Scott's Track

The speaker first discusses some technical issues with the Zoom call. Then, they share a funny story about a family therapy session that went longer than expected. They also mention a frustrating experience at a store where their wife's earrings went missing. The speaker discusses their recent video game obsession and their virtual comic store. They talk about the challenges of making money from their comic work and YouTube channel. Alright, you guys want to make sure you're seeing those little squiggles that indicate that it's hearing your voice. Okay, testing, testing, yep, seems to be hearing me and not everyone else. Testing, testing, I don't know if you're hearing me. Hold on, I think it's me. Alright, good. Hello, hello! Alright, don't mind me scruffing down the rest of my elaborate dinner here. No, no, no problem, fella. Oh yeah, we should turn off, we should turn off, when we're in the Zoom, we should turn off the video. Because sometimes it affects the, um, yeah. Alright. So, you know, we're still on the Zoom, but just, just put the video part on. Okay. Alright. I nearly dropped my sandwich, I'm so sorry. It's alright, man. So, what was the emergency, doctor? Nah, never mind. I don't mind telling you guys, it's hilarious. George, you know the crisis that it has with my family, right? Forever now. I finally got a family therapist for us. Okay. She wanted to get us in this year, so she said, you know, Thursday 5pm. I was thinking, well that's when we just, you know, reschedule the podcast for, but it's 5pm, we should be absolutely fine. So we go in there, and it's going really, really well, it's an hour session. It's going really, really well, and then suddenly I just casually realized, we've been in here a long time. And I checked the phone, and it's fucking 7-0-8. And she's like, oh yeah, I let people go as long as they want to. I appreciate that so much, but please tell me next time. And that's when I texted you guys, and you know, drove home at the top speed, and that's why I'm starting to have a temperature right now. So, I am so sorry. It was a really good session. It's going to help our family a lot, but I had no idea. Wow. Yeah, yeah, look, stuff happens, man. My wife just landed. She had, she had busted her thumb a couple years ago. And yesterday it broke, right? But she had insurance, so she takes it back to JCPenney, and they repair it. She said she went through there, and the person that was behind the counter, first of all, took 20 minutes to get to her. Then when she finally got to her, she told my wife, oh, I lost my keys. I can't find it. And then my wife helped her look for the keys. Oh, that's awesome. When she went back to the counter to look for the earrings, the earrings were gone. Oh, my God. We're talking about $10,000. So, like, they're flipping out and panicking, and my wife's crying, and all the other customers are jumping to help. Turns out they fell behind the counter. Oh, my God. I'm like, you know, my wife's not doing the greatest these days, you know, with all kinds of stuff that's been happening. But, I mean, I just, like, man, you know, you guys just watch out for yourself. I wouldn't put anything on the counter. That's a thing in my pocket until it happens. It was an odd logic tree for me because the CCF podcast, my family knows them, takes over the entire house, you know, when we're doing this stuff. And yet, you know, getting us into therapy was my number one priority of anything ever, anywhere. So, priority one and priority two were beating each other up while my wife just watched and was like, are you okay? I'm glad you're okay. It's probably more exciting to watch what happened to me. I'm glad your earrings are okay. That makes me happy. That makes me happy. Did I go to Target afterwards to celebrate, George? Huh? Remember last time around, Target? No. No? You were so upset that your wife had gone off to Target when you were all worried about her. Yeah, I guess. I think this is really like a subtle joke. I'm like, George is going to love this. That was hilarious. I take it this is a previous guest. I haven't had a chance to listen to all the episodes, although I've listened to most of them. Somebody was torturing us at the end by mentioning every single book written by Roy Thomas. Well, that's a lot. To be fair, it ended up being a great episode. It did. It was just a little strange at the end. Yeah. We were both like, why's that? I was like, that's what I owe. Well, that's not as bad as the time that guy came out and made us reschedule the last minute when he was late for recording. That might have been our fault because we had a time difference between where we live and where he lives. So he was late, but he was on time. I was talking about me. Oh. All right, Scott, any questions or things you want to work out first? I don't think so. I talked to George a little bit about the issue, but I didn't want to spoil any. Not that I have anything particularly deep to say, but I didn't want to spoil anything. But I've got my notes called up. I've got our outline that you sent us. So I think I'm ready. Awesome. And with all that you're doing these days and how burnt out you are in everything, I'll thank you again when the thing starts rolling. I really want to thank you. I have missed you, and it's really awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Yeah, I've