Stuff You Should Know - How Comic Books: Live from SXSW

Episode Date: March 20, 2012

Although you might not be a fan of comic books, there's no denying that they have a fascinating place in American history. And -- as if that wasn't interesting enough -- Josh and Chuck decided to break down the story of comic books live at SXSW. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Tucker's Bryant, and I would say about 100 people here in Austin, Texas at South by Southwest. Say hey, people. I think we figured the solution was we were in a bigger room across the way last year.

Smaller room seems fuller. I think there are probably a few more people here, but just make the room smaller. Yeah, that's the easiest way to go about things. So for those of you who are just coming in on the recording, we've already done the bantering, so we're going to get to it, I think. Yes. Chuck. And we'll have questions at the end, by the way. Yeah, we may replace listener mail with the questions if they're good questions. Right. Okay, we probably should have included that before we started recording. Well, I don't have a listener mail, so we better have questions. Okay. Chuck. Josh. Have you ever heard of an actor named Nicholas Cage? Yeah.

So you have? So Nick Cage suffered some misfortune in 2000, the beginning of 2000. It was a rough time for him. He suffered misfortune long before that. No, this is I think the start of it. This is before. Oh, I know what you're going to say. Okay. All right. Well, just indulge me. So Nick Cage on January 21st, 2000, filed a police report because somebody broke into his house and stole his action comics number one. That's not what I thought you were going to say. What did you think? I thought that was the release date of Ghost Rider. That's what I thought you were going to say. It's funny you bring that up, though, because he did Ghost Rider because he's a big comic book guy and he would probably do any comic book movie that

you asked him to because he's big into it. He had an action comics number one, which is the debut of Superman, right? It was worth like $1.1 million and it just vanished. And 10 years later, there was a guy on the case, there was this detective who was working the case the whole time. And he got a tip finally from a comic books dealer that this one issue of action comics number one had turned up. And they were pretty sure that it was the issue, like Nicholas Cage's issue that had been stolen. And they check all the identifying marks, the scratches, you know, like the fold from like the mom who's like yelling at her kid that she's going to throw this out. The piece of the hair plug. Exactly. Somewhere on the back pages. Yeah. Elizabeth's shoes, lipstick.

So they identify it as Nicholas Cage's action comics number one. He gets it back. They found it in a guy who bought a trunk from auction from one of those places that sells stuff found in storage sheds, you know, or storage, you store it places. So I guess the moral of the story is, is go to those auctions. Oh, he bought one of the full bins? Yes. And it was in there. This comic in it. Wow. So he's just feeling loaded. And then all of a sudden, Nicholas Cage comes on. It's like, that is mine, right? And he was very ecstatic to get it back. This was April of 2011. He turns around and sells it for $2.1 million. Makes a million just sitting there after he already collected insurance money. Really? Yes. So it wasn't that special to him?

No. And he pretended it was. But the point is that if, if this story fascinated you, as I hope it did, it's coming out as a movie. But from the guys who created Reno 911, who played a dangler in junior, you guys know you were 309 on one. They're making a movie about this whole thing. About the caper of the whole incident. Yeah. With Nick Cage as a character and everything. It's very like. Is Andy Samberg going to play him? They don't know he's going to play him. That's an excellent thing. Yeah, he does. I don't know if y'all seen the SNL Samberg. It's pretty great. Is that right? Yeah, it's really good. So, uh, you know, it'd be great would be to see Andy Samberg doing Nick Cage doing Elvis. Doing tiny Elvis. Yeah, exactly. So I say all that to ask

you, Chuck, if you've ever read a comic book. Wow. That was a good one. You know, I have, because we have talked on the show. I can't remember which one I was searching my brain when we were prepping for this. We talked about our love or my love of Archie comics growing up. Because I was a little Baptist boy and I wasn't into like, you know, all the action heroes, although I guess there was really no conflict there now to think about it. But I had, well, we'll talk about the Spire Christian comics. I had some of those for sure. And I was into Archie and the Archie people were kind enough to send us a bunch of swag after we recorded that. I didn't get any of that. I did. I kept it because you said that Archie was like, wussy stuff. So I took

my little Archie boxer shorts and I went home. Yeah. But yeah, they did listen. That was very cool to know that they're still out there pumping them out. And I was into like Archie and Richie Rich, a little bit of superhero stuff. But this is the big disclaimer. I know we're going to get murdered on this one because anytime we do a topic that is like religion to people, yeah, like comic books, artists on people, we're going to get killed for it because we are definitely not experts in comic books. That is a live version of COA. That is very good stuff. Cover our beeps. So I'm talking about comic books today. Are you guys fans? Any really big? So I'm like, I like that response. That's good because you'll be like, that was okay. The people who clapped,

I'm sorry. Are there any huge, huge comic book fans like that really know a lot about it? Because we'll probably ask you to come on. Sort of. Okay, that's good. I was hoping for nobody. That's good. One guy's fine. I want like Kevin Smith in the back row. I'm like, no. And I know I look like you, but stay away. So we're going to talk a little bit about comic books, about the history, how they're made, famous comic books, not Richie Rich. That's it. That's the only mention of Richie Rich. All right. I mean, this is the time of like Occupy. You realize you can't talk about Richie Rich without people tearing you to shreds. You're right. I will say that we can probably skip most of the beginning because they, in this article from howstuffworks.com is very

