Timcast IRL - Timcast IRL #743 Democrats DESPERATE To Stop TIKTOK BAN As Ban Seems Likely w/Ethan Van Sciver

Episode Date: March 25, 2023

Tim, Ian, Brett (Pop Culture Crisis), & Kellen join Ethan Van Sciver to discuss the United States potentially banning TikTok, how to win the culture war, the real story behind ComicsGate, and the infiltration of wokeness in the comic book industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We got a pretty special Friday for y'all. We got some big news. Democrats seem very desperate to stop the banning of TikTok, which seems likely. I don't know if likely is the right word. Plausible, possible, feasible. But we'll see because we're now starting to see some pretty serious resistance. But along with the cultural manipulation, there's data privacy concerns, though I think the cultural manipulation is the most important.

Now, in terms of what we are doing to win this culture war, it goes beyond just whinging on the Internet. First, if you caught the culture war podcast earlier today, I am joining a lawsuit against California for censorship. And this could get big. Minds.com is also a party to this lawsuit. Basically, California is requiring platforms to create terms that would, you know, let's just say, effectively interfere with free speech.

So I'm going to be joining that lawsuit, fighting back. I am also, you're usually not supposed to do this, but I'll say it anyway. We are beginning the preliminary stages of filing litigation against Bandcamp for the termination of our account. And I'll explain for a few important things. And again, you know, I'll confer with my legal counsel as to what the direct approach is.

But here are the personal complaints that I think are legitimate and fair. I don't know if the people who paid for the songs that I've produced have access to those songs, which means I have no idea who my customers are. I have no idea if they need a refund. I have no idea if they still have the product. Some people have said they still have the song. Well, if that's the case, then Bandcamp is hosting my content, my copyright without my permission and using it to profit off of me by providing that content to individuals in the long term while terminating my account. So I think we've got some very serious problems. plus the withholding of data. I believe it's likely they're withholding money from us because they're not communicating with us. So we're going to have to go into some very serious litigation against them. So we're going to be pushing back. But before we get into all of the

news and the talk of cultural stuff, there is another big announcement. Today, we launched our fourth song, Bright Eyes, to a tremendous response. Head over to trashhouserecords.com and you can pick up the song. Notice we're not using Bandcamp anymore because they removed us. Clearly, whatever it is we're doing in the culture war is effective. We released three songs before this, all three charted on Billboard. That's a 100% song on Billboard rate. I'm sure most bands would love to have reached that. Granted, we put out like three singles. They've all done really well. We're hoping that Bright Eyes, the latest song we

put out, hits Billboard as well, and you can help make that happen by going to TrashHouseRecords.com and downloading the song for, I think the minimum is 69 cents, but you can put in whatever price you want. We want to chart. We want to prove that we are having a cultural influence and an impact. And I think currently we're number 24 on iTunes

with zero promotion. So we've put out no, you know, with the last releases, we did promos with, you know, through all the videos throughout the day. We didn't do that today. And we hit number 24 in the top 100 on iTunes already. I'm pretty sure with all of your support right now buying the song, we'll probably hit number one. Maybe we'll see. We hit number one with the past two songs. We even beat out Taylor Swift briefly. I'm hoping that we can once again do it, but it's entirely up to you. If you guys want to support our cultural endeavors, buy the song at Trash House Records. And I think the reason that we got banned from Bandcamp is likely because they don't care that much when we complain on the Internet because complaining does very little. But if we make successful cultural products that influence people and get people talking and become popular, they are actually then losing the culture war.

So when all these outlets are like, oh, how are we supposed to ignore the third song from TimCast that has hit Billboard? I mean, it starts to become really weird when people are like, how are they not? I mean, isn't that a big deal? How many bands have pulled that one off? So if we get a fourth song in a row, we'll just keep trying to do it. So that's if you think we should. And if you think we should, TrashHouseRecords.com. It would be greatly appreciated.

But, of course, we'll promote it more next week. And we'll talk with Carter about the song. And we've got Pete Parada on drums, Phil Labonte. Of course, he's been on the show a bunch. He has a guest appearance in the music video. And so it is what it is. Support our work. Don't forget to smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share the show with your friends. Here to talk to us about winning the culture war, because again, it's more than just whinging. It's someone who's actually very successful and has taken a very powerful stand to fight back in that culture war.

We have Ethan VanSkyver. Hey, all right. Great to be here on TimCast. Amazing. Thanks for coming. Who are you? What do you do? Okay, so like you said, my name is Ethan VanSkyver.

I'm a 30-year veteran of the comic book industry. As I say on my own show, world's most charming, disarming, elegant, eloquent, and yet humble man. Great big Sopranos fan and trusted member of the media. Not as trusted as you, though. I think that you're more trusted than I am at this point, and rightly so. By the corporate press? Maybe not. Maybe by regular people.

That's all that matters. Yeah, I am a comic book artist. I work for Marvel and DC. I've drawn Green Lantern and Flash mostly, some X-Men stuff in my time. I was viciously canceled for voting for Trump in 2017. Everybody kind of knew that I was a Republican. But when I voted for Trump and Trump won and then I celebrated, that was a bridge too far the mechanism of cancer culture i did celebrate i took a nice picture of myself in a maga hat posted on twitter people were outraged by that i didn't understand because i was so polite when obama won yep i was so polite i didn't get it so uh for people who aren't familiar you're an artist and you created the flash's mom yeah you created atrocities yeah are there any other walker lares? Like if you've been reading

Green Lantern and you know, some people in the chat probably have. We did something called the emotional spectrum back in 2009 or so. And what it was, was we realized that Green Lantern, his green energy represents willpower. Then there's yellow energy, which represents fear. And boy, it really seems like those two colors are real close on the rainbow, right? And maybe there are other colors as well. Yeah. So we created red lanterns, orange lanterns, the yellow lanterns, all the way to violet. Blue, red, and... They all represented a different sort of motivation. Red was rage, blue was hope,

yellow was fear. Wasn't there like white, like a combination? There was. And that's why there are now white, like a combination? There was. And that's why there are now white power rings that are on the market. Wait, what? You got to make a villain called Ultra Violet. Wait, wait, wait. That's a real story. I remember that.