just been like... I've just so burnt out that I... You're going to find this very funny. My wife finds it hilarious. But I've just like... I had a couple extra months built into my fulfillment on the new comic that I... the last one I did on Kickstarter, and I was just like, you know what? I'm just going to relax for this month. Like this extra month. We were supposed to go on vacation. We had to cancel it. So I was like, you know what? So I just started playing this video game, Fallout 76. I don't know if you've ever played Fallout 76. But you can build houses and build your own structures, but in the game, there's a comic book company, and you can collect these virtual comics. You have to search for them all over the world when you're running around. And so I've actually spent the last two weeks playing this video game, collecting virtual comics to build a virtual comic store. So I've got a complete run of Grognak the Barbarian, and I've got a complete run of The Unstoppables, and I've got a little comic... It's a multiplayer game, so I've got a little comic store that I built in the world so other players can come in and buy the issues that they're missing. There's still a couple things. There's a pulp magazine as well called Astoundingly Awesome Tales, and I'm still missing two issues of that. But once I have those two issues, then I'm going to do a YouTube video. I do these store visits when I go to comic stores, but I'm going to visit my own virtual world of comics. So my... my relaxing from comics has just been doing virtual online comics instead. No, but I was thinking in my store, I'm going to put a little sign. I'm going to have a display case with some of the issues in it. I'm going to put a little sign saying Graded Copies and have, like, that's the best I can do. Everybody else plays video games and kills people. You play a video game. Well, a lot of the comics, it's a post-apocalyptic world, so you're, like, going into these, like, blown-up houses and, like, burnt-out buildings that are filled with, like, zombies and mutants. And you have to kill them and then, like, search in the corners to be, like, oh. There was a comic book behind this dresser. If zombies were hoarding comics, they're no longer the enemy. I want to get to know these zombies. Well, they're dead now. I killed them for the comic book, so... And let that be a warning to you all. Scott is, like, the emergence of the zombie world. Don't break your glasses. You know, it's actually wild and it's totally off-topic, but I have been meaning to share this with you forever, Scott. I have to do this now. When I first got back into comic collecting as an adult, my first LPS I went to, the owner was this charismatic, eccentric guy with a big ol' beard who looked just like you and had a voice just like yours, and his name was Scott. You still confuse me to this day. It wasn't me, I don't think. No, but he was so you, it's strange. Do you have a doppelganger stuff or not? Well, you know, I was in the early-ish days of the internet, so I worked at Fidelity Investments 2002, 2003, and there was this guy on my team who would send out joke emails, which we weren't supposed to do, but he found a photo online of a guy that looked exactly like me. To the point where I showed it to friends and family and they thought it was me. This guy looked just like me, and it was the craziest picture because the guy was wearing the weirdest outfit. It was like a Sacramento Kings jersey, but he was wearing a Confederate soldier's hat holding a giant sword. So when I showed it to people, they were like, wow, you look crazy in this picture. I'm like, that's not me. Anyway, I'm glad to be here. I wish I had more time. The real short version is I've been writing freelance for 17 years now for work, and work is getting really hard to get. I've been trying to do these comics to build it up to the point where I can actually make a little bit of money off of it as a source of income, and so I've been putting so much work into it. It's just not working out. I'm not making any money. I love doing the comics, but it's just like a second full-time job where I'm losing money on it. No, I don't make anything from that. I only got to the point where I could theoretically monetize it three months ago, and that also allowed me to add the thing on the YouTube where my comics show up under the video so people can buy them, and I've had that since December, and I haven't sold a single copy of any of my comics through YouTube. I haven't actually gotten any money from the YouTube advertising at all. I haven't made any money. It's profitable in the sense that people watch the videos, and a few of those people have actually started supporting my Kickstarters, but other than that, no. I try and do two videos a week, so it's not like it's too much work, but I don't make any money from that at all. Yeah, the whole Kickstarter thing is becoming a lot more difficult the last two years, and so it's right when I was ramping up, it started becoming really hard. People, it's a few different things, but there's a lot more competition, so it's harder to people have more options. If someone goes to Kickstarter and they want to buy a comic, it used to be there would be 185 to 200 projects live, and now it's closer to 350, and so there's a lot more things. A lot of the not the big companies, the mid-major