thorough. So they, whoever, who wrote this, do you know? A guy named Nathan Chandler, who I've never met or heard of, but he did do a bang up job. He did a bang up job, but he spends a full page talking about defining what a comic book is. And that can assume we all know what a comic book is. But I will say that I did learn that the little, the gutters, I never knew that. The blank panels, they have blank panels to fill in spaces and they're called gutters. And I also always kind of took for granted the flow of the comic book. Yeah. A lot goes into the way your eye follows the comic book, you know. And if you ever look at a comic book, you know, sometimes dialogues appear, sometimes down here, sometimes it's just action and the dialogues

over here. But they put a lot of forethought into the layout of the comic book. I thought it was kind of cool. Right. And that's why it's called sequential art. It's another name for a comic book. And speaking of art, comic books are usually lumped in together with jazz and the mystery novel as like a pure American art form. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I kid you not. I believe it. So I think that was a great explanation of the comic book gutters. And I think I think it's a good assumption everybody knows what a comic book is generally, right? But I think the history is kind of something disfascinated me and like, man, I went to town doing like supplemental research on this. So just if I get a little off at any point, just be like, no, no, no, I love it. Okay. So do you

do you know what the first one was? Well, I do. It's right here in front of me. 1842, generally credited as the first comic book is the Adventures of Obadiah Old Buck. Have you seen it? Did you look it up? I did. And the first thing I wondered what is whether or not Obadiah wasn't it Obadiah Stain from Iron Man? Jeff Bridges in the movie? Someone answered him. Yes. Is that right? I just always I wondered if that was just a nod to that first comic book. It's possible. Obadiah is not the most common name. So, um, but you did see it. It's just like panel after panel of action. And there's like narration. Like I don't think he actually talked at any, at any point that I saw. So it's kind of like a silent movie. Yeah. Almost two. And then it was just basically action. If

you can call like rowing down the river with your hat action. I mean, like that was like four panels, I think. But it was the first time anybody ever put like, you know, sequential art and text together. And this was, you know, ostensibly the first comic book anyone's ever created. Yeah. And it was 1842. I know I said that, but let that sink in a minute and think about 1842 and what's going on. So it was a pretty modern thing for the time. I guess. What do you think? It's pretty Swiss. Well, it was Swiss. Rodolfo Topfer. That's very nice. I was going to say Rudolph Toffer. I think that was nice. He went to that trouble. Yeah. He was a teacher and an artist in Switzerland. Did he do this in Switzerland? I think so because these were translated. I don't know. It says,

made its first appearance in America. So, and it's a truly American art form. Invented by Swiss man. My own fact against me. Okay. Well, then, yes, it was American in origin. It was. So, fast forward from Topfer, right? Yeah. To 1895 with the appearance of a kid with what? Did you see this guy? I did. The yellow kid. Some sort of developmental problem or something. Like he was also the predecessor of the shirt tales, apparently, because a lot of the action and narration appeared on his shirt and it would change from time to time. But the yellow kid was the first humorous comic strip. And I used humorous like really, really like liberally because it wasn't funny at all. Well, comedy in 1895 was like, if you weren't dying

that day, then it was pretty funny. We don't have the plague. Exactly. Isn't that funny? So, the yellow kid comes along and he's the first one where it's like, okay, you can pick up a newspaper and find something that'll just take your mind off of everybody dying and give you something to laugh about for a second and it happens sequentially to their speech bubbles or else he says something on a shirt. Yeah, speech balloons. That was, they'd used them in political cartoons before, but this was like where the speech balloon really like took hold as a comic. Well, they remember, they just like wrote everywhere in political cartoons. Yeah. I got a little nugget for you too. I don't know if the yellow kid, the comic, the yellow kid was inspiration for the term yellow

journalism, evidently. Is that right? Yeah. Because it was first used by someone, I think, from the New York Times, said this yellow kid journalism because he was in a Hearst newspaper, I think, and they were mocking Hearst. Gotcha. And that eventually came yellow journalism. Nice. Yeah. That was a good one. Thank you. So, the yellow kid runs around doing this thing for another maybe like 35, 40 years. And then all of a sudden, the boring part of this podcast is over. People start figuring out that they, that people think the yellow kid's funny. They took about 40 years to like test the water, right? And then finally, like people actually like this stuff. So let's start making new characters. And all of a sudden, you have like Dick Tracy, Popeye,

who else was in there? Little Orphan Annie. Yes. And these are all like characters that are still resonating today, obviously. Right. And then right after that, a little company named Eastern Color, who eventually, did you realize this? Eastern Color became EC Comics, entertaining comics, which gave rise to Mad Magazine. Yeah. Which is like end of story right there. EC Comics is the most important thing that's ever happened to humanity. Yeah. Agreed. Right. So Eastern, Eastern Color starts printing like all these comics that are appearing in newspapers, puts them together. You know, what's the first comic book? And they're all reprints and Proctor and Gamble pays for this and starts giving them away with like, it's like toothpaste or

some sort of weird toiletries from the thirties. You know, what were they using back then? I had no idea. And that kind of gave rise to the idea that you don't just get your comics out of the newspaper. And you can kind of see like these things are like starting to, these steps, these huge monumental steps are taking place like closer and closer together. Because that was 1933. I think it was 1935 that somebody said, you know what, I'm tired of paying all these fees to reprint all this stuff. I can just find some guys. It's the depression and pay them like next to nothing. Yeah. Maybe assign some armed guards to make sure they work 24 hours a day and just publish like all new material. Yeah. Eastern had given these away through Proctor and Gamble and they

actually sold a few after that because they thought, hey, these are really popular. And then that's when they started saying, you know what, these reprints are getting old. Let's come up with original material. And in 1935, DC Comics, in 1934, they were formed actually Detective Comics is what it stood for and stands for. Unless they changed that without my knowledge. No, no, no, it's still going strong. And they were the first ones to put out something called New Fun Comics number one. And that was the, it sounds like a Chinese restaurant or something. And should I not have said that? It's okay. This is live, but it's not going out. Okay, good. And that was the first time that there was a full comic book of new stuff as

part of a sequential series that people could follow. That was ostensibly the first real like comic book was born. Yeah. And the sixth issue, the sixth issue, I'm very determined of that comic book was a New Fun Comics number one. Okay, so number six put together two guys named Jerry Siegel. And what was the other guy's first name? Joe Schuster. Joe Schuster. And within a couple of years, those guys put out the first superhero ever his name was Superman. Let's get a round of applause. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of

marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm a prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt

