Are you getting tired of the MCU, the DCU, and shiny, happy endings? Refresh your love of superheroes, drama, and blood & gore with the hosts of Don't Encourage US as they do a deep dive into the thrilling and thought-provoking Amazon Prime Video series, "Invincible" by Robert Kirkman. Join them as they explore the show's complex characters, complex storylines, and dramatic twists. With a blend of humor and analysis, they unpack the show's powerful themes of morality, family dynamics, and the consequences of power. Whether you're a fan of the show or new to the series...wait a minute, if you're 'new to the series,' go watch it now (or read the comics). They'll wait.
Are you getting tired of the MCU, the DCU, and shiny, happy endings? Refresh your love of superheroes, drama, and blood & gore with the hosts of Don't Encourage US as they do a deep dive into the thrilling and thought-provoking Amazon Prime Video series, "Invincible" by Robert Kirkman. Join them as they explore the show's complex characters, complex storylines, and dramatic twists. With a blend of humor and analysis, they unpack the show's powerful themes of morality, family dynamics, and the consequences of power. Whether you're a fan of the show or new to the series...wait a minute, if you're 'new to the series,' go watch it now (or read the comics). They'll wait.
---------------WE SPOIL IT BIG TIME---------------
Reach the pod at DontEncourage@gmail.com
Discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threads
dont-encourage-us-invincible-final
speaker 2: Welcome to. Don't Encourage us, the podcast where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, nothing's off limits. You know, I actually had a thought we could change that. We could say, uh, welcome to the podcast where two men mansplain science fiction to each other.
Yeah. You like
speaker 1: that? I don't know. I like, I like it conceptually, but I don't know if at.
And then what is it? Talk about topics they know, know little about For two, for Two Men. Google briefly Google Topics. Right? And
speaker 2: pretend like they're experts. And Miss Report. Yes. I'm your host, Frank Castle, and I'm here with my co-host Jake Gallos. Hi Jake. How you doing? Great, as
speaker 1: always. Good to see
speaker 2: you again.
I feel like that bit's getting tired. Should I retire? That is, it's time to move on. Maybe it's a little retir. It's time, it's ready. Today we're discussing Invincible season one available on Amazon Prime streaming TV channel app or whatever they're calling it. But first, uh, what's on your list this week?
What have you been into this week?
speaker 1: Really, I just focused on. Invincible. I've been working through Columbus Day. Mm. That's been, that's been pretty good. I've been reading it. I haven't been listening to the audio, but I think at some point I'll probably switch over to the audio and probably go back to reading it, depending on how much time I have.
Okay. That's been enjoyable. I don't wanna talk about it yet. 'cause I know we have a dedicated episode coming
speaker 2: up next, next week probably. That's the plan. Yeah. Yeah. I read today the guy I was researching a little bit for that one, RC Bray, the guy who does the narration or the book reading, he actually did The Martian.
Really? Mm-hmm. Huh.
speaker 1: Yeah. That's a pretty good book.
speaker 2: Oh yeah. It seems like it's fairly well known. Yeah. I think I was, you know, it was a movie too. Uh, you about the movie, I think. Yeah. It's little known star. Matt Damon, I think was in that. Yeah. He's
speaker 1: gonna make it big one day. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. But it's just been for me, just invincible in that.
This week, but,
speaker 2: oh well. I've also been reading that series and enjoying that. I just finished the, uh, novella that's crammed in between two of the longer novels and I switched from the audio to reading. Either one I think works. I also saw Antman Quant, quantum Mania and Cocaine Bear.
speaker 1: Hmm. What did
speaker 2: you think of those?
I really enjoyed Antman, but I don't know how your average M C U fan would receive that one. Uh, I think the critics were a little bit lukewarm on it. I think it's got a lot of really fun, uh, interesting elements to it. So it was great for me and you know, you know me. I love everything. I never have any criticisms.
No, never for anything. Yeah. That's what this podcast's all about. Cocaine bear is a fun idea. It's got some, it's got a lot of, uh, celebrities in it, or a lot of TV celebrities, a lot of recognizable faces, let's put it that way. And it's a, it's a funny premise. You might want to plan on having a couple drinks if you're gonna sit through that one.
It doesn't really drag or anything. Uh, just maybe don't rush out to see it. It's
speaker 1: pretty short, right? About 90 minutes or so. It's probably really
speaker 2: a long, it didn't really feel long, super short, but I don't know. I didn't look at the length. That's rough. No, it's, it's good. It's fine. It's fun. It, it is. It's exactly what you would expect.
So if, if you're in the mood for that, this is a great choice. I heard
speaker 1: the director might do a, uh, cocaine shark. Movie. I don't know if it's a, I read the headline, but I didn't read the article and I'm thinking, oh, that's ridiculous. But now I think about it a little bit more and maybe it's not so ridiculous.
Maybe it'll be a whole series of cocaine. Werewolf cocaine.
speaker 2: Do sharks have the proper receptors to cocaine? Werewolf is a great idea though. Before we skate past that and get into anything grounded, I think you need to pitch that.
speaker 1: What do you think cocaine werewolf would be? Let's say a guy who, uh, has werewolf tendencies ends up in the red light district.
Mm. In, uh, in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, that's where he ends up getting the cocaine. Mm-hmm. And that's where he turns to a werewolf. So it's kind of like American werewolf in Amsterdam with a cocaine twist.
speaker 2: Well, that's kind of implied then. I don't think you need to mention that in the title. If it's a, if it's a werewolf in Amsterdam, then you know there's gonna be some cocaine.
That's true. Or weeded or whatever. Yeah. Let me think about that. Cocaine werewolf. So werewolf's are already pretty hyped up, pretty aggressive, right. Would would it have an opposite effect? Would it mellow him out? Is this gonna be more like a teen wolf where he ends up on the club scene? Like DJing
speaker 1: or the basketball team?
speaker 2: Yeah. Like maybe he opens an online business and gets his own yacht. I mean, what's like, and he becomes an accountant. I don't know. It's like an A due to a
speaker 1: werewolf. That's a really good, that's a really good point. Hmm. A hyper aggressive werewolf. I don't know if that's such a
speaker 2: thing. Right? I mean, can they be more aggressive?
I mean, they're pretty aggressive, right? Yeah. Already they're, he throws some cocaine. Maybe all his fur falls out and he just looks like a, like an ugly guy. Think he starts working in finance.