companies, companies like Boom and stuff like that have moved into Kickstarter, and so you get these big projects that take the air out of the room a little bit. Where the publishers are basically using it as a distribution. People just have less, I don't know if they have less income. I keep hearing the economy's good, but people are spending less. Even the people that are coming back from one issue to the next, instead of buying two of the variant covers, they're just buying the basic one, or they're moving to digital, so when the people come back, instead of spending $30, they're only spending $12. I've had to start very carefully budgeting projects and it used to be no big thing, and now it's like you're spending three times as much on goods. It's a hard decision, too. Yeah, so Oh yeah, there's a lot of people from Marvel and DC. Yeah, and there's people in there, but you have to know what you're doing. Those smart people, when they have the big names, they'll hire professional Kickstarter people. But I've seen a couple where they didn't, or I don't know what they were doing, but Dan Pinozian I think it was. I might have that wrong. I think so. I think Dan Pinozian just did a book on Kickstarter and it completely tanked. He didn't come close to funding. He didn't even come close to getting as much funding as I do. So it's just like you really got to know what you're doing. The other thing that's made it really hard is the social media, the way you promote it, the algorithms have changed. They're really suppressing your posts unless you're paying for advertising. So I post stuff on Instagram or on my I have a Facebook account that's just for comics and nobody sees it. Nobody sees the posts. And so it's really hard. I know there's a lot of people that would buy the comics if they knew about it, but figuring out some way for them to find out is almost impossible because even when they follow you on the social media, the sites don't show the people the posts. I have almost 700 followers on Instagram and usually when I do a post I can see how many people have seen it. Like how many accounts it's showing it to and it's usually less than 40. So even if they specifically follow you because they want to see what you're doing, they won't actually see any of the stuff you're doing. So it's just almost impossible to tell, just to let people know that the Kickstarter's happening. I don't know. I doubt it would help too much. You're always welcome to have advertising based on TTF. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah, well thanks. At some point I'm going to be redoing my website and I'll when I do that I'll take you up on that. I appreciate it. I still have a bunch of stuff coming out this year, but I'm just like I'm mailing out Climbuster 6 tomorrow. I've got one person's thing left to draw for them and then I'll have everyone's packages packed. Everyone else's packages are all done. They're all just sitting in my office. I just finished them yesterday. When are you taking the month off? Wow. Well, those I had estimated the delivery date of May for those, so I have to get those out this month. Whereas for Quest 3, which is the next one that I've already done the Kickstarter for. I said it wasn't until August, so that's the one where I'm playing a game instead of finishing that. Next week I'm going to have to start working on that. I mean, it's just a matter of bandwidth. It's just a matter of bandwidth. I mean, I'm going to be doing like a 100 page special. You probably saw this on my YouTube channel. I don't think I've mentioned it on the forums. I tracked down and bought all 14 issues of Modern Age Theory, so I finished that run. You've read them all? Yeah. I haven't actually read all of them, and for some reason it's going to sound weird, but I love them so much that I've read like three or four of them, and I kept having all these story ideas, and I was basically like I don't want to be overwhelmed with more ideas before I haven't had a chance to even do the stuff I've already been thinking about with that character, so I was like I don't even want to read the other ones because it's just going to be too much. But I bought them all. I have the National Comics, and what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm going to do a 100 page giant where I'm going to scan them all so they're all like 350 or 600 DPI scans, like really high resolution. I'm going to digitally correct the colors for the tanning and stuff, and then I'm going to print a copy, a 100 page it's going to have all of her stories but digitally remastered because the versions you have online, they're all really crappy. So... Yeah, so this is going to be probably the highest quality copies of her stories you can get, and I'm going to draw new covers for it. The other thing I was going to do is I'm going to draw a new cover for all 14 stories as if what the National Comics cover would have looked like if she was on the cover instead of the Barker. Because the Barker is like she never appeared on any of the covers, and those covers suck. They're so bad. So I'm going to do a new cover for all 14 of them as part of it, but I don't know when I'm going to have time. That is probably something that's not going to come out until next year. The fact that you can have it next year is awesomely ambitious. That's cool. That's very cool. Yeah, like... If I had