This is true. I'm so sorry, DC. I'm so sorry about this. But it is true. And I guess it's part of my legend. You know, look, if there are green power rings and there are white lanterns, there are white power rings. And you can find those on... Based.

You can find those on eBay, I guess. So anyway, yeah, I created all that stuff. All those characters are, you know, associated with that and did very, very well for DC. All the symbols associated with those characters, T-shirts, baseball caps, all the the stuff there it was a marketing bonanza uh isn't there a black lantern core as well and it's like yeah zombies yeah all of the dc heroes and villains that died

uh you know we resurrected them we gave them black lantern rings and they came back and bedeviled the heroes and the prophecy of Blackest Night. It was so much fun. I mean, we really got people excited because the idea that we gave to DC Comics was this superpower that's transferable to any other character. Imagine how this lights somebody's imagination on fire that, you know, if you get a red lantern ring, you can put it on Wolverine, a Marvel character. And he's suddenly red lantern Wolverine and he's spitting up red energy and he's crazy and wild.

The Hulk might have a red lantern ring. This is just great for comics. So those are Marvel characters. But it just is great. And DC just loved the hell out of it. They did so much great stuff with like the emotional spectrum and all the different colors and all the different rings. But then you voted for Trump, so. Yeah. If you guys are listening, I'd like

to make a character called Ultraviolet that has the ring. They already did it. Oh, nice. Does it make him partially invisible? I don't know. Okay, well, we'll get through this and we'll get into it. We got Brett Daszak hanging out. What is going on, guys? It's been a while. It's been a very long time since I've

been on here. Yes, I do Pop Culture Crisis Monday through Friday, 3pm Eastern Standard Time right here on YouTube. You should join us there. I remember that story about the white power rings and all the memes. There's all these memes being made. It's a guy going and says, like, DC headquarters, and

says, how many days since last time DC screwed something up and they tear it off and start it over again? I remember that. Right on. We got Ian. Hi everyone. Good to see you. Ian Crossland here on a Friday night. Let's steamroll this. What's up everybody? It's Kellen. Ethan, if you need to, you can move this mic

closer to you, further from you. How do I sound? Do I sound okay? You sound great. Yeah, just put it right below your mouth. You can move it around with you whenever you're... I'm going to use it to cover as much of myself as I can, if that's okay with you. All right, let's jump into this first story. You know, I saw this from Politico, and I don't know if they're going to ban TikTok, but I personally think TikTok should be banned for a variety of reasons. And there is a difficult question, but, you know, we don't want to curtail free speech.

Politico reports, will TikTok be banned? Some Dems say not so fast. A number of House Democrats and at least a few senators remain unconvinced that singling out the Chinese-owned app is the best course of action. All right. Well, we'll see what happens. I don't know exactly, but let me explain to you why I think this Democratic Party and the culture war, cultural left, represent zombification, social zombification. Zombies crave only to spread the zombie disease. There's no end goal.

So if you look at the issue of TikTok, there is legitimate problems with allowing a CCP product into the hands of our children. The cultural manipulation. In China, the kids there, their version of TikTok has educational science, that kind of stuff. Really great for our young developing mind. In the United States, there's young women who think they're birds saying they're a bird person and their pronouns are bok bok or something like that. There's the woman who's like frog frog self pronouns. These things are being propagated on the American version, which is literally harming vulnerable people to the point where you notice aated on the American version, which is literally harming vulnerable

people to the point where you notice a lot of the trans people, the trans species people, people who actively want surgeries are autistic and extremely vulnerable. TikTok is doing that. You then have the data spying component. The fact that Democrats would defend this, despite the fact that there are clear, obvious and objective problems with it, shows the zombification of the party. If it empowers them, they don't care the damage it causes they want to extract from the system. So I think it should be banned.

And the main reason is not so much the data spying, which I think is a problem, but the cultural influence. And that's probably why the social zombies want to maintain it. It spreads social zombism and mental illness. So this is a big issue right now. If we want to win the culture war, there is a political and technological component right here. Granted, I think creating culture is the number one way to do it and pushing back. But it's hard if the mechanisms for delivering that content are controlled by, say, the CCP.

What's interesting is, first of all, I heard earlier, somebody mentioned to us, I mentioned the fact that China has a different algorithm for their version of TikTok than we do, right? And somebody said that Andrew Schultz said that he started that as a conspiracy theory. He said that was actually him that started the STEM rumor that they had a different version of the algorithm. Is it even if that's true, it doesn't matter because the damage it's doing here in America, whether China was getting the same stuff as we are or not, I can't say if that's true. Somebody said that to us when we were on the show earlier. I think a lot of it's also the addictive nature of it. As much of the, you talk zombification, I talk the addictive nature

of phones, of technology, and just how much damage it's doing for people to have to use this technology constantly all the time every day? Well, let me just say, I mean, you know, if espionage isn't the issue, I got to ask then what makes TikTok different from what Tim's talking about than YouTube Shorts, which is basically adopting the same delivery system as TikTok, highly addictive short videos. I mean, essentially, it's the same thing. It's the same product. So why is that not a problem in TikTok? That's a good point. And that's why this bill that's been introduced into the Senate, it's called the Restrict Act, is so dangerous because

there really isn't much of a difference in these companies. If you start generally targeting social media companies for doing or for people doing things you don't like on those networks, it gives you carte blanche to just start ending networks, ending TikTok, ending Twitter. We're banning Twitter. We're banning YouTube because somebody on YouTube said that the election was fake. I'm reading this bill. It's called the Restrict Act. Maybe we can pull this up at some point. And there's a few sections in the Restrict Act that are completely insane. Section 3, where we have Section 3.1.C is fucking insane. It's Section 3.A.1.C. What it says is, oh my God, this is so crazy, dude. This is like the Patriot Act for technology, basically. We cannot allow this kind of power.

