peter Snejbjerg takes over, with a remarkably different art style; but, one that comes into its own, during the To The Stars saga. Robinson makes the pest use of Ralph and Sue Dibny since the Silver Age, as well as Adam Strange. His Times Past tales let us see the later days of Brian Savage, the DC western hero Scalphunter. We see into the Shade's mysterious past, which stretches back to the Victorian era and even to Oscar Wilde. We get acquainted with the ghost of the Black Pirate, one of DC's oldest characters.

Jack Knight is a self centered jerk who grows into a man and a hero. I was getting burnt out by superhero comics in the 90s; hated most of them or was indifferent. I took a chance on Starman because of Robinson's work on Firearm, Grendel, and the Blades storyline, in LOTDK. It came out of that horrible Zero Hour mini-series and was really the only good thing to emerge. It slowly pulled me in until I was in it until the end. Astro City and Alan Moore's ABC line were the only other pseudo-superhero books that grabbed me the same way. The rest of my reading was more unique, like Hellboy and American Century, or Patty Cake.