Yeah. That might make more sense. Cocaine, werewolf and finance. Would he get into porn? Is that the title? Porn and finance, would that be a day and night shop and incessantly
speaker 1: talking to you about his Bitcoin portfolio?
speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds right. I think we're going in the right direction with this. I don't think he'd kill more people. I don't think he could stand still long enough to kill anybody. I don't think he'd be able to successfully hunt if he was cooked
speaker 1: up. No. And like he'd just end up at the H in the Hamptons at the end or something.
speaker 2: Lotta waking up, passed out on beaches.
speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know. Would he be shunned by the rest of the werewolf
speaker 2: community? Would he have trouble performing sexually? Anything's possible. He becomes, I don't know what cocaine would do to aol. There's a lot to explore here. Yeah, there's a lot going on here. You do a cocaine monster universe where you have cocaine.
Mommy. Where he is constantly pulling like the cloth off to wipe his nose and the blood from his eyes. Nosebleeds constantly.
speaker 1: Cocaine, vampire. It goes on and on and on. Oh, I love it. Cocaine, Paddington,
speaker 2: just throw him in there. Finally, another successful shared universe. Cocaine. We gotta get writing. Absolutely. A kid, a kid friendly
speaker 1: version of the concept.
speaker 2: Ooh. Coked up. Demon. Someone's possessed and coked up. I feel like that would get messy.
Just bodily fluids flying in every direction. It would be repulsive. Yeah. The demon trying to escape, but it can't like get out. It's trapped. It's coked up body. It's a miserable experience. Doesn't
speaker 1: know what to do. I think there was some horror movie. Movie like that priest. About some alien that takes over, like a crackhead's body.
Oh wow. I forget the name of it. It's one of these kind of like B-movie concepts. I'll find out. We can, we can get
speaker 2: back to that. Yeah, definitely. We might have to push Columbus Day. Mm-hmm.
speaker 1: For Coked Up Alien Demon Possession Werewolf Vampire slash Paddington movie concept
speaker 2: episode. How come there isn't a Paddington three?
Wasn't Paddington two like hugely popular? Yeah,
speaker 1: both of 'em were great movies.
speaker 2: Yeah. And then they just dropped What happened? Dropped the mic and walked away, huh? Yeah, they're just like, we're gonna
speaker 1: go off, go out on a, on a high note here.
speaker 2: Yeah. Where the director was like, I'm never doing another Paddington movie.
No matter how much money they give me. I wanna do all cocaine movies from now on, from now on. Paddington was just my route to get to do what I want to. Do you think this is
speaker 1: just the beginning of those cocaine movies?
speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. We'll see how this one does, but certainly as far as like the sci-fi channel is concerned, or I don't know though, that's a little bit too, what do we cinemaxx maybe Who's gonna pick this up and run with it?
What is it? The asylum, that's the name of that, uh, production company that does all those, like Blumhouse or Blumhouse or Blumhouse, uh, that they do more successful stuff now. They're actually now in charge of the, um, universal monster verse. I think they did the Invisible Man movie. Oh, okay. With, yeah. And um, I think they're taking a swing at something else.
speaker 1: They started off with, um, kind of low budget horror, right?
speaker 2: Yeah, I believe so. I think they were doing those ghost movies. They made some money. Horror movies are a good way to break in. Yeah. Yeah.
speaker 1: Horror movies and comedies. Right. If you can, if you can do a great horror movie or a great comedy, you're all set.
It's really
speaker 2: hard to get right. Interesting. Alright, so that's enough of cocaine themed entertainment for at least the next 10 minutes. Uh, before we talk about invincible, the TV series and the comic books, the graphic novels, we should, uh, issue the standard spoiler warning. There's a lot to spoil in this, and some of it comes really early in the series.
I, as I understand it, the comic series takes a little bit longer to get to some of the more spoiler or surprising twists, but the TV show made a point to get to it in the first episode. So if you have not watched Invincible, I highly recommend you delete this episode and never come back. Um, and in your bonus free time, if you're, maybe if you're driving, set your phone up very carefully on your dashboard, load Amazon Prime and try to drive in traffic and watch Invincible as if you are invincible.
I think the whole season, the whole first season has some good stuff. Most every episode I think has some good, has some great drama, if not a twist. But we are gonna spoil pretty much everything, I think, right? Yeah. We're gonna try. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Good. We
speaker 1: might even spoil season two, which isn't out yet.
We'll just speculate about that enough
speaker 2: until we get something right. Yeah, exactly. Throw enough things at the wall. There's a lot about invincible. That's really interesting, including a lot of behind the scenes stuff. Did you get a chance to research anything behind the scenes? For the show. What I was really
speaker 1: curious about is, since I'm not a huge comic book fan mm-hmm.
Which I think will make this conversation interesting in the fact that you're really into the M C U and all, all of those, uh, the comic universes, how this, this comic book series or this series in general flips a lot of the, the general comic book tropes on, its on their head. So I'm really curious about discussing that.
I mean, that's really the kind of the one big takeaway that I got from what I looked into.
speaker 2: I'm curious from the perspective of someone who hasn't seen endless versions of this, you know? Mm-hmm. Or what they're playing off of. Did you feel lost? Did you feel like stuff was left out? Did you enjoy it? Were you follow everything?
Well, I
speaker 1: followed everything. Well, I thought the, the series was really well done in that someone who's not really familiar with comic books in general could pretty easily follow what was going on. And they established the characters. I thought really well. Good from the, from the get go. 'cause I felt like this was so relationship driven.
What I thought going into it was that it was just gonna be nonstop action, just kind of kid-like humor. But it was really more mature than that. And a lot of the themes that I dealt with were really, really deep themes. Mm-hmm. Free will and mortality in general and what it means to be human, which I really enjoyed.
So, no, I don't think so. Good. I think anyone could really
speaker 2: enjoy it. Yeah, there were some great moments about parenting heartbreak. They treated relationships a little bit more maturely. Mm-hmm. Romantic ones than a lot of these kinds of things do. But they played a lot off of the, uh, DC universe with Superman, Batman, wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, et cetera, et cetera.
So there are direct parallels for all those characters, including their super team, the Justice League, and a variety of other characters. Right. So the, this show plays off of that so much. I wasn't sure if they did an adequate job introducing those characters before important things happen to them.
Mm-hmm. You know? But it sounds like you felt oriented and you understood the characters well enough to appreciate their relationships and why what's happening to them is really
speaker 1: important. Yeah. I felt oriented. I mean, I guess you could have had another episode kind of delves deeper into each one of those characters a little bit.
