Jessika: [00:00:00] That's why I was shocked and appalled when I got into this college yoga class, and they're like, now here's the homework. And I was like, I'm not gonna show up half the time
you're you're out of your goddamn mind. If you think that I'm gonna be doing homework for this place, I'm gonna barely pass.
Mike: Hello. Welcome to Ten Cent Takes the podcast where we gasp at gastronomic garbage, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson and I am joined by my co-host the Toothy Terror, Jessika Frazer.
Jessika: Oh my God, you have no idea. If you guys haven't seen a picture of me yet, I have so many teeth. Like I'm, I'm one of those creatures that was born with like three [00:01:00] sets of teeth in their freaking head, and like I used the first set to like chew out of the womb.
Mike: Well, that's nightmare fuel. Thank you for that.
Jessika: Well, you gave me mare fuel today, so thank yourself.
Mike: Yeah, that's fair. Fair. If you are new to the show, the purpose of this podcast is to celebrate comics in ways that are both fun and informative. We like to look at their coolest, weirdest, and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history.
And if you are enjoying the show so far and wanna help us grow, it'd be a huge help if you can rate and or review us on Apple Podcasts, because that actually does really help with discoverability. But you also don't have to, you can just keep on listening and enjoying the show. Do whatever you want. Tonight we are going to be talking about Kid Cannibal a, in quotes, mature mini-series from the early nineties, which, uh, man.
Jessika: Groan.
Mike: [00:02:00] It's a thing.
But before we do that, Jessika, what is one cool thing that you have read or watched lately?
Jessika: So in honor of Pride, which is when we are recording in the month of June. I'm reading this really amazing graphic biography called Queer As All Get Out, and it's by Shelby Criswell.
Mike: Hmm.
Jessika: It was published through Street Noise in 2021, and Shelby is a non-binary artist in Texas and weaves their own story in between stories of the lives of other queer artists that haven't received a whole lot of mainstream attention, including Nancy Cardenas, Ty Nassim, Sister Rosetta Thorpe, WeWa, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, and other writers, activists and more. It's It's really thoughtful with really gentle lessons about how to treat the queer community with dignity and respect, like an explanation about dead names and why we don't [00:03:00] use them.
Mike: Oh, that's cool.
Jessika: Yeah, it's really nice. And it was really thoughtful in the way it was presented.
It wasn't like an accusation, it was just like, hey, this is what dead names are and this is like, we don't do that here, you know, kind of a thing. It was just, yeah, it was really sweet. And they're also incredibly sensitive about topics like suicide, providing reminders throughout the graphic novel about the hotline and how important it is that we're all individuals and that we all deserve to be here, you know?
Mike: That's great. That
sounds very uplifting.
Jessika: It's so sweet. I'm only about halfway through and I just, I love it so far,
Mike: Nice.
Jessika: Yeah. Well, what about you?
Mike: Not nearly anything as profound as what you just discussed, but
Jessika: That's okay. We don't always have to be profound here.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Many times we're not.
Mike: I probably should, have sought out something a little bit more queer oriented because of the timing, but I didn't. So I have been reading Once [00:04:00] Upon a Time at the End of the World, which was published by Boom.
It is written by Jason Aaron, and it has art by Alexander Tefenkgi and Nick Dragotta, and it's colored by Lee Loughridge and Rico Renzi. It just had the first volume come out last week, so.
Jessika: Oh, wow.
Mike: I think this episode is gonna drop like right at the end of June, or very beginning of July.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah, so the first volume just came out. You know, we got sent a review PDF by Boom, so I was reading through it. The story takes place in a world that has been ravaged by like, some sort of ecological disaster.
We don't really see what it is at the, like, I don't know if we eventually do, I'm not all the way through it yet, but Teenage Wasteland, ranger Mezzy comes across a boy her age named Maceo, who is later known as Mace, living in a skyscraper, like on his own. And it's kind of like this sort of like kids' paradise because he has managed to survive the death of his parents. They got [00:05:00] sick and then died, and he is like this mad scientist inventor. So like the first issue is he's giving her a tour of this like tower that he lives in, and he's like, created a book pool. He filled a swimming pool with like all of their books.
He,
He has an entire floor full of like vending machines that he calls the orchard. It's really kind of clever. But yeah, he also has like all these crazy inventions, it's really cool. And Maceo is instantly enamored with Mezzy and leaves the safety of his tower to accompany her across the Wasteland. She teaches him survival skills, which are, you know, useful seeing is how hostile the landscape and the wildlife now are.
And then he in turn is kind of teaching her how to live after she spent a lifetime just surviving. I love the art. I wasn't really all that taken with it originally because it felt a little cookie cutter, but then, we start getting bits in the story that take place much later. It's like flash forward sequences, and those are real interesting.
Like they provide this really [00:06:00] interesting twist. So, so yeah, so like I, I'm digging it now. I think it's really good. The first volume, as I said, came out last week. And I found myself progressively getting more into the story as it goes along. So, yeah, you know, if you're looking for something that kind of scratches that Mad Max vibe, check it out.
Jessika: Wow. Totally. Yeah.
Mike: All right. Are you ready to, uh, talk about Kid Cannibal, like
Jessika: No, just shut it all down. This is the end of the, this is the end of the issue
Mike: is the end of the episode.
Jessika: Sorry. We're done here, folks.
Mike: Sorry, we're just gonna skip right to Brain Wrinkles. It'll be the shortest episode ever.
Jessika: Good Lord.
Mike: All right.
Mike: Okay. So before we talk about Kid Cannibal, as always, we need you do a little background information. So this was published by Eternity Comics, which we have discussed during our Obscure Fantasy edition of Dollar Bin Discoveries back in April since they published [00:07:00] the the book you brought to discuss, Earth Lore, Reign of the Dragon Lord.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: But, do you know anything about them other than they published that specific comic?
Jessika: No, I'm coming in incredibly fresh.
Mike: Okay. All right. So Eternity's actually a pretty interesting publisher. I was not expecting this really interesting deep rabbit hole when I started researching this episode. I was, I was not sure how much we were gonna have to talk about, to be completely honest.
Jessika: Oh, okay. Oh, sounds like you found some good stuff.
Mike: Yeah. Okay. So as you're sitting there rubbing your hands together.
Jessika: I sure am.
Mike: All right. Eternity started out in 1986 as a Comics publisher that they were putting out like kind of weird and different creator-owned black and white books. This was right at the height of that black and white indie bubble that we've talked about a couple of times throughout the history of the show, which you know, really came about due to the success of the Ninja Turtles.
And [00:08:00] at this point in time, the Ninja Turtles were already very successful, but they weren't fully mainstream yet. The cartoon and the toys didn't launch until 1987, but at this point in time, the Turtles had pretty much single-handedly created this like indie Comics boom because Mirage's core series was just so successful.
There were like a ton of parody series such as Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, most of which didn't really catch on. You know, it's kind of like how we had that like deluge of zombie content after the Walking Dead struck
Jessika: Lord.
Mike: A bid.
Jessika: Sure did.