What does it do? It gives the Secretary of Commerce the ability to... Oh, God. Okay, so let's see. Section 3A. The secretary in consultation with the relevant executive department agency heads is authorized to and shall take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate these these technologies is what they're saying if they pose an undue or unacceptable risk of interfering with the result or reported result of a federal election and they're saying like if a person this is any any covered transaction by any

person or with respect to any property subject to the jurisdiction of the united states so any american citizen that says an election was fake on Twitter means that they can go into mitigating any mitigating act that they can take to solve that, meaning they could shut Twitter down. I don't think that Andrew Schultz thing is true. I mean, the reporting going back talks about how the algorithm is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. So I pulled up Fox, multiple sources.

I had always heard that they had said that they had a different algorithm in China than we have for our version of TikTok. It was just something somebody said earlier and I said, I could see somebody leading with something like that, making a joke like that and it catching fire somehow. There was also reporting like two or three years ago, which we talked

about, so this is probably like two years ago, about how they were specifically trying to ban feminists and feminist ideas from their schools and stuff like that. So maybe the specific concept of academia, of STEM content, he may have made up. I don't know. I can't verify that. There's no way to know. There's no way to know. We don't have access to the algorithms.

But I mean, so Joe Rogan made the claim, which popularized it. Yes. So perhaps Schultz lied to Joe and then Joe ran with it. But there is previous reporting where people are saying Douyin is China's version of TikTok has a very different algorithm that doesn't allow this kind of content. It doesn't specify STEM or anything like that, though. Think of all the influencers that will be out of a job if they ban it here in America. They should. What will they do?

What will they do? But you don't make real money on TikTok. You make like... They push it towards brand deals though, right? A large amount of following gets them more content with other types of products that they sell through their... Let me put it this way. You can make money on TikTok.

You can make money on Instagram. In terms of social media, I think YouTube is the highest view to dollar ratio, and it's still crappy. Podcasts are the best. Audio version podcasts have the best CPM. If you want to make money on ads and sponsorships, it's audio podcasts. Instagram Reels actually do fairly well for mid-level creators and down, right? Probably not for the larger ones because there's a cap on how much you can make per month. Facebook does way better.

So putting your videos on Facebook makes like 10 times the money of Instagram. Like per viewer. That's weird. Don't ask me why. I don't know. And TikTok was completely worthless. That's why I personally think TikTok, in my personal opinion, I believe it is probable that TikTok's followers are fake and intended to socially manipulate young people.

Dude, this is coming out of China, which said that they had zero COVID. They were like, we have no more COVID now. It's all done. Like, they just lie, lie, lie, analytically lie. I think one of the biggest black pills for me was when somebody on Facebook, like long before I got rid of Facebook, was like actually said China's got the right idea by locking people in their homes. I'm like, that's enough internet for today. Like somebody I've known for a long period of time

said that. Here's what's going to happen. There's going to be another lockdown. And then someone's going to make a video on TikTok and it's going to say, I feel kind of bad. This doesn't seem like a good thing to do. We shouldn't be locking down. Then the phone's going to go and they're going to look and it's people

gonna be saying they're gonna get a bunch of notifications from people being like this ain't it bro you're wrong are you trying to destroy the planet bro you're so off i can't believe i ever followed you then they're gonna be like oh what's happening why is everybody mad at me then they're gonna make a video and being like you know i thought about it man like we probably do need to lock down and then like like like like, like, wow, you're so smart. You're so smart. That's what the bots do. Sargon posted like a poll the other day

that said a bunch of people in Britain said when they said like, do you believe that the lockdowns were a mistake? And most of them said no. Like, I don't know how big the sample size was in a poll like that. But like, even with hindsight being 2020, it's just you're living in a different world

than people who intake a different set of news to you. So somebody watching CNN or over there, I guess the BBC, they don't understand things the way you understand about what's been going on in the world. So functionally, they might see another lockdown as a good idea because they just don't get that things are different now. Straight up, it's a manipulation tool, TikTok. We don't have access to the algorithm, so we don't know what it's feeding us, why it's feeding us, what it's feeding us. We don't know what's getting tracked with our data. So that stuff needs to be opened up. We need to see that code.

That I understand we could use the government to force open, but to do these dumb, bland, general, legal things where it gives them – they can mitigate any system that, quote, poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States. Are you kidding me? That's insane. That is absolutely insane. Do you use TikTok? I have a TikTok, but I don't use it. I'm too much of a boomer. Sorry.

I'm on YouTube. I think you're a Gen Xer. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly right. But it's like you don't need to see the code to know that doom scrolling is bad that like you'll find yourself like 10 minutes go by and you're like holy crap what the hell have i been doing for the last 10 minutes and like i go through phases like that right we're like not tiktok but like i there's a difference between posting content and then when you where you find you've just been scrolling and looking at nothing important for 15

minutes you're not even really engaging with what you're looking at but you always feel worse for wear when you're done and that's just as much as you're talking about as it it incentivizes people to act or promote bad behavior or to promote unhealthy behavior it is mentally damaging for your brain even if you're taking in general content to sit there and doom scroll for long periods of time what What is that thing called that you talk about all the time? Apoptosis? Yeah, apoptosis is when a cell programs itself to die because it has no more function in the system. I feel like Democrats are the party of that, right? Like every single thing, I shouldn't say everything, but like most of their policies are just about killing their constituents.

Like abortion, sterilization, or now TikTok. It's like promoting the things that maximize the likelihood an individual suffers and then dies. That or just the fact that people who use it tend to vote that way and it encourages them to reach out to more people. That's what I mean. Like if their policies result in people ending their bloodlines, they're like just basically the Democratic Party is the great filter of social Darwinism. Well, that's what they talk about with LGBTQIA philosophy, right? They don't give birth, they recruit. And then the people who are resistant to those ideas have families and persist and their bloodlines continue. I worry sometimes though, like we've talked about how they say Gen Z is going to be the first generation in a long time that will be more conservative. I

don't know if that's bared out to be true. but a lot of times I wonder, it's like the power of social media, you can have all the kids you want. That kid is still going to have a phone at 12 years old. If the parents don't do the right thing, that kid's still going to have a phone too young, and they're going to have access to material that's very damaging them to have access to if they don't have parents that are showing them the right way to live. You got to get out of the cities. You got to homeschool your kids. But let's talk about some of the stuff that we can do

in pushing back. It's not just about complaining on the internet like we often do. So a few things. We did a podcast episode with The Culture War. Bill Ottman was here.

