The Smark Avengers - The Art of Following Unlikable Characters

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Why do some of the most compelling stories ask us to spend time with people who are difficult—or even outright horrible—to understand? With Jon unavailable for this episode, Corey and Dylan sit down for a wide-ranging discussion on one of storytelling’s most uncomfortable but fascinating ideas: following unlikable or morally questionable characters as protagonists. The conversation is sparked by Corey’s recent reading of Odin #1 from Image Comics, which follows an investigative journalist embedded with a group of young neo-Nazis lost in the wilderness. From there, the discussion expands into comics and beyond, exploring how writers navigate empathy, discomfort, and moral distance. 📚 Topics discussed include: What makes an unlikable or villainous character compelling to follow The difference between understanding a character and endorsing their actions How writers build empathy without excusing harmful behavior Antiheroes, villain protagonists, and morally gray storytelling in comics When storytelling becomes meaningful exploration versus uncomfortable glorification A significant part of the conversation also turns toward audience interpretation, as Corey and Dylan discuss concerns about how some readers/viewers may identify too strongly with unsavory characters, particularly when those characters embody unchecked power, dominance, or influence. They explore how certain stories can be misread—or intentionally reinterpreted—in ways that reflect a desire for control or superiority rather than the narrative’s intended critique, and why that tension matters in modern storytelling. Along the way, they question where the line is between engaging with complex fiction and projecting real-world values onto characters who are meant to be cautionary or critical examples. Do characters need to be likable to be worth following? Can a story about terrible people still offer insight without being misunderstood? And what responsibility, if any, does an audience have when engaging with these kinds of narratives? Join us for a deeper-than-usual conversation about comics, storytelling, and the uneasy space between fiction, interpretation, and audience response. 💬 Join the discussion: Do you think audiences sometimes misinterpret villain-centric stories as aspirational? Where is the line for you? 👍 Like the video if you enjoy comic discussions and narrative deep dives 🔔 Subscribe for more comic book podcasts, character studies, and storytelling debates Click the link for Dylan's radio show!: http://www.bouncedigitalradio.co.uk Click the link for Dylan's Twitch stream: http://Twitch.tv/spookylaroux Click the link for Jon's Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/bigjonbowski/ Click the link for Corey's show "Large Old Cup": https://open.spotify.com/show/2YHMppnl9inQevwLIxR64f

What's your favorite kind of pie? I enjoy a pumpkin pie. I'm a very autumnal person. Do you eat pumpkin in March? I eat pumpkin seeds pretty much every day. Okay, but you don't eat it's kind of weird for the pumpkin to grow? You're like, no, I got to have it now. Got to get that in me.

I eat that seed. Got to get that gourd in. I got that gourd in me. A time to watch a pumpkin grow? Jesus. I would look like Mr. Pumpkin? Takes pumpkins a long time ago. You got to wait in for a germany

and then they got to get big enough and then you can plan them outside. It's a process. Yeah, but also nobody wants them when they're not November. No, but I do because I like the pumpkin seeds. Yeah, but not everybody. Yeah, but you like the seeds.

Yeah. Like, who's like, oh, I got to get his pumpkin pie in, like, February. I didn't eat pumpkin pie in February. I also enjoy a good, like, soup, a good, like, pumpkin soup. Pumpkin soup is nice. Yeah.

Hi, everybody. Welcome, Smart Avengers. My name is Corey. With me is Dylan. Dylan, how's it going? Hi. Just talking about pie. Just talking about pie. We were talking specifically about pumpkins for a moment there.

Well, I started off by pie. You did start about pie, but turning to pumpkins, because that's where I drove the conversation. As you may notice, you do not see the face of a certain Lubowski underneath us. That's because John couldn't make it today, Dylan. Do you, any idea why John can make it? Yes, I do. He was, he had a terrible bowling accident. A bowling accident?

Yes. Does he have a hook for a hand, like Kingpin now? No. Okay. Much worse, bowling accident. Oh, geez. Very tragic. Some people died.

Not John, obviously, but. No. He's just some people that legally... He's like to name them for legal reasons. He's up to the police station right now filing a report why he's not here with us because he has to testify. He's at the police station doing something? I don't know what it is.

I couldn't possibly speculate. But he's busy and may or may not be responsible for the deaths of several people in a bowling alley. So, you know, he'll be back, I think, next time. Because that guy's unpotable. You can't keep him done. No. You can't keep time down.

There are movies to watch, and he's got to be there to watch him. You can't do it in prison. No. You don't get his Vee channels. No. You don't get to choose what film you watch. Yeah. It's just like Cool Hand Luke again, you know.

I mean, although, I don't know if I'd show Cool Hand Luke if I was in prison. I feel like you might give people the wrong idea. That's the irony of it. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, irony or whatever. It also, if you've ever looked at John's Letterbox, you would see it. doesn't seem like John picks what he wants to watch either.

It just seems to be whatever happens to be going on at the time. Well, he picked Despicable Me. One through four. Like, I get seeing the first one just out of like morbid curiosity. He saw four of them. John is a completionist. We know this about him because he almost has like a complete daredevil run for God's sake, you know? So he's a completionist.

Yeah. He's going to see it through to the bitter end. He's a car. there for sure absolutely so as you could guess with john not being here this is going to be a minus one episode minus one episodes are usually a little less structured a little less formal a little loosey-goosey so and we are definitely some loose keys we are the loosest that being said earlier today at the time of recording i just posted a new number one for a comic called Odin by Image Comics.

And it is, as I was kind of telling you about before we started recording, it's kind of doing something that I don't know if it can achieve, which is, I think it wants us to be sympathetic for the characters in the book. So as a quick rundown, Odin is a story about a young investigative journalist who infiltrates a group of neo-Nazis and follows them on their trip to. a Norwegian campground to summon Odin, essentially. And things go awry. And it's kind of a horror movie, tropes.

When you get introduced to the characters, they're all neo-Nazis, but they all have sort of the roles on the team. Like, there's the funny guy. There's the dumb, tough guy. They're the two characters that just want to have sex, like, etc. So they're fitting the slasher motif. And the question is, is like, I didn't think there was enough in this book that made me want to keep reading it,

because I'm going to have a hard time, feeling any sort of sympathy for any of these characters, uh, are wanting to see them succeed, save for the main character who's just there as a journalist. But even then, the kind of way she frames of herself, it seems like she kind of has an ego to her.