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and superheroes and being able to take a bullet in the chest and have it just ricochet. Which, by the way, are you familiar with the George... What was the guy who played Superman? George Reeves, right? Or Reeve? George Reeve. And then Christopher Reeves was plural. Or do I have that backwards? No, no, you have it right. Have you ever heard the story when a kid came to one of his appearances? Because George Reeve played Superman on TV in the 50s. And so kid showed up with his dad's gun to shoot Superman. Because in the opening credits of Superman, some bad guys are shooting him and he's just standing there with his chest out and bullets are ricocheting. Then one of them throws his gun and he ducks. Yeah. I thought that was weird. But a kid showed up

after seeing all these many episodes of this to some publicity appearance and was going to shoot George Reeves. And George Reeves said, kid, it would work if you shot me. But that bullet would ricochet off and hit somebody in the crowd and you'd kill him and you don't want to do that. So the kid gave him the gun. And then he went, exactly. Yeah. So that was a Superman aside. But Ben Affleck played him in a movie. George Reeve, right? Yeah, Hollywoodland. There you go. He was a pretty messed up guy. No, you're thinking of Bob Crane in autofocus. No, no, you really are. No, no, they were messed up in two entirely different ways. Oh, okay, I got you. So DC also gave rise to once Superman came out, or soup as we like to call them,

they also gave birth to Batman. And the whole detective comic series and the detective series is still going today. 800 issues. Well, by the time this was written, I'm sure it's way more than that. 800 plus. 800 plus issues still going strong today. Yeah. Longest running comic title ever, the DC series. Right. So that was 1939 that Batman came out. 1941 was a big year to Wonder Woman came out in All Star Comics number eight. Yeah. And anybody who listened to the lie detector podcast will know that the guy who invented the lie detector, a psychologist with William Marston, I believe that sounds right. He also created Wonder Woman and really? Yes, he did. You know this. You know this. And he was a psychologist who lived with two wives and the children he had

with all of them under the same roof supposedly happily. But he was huge into women's lip and truth telling, which is why Wonder Woman has that lasso of truth. He created the lie detector. Really? Yes. You know this. I don't think I remember that. Okay. I was like zoning out on Linda Carter at the time, I'm sure. So World War II came along, as we all know, unfortunately. And that was when superhero comics were really big. And not only that, but Walt Disney Comics were really huge. Yeah. And they mentioned Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, obviously, but the most popular of the Disney Comics and actually the most popular comics during the most popular period of comic books was Uncle Scrooge McDuck. Yeah. He's like the biggest selling one, right? Yeah. But I remember

I had a few of those as a kid. Yeah. I liked Duck Tales. That was a good show. Yeah. Yeah. He well, he figured big into that one. It was great. But World War II, speaking of, that was huge for comics. Yes. Because even before the U.S. entered into the war, comic book characters were beating the tar out of Adolf Hitler, like on a monthly basis. Like Captain America. Sure. He debuted, his number one edition comic book, had him like socking Hitler in the face. It's a pretty awesome picture if you ever want to check it out, especially if you hate Hitler, you know. But don't we all, really? That was par for the course for comics at the time. Like they just beat up on Hitler in the Germans or the Japanese every month, right? Sure. So that was kind of a

big deal. And speaking of Nazis and comics, do you want to mention Hansi? Yeah. Did anyone grow up here in the 70s and read any of the Spire Christian comics at all? You did? All right, one other person. That's how popular they were. My grandmother, God rest her soul, grandmother Mills, worked at a Baptist bookstore in Tennessee. And whenever I would go to this bookstore, she would tell me to pick out some comic books, which I thought was really cool, like free comics. However, being in the Baptist bookstore, the only thing they had was Spire Christian comics, and they didn't have any superheroes or anything like that. They didn't even have Archie at the Baptist bookstore. And Spire was really big at the time. A man named Al Hartley, he was a cartoonist,

converted to Christianity in the late 60s. And converted like 25 family members, right? Did he really? Yeah. Like he just went to town. He went to a prayer meeting, came home and was like, that's it, we're all Christian. I don't care what you have to say, you're Christian now. And he worked for Archie Comics and tried to work in some of the Christian storylines through Archie, and then the publishers were like, you know, Archie's as clean as it can be, but we really need to tone this down on the religion thing. Wait, let's simmer in. The publishers of the Archie comics told this guy to tone it down. That is significant. It was pretty significant. And lucky for him, a publisher called Fleming H. Ravel came along and said, you know what,

I want to start a full line of Christian comics, we'll call it Spire Christian comics, and you can go to town, dude, as much as you want on whatever you want. And he did. He totally did. With Hansi, who I will show this little picture. I know, I wish we had that up on the... That's okay. This is lo-fi. That is Hansi. The girl who loved the swastika, that's the subtitle. Yes, from 1973. And I actually did not have this one, but I did have the... No, but I had the Johnny Cash Christian comic, the Tom Landry Christian comic, and the very awesome story, The Cross and the Switchblade, in which a thug mugger is turned, you know, by the guy he mugged. He mugs a pastor, and the pastor's like, come with me. Let me tell you a few things.