We were talking with James Lawrence, lawyer. We are suing California because California passed a law that has requirements on big tech platforms basically requiring censorship, which negatively impacts me as a media company and content creator for distribution on these platforms. And then Bill, who's the CEO of one of these big platforms.

So we're actually taking those steps to do something because we're not just sitting around doing nothing. entering litigation, filing lawsuits against Bandcamp for terminating our account because they've created a whole slew of problems for us and all of the tens of thousands of people who've purchased music. I think it may be in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands. So it's created a disaster. And the way we described it is like if you go to a mall and you sign a contract to open up a mall store and sell a product, and then without breaking any of the rules of the mall's contract or any of the deal,

one day you walk up and they've pulled the gate down, locked it shut, they've changed the locks. And you're like, I've got stuff in there. And they're like, too bad, it's ours now. And you're like, yo, at the very least, you have to give me my stuff back. You can't just take my stuff. What was the reason they gave you? They didn't give you... So we don't even know if they're still holding our money. We don't know if they're still distributing our content

or hosting our copyrighted works without a permission or profiting off of it because they've communicated nothing. So our only course of action is going to be if, like, that's what I'm saying, the mall analogy. If they shut the store and we know for a fact our stuff is in there, and we do because we had music on the platform.

Well, so the first thing is, yo, you have to let us in to go and check to see where our stuff is. We own the rights. That's our copyrighted work. With the mall, they'd let you go in and say, look, your stuff's not there. I mean, granted, you know, if you have an ice cream machine and you didn't get it, you know it's there. With us, the problem now is we can't contact any of the people who bought from us. Not directly. So we don't know any of the people who bought from us. Not directly, so we don't know how to refund if they need a refund.

So if they don't have the music, then Bandcamp took a percentage of the money that transferred and then took the music away from the people? Okay, that's a problem. Because now we've got a problem. That's like theft or something. I don't know. That's interesting. And then if they didn't take the music away, now I've got a problem because they're hosting my copyrighted content and profiting off of it by hosting it on their platform for people without my involvement.

So we've got a legal issue that needs to be answered by the courts. Can a business host my copyrighted content after removing me from the platform if it retains a customer base that they are profiting off of? So there's a real question that has to be answered. I forgot what it's called,

but we talked about it. Anyway, we're taking these actions. We're suing. We're also building culture. We released a song. Pick it up at trash-records.com.

But this is what brings us to you, Ethan. You got this comic, Cyber Frog. Cyber Frog 2. That's the second one, yeah. W got this comic, Cyberfrog. Cyberfrog 2. That's the second one, yeah. Wreck Planet. Let's talk about your story first with getting cancelled

so people can understand what ComicsGate is and why they should hear your story because I know a lot of people may not be familiar. Where'd my pen go? Is it this one? That pen's awesome. Basically, you are responsible for some of the most iconic comic book imagery. I like that.

I don't know if it's true, but yeah. So you created Flash's mother, Nora. Well, that's one thing. Yeah. I know. Right. But hold on. The movie that's coming out, the Flash movie.

Yeah. It's about him going back to save his mom, is it not? Right, I think so, yeah. It's the Flashpoint paradox. I guess. That's a major DC storyline where the Flash, his mother was killed by Zoom, and then he wants to go back in time

because he can run so fast he can do it. So this is a character you created, now so influential, there's a major, massive blockbuster film about to be released. I think that's that's important context we want to understand the amount of influence you've had on the industry is is large plus in the in the video game that came out a few years ago injustice 2 atrocities is a character who is in it you can play as him a character that you you drew you created the art for yeah i created

the whole thing i'll take 100 credit for atrocities yeah i just i had the name i said this is so dc comics atrocities it sounds great so you actually created the character absolutely yeah and then one day you said hey everybody i voted for trump and they then they came after you well they they knew i was a republican i mean they did i i used to i mean i literally was the only elephant in the room all the time when I went to comic book conventions and everybody looked at me weird. I would have friends, I would make friends with other professionals. And then I would, I don't know, we'd spend a little time apart. And then the next time I'd see them, they'd go, you voted for Bush.

And they'd have this look of disgust about them that I was like, yes, I'm a Republican. I voted for Bush. And then that was fine. I think the Obama years were great for me anyway, because I wasn't being persecuted. Nobody was worried about anything because Obama was president. They won. And Trump was a joke. I really didn't think much of Trump in 2015, but he won me over by 2016. And I was a fan and I love the Pepe memes. I loved all that stuff. So anyway, it was no big deal until Trump actually won. And when Trump won, I just thought, great, it's our turn. You know, very naive about the culture war. Wore my MAGA hat that was autographed by the president. And I took a nice picture and I tweeted it out. And that's when I started to see,

I started to see messages from my peers saying things like Ethan's MAGA, Ethan VanSkyver's MAGA. Did you see that? Yeah. Well, I guess he's canceled now, right? Everybody who's canceled. And I didn't know what that was all about, but there was definitely like rage over this idea that somebody who was a fairly influential artist at DC Comics was a Trump supporter. And I didn't think it was going to, you know, I basically talked to a few of them and kind of said, hey, this is the way. Oh, I'm so naive. I said, this is the way the country moves forward. Right step, left step. You know, basically, we all get our turn and hopefully this is progress. But then I got a message from somebody who said, how could you do this? You voted against all of your queer comrades in comics. How do you understand that our lives are in jeopardy and you voted for that. Don't you care? And I guess I wrote back to that person and I kind of

said, well, I guess I don't care that much about that. I guess I have other priorities in my life than, you know, we all have our different, you know, issues that we vote on. Anyway, my response to that tweet or that private message got shared around to all my peers. And now everybody was furious with me because I'd basically invalidated the lives of my queer associates in comics. And then the final thing was I was persecuted. People were coming after me. I had a writer I was working with on Batman. I was doing Batman for a little while, this great guy named Greg Hurwitz. And he had a mutual friend. He had a, Jordan B. Peterson was his friend. And he had a mutual friend. Jordan B. Peterson was his friend. And he kind of said, have you heard of this guy, Jordan Peterson? I said,

yes, he's great. Well, he's seen your work. He likes it. He wants to know if you'll illustrate his upcoming book. And I was just like, well, if I do that, if I do it, I'm going to get a whip in. I know it. That's going to be a big problem. I'm already on the verge of cancellation. I was terrified. My wife and I just had a baby who was diagnosed with autism. And so I needed my job. I really needed my job.