I mean, she compares herself a little bit to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism by making herself a part of the story and all. So it seems like she kind of wants to get famous off of this story, as opposed to like more, um, noble attempts at, writing this article and exposing this sort of web of counterculture fascist youth groups.

So yeah. So we're kind of talking about like the idea of like can you follow a book or follow characters that are unsympathetic? Yes. No. I'd say the show. Great show. Yeah. Great show.

I was quick to the point. on this year, you know. All right. Yeah. It's a tough thing to ask of your audience, because first of all, you have to find an audience that would be interested in reading stories about neo-Nazis. And then you kind of have to, to garner that kind of sympathy for those characters is quite difficult because they're obviously very unseabry people.

To be a neo-Nazi or Nazi event in the description. is I'm going to say bad. And you can quote me on that. You can put that in headlines. Big Bulldogs. I don't think it's cool. I'd see. And I think a lot of people probably share that sentiment

and therefore it may not be super excited to read a book like that. You know? Like you said there's a little clip hangers and stuff. You're like, okay, cool, but it didn't make you want to read the rest of it. No, no. Because you're like, I don't get these characters. Yeah. So like that's kind of, so to kind of a, every episode in number ones, I always reiterate,

what are the things I'm looking for? Do they do a great job of establishing the main character? Do they do a good job of establishing the world? And is there enough meat on the, on the bone, story-wise, that makes me want to read the next issue? And two-thirds of that book was establishing the characters and the world that we're in. And then the last third was what kind of threw us into the sequence of events that left to the cliffhanger. And I just, I don't care. I don't care what happens to any of these characters at all, you know.

And like, I don't know if that's the approach they're going for it. Because, like, for example, if you ever watch like a Friday the 13th movie or like Nightmare on Elm Street, a lot of the time the characters you meet that make up the majority of the cast are all very shallow, one or two dimensional characters that are just existing to give Jason Borges or Freddie Kruger someone to kill. But you still have your main character. your final girl, typically, who is there to garner this empathy and to be the person you want to see make it through the end. And, like, you know, as I was kind of saying, I don't think the main investigative journalist character who's posing as a neo-Nazi, I don't think there's enough that was established that made me really want to see her make it through this alive.

Right. So, like, it seems like that's the person they are free. I'm going to thought they're, they're not saying, oh, it's the Nazis that are. the sympathetic ones, they are really saying it's, it's, um, it's, it's, it's this journalist that's the main character, but like you said, if, if they don't give you a reason to care, care about the journalist, then you're like, well, then nobody here is likable or just saying, or makes you want to watch it anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So I've never considered, like, I say with my fucking Halloween decorations on the wall, I never consider myself a real horror person.

Right? Mm-hmm. Demon Hand, Frankenstein, Frankenstein. Never consider myself. And there are reasons. I've never considered myself a big horror person, but I've consumed a lot of horror media, obviously. I've watched a lot of, like, really bad horror movies,

and I've read a lot of horror comics, if not just because of new number one, because it seems like that's the go-to third-party comic these days, because Marvel and DC don't really like doing horror books up until recently. I consume a lot of these. And I was trying to think of like, has there been other examples of here's this book and it's introducing me

to all these characters? Like, for example, Pretty Hate Machine was a book that I read, not that long ago for new number ones. Yep. Like the Nine Inch Nails album. And make a sure. Yeah, yeah. And that one was sort of like

a weird horror take on Hamlet to a degree where basically this kid's dad dies and his friends see this sort of like demonic apparition in the woods telling them to bring him there and he shows up and there's this demon with knives for fingers who tells him like hey your dad's not your dad died but your dad died because his friend killed him and is like moving it moving in on your mom and like do you want revenge so sort of the take on king hamlet and hamlet that whole interaction and like in that book the characters they do you do introduce, they don't introduce them to such a degree where I feel strongly about them for the

most part, except for the main character who you feel for. And because that is the case. He's like an artistic kid. He's going away to art school soon. He's going to be leaving his hometown behind, but he was very close to his dad. And it's like, you know, I felt for him. And like, that would be a book I'd follow up on. Um, the hab. That was another horror book that I read. That was from bad idea bad idea comics. That one is sort of like the world is ending and this but this billionaire years ago

had a feeling this was going to happen and he basically created this multi-billion dollar bomb shelter near the Arctic that sort of like draws from this like hidden lake that's inside of a glacier kind of deal and so you meet all the characters there

but all the characters are terrible because they're all like billionaires is like you meet his daughter who's like like, you know, traumatized because she saw nuclear weapons hit New York and her mom was there so she knows her mom didn't make it. And like she's 17 years old and like the whole world has ended and like she's just alone in this bunker with all these scientists and stuff now. But you also find out that when like 15 years old she was doing drugs and did a hit and run

and killed some poor girl in Egypt and like had her family like erase that ever happening and never was like never took accountability for it and the billionaire himself's a piece of shit his wife is like a drugged up actress and like no one you meet no one that you want to see make through it and like i had no desire to continue that um there was a book that i did read all the way through and it was from idw comics called red shirts and it was a star trek book because you know the gimmick with the red shirts are that they go on the away missions and never come back So this book was a series of red shirts that were getting brought in to do a mission. And one of the characters was our main character.

And he was one who had already been on a mission and got fucked up. And like had to survive on his own on an alien planet for like 14 days and barely survived. So like he's already coming into this with a very jaded perspective. But it was sort of the classic horror movie tropes where you meet all these different cadets with all these different personality traits. and one by one they get picked off. But like, that one was actually kind of compelling because they were all heroic characters. Like, they were all with the Federation in Starfleet

and like they were trying to do the mission, right? I don't know. I don't know what I'm getting at, I guess. I just read a lot of horror stuff lately and I feel like we get asked to follow these characters and care about them. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Right.