Before that built big twist. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But at the same time, the series isn't really about those characters at all. It's more the relationships between the characters who make it, let's say.
speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. So back to the behind the scenes stuff. The Invincible TV series, it's eight episodes. It's based on a graphic novel series by Robert Kirkman.
Do you know Robert Kirkman? Do you recognize that name? I mean, I would say yeah, but I don't think I do. He's the, uh, the guy who wrote the comic series Walking Dead. Oh wow. Same guy.
speaker 1: Didn't realize that. Yeah. What a different
speaker 2: series this is, huh? Very, very different. Yeah. I did read a lot of The Walking Dead.
I have not read any of the Invincible Comic, and I'm glad I hadn't because I enjoyed the series that much more I think for not knowing at all or having any preconceived notions about these characters. But I, I would be curious to go back and read it. The Walking Dead series in the comics is, uh, full of a lot of in-depth exploration of characters and their relationships and extreme circumstances, which most broadly is, you know, same and invincible.
But he does a great job. It's interesting. He, he's a very mature writer.
speaker 1: Isn't there another connection too with the, the lead Voice actor?
speaker 2: There's actually a lot, a lot of the Walking Dead actors do voices in Invincible. Yeah. Including the lead. Yeah, I thought the voice
speaker 1: acting was, was phenomenal in this.
speaker 2: Oh yeah. Actually, I wanna go through that in a second because there's a lot of talent and it goes by so quickly. I think it's easy to lose. Mm-hmm. Actually we can do that right now. Uh, so the lead is Steven Young. I think that's how you say that. And I apologize if I'm mispronouncing people's names, but he was Glenn in The Walking Dead.
He's also, he was just recently cast in an upcoming Marvel movie. It's unclear who he's playing, but he might be playing a, like a sort of a Superman type character. That would be an odd casting choice because he physically doesn't fit the part of that character in the comic at all. Like, he's almost opposite, but, you know, hey, special effects.
Uh, so maybe that's who he's playing, but he's definitely gonna be in a major. A Marvel movie, or at least as of now, a major Marvel movie coming up. But I thought he did a really, really good job acting this part with a lot of nuance and a lot of heart in a very believable way. Like at no point was I thinking, oh, this is Glen from Walking Dead, or none of his work ever took me out of the story they were telling.
So that's really impressive, especially given how much work he's doing. Yeah. Uh, his mother was voiced by Sandra o. She was in Grey's Anatomy. Yep. Uh, his dad, another main character was voiced by JK Simmons, instantly recognizable voice. I'm sure you got that one. Mm-hmm. Um, you remember Samantha? Uh, Adam Eve?
Yeah. The pink. Okay. So you, did you recognize that voice? I didn't, no. It's Jillian Jacobs. She was Britta and community.
speaker 1: I never watched community, so
speaker 2: I didn't recognize it. Oh, okay. Cecil, remember the older guy who, yeah. So Cecil was voiced by Walton Goggins. He was in the shield. He's done a lot of stuff over the years.
Uh oh, really? Well known actor
speaker 1: be mm-hmm. I think he might've been in, um, seen Hateful Eight, or no, I don't remember. I'm
speaker 2: confused. Somebody else might be. He might be. I don't know. Did you recognize The Voice of Robot? Oh,
speaker 1: that's Zach, uh,
speaker 2: levy. Zachary Quinto. Mm-hmm. Quinto, yeah. Yeah. From Heroes originally. Uh, star Trek.
Mm-hmm. And perfect choice. Yeah. And, uh, when he becomes younger, when they each becomes human, basically that's, uh, the guy doing that voice is a walking dead actor who was also in a Avengers endgame. Uh, Ross Marwan, I believe is how you say that name. So he's probably an up and comer, like, I know he's been acting for a while, but it seems like he's on a upward trajectory, so that name may pop up more and more.
Did you recognize, okay, so Rex explode, the guy who can kinetically charge or he can, uh, energetically charge, like he uses coins a lot and they kind of explode when he throws them. Yeah. Okay. That's, uh, I'm gonna mispronounce this. Jason Manzu. He's a comedian, standup comedian, star of the League TV show.
Hmm. Uh, I'm just gonna blow through these. He sounds like Will Anette, he is a different guy. Duplicate is an actress, Malise Jao from Nickelodeon shows and The Vampire Diaries on CW Amber Bennett. The character is, uh, Ozzy Beats, uh, the, you remember Art Rosenbaum, the, the costume designer? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
That's Mark Hamill, huh? Yep. The Demon Detective. Damien Dark Blood is Clancy Brown. Uh, well-known actor, Alan the Alien who comes and fights with Invincible. That's Seth Rogan. He was one of the producers on the, uh, series. There's a character, a Secret Service agent who's guarding the White House, and uh, I think later he pops up and he's in London with his son.
He is, there's like a little small story and, and two acts that they throw in there. That's John Ham. Yep. The principal from the high school is, uh, Reginald Vel Johnson, who was a cop in diehard. He was the dad from Family Matters and he was in Remo Williams. Yep. He was, uh, on Facts. Was he cop in that I think as well?
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Marcal Ali plays Titan. He's gonna be the New Blade. He's done a ton of stuff. Jamon Ssu is a couple different voices in this. Jeffrey Donovan, he's the lead from Burn Notice. Does a voice in this. Michael Dorn from Next Generation, his battle beast. That was a great part. I think he's gonna pop up again next season.
Ezra Miller, the Flash, the controversial actor is a voice in this. Uh, Justin Roland is one of the characters. He's the, um, one of the college kids that gets turned into a cyborg. Justin Roland is from, um, Rick and Morty. Yeah, so a lot of really talented actors behind the scenes. I'm not really sure how they recruited so much talent.
My guess would be partly because Amazon was serious about investing in this and partly because of the relationships that the executive producer, one of the behind the scenes media executives and also Seth Rogan and his partner had in recruiting all these people. You know, again, a lot of, I didn't mention it, but a lot of Walking dead actors are also doing voices.
Yeah. I think a lot of those
speaker 1: relations probably really helped in this case. And the source materials. So good, right? Isn't it? It was first, uh, first came out, what? 2003? Was it?
speaker 2: The comic series? The original series. The original comic was launched in 2003. Yeah. And it was the same year he launched his Walking Dead series.
