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The speaker apologizes to someone named Chris and expresses frustration about constantly having to apologize. They then discuss watching Miyazaki films during the pandemic and mention their girlfriend who watched the films with them. They talk about attending BubblesCon and mention various people and events at the convention. They also mention that some people expressed interest in writing for the journal. The conversation then shifts to Garfield and the speaker asks the listener questions about the comic strip and its creator, Jim Davis. They discuss John Arbuckle, Garfield's owner, and his profession as a cartoonist. They also mention Jim Davis's previous comic strip about a gnat and his background as a gymnast. The speaker shares a story about a photographer who covered car crashes and asks the listener if they had a similar photographer at their paper. They discuss the challenges and responsibilities of covering incidents like car accidents, shootings, and fires. The speaker then a Chris? Yeah. I owe you an apology, again. I'm getting sick of it, honestly. Okay, you were telling me. We were talking about Garfield and his prime. I think you were going to ask me a question about Garfield. I was going to ask you a question about that, but also, I just... Let's go back in time for a moment, if I may. Yes, you may. All right. You mentioned you were talking about, before we had a technical difficulty, that you were watching these Miyazaki films with your kids. Yeah. And then, what happened during the pandemic? During the pandemic, when we were in that little tidal enclave with me and my girlfriend, who I had just started dating a few months before, my kids were both like, oh, we have to watch... We'd spend weekends and dinners and stuff at her place, and my kids were like, oh, you have to watch all of these Ghibli movies with us. It was like it was a rite of passage. You must sit down and go through this with us. So, we didn't watch every single one. I don't think we watched Porco Rosso, for example, but we went through quite a lot of them. We didn't watch Princess Mononoke, either. But there's still a lot of titles. Yeah. And this girlfriend... She didn't like all of them. Still in the picture, this girlfriend? Still in the picture. Despite being forced to watch that, and I made her watch the first Lord of the Rings movie. She sounds like a great lady. She's a trooper, let's put it that way. Yeah. Okay. We are going to talk about Garfield. Okay. I am going to make you answer these questions, and I know that you know the answers to them. Okay. All right. Like I said to you, off the record and now on it, I do like people... So, I was at BubblesCon this past weekend. Couldn't have been better. Perfect programming. Really, my only complaint is that it was 9.30 in the morning until 4 p.m. There was an hour break for lunch, but besides that, it was just back-to-back talk that I personally was interested in. So, I barely got to go pee. It was just, oh, I want to hear this interview. Maybe that won't be interesting for me. No, I do want to hear what they have to say. Ryan Holberg did an amazing job. It was great hearing Gabrielle Bell get interviewed. Noel Freiburt and CF had an amazing talk. Jenny Zrabakis was there, which I didn't realize. Oh, wow. Oh, my God, she was sitting right next to me, the audience. I died. I have Strange Growth on my bedside table right now. Okay. They're like all stars, like only playing the hits. This was such a great event. A few people came up to me and mentioned specifically, a few people who I'm going to assume want to remain anonymous but would like to continue writing for the journal. Yeah. Who are they? Oh, gosh, I'll tell you later. So, pointed out that the Pennsylvania saturation for TCGA.com has, like, reached its maximum. There cannot be more of us. Regarding that, see, this is now for real a softball question. Which of these people is not a cartoonist from Pennsylvania? Okay. There are wrong answers. Okay. A, Allison Bechdel. B, Robert Crum. Yes. C, Jackie Orms. Mm-hmm. D, Chip Kidd. Mm-hmm. Or E, Steve Ditko. Hmm. Who is not a cartoonist from Pennsylvania? Well, technically, they all are from Pennsylvania. However, however, I think you have a little truth of the trick here, and I think that Chip Kidd, of course, is a book designer and graphic designer and not a cartoonist. That is so true. He is not a cartoonist. And a writer. He's an author. What isn't he doing? Cartooning. That's the only thing. He just got mooted, too, I saw on Facebook. He did, yeah. He's now, I want to say he is the executive art director for Knopf? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Way to go, Chip. That's a pretty big jump. I mean, look, he's America's boyfriend for a reason, so good on him. Okay, good job. Now, Jim Davis, who you know from the papers, is not from Pennsylvania. Yes. He's a Midwestern guy. He's a flyover state. Forgive me. Yep, so Pennsylvania could be a flyover state for some people. Who am I to judge? We're in Pennsylvania. I mean, your area, you're in the hip urban area. I'm in the flyover part of it. Sure. I think some people prefer to skip Philadelphia, which, you know what, I understand. I'm with you. I get it. Just go straight to Pittsburgh, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Just get away from it all. Go to Pittsburgh. It's beautiful. Or Erie. Also good. Two places I went to in the last month. Oh, wow. I get around. Yeah, I go everywhere. I bring my children everywhere from Richmond, Virginia to Erie, Pennsylvania. They love it. I'll appreciate it later. I'm taking them to Ohio in a couple of weeks. Every child's dream. Isn't it? Yeah? Yeah. Be in Ohio this weekend. It's a fabulous state. Yes. Never been. Can't wait. I'm mentally prepared. Okay. So, first of all, what is the name of Garfield's owner? Oh, John Arbuckle. Very good. And this is not multiple choice either. What is John's profession? He is a cartoonist. Nice. Good job. Okay. I'm going to give you. What was Jim Davis' comic strip before he started Garfield? Was it something about a gymnast? No. Oh, I don't know. What? It was about a gnat, G-N-A-T, and it was called Gnat the Gnat. And it did so badly, they were crushed. They were killed in the end by a foot. But, wow. Okay. I mean, that's life, baby. Yeah, that's true. If you're a gnat. That was the stepping stone, the insect-sized stepping stone he needed to get to Garfield, really. Yeah, well, he was like, I love the letter G. How can I stay there? Let's see. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Do you know why I guess that it was something about a gymnast? Why? Because he was a gymnast before becoming a cartoonist. See? Now you're coming at me with the trivia. That is impressive. I did not know that. Isn't that hard to believe? Yeah, he sustained an injury and then did that natural trajectory that all athletes do when they can no longer play. That's what happens. Yeah. Okay. So, another thing. This is just, this is not a right or wrong answer. Well, you only know the right answer to this. So, in the summer of 1999, the Daily News record in Harrisonburg, not Harrisburg, had a guy whose job it was just to go and photograph any car crashes that happened in the vicinity. Did you have a guy like that working for your paper? No, not specifically for that sort of thing. I mean, like, we had a team of photographers. You know, if there was a car crash, especially if someone was injured or, you know, how badly, how bad it was, they would go and get it. But, honestly, it was more fires and shootings that you'd call the photographer out for. Okay. Because car crashes, unless it's something that, like, shuts down a whole roadway or shuts down, like, and I hate to say it, you know, I'm sounding ghoulish here, and I apologize to all the dear listeners. I mean, we've all been to the gym and seen the news. I think that people know the news is ghoulish. You don't, I mean, if it's just an accident, you know, people's cars get towed away. Yes, they do. It gets cleaned up quickly. By the time you get someone there, it might be gone. Maybe you should consider having someone. Like, there was an incident back in 2013, I'm going to say, where a truck overturned on an overpass in Harrisburg and caught on fire. And, thankfully, the truck driver was not injured, but, like, the entire highway had to be shut down for a while, for a long while. It was a massive thing, and, like, we had a whole bunch of reporters out there, photographers. I think we had, like, two maybe photographers out there for that. I could be wrong. Okay. If you had to meet a photographer to cover car accidents, shootings, or fires, which one would you want? Well, I would say it's usually the same person who covers all of that. No, I'm saying hypothetically. You're living somewhere where there's so many. Whether it's car accidents, shootings, fires, or what's the other one? I mean, I guess I would guess fires. But, I mean, because if you're covering a shooting, A, and, B, that you're eventually going to have to go to the point where you have to try and talk to members of family or neighbors, people that knew the victims, which is very grim. And, you know, it's a certain type of person, isn't it? You have to have a certain set of stoicism and dedication to the job, because it's not easy always to do that sort of thing, honestly. I'm giving you a much more serious answer than you were looking for. My thinking was, like, if we're shooting, we're always shooting after the fact. You always have a COPS