Okay. Um, yeah Well, that's That's The tricky thing is Whenever you're writing a book like that Maybe not specifically like the Red Shirts one I'm not sure what

Seems they were trying to talk about Other than Star Trek But like that other one with like the billionaires and shit Like People are probably trying to make a specific Because billionaires are pretty In the news these days You know

And the same of the national one. Nazis are kind of in the news these days. A little bit. In the White House. And sorry, I'll call off there. We probably didn't pick it up. That's fine. And they're probably, the writers are probably trying to make a broader point about two of these very important things.

And the problem with that is those two people, or those groups of people, are both insanely unlikable. I'm not going to say they're a one-to-one here, but I'm going to say that they're both very, very, very unpopular with, I would imagine the majority of people. So if you're trying to write a book about them that will at some point critique them, you still have to write a book that includes them and introduces them. And that's the problem is that if you want to talk about this stuff and these current issues,

you have to introduce very unlikable people into your book and run the risk of people like us going I don't fucking want to read a book about billionaires or Nazis Yeah You know so that's I think an issue I don't know what the The red shirts one was I would imagine very few of them were Nazis

I don't know for sure You never know it's hard to know by looking at the guy I mean I can I can break that down for you a little bit and tell you what the main crux of it was. Essentially, what it was is that they were kind of put in a mission to find out who was stealing data off a satellite, but it very quickly became apparent that they were just there as bait. And it was the idea of like the armed services or the military using the people who volunteer to serve as nothing more than sacrificial lambs, like not valuing them as humans or not as.

humans, but as individual people, but just seeing them as resources that can be used and exploited and thrown away. That was the least the concerns of the main character who had spent that 14 years surviving on his own before Starfleet found him. Yeah. Okay. So probably... More of a critique on the military industrial complex, which is odd because it's about Star Trek and Star Trek's Eutopia, which is like that's... Yeah. That's one of those weird things. And I know you're not a space person, so I'll try to keep this as short as I can. But that was like a critique I had about the book is like trying to present the idea that Starfleet was corrupt.

But it's like this is a utopia. It doesn't, that doesn't fit into the established setting. Okay. That's more of a Star Wars idea. Like I could see like the Rebel Alliance having to do something like that. But not Starfleet, which is again, in a utopia moving forward. Sure. I know you hate space stuff.

Yeah, I agree with all the points you made by those specific things. Of which I know so much about, sure. Right knowledgeable about the things that you just said. Well, okay. Let's change the argument a little bit, right? We'll take it back to Marvel. Okay.

Let's go to Marvel and DC for a moment. Marvel and DC in recent years have been publishing more books from the perspective of not necessarily villains, but anti-heroes. In Martin, you know, since like the 90s. So, you know, you always think of like Venom, lethal protector. That was like the first real big one. Punisher War Journal, that's a big one. Yeah.

On the DC side, of course, you have Lobo, and they've put out Joker comics, multiple Joker comics. And again, like, how do you find yourself rooting for a character who's a homicidal maniac? like that's what you're being asked to follow yes yes i feel like that's always but that seems to be different because that a lot of that becomes like i don't know if it's like wishful thinking and whatever but like whenever you do you see something like that you see like the punisher like mowing down a bunch of people in machine gun or wolverine just like cutting people's faces off or um badham just eating people's brains there's there's a there's

like a coolness factor to it. There's something cool about those characters. Despite like the mindless violence there is this edge to them where you're like, yeah, I like this. Like they're doing bad stuff, but you still like them in a weird way. There's just something about the characters and it could be

like the design or the way they're written or just the way they're doing stuff. But there is something about them that makes you not emphasized with the character but like, kind of like what's the phrase for it where you're kind of like you want to be in their shoes you know

you're like boy I don't I don't want to be a homicidal maniac guy but like you know you kind of fantasize about that I guess it's like wish fulfillment wish fulfillment I think is what I'm talking about that kind of thing you're like yeah I would not be cool if one day I had claws and just caught people's faces open I don't and I will never do that

but wouldn't it be cool if I did which is is, you know, that kind of action and comic-y thing that you can get away with, but isn't the same as, here's a busload of neo-Nazis. Yeah, exactly. Literally a busload of neo-Nazis. That's when you meet them all. They're on a bus.

Yeah, like that doesn't translate it into like, boy, I wish I was one of those guys. Because some of the people reading it might be those bus full of Nazis. Well, and that was another thing is like the book doesn't, I mean, the book immediately, she does point out how pathetic they are. Like she's like a journalist, so she's there to cover his story. She's only pretending to be a part of them. And she kind of is pointing out like, you know, like how each of them are like either sad or pitiful in a way. They're just a bunch of rich kids.

And then they actually like they stop at a place and one of their friends get on that she hasn't met before. And he's like a dyed in the wool Nazi. So like, because he's actually enough that makes her worry that her cover is not good enough to get by him. so like there is an element of that as well like they're not portrayed as being cool or anything like that so it's like i guess maybe that's the angle that they were hoping for or tynan and uh james tynan the fourth and marguerite bennett if that was the angle they were hoping for it that like you would kind of like feel sad for them because obviously like they didn't they maybe they didn't actually mean this shit they're just like edge lords yeah i don't know um but again though like that's

That's a tough angle to take because you're like, oh, well, you know, I feel sorry for these horrible people just because they're actually like stupidly pathetic. You're like, then you're like, I don't know if that's... I don't know what message is. Yeah, I don't think you should reward. Yeah, I don't think you should reward terrible behavior because, yeah, it's because they're just pathetic people. Like, I'm like, I don't think that's fair to anybody, you know?

So... I'd tell you one thing I did want to talk about. um whenever you were bringing up Marvel in DC sure I think

there was a character we're going to talk about Spider-Man we just said we weren't going to talk about Spider-Man I said I wasn't going to talk about Mary Jane

Merit is Venom okay so as long as that sentence doesn't remain in the podcast I will have kept by promise um

but related to that in a roundabout way it was a character introduced by Marvel Comics very recently that everybody fucking hated

right we could all agree and what's unusual about it is I don't think the character itself was written terribly it wasn't like a like an unsympathetic person it just seemed like a like a regular

dude Yeah. By Paul. Oh. That's not the angle. I thought we were talking about somebody else. I didn't think we're talking about Paul. Who did you think we were talking about?