That happens a lot. But Hansi was huge. She was a young girl in Sudetenland, and the Germans invaded, and she was very glad the Germans invaded because they brought books for her to read. They took her to a Russian prison camp, and they raped all of the women except Hansi because she was too skinny, which I don't even know what to say about that. I don't know. But she was very fortunate to get out of that, obviously. Eventually she finds her way to an American camp. She's very pleased because the soldiers there treat her well, and moves back to America, finds a husband who introduces her to the Bible. And then it was all over after that. She opens up halfway houses

in California, and doesn't age over the period of like 60 years. No, that was the critics big problem with this one, was that she doesn't ever age. That was the problem with this combat. But time still went on. So like 60 years later in the book, she's talking to people about where she started out, and she's still teenage Hansi. So do you want to drop the bomb on I'm not sure what you mean. It is based on a real story. Oh yeah. Yeah. Is it the bomb? Okay. I thought it would have a much bigger impact than that. That's why I call it the bomb. I would have been like, do you want to mention that last thing to him? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. What was her name? I can't find it. Oh yeah. Maria Ann Hirschman. I like Hansi more.

Yeah. Hansi is a very remarkable name. So World War II, it was big for comics, whether you're beating up Hitler or publishing Christian comics about girls who love swastikas. It was huge. Yeah. There were also some propaganda comics in the 40s about communism. Is this tomorrow America under communism in which the Speaker of the House was subverted before assassinating the President and the Vice President and smashing a statue of the Virgin Mary. So that's some serious propaganda going on. I've got one for you speaking of propaganda. So Jerry Siegel, one of the guys who created Superman, because Superman beat up Hitler on such a regular basis. Joseph Goebbels himself called Jerry Siegel circumcised physically and intellectually,

a beetle. So man, if you take off Joseph Goebbels enough to say something publicly about you, you're doing something right. Agreed. And I think they were. But so the big thing, besides beating up Hitler and coming up with Hansi that World War II did to comics, was that it created like a whole new readership in GIs. Like the American government actually sent comic books out to the front. So you had a whole new group of grown up guys who were like, this is pretty cool. I like beating up Hitler. But I'm also into like Westerns and science fiction and horror and crime and just like more adult themed stuff. And I also want to see like some more nakedness than I'm seeing in comics. I want to see the F word, not just like some, you know,

the dollar sign and an asterisk or something like that. So it changed the readership of comics. So when everybody gets back from the war, comics themselves change too from that demand. So you have horror comics, you have Western comics, you have crime comics and comics get like way more hardcore, way cooler than they were before, right? Agreed. But they actually step over the over this line supposedly. Yeah, because a man named Frederick Wortham, a psychiatrist in 1954, wrote a book called The Seduction of the Innocent and he kind of threw it out there that these comic books are what are leading our kids down this awful path of destruction. And parents, of course, bought into it big time. Yeah, well, basically, he was saying like this is,

comic books are going to turn all of our kids into serial killers. Like they're all doomed. Some are probably already killing and you don't know it in your parents. So just pay attention to your kids and get rid of the comic books. And actually Binghamton, New York, had a comic book burning. Oh, really? Based because of this book. I got a friend from there. He never told me about that. It's a dirty secret. I'm on the town spoke. So the comic book industry decided, you know what, we're going to take a big financial hit here if we don't do something. So maybe we should self censor. Because censorship is illegal, right? Yeah, not what they say. And so they came up with what they call the the code, comic code authority, the CCA. And it was all self imposed and up until,

I think last year, DC Comics still subscribe to this, right? Yeah. It's crazy. Marvel stopped in like the 70s, I think. So this is way too long, but I'm just going to read you a few highlights. General Standards Part A, the big thing was to not endorse crime or to make crime seem like something kids would want to do. So you couldn't explicitly present unique details or methods of a crime. You didn't want any copycatting going on. You could never show kidnapping whatsoever. The actual word crime could not be any larger in font than any other word. General Standards B, no walking dead, no torture vampires. I don't even know what that is. Because they also include regular vampirism. So I guess torture vampires is the worst kind

of vampire. Those are not Twilight vampires. No ghouls, no cannibalism, no werewolfism, obviously. Which is not even a word. Under dialogue, no profanity, smut, no vulgarity, precautions to avoid references to physical afflictions or deformities. Didn't want to make anyone feel bad about themselves. Can I say my favorite? Yeah. Wherever possible, good grammar shall be employed. Is that in there? Yeah. I didn't even see that. Religion, there's only one rule, ridicule or attack on any religious or racial group is never permissible. Nudity is prohibited. And this one is what I think personally inspired R. Crum to take up a pen. Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

So R. Crum was like, what? Oh, really? Yeah. And we mentioned that because joking aside, this is what actually gave rise to underground comics. Yeah. Because comics, from that point on, sucked. Yeah. And actually, I think sales dropped between 1954 and 1956, like 50%. Oh, really? Yeah. And this is the comic book publishers doing it themselves. They came up with this code. They established this authority. And anytime you finish a comic book, you had to send it in. The CCA would be like, change this, change that, and then we'll approve it. So then, yeah, it drove everything underground because it's like, sordidness can neither be created nor destroyed. So it has to go somewhere. And it went, like you said, like into R. Crum. Right. It went into