Mike: Yeah. But this Boom was also how we wound up with publishers like Arrow Comics who published the Realm, which we have discussed, or Aircel, the folks who gave us Men in Black, or Debbie Does Dallas.
Like, you know, it's one of those things where there was a lot of crap, but there was occasionally kind of cool stuff coming about. But Eternity is a pretty unique publisher from this time. A number of really major creators got their start at the company. Brian Pelitos Evil Ernie, which [00:09:00] was one of my favorite comics in the nineties, started out as an Eternity series.
Jimmy Palmiatti has written about how some of his earliest work was doing everything except lettering on a bunch of Eternity comics titles. Yeah, Ben Dunn's Ninja High School was originally an Eternity book. Ninja High School was the series that Areala Warrior Nun first appeared in, and now she has a Netflix TV show.
Ron Lim's first comic Ex- Mutants was published by Eternity, and his art that was so good that Marvel basically like snapped him up right away, which is how he and Fabian Nicieza ended up working on Psi Force together as their first Marvel work, which we talked about with Fabian a couple months ago, you know, and we talked about what a nice guy Ron is, cuz he's just a very wholesome human being.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah, so when Eternity was founded, it turns out it was being privately funded by this guy named Scott Mitchell Rosenberg. He also owned a comics distributor called Sunrise Comics. So [00:10:00] Rosenberg actually funded like a total of five different comics companies in the eighties. There was Eternity, there was Amazing, Wonder Color, Imperial Comics, and Malibu Comics.
And here's where it gets weird. Rosenberg financed like all of these companies in secret with other people who were technically in charge of them. And this worked for roughly a year or so. But in the spring of 1987, Sunrise suddenly said it was having cash flow of problems and it wouldn't be able to pay some of the publishers that it was working with until July.
So yeah, and as a result, there's this like whole ripple effect of chaos. There were a number of publishers who worked with Sunrise that were suddenly left high and dry, which led to a number of indie comics publishers suddenly having money problems and they ultimately wound up shutting down.
I'm not sure on the final count of companies that closed because of this, but I do know a couple of them sued Sunrise over money owed to them, and they basically never recouped their [00:11:00] losses.
Jessika: Oh shit.
Mike: Yeah, and Sunrise itself never recovered either, it declared bankruptcy in 1988 during the black and white comics implosion, and then it just kind of ceased operation.
And then Malibu co-founder Tom Mason, gave an interview to JC Vaughn a couple of years ago, we'll include the link in the show notes, but basically he spilled the tea about how messy this whole situation was.
Jessika: Rosenberg secretly financed four, yes, that's right, comic book companies with the idea that they would publish comics, he'd push them through this existing distribution channel at Sunrise, then sell individual copies by mail order through yet another company of his called Direct Comics. Having a distribution company that distributes books from multiple publishers that expands to publishing its own books while also running a mail order division isn't a bad way to create a vertically integrated company without many assets.
Unfortunately, he did it in secret and had been trying to manipulate the market to create "hot comics" that could be sold at [00:12:00] higher prices post publication, and all that went bad when the bubble of inflated, high priced hot comics burst. Sunrise was bankrupt and shut down, leaving behind a trail of bad debt that hurt a lot of small publishers at the same time Malibu was launching.
Mike: Yeah, so it's like pretty sketch that whole situation.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: Like I'm honestly kind of shocked that there wasn't like more of a ramification for this guy, but anyway. So at the same time when Sunrise started having all their money problems, Rosenberg publicly admitted that he'd been secretly financing a bunch of different comics publishers. And then he announced that he was taking over direct control of all of them, where I'm like, I don't know why anyone would wanna deal with you after this, but okay.
Jessika: Right.
Mike: And then he shut all of them down except for Malibu, and then Eternity was like an imprint under the Malibu umbrella.
So yeah, even after this point, Eternity was like this kind of like chaotic comics publisher. At one point they published something called The Uncensored Mouse, which were a bunch of [00:13:00] collected.
Jessika: I have that.
Mike: Do you really?
Jessika: I have the, there's two. Yeah, there's two issues and I have both of them.
Mike: Yeah. Okay, cool. Well, those are the only issues they published.
Jessika: Yeah, we
could talk about 'em later. Oh, well that makes a lot of sense why I couldn't find anymore. So we will jump down that mouse hole later.
Mike: Yeah, but for those of you who are unfamiliar with this, this was a bunch of collected Mickey Mouse newspaper strips that had been published without Disney's permission because it turns out the people in charge of Eternity weren't very good at reading copyright law, I guess. And so they thought the strips were in the public domain, but they weren't.
Disney basically brought a lawsuit against them. It was supposed to be six issues, there were only two ever published. They also did an adaptation of the manga Captain Harlock, but, so that series ran for like multiple years, but it ended really abruptly when it turned out Eternity didn't actually have the rights to the character.
Jessika: Oh my God. Here we go.
Mike: [00:14:00] So comics creator, Tim Eldred did an interview with the Captain Harlock fan site, where he detailed what happened in that instance.
Jessika: Toei Animation noticed the American Harlock comic and contacted Eternity to tell them that the American publishing rights did not exist, so therefore they weren't supposed to be doing a Harlock comic. Eternity pointed the finger at Coral Pictures, and it turned out that Coral wasn't a real company, just some individual living in Florida who traded in fake licenses like junk bonds. Eternity had unknowingly licensed Harlock from a real life pirate.
Mike: I kinda love that. Like
Jessika: Wow. The irony.
Mike: I mean, also it's one of those things where like, yeah, I guess this was like easier to pull off before the internet was a thing because.
Jessika: Right? Right. Oh, you could have a whole other family, like three towns over and nobody would freaking know. Of course this was easier.
Mike: Exactly. But I mean, you know, like the other thing is that like Toy wouldn't be able to find out about this because it wouldn't be as easily accessible information. And it's one of those things where I'm like, you know, I'm [00:15:00] sure that they had lawyers look at like the thing and, you know, draw up some paperwork and all that and then it just turns out the guy didn't have the rights.
So, you know.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. So like in spite of all this stuff, Eternity kept on going right into the nineties. They had kind of a good mix of license books and original stuff that sold decently enough.
Jessika: Actually licensed?
Mike: Yeah, actually licensed, like, I think they had like an I Love Lucy comic, they had a lot of manga and anime.
They were doing robo tech at the time.
Jessika: Okay.
Mike: Yeah, they had like a pretty good mix. Comichron, which is the site that provides historical data on comic sales shows multiple books from the publisher appearing on sales charts each month during this era. And we're not talking like top 10 or anything, but the numbers look pretty respectable for the sort of niche content that they were providing.
And it's like, like I said, it's a good mix of international adaptations, particularly manga and anime, other licensed properties. There's some original stuff like Dinosaurs For [00:16:00] Hire, which I know you, I think that's one that you're actually interested in like finding more of.
Jessika: Yeah, I think so. I did find one of those. Yep.