But on the other hand, I had this conversation with Jordan Peterson where he said something that really impacted me. And I still think about this every single day. And it helps me step forward. It helps me take another step. He said, Ethan, I said, I'm scared. Dr. Peterson, I'm scared to illustrate your book. And he just said, Ethan, you can't let these mobbers back you into a corner. I wish I could do a Canadian accent for you.

You can't let these mobbers back you into a corner. And I just thought to myself myself you're damn right you know i'm gonna illustrate your book and so i did i illustrated 12 rules for life it turned out to be a number one bestseller and that was it i have the someone sent me the korean version really yeah i guess it was a joke i can't read korean that though it may have burned some bridges or seems to have, that it launched your career in so many other ways. That book is huge. It was big, but again, it wasn't really my book. It was Jordan Peterson's book, and people just kind of incidentally go, oh, your name's in that.

Like my little sister, Hannah, who's a big fan of yours, she's watching right now. Hi, Hannah. Howdy. You know, she was shocked. She's like, Hannah. Howdy. You know, she was shocked. She's like, we love that book. I can't believe my brother illustrated it. Like, I just, you know, so in any case, like, it's more stuff like that. But what it really did was it just kind of, like, set my feet in stone. Like, I am now officially, I guess, a culture warrior, where I didn't even believe the culture war existed until then. Wow. What year was this, 2017?

2017. And people were calling me a white supremacist and a Nazi and all these things that in 2017 really hurt. You didn't want to be called a Nazi. You didn't want people to think you were racist. But those are the weapons that they use against creative people and pretty much anyone that they want to destroy. You can't deny that you're racist. Racism is on a spectrum. So is white supremacy. And if you deny it, that proves it.

In a sense, yes, it does. The Kafka trap. You're not even aware that you're racist. Let me explain why you're racist. So it really is a nasty situation. In any case, DC Comics called me up and it was was I got to say, DC did the best they could. But they were being swarmed by the media over my existence working there. The thing that leftists do that they're so great at is they have accomplices in the media that will write the articles that you want them to write, that they want them to write. And then those will get published on the Daily Beast or any of these awful websites. And then

they'll refer to those articles as proof that you are exactly who they say you are. And then those get referenced in Wikipedia. Your Wikipedia is soon denouncing you as a whatever it is, a white supremacist or whatever they're calling you. And anyway, so that was that. DC Comics called me up, and God bless them. They tried to stand by me as much as they could, but somebody who I really liked there, a friend of the family, called me up, and I said, am I okay? Is everything okay?

And I could hear him pouring a drink into a little glass. I could hear the ice. And he just said, we can't renew your contract. Wow. And he took a big drink and I was like, I have a child. I have a baby. I have a baby with autism. I need my job. And he said, well, you've got four or five more issues on your contract and then that's it. We got to you've got time to find other work, you know. So it was absolutely terrifying. You you know you know what the mistake he made was what well you see what the you know the left would have a leftist would have done

what they would have immediately started yelling how dare you touch me you ever you ever watch fight club yes you know the scene where edward norton falls on the ground that's punching himself in the face yeah that's what the left does yeah so then they walk out and then people are like i saw him walk out with a black eye and then you're like you're gonna renew my contract that's what they do cry bullies right they say they they they accuse the boss of some kind of impropriety they exploit the law the eeoc uh the labor rights and stuff like that whereas you and on a sky just went well i guess my contract's done i guess i'll leave yeah but you know one thing i don't like is when people use the word can't. That's really annoying when what it means is I don't want to. We don't want to.

But we're like, we can't refree your contract. No, they could. They just chose not to. They could have. But who am I? I mean, they were DC Comics was in all kinds of trouble. They were trying to sign with AT&T. I'm making excuses for them.

They were trying to sell themselves to AT&T. They were trying to get good press. And they were deliberately, the left was deliberately putting all this stuff in the media to make it look like they were employing white supremacists. They really didn't have, as a business, a choice. And I give them a pass. I do. Because they've always been good to my family up until the end. And they're still writing me big royalty checks for movies like The Flash that are coming out.

Wow, really? Yeah. That's cool then. That's nice. Yeah. And they were barely with AT&T for like a year before getting sold again. checks for movies like the flash that are wow really yeah that's cool that's nice yeah yeah and they were barely with at&t for like a year before getting sold again yeah so i don't don't answer this if you can't i'm curious maybe you can answer in a more general sense you know so the flat with the flash movie you're getting like a royalty from that somehow i'll bet yeah

so i'm like how does that i i want I'll bet, yeah. So I'm like, how does that, I want to avoid asking anything too personal, but I'm curious, like a comic book artist who sees their work turned into a movie, like what kind of money can they make from that? Is it like a big deal? Is it like you're going to buy a mansion or is it like you might pay a phone bill?

Oh, no, we bought our house from the Justice League royalties. Whoa, from the movie? Yeah, yeah. Wow. So wait, wait, how do you get royalties for that because when you drew the pictures you have the right to that imagery so because of the the insane exploitation of comic book creators throughout the years uh you know i mean basically steve ditko doesn't own spider-man or doctor strange

at all he's got none of that he should be a billionaire and he died just a regular middle-class fellow. It doesn't make any sense. DC Comics kind of woke up to that idea and they created an incentive program for their creators. If you just want to sit there and draw their characters, that's fine. You'll get a paycheck. But if you want to create something for them, like I always did, I always created new stuff for them. If they look at it and say, this is really good, we're going to be using this in other media, they'll send you an incentive contract that you signed that grants you a percentage of those media rights in perpetuity. Wow. That's awesome. In perpetuity.