Hmm.
speaker 1: So I wonder if this was part of his, you know, when, when, uh, writers will pitch one thing that gets sold, then the studio asks, what else do you got? And then they, uh, they pitch that as a series. Yeah. I wonder if it was kind of in development for a long time and kind of making the rounds different studios
speaker 2: that history was, I did some research on that.
At one point, Seth Rogan said it was gonna be a movie. And from some of the resources I saw, they said, oh, there's still gonna be a movie. They, they just announced that there's separately gonna be an animated series. I don't know if that's still the plan. It's been a few years since they've said that. I don't really see how you could then do a movie after having done this series.
Maybe they thought they would keep the movie option open in case the animated series didn't reach a wide audience. You know, if it was like really loved, but most of Amazon's audience didn't wanna watch an animated show. Maybe there'd be room to do a movie. Going back to production side here a little bit more.
When they finished, or when Robert Kirkman finished the 144 issue run of Invincible, he had already sold the rights to the Amazon pilot and he started working on riding that pilot. He wrote the first and last episodes of this season. Um, he started that just a few weeks later. And I think that's largely due to the relationship that he had with, uh, a senior media executive named Sharon Talal.
Ido, I believe Ido, perhaps is how you say that name, voted one of the most influential people in Hollywood. She had a relationship with Kirkman going back to when they originally started airing the Walking Dead. So she was in charge of new show development, I believe, at a m c at that time. And she approached, or was, you know, there was a connection with her and Kirkman, and then she later moved to, was it Cinemax?
Oh, Cinemax, yeah, exactly. Okay. So when she moved to Cinemax and was in charge of developing series there, she approached Kirkman again and they made a two season show based on another one of his projects called outcast. Have you heard of Outkast? I haven't, no. So Outkast, I watched season one. I haven't gotten around to season two yet, but Outkast is the story of demon possession.
And I don't wanna spoil it because some people might be interested, but it's a, it's a kind of a unique take on it. Sort of typical for Kirkman, where he takes your standard uh, possession story and develops it in a really interesting kind of twisty direction with a lot of characters who are complicated and have interesting relationships to each other.
And then season two, I think just didn't get really good ratings. I don't know if that was because Cinemax wasn't making the transition very well into the streaming era, or I don't know, who knows? Maybe people's interest in possession stories was not as high. I think there were a bunch of projects at that time where they tried to relaunch, like there was an Exorcist TV series.
I watched I think half of that before it was canceled. And it was, at times it was very good and very creepy. And other times I got a little bit bored. So I think maybe it might've been, there was a little bit of an over exposure of that idea. So anyways, she worked with Kirkman at Cinemax, then she left Cinemax.
She took over scripted TV or scripted show development for Amazon, and now we get events invincible. Oh, it's quite a ride. It is. And it's clearly the relationship that she had with Kirkman and he just, you know, wherever she was, he had a project that she would develop and they're all, I think, fairly successful Since then.
She was involved in the development of the Rings of Power, the Lord of the Rings. Right after that she left Amazon and amongst other things, she's the c e o of a company, a gaming company. Yeah. Called Astrid Entertainment. And the quote from Deadline was, I. I'm just gonna paraphrase here a little bit.
Astrid Entertainment, a gaming company focused on developing fantastical living worlds that inspire positive community play and can crossover into different mediums, including film and tv. I, I looked at their website. I tried to do a little additional reading. All I can figure is, it's sort of like a, uh, world of Warcraft slash Second Life slash Metaverse strategy.
You know where a lot of these big tech companies are going, where they think, Hey, if they can suck people in and get them really invested in this fantastical living world, then they'll also be interested in projects based on that in other platforms as well. Is there sort of like an ecosystem, you know?
Yeah. Where you can pay real money to buy a digital hat?
speaker 1: Yeah. I think that there's a lot of that going on now. Mm-hmm. That seems to be really where gaming and entertainment, or at least that's the way they want it to go, put it that way.
speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's a, there's a really strong desire to take things in that direction.
Yeah,
speaker 1: I was, I was reading about how Disney's planning on doing this with all of their major ip, so Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, et cetera. Mm-hmm. Their plan is that if they have a medium, like a metaverse type of medium where they can have a child buy, let's say the Mickey Mouse character, and within that world, they can buy a better house from Mickey, a better outfit.
They can buy him a car, they can do all this stuff. 'cause it seems like what they're really trying to do is to get kids away from the stuffed animal, the physical product world, and get them immersed in this digital world. 'cause it's so much more profitable. And once they've built out the world for, let's say Mickey, they're not gonna abandon it.
They're gonna add more characters to it. They're gonna make that world richer. And every step of the way they monetize it. So they really kind of hook the, the user in. So I think that's what a lot of these media companies are going for, right? Once you're hooked into these worlds, of course you're gonna watch the movie.
Of course you're going to listen to the soundtrack. Of course, there's so many opportunities to, to make money off of one person, you know, and to really get them hooked into your product. So it'll be interesting to see where, where that actually goes with the development of Absolutely. Of the Metaverses and I guess VR in general.
And are people really gonna buy into it? Mm-hmm. In such a huge way, quickly enough for them to make a profit. 'cause they have to dump so much money into the development of these worlds
speaker 2: in the first place, you know? Yeah. Well, working from home is only a short step away from working in a virtual space.
Mm-hmm.
speaker 1: That's true. Yeah. I wonder how the pandemic really drove that, that whole ecosystem.
speaker 2: That's the direction she went with her career or is going at this point, and as one of the most influential people in Hollywood, you gotta take it seriously. Yeah. By the way, I don't know if you know this, but early versions of Mickey Mouse enter the public domain next year.
speaker 1: Yeah. You mentioned that. Not on a podcast episode, but that was shocking to me to hear.
speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Disney successfully postponed it a while back, and maybe they'll figure out how to do it again. But a lot of things like Sherlock Holmes and other properties, they all move into public domain eventually. So unless their lawyers figure out how to kick that down the road, again, you can start working on your Mickey Mouse spec script or T-shirts.
Wow. And hats.
speaker 1: Yeah. That's, yeah. I wonder how that'll affect Disney in general. Yeah. Or people so latched onto the original product that in order for them to get pulled away from it, it would have to be something so remarkable. Like a Mickey Mouse feature film or something. Yeah. Done by another studio. And would other studios jump on that as well?