Mike: Yeah. But now we're at the point that we can talk about Kid Cannibal because the comic debuted in October of 91, which is really when Eternity seemed to kind of pivot into over the top violent horror. And this is a bit of speculation on my part, but my guess is that when Evil Ernie became kind of like a word of mouth sensation, they just started pumping out a ton of similar books to try and replicate that series success.
So Kid Cannibal was written by Doug Campbell, it was penciled by Andrew Wells, and it was inked by Fred Perry. This is a black and white series, so there was no coloring. And we should just actually like go into a summary, I guess.
Jessika: Boo! Oh, sorry. Yeah, go for it.
Mike: Reactions come afterwards.
Jessika: Whoops. Sometimes I can't help it. You know me.
Mike: Yeah. Alright. So in issue one, we are introduced to Nelson, who is an obese high school student in [00:17:00] the town of Big Pine. He is described on the first page of the comic as quote, the fattest kid I ever met. And we see him rushing to his high school's open house night, where parents are encouraged to attend.
Nelson is locked out of the main entrance by some bullies, but they leave open the side door for him to go through because they know that he's so overweight that he will get stuck in the doorway for everyone to laugh at, which is what happens. But the only person who doesn't take part in Nelson's humiliation is popular girl Janice, whose parents are like humiliated that she helps Nelson get unstuck from the door. And like that's the only defining character trait that we find out from her parents too, is they're just like, oh, she's embarrassing us. Ehh, okay.
Jessika: What we know about them, we hate them. Let's just say.
Mike: I mean, that's kinda everybody in this book, to be honest.
Jessika: I, yeah, no real talk.
Mike: So anyway, the next day Janice tells Nelson that if he ever needs a friend, she'll be there for him. And he immediately tries to take her up on that without really understanding personal boundaries. It's,[00:18:00] this is like a recurring thing throughout the comic, is they alternate between giving him very human kind of like realistic dialogue, and then at other times they make him seem like he might be developmentally disabled based on his speech patterns and his behavior.
And, and this is one of those instances where it's the latter because he immediately starts trying to like, hang out with her without really understanding personal boundaries.
Like, things finally come to a head when he interrupts Janice and her boyfriend Eric, as they're about to have sex in his car at the local make out point, which like nowhere near town, Nelson doesn't have a car. He somehow like followed them up to like this giant cliff overlooking the town, but okay, whatever.
Eric is very upset at this and beats Nelson up. Janice tells Nelson to leave her alone permanently. Nelson leaves despondent, and then we immediately cut to a few days later when Janice comes home to find her cat eaten on the front lawn. And, an anonymous,[00:19:00] in quotes letter declaring the author's love for Janice.
Janice is like, well, like I had to go to work. And it turns out she's part of a police explorers program, which is kind of like a youth intro program to law enforcement.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: And she is riding along with a cop named Jack. They almost collide with a downed electrical tower, which on closer inspection shows the structures foundation was chewed apart.
They find the carcass of a cow that's also been eaten, and then they get a call in their radio from someone who has panicked saying that something is eating everything. And then it's revealed that the person on the other end of the radio is talking about his son right before we hear him and his wife getting eaten.
It's, yeah. So Jack and Janice make it to the house that the call is coming from, and they find the remains of Nelson's parents eaten down to the bone. They try to get back up, but are told that everyone's at this like, all night donut shop where the entire department gives Janice a surprise celebration because she got into the police academy.[00:20:00]
Jessika: Tell me that you understand the vibe of police departments.
What you know, because like they give, they were like, no, we have better things to do. Let's have this celebration than we'll hear whatever it is you have to say.
Mike: Well.
Jessika: Which like, fuck off, this is an emergency.
Mike: Yeah, and that's the thing is like Jack and Janice try to tell everybody else what is going on and none of them will listen to them. And then this monster smashes through the windows of the shop, murders all the cops in like a two page spread. And then it's revealed in the last panel to be a monstrous version of Nelson.
He's at least twice as big as he was when we last saw him. Both in terms of width and height, he's also got like shark's teeth and he has like no hair and I don't know, like scales or
Jessika: Or really bad acne. Or
Mike: Kinda
Jessika: Or Like
Mike: like bumps. It's hard to tell because there's no color.
Jessika: Like body, body wide acne. I don't know.
Mike: I was almost thinking like, kind of like in a lizard's bumpy skin, you know.
Jessika: Yeah, Yeah, that's a good guess too. I don't know.
Vague,
Mike: that's, that's where the issue ends.
Jessika: Yikes, that [00:21:00] happened.
Mike: Issue two picks up immediately after this. Janice manages to escape the donut shop because Nelson gets distracted by like the giant donut on the top of the building.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: It's like Nelson is really dumb when it's convenient for the plot and other times he's not.
She takes one of the police cruisers and warns everyone in town over the car's loudspeakers that this is an emergency and they need to evacuate when she gets home. She finds her parents have been eaten and then Janice has like an I'm a badass moment and declares she's gonna stay and fight.
So she drives to the edge of town where there's a canyon with a single lane bridge as the only way across. I guess this is the only way outta town too, theoretically.
Jessika: Yeah. It seems like.
Mike: But, there's a traffic jam that's caused a standstill, and Nelson is trying to climb the bridge while screaming about how he needs food.
The bridge starts to collapse. Janice rescues a kid who is inexplicably dangling over the edge, and then the structure collapses into the water below the mayor. Oh God, the mayor. The mayor suddenly is like, I need to help this poor [00:22:00] boy. We can't leave him to die. And Janice is like, um, he's already murdered dozens of people and just tried to eat a kid.
And the mayor's actual response is, I don't have time to stand here and take this vigilante nonsense. So he like, he finds some potatoes in someone's car, and then he goes down to Nelson and feeds the potatoes to him. And then Nelson basically breaks outta the wreckage and gives chase to the mayor, declaring that the potatoes are good, but fresh meat is better.
Jessika: Yeah. And like, here's the thing, the mayor would've been one of the first people to make fun of this kid too. So i,
yeah,
I don't get it. I don't get it.
Mike: I like the mayor is very clearly meant to be like a satire of like bleeding heart liberal politicians at the time,
Jessika: Oh sure. Yeah.
Mike: But it, it doesn't work real well. Like, he flip flops between, between wanting to take down Nelson throughout the rest of the series or like being like, oh, we should help him.
But it's only when like, when [00:23:00] basically, you know, he stops Janice or others from like, actually like putting Nelson down. That's the only time that that actually comes out.
So, Yeah. Now, in issue three, Nelson is still chasing the mayor through the canyon, but the mayor is able to escape when Janice shoots Nelson, which doesn't actually hurt him.
Cuz he's so big now. But he does have a moment where, You know, from the safety of the cliff in the canyon, Nelson is talking to the towns folk, and he tells the town that he always hears them making fun of him for being fat. And it's actually like, kind of heartbreaking. But then he immediately declares that like, he's gonna eat them all.
So whatever.
Jessika: Yup, yup.
Mike: He climbs up to the high ground very quickly. He starts eating more people. The towns folk unsuccessfully try to crush Nelson with a boulder before he chases the survivors through the canyon. He tells Janice that her boyfriend has something to do with how he became monstrous, and then he eats the town drunk, which makes him [00:24:00] really sick.