That's the way it should be. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So there are certain things like I own Iron Heights Prison. So whenever Flash sends a criminal to jail and they say and he's in Iron Heights, I get paid. So it's great. It's terrific.

Wow. But I have to imagine it's like one instance in one media thing. It's the combined collection of all the different media mentioning it that makes it substantial. Well, video games are very substantial. I mean, yeah, the combined, that definitely matters, but movies and video games are insane. The royalties we get for video games are great. I hear that for a musician,

if they can get their song into a movie is when they can retire. Yeah. I, there was a friend of a friend. So someone I know, knows a band that we would widely consider to be a one hit wonder. And the guy, I think, made like $10 million off of one song that ended up in a commercial.

It was a very, very popular song. Most people may have remembered it from the 2000s. But like they told me the story was like this guy went from being a middle class dude playing local shows, building up a following, making a decent living. Then one day, a phone company bought a song from him, and then he just didn't know what to do, and he just had 10 million bucks. The money just slapped his account, and he was like,

that's weird. It kind of, in a sense, destroyed his life, as I'm told, in that a buddy of mine said that when he first became very wealthy at a young age, he had an existential crisis because you don't know what to do. Everyone around you is in this machine. The relationships that you had were predicated upon like your work environment, your school environment, but now you've been removed from that. And you're just some dude

who wanders around and doesn't have to work where everyone else is like, you know, the story is, he'd call up his friend on like a Monday afternoon and be like, hey, you want to go out to eat? And they'd be like, bro, I'm at work. And he'd go, oh, when do you get off? They'd be like, I don't know, six or seven. Then I'm going home to see my family. And he'd go, oh. So all you rich people out there, when you take your friends out to lunch or dinner or whatever, let them know before the meal that you're going to pay for it.

It's so stressful to wonder the entire meal when you're broke. Am I going to have to pay for this? I don't know what I can order. So just let them know ahead of time. It's helpful. And also, be wary of inviting your friends on trips to europe like i i've i've seen that way too much well like people who are wealthier being like you have any you have any time this weekend we're going to prague it's like uh-huh dude is it on you yeah right what are you asking me yeah i mean

yeah so i think people need to be cognizant i think you know i know a lot of people who grew up well off do not understand that's not a normal thing people do right and also i know exactly what you're talking about ian because you know when i worked for like these media companies they'd be like hey let's go out to dinner and they would bring people from the root like from the from the from work who are making like maybe 80k a year but they'd want to go to like a five-star steakhouse and get like Wagyu or something. And then I'm just like, you realize you can't bring that,

like that's not nice. That's like a mean thing to do. Anyway, what we're talking about. It hasn't made you crazy, these royalties and the wealth that you're doing. I mean, maybe a little bit, you know. But no, I mean, listen, it's really nice of them. I'm really happy that DC is taking care of more of their professional creators.

Who's your favorite character you created? I guess it's Atrocitus just because he's so popular. And I really, I don't know, I just like him. I got the idea. I was watching 28 Days Later. Remember those movies? Yeah, of course. Like the zombies just spit blood and their eyes are red and they're

they're all of the the the mucus membrane and tears it's all blood and red and i just got this idea this is the red lantern course this is i'm sure you guys don't talk to many people like me this is how i am but here's the whole thing imagine here's the fantasy imagine you are wronged in such a profoundly awful way. Somebody kills your wife, your kid, blah, blah, blah. You go through the legal system and nothing happens. You can't get your justice. And the guy's just laughing at you that did it.

There he is. There's atrocities. And so you're so angry. Obviously, you're filled with this rage that you can't even comprehend, but then a little red ring flies down from outer space and looks at you and talks to you and says, put me on, and together we'll get the vengeance that you're looking for, that you deserve.

Now, do you put the ring on? Do you do that? Because the minute you put the ring on? Do you do that? Because the minute you put the ring on, you are now overwhelmed with rage to the point where you're spitting up like red blood and energy and everything. And now you're entirely consumed by vengeance. You've become the Incredible Hulk, essentially.

And yes, you get your revenge. You can go get this guy and punish him and destroy his whole world. But now you've lost your soul. And that's what the Red Lantern Corps is all about. Like it's this Faustian bargain that comes with putting on the ring. Can you take the ring off? The ring leaves you when it's ready to be, when it's destroyed you.

You know, it's like it leaves you. Now, somebody like Atrocitus has just mastered the ring. He wears it all the time. It's never going to leave him. He's the leader of the Red Lantern Corps. See that symbol on his chest? Let me ask you about before all this stuff went down,

did you notice in the industry before your cancellation an encroaching wokeness, cult-like mentality? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I didn't understand what it was. A lot of a lot of strange women, I hate to put it this way, sorry ladies, a lot of strange women kind of suddenly showed up in the comic book business

and basically came at us with this criticism that this was clearly a boys club, it was unsafe for women, and everything that you guys are putting out is sexist and it's racist and it's homophobic. And well, we're going to fix that. If you hire us and you should hire us, we're going to fix that. Because if you don't hire us, you're sexist. start basically making changes to this sort of male-dominated hobby. This is a male-driven culture. Obviously it is. These power fantasies are mostly for boys. But they started to make these changes. The women suddenly, who used to be beautiful and curvaceous, we used to be able to glorify and exaggerate the female form.

Suddenly we had to cover them up. Breasts became smaller and smaller until they were just sort of pecs. There was actually a weird phenomenon called the unipec, which was just one breast with like a stretched cloth over it because you didn't even want to define breasts in any way. And superheroes. And basically, everybody got scared. And then this other thing happened because there were women in the workplace. Of course, the men started flirting with the women. God help them. These guys started to ask girls on dates and then the girls would say that that was sexual harassment. And that's when cancel culture really started.