underground comics. And comics is spelled with an X. Right. Just to kind of separate it from other comics. And, you know, because they're X rated, which they're very proud of. This was in 1960s. And so all of a sudden, they were tackling with underground comics, the really good stuff, sex, drugs, politics. With cats, though. Well, Fritz, the cat was one of the big ones. Yeah. But along with all these sordid tales, comic books also grew in respectability because they started, you know, like real literary works all of a sudden were being created. Right. Like the art got better. The storylines got a lot better. Yeah. The writing got better. Yeah. Because it was like, hey, we were back from World War II. We

want mature comics. And here they are in another band. So people wanted that. And if there's demand with anything, like you're going to get it. So the other thing that underground comics created besides R. Crum stuff, Harvey P. Carr was another big one, too. Oh, yeah, sure. That was a great movie, wasn't it? Yeah. Was it American Splinter? Yeah. It kind of proved that you can take something like in comic book form and add, like, real literature to it, real art to it. Yeah. And that eventually gave rise to the graphic novel. Thanks to a guy named Will Eisner. Yeah, 1978, a contract with God is generally considered even though they had used words like graphic before, which they don't like, by the way. They don't like graphic novel because

it sounds dirty. You know what I'm saying? Who doesn't like that? The comic book people, apparently, never liked the term graphic. Really? Yeah. That's what I hear. And a novel, like a drawn novel, had been used. But Will Eisner actually printed on the front cover a graphic novel by Will Eisner. Right. And he thought he coined the term, but apparently it was some fan who had, like, years before. Yeah, but everyone says Will Eisner. We'll go with that. So that gives rise to this whole idea that, like, you can create something that's longer than 20 to 30 pages that has, like, real meaning to it, where, like, the characters are just messed up, including these people who are supposed to be heroes. Yeah. Because that's something that's

been simultaneously evolving, too. Will Eisner was the first person to create a superhero. The spirit. Yes. Who was just deeply flawed. Yeah. Like, he didn't always, he wasn't always successful at fighting crime. Like, he failed. He had problems. So him coming back and creating the graphic novel is not really surprising. It was almost like he was setting a precedent for years later. Right. But it gave rise to, like, Art Spiegelman's Mouse. Yeah. The Alan Moore's Watchman. Which is the only graphic novel I have read. Is it good? It is awesome. I've not read it. Yeah. It's way awesome. Did somebody just gasp? Yeah. It is gasp-worthy, I think. And then Frank Miller. I have not read any of his stuff, but I have seen Sin City. Yeah. I enjoyed that. And he

did, he did 300, too, right? Yeah. It looks like it. Yeah. Oh, the abs in that movie. Man. He did the, for those of you who aren't here, Chuck just waved the sweat off. Yeah. He did the Dark Knight Returns, too, which gave rise to, like, all the Batman movies that we know and love now. Because Batman also originally kind of started out flawed after the spirit. And then he turned into, like, just this, well, he turned into the 60s TV show Batman, which was awesome in its own right. But if you're in the comic book industry and you're trying to prove that comics are legitimate art forms, and Adam West is doing his thing on TV every week, like, it's really kind of undermining your case, right? Yeah. So there were no abs in

that, by the way. No, there was flabs. Adam West had, like, some serious love handles. Oh, and speaking of, so we talked about the guy who wrote The Seduction of the Innocent. One of his big problems with comics was that Robin and Batman were clearly homosexual. Robin was drawn often with bare legs, frequently spread apart while he was standing. And he was, I think, clearly only attached to Batman or something like that. That was one of his big problems. Well, I think they were the inspiration for the Smigals ambiguous. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't get me started. It's one of my favorite things ever. He talks about it all the time. I do. Stan Lee was actually one of the first people to start having flawed superheroes as well. Yeah. But they weren't, like, completely

messed up, like, in the Watchmen. No, but he was Stan Lee, who was, like, one of the founding guys at Marvel, as everyone knows, I'm sure. Sure. He was working within the structure. Yeah. The underground comics guys, they didn't have anybody to answer to. They could do or say whatever they wanted to. But Stan Lee, you know, he was working for Marvel. He was a major publisher, and he had confines to work with him. But he was trying to kind of push the boundaries here there. And he was doing it with Floyd, like, Spider-Man. Yeah. Like, he's just a total screw up. Well, he was the first guy to kind of introduce characters that their powers were a curse and not so much a blessing. Like, he had the Fantastic Four, who, three of them, it was a big blessing. But, of course,

the thing I always wanted to be human. But, you know, Tony Stark was a big jerk, as everyone's seen in the Iron Man movie, if you're not a fan of the comic book. And he was forced to become Iron Man, to live, you know, to keep living with that punishment, that thing. I don't know what it's called. The Yeah. Yeah. The Flux Capacitor in his chest. And, of course, Spider-Man, he didn't choose that. He was a little nerdy kid who got beat up and got bit by a spider. The Hulk, very tortured character. He didn't want to be the Hulk. He hated being the Hulk. He hated being Lou Fragno. Yeah, he certainly did. But it's pretty cool that Stan Lieber, actually, was his original name. And Stan Lee was what he became. But he kind of took it to a different level,

even further than Eisner, I think, from what I understand. He also helped create the, like, the shared universe. Like, all Marvel characters live in the same universe that cross over a lot. And that was like groundbreaking when he came out with that. Like, everybody takes it for granted now. But that was a big deal. Yeah. And it's the guy, I can't remember the article that I read, but the guy that I read talked about the sharing of characters. And he said other people had people appear as guests in other comics. But they were the first people to really build this universe and have this carefully constructed forethought to where you felt like at any given moment a different person could show up and it wouldn't be like, oh, wait a minute. There's