And then that allows the remaining people to get away. And Janice, the mayor and Eric make it to the police station where they arm themselves and then they drive off Nelson, who has followed them. And he retreats into the local supermarket to recoup.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: End scene. But now we get to issue four, which is the final issue of the series.
Jessika: God, I wish it ended there.
Mike: I know it would've been great, right? Like if either just folded a little bit earlier, it would've been fine.
Jessika: I mean, maybe not fine, but it would've been, maybe would've saved something
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Would have saved me from one of these scenes in particular.
Mike: Oh man, it's bad. So issue four begins with Janice going into the supermarket with a machine gun. Like also , I need to point something out, which is that I talk about like how Janice is like having all these like, strong final girl moments where she's not gonna back down.
But she is very sexualized. Like when she's getting a gun out of a car. Like it, like the art very obviously focuses on her ass. Like[00:25:00] her cleavage is like increasingly exposed. Like, and then I think like the last few pages of this book, she's like, in a bra.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: She doesn't even have a shirt.
Jessika: Exactly.
Mike: Yeah. So anyway, inside the supermarket we find out Nelson is now the size of King Kong and he snatches her into the air, but they talk for a second. And it's weird because Nelson keeps swapping between being able to deliver these really insightful statements. And then he has immediately afterwards this childlike dialogue where he can't really do more than say things like that hurted me and eat people.
Jessika: God, it's so frustrating. It makes no sense.
Mike: I found myself really frustrated with those scenes cuz I'm like, did just nobody edit this book? I know that we have an editor credited in this book, but I'm like, but did they really do anything? Like what were they doing? Like how were they earning their paycheck?
Jessika: We've talked to enough people who have edited things that have said, I don't remember what that is, so I, you know what I'm saying? I.[00:26:00]
Mike: yeah. But yeah, Nelson chases Janice into an area that he's used as his bathroom, and it's very clearly meant to be a joke about how much poop something kaiju sized would generate. But it's just like, it's gross and sad.
Jessika: Yep.
Mike: Like it doesn't matter. Like It doesn't have the intended effect.
Janice leads Nelson back to the police station. Bullets don't do much, but then they set Nelson on fire and they get, again, a momentary reprieve while he climbs the local water tower and then dowses himself in it. Janice demands that Eric tell the truth about what happened to Nelson, and he basically refuses until his awful sister, Tess, who by the way, like we have had these two characters showing up in the background of like this entire series, but their contribution to this story is so minimal that I don't really feel it really is necessary to talk about like every time they
Jessika: No, There's no development about
Mike: Yeah,
Jessika: them.
Mike: No.
Jessika: They just show up in the background and I had to be like, oh yeah, that's who that was.
Mike: Yeah, I like, so Eric is just, he is like the mean spirited jock. Tess [00:27:00] is his equally mean spirited, popular head sister.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: But yeah, Tess says she will tell the truth if Eric won't. And we find out that Eric and his friends tracked down Nelson after the interrupted sex session. They took him behind the hospital for some reason, and then kicked the shit out of the poor guy until he stopped breathing.
So then they went into the hospital to grab some oxygen to try to get him to breathe. And it turns out they'd actually grab some kind of like toxic gas. But here, okay, again, like proof where it's like, okay, no one was really paying attention to what they were doing. they have this tank of toxic gas and it's got a respirator mask on it.
And I'm like, no one would actually include that. Like, no one, no. Okay.
whatever.
But yeah. So once they grab it, they hook the poison gas up to Nelson, and then they realize that it's actually poison gas, and Nelson is apparently dead.[00:28:00] And as a result, they take Nelson's body out of town and they throw it into a chemical dump, but he comes back to life for like a second before drowning in the chemicals.
So, he like theoretically ingests all these chemicals and that's how Nelson became a monster. I guess. It's, it's like, okay.
Jessika: It's a real Joker/Harley Quinn kind of an origin story.
Mike: Like kind of, yeah. Also Swamp Thing.
Jessika: As far as the chemicals go. Yeah. Oh yeah. Swamp Thing too. Yeah, you're right.
Mike: I mean it's like, well, we kicked the shit out of him and we gave him poison gas, but then it turns out that didn't fully kill him because there were all these toxic chemicals, but then that didn't kill him either. But then he drowned and it's like, what? Okay. Oh man.
Jessika: And then, and then.
Mike: And then and then, and then, yeah.
So we get this like kind of like truncated origin story and then Nelson breaks down a wall in the police station. He bites off Tess's hands because she's always obsessed with her nails. And so she's running away, [00:29:00] screaming while she's got these stumps on her arms. And then he kills Eric with a monstrous burp.
Admittedly, that was pretty funny. That was like one moment in this entire book.
Jessika: She literally said, my manicure. And that actually that one had me sent, that sent me, that did send me as her, like as her just wrists are just bleeding out.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Like, oh.
Mike: And then, the other thing is, it's like a fire belch from Nelson, which I thought was pretty funny. So we got like, on one page, we got like two solid gags out of this entire series.
Jessika: Right. That's it.
Mike: And they were kind of like throwaway moments too.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: At this point in time, Janice remembers how Nelson wouldn't consume any booze in the supermarket, even though he ate everything else. And she realizes alcohol shuts down his cell growth. So she finds a jug of tape head cleaner, which is almost pure alcohol and is going to kill herself with it.
Like she's gonna just drink it because she knows that Nelson's a slave to his hunger and he won't be able to [00:30:00] stop himself from eating her. But Nelson then instead says, let me, and he drinks the cleaner killing himself. And then Janice walks away while sadly reiterating the opening line about how Nelson was the fattest kid she ever knew, but she always felt sorry for him because all he ever wanted was to be loved.
The end. Yeah. It's uh, it's, it's like just, oh man.
Jessika: I'm Like, grimacing into the camera. That's like all I can do.
Mike: Yeah, it like your face is what my face was doing as I was reading this thing throughout.
Jessika: Same.
Mike: You know, and yeah, Sarah was like looking at me while I was reading. She's like, what are you reading? And I'm like, I'm like, it's the next comic that we're gonna talk about. It's really bad.
Jessika: I was like talking out loud to my dog about, I was like, this is such trash.
Mike: Yeah. All right. Well, like, we'll save our thoughts for just a second, although if you're listening, you already know where we're gonna go. But yeah, the series wrapped up in [00:31:00] 1992. It looks like it was one of the last original titles from Eternity looking through League of Comic Geeks. All of the comics on there that are listed as being published from 92 to 93 were anime or manga adaptations, like Robo or Captain Harlock LOL.
Yeah, so anyway, Malibu Comics was acquired by Marvel in 1994 and Malibu had spun down the Eternity label shortly before Then you can tell that this book was sort of a last gasp from a dying publisher. Each issue has fewer and fewer ads, most of which are for other Malibu owned comics.