Do you think? It's some kind of secret code they have that they wouldn't do that they wouldn't develop a property that's in the public
speaker 2: domain? That's a good question. Do you want to tick off Disney? I don't know. I mean, some people clearly don't care. I don't know. At the end of the day, it seems like if you create something, whatever it is, if people like it, then it finds a way and you know, to survive it, it moves forward.
Even if it's a cold following and there's not a sequel for 30 years, uh, you know, it does find a way. That's not to say every story, everybody's career story has a happy ending. But if people do come out with things using early versions of Mickey Mouse that are funny and interesting, and it's not just like little gags on Family Guy or, you know, uh, different shows taking advantage of that, if for a joke here and there, I don't know.
Maybe there'll be a, um, uh, what was it? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Maybe there'll be a Steamboat, Willie and Zombies that'll come out. That'll be hugely popular. Steamboat Willie and
speaker 1: the, uh,
speaker 2: cocaine Werewolf. And Cocaine Werewolf. You heard it here first. That's a
speaker 1: free idea. Everybody. You can run with it if you want.
Love that. I don't think we're
speaker 2: gonna develop that. Don't finish until next year. Don't launch it. Yeah. Please don't launch your M m O RPC until you Yeah. Give it a year. Just wait. Yeah. Oh boy. So I picked this, uh, I picked Invincible because I know you're such a big fan of the 1981 film, heavy Metal starring cartoon boobies, so I was hoping you'd appreciate a little bit more adult animation.
Yeah, huge fan. That explains the subscription to the magazine and the blacklight posters in your room. That's
speaker 1: for another episode.
speaker 2: But this is, uh, really intense stuff. It's an interesting commentary and probably not worth going into that. In America. We are fine with this kind of ultra violence. But we are not okay with sex.
So the sex in this is incredibly tame. Like the, you know, sexuality is really toned down and very bland and not at all remarkable that I saw, you know? Mm-hmm. Maybe you picked up on something I didn't. But, uh, really nothing, nothing to mention. In stark contrast to the violence, which is 11 outta 10, the
speaker 1: violence was shocking.
Mm-hmm. To me it was so shocking to see this in an an because, you know, I think of animation a lot, like aim towards kids, and then you see this level of violence in an animated series and it's, it's really, it really threw me off. Mm-hmm. For a second I was like, wow, this is, this is totally different than what I was expecting, especially just seeing the, um, cover image to the series.
I was like, oh, it's gonna be like your typical mm-hmm. Kind of superhero type. Show, but then seeing that I was like, wow, this is, this is intense.
speaker 2: This is really intense. It's relatively simple animation, very much in line with a lot of kids' cartoons. The violence isn't just, uh, first of all I'll say I'm not against the violence in this case because I think it, it does fit the story and the material really well.
And they intentionally wanted to create a contrast between a lot of what people think of as fun fantasy and the reality that they were trying to bring into it. If there were people who had these kinds of powers, it would be only a matter of time before it became, at least as violent as that show, probably more violent.
So people with that kind of power living amongst regular humans are not gonna be, it's not gonna be pretty. So I think there is a purpose to the violence in terms of telling the story and creativity, but the violence isn't just drawing blood and guts. It's also conceptually very violent. What's happening has more impact than just gross.
Yeah. Right. Yeah, I agree with that. So it's disturbing violence, and again, that underscores, uh, I think the point, or not the point they're trying to make, but it underscores the themes and the ideas and what makes this so good. So, again, I'm not against it, but if you're not prepared for it, then it's, uh, well, if it's not your thing and you know that definitively, then feel free to turn off the episode before the last, uh, 25% of it.
The first one. Yeah. Yeah. I
speaker 1: mean, to your point, I think that the show does a really good job of showing that disparity between the power of humanity and these superheroes. Mm-hmm. And it goes into each one of their specific power powers really well. I think there are certain superhero movies that don't really display all the capabilities of each character that well.
Mm-hmm. And I thought this did it really well and really early. Which was refreshing to see. So like, wow, thi this is really what, what they can do. And we're getting a taste of that here, like when they're fighting
speaker 2: both lizards. Yeah, no, that's great to hear because I wasn't sure. 'cause again, they, they play off of existing characters so clearly.
Like they're just one-to-one analogs basically for me, I, I, like, I get it, the guy's, the flash, right? The red blur. I think his name was the Russian, yeah, I understand his powers. So when he uses them, I'm like, oh, that's, that's exactly what I would expect. But for someone who hasn't seen all these cartoons or TV shows about the Flash, maybe that's confusing.
Martian Man, hunter is a DC character and one of the characters in the, um, defenders of the Globe. Is that, is that what it is? Defenders of the Globe? No. Guardians of the Globe. Guardian of, guardian of the Globe is obviously the Martian man. Hunter, and I know who that is and I, I get him, for those of you who don't know, it's the character in Invincible who, uh, has a relationship with the seemingly, um, homeless little girl and he's trying to stretch out and she's like marking the limits of his power and he flies off.
So that's, you know, a very famous, it's a playoff of a very famous character in the DC universe. Immediately I get the relationship with this character in that character, so I'm glad that didn't bother you. It probably enriched it a little for me, but also changed the way I enjoyed it, so I'm glad to hear it worked.
Yeah. Okay. So all that being said, the premise of, of invincible, the, uh, Amazon show, as I would state it, is what if your dad was Superman and you found out he's bad? Does that sound about right? I think that's about right, yeah. In a nutshell. Good. So in a larger nutshell, what would you say is a good brief summary of the plot, me and
speaker 1: brief summaries?
Oh God. Mark Nolan finds out that, well, he knows that his father's a superhero. He's coming into his zone, that he's gonna have powers, that he's going to be trained by his father. Turns out that he's also a teenager. He's trying to juggle his powers with him being a part human because he's half, what is it?
Vitruvian, what is
speaker 2: it? Vi Mite. Vi mite. Bill Mite. Vi
speaker 1: Mite. Yeah. So he's trying to juggle that with his relationship with his girlfriend as well as with other, the other superheroes that are on earth. But then after the first episode, there's a big twist where you see his father committed a huge crime against the other superheroes, and this is a mystery for a while.
The audience knows it, but then it becomes an investigation to who actually did this between the government as well as Damian Dark Blood, who is a demon detective. And the rest of the series is really, really delving deep into how Mark Nolan is going to become. Basically his father, until he realizes how evil his father really is.