Hulk all of a sudden. Right. It would like make sense. Right. Exactly. I thought it was pretty cool. And I think it was Comic Cube that you got that one from. Yes. So Marvel, household name, obviously. So it's DC Comics. They account for eight out of every 10 comic books sold in the U.S. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which total that whole 10 accounts accounted for $417 million in sales in 2011, which is substantial if you ask me. That ain't nothing on Monge. Manga. Manga. Manga. Whatever. These are comics in Japan and we're covering the United States pretty much exclusively but they are huge in Japan. And in 2007, the total sales were $3.6 billion in Japan alone. So crazy. I know. And that same year, $175 million of Japanese comics in U.S. and Canada. So

they're popular over here as well. Yeah. You mean I went to Japan and everywhere you go where there's manga being sold, there are 18 kids just standing there reading. I'm like totally smoking cigarettes. No, no. They're all wearing like school. No, this is like whole country of good kids. They don't smoke cigarettes yet. Like they wait until adults and then everybody smokes. But yeah, no, they're all wearing like their little shorts and their blazers and everything, reading manga, like just crazy stuff. Yeah. And those are generally black and white. Is that right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm not the manga expert. I've just been to Japan once. That's more than me, my friend. So we've talked about the history of comics. We've talked about manga. What else

is there to cover? Let's talk about some of these, some of the top artists and because the part on how they're done is really not super interesting. No, no, I think I think it bears mentioning that it's not one person is in creating a comic. There's there's the writer. Yeah. There's the the, the penciler who draws rough sketches, the anchor who comes in behind and like substantializes everything. Right. The person who does shading, the, the, well, there's the colorist. Yes. And then the letterer. Yeah. And the letterer, I thought that was kind of cool, actually. Yeah, you know, like, think about the font that much, but it really matters. If it's bold or something, you know, they make these decisions or these choices. But really, it's like, is it bold,

not bold or squiggly? Yeah. It's kind of what the, that's what the letter is coming up. It's quickly means fear, right? Pretty much. Yeah. Or intrepidation, trepidation. Yeah. I think that's a word. It is. Yeah. So we did, we searched a comic cube and I'm not sure what this other one was, but because I didn't know who people generally considered the top artists and writers of comic books, but this dude has Stan Lee in the Marvel gang, including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, the people who created Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, and number five. Yeah. Yeah, this guy's all over the place. I don't know much, but I thought, come on, dude. He was clearly drunk when he made this list. Well, he has a Harvey Kurtzman is number one and

Kurtzman was famous for, for his military comics and they were not very pro military at all. They were very much showed the downside of war and show the ugly brutality of war, but he is the man who went on to later create Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad, which became Mad Magazine, which Josh and I were, you know, huge fans of. Yes. Still are. He also oversaw Tales from the Crypt because that, oh really? That was EC. That was Eastern color. I thought I heard a gasp about Tales. Was that you? Wow. That's awesome. Tales from the Crypt. Two gasps in one pocket. That is a 200% more gasps than we usually have. That's actually good. No, I don't know where you were going. Well, I thought I'd cover some of the artists too, because the writers get a lot of do,

but you never hear a lot about the artist and Lou Fine, one of the first big stars in the 1940s. They got him at number 10. Not bad. Okay. And Frank Frazetta, who I didn't think I knew until I looked him up. He was a comic book artist for a very short time and then was one of the few guys to go on to mainstream art. And I was like, I still haven't heard of this guy until I clicked on Google Images. And then I went, oh, the guy who did the Molly Hatch at Album Covers. Nice. And he did all those awesome fantasy, fantasy paintings. Yeah. It was really cool stuff. I'm a fan of Yes and Ages Album Covers and Iron Maidens. I think Iron Maidens has the best Album Covers. I don't know who did those. I don't either. It's just awesome. Okay. Small clap for Iron Maidens.

Neil Adams, they have listed at number three. What did he do? He was the guy who brought along modern techniques like from the commercial art world. And he applied it and he's sort of revolutionized. And people generally say that as far as art's concerned, you have the Kirby era and then you have the Adams era. So he was, he was that important. And Kirby is number one. Captain America, X-Men, Hulk, Fantastic Four. Yeah. Forget about it. What about Steve Bilko? Who? Steve Bilko. Not to be confused as Steve Bico. Ditko? You're thinking Sergeant Bilko, the Steve Martin movie. No, I was thinking of Steve Bico. Steve Ditko. Yeah, Ditko. Not to be confused as Mike Ditko. I think he, he co-created Spider-Man and I think was the first guy to draw Spider-Man. Yeah, like the

comics we drew, we grew up with. Yeah. It was Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. Yeah. Like I'm sorry, the comics I grew up with were Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. I grew up with everyone else in this room except you. You got anything else? We should talk about Mouse maybe for a second. Yeah, that's a big deal. That was Arch Beagleman and he was, he won a special Pulitzer Prize for his comic book, Mouse M-A-U-S. And it told the story of he and his father in Nazi-occupied Germany and he used a very tried and true technique of using animals as people. So the Jews were mice, Germans were cats, of course, and Poles were pigs. And I didn't, I thought, what, does that try and true? And I thought, oh no, every Disney movie I've ever seen has animals, not as people. And again,

shirt tails. Yeah. Duck tails? No, shirt tails. Oh, is it? I don't know shirt tails. You don't remember shirt tails? No. We got three gasses. What was shirt tails? Oh, it was like some crime fighting menagerie of like a panda and like a fox and like a moose. And they all, they all, they lived in this tree and then they all jump into like a, like something akin to the Great Space Coaster, fly off to like handle a problem, solve a mystery, but they would like whatever emotion they were feeling would like flash on their shirts. That was their gimmick. And this was a cartoon. Yeah, it was a great cartoon. I don't know how I missed this. Yeah. I wasn't the baddest bookstore. I think, I think your, your grandmother would have been okay with shirt tails. Ah, you

never know. It was not very nice. Were the shirt tails tucked or untucked? They weren't even wearing pants now. Oh, well, forget about it. Maybe not. It's all over. Yeah. I got nothing else. Actually, Watchmen. You keep saying that and then following up with something else. I know, I know. There's, but we should say Watchmen was so great. It was named one of the 100 best English language novels in Time Magazine in 2005. So I should say it all. Even though the movie I liked, because I like the book so much, wasn't so great. Did you watch it? The movie? The Watchmen movie. No. No. It was good. It was faithful. Well, I just remember like just a big sense of depression just kind of settled over America for like two weeks after that movie came. Yeah. It's definitely not an uplifting story.