And I mean, the back covers for the last three issues, they're not even ads. It's literally just like solid black with a list of all the different imprints under the Malibu umbrella. And I mean, I also kind of have to wonder how rushed they were when they were putting these out, because there's like a lot of white space in the last couple of issues too,
Jessika: Yeah, That's fair.
Mike: Like in terms of artwork.
So, yeah. But according to the indicium Campbell actually owns the copyright, which means this was a creator owned [00:32:00] book. But I don't know if Marvel's retained the publishing rights to this Kid Cannibal was never collected or reprinted, which like, let's be honest, was probably for the past.
But Yeah. But that might actually be because of the terms involved with Malibu's acquisition by Marvel. A number of people have been clamoring for reprints of various Malibu series. Not this, but, you know,
Jessika: I was going to say.
Mike: Well, so here's the thing is that like by 94, Malibu had something called the Ultraverse, which was like their own shared superhero universe that was pretty successful in its own right.
And a lot of people really love the series that were being put out at that point in time. So, you know, like I said, a number of folks have been kind of clamoring for reprints of these books, and the speculation is that they aren't happening because the rumors that creators would get like a really high percentage of the royalties
on the acquisition details.
Jessika: Okay.
Mike: Marvel's former editor in chief, Joe Cassada, said that he would love to bring the Ultraverse characters [00:33:00] back in like a big showy way, but that wasn't going to happen. He said, while this is a logistical nightmare because of the way the initial deal was structured, it's not the reason why we have chosen not to go near these characters.
There is a bigger one, but I don't feel like it's my place to make that dirty laundry public,
Jessika: Ooh,
Mike: which, yeah, like, it's one of those things where I feel like probably after the right person dies, we're gonna find out more information about that. Like that sounds ghoulish, but it's kind of one of those things where I don't know, there have been some other veiled comments from higher ups at Marvel, that have some people thinking that Disney or Marvel don't want to deal with Rosenberg.
He's continued to be kind of a lightning rod in comics and movies, but it's all very nebulous like. Yeah.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: You know, as for Kid Cannibal's creators, writer Doug Campbell doesn't seem to have worked on much else outside of the series. League of Comic Geeks only shows him working on the comic adaptation of the Demonic Toys movie, [00:34:00] also for maternity and the Bat from Adventure Comics, which was another imprint for Malibu.
But as far as I can tell, that's it. There are multiple writers named Doug Campbell, so, you know, it's kind of hard to figure out which one's the right one. Yeah, likewise, artist Andrew Walls is credited with three other indie comic issues, but I couldn't find much more about him.
One site claims he's working as an art teacher now, but I can't confirm that and actually inker fred Perry has gone on to the most success in the field. He's still working in comics, he received an Ink Pot award in 2013. He is best known for an ongoing manga esque series called Gold Digger, which is apparently one of the longest running North American Comics, written and illustrated by the same original creator.
Jessika: That's good for him. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not mad at Fred Perry for any of this.
Mike: I'm like this. You were just the
Jessika: he just, inked what was already given to him. Like
honestly,
Mike: Yeah, I'm like you were just cashing a
paycheck. It's fine.
Jessika: yeah. Well, a hundred percent. A hundred [00:35:00] percent. I wonder if he had that same face while he was doing it too. Like that, like, I had quite like the, like the Winnifred Sanford, like tooth going on there for a moment where I was like, disgusting.
Mike: Yeah. Uh, book, book. Sorry, we just went off on a side tangent. I apologize.
also. No, we're not also like, I can't believe we never got a Hocus Pocus comic.
Like,
Jessika: Oh yeah,
Mike: At least I don't think we have. I mean, I might be wrong. Someone, you know let us know if one.
Jessika: Wrong I haven't heard,
Mike: if there was one, but,
Yeah,
Jessika: I want it now.
Mike: I know, right. And, so ultimately there is like, almost no information about the series on the web. League of Comic Geeks has an incomplete listing of all the issues.
The series does have a full listing on comic book realm. And other than that, the only thing that you can find on Google is like listings of [00:36:00] issues for sale. Like, hmm. So, yeah, I guess, uh, the rest of this discussion is gonna be kind of like a little bit of a mini book club. So, I mean, I, I found this book kind of triggering because I was a fat kid who got picked on all the way into high school. And that said like, the triggering effect wasn't as bad because the bullying is just so over the top that it doesn't feel believable. Like it's still like, you know, you kind of recoil from it, but like, it's such a weirdly lazy story that really, it just seems to be kind of going through the motions of making these people awful.
And you know, like you and I both talked about our struggles with weight. And I'm curious, did you have a similar reaction?
Jessika: Oh yeah, it was, I agree. It was incredibly triggering for me in a couple of ways. I also experienced really intense bullying, mostly in middle school, but also a bit into high [00:37:00] school for my weight, so much so that kids actively called me Fatty McGee.
Mike: Yeah, I never got that, but it was pretty bad in middle school. And then in high school, the kids kind of backed off a little bit because I got known for having like really good responses, like really good retorts, and I could be meaner than them, which in hindsight I'm not real proud of, but you know.
Jessika: I think my mask just got better when I got into high school and I started, you know, noticing people's behaviors and like doing pattern recognition work of like plying myself into, you know, what could be socially acceptable. But like the Fatty McGee thing was so bad to the point where probably like seven years after I graduated from high school, I saw this guy that I'd gone to middle school with, but he had gone to high school elsewhere.
He didn't recognize me by my actual name, but I had this sneaky suspicion that he might remember me by my nickname, which he did and
like, It [00:38:00] wasn't this guy's fault. Like he actually wasn't someone who actively teased me. He was a really nice guy. But it does show how deep that teasing truly ran,
Mike: yeah.
Jessika: if that's how he remembered me.
Mike: Fuck.
Jessika: So oh, I mean, it just is what it is. Like I've done a ton of work on myself, like I'm 37 now, I give zero F, like,
I'm literally wearing, my chubby ass is wearing a crop top right now. I give zero fucks. Like I was out in Santa Rosa like, yeah bitch earlier today with my tummy out. Like I don't care anymore.
Mike: yeah.
Jessika: But it's, it's so much harder in high school, you know, in high school, it feels so much more detrimental and it is to be kind of a social pariah in that way, in any way. And so, you know, as you get older and you're able to unlearn some of that stuff, it does become easier, I promise to you, younger people listening.
Mike: It's better now. I think, like, I, like they do a lot of kinda like speaking as someone who is like, you know, a parent adjacent figure with kids in
school. It's [00:39:00] gotten better, like, you know, they're, they're much more aware of bullying and like, kind of, you know, being and emphasizing kindness and empathy. But yeah, like middle school and high school when we were growing up, it was really tough to be the least bit different.
Jessika: Yeah. Well, and everything like TV was super fat phobic. Everything in in the media was super fat phobic too, which contributed to it.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: But on the other side of things, like if we're looking at the Janice side of things Nelson here, he got really stalkery. Let's be real. Like he got really stalkery.
And I also like for how much I was like, you know, made fun of there were like, oddly enough there were also people who just would not leave me the fuck alone, like romantically wise. And I didn't really date in high school, I had like one boyfriend, but I had like a few issues with guys exhibiting like really stalker behavior.