And the fact that he's come from, he's a mite, he's come from a really far away planet, it's a conquering planet. They take over other planets and basically dominate them. Conquer them. So his father's been sent to earth in order to conquer earth. There's a mite who's sent to every planet, and he's been undercover this whole time.
So you're thinking that he's protecting earth, but he's not. And then chaos ensues when Mark doesn't wanna go, go along with his plan.
speaker 2: That was perfect. Very good. Okay. So the, there's a lot of threads, and that's how I think of this, is that there are, uh, usually in a story like this, you would expect the most of the episodes to be about Mark and his dad.
And to a lesser extent, Mark's friends and uh, his mother and stuff like that. But really it's about the, you would think it'd be about the two of them, and every episode follows that thread all the way through to the end where there's a confrontation in the last episode between the two of 'em. But that's not the only thread.
There are multiple other characters that have their own threads that operate. I'm not completely independently of this one, but a lot more independently than you would expect. So that's part of what I really enjoyed about this, is that it very rapidly takes on a complexity level, more in line with like a soap opera than your standard superhero story.
speaker 1: Yeah, it almost goes into, I, I don't know how he, parts of it are like a teen drama in the high school and the relationships between Mark, his best friend, his best friend's, love interest, but it also has that backdrop of all of these insane things happening all over earth where they, the superheroes have to jump in and protect the humans.
Mm-hmm. So it's like all this chaos is happening in the background. It's like, how do they kind of balance their two lives? Really? It's like a, they're caught between two worlds. On the one end, these teenagers are trying to be normal, like let's say Adam Eve and Mark, but at the same time they're superheroes.
So how do they walk between those two worlds and how do they keep their, their relationships intact?
speaker 2: Absolutely. And every character has, I don't wanna say every, because maybe I'm forgetting someone, but all the characters that I think about, which is a lot in this, they have complicated relationships, like you're saying, a lot of them are superheroes or super villains and they have dual identities in many cases.
And even if they, if that isn't featured, they have relationships with people through work and through their personal lives and those relationships impact them and their reactions to other characters. So it's really rich. You know, like our main trio initially, and these are not the three most important characters, but the mom, the son and the dad.
Dad being the Superman stand in the mite, the evil Superman, he's part of a group, a superhero team. And the son has a relationship with his mother and his dad. That's very important. And he also has his school friends. And some of them have relationships with other people, and one of his school friends is part of the replacement team for the team that's murdered.
And she has her own relationships with members of the team. And her story takes her in a very different direction. So towards the end, she's independent. She decided to leave the team because she's interested in helping people in a different way instead of just showing up when there's a crisis. So, uh, and the mom, she has relationships with other characters.
Uh, her relationship with her son is very important and her husband, but she has other relationships as well that you see glimpses of. And that seems to be, she seems to be at the end of season one on a path to developing those further. So it just exponentially, like, it's almost like this could go into like five spinoffs or right next season could have like 25 episodes, but it doesn't feel fragmented.
It doesn't feel like you're watching scenes that aren't really relevant to the main story, even though they may not directly tie in in a way that's predictable. So it was really cool. Yeah, really. And there are a lot of open ends. There are a lot of things that aren't fully resolved. There are a lot of interesting new directions.
And then in, you know, in season two, they're gonna introduce more characters and more twists, and it's gonna get even more complicated. So I really enjoyed that. Yeah.
speaker 1: Yeah. I did too. I, I looked at a character like Cecil and how complicated a character he really was. Mm-hmm. At first I thought he was just gonna be the head of this government agency.
He oversees the whole superhero program, I guess you'd call it. Mm-hmm. But this how he had to straddle these two, this line between how do you placate these, you know, super powerful beings, but at the same time protect humans and how he had his own insurance policies set up mm-hmm. That whole time. And how they, I would say Nolan hated him the whole time, but then in the background, you just find out that Cecil actually is a good guy.
Mm-hmm. In, in the sense that he's really just trying to look out what's best for humanity. And I think he just knew down the line that if anything went wrong, it'll all fall on his shoulders. So he'd set up that super weapon in space. He has that whole team that kind of Yep. Shows up when anything goes wrong.
So it was a more, much more complicated character, especially in the scenes with the mother at the end. Mm-hmm. When they've already discovered that Nolan is, is
speaker 2: really bad. Yeah. He really opens up. Mm-hmm. There were a lot of really great scenes and some of the smaller characters also have really great moments.
Like his second in Commander, his assistant, I don't know what that guy's technical job title was, but Nolan catches up with him. He's gonna omni man, he's gonna destroy him or kill him, and uh, he refers to the guy as spineless. Mm-hmm. And then the guy puts up a fight. Yeah. You know, and he goes out strong.
speaker 1: Yeah. The Moer brothers. Yeah, it really surprised me as well. Yep. The whole setup is that there's these two meathead giant guys who are just causing trouble and just doing evil, evil acts in the beginning. Then you find out, yeah, they're doing all that. But they're brilliant, mad scientists that can create a cloned version of, I guess you would say, the original robot.
The original boy
speaker 2: who was created a robot. He modified, he modified the genome to mix it with, what's his name? Rex Blow. Rex. Rex Blow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a really funny scene, by the way. It's a good example. It's a good example of the nuance. So Robot is uh, one of the main characters. He's formerly of the, or the leader of the, uh, what is it?
The teen, what's that? Teen team? Global Teen Force or something. Originally they're teen, teen Force or something like that. Mm-hmm. And then when the guardians are murdered by Omni Man, Robot is recruited to replace the guardians, and he pulls from his old team and he, uh, includes some new people. And one of the new members of the team is a woman trapped in a body that gets younger.
She's cursed. So every time she uses her superpowers and then comes back to her normal body, her body's gotten younger, she's de aged herself a little bit, right? So that's the nature of the curse. So she can transform into a powerful like ogre like body. But when she comes back to her normal body, she's younger, so she's actually older than she appears.
It turns out robot. Isn't actually a robot. He's a deformed human who's a genius, but is almost entirely or pretty much not in, not entirely, but very closely to entirely crippled, right? He's barely able to survive in a very special container. So anyway, that character robot decides to clone himself a new, healthy body and transfer his mind and experience and intelligence into that new body.
And what's really interesting and nuanced about that is he chooses to alter that body genetically to be more like another character on the New Guardians of the Globe team. Because the woman or girl, I guess woman in a girl's body that he has a crush on is attracted to that other member of the team. I.