reporter rotation. We used to have it much more frequently. When I was a reporter, I mean, I always should say, when I was a patronist, I haven't always been an editor. I've done everything there, literally. I've done, like, except for selling advertising, for doing advertising. And also not covering any car crashes. Well, I was going to say, part of your rotation is there would be a day, a holiday, a Sunday, a Saturday, where you would have to be on the COPS committee. You'd have to answer the phones. You'd have to call all the police stations, find out if anything's going on. And, you know, if it was bad enough, you would have to go out and write about it. And when I was always, it would just, it would just, I am not proud to say this. I don't want to be clear about that, but it would fill me with dread whenever I had to do it, because I was mainly a features reporter. I was mainly covering arts and, you know, and lifestyle and stuff. And I felt very ill-suited. I didn't necessarily study journalism in college. You know, like I said, I felt backwards into it. And I didn't feel, I was always, I would, like, pray. Like, I'm a particularly religious person, but I would pray that, you know, that no one would get killed while I was on the beat. I don't think that's embarrassing. I did not want to have to do that. I didn't want to have to cover that. You know, it would be a real source of anxiety for me. Sure. I'm a little better at it now, but even then there's still, you know, social anxiety about it to an extent where, I mean, you know, but you have to. You have to push. If you're going to be a reporter, if you're going to be a reporter and, like, you know, I'll give an example, like, where literally a house exploded not too far from my girlfriend's house, like, and you're in the neighborhood. You go down there and you start ringing the neighbor's doorbell and you start talking to people and you do it, you know, that's the job. And you have to, you know, you have to do it and get something, get a story right. And get photos with your phone and get video. And, you know, these days do everything. And, again, we're lucky that we have really talented people who can put that stuff together and are willing to, you know, do the difficult work. Speaking of difficult work. Yes. You know who's got it hard? Cartoonists. Nope. No. I was going to say, I was, okay, for one thing, if you're praying that no one gets shot while you're at work, like, even if that's, like, inherently selfish, the end result is still positive. So, like, what philosopher will support that idea? Okay. But I was going to say, as I mentioned to you earlier, I want to know about the comics that you grew up reading. You mentioned that your kid was into Archie. And I think I've just been assuming this whole time that you were not really ever an Archie reader. Is that true? No, I mean, I was. I didn't save any of the Archies I read as a kid. As a kid, I read a lot. I would say as a kid my addictions were comic strips, superheroes, especially DC superheroes, especially as a younger child. I was very much into Superman, Batman. You know, that was in the heyday of, like, right before the DC implosion where, you know, the dollar, one-dollar Superman families and whatnot. And so I was really into, like, newsstand comics mainly, especially superheroes. But also Archie. I did, like, a lot of the Archie comics, the Digests, you know, that my parents would buy, that I begged my parents to buy. Well, they're at the grocery store line. Like, it's kind of impossible as a parent. There was a stationery store slash, like, greeting card store downtown that we'd go to get the newspaper, the Sunday newspaper at. And I begged my dad. I conned my dad into getting the Daily News on Sundays because that had a comic section, a big, bright comic section that the local New Jersey paper, the Virgin Record, didn't have, this nice comic section. Oh, wait. Oh, my God. Are you from New Jersey? I am from New Jersey, yes. I'm from Bergen. I'm from Bergen County. Well, I'm from all over the place. I was born in Long Island, moved to New Jersey. I think you know someone. I lived a while in Florida. I lived a while in Florida, briefly. Long Island some more, but mostly in Bergen County, New Jersey, yes. Okay. Thank you for revealing that. Are you originally from New Jersey or are you from Philadelphia? I'm from Philadelphia. Philadelphia? I don't know. I did live in New Jersey. It's kind of almost part of New Jersey anyway. It's kind of like it's kind of. No, I love New Jersey. I love people who are from New Jersey. I lived there for a couple years. Great things to say about New Jersey all around. Love it. We need it. It's weird. Okay. So you're reading, aren't you? You're reading the things from the Superior Daily News comic