Like we're talking [00:40:00] people driving past my house.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Like one guy who counted down the days to my birthday on like a classroom whiteboard starting at 50.
And then on my birthday he says, you're 18 now, we can get married. Like, I was not dating this guy, nor was I romantically interested in him. And so,
like,
Mike: whatever teacher. Let him do that on the whiteboard in a classroom.
Jessika: yeah, it was really ridiculous. Like not because none of that stuff was taken seriously, you know? And. Like between guys not being able to take hints or more direct forms of rejection. Like when I see stuff like that, like it makes me sick to my stomach because I remember being in those situations where like, I still have to go to school every day and see these people.
Like I still have to get home from school. So if I don't realize somebody's following me, if I'm not thinking about it, like, because why would somebody do that?
Mike: Mm-hmm.
Jessika: So,
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: yeah. Good times.
So that's, [00:41:00] that is how I was triggered
during this. It was great.
Mike: sorry to rip open that wound. Oof.
Jessika: That's okay. Well, next year is my 20th high school reunion. I probably should get over it.
Mike: I have not come back to my high school since I skipped graduation and zero regrets.
Jessika: I still have a few friends that I talk to and
you
Mike: do too. I just, uh, mm-hmm. Like none of my friends go, I don't care. Like, it's
Jessika: Oh yeah, that's what I'm saying. If any of my friends go, I'll go. But like otherwise, like I don't give a fuck.
Mike: Yeah. Okay. This book was clearly trying to be a horror comedy. Do you think it succeeded at either?
Jessika: Good Lord. It felt very high school edge lord.
Mike: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Jessika: It wasn't scary per se. It was really just a bad story of a marginalized person being pushed even further into the margins. So I guess in that sense it was scary.
Mike: Yeah. But it's not like, it wasn't in a
Jessika: No, no.
Mike: Like, you know,[00:42:00] Hmm. I like, like I, I agree with you. I honestly think it's not a very good story. It's not actually gruesome enough to be a horror book. The humor almost always falls flat. None of the characters are actually like characters. Like Janice is clearly meant to be like the final girl trope.
But I can't tell you anything about her character other than a, she feels sorry for Nelson B. She wants to sleep with her boyfriend, Eric. And c she loves the idea of being a cop. But like, that's it.
like
Jessika: hey, she had a cat at one point.
Mike: She did have a cat named, um, I think Schnookums or something, or,
Jessika: Schnookums. Good Lord. Why?
Mike: I know. I mean,
Jessika: Like, what are you 90? What are you? A 90 year old heiress? What is this?
Mike: Hold on, let me look this up. Let me, let me open up the book again and make sure that I got the name right for the sake of accuracy.
Jessika: No, you did because I remember that because I thought in my brain, what are you a 90 year
old heiress?
Mike: I mean, [00:43:00] like, I'm glad that we hadn't met the cat before because that would've made me really sad.
Jessika: Seriously.
Mike: But yeah, you need at least one good character to really meet any kind of genre challenge.
And we don't get a single good character in this book. It never happens across four issues. Like, I mean, Nelson is honestly like the most relatable character, and that's just because like, he is just so bullied and like the town seems to be populated by truly awful people.
But like, I was not able to root for a single person in this book like, were you?
Jessika: Not really. Like I thought for sure I would be rooting for Janice and she was the one who was trying to help throughout the series, but she also acted in ways that were pretty harmful.
Mike: Yeah, she's not great. Like,
Jessika: No, she's not. I would say that the one that I'm most empathetic to is Nelson. You know, he's really just continually ostracized by everyone he comes into contact with.
[00:44:00] But it's hard though because he does also turn away help, which you know, also that is pretty relatable too, cuz you don't know who you can trust. But he also hurts those around him, like his parents. And like, why did they have to get in? Like why was that part of it? You know? And then his obsession with Janice isn't healthy at all, like, but ultimately it does make him a more complex character, but I don't know that that's a good thing in this case.
Mike: I mean, like he has, he has some actual moments of character, I guess, but like e even then, it's still like not really Anything truly character. It's not actually, I don't know. It's one of those things where I'm kind of sitting there going like, you have these moments where you say something almost insightful, but then, but then the next panel after that, they immediately undo it all with some like, kind of like beastial line or something and they don't really explore anything about him other than like, you hurt my feelings because you were mean to me. Oh, now I'm hungry and I'm gonna eat you.
Jessika: It was really surface level, like incredibly surface [00:45:00] level. It was just like, okay, like we have fat person. That is the attribute we are giving to this person. Like that is all we are gonna know about this person. Okay. We have popular girl who's in a relationship. That's the attribute we're giving her.
Okay, popular guy who's a dick. Okay, give him that attribute. Like that was really all it was. It wasn't anything, you know, like you said, deep or insightful. It was just like they were attributes without actually developing the characters.
Mike: Exactly. I mean the, the town drunk, they introduced, I think they introduced him in like the first issue. And it's for like one scene. It's like, oh, that's the town drunk. And then he comes back and he gets eaten and that's it. And you're like, oh, okay. So his defining characteristic was that he was a drunk and
Jessika: Attribute, not character.
Mike: Um, the, the mayor is, a terrible politician.
Jessika: Yes.
Mike: I mean, yeah, it's just like, I don't know.
Jessika: Uh,
Mike: Oh, one [00:46:00] other attribute of Janice is that apparently she likes getting naked, you know, in the back of her boyfriend's car, I guess. Because we got a lot of time.
Jessika: her. It's, It's, explained that that was going to be their first time going all the way.
That's why it was so special. And she was mad that they were like interrupted because that was supposed to be their night.
Mike: Yeah, but we also get, we get a lot of focus on her nude body in like, silhouette or, or like barely covered up. It was like, ugh,
Jessika: Right.
Mike: like aren't you supposed to be in high school?
Jessika: She's supposed like a teenager.
Blegh. Blegh.
Mike: I was like, oh, okay. Yeah.
Jessika: It's basically a child.
Mike: The older I get, I, you know, cuz we live right near a bunch of schools and I'm just like, these kids look younger and younger and,
Jessika: Right.
Mike: I just, like, I can't fathom dudes my age or older who are like lusting after [00:47:00] kids that age. I'm like, they're children. Like, they're, oh, oh. We've also been watching a lot of, the Dugger documentary, Shiny Happy People.
Jessika: I was gonna start watching that.
Mike: It's really good anyway, sorry for all the side tangents into really kind of like fun, happy topics this episode, folks.
Jessika: Hey, they know they get what they get when they tune into
Mike: Yeah, I know. What was the worst moment for you in this comic?
Jessika: God, the poop room,
Mike: Me too.
Jessika: it was just horrendous and absolutely unnecessary. And like, let's just say that it was at this point in the comic that I was incredibly glad that it was in black and white rather than in color.
Mike: Yeah, cuz it's just like, you see this like black mass.
Jessika: It's so gross. She like skids in and leaves like a trail after her. I was like, oh.