I saw some very talented guys get their lives turned upside down because they were stupid enough to ask so-and-so at the bar at a convention if she wanted to come up to their hotel room. And this wasn't like a power disparity. There was one case where an editor with a lot of power was putting his hands on women. I understand that. This was different. This was a case of peers. We're both creators. You're a female. I'm a male. I'm going to ask you on a date. I feel threatened if I say no to you. All of the stuff that happened to me too hit comics pretty hard. So there was that

whole situation which caused everybody to really get in line. You did not want to question these women. You didn't want to start it to realize they were activists. You don't want to question these activists at all. Allow them to make these changes. And then the other thing that happened was there was a guy named Orson Scott Card, who was a very, very famous sci-fi author. And he's also Latter-day Saint. I was raised Mormon, so I know that he's Latter-day Saint. And so he shares the values that I was raised with. He came out and said he disagreed with gay marriage. He didn't think it was something, marriage was something between a man and a woman, and it was a holy thing. Gay marriage shouldn't be a thing.

And then DC tried to hire him to do a Superman story. And the entire industry went crazy trying to get this Superman story, a short story by this legendary Orson Scott Card. Look him up. Legendary author. Canceled. And that was an amazing thing to me. I was like, why can't we just publish the

story? I don't understand why disagreeing with him about this one political idea means that he can't write a Superman story when everybody loves his work. So that's when I started to see Woke creeping into comics. And by the time 2015 rolled around, my peers were saying strange things to me they were saying you're a capitalist you're a republican right ethan you care about money uh imagine this 50 of the country 50 of the world is made up of women and we're not marketing to them at all are we uh if we started marketing and changing these comics to appeal to more women and hiring more women you understand what would happen we would double our income we would double our revenue and you as somebody who cares about money because you're

a capitalist and i was like aren't we all capital no we're not okay just me uh that means something to you i'm sure uh and uh that was the philosophy that was the big lie uh that allowed something to you, I'm sure. And that was the philosophy. That was the big lie that allowed comics to come in and become woke, I think. From there, you hire activists, they hire more activists, and the whole thing erodes from the inside. And then people stop buying. Yeah, when you want to appeal

to women, then the guys maybe are not getting appealed to. Like, you can't appeal to both, I would think. You might be able to. It's even weirder than that. Lego. Lego did a study, which I always cite. And this is amazing. I don't think anybody's thought of it this way.

But Lego was wondering why girls don't play with Lego toys. They're boys. But they're not really gender based. They're just bricks. So why are little boys playing with Legos, but girls aren't? Why is that? So they got a study together. They got 2,500 kids, 1,250 boys playing with Legos, but girls aren't? Why is that? So they got a study together. They got 2,500 kids, 1,250 boys, 1,250 girls, and their parents. And they put

Lego figurines, let's just say a Batman Lego set in front of these kids. And they just studied how these boys and girls played with their Lego toys to try to figure out what the missing problem was. What's the missing piece? Well, the boys pick up Batman, pick up a little Batman figurine, and they become Batman. That's the whole thing. They take on those traits. They imagine they're Batman, and that's how boys fantasize. That's how boys play. Meanwhile, the little girls pick up Batman and Batman becomes them. They project themselves onto Batman and suddenly Batman is acting like they are.

Wow. Which is why Barbie is so popular. What's Barbie's personality? Who's Barbie? She's whoever the little girl who's playing with Barbie is. We were just talking about that yesterday. Boys pretend that they are He-Man and girls pretend that Barbie is them. That's right. Wow. I used to do that with G is them. That's right. Wow.

I used to do that with G.I. Joe's. I would become the guy, Duke or Scarlet or whoever the character, and we would act like me and Steve. We'd set them all up and I'd be like, I'm coming. And he's like, no, look out, look out. And he'd be the Cobra commander. And we were acting as the characters. I don't know. I've never put my personality onto a doll before. It's why they say where a lot of the representation stuff comes in,

it's a feminine trait that's been learned by males to look at representation as if they have to see their exact selves in another character. I don't know if when I played with Legos and stuff, if I became the character or whatever, like if I was playing with Batman, Batman was doing Batman stuff. You know what I mean?

Like I would have like Batman and like was doing Batman stuff. You know what I mean? Like, I would have, like, Batman and, like, Cyclops, and I'd be, Batman would be, like... But, Tim, you knew who they were. You understand? And they were themselves. They were themselves. Yeah, they were not me. Batman was Batman. You were acting as them, which is why, as a male... Well, I mean, like, this is what I'm trying to say, like, I wasn't going, like, I'm Batman,

and I will fight you. It was like, I have Batman and Cyclops, and Batman would be like, yeah, two of two, like, so they were two distinct characters of themselves that I would have do battle when I was- Were any of them you? No.

Okay. See, that's the whole thing. That's what I'm saying. Like, not that I would be like, I am Batman and like walk around

and project myself and as like, Batman becomes me. I'm saying like, I would view them as them, as their characters. Of course. But for the girls,

you're saying like, they would be like, look, Jenny would be playing with Batman. She'd be like, this is Jenny. So she'd have the Batman doll, and it would be called Jenny, and that would be her?

Like that kind of thing? Pretty much. I mean, whatever a little girl's aspirations are, she'll project them onto Barbie. Does Barbie have distinct traits? Like Batman has Batman, has Bruce Wayne, Batman has parents,

you know what I'm saying? Does Barbie have distinct traits that they would even be able to quantify other than what their physical appearance is? Deliberately, no. Yeah, exactly. That's why it's so successful. So now imagine, I don't think men and women change as they grow older in that way. That's just, that's a big difference between men and women.

So now imagine that you're a creative person who's writing Batman. Now men just go, okay, well, I'm going to write Batman as I know Batman. He's going to be Batman. He's not going to be me. I don't want to put myself into Batman. He's going to be Batman. I'm going to do the best Batman story I can do. These ladies, Batman starts getting sassy. They start to write Batman with more of their own traits. And soon before you know it, it's like these characters are unrecognizable. They're sitting around having coffee and bars and having chit chat and stuff. And they seem to be unable to actually, and I'm not saying all of of them there are some ladies who are great and the senti shout out louise simonson great writers but many of them are just you know

projecting themselves onto these characters and maybe it's because they really just don't care that much are there specific examples of character like a character you can think of that was i guess say feminized i don't know if that's the right word we're not talking about like masculine and feminine behavior it's not necessarily men and women. I'll tell you one thing I don't like, and I don't know if this is actually a remnant of this, but you saw the Batman film? Yes.