I thought you were going to bring up Null, the King and Black. No. Because he's a villain who got his own book. Well, we can circle back to that. Okay. Because I think that what we were talking about originally was like unsevery characters. Being asked to be sympathetic to unsavory characters. Yes. Yes. And so I think Null for sure kind of fits into that so we can circle back to him. But I wanted to bring up Paul because that's kind of a character where they wrote him as like he was going to be like I would assume more of a main character than he was or some sort of like important character. And nobody liked him. Like just the way they crowbarred him in and the way they kind of introduced him and kept him around. Nobody was a bit.

big fan of Paul and again it's not because he was an unsympathetic character it just seemed like a regular dude yeah but the problem was nobody got on board with Paul at all to the point where spoiler alert very recently all dies yeah and not people not care about his death they were actually kind of celebrating it yeah and i'm like well that is it that is like the opposite of what you want You want to introduce this character and get people behind him so that whenever he does eventually die, it feels emotional and you feel regret that the character is gone. People didn't feel any of that. They were unsympathetic towards this guy. And then he died and they were like, fucking finally.

Finally he's dead. Oh my God. Why didn't he die earlier? And I think that's a very interesting thing too. Because like I said, he wasn't written to be an unsavory character. He's not a neo-Nazi or a billionaire. It was just a guy. But in terms of what we're talking about,

he just didn't guard any sympathy or empathy or any kind of positive emotion from the audience at all. It was either like straight up a difference or like real hatred of this character. There was no positive. I mean, the fact of the matter is the character was doomed to do that anyway because Paul was introduced for the sole purpose of effectively keeping Mary Jane and Peter Parker separated.

And there is a huge base, huge, huge, huge part of the fan base that they never wanted Peter and Mary Jane to be separated in the first place, you know, like, let alone having their marriage nullified, you know. So like, to introduce this character. Huh? So we should talk about that at some point. Oh, about comic book marriages? Yeah, that's coming up, I'm sure. Yeah. But yeah, so, like, he was doomed to fail because there's already a huge section of the fan base we're going to hate him, regardless of whatever, like, gimmicks or neat gifts they gave him.

Like, oh, he's a genius inventor or some shit. I don't care. He's the guy that's, like, was it, there's a lot of, like, Paul cucking memes. Like, Paul cucked Peter. Whatever. Well, yeah. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

That's meme culture for you. That's Marvel Reddit there for you. Anyway, when you talked about, when you first were bringing this up, I thought you were talking about null, because null was introduced as the big bad for Venom, and then null has his own comic now. And I was going to talk about, like, the Joker comics, about, you know, going back to that whole deal of, like, how do you, like, get people to read from this character's perspective? So like the Joker ones were really interesting because the first Joker comic, he wasn't the main character. The Joker was sort of like the shark and jaws. He was only there in brief moments and flashes. The story was from Jim Gordon's perspective.

So Commissioner Jim Gordon, but at this point was no longer a commissioner for Gotham City but was acting as a private investigator, was following the Joker around the world effectively. he was being hired by this independent party essentially to bring in the Joker. So, like, that was his plot. His plot line was to bring in the Joker, and he would only catch glimpses of him. And that was effective, because you have a character people really love, which is Jim Gordon. You still give him Joker in the bits and flashes, which is, as you've pointed out in the past, Joker works best in bits and flashes. The second Joker comic, there were two Joker.

because one of them wakes up after getting shot in the head and so you're following them simultaneously. There's a Joker in Los Angeles who's like creating all this chaos and havoc and there's this Joker in Gotham who woke up with a head wound

and doesn't you know and isn't sure what the fuck happened and so you find out that the Joker that got shot in the head was actually just a regular guy that the Joker like had hired and then you know know, cosmetically fucked up his face so he looked like him and then was for a job and then was

disposing of him afterwards. But he woke up with his head wound thinking he was actually a Joker. So like that one was an okay comic as well because you weren't really following the Joker. You were more following this fake version of him. And that was fun. Because that one they also introduced like Red Hood and Batgirl and other people like whose perspectives you were getting is they were trying to make sense out of all that too. So like that was fine. But it's definitely not the first time that DC trying to make a Joker comic happen. But like they do it with Death Stirk the Terminator.

And Death Stirk the Terminator is a pedophile. His fan base hates it when you pointed out. But it's fucking truth. It is. It's a fucking truth. Because Judas contract, the most famous Teen Titans storyline of all time with Tara the traitor, he was having sex with Tara, who was established at 16 years old. So yeah.

Yeah. It's a cool guy, Death Stirk the Terminator. Pedophile. Sorry. He is. Death Stirk fans can be his best of fucking one. but it's the truth. I would think you need to apologize for that.

I'm not going to. They get so mad when you pointed out. It's like, I'm sorry your boy likes teenage girls. Now, obviously, the point of it was that she was just like infatuated with him and he was manipulating her and having sex with her was a way of keeping her under his thumb. That was established that Death Sturks that kind of asshole. Because he also like slept with his son's fiancee and shit doing stuff like that too. Destrook's a terrible person, yes.

Deathstroke has multiple children. Ravanger, Jericho, and Rose. Terrible dad. Terrible dad. It certainly seems that way. Yeah, it amazes me. There's a Deathstroke, The Terminator comic right now that just started recently. It amazes me that we have so many Deathstroke comics, because he's, like, kind of the quintessential of this of, like, he's a terrible person.

