Vertiguys

[http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/The-Endless-2.jpg] Welcome back! Join us for a final tour through all things Sandman with our friends from What’s Lightsabers, Precious?, Ryan and Joanna! https://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/101_Sandman_roundtable_edit_1.mp3 [https://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/101_Sandman_roundtable_edit_1.mp3] Show Notes 1:17 When we recorded this, it had been just a year since we recorded our Ninja Scroll episode. It has now been closer to a year and a half. Apologies, the pandemic and some personal life stuff that came up beforehand severely impeded our workflow. 2:05 “Imperfect Hosts,” is the title of Sandman #2, in which Morpheus visits the Hecate and is given advice on where to find his lost tools. It’s part of Preludes and Nocturnes. 2:35 As of the time of this writing, What’s Lightsabers, Precious? has not posted a new episode since January. 5:03 Richard Nixon’s head, voiced by Billy West, is a recurring character on Futurama as President of Earth. He is one of several political figures portrayed on the show surviving as heads in jars, along with Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Nixon.png] 6:17 Zoboomafoo was created by the Kratt Brothers and originally ran from 1999 to 2001 on public television and continued to appear in reruns and syndication long afterwards. There appears to be a common misconception that Zoboomafoo was also a real lemur; in fact the character was played by a lemur named Jovian. Homestar Runner was a web series created by the Brothers Chaps that debuted around the same time and theoretically continues to this day, though updates have been extremely sporadic since the mid-2000s. 9:53 PK can be heard discussing his love of the scorpion flail here [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/sandman-universe-1-ravens-just-know-these-things/]. 12:18 Sandman: The Dream Hunters was first published in 1999 by Vertigo as a novella with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano. It was later adapted as a comic book with art by P. Craig Russell in 2008. We fully intend to cover it in the future. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Amano-1-646x1024.png] 13:14 Wolverine: Snikt! was a comic book series with words and art by Tsutomu Nihei that ran for five issues in 2003. It was part of Marvel’s short-lived Tsunami imprint, which was all about Marvel characters done in a manga style. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Snikt-675x1024.jpg] 13:58 Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer was a 3-issue series from Amano and writer Greg Rucka that ran in 2002. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Amano-2.png] 13:27 Silent Möbius creator Kia Asamiya provided covers and pencils for Uncanny X-Men #416-420, which were indeed part of the Chuck Austen run. Unfortunately, these issues achieved more notoriety for containing the Juggernaut’s heel-face turn than for the legendary manga artist’s contributions. 25:16 Sam Keith was the artist for the first five issues of Sandman, as I originally suspected. Shoulda had faith in myself. 29:29 The Rebirth-era Batman run by Tom King included art from the likes of David Finch, Clay Mann, Lee Weeks, Mikel Janin, Mitch Gerads, and Joëlle Jones. 33:30 The What’s Lightsabers, Precious? coverage of mpreg can be found here [https://soundcloud.com/whats-lightsabers-precious/wlp-episode-79-festive-fanfic-extravaganza-2019]. 47:42 Some insight on how Gaiman intended Matthew’s voice to sound can be found in this interview [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ]. 49:20 My favorite running joke in The Big Lebowski is The Dude’s incessant recycling of words and phrases from other characters. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Dude.png] 57:36 Not so timely anymore. 1:10:50 I’m referring to this [https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-y7kvOYLzas6Ag] gif. Yeah, I know I say it wrong. 1:15:12 “I Will Survive” is a 1978 disco single by Gloria Gaynor, from her album Love Tracks. It has been covered by Cake and Diana Ross, among others. 1:18:00 “Rhinestone Cowboy” was written and originally recorded by Larry Weiss in 1974 before becoming the lead single from Glen Campbell’s 1975 album of the same name, as well as Campbell’s signature song. “Wichita Lineman” was also a single for Campbell and the title track of another record. It was a sequel of sorts to “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” which was originally by Johnny Rivers, but had been covered by Campbell a year earlier. Essentially, his producers believed that another Campbell song with a city in the title was bound to be another hit. 1:19:00 Joanna told a shorter version of this story at the very end of this episode [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/sandman-32-34-a-game-of-you/]. 1:22:10 An adult take on Oscar the Grouch [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqpak5lFxvs], you say? 1:25:01 For the record, we are decidedly not the official Sandman podcast. 1:40:42 We covered the Hellblazer issue with Winnie-the-Pooh in this episode [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-23-24-the-family-man/]. 1:42:51 Sam Keith created The Maxx and wrote all 35 issues, but received writing assistance from William Messner-Loebs on 21 issues and from Alan Moore on one issue. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Maxx.png] 1:56:30 Look for Joanna and Ryan’s new show Podda Cast ‘Em All within the next month or so. It should be dropping into the WLP feed.