time, I would like to draw those covers over the holidays because I usually don't do or run any Kickstarters in November or December. But we'll see how it goes. We should probably start the actual thing here at some point, I suppose. Yeah, yeah. The enthusiasm is incredible. Incredible. I'm getting tired, but let's get this going. Are you already tired? Eh, you know. All right. We're a little late. All right. Here we go. It's the CCF in depth. Hi, everybody. I'm George. How are you doing? Hi, everybody. I'm Jeff. How are you double doing? And we have a special guest with us today, Scott Harris King. Please say hello. Hello. How are you triple doing, I suppose? Nicely done. Today's episode, we are talking about how Avengers Number 4 changed everything. This is our very first episode with this kind of scope. We've done entire eras before. We've done entire careers before. We've done 12-issue year-long Maxis series that changed the universe, but focusing on one specific issue? I don't know. Avengers Number 4 might be the biggest game-changer I could think of. George will say I'm exaggerating too much, but I think we all feel this is a very special, important issue. And we brought Scott Harris King on today, who is, if you don't already know, this is actually a really big moment for us in terms of that too, because this is like a Captain Kirk meeting Captain Picard or the Captain Picards, because Scott Harris King created the original podcast for the Classic Comics Forum, and was gracious enough to let us take over when other projects came his way, because Scott Harris King is also the creator, the writer, sometimes artist, and publisher of the Crimebusters, Quest, and also Goo Goo vs. Uncle Sam. Am I missing any, Scott? Well, it depends on when people are listening to this, because I've also got a new romance comic I'm doing called Geek Love that'll be out hopefully in June or July of this year, 2024. I was just thinking, like, I won't go without clues for Geek Love, number one. But Scott has graciously taken time out of his impossible schedule to join us, because Scott is a massive Avengers fan, he's a great friend of ours, and I'm just excited to get all three of us in the room. Wait a second, forget Captain Curtain and Captain Picard, this is a little bit like a Captain from a previous era coming to, this is kind of Captain America, even the Avengers, isn't it? Actually, I was thinking it's more like the Flash of the World. On one side, Scott is running, and the other side, you're running, and I'm like the Wall or something. Well, then I, yes, if that works. So I'll be all the Avengers, and you'll be a wall. So anyway, so Scott, we are so happy to have you here today. This is big, and let's just start with very, very simply, Avengers number four, I don't think any of us were around collecting and reading comics when that issue hit stands in 1924, I'd love to hear your stories about how you first came across that issue, and what your first thoughts were upon reading it the first time. Well, I guess I'll jump in, because I've been thinking a lot about this, and the first time I read it was actually, I bought a copy of Avengers number four, so I read, the first time I read it was reading an original copy of it. Now, I don't know if I even knew the significance of the issue at the time. I've mentioned this, I guess, a few times in various places, but I started reading comics in 1984, really got into comics quickly, so by 86 I was starting to collect back issues, and what I wanted was the oldest comics that I could get. I didn't really know that much about them, but I always loved old stuff, and so we started going to comic stores, the first back issue that I got was Avengers 36, and then, shortly after that, we went to a comic store in Fishburg, Mass., for those who may remember it, it's called Same Bat Channel, it's not there anymore, and I went over, I wanted to see what they had for the old back issues, and what they had was an Avengers number 4. It was really, really beat up. It was $12.50, and the other old back issue they had, there was issue 60, and so we got those two issues. My dad bought me the Avengers 4, because I didn't have $12.50, but my dad bought it for me, and we went home, it was falling apart, a lot of spine damage, and so we did what any red-blooded comic book collector would do, is we rubber-cemented the spine to the comic, to make sure it wouldn't fall off, and that's how early it was in my comic collecting, that seemed like a totally fine thing to do, and then I read it. I think I read it first, and then I was like, oh no, the cover's falling off, if I keep reading it, it's going to fall apart, so my dad was like, no problem, check this out, glue, glue, glue, glue, glue. So that's my story, that's how I encountered Avengers 4, is I bought it, and I read it, and like I said, I don't know if I even knew the significance when I bought it. It was just the oldest thing they had. I mean, I don't, to be honest, the only thing I remember about it, because this was, you know, in 1986, so it was almost 40 years ago, and I was very young. Right. Um, I remember thinking it wasn't very good, um, but, well, we'll talk about that when we get into the story, but, um, you know, I could, I think I had some sense, just from the cover, you know, that it was really important, and the price, you know, $12.50 doesn't seem like