Unrepentant. Unrepentant. yet people read along I read the first one they did after Rebirth that Christopher Priest was writing and it was really well written because it's Christopher Priest and the dude knows what he's fucking doing but like yeah

Deathstroke's a terrible human being and the whole comic was about how he was a terrible human being like one of those things like his wife who hates him and was like trying to kill him most of the time reminds him how terrible he is it's like it's your fault our son died it's your fault

our children hate you so so that raises the question then why would people want to read that book if it is just like this guy who is what we're talking about a very unlikable um unse every character like why would people want to read that book is it just what we said earlier about the anti-hero things we're like yeah he's a horrible person but he kills people in cool ways so that's cool because that one of those things were like they just they're not empathizing with him because he's so horrible they're just like Um, which for filming the, the cool stuff that he does. I mean, so it kind of, some of the biggest successful television shows in the last 20, 30 years have been Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Are you familiar with those shows? Uh, I, I, uh, I know that those shows exist. Okay. It's basically kind of like, they're both in the same ilk of, like, people really like them, but the main characters are, are terrible human beings. The main character of Mad Men is Don Draper. Don Draper is an ad salesman in a very upscale New York marketing agency. But the main thing is about how, like, he is a womanizer and a liar and a manipulator

and has all of these big depressive episodes. But it's like everything that goes wrong in his life is his fault. but he's smooth, he's charming, he's handsome, he can get any woman he wants, people respect him, and that's how he's like counterbalancing these sides of him. There's like the carnal side that gets everything that he wants, and then there's the negative side where he ruins everything he has because he doesn't feel like you should have it.

But people love Don Draper, and they love that he's so cool and confident and able to like smooth talk his way through situations. Breaking Bad, of course, is a, you know, the story of a high school chemistry teacher, who has cancer and decides to start selling meth on the side to pay for his cancer treatments and then falls in love with being a drug lord and the whole show is the escalation of this persona he's crafted for himself that becomes larger in life as he gets bigger and bigger in the underground also terrible human being walter white is pathetic and cowardly and egotistical in conniving and a liar and a manipulator but people love those shows. Well, that one you can see because

like you said, there is an escalation. There's an obvious, like, drama to it. You can see if somebody, like, A, has cancer and B is running their math lab, you're like, okay, cool. At some point, he's either going to die slash get very sick or he's going to get busted.

And so part of the, the cliphangery nature of that show is you want to see what happens to this man you want to see if he does get his come up and so you want to see what's going to happen next it's not necessarily that people love and empathize with that character specifically it's that the TV show has such a really good hook to it it's really well written and interesting

and it makes you want to watch more to see what happens to see what happens to that guy you you don't necessarily emphasize with him but you understand the world around him and how it works. I'm watching him slip in and out of adventures and get his way out of stuff. You want to see what happens if he will continue to get his way out of situations or if he will at some point get his come up and... I can see the attraction to that show.

Well, I mean, that's an age-old thing that Alfred Hitchcock talked about, how if you present people a story where you have a safecracker who's trying to open a, you know, trying to open a safe, and you also know that the audience sees that the people that he's breaking into are coming home, then your natural inclination is to side with the safecracker, even though what he's doing is morally wrong, because you want him to be able to open the safe get what he needs and get out.

So, like, because you're seeing it from Walter's perspective, you're rooting for him in that sense of, like, he's the person whose journey you're following. Kind of, like, the safecracker, I don't think you're really, you want to see what happens to the safecracker. You want to see if he gets busted or not. Yeah.

I don't know if you're necessarily rooting for the safecracker. Like, yeah, rob that guy. That was his cock's arguing, though. Well, it depends who he's robbing, doesn't it? That's what he said. You're nervous on his behalf. Well, yes, you feel some sort of tension because you can see the two sides coming.

You can see the other guy coming closer to his own hoist, and you can see the, safe cracker like maybe missing a number or whatever you can see all that like that makes sense i don't know if they're necessarily like rooting for the guy to break the safe they just want to see what happens because there is that tension there and they want to see does he fuck it up or not does he get caught or not does he get away with it you know i don't think that's necessarily like empathizing with the character if you know what you mean no i get what you're saying i get what you're saying but like i said i don't think that in his in that analogy i don't think you're like

rooting for the people to come home more so that you're rooting for him to get what he needs to get out but yeah are we gonna bust open Alfred Hitchcock being a big hack I guess so is what you're saying that's what you're propositioning right now he didn't know what the fuck he was talking

about Alfred Hitchcock what a fucking prick he has no dick that guy I'll I'll write you no talk about birds and whatever that's bullshit what's he know so scary about a bird

What does Albert Hitchcock know about films? What's he ever done in the business? Yeah. What money do you draw? Yeah, what the fuck? Yeah, yeah. He even put over. He's talking about.

He's got the pin, brother. Alfred Hitchcock. I didn't, I'll be honest with you, dude. We started this show like fucking years ago. I didn't expect me to start pick and fight so Albert Hitchcock. That's a fun surprise. I mean, I often wonder, going into the episode, I'm like, I wonder who I'm just going to pick an imaginary fight with today.

Because it's always somebody. You're like that little, you're the little, like, fighting Irish mascot. You're ready to go. That's stereotyping. That's the thumbnail. Well, it was going to be something to Albert Hitchcock for sure. Be fighting Alfred Hedgcock in a boxing ring. There you go.

Why not? There you go. Yeah. Fuck it up, brother. You know. Yeah. Well, he had no dick, man. That one on my tube stone as well.

There you go. The tube son's getting awful full. We're not going to be able to put your name or your dates of birth or death at this point. It's going to be a tomb. It's going to be a whole tomb. Oh, yeah, it's going to be a big. I have talked about this. Very extensively.

I mean, I'll be dead, so I don't know if people will actually. actually do it, but... Yeah, it's not your problem anymore at that point. Well, I would hope that it's... I'm gonna haunt anybody that doesn't do it, so they better fucking do it. And we'll come back. No way, if we miss you, we just have to intentionally

get your last wishes wrong, and we'll see you all the time. Yeah, if you want to see me again, just smash up my mausoleum and I'll fucking haunt you. I'll go, I'll be getting out of the shower one day, and I'll, like, clear the fog off of the, the mirror, and you'll just be there behind me, laughing, looking all messing and I'm like, Dylan!

You're back. It's to be giving you the finger. I'm like, what the fuck, dude? God damn it. Went to my mausoleum the other day. The door was open. You let that. But that, Corey.