But no, no, I meant because it like wasn't as good as everybody. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right. The War on Drugs impacts everyone whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example. Okay. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting?

Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement? Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet. Roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals. Our podcast, How to

Money, can help. That's right. We're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now and we want to see you achieve your money goals and it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is chock full of the personal finance knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week and we talk about debt payoff. If let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing and growing your income. No matter where you are on your financial journey, How to Money has got your back.

Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to How to Money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's see, if you guys want to learn anything more about comic books, we actually have a bunch of comic book stuff on the site. You can type in comic books, C-O-M-I-C, space-B-O-O-K-S in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com and then we'll bring up this article. And I said handy search bar, I didn't even just say search bar, I said handy search bar, which means it's time for Q&A. Whoa, unless no one has any questions. So does anyone have any questions that have nothing to do

with comic books? I'm just kidding. Okay, hi, what's your name? Oh, hey, we got a mic. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, we can hear you. Well, no, we're recording this. We needed for the recording. Oh, also, by standing up, you released us from any kind of liability for using your voice. What if a squat happened? It's too late now, pal. What type of screen process did you, Josh, go through when you were kind of picking out your co-hosts? Because before you had podcasts for five minutes long, you'd had different few people to howstuffworks.com. I mean, Chuck just started working there and like, hey, let's do a podcast or I need somebody to do 30 minutes of podcasting with me. How did that work, Josh? So we, for those of you who don't know,

Chuck and I haven't always been together. There was a dark time pre-chalk. It's just crazy. I won't forget about it. But no, so it very much came about the way that the podcast came about, where I have a boss who came along and said, hey, why don't you get together with Jerry and make a podcast? It doesn't matter that you don't know what a podcast is, is that you've never heard one. Just go do it. So we did. We tried a few people. They were editors at the time. That's how they were picked. And then all of a sudden, I think you went to Connell, didn't you? And you're like, dude, I want to know. I didn't know what was going on. Well, then just out of the blue, Connell was like, hey, let's do this with Chuck. And we tried it with Chuck. And man, it was like

the first moment he sat down, I was like, this guy smells good. Like things just seem like different now that this recording is such like, I'm not sad. Like everything seems cool. And then he opened his mouth and it was like fireworks, dude. I don't even know how to interpret that. Yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, we were buddies at work and had similar sensibilities and it just sort of made sense. I'm frankly a little shocked that they didn't pick me to begin with. I am as well. I mean, we were buddies already at work. We knew each other to work and we like paled around and everything. But yeah, it was, I think it was just kind of like a baptism by fire. And then they're like, it's Chuck time. We got number two. Yes. Hi. Hello. Hi. So I'm curious what a topic is that

maybe you guys keep saying, oh, we need to do this. We should do this. We should do this. And you just never get around doing it. Something that you'll probably say the same thing I would say is Scientology. Sorry. Was that what you're gonna say? No. I mean, that Scientology is one that we have been asked to do many, many times that we want to do. But they are very litigious group and we don't have that much money. Yeah, I think we're scared to do one. Yeah, I am. I mean, John Travolta is in Georgia right now shooting a movie. So they could just send him over to our house. So yeah, I mean, there was a there was a moment where it was like, hey, maybe we will do Scientology because the FBI was investigating them. There's all this stuff on public record,

which is the big, the big problem is like every, every source that we would come across would be just about hearsay from disgruntled people, ex members, whatever. And it's very, very one-sided. So all of a sudden, like there was a possibility that we were going to have all these sources from like FBI investigations, and then it just stopped. And we're like, well, if the FBI is not doing it, we're certainly not going to do it either. They have guns. Yes, over there in the glasses. I think actually, oh, sorry. Yeah, this person over here is your next started. 10 minutes, Greg. Hi, my name is Kara and I live in Guatemala with my husband. And we're big fans of your country. We loved your podcast. Those two podcasts you did in Guatemala were awesome. Thanks. For those of

you who don't know, we went to Guatemala with Jerry. We were invited by a group called co-ed, who's a nonprofit, who does great work down there, and they paid for us to go down there, and it changed our lives in a lot of ways. And you know, I want to compliment you on it because you did the history section really well, which most people don't do. And one thing that I want, and actually Brad was like, man, I wish I'd gotten this before I went to Guatemala, you know, because it really served as kind of like dummies on Guatemala. It was really great. Well, we were dummies in Guatemala. Well, you know, one thing that I wanted to ask you is, you know, if, where there are some stories or some other things that you left out, like how you went about, I mean, you

know, you talked a lot in your second Guatemala podcast about how there was all this material that you didn't include or things that you could have included, but you didn't. And I guess I'm wondering, like, was there like one thing in particular you didn't include in that podcast that maybe you could talk about? I probably had to do with Ronzacapa rum. The nectar of Guatemala. That's good stuff. I think there was just so much that went on. There wasn't anything in particular, but when you're there for how long were you there, like four or five days? I think five days. Yeah, it's five days and six nights, I think. Yeah, it's hard to encapsulate that in two hours. There was definitely nothing we were covering up. No. Beautiful country, though.