very much for that issue, but it was really beat up. And so, and, you know, I may have had some inkling, because that was right around the time I started buying, like, books about back issues, I got my first, like, price guide in 1986, so, um, in the, that summer, so I was like, I might have had some idea that it was important, I just didn't really understand it, you know? Uh, so, I, I, my memories, I had the sense that it was important, but I didn't, like, the story didn't really do much for me. Um, it was better than Avengers 36, I mentioned that was the first back issue I ever got, and I traded that away, like, two weeks later, because it was not good. Um, but, Avengers 4, that was a keeper. I mean, that was, 36 is like, Well, 36 is the first, it's, it's the first, 36 is the first issue Roy Thomas did, and he, it took him a while writing before he got good. Um, but anyway, so that was my, that's my experience with Avengers 4. You can count me out of that one. Yeah. Essentially, you bought it, you knew it was old, but it, it didn't resonate for you at that time. Was there a point later on where suddenly you revisited the issue and you understood it differently, Scott? Or, how did your evolution of understanding with Avengers number 4 progress? Well, relatively early on in, like, collecting, you know, I was all over the place. I had a bunch of different titles, like, I was buying everything new that I could get. And, and, um, I was sort of all over the place. I didn't, like, I was very unfocused. And my father said to me, he was like, and I wanted everything. So he said, what you should do is pick one title to focus on, and when you finish that, then you can move on to the next one. And so I sat down, put all my comics out, my back issues all on my bed. I had, I think, at that point I think I had 20 issues of Avengers and, like, 20 issues of Fantastic Four. And I had my first price guide. And I went through it, and I was like, you know what? Fantastic Four didn't seem possible to me. It was so much money. At that time, issue 1 of Fantastic Four in near mint was guiding for $1,500. And I was like, that's impossible. But Avengers 1 was only $400 in near mint price guide. And I was like, you know, I don't have any money because I'm a kid, but that seems like at least theoretically possible. So just from the logistics of it, I said, I'm going to go with Avengers. So then I started putting together a complete run of Avengers. And it wasn't too long after that that I started to really have a different understanding of what issue 4 was. The more I got into Avengers as a series, the more I sort of understood the importance of it. But, and then we'll talk more about this later. But I think the importance of Avengers 4 has gotten more, as time has progressed, it's become more and more and more important. And so my understanding now of Avengers 4 is different even from when I realized how important it was as a kid because I think it's more important now than it was in the 80s. So yeah, but once I really started focusing on Avengers, I started understanding the keys, like what issue 16 was and how important issue 16 was, but also issue 4, like it pretty quickly jumped out as like the importance of it registered with me. Okay. And I'm excited to hear more about your explanation later on for why it matters more today. I have my own thoughts about that too. It's going to be a good one. George, do you want to go next and see if you can possibly work Mort Weisinger into the story somehow? No, I... That's a good one. That's a good one. I just want to hear it. I want to hear what you call him this time. I don't even like to think about it. But you're right about one thing. When he had the funeral, they said his brother was worse. I thought you made that up. No, it's real. It's real. Well, my first contact with Avengers before was actually the reprint in Avengers Annual Number 3. And that's a nice John December cover. But when you open it up, you know, Marvel Comics books, they did something different with the way they format their comic books. The first page, that flat page, usually was part of the story. That scene was more like, they would give you a second cover on the first page. And they'd repeat that page a third time later on. So, you know, I didn't like that so much. But they have a scene in Avengers Number 4 where the Avengers Thor, Iron Man, Wasp, Giant Man, they're lined up. And Captain America is marching towards them. Step forward, Captain America. Your rightful place is here, among the Avengers. The part that made me laugh is that right in the bottom, it says, Editor's Note, we sincerely suggest you save this issue before you treasure it in the time to come. So, I'm like, boy, you know, I know that Stan Lee was like a new car salesman. So, boy, he nailed it there. Well, if you're saying every issue Disney collectors have, you're going to be right at least once, right? But, you know, you will treasure it in the time to come. And it's true. You know, the book introducing Captain America, and again, we'll get into it, like Scott said, but they said so many things about this issue that jump out at you. And I believe it might be one of the pivotal comic books in all of Marvel. I would go bigger than that. Yeah, he, I mean, you can all view a lot of the Fantastic Four books and see more privilege. But this one, for some reason, he's