You're letting all the air out. Yeah. It doesn't all the air in. I don't want the air in there. I'm dead. Oh, I thought you were running like, you know, air conditioning in there. And I screwed in the Mosulium. I'm dead. won't have any

famously dead bodies don't have a whole lot of need for air that's true so so so so kind of going back to the whole like death strict determinator conversation i read that book for like 20 some issues and i'm like thinking back now like what was it specifically that i was like wanting to read about it because i i never came away with a good feeling

like every issue i came away going wow Slade Wilson is a terrible fucking person. And it did a great job. Maybe that was what it was, it was a comic about family. And like the impact it was because it would like, there would be sections of it dedicated to Rose and sections of it dedicated to Jericho.

And you could see like how they were as their young adult selves and like what growing up with Slade as a dad was like for them and like the impact it had on him. where, like, you know, Jericho had, like, a secret homosexual relationship with one of his dad's former partners. And Rose was, like, her, like, Deathstroke's wife, who you see throughout the issue wasn't Rose's mom. Her mom was a woman from Cambodia, I believe. And, like, how she was kind of treated as an out, like, you know, treated poorly by that

woman because of that reason, because it was just another reminder that Slade Wilson can't keeping in his pants. Uh-huh. So, like, they definitely did play on, like, you know, Slade, his behaviors and his actions

definitely had impacts on his children's upbringing, for sure. I don't know, maybe that's what it was, is like the family dynamics were really well written, and that's what was kind of drawing me in.

Right. It's not anything to do with him. Yeah, it had very little to do with Slade, even though he was the main character. Yeah. Right. But, like,

this story, And it's, in its, or was about, like, a family dynamic. And to make that interesting, you do need to have some member of the family be a total raging asshole. Yeah. Because, you know, if it's a comic about family dynamics and the family are already nice and friendly to each other and they love each other, you're like, okay, I'm going to read 20 issues of this. I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah. Well, like, what's the hook?

So Slade was Slade is Slade Wilson fucking terrible But like you know It's full of really good action sequences and stuff Because you know Slate's a mercenary So like it was really well done in that regard His wife worked for the government And she would turn up And it was never a good time when she turned up

Because they had a very hateful dynamic Mainly because his son I believe Garrett I want to say it was his name But he was he was Ravager Ravager died Because of Slade and Jericho and his dad were not really even communicating,

but like Slade was sleeping with Jericho's fiance because she was a spy that was being basically positioned to pretend to be marrying Jericho so that she could spy on Slade. And Jericho was sleeping with one of his dad's former partners. And it was implied that they were even doing that when Jericho was a teenager. and yeah rose was the one who had like almost the least to do but the one that Slade kept checking in on the most

so yeah no I mean it was like I said it was it was Christopher Priest who's a great writer if you've not read anything by Priest look him up like if he's not already done a Daredevil run he'd be perfect for one I don't know if that does anything for you I'm not sure if you're a Daredevil guy I know that's more John's thing yeah I don't know if I've ever read

devil comic. So. Don't say that too loud. John might turn up from the police station. I'm upset with us. Well, he's still going to be there for a couple of hours, I'd say. He's got a lot of paperwork to fill out. So, I guess what we're coming to is the real, that the kind of necessariness of like,

you can write about terrible characters, but there needs to be a good hook to them because no one just wants to read about terrible characters. Right. exactly like that's what we're saying about breaking bat like yeah it's it's it's the story like if you just had two horrible people selling meth you're like oh all right but it's like the actual story around it like there's intrigue and there's like you know is it's gonna get caught is there what's gonna happen you know there's there's stuff that happens it makes you want to keep

watching the show it's not just a man selling math to people because you're like that that would get old very quickly yeah you know um there's always a hook you ever read um a clockwork orange yes i assume you've seen the film yes yes well you would know that in the clockwork orange there's a book first and then it was a film as is uh quite a common practice and you know that guy is incredibly unlikable oh yeah Alex Delarge is considered one of the worst human beings ever horrible, horrible person. Violence and rape.

And yet, they made a whole book and film about it. And people watched that film. And people loved that film. Do they love that film because they love him? Or are they, do they love that film because it's just a fascinating look into, like, somebody that they would have no,

somebody that's like the complete opposite of them? You know, you look at that guy and go, I wouldn't do any of that shit. You're a horrible person. Like, is that part of it? Is it a look into like a completely other side of life that people aren't used to? Well, add to that, I suppose. You know, it was kind of like we talked about where sometimes people read stuff and they come away with the wrong.

They come away with the wrong feeling about it because it's like they don't have enough media literacy to piece why they feel certain ways about certain things and they just kind of like smush together their own idea. case in point I always call it the Rorschach effect where if you walk away from Watchman and you feel like Rorschach is a great character and it's like no he's a smelly weird man who's a conservative and has a lot of really weird political opinions

he has the most conviction of everyone but conviction doesn't always mean it's a good thing right like misplaced conviction can be uh pretty deadly yes so I kind of I was going to bring up watchman earlier because we were talking

about that. I've been thinking about a lot recently. A lot lately. From weight on my mind. And you know,

very recently it's just kind of been especially the film for some reason. I don't know, maybe we'll talk about that. Maybe that would be a fun topic to talk about it.

I don't know. But I was going to talk about that because I had been thinking about it recently about how a lot of the characters were quite flawed. but I think that's a different thing the whole point of watchmen

is that you're not you're not supposed to empathize with them but you're also not supposed to hate all of them either they all had like their own good and bad qualities they were all built to be very human and very like flawed characters um all of them were very flawed characters

you never really like this one's my favorite it was always kind of like well this guy did this but also he's a jerk or this guy kind of acted like this but also you know, you can see why they did that. There is a level of empathy there, but there's also a level of like attempt

because you do look at all those characters and go, I'm not like this person in this specific way, but I can understand the situation they're in and I can understand them feeling like this at this moment, you know? Yeah. But I think that's different. I think that's just very good writing, honestly, to make all of these very tragic, flawed characters

who are all also very very very, very different from each other. Yes. I think that's what was, what are we talking like five or six, six main characters? Pretty much. That are all kind of horrible

in like very different way. Yeah. They're pathetic, pitiful, outright, terrible. Ecostical. Yeah.