[http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/transmetropolitan-3-02-1024x675.jpg] When the alien secession movement runs up against a civil authority that’s anything but, crusading reporter Spider Jerusalem just has to be there! Plus, we celebrate the 100th episode of Vertiguys, Rob Gordon style. Happy holidays, everyone, and we’ll see you next year! http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/100_Transmetropolitan_2-3_edit_2.mp3 [http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/100_Transmetropolitan_2-3_edit_2.mp3] Show Notes 2:39 – I might have accidentally quoted Love Actually there. 4:25 – As we discussed in our last Transmetropolitan episode [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/transmetropolitan-1-the-summer-of-the-year/], Andre Ricciardi is a friend of Darick Robertson who served as the model for Spider Jerusalem. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ricciardi.png] 5:35 – Helix lasted only from 1996 to 1998 and covered only the first 12 issues of Transmetropolitan. It did have some reason for existing – DC courted a number of science fiction and fantasy authors to collaborate in making the imprint a success, but most of its titles that weren’t cancelled ended up under the Vertigo umbrella anyway. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/helix.png] 5:57 – This year, as we’ve discussed, DC has mothballed the Vertigo line and is going all in on DC Black Label instead, despite their being… basically the same thing. 8:23 – Sean was not, as I first thought, misusing the word “allay,” which means “soothe,” but rather being inscrutably sarcastic. 9:43 – Spider has a line here: “You think professional people are afraid of guns? Do you?” This can be read simply as Spider bragging about his own fearless pursuit of the Truth, or the professionals he’s referring to could be the police, but we also thought it might imply that guns are much more commonplace, and facing them endemic to many more professions, in this future. 11:02 – Destructo Vermin Gobsmack, a.k.a. Martin Peters, a.k.a. Patrick McDonell, a punk rocker turned music manager turned real estate developer who Constantine remembers from his Mucous Membrane days, turned up in Hellblazer Annual [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-annual-1-the-bloody-saint/]#1 [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-annual-1-the-bloody-saint/] and again in Hellblazer [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-32-33-new-tricks/]#33, “Sundays are Different” [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-32-33-new-tricks/]. 11:47 – In another incredibly uncomfortable piece of dialogue, Spider taunts Fred that all the transients in Angels 8 are “failures” because they haven’t fully transitioned yet. 17:02 – As we saw in the first issue, Spider uses jumpstart pills to boost his intelligence and make writing easier. It’s not far off from the way that adderall is often abused by students today. 18:18 – Ed Gein killed two women in Plainfield, Wisconsin between 1954 and 1957, and may also have been responsible for the death of his brother in 1944, in addition to stealing many other bodies from graves in order to fashion household objects from the remains. Gein is considered to be the inspiration for the fictional killers Buffalo Bill, Norman Bates, and Leatherface. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/gein-199x300.png] 24:41 – Sean liked the adherence to aesthetics that has Spider banging out stories on an old-fashioned typewriter instead of a computer, even if his future typewriter has some added features. 31:31 – I meant to say that Spider stopped the crackdown, rather than the riot. 51:28 – Sadly, we are not on Stitcher, though that’s coming soon. The real reason Sean tried to install Stitcher on our mother’s cellphone was so she could listen to the Washington Post’s Presidential [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/podcasts/presidential/] podcast. 53:17 – “Nothing clean” is a reference to The Terminator, although I don’t know why Sean was doing Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein voice instead of Arnold Schwarzenegger. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/nothing-clean.png]