So he alters his new body to look like that, which is so complicated. Right. You know, and it's so, and now there's a weird relationship because he shows up to the, you know, the team meeting, looking like one of a younger version of one of the other members. But he immediately explains his thinking to everyone.
Right, right. It was a
speaker 1: really funny scene. It's
speaker 2: really interesting. And explode loses it. Yeah. Like why? Absolutely. Yeah. So it, it goes on and on from there. There's a lot of really interesting nuance to their relationships and I loved it. It kept me engaged the whole time. I don't think I was bored for one minute during the whole series.
speaker 1: No, it definitely wasn't boring. There were so many twists and turns that it took and so many like that, that one character, what's his name? Steel Face or whatever. The mob boss.
speaker 2: Yeah, the mob boss. Isn't that how that whole thing happened? Isn't Titan? I can't remember his name. I think that's Titan. I don't remember his name either.
Um, yeah, he can, he can generate like a rock hard shell. Yeah. And he manipulates invincible. Yeah. To build his, uh, empire and then recruits his own team. And that is one of the most brutal fights.
speaker 1: Oh yeah. That was really hard to watch. Yeah. There were a lot of times in this, in this series where I was kind of wanted to look away 'cause it was so brutal.
Mm-hmm. Like the fight between Nolan and Mark.
speaker 2: Oh yeah. At the end. Yeah. That was just, yeah. He felt so horrible for, that was intense. Oh, mark,
speaker 1: let's talk about that a little bit. Their complicated relationship. Mm-hmm. And the whole idea that the vites, their whole view on life in general, if you look at it on the surface, it's, it's horrendous, right?
That they just want to conquer worlds and they slash their own planet by 50%. Getting rid of all the weakness on their planet and moving along and trying to conquer everything. Mm-hmm. But then there's the other side. I'm not saying, you know, I agree with this, but that they would think that humans are more.
Like insects that need to be kind of taken over because their whole time horizon is so much longer. Mm. And you think about the way we, we treat the animal world, it's very similar, right? No one worries about building a, a shopping mall or something on top of land while or clearly animals are gonna get killed in the building of it, right.
Their homes are gonna be destroyed. And smaller animals like rabbits, etho, are gonna die. I just wanna hear what your, what your thoughts on that were, were.
speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we don't just do it to the natural world. We do it to other humans, I guess, which technically are part of the natural world. But yeah, it reflects a side of us.
Like all good science fiction. It's really not about aliens. It's not about monsters or anything like that. It's about different aspects of humanity and different types of people or different sides that we all have. And this is one of 'em. And it's hard to be confronted with it, but it's very real. I mean, yeah.
It's, I don't know if the average person or, or the average person, I don't know if most people can stop, think about it and imagine themselves being on the aggressive side of this equation. But to your point, we all are at some point or another. It's a real aspect of our existence. And I would only hope that if we actually ever did meet alien civilizations that they would lack that because we'd be in a lot of trouble potentially.
Yeah.
speaker 1: Yeah. And the way he conceptualizes life, meaning Nolan, since they can live for thousands of years and humans can live for say 80 or 90 years tops, he doesn't feel like they're worth saving because they're just not powerful. And what does that say about the powerful versus the weak who's worth saving?
It jumps into all those other topics that we've talked about previously about ai. Any AI feeling, trying to figure out what's, you know, who's worth saving and who's not. Mm-hmm. Just got me thinking about all those topics a lot, even though it seemed like clearly he's evil and he's been being set up as being really evil, but there are parallels to what we do as humans on earth to what his civilization is doing on a bigger landscape.
speaker 2: So what are the answers?
speaker 1: There are no answers. Those are the answers. That's lazy. No,
speaker 2: I mean,
speaker 1: No, it's just, it's really well done. How they open up that whole can of worms here. Mm-hmm. They take their hero and immediately flip everything on its head. By the end, he's justifying all of these evil acts that he's committing in a very logical way, which is really scary.
And how trying to convince his son to join, join his side. Mm-hmm. Because he's half mite. But his pain and having raised him as a human and how conflicted he is, I really thought that was powerful.
speaker 2: Well, as with most things, answers are usually not all this or all that. Mm-hmm. There aren't usually a lot of absolute truths.
Things are complicated. And I think this show does a pretty good job of staying in that gray, in that middle, you know, at the end like Mark is pretty committed to, or living a human life. And he's willing to die for that. But he still loves his dad and he is still part mite. So he isn't ever really gonna be human, and that's complicated.
And the dad, on the other hand, was fairly absolute in his point of view about those things you were just talking about. But then he softens and flees because he's torn. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, I, I think the answers to those questions, like, yes, powerful people, powerful entities do dominate. And to some extent that's the natural order of things.
On the other hand, there are certain values that can and perhaps should limit that under certain circumstances. But then what are those values and how do they apply here? And it just rapidly gets incredibly complicated that it becomes hard to judge. Mm-hmm. You know, at first blush, this finale, it's easy to judge.
There's a right and a wrong. There's a good guy and a bad guy. But the more you think about things from the perspective of somebody who lives as long as Oman does, and his society and everything they've been through, and he didn't create that. He was born into that society and was sort of cast on a path, and then he spent time living amongst the humans and was clearly influenced by that.
And so it starts to change the values by which he would make these decisions, right? Mm-hmm. So is he really bad? I mean, he did really bad things, but maybe you can put yourself in his shoes and start to, I don't know, bridge that gap a little bit. Understand how his values might have been consistent or created in a way that's consistent with those really bad actions.
Like you said, stepping on an anthill or crushing a bug.
speaker 1: You've heard people talk about how someone who's a terrorist or who does really bad things, they never feel, or most of them don't feel like they're doing bad things. They think of it as doing it for a higher cause, or the greater good or God or whatever their, their mission is, you know?
Mm-hmm. Like what do they have? They said like one person's terrace is another's freedom fighter. You know? If Mark ended up choosing vite life and doing what's best for the mites, is that an evil thing to do? 'cause he's half human. Well, he has to choose one
speaker 2: side, right? Well, he's gonna live a long time.
There's that. Right? So who he is now may be very different from who he becomes. Mm-hmm. After he's lived, uh, a few hundred years or several lifetimes, his dad was pointing out, everybody he knows now is long since gone. How's that gonna affect his view of things and his judgment? It changes your perspective.
Right. And that's a lot of where values come from is perspective. So this series explores that, not just with these two characters. And the mom I think is a great human grounding character. She has no real powers and she, there's nothing that really distorts her perspective that much from the viewers.