section. You're reading Batman and Superman. Yeah. I always thought the most interesting things. I always thought, and I'm correct for thinking, that the best thing about Batman are the villains. The villains are so innovative. Do you have a favorite Batman villain? Probably. I mean, I always loved the idea, like the concept of Two-Face. I always loved the visual look of him more so than anything. I remember there was, I don't even think I ever read the issue, but I saw an image from it in like a coming attraction ad or something where it was Two-Face in his room. And, like, not only was he split down the middle, but the room was split. Yeah. Yeah. You know, pristine half and, like, this tawdry falling apart half. And I loved that kind of design element of it a lot as a kid. So I'll go with that one. I'll go with that one. I mean, I could be goofy and pull out something like Calendar Man or some film that appeared only once. You've got to explain Calendar Man just in case anyone listening hasn't had joy in their life. I mean, I think it's kind of explanatory. Calendar Man is a villain whose whole motif is based around the calendar. And I had a copy that I had, I don't remember what issue it is, of Batman, where Calendar Man goes on a crime spree and he dresses up in a different costume each week devoted to the day of the week. So, like, on Thursday he dresses as, I think on, is it, one day he dresses up, but which day is it that it's named after Odin? Is it Wednesday or Tuesday? Because Thursday is Thor's day. But, like, he dresses up as, like, Odin at one point, or Thor, like a DC version, and, like, has these ridiculously elaborate costumes so he can, and chooses his crimes based on the particular, like, a jewelry exhibit that somehow is based on, like, the concept of Tuesday. And Batman isn't able to clobber him until Sunday. I like that the villains make it look like, because Batman is, you know, very obsessive in an unhealthy way, but his villains make it look like he's normal. I think that's a great way. What comic has even better, crazier villains and even a more obsessive hero? Dick Tracy. Oh, okay. Absolutely. I have barely read Dick Tracy. I only read... Tracy is bananas. Okay. I haven't read the, I'm only, I've been slowly collecting the IDW volumes. When I was a kid, I'd go to my local library, and once I was able to get into the adult section from the children's section, they'd have these large, you know, I'd run to the, you know, card catalog and find where the comics, cartoons were. And they had a large, this huge oversight book called Celebrated Cases of Dick Tracy. And it was, like, very select storylines from basically the run of the 40s, which is generally considered the golden period of the strip. And they wouldn't have the Sunday comics, but otherwise they would have it. And I just, I would take that out, like, regularly. And I'd, like, I had this Schwinn banana seat bicycle, and I just kind of put it on top of the handlebars and kind of steer it while holding the book on the other end. Is the book open in this scenario? No. No. Okay. It was a very big book. Be safe. Yeah. No, I was not safe. Okay, wait, what's your favorite villain? I was 12 and heedless. And I had to get home and read Dick Tracy for the upkeep time. But it is an extraordinarily violent strip, considering that it ran in daily papers, I think. It was a different time for violence, you know. I just even surprised that during the day, you know, especially since, like, it wasn't that long, you know, you get the anti-comics crusade not too much later, that, like, the number of people that get shot through the head or shot through the head and, like, the amount of blood and the gruesome, gruesome ways the villains always meet their ends. Have you ever read the story of The Brow? No, I have not. All right. So The Brow is, and I mean, The Brow is this Nazi spy who's got this, you know, gigantic forehead with this huge brow that has, like, all these holes in it. And he's using these two young girls, torturing them to basically get them to deliver messages for him. Like, if you don't come back, your sister's going to get killed. And she's got this spike trap where you sit in the chair and the spikes are stuck in the leg, and there's a clock, and as you get the spikes get closer and closer into piercing her leg as, you know, she's not back in time. And Dick Tracy shows up at one point and knocks The Brow out, and his head falls in between the two spikes things. And it starts, the clock starts ticking, and he wakes up. And he can't, and he's like, he's like, when he realizes where he is and he can't get out because the spikes haven't hit him yet, but they're just close enough that he can't get free. Yeah. Okay. And he literally has to wrench his head out. Around just