Mike: Well also it's like, everything about this chase scene just gets ground to a halt with that moment. And it feels really cringey and sad because Nelson [00:48:00] a originally like says like, I had to use like 12 phone books to wipe. But then as Janice is running outta the store, he's like, please don't tell anyone about it.
And I'm like, what? What am I, how am I supposed to react to this? Like, this is gross and dumb, but also like, it just, it like, it makes my heart hurt a little bit, but like, I don't think that was the intent.
Jessika: Right? I think it was supposed to be that stupid toilet humor that I really think that we could do better than honestly.
Mike: I mean, yeah. Like you said, it was like high school edge Lord. You know, it's like, ha ha.
Jessika: Yeah. Let's make a diarrhea joke now.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Basically.
Mike: Yeah. Do you have any final thoughts about this book?
Jessika: I don't know. It made me feel yucky in a lot of ways, even though like it didn't truly hit my horror bone. I, I'd be fine with this, staying right where it is and going absolutely nowhere else, please.
Mike: No, I've spent the past week thinking about this book and trying to figure out like what genre of horror you would put it in.[00:49:00] Cuz I was like, it's not a slasher, it's not quite like, I don't know, I think it kind of falls into like the splatter sub-genre of horror, which is, you know, the, the one that focuses on like gore and graphic violence.
Cuz that feels like what it was attempting to do.
Jessika: Right.
Mike: Like I keep on linking the comic in my mind at the Toxic Avenger brand, you know, cuz there there's like a lot of parallels. There's the monster in both of these stories are social outcasts who are transformed through basically kind of like accidental exposure to harmful chemicals through the actions of jock slash popular kid stereotypes.
Both are clearly trying to be funny, but the comic doesn't really nail that. Although the movie I think does, it's problematic in certain ways, but it's definitely got funny moments and there are also terrible mayors in both of the stories. Like, I don't know if this was the plan. I, I have to wonder if Eternity was really hoping that maybe Kid Cannibal might somehow meet the same cult success that the [00:50:00] Toxic Adventure brand had.
Because earlier in 91 there was an animated series that launched and it had all of the usual associated products. There were like toys, there were coloring books, there was even a video game. Like Sarah and I last weekend were at a local comic shop up in Santa Rosa called La Gotti's and the guy just had like boxes of comics to go through and he was really cool.
Like he hadn't fully organized it yet cause he had just moved the store and I found the Toxic Crusaders comic and I was like, oh, that's kind of funny.
And he was like looking up what they were going for and he is like, there's another Toxic Avenger movie. This is currently going for a shit ton of money.
And I was like, nevermind, I'm not interested. It's fine.
Jessika: Yeah.
Oops.
Mike: Yeah. It's fine.
And it wouldn't be the first time that like an R-rated property successfully transitioned over to kid audiences, because before that we'd had Police Academy. Like, that was my original exposure to Police Academy, was the cartoon. And my parents let me watch the original Police Academy movie when I was like seven, because I'd been watching the cartoon. I'm like, this is great. And my [00:51:00] parents were like, yeah, sure.
It seems harmless enough. And hmm, ooh,
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: You know? And then also Robocop, which was like hyper violent. That became very much a kid's property. Like both of those things had cartoons and there was like all the associated tie-in merchandise for them too. So, I don't know, it's just something that I've been kind of thinking about and I'm like trying to rationalize who the audience was and what the plans for this were.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: But yeah.
Jessika: Little boys.
Mike: Yeah. Oh God, I'm having like kind of like terrible thoughts about like what the action figures for these would've been.
Like body parts that just like pop off and squirt.
Jessika: You like with like bite marks.
Mike: Well, like remember how in, I think it's like issue two Nelson talks about how he likes the gooey insides as he's like
Squeezing a dude's insides out through like the severed neck. I was like, I was like, oh, okay. I'm like, hmm.
Jessika: I know it was [00:52:00] rough.
Mike: I would actually buy that toy.
I'm not gonna lie.
Jessika: What?
Mike: All right. What do you say? We move on to brain wrinkles and hopefully talk about something better.
Jessika: Let's do it.
Mike: All right.
Mike: We are now at brain wrinkles, which is that part of the show where we talk about one thing that is comics or comics adjacent that has just been stuck in our head for the last couple of days. So I need to give my vocal chords a rest.
You wanna kick things off?
Jessika: We haven't been talking for that long. Goodness. We all feel so bad for you, Mike.
Mike: Look man, I actually had to record audio for work today, right?
Jessika: Oh,
Mike: Like,
Jessika: Mike.
Mike: it was actually really funny cuz I was working with someone who does a lot of the video training and stuff like that and she was like, I hate doing audio recordings. I never like how I sound, I don't like my voice. I'm like, I feel like this is a trap.
But I have a podcast and I've got actually like a pretty decent setup. So if you want me to do it, I can. And so I was [00:53:00] reading scripts all afternoon.
Jessika: Oh my gosh. I know. Oh, you don't like the sound of your voice? Couldn't be me.
Mike: Couldn't be me.
Jessika: I intro that at trivia. I go, oh, do you like the sound of my voice? Checkout my podcast.
Mike: I so funny story, I legit never thought I sounded good in recordings. I hated it. Cause it always sounded different than I always heard myself in my head until I started doing this podcast. Now I'm like, no, I actually have an okay voice. It's fine.
Jessika: You have a great voice. We have great voices for this.
Mike: Yeah. I, I, people keep telling me that. People keep telling me how good we sound. Oh. I'm like, all right.
Jessika: I'll take it. It's gonna go right to my head.
Mike: All right. So Brain Wrinkles go.
Jessika: Okay. Well, I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was headed to Disneyland and California Adventure, but I went, guys, I went and I have convinced myself that I need an annual pass for next year.
Mike: Good.
Jessika: Because, let me tell you, [00:54:00] like so many times I like about cried when I saw something like, okay, like walking into the, the Galaxy's Edge, I like legitimately teared up and I made sure to do all the nerdy stuff.
Like I built a light saber and I made a droid. And like those were such cool experiences and like, I'm not gonna go and do those things every single time. Like, those were pretty expensive and it was a, a birthday treat to myself. But, I mean, gosh, the Avengers campus was so amazing. I'm gonna throw a little video on TikTok here when I get a minute of just kind of a compilation of some of the nerdy stuff that I did on the trip.
But it was such a good time and just the attention to detail that they have, it's just fantastic.
It's so good.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Ugh, I'm obsessed.
Mike: Speaking as someone who worked at Disneyland like 20 years ago, I can confirm. There's a lot of stuff that they do to really nail down just everything, detail wise.[00:55:00]
Jessika: It's true. And like I went to Disneyland proper on my birthday. And so like, I went to the Blue Bayou for dinner and okay, so, you know, everybody tells you Happy birthday when you have your little birthday button on, right?
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: When you're in Galaxy's Edge, they say Happy Origin Day. Ah.
Mike: Good. I love it. I, I wonder if, like, during the holiday season, like, or on Christmas they say Happy Life Day, like in the Star Wars holiday Special.