Do you know, do you know, I went, I gave a sacrifice to a cigarette and some some cane liquor and I quit smoking like two years this May. So that definitely helped. So it works, I guess. That's to answer your question. Yeah. Over there, I think she had a question. Yeah. She's like, no, not anymore. Yeah. She's like, it was about Guatemala. Yay. So my question is related to research. So we pretty much live in a world now where most people, including like, if you're in school, will do research, I guess, on the internet. So I was wondering for each topic, like a, if you're doing research online, how do you try to validate a particular fact and then also, do you ever go outside of the internet for, I don't know, validation or more research? And if

so, what are your sources? It's almost all internet research, which is kind of the way it is these days. It is. I've written one article where I went to the library and I've written a few hundred articles for House of Works. And I actually had to go to this rare books library to find the one book in print. As I was writing about Elizabeth Bathory, who's this Hungarian countess who's like the world's most prolific serial killer. Oh yeah. And there was, it was really hard to find like any good stuff, like decent sources on her, but I knew that there was this one book out there. So I've been to the library one time and I'm like, not in his life. He had been before that. Right. Exactly. I was like, what is this place? All these weird books. And it smells, there's pencils.

But that was pretty much the extent of it. There's so much good stuff online. I think it, five, six, seven years ago, you could really put somebody down and say that they just do their research online. There's so much good stuff, especially if you know what you're looking for, where you're looking at, if the fact you're kind of looking up appears in almost the same wording and source after source after source. Well, then you need to go find something else. Yeah, that's not a good thing actually. It's always very good to just find a couple of sources for a fact, especially something that's just kind of outlandish. It's a lot of common sense and then it's a lot of like knowing who you're, who you're getting your sources from. We have since

virtually stopped writing since we've been working on the TV pilot and since we've been podcasting so much lately, that we rely on How Stuff Works articles. And that, so we'll, like all of our articles are based on just the How Stuff Works article. And then we do supplementary research. And it, I guess, that's all we need. Like is the How Stuff Works basis, because we know that there's the same amount of attention and dedication has kind of gone into the research to write that article. That very rarely do we run across one where we're like, this is just flagrantly wrong. The Donner party is an exception. Yeah. And when we do, check out the Donner party when we tear that poor kid apart. I don't remember who wrote it. That's coming out soon. But when we

do, we call them out, like, because it's bad research and we hate bad research because it makes us look like jackasses and we hate looking like jackasses. So, but it's almost all online. Thanks. We've got one more. Perfect, man. This is petering out nicely. I love your podcast. I listen to it all the time. I was just wondering what a day in the life of Josh and Chuck looks like. You said you don't write as much anymore, but how many podcasts you do per week? You know, what's the pilot going to be like on your schedule? And what's the fun you should ask? This is not a plant, by the way. Great question, though. Thank you, Tim. We, we record between two and four a week and we release two a week. So we tried to build up

what we call a kitty, like Jerry likes to call it. So like when we got a town or when we're shooting TV stuff, you know, we can still release on a regular basis because if anyone wants to start a podcast, everyone always asks for advice. You always have to release it very regularly. The biggest mistake podcasts make starting out is they'll release one, then they'll wait a few weeks and release another one. But that Tuesday, Thursday, man, people count on it coming out. And so we record two to four. We do, we have a little video podcast now. This is kind of fun. And we record 12 of those a month that we alternate every other week. So generally a day in the life is us, you know, researching and studying. We call it studying. It's, it's a lot of,

lot of reading and Josh memorizes way more than I do. But we take a nap on carpet squares at 2 p.m. sharp every day, butter cookies and juice, then martini time after that. But since you did mention the TV thing, we would like to invite everyone here tomorrow to Fido Irish pub on 4th street. And we are having a variety show slash premiere party for the TV pilot that science channel has gone out on them and been really awesome to let us do. And it is at five o'clock. It starts, goes till nine. And we have a John Hodgman will be there, our old bud. And a gas for John or just a class? John will be there and comedy from Eugene Merman, who's very hysterical stand up. And our buddies, the Henry Clay people will be playing music.

And local band Crooks will be playing music. And Lucy Wainwright Roach, who plays Jerry on the show will be playing music because she is also a very talented singer, songwriter, guitar player. And it's going to be fun. First hundred people get a free drink, which is always nice. Everybody just ran out right now. Got in line at Fido. So yeah, it's going to be a good party. And we thank science channel because they are super awesome and have really stuck their necks out to give us a shot at a TV pilot, which hopefully we'll see later on this year. And you are good at that. Thanks man. I'm getting better at it. Yeah. Anything else? I'm good. Does anybody else have any questions? We have one minute. Man, this was perfect. As a

matter of fact, everybody give yourself a round of applause. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much for coming. Let's see. If you want to contact us, you can reach us on Twitter at SYSK Podcast. If you don't follow us, it is a jam. Facebook.com, stuff you should know. Also quite the party. They could have gone and seen Willem Dafoe right now, by the way. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. I wish I had a $5 bill to give to everybody. Or you can email us at stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join House to work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the

reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Getting better with money is a great goal for 2023. But how are you going to make it happen? Ordering a book that lingers on your nightstand isn't going to do the trick. Instead, check out our podcast, How to Money. That's right, we're two best buds offering all the helpful

personal finance information you need without putting you to sleep. We offer guidance three times a week and we talk about debt payoff, saving more, intelligent investing and increasing your earnings. Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them make progress with their financial goals. You can listen to How to Money on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.