somebody that sort of takes over. You know, like everybody looks to him after that. And he just walks in and it's just cool. He's like the perennial leader from that point forward. Which is nice. You know, again, Captain America I knew about before I read this, but I didn't understand what he meant to everybody else. Because they have a scene in the book where he's walking around New York and people are seeing him and they're going, is that really Captain America? And then the actual cop starts crying because he's saying, you know, I can't believe you're here when the world needs you the most. So he was important to the universe before this book. You know, they actually introduced him, but he's also, he's like his co-killer. And he's back, you know, when people need him. It's a great book. Just a great moment. I guess I inevitably had to approach it differently being a child over the 1980s. And I can't await George's comments numerous times teasing me for that in this episode. I'm sure it's coming. For me, in the 1980s, comics had moved far away from being for kids. I've mentioned that several times. But what had taken place was comic book companies were merchandising way more effectively than they had in the past. So my first experiences with Captain America had nothing to do with comic books. You know, when I was, I think, like three years old for Christmas, one of my presents was a wooden puzzle of Captain America standing in an arena. And I'd never heard of a character before, but I sat there and I put that puzzle together and it actually gave me time to focus on and think about who is this guy whose smile tells you he has all the answers? So I tucked it away in my head and then the Secret Wars action figures came out and Captain America was there and he was important. And, you know, it wasn't really ever out of my understanding of Marvel comics that Captain America was centrally important. I didn't really know much about who he was, but I put him on the same level as Superman and Batman. I knew he mattered. And, you know, then back in 1990, the Marvel Universe Series 1 trading cards came out, which, you know, for kids was the hugest thing. Those cards are still the coolest thing ever. And Captain America was the very first card. He was card number one. If you put your binder, if you set your cards up in order, he was the first thing you saw. And at the very back, the coolest, one of the coolest things they did in that set, is they had these iconic comics, these iconic issues. You know, the most collectible Marvel comics that kids like me didn't know about. It was a good crash course. You know, Hulk 181 and Fantastic Four number one and there was Avengers number four. And just that cover alone, it was the most beautiful, interesting one of all the cards from that whole section to look at. So it was always sort of ingrained in my head, but honestly, I thought it was Avengers number one because the idea that Captain America wasn't always an Avenger didn't seem possible to me. But finally, it was a year later. That's a better cover. Oh, my God, yes. Oh, my God, yes. Well, we might talk more in a moment about why Avengers number one might have been a rush job. There's a whole theory on that one. Anyway, the point being that in 1991, I'm into comic books now. I'm reading them as an 11-year-old kid. And Avengers in the early 1990s was off of the grid of kids my age. You know, there were enough Avengers titles, somebody must have still been reading them. You know, Avengers, Avengers West Coast, Wonder Man, Quasar, Captain America had its own comic, of course. But nobody was really talking about them. There was no creep about them. So I was, you know, collecting every X-book I possibly could and all the Spider-Man titles. That was like, what, 12, 13 books right there. Avengers was just never something I'd gotten around to. And then they had Operation Galactic Storm, which was this massive crossover using all the Avengers titles. And you kind of had to pay attention. It was ambitious. And I can tell you honestly, years later, I have zero memory of anything that happens in that story. It's this epically long thing that just did not impress me in the least. But I think also at that point, where the comic book market was, if you were in the mainstream as a kid, a lot of the quality of the stories was kind of like, Marvel was not really in its heyday anymore. The sales were there, but it wasn't putting out its best stuff. Instead, I was, I think I'd say I was more of a collector. I was buying the comics to own them, and I kind of felt like it was my duty to read them first, but I rarely ever actually enjoyed them. I enjoyed the thrill of the purchase more than the read. But I remember Cats of America number 400 was part of Operation Galactic Storm. And the lead story was whatever. I have no idea what happened. But because it was a big anniversary issue, they threw in some extra content in the back. And I know they did this with the Hulk anniversary issue that year too. And a couple others as well, where they threw in all this extra content including a reprint of the first story that the character had ever been in. Or in this case, for Cats of America, Avengers number 4. And the funny part for me was I had the exact opposite reaction of Young Sky. Comics generally didn't excite me that much, other than the covers and owning them. And