Jessika: Oh my God. Well, I'll let you know.
Mike: Good.
Good
Jessika: Maybe I'll be there next year.
Mike: Yeah. Start demanding that they sing Me Life Day carols in the original Wookie.
Jessika: Oh my God, be great.
Mike: Good.
Jessika: Yes, I can Wookie on command, you're correct.
Mike: Amazing. I can't, so.
Jessika: .Oh, so that's, I mean, that's me. I'm, I won't wax too poetic, but I just had just a phenomenal time and I went by [00:56:00] myself, I said, fuck everyone that I just went by myself and I was in all the solo rider lines and I was, you know, just zipping around doing whatever I wanted. So that is how I
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: recommend you go to Disneyland.
I didn't wait more than 35 minutes in a line.
Mike: That's rad, like, thrilled for you.
Jessika: Yeah,
Mike: so glad you got to do that.
Jessika: Me too. So, Well, what about you? What's in the noggin?
Mike: Yeah, so this actually happened yesterday. I was at the grocery store and I saw a couple of kids sporting mullets and clothes that looked like they were straight out of the eighties, like kind of bright colors and like short shorts. And, I realized that a lot of stuff from that era is starting to come back into style.
Like we've got remakes of eighties properties like Magnum pi or night chord on tv, or like I mentioned, the Toxic Avenger movie or Akira. Those are coming down the pipelines. You know, but I don't have a problem with that, but I hope that with these remakes that we get.
We're gonna see updates to like the problematic elements. Like a lot of these anti [00:57:00] woke groups that are producing media are really glomming onto ideas from that era, because I think that was the last time you could really get away with like, ableist, misogynist, racist narratives without getting seriously called out, but.
Jessika: Yeah, you could be a dick to anybody you wanted. Absolutely.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Punch down all you want. Go for it. It's the eighties.
Mike: Yeah. Right. Where it's like that sainthood of Ronald Reagan where, you know, political group is like, that was the last time that America was great, you know, is when we were doing a bunch of bad shit, like both foreign
Jessika: Right?
Mike: and domestic.
Jessika: Yeah, right. Yeah. You can't say the four letter F word, but you can say the other one. No problem.
Mike: Yeah. So, I don't know. I was just thinking about how like, all this stuff is coming back and I don't have a problem with it, but I'm really hoping that as it comes back, it gets updated in a way that, you know, is better for, for this generation.
Jessika: Yeah, I agree.
I'm ready for the nineties to come back. I, every once in a while, unironically, [00:58:00] wear my nineties windsuit, and I'm not gonna lie to you. It's a hit.
Mike: I, yeah. windsuit's good. I'm, I'm totally okay with the nineties coming back again with caveats. Like I
Jessika: Yes,
Mike: more, I want more trash, like, foil, variant, garbage, comics.
Jessika: Of course you do.
Mike: I don't need the extreme male gaze that a lot of the comics came with. At the same time, like, I don't need all of my heroes to look like. The same set of muscles squeezed into a suit or the women to be nothing but like a three inch waist with like, incredibly large boobs.
Jessika: Yes, yes. Also, you can keep Friends. Just leave it there.
Just leave it
there. We don't need it.
Mike: Yeah. No.
Jessika: Go be nostalgic on your own time.
Mike: Yeah, we also got Will and Grace to come back and that was. Hmm. Like, I was like, do we really need this back? Like, it was groundbreaking at the time, but.
Jessika: Yes. I was like, love it in theory.
Mike: I'm like, Hmm. I'm like, but yeah, like I've gone back and rewatched some [00:59:00] of those episodes and I'm like, it's not great.
Jessika: Yeah.
Mike: I do like Frasier a lot. That is a show that I've watched a lot of and, and at the same time, like, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty solid.
Jessika: It's pretty solid still. Oh my gosh.
Mike: Yeah.
Jessika: Yeah.
Tossed salad and scrambled eggs.
Mike: Also, you know, what really holds up is fucking Murder, She Wrote. Murder, She Wrote fucking slaps.
Jessika: Oh, my dude. Murder, She Wrote is amazing. Although we do have to consider how many people are being murdered in Cabot Cove. And there is a real.
Mike: Yeah. I like the conspiracy theory that JB Fletcher is actually just a prolific serial killer.
Jessika: Yes. Yeah. It's my favorite.
Mike: That's,
also, That's something else that we never got a comic of.
Jessika: And And mad about it.
Mike: Like, It had 12 seasons, Jay Michael Krazinsky was actually like involved in that show too. And he's like a prolific writer of both comics and TV and movies. He's the guy who gave us like Babylon five and all that. But yeah, I'm actually like really shocked that we never got,
Jessika: I'm Not gonna lie to you. Like murder she wrote was kind of my personality [01:00:00] like halfway through high school through the end, like I had like an avocado green typewriter that was on my desk, like with an avocado green case, like I'm all in there. Doom. Doom.
Mike: Yeah. No. Angela Lansbury's a treasure man. Like, I.
Jessika: I miss her.
Mike: I missed her too. I'm just like, no. Like, she gave us so
Jessika: Man, She was one of the people that I would invite to a tea party. All those people are leaving.
So sad.
Mike: Apparently she made a point of hiring older actors too, so that they could still qualify for like SAG insurance and stuff like that.
Jessika: Oh my God. Stop it.
Mike: Yeah, no, she was like, good people.
Jessika: She was, God. She was performing off-Broadway. I mean, even like just a few years ago, I mean, I saw like an Angela Lansbury like off-Broadway sign in San Francisco one day. I was like, oh shit.
Okay.
Mike: man,
Jessika: It was like, I mean, it was a few years ago, but I was still like floored. I was like, [01:01:00]
Mike: there, you know, there are certain celebrities where I'm like, you were not allowed to be revealed to be a bad person. There's like Weird Al Yankovic, there's
Jessika: Yep.
Mike: Lansbury, there's Elvira.
Jessika: Betty White.
Mike: Betty White, Dolly Parton.
Yeah. But, anyway, I feel like we have waxed poetic for long enough.
I think it's time to let everybody get on with their lives. So, how do you feel about wrapping things up?
Jessika: Let's wrap it up.
Mike: All right. We will be back next week with another Dollar Bin Discovery. idea what that's gonna be, because we've kind of tapped out our buffer and so we're about to rerecord everything.
Jessika: Yeah, we are.
Mike: But in the meantime, we will see you in the stacks.
Jessika: Thanks for listening to Tencent 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 Frazer and Mike Thompson, , written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson Johnson of Bay Area Sound. Our [01:02:00] credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan MacDonald 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 Tencent takes.com or shoot an email to Tencent takes gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter or now the official podcast account is Tencent, takes All One word. Jessika is Jessikawitha and Jessika spelled with a K, and Mike is VANSAU V A N S A U. You could also find us on Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky, and Hive. full list of our socials will be listed in the show notes.
Mike: If you'd like to support us, be sure to download, rate and review wherever you listen.
Jessika: Stay safe out there.
Mike: And support your local comic shop.
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