Just, you know, fucking wimpish and spineless. Or just abrasive and self-centered. Or just like, oh, lack of empathy you know

there's like all of these these things but they're also so well written that you're like well I care about these characters

even if it's not necessarily like an empathetic thing um although speaking about that there was um did you ever see that film of Wolfo Wall Street

yeah I was to see all my friends like years whenever came out in the cinema like anybody who watched that film would go that guy's a fucking out asshole, right? That the whole film, the whole two and a half art film is just by this guy being a

fucking asshole and then eventually getting, you know, the repercussions of his actions. Like that's the whole film. Yeah. And one of the guys comes out of the cinema is like, you know what I already liked. I'm like, you better not say what I think you're going to say. You're like that guy. You know, he's really driven and you know what he wanted. You got it. I'm like, You're not supposed to empathize, there's certain people who do empathize with characters like that. And I think it's because they themselves have something that is so inherently broken or missing inside of their own lives where they do wish they could have like,

I wish I could have unchecked power or unchecked influence. And like, I wish that morals weren't a thing. And it's like whenever you find that out, you're like, cool, that's another person I don't want to associate with. It's sort of like a litmus test of people. of people you want in your life, which is amazing. So, like, the most recent example of this. So the show, the boys just ended.

And the boys television show is different from the boys' comic, as is often the case with Gardinness's book, because even there's even a limitation to what television in movies can do with his work. But a lot of people were very upset with how they killed off the main antagonist of the show, The Homelander. This isn't going to be spoilers because at this point when this comes out, it's going to have been like two, three weeks, and that shit was online five minutes after it happened, grow up.

But essentially, through McGuffins and DeiSX Machina, homelander stripped of his powers, and very pathetically tries to jump up to fly and can't, and realizes that he's fucked and proceeds to get dog walked by Carl Urban's character with a crowbar. and he's begging for his life and like pleading with him and saying, I'll fucking suck your dick. I will eat shit for you. If you shit right now,

I'll eat it for you before he gets his head caved in with a crowbar. And a lot of Homelander fans and a lot of boys fans were very upset that the character died in such a pitiful manner. They're like, he need a much bigger send off or he was redeemable. And it's like, not really because I don't watch, I didn't watch the boys. because I'm familiar enough with Garth Dennis's work to be like,

not for me, but... Yeah. Exactly. Not for me. Mr. Annes has a feeling about superheroes, and he has a no problem letting people know about it. But anyway, Homelander has been through five seasons of the show shown to be vain, murderous, pathetic, pitiful, cowardly,

advantageous, opportunistic. You know, nothing really suggests. that he would be in a moment where he realized he didn't have his powers, which he's been relying on for all of his fear and intimidation, would still put up a good fight. That's one thing. And then two, like,

you should want to see him get that comeuppance like that. Because I feel like, I feel like, to be broad generalization, a broad generalization, a normal person would be like, wow, this guy who has been intermittently killing off people,

who disagreed with him and bullying his way and positioning himself as this egotistical, fascist, like he should go out in the most punk way possible, like a most piss, poor, baby shit way possible. That's the way he needs to go, because it's fitting. Yeah. But again, there's a certain subsect of people who saw, like, unchecked power and being able to do whatever you wanted and went, that's what I want. I want to be able to put people under my thumb. Yeah, it does say a lot about the human condition where you see people who come away with,

when we were talking about that with Zach Schneider, reading Watchman, and evidently his take on the comic seemed to miss a lot of the finer points of it and the nuance and to just go like, oh, fighting is cool. and like, oh, interesting. You know, we can show this.

We can show this. I don't think that's the point of the show. There's a lot more to it to the blue guy with this take on. But to the point where, like, I realized when I'd read the book, I'm like, I didn't even notice. Yeah. I didn't even remember seeing a stick at all. If I did, I don't remember.

I'm going to have to go back and have a look for it. But it's interesting. The way that some people interpret, like you said, the way that some people interpret media is quite alarming. And also, a very good way to explain. Current mistakes. Yeah. Well, this is all starting to make a lot more sense.

Once you realize that people watched the Joker film, I thought, I like that guy. Or watched Wolf of Wall Street, like you pointed out and said. I like that guy. I like that guy. Or watch the boys. I like Homelander. Yeah.

I like this horrible fucking person. Yeah. Yeah. That's life. That certainly is. So it's weird. I feel like we came about to a really strange conclusion of like, can you read something and follow characters who are completely irredeemable?

And we ended up with talking about how there is a certain subset of people that love the worst characters. imaginable only because they have power like trip fantasies. So I guess there are people out there that would read Odin and legitimately feel bad for these neo-Nazis. Yes, I think so. I think there probably are going to be people though like, why are you being so mean to the Nazis? Why are you being so mean to the neo-Nazis?

Yeah, they're not real Nazis. I actually saw this thing recently where someone was like, see, this is why gatekeeping is important. because you have to keep people like that out. The laundromat recently canceled a show because they found out one of the bands playing were very alt-right. And they said, nope, whole show is canceled. So, yeah, no. You got to gate-keep your community. Let that be the lesson out there.

If you're going to take anything from an episode of the Smart Avengers, gate-keep your communities. Keep the fuckers out. No. No, no, no. It said fucking Alfred Hitchcock. No, fuck Alfred Hitchcock. one, two, keep the neo-Nazis out of your community. Yeah, yeah.

We're very wise. I think we are. We got a lot of wisdom in us. I think so. I think more people should listen to this show. If people listen to the show and empathize with us more, then maybe things would change, you know? I think John's been holding us back.

Like, we came to this, like, we came to this, like, sociopolitical platform in his application. sense. So I think John's the one holding this back. Yes, because whenever me and John do an episode, it's like Kitty Parry in Spice. And hot dogs. And hot dogs. We go really like deep and intelligent and like, philosophically, what do you think? We didn't talk about hot dogs at all. We did not talk about hot dogs at all. It's not too late though, if you want to.

Do you have IKEA in America? We do have IKEA in America. There's an IKEA in Columbus, actually. apparently they pronounce it it yeah oh no kidding yeah we were at ikea ikea well i mean it we put it past our country to mispronounce something that comes from the other land well our country does it too um and then on the way i did like you want a hot dog you can just like you can go the whole shop and then just on the way i do like by the way you might want a hot dog i'm like oh we have Costco which does the same thing but that's like a big box retailer but you can get like a hot dog for like a dollar 50 yeah this i think it was like a pine for the hot dog yeah yeah apparently like

the CEO of costco was like insistent that the price never changes on the hot dog i just tell you man real quick you don't we buy a hot dog that costs one pine like you know exactly what that hot dog's gonna taste like i'm vegan again so i don't i don't have to worry about this worry i think you're Okay. Yeah. What the fuck? He's in a hot dog? I don't know.