I'm reading this comic, I'm like, yeah, whatever, I guess it's that kind of note going on, okay, you know, Supreme Intelligence, Shi'ar Empire, yadda yadda yadda, and I get to the next, the Avengers number 4 reprint, and I'm like, this looks different. This looks kind of stupid, because, you know, it's old art, you know, I'm not that used to it. But then I actually, like, something about the art compelled me. It was my first real introduction to Kirby, who on some levels looks primitive, you know, compared to art that came afterwards. But on the other hand it's so dynamic and interesting. I read it, and I remember being completely and totally involved with it. Even though it's scientifically completely impossible that a man frozen in ice could just thaw out in an ocean and be okay a minute later. I mean, my gosh, his eyeballs. That had to be a bad situation, but the idea was so cool. Like, you know, oh my gosh, he's from a different era and here he is. And Kirby's art utterly sold it and made Captain America look like such a badass. The poses and the postures were unforgettable, and I think the part that thrilled me the most was I didn't realize before that he wasn't always an Avenger, but when he woke up, he was vulnerable. He wasn't a guy with all the answers. He was a guy out of time who had lost his best friend, who was in shock, who was grieving, who was depressed, but could put that mask on and become Captain America. And there was something about that. And it's never left me, and it's become more important to me as years go on. He was broken inside, but he could put that mask on and become Captain America. And Kirby's postures and facial expressions told you everything, and I've always loved that story ever since then. It took me years to actually get an original copy, but I knew right then and there it was magic. And I haven't read a lot of Captain America since, but I've always, always revered the character after reading that issue. That page, where he just fought out and you're like in shock, and you're Captain America, and you're like, he's alive! And like, they ask him, are you Captain America? And he says, you know, he kind of gets up and puts on everything, and he just stands at attention and says, here I am. It was just an awesome moment. The dude's been frozen in ice for 20 years, wakes up, realizes he just saw his best friend die, and within six panels puts the mask back on and gets it together. What the hell? I mean, that's the worst, you know, goofiness, where somebody could be frozen for, what was it, 10 years or something? 20 years, right? Something like that? And like, you know, he can move, all his joints are fine, everything's just good, you know? Because he beats the Avengers up in the next two panels, throwing acrobatics and everything. I was like, okay, good work. On a symbolic level, Kirby really sells it, where you see him in that first real thought-out panel with the seaweed dangling all over him, looking totally helpless and destroyed. You're like, there's no way there's life left in that body. And a page later, he is up and straight and rigid, and a page after that, he's in perfect form, dodging the older and all these amazing things they're throwing at him. The whole point of this was, here's a guy that no matter what setback you throw at him, is going to be a badass at the end of the day, because that's what he does. Yeah. Oh yeah. So I guess we're already kind of going there, how about the story itself? You know, moving to the historical context, nostalgia, your first experience with the side, what are your impressions of what actually happened in this? Well, for me, there's kind of two different parts to this. There's some stuff in this story which you guys have just been talking about, which is absolutely great. The part where Captain America wakes up, it's one of the most iconic scenes in all the comics. And for a reason, it's really powerful. I mean, everything with Captain America, in this issue, is extremely powerful. When he comes out of the submarine, after they get back to the city, and the Avengers aren't there. And so he's making his way around the city, and everyone's reacting to him, and breaking down in tears, because they're amazed that Captain America's returned. And then when he meets Rick Jones, and he thinks it's Bucky, like, everything with Captain America, the character moments with him, are just great, absolutely great. The rest of the story, the actual plot, where it turns out the Avengers have been turned into statues by an alien who was bribed by Namor to destroy the Avengers, so that Namor will fix his ship, his spaceship, which is at the bottom of the ocean. And then the Avengers try and fix it for him instead, and Namor attacks them. That plot is absolutely stupid. Like, that's the part where, when I was a kid, I was reading it, I was sort of like, okay, sure, whatever. And when I re-read it yesterday, and I've read it many times, but I re-read it again last night, and I thought to myself, this is really bad. Like, it's a strange issue, because the plot is really stupid. But it's also secondary to the character work, and the character work is incredible. So, it's a very strange read, because it's two very different elements that don't really work together. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 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