drenched in blood from the cops. And he can't see because there's so much blood covering his eyes. That's like Umez stuff. Like, really? Wow. That's a comic strip that ran in daily newspapers that people loved. I adore Dick Tracy by the way. All right. One, I have one last question for you that I think has the right answer. This is just my, that you tell me. Going back to our job where we're both going, where I'm going to work as soon as we're done this call. Do you, this is a multiple choice. Okay. Do you think we were hired for the job because a, we're the best candidates for the job. B, Matt Seneca and Katie Skelly said no. Or C, someone threw a dart at a printout of TCJ contributor names and our last names are just alphabetically consecutive. Is there like a D all of the above? I mean, all right. You know what? That's fair. Fine deal. I'll add that in. It'll be fine. Okay. Right. Yeah. I'm just saying, I was trying to look up past times where you contributed to the, the best of, and I was like, huh, that's funny. Right there. Just right there. It feels like someone was being a little bit lazy. Honestly, like Chris monitor and who else? I don't know. All right. Chris. It's been a pleasure though. So far. Sure. We, I, I love to laugh. I love, you know, what is great is just getting it honestly, Honestly, just because we have to, we have to read the comic journal as much as humanly possible. It is really getting me like riled up and getting excited to read so many comics that honestly, like I would not have considered at all. I agree with that already. There's stuff like, I feel like I was, that was completely under my radar that I'm like, how did I not, how did I not notice this? Yeah. Or just like, look, we get, we get really the thing with the job is all right. For one thing, if anyone's curious, what's it like to finally do something and have your dad be proud of you? The answer is it's fleeting reward. But really the thing is, is that you and I get a incredible deluge of alerts about upcoming comics being published. Yeah. Things that we never could have dreamed. Just before we started this call, I told you about the email we got about a Taylor Swift comic. Yes. Yeah. Got it. We got it. We signed up. Got to have a sign up one today. Got to find someone. Got to find someone. Good to hear on that. I mean, who I I'll check our inbox. We, I bet there's already somebody who wants to cover it and say, you know what? We'll see. We'll see what happens. Yeah. It's fun. I like being able to see what's going on. It's good. It's like the news. It's my news now. Now I have no idea what's going on in the world. You know, aside from the president. Keep it that way. Keep it that way. I, I was going to say, like right before the press release went out for us last week, I read an article about how a second article about how our president of the United States strongly seems to believe that a relative of his was eaten by cannibals, even though there's no evidence whatsoever. And I was like, you know what? I'm done. Done here. Time for comics. We have time for left in the day. Thank you so much, Chris. Thank you. If people want to know where to find any writing and reading of yours, where would you like them to take a look? I mean, as you mentioned, the stuff at the comics journal, there's plenty of things I've done in the past. You can find, you can also, I, for a while I was writing for a website for this called the smart set, which is based out of Philadelphia. I think it's part of you, a pen. And I did some very good. I, I shouldn't say that, but I'm proud of some of that. I'm proud of some of the writing I did for that site. And, you know, you can also follow the writing I, I do on Penn live. Yeah. Right. I do on kind of local news and aggregate news of crimes coming out of Penn, of the great Keystone state. Beyond that, I'm on, I'm on the social medias. So you can find me there. I would like to recommend to any listeners of this show, any regular listeners who are like, yeah, I know Sally, not thrilled. Katie's not there this week. Who is this Chris monitor? Where do I start? Because there are decades of writing to go through. Why don't you go take a little look at something that he wrote this past winter about Jay Stevens, amazing horror series dwellings. Take a little look at that. Get excited for it. The, um, what is the word for it? The excellent interview that Jason Bergman, it was Jason Bergman. Yes. Great interview. The site that ran last week. Yeah, that's I want to fill your weekend. Yeah, guys get, get psyched for dwellings. It's very important. And, uh, so that's, that's all for now. Okay. I'll see you in a few days. And, um, thank you so much, Chris. Thank you, Sally. Bye. Yay. Okay. Okay. Good. Oh, well, I hope that went well. It did. I, I.