Who knows? But like, you, you just know exactly what a one-point hot dog's going to taste like. And then we got the one-point hot dog, and you know what it tasted like? One-pound hot dog? Like that's what it tastes like. And sometimes that's just what you want. Yeah. You know what you mean?

Sometimes you're just like, I just really, right now, I really want a one-point hot dog. You know? I imagine it's kind of like pizza. There's no such thing as a bad piece of pizza. like if you know it's a one-hound hot dog oh where is it there's definitely about pizza for sure oh fair enough but i feel like i feel like to that point it's like you know i really like going out to like proper pizza places you know like home-mead pizza places realize grown pizza places right i don't like going to cheans but some days you're just like i really want a dominoes i'm just in

the mood or a stinky-ass domino pizza yeah Yeah, yeah. I know it's going to suck. Because I'll tell you this, I think the part of it is, like, the consistency, like, Adominious pizza always taste the Admonious Pizza. Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. It's the same. It's the same as pizza hut and Papa Johns. Yeah, you know what you're getting. There's a strong likelihood that's going to feel sick after this. Yeah. But you're getting that specific taste that you can only get in this one place. Yeah.

You know, it's like McDonald's. McDonald's burgers don't taste like any burger. you've ever had in your life. Only McDonald's does a burger like that. And so then when if you come out of it, you're like, oh, I really want this one specific thing that can only get in this one specific place. It's very clever marketing. It's weird.

The Sprite is the same way. McDonald's Sprite is one of those things that people get really impassioned about. Because if you've been at a concert and you get out of the concert, it's like 11 o'clock, by the time you get through traffic, it's already getting closer to midnight. You know McDonald's is open 24-7. and you're dying of thirst because you didn't want to spend $12 for a bottle of water at the venue. $1.99 McDonnell Sprite

hits you, hits you right in the soul. Well, see, I'm like, I don't like, um, yeah,

Sprite, I think's different because I don't like getting Diet Coke out of those chain places because it's, it's really like, it's either really serpity or it's really watered down. Yeah. Whereas the Sprite is just the Sprite. It's just Sprite.

Yeah, it's weird. Always Sprite. You know, because maybe you can't water sprite down. I don't know. What is it? We'll never know. So how many movies? How many movies do you think John's watched so far this year?

Or... Four. We're getting towards the end of May. When this comes out, I think it will officially be middle of June. So I want to say that John's probably already hit 520 at this point. Isn't he at 700 and something? No, he's not at 700 yet. Are you sure?

I'm pretty sure. Oh, well, I just have him a fantastic in our show that we do. You're just waiting for you to do your plug, which is coincidentally now, Dylan, what do you get up to you during the week? Don't you want to say, do you want to at least, like, humor John a little bit and shout out his letterbox? Oh, yeah, we'll do that. If you want to see what John's been watching, or if you just want to read all four of his despicable me reviews, you'll find a link in our description, but he's letterbox.com slash big John Bowsky, all one word. you think people are going to write big john boiskey all one word and then be like it's not coming up well i was thinking maybe the reason he says it like that is because they'll put big space john

space balbosky and however many spaces they discern big balbozky needs i i think it's the opposite i think that because he says it all the time in the same way that they're going to write the whole thing in do you think that john named himself after um the character from the big labowski Or is he just a very big fan of Valvinus? Do you think the Big Lobosky was Biasanjong? Do you think the Big Lavowski was based on Valvinus? You think the film is based on Valvinus? Might be.

I mean, he was the Big Valbozzi. Yeah. Do you remember when they called him that for a short period of time? Like they were billing him as the Big Valbozky? That was weird. Yes. I mean, well, the whole thing was weird. I feel like this is the most of anyone's talked about Valvinus

not related to his weird conspiracy theories or marijuana consumption in quite some time. Well, he was beefing with MJF for recently. Who isn't? Yeah, like you do. I feel like if you're getting Valvinus anger at you, you're like probably misplaced. Yeah, exactly.

That's his low-hanging fruit at this point. You could try better. Yeah, I reckon anybody can piss off Valvinas. It was like that period of time people would just try to rile up glen goberty or ryeback it's like what are you really accomplishing yeah well you know all right i feel like we lost it that's all the rest of everybody yeah i want to say i feel like we lost a bunch of people just that i assume that's getting what the fuck's a ryeback who what is glen gilberti what's a what's a glen gilberti and how can we

make it stop what that hey delis Dylan, what do you get up to you during the week? Thank you for asking, Corey. I do a radio show. Monday nights, 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock. UK time. You can listen to it online. It's on, like, your web browser, you type of thing in.

Finds digital radio. Dot, K. 9 o'clock, 11 o'clock. Monday nights. It's really fun. Stream on Twitch sometimes, the spooky of the room where I draw pictures, and then they animate those pictures.

On YouTube, Team Crows, N-I. on TikTok at Team Crow Studios. So you could subscribe or whatever. I don't come up. All right. Well, I already talked about it a little bit at the beginning of this, but I have my other show, which is new number ones,

which is every Sunday. We talk about a new number one episode is usually about five, six minutes long, kind of get in, get out, whether or not I feel like it's a book that you should check out. All here on the YouTube channel, I also have my other show, large old cup which is a spoken word stream of consciousness kind of podcast where i kind of just go for about 28 minutes at a time and let my mind and my subconscious take me wherever it is i need to

be so you can check all of that out later cat cam coming up yep there he is he's got to get the cat cam he's been sleeping the whole time we've been recording he just now woke up once we start talking about disconferto he's like hey rest of talk now right now brother yeah brother you know I hired him, right? All right. Somebody had to. Yep, somebody had to. All right.

We'll see you guys later. Have a good one. Goodbye. Goodbye. Burr. He's back for the police station.