[http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/hellblazer-special-02.jpg] A mage and a dead body walk into a church. That’s not a joke; that’s the comic. http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/99_Hellblazer_Special_1_edit_1.mp3 [http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/99_Hellblazer_Special_1_edit_1.mp3] Show Notes 1:48 – The Darkness, created by Marc Silvestri’s Top Cow (an imprint of Image Comics), is a mafia hitman who inherits the embodiment of universal chaos and therefore receives superpowers. The character seems to embody Garth Ennis’s preoccupation the violence of humankind crossing paths with more cosmic-level conflicts, and in fact, Ennis is credited as a co-creator of the character along with Silvestri and David Wohl. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/darkness-1024x512.png] 5:45 – Sean means that we can figure out Constantine’s age from knowing his birth year, which is canonically 1953. 5:50 – I was alluding to Al Stewart’s song “Pretty Golden Hair” there, from his 1967 debut Bed-Sitter Images, which also concerns a young man preyed upon sexually by older men. 6:45 – I was reminded of this gag from Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein: [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/young-frankenstein.png] 12:31 – In Catholicism, an indulgence is a reduction in the time one must suffer in purgatory for their sins, usually granted in response to prayers or good works. The selling of indulgences for cash was a major complaint of the Protestant Reformation. 16:14 – This may be a reference to the Boomtown Rats’ lead singer Bob Geldof, a fellow Irishman. Geldof is known as a liberal activist, so his friendship with the messianic figure the First describes might not be surprising, but the name is spelled with a second “f” in the comic. 20:15 – Loch Lomond is located between the counties of Sterling and Dunbarton in Scotland, and is the subject of the traditional song “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cN2iIOK-SY]”. 22:35 – I think I sell the book a bit short here, wanting it to be more continuity-heavy. I should be clear that as a stand-alone story, this is great horror with a truly chilling human element. 26:35 – While I think that fictional exploitation of the Catholic abuse scandal for drama is a cliche, I certainly don’t mean to diminish the trauma of actual victims. 30:00 – Here’s the cover we’re talking about: [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/cap-315.png] 31:02 – It happened in Batgirl (5th series) #25.

[http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/lucifer-3-01-2.jpg] Celebrate Turkey Day with the Vertiguys by chowing down on the first grim tale from Lucifer’s ongoing series, as the Devil-in-retirement seeks advice, takes in a show, and is generally kind of a prick. http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/98_Lucifer_1-3_edit_1.mp3 [http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/98_Lucifer_1-3_edit_1.mp3] Show Notes 2:09 – The actual line is “flights of angels sing thee to thy rest” and it’s from Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2. It’s part of Horatio’s goodbye to a dying Hamlet. 3:10 – We were reminded of Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime series where each half-episode had its own title. To boot, these titles often didn’t match the titles we’d been given in the next-episode bumper. 3:17 – I didn’t have the summary of X-Men (vol. 2) #51 quite right. The person spying on Bishop works for Dark Beast, not Sinister, and doesn’t appear in this issue (that actually happened in issue #49). Sinister is in this issue, though, and was responsible for mutating all the passengers on the train into monsters. Unbeknownst to the X-Men, Dark Beast is in this issue as well – that’s him on the cover posing as Beast. This cover is by Jeff Matsuda and Dan Panosian, also the issue’s interior artists. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/death-train.png] 4:25 – When we say, “writing for the trade,” we mean practices that de-emphasize the importance of making individual issues readable and rely on readers to read the whole story arc at once (probably in trade paperback form). 5:15 – Loki’s fuckery toward Susano-O took place in Season of Mists [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/sandman-26-28-season-of-mists/]. 6:00 – Our discussion here reminded Sean of this [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/03/20/in-search-of-a-robust-cosmology] Penny Arcade strip. 6:04 – The wheel of pain is shown to play a formative role in the life of Conan the Barbarian in the 1982 film. It is also, to my horror, a key craftable object in 2018’s Conan Exiles. 8:50 – Pastourma is a form of cured meat that is repeatedly pressed and air dried. Pastrami may be a relative of this. As we suggested, its use here seems to be to show that Lucifer has cultured tastes. 