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Writer's pictureTen Cent Takes

Dollar Bin Discoveries: The Last Session & Hellcop

Updated: Dec 12, 2022


Mike: And he's like, we're going to have him fuck this dog. And then our two houses will be united. And I'm like, yeah, that's no.

Jessika: Uh, he's just a child.

Mike: Welcome to Ten Cent Takes the show where we dumpster dive for comics one issue at a time. I am Mike Thompson and as always, I am joined by the mistress of Midnight herself, Jessika Frazier.

Jessika: Oh, hello.

Mike: It is I though we're recording this the day after Halloween. I feel like Spooky titles still apply.

Jessika: Absolutely.

Mike: If you're new to the show, our main episodes drop every other week and provide in depth looks into interesting moments in comic books and how they tie into pop culture and history. But today is one of our dollar bin discoveries in many episodes where we do in between those deep dives. So while a lot of the issues that we find as we go diving through dollar Bins are fun and weird, there may not be enough for us to do a deep dive on them. But that may just be at the moment. We reserve the right, as always, to change our mind and come back for a larger episode on those books that we cover in these episodes. Each of these mini episodes feature both of us talking about one random issue that we came across in the dollar bins. And we focus on what it is, what goes on inside it, and why it's interesting. So Jessika, what are you bringing to the table tonight?

Jessika: I have a fun one. And it is just from a year ago. Actually. It's called the last session. Issue number one. And it's from Mad Cave Studios, Inc.

Mike: I've never heard of this book or this publisher.

Jessika: I had not either, but it looked so fun. It's written by Jasmine Walls, art by Dozer draws lettered by Micah Myers, edited by Michael Mochio, and the book and logo designed by David Reyes. And uh, this was super fun. The story follows a group of teenagers who end up creating a dice and death traps campaign after the president of their Gender Sexuality Alliance club failed to show up. Four years later, the group has grown up, but is still playing their initial game and decide to get together to play what is supposed to be the final session of their original campaign. And they have an additional member of the group and we get to see them and their characters begin the final session. And you actually get to see the characters going through the game itself. And then every once in a while the people will be talking out of character and they're like, well, what about this? Like, can I do this? So it is a lot of fun.

Mike: That sounds really cool. It sounds almost like a comic book form of there's a movie series called The Gamers that a couple of my friends made. Uh, yeah. There's the gamers, the gamers Dorkins rising and then the gamer's hands of fate, all of which are very fun. Like, the first one is a very low budget indie movie. The second one is still low budget, but they got a little more to put into production values and stuff. But they're all really fun. I always like stories like that. There's something very enjoyable about those. Kind of like, DND campaign stories interspersed with the reality of the players.

Jessika: Yeah. And this comic in particular was really cool because it had really diverse characters both, and they had different genders in there. They were working with different races, ethnicities. It was just a lot of fun. Body types were all different.

Mike: It's cool.

Jessika: Yeah, it was really neat. So I want to go through and read more of these. It sounds like they're even more fun moving forward. There's a little bit of drama because the new person is a significant other of one of the other people who's joining for the first time. And so they've heard all of the stories about the game, and they're really enthusiastic and dress up the first time that they show up, and everyone's like, oh, that really brings me back to high school when we used to dress up.

Mike: That sounds great.

Jessika: Yeah. Well, what about you?

Mike: I recently came across a series called Helcop. You'll be shocked to hear. This is from 1998.

Jessika: Yes. Here it is. Let the propaganda roll. I want all of it.

Mike: No. Uh, okay. So this is from 1998. It's from Avalon Studios and published by Image Comics. So it's actually interesting because some of the stuff that they have advertisements for was Aria, which I think you had talked about in a previous episode. It's like one of the things you've.

Jessika: Been reading, in fact.

Mike: Yeah. So this is written by Joe Casey. It's illustrated by Gilbert Monsanto, colored by Brian Haberlin and Andy Troy, and edited by Brian Hogan. And the concept is that sometime around the new millennium, mankind discovered a way to break down the walls between dimensions. So there are all these different universes that range from being nearly identical to our own to, like, pure chaos where things like physics don't work. And one of the dimensions they discover is called known reality. Plane 13 one a and basically, it's the hell from Dante's Inferno. It's complete with the seven circles. It's got demons and it's also got the river lith, but it's also like, a bunch of different mythologies from, like, cultures around the world mixed together. And I didn't really see that in this issue, but that's what it said in the intro, which I thought sounded kind of interesting. So as a result, there's this group called the Pan Dimensional Security Corps that basically works to shut down the quote unquote soft spots between this Hell world and ours. And the hero of the story is this guy named Virgil Pillots, and he is the embodiment of late 90s cool. He's jacked. He's wearing a tight outfit that's also sort of billowy. And then he's got like the John Lennon sunglasses and he has this hairstyle that's like, you know, it's kind of like wavy boy band hair that's like, you know, got the undercut, but then it's got the really long they're not even sideburns. They're just kind of like locks of hair that go down the side. It's very strange. But yeah, he is one of the agents for this group and then he has a partner named gladys who is this jacked amazon of a woman. I actually really enjoyed it because she seems very not sexualized. Although all the other women that we see at any length in the comic, definitely male gaze personified with slinky dresses and all that, but they are signed to track down a mother and son who have crossed into the hell world. But the problem is, is that the kid's father on earth has legal custody. So basically this issue is them pursuing that case. And when they do track down the mother and son, they have to fight through some demons to get to them. And then Gladys is shot by the mom. And it turns out that the twist in this case is that the mom is protecting the kid and she's saying that by returning the kid to the dad, the kid is basically dead already. And so while gladys is recuperating, virgil looks into it and it turns out that the kid's dad is actually the CEO of the company supplying the security corps with the drugs that they need to survive their dimension hopping. So it's ridiculous, but it also felt like it's an interesting concept, kind of like men in black me Tailblazer at the same time. It's not great. The characters are pretty thin. There's like a lot of exposition that we get from Virgil, both in terms of dialogue and then also his internal monologue. And like I said, the art in general just feels like kind of the male gaze put onto paper. But, you know, I picked up a few issues in the dollar bins at the local antique mall and I didn't hate it. I'll definitely read what I picked up and see how I feel about it at the end.

Jessika: That's fair. Give it a fair shake if you have it. Anyway.

Mike: Yeah, there was nothing about it that made me recoil.

Jessika: Well, uh, that's definitely a start.

Mike: That's better than some of the stuff that we got.

Jessika: Yeah, absolutely. I was going to say even some of the stuff we've done for the show. Especially some of the stuff we've done for the show.

Mike: Right. But yeah. So that is our latest episode of dollar vin discoveries. We will be back next week where we will go on to a deep historical dive of something and probably get mad about it. But until then, we will see you in the stacks.

Jessika: Thanks for listening to ten cent takes. Accessibility is important to us, so text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website.

Mike: This episode was hosted by Jessika Fraser and Mike Thompson, written by Jessika Fraser and Mike Thompson, and edited by Jessika Fraser. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound. Our credits in transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan McDonald and was purchased with a standard license from Premium Beat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who you can find@lookmomdraws.com.

Jessika: If you'd like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencentakes.com or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter or now. The official podcast account is ten. Cent takes Jessika is Jessika witha uh and Jessika spelled to the K and Mike is Van Sal. V-A-N-S-A-U.

Mike: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, load, rate and review wherever you listen. Stay safe out there and support your local comic shop.

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