Mm-hmm. So I think she's a great part of those conversations. Someday she'll die. And is that gonna sever Mark's connection to humanity or, I don't know. That's a really
speaker 1: good point. Yeah. Or, and or everyone else that he knows, right? His girlfriend, his friends, everybody. Mm-hmm. Is he gonna want to stay on earth, make friends anew for another generation and another generation just to watch him continuously die?
Or is he gonna leave? Or is he gonna wanna leave? Right. Yeah. I don't
speaker 2: know. To be with his father. We'll see. Or we won't, I don't know. Maybe season two. When is that out? I believe later this year. No specific date. So probably like closer to the end of the year.
speaker 1: I'm looking forward to this one.
speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Really good show. I was surprised you hadn't seen it. And you also haven't seen the boys, right? I
speaker 1: haven't. I've heard of the boys. That's been really popular, right? Mm-hmm. Several seasons now.
speaker 2: Yep. Yeah, that's another one. But unlike Invincible, they don't shy away from the sex. I see. So it's the violence and the sex in that case.
And I don't know why, maybe because it's, um, live action that somehow makes it more acceptable. But there's been animated sex even in the, not necessarily the mainstream, but somewhat close to it. For a long time I referenced Heavy Metal, the 1981 movie, partly for that reason. Hmm. But maybe that was the seventies thing.
Yeah. And they just got away from it. Animated sexuality wasn't there, like Fritz
speaker 1: the Cat, wasn't it? Some like, have you heard of that? Some kind of animated series or comic book that was full of
speaker 2: like X-rated stuff? Lend me your, uh, eight millimeter of that.
speaker 1: Oh yeah. The dusty copy under my
speaker 2: mattress. Good. So we could talk about all the different threads, the Cyborg soldiers and that mad scientist, the Space Lion.
Uh, we could talk about a mortes or whatever his name is. The guy who keeps getting killed. Oh
speaker 1: yeah. I, I found that guy really, really odd. Yeah. How? His name is Immortal.
speaker 2: Is that his and Yeah. His name Immortal.
speaker 1: Mr. I, maybe his full name is Imm. Imm Mortal.
speaker 2: Yeah. He just theod I mor
speaker 1: Yeah. But yeah, he, he's not really immortal, is he?
He gets killed a lot.
speaker 2: Yeah. But not for long, I guess. No, just gotta put 'em back together anyway. Yeah, we could talk about all of those different characters. We could talk about what they set up for season two with the, uh, some sort of, what is it, the Federation of Planets or whatever the, the Oh yeah.
People who are, who wanna resist the mites No. That Alan talks about. Yes. Alan the alien. Goofy. Goofy. Seth. Seth Rogan voice. So he makes no effort to disguise this voice at all? Nope. It is the, that is the one point about 10 minutes point that took me out of the, the series. 'cause it's like very obviously Seth Rogan, like, he doesn't even like try, like, they could've maybe changed it slightly.
Nope. Maybe they wanted that recognition. But yeah, he had Tom on his lunch break and just
speaker 1: showed up in the studio.
speaker 2: But yeah. Do you feel, uh, like you have anything interesting to say about any of those threads or do you think it's better for people to experience them by watching the show?
speaker 1: I think it's better for people actually to experience 'em by watching this show, because I think there's, I think that part of the series is really kind of sets it apart, those multiple threads.
Mm-hmm. Because it could've gone really linear and you still would've had a pretty satisfying show if you just focused in on Mark and his father. And that was kind of the basis for the whole thing. But I think with those other threads, it made it a lot more complicated and nuanced. I mean, we can talk a little bit about it if you want
speaker 2: to.
No, I, I actually, I think it's, uh, there's a lot we could say. Each one of them could be unpacked, but again, I, I think it's a lot better for people to watch it, think about each one, think about which ones really resonated with them or like stuck with them. And formulate your own opinions. It's, it's only eight episodes, so it's not like you need to put in 25 hours to get through this and if you get through the first one, or, I dunno.
Do you think the first one is a good representation? Is that enough to get a sense of somebody? I think the first two,
speaker 1: I think you just give it a chance in the first two, I
speaker 2: think. Okay. They are different enough. Yeah. Yeah. Is there anyone you wouldn't recommend this to? I think
speaker 1: that the type of person who doesn't really, I.
I can't really watch violence in any way. Mm-hmm. I would not recommend this to for sure.
speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point. Um,
speaker 1: I think someone in general who doesn't like their whole concept behind a superhero or the superhero universe, I think those two general things. But otherwise, I think it, there's a lot of concepts that are grounded in reality and there's a lot to think about here.
Yeah. Like a lot more than your typical animated series. It's really fascinating to watch it and watch these characters unfold. Absolutely. Surprisingly so. Even if you don't like animation, you should give it a shot.
speaker 2: Yeah. I think if you just really hate superhero stuff and or science fiction in general, and you don't see the parallels.
With everyday life in exaggerated characters and exaggerated, uh, science and fantasy and things like that. Um, so if that just isn't something that connects in your mind, then this is just gonna seem like a lot of violence for probably no good reason. Right. Um, but that's not too many people. I, I think most people are capable of inferring the common connections to their daily life in science fiction.
So maybe somebody who's oversaturated with superhero stuff might wanna save this for a day that, that's no longer the case. Good. Okay. Anything else you wanted to fit in about Invincible before we wrap it up? No, I think
speaker 1: we're, We're all set on invincible. Looking forward to season two for sure.
speaker 2: Yeah, me too.
And I, I think there'll probably be some other similarly mature, interesting takes on the superhero genre that'll come out possibly as a result of this and the boys and some other stuff that's come out. Alright, well as always, thank you to the amazing, talented people who did the hard work to actually make this.
And that includes both the comic and the show. Uh, make sure you stay away from those like and subscribe buttons. Please don't email us anything positive. If you have, uh, criticisms or things that I forgot to include that make the whole episode not make sense, feel free to send those. I don't know that it'll help, but you know, maybe you'll find it before I do and you'll, I'll, uh, mail you a no prize.
The plan is to be back next episode with the Columbus Day series, or the first book is called Columbus Day by Craig Allenson. Overall, I think they call it the Expeditionary four Series. You can catch that in written or audiobook format. My co-host may also share some tips for launching your own business as a pirate in Africa.
Is that correct? Is that what you, that that's correct. Exactly. Alright, well tune in next week and find out. Thanks. All right. Thanks everybody.