32:52 – I think we’ve made this reference before, but that’s a reference to this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU] Mitchell and Webb sketch. 38:47 – Cardcaptor Sakura is a manga and anime by Clamp which was seen in the late 90s. The plot is quite similar to what we see here – a magical girl has to track down and reimprison a bunch of magical creatures that escaped from a magical deck of cards.. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/cardcaptor-sakura.png] 39:20 – See also the Key to Hell in Season of Mists, which caused so much trouble for Morpheus and Remiel. By the way, although Lucifer says angels don’t breed here, we’ve seen evidence that they can – over in Hellblazer, Ellie the succubus had a baby with an angel once [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-59-61-guys-dolls/]. By claiming that he doesn’t breed, Lucifer also distinguishes himself from Paradise Lost’s Satan, who has a daughter, Sin – albeit by the Zeusian method of conjuring her from his brain. 40:35 – Mike Hammer is a fictional private eye who first appeared in a series of novels by former comic book writer Mickey Spillane, starting with 1947’s I, the Jury. The novels were told in the first person and were known for their purple prose reflecting the main character’s deep cynicism. 43:17 – I realized that maybe not everybody is old enough to be familiar with the theme song [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGdpE8Dsr0U] to the TV show Cheers, which we referenced here. 43:35 – Editors were discussed in Transmetropolitan #1 and our episode here [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/transmetropolitan-1-the-summer-of-the-year/]. 44:44 – In 1973’s Live and Let Die, 007 seduces the tarot-reading psychic Solitaire (Jane Seymour!) by stacking a deck, filling it entirely with Lovers cards. 51:41 – A Trip to the Moon was an early science fiction film created by the French auteur Georges Méliès. The rocket’s collision with the moon is portrayed thusly: [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/trip-to-the-moon.png] 1:17:12 – The device Sean incorrectly described here was actually used in issues prior to the death of Superman in Superman (vol. 2) #75. Successive issues leading up to the epic battle between Superman and Doomsday featured dwindling numbers of panels per page, with #75 consisting entirely of full-page panels.

[http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/transmetropolitan1-01-2.jpg] Vertiguys Phase Two continues with another #1! Journalist jerk Spider Jerusalem has three books to write in five years, and zero chance of doing it without returning to his one and only geographical nemesis, the City. No new episode next week – we’ll be back in two with Lucifer. http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/97_Transmetropolitan_1_edit_1.mp3 [http://media.blubrry.com/vertiguys/content.blubrry.com/vertiguys/97_Transmetropolitan_1_edit_1.mp3] Show Notes 2:00 – Warren Ellis was the writer for the first two story arcs of Dynamite’s 2015 James Bond series, Vargr and Eidolon. Don’t listen to Sean; you should read those books because they’re awesome. 2:45 – Darick Robertson confirms Ricciardi’s role in a 2015 tweet [https://twitter.com/darickr/status/624282970141143040]. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ricciardi.png] 5:39 – In 1999, while a player with the Atlanta Braves, John Rocker made a number of racist, sexist, and homophobic comments after being asked if he would have any interest in playing for a New York team. Interestingly, he described the experience of being in a diverse city as “hectic” and “nerve-wracking.” 6:44 – Sean is correct. According to Wookieepedia [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page], Han Solo uses a modified DL-44 heavy blaster pistol from BlasTech Industries, favored for its ability to pierce Stormtrooper armor. In real life, the props were built on Mauser C96 Broomhandle pistols and have gone for hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/blastech.png] 8:03 – The Unabomber, as he was called by the press, carried out a campaign of mail bombings from 1978 to 1995 that killed three people and injured 23 more, targeting mainly universities and airlines. He was revealed to be Ted Kaczynski, a former assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley who had left modern society to live as a hermit in a secluded cabin. He was also somewhat infamous for his disheveled appearance upon his arrest. 9:11 – Though we know little of the Beast yet, his rise to political power may evoke the Biblical beast from the Book of Revelation. 13:50 – In case this wasn’t clear in the audio, the implication seems to be that these two men have to be dissenting from their culture in order to live as lovers. 14:55 – We’ve discussed him in this space before, but Hunter S. Thompson was a counterculture writer in the 1960’s and 70’s who created “gonzo journalism,” in which the author involves themself in the story they are reporting and eschews the pretense of objectivity. Thompson’s fondness for guns, drugs, and seclusion, as well as his hatred of authoritarianism and conservatism make for obvious parallels with Spider. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/hunter.png] 17:38 – Mr. Fusion is a “home energy reactor,” presumably commercially available in the year 2015, according to the Back to the Future trilogy. Unlike Spider’s maker, it does not reconfigure matter into other objects, but merely uses it to generate energy. The maker is more like one of the replicator units from Star Trek. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/mr-fusion.png] 25:26 – From our perspective, Ellis’s English origins are relevant because of that country’s higher baseline level of liberalism and social democratism. English conservatives are more liberal than our conservatives, and English cynicism towards liberal measures is derived from a society that actually is more liberal – in some ways. Certainly, English writers led the charge for more openly political comics at DC, as we’ve seen. Supporting Ellis’s political leanings, we found this [https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/dp4n9z/warren-ellis-good-morning-sinners-the-last-column-about-the-election-really]. And this [https://www.bleedingcool.com/2017/01/22/warren-ellis-whether-nazis-punched-face-not/]. It’s also possible that we aren’t meant to read Spider as objecting to any of the denizens of the city or the way that they live their lives per se, but rather to the way that the immense variety of people contributes to the feeling of sensory overload. This reading is better, but still somewhat closed-minded, and brings us back to both Rocker and, to a lesser extent, Kaczynski. 30:00 – Sorry, it’s Sandman Universe: Hellblazer. 31:27 – That was a reference to this [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/01/19] Penny Arcade strip. 32:40 – Nelson’s Column is a monument to British naval hero Admiral Horatio Nelson. It’s found in London’s Trafalgar Square, itself named for the battle where Nelson died in 1805. 31:57 – “Kill by demons!” is from the infamous Doom fanfic Repercussions of Evil [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R0ZZF4O0K4]. 32:42 – Timothy Hunter was created by Neil Gaiman and John Bolton (not that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bolton] John Bolton) in 1990’s Books of Magic #1. We didn’t mention it, but Constantine is a major character and mentor to Timothy Hunter in the original Books of Magic miniseries, so this isn’t an unprecedented crossover. 33:27 – Check out our coverage [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-34-36-dead-boys-heart/] of “Dead-Boy’s Heart” for more on John’s disturbed childhood and history of hurting animals. 33:58 – For more on this, check our episode here [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/preacher-11-12-until-the-end-of-the-world/]. 34:47 – And for how John ended up in Ravenscar, see this [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-11-newcastle/] episode. 36:54 – We covered “Counting to Ten” here [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/hellblazer-50-51-remarkable-lives/]. Spoiler warning, though: we didn’t like it very much. 41:50 – Reality Ensues [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RealityEnsues] is a TV Trope. It means when something realistic (often bad) unexpectedly happens in a story, instead of something consistent with the story’s genre. 42:00 – It’s worth noting, at the point we’re covering in Hellblazer history, Chas hasn’t been seen in months of both real and in-comic time after John made one too many cracks about his wife and Chas beat him senseless and walked out. Again, not without precedent. 44:04 – Sean was probably thinking of Simon Spurrier’s run on X-Men Legacy volume two, and the prison in Legion’s mind where his alternate personalities are locked up. [http://vertiguys.blubrry.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/qortex.jpg]