I absolutely hated it. Really? The new one. I think me and you were the only people that didn't like it. Because Batman was totally incompetent. It didn't make sense for his character. Batman is something to behold because he is the best of us he is a human being who used light utilizes the best

technology strategy so to create a but it's batman early on he was dumb as a box of rocks no he's always at 10 intelligence was it recently not in that movie that's the point in the movie they made him really stupid hero and when he's jumping off the building and he falls and gets hurt, I'm like, and then you had the woke Selina Kyle white privilege thing. Like, they just ruined what Batman was. That line was particularly bad because the rest of the movie's dialogue was written toading as a superhero flick, that line just takes you out of it completely. Question, Ethan. Did you notice when the women would come in and start to change the system, did they have kids or were they childless? They're childless largely yes something that someone pointed out is that women

that aren't mothers tend to try to mother society in they get into hr and they'll try and mother the company they'll try and like protect and nurture and change and like no that's racist do it this way do it this you know i'll give you i'll give you my experience working with women it's very interesting uh i worked at an office and i was the only male manager and the office was having problems. And so revenue was down. My approach was our revenue is dropping. If we do not reassess and restructure what we are doing, we will cease to exist. Their attitude was no.

Everyone bunker down, huddle together and we'll wait out the storm. And I thought that was interesting because it was like the women were adamant we're going to keep doing exactly what we're doing and just tighten up and my attitude was it's not working anymore this strategy does not work we have to adapt so i wonder if that's a an element of a difference in the male and female the male we have to go out take the risk and go on an adventure. And there, there's was,

I mean, think about it in, in, in terms of like an old tribal situation, the women wanting to huddle together in the cave to protect each other. And the men wanting to go out and venture off and try and find new sources of food or, or,

you know, some, some way to solve the problem. That's what kind of felt like to me. Fascinating. Did you see the, did you watch the movie Prey on Hulu? Uh-uh.

It was the Predator remake that they did last year with the girl. Oh, yeah. I was one of the few people that didn't like it because they said her motivation at the time period when that movie came out made no sense, that she wanted to go to be a hunter just to prove she can.

I'm like, that's not realistic. And nobody would be... Let's address the male-female be. Let's, let's, this is actually, let's address the male-female motivation. Captain America versus Captain Marvel. I love this breakdown. Have you seen both movies, I imagine, right? Yeah.

Captain America. Let's talk about the cultural success. And I want everyone to understand this. And I want you to tell your friends. And I want you to buy the movie. And I want you to somehow make the movie number one on Netflix or whatever. Captain America is a marvel film from about 10 years to 10 years ago right more than that now it's about a scrawny uh developmentally like uh um physically uh a weakling a weakling born with a weak heart perhaps. Like someone suffering from many physical ailments who is so desperate to fight for his country, to help others, that he tries to cheat his way into the military.

And he is of such strong heart, he is chosen for the super soldier program. So here's a guy of good moral character, standing and honor who wants to serve his country fight against the bad guys and sacrifice whatever it takes for his community he defends his friends by fighting in the streets and then there's that scene where he jumps on the grenade his motivation is to sacrifice himself for everyone else self-sacrifice self-sacrifice captain marvel's motivation was to benefit herself and to be able to do whatever she wanted. Captain America, his whole motivation is we don't trade lives. We're not going to sacrifice one for any.

He's a deontological moralist. Thanos is utilitarian. Thanos wants to kill half the universe, save half the life. Captain America says we don't trade lives. Captain Marvel robs a guy in the beginning of the movie. He says you should smile. So she steals his clothes and his motorcycle. Think about

that motivation. That is the woke feminist motivation of I can do whatever I want. Then think about the other character motivations. Jude Law's character says control your emotions. And then finally at the end she goes no! And that is her ultimate motivation.

The story arc for her is she can do whatever she wants because she's powerful and she shouldn't have to listen to any man who tells her to control herself. Captain America's motivation is, I will die for you so you can live a better life. It is the Hillary Clinton quote personified when she said

women are the real victims of war because their husbands and their brothers and their sons die. That exemplifies it perfectly. That's amazing. Self-sacrifice versus self-validation. That is the difference between the way I was taught to write and draw superheroes and the way superheroes are being presented today. Right there. Everything is, you know, all of these new superheroes that are coming out of Marvel, they're all selfie-taking, self-aggrandizing narcissists. Eating lunch and dinner together at diners that's what they're doing there's no you know my book cyber frog cyber frog says in the in the very you know in the very first couple of pages you know he just says because people don't like him he's ugly cyber frog

so he says i've found something to love about humans and i'm willing to die for them you know and that's that's the thing that's heroism to me how many modern superheroes are stories of young kids who wish they had superpowers modern ones not too many you don't think so i don't i'm not sure well maybe um who are you thinking about i'm thinking about the Captain Marvel... Ms. Marvel? Ms. Marvel. Yeah.

Right? So there's a story of like, wow, I've got two powers and I'm going to be an Avenger too. Well, that's the meta nature of Hollywood now that everything has to be meta. Shazam. Shazam. No, not so much. Not so much. You don't think he wanted the wizard's powers?

He got pulled in and brought into it. It was different. I'm thinking about just like, I'm thinking about Ms. Marvel specifically. And I was thinking about Miles Morales, you know, in the new Into the Spider-Verse. He's like, wow, I got spider powers too. And then I was thinking about growing up watching X-Men. And in X-Men, typically the kids who got powers were panicked and scared. And didn't want it to happen.

And the parents were freaking out. And the story with the X-Men stuff I grew up on was it was actually bad to be a mutant. It was scary. It was bad. And they weren't happy about it. It was often depicted as like your mutant powers were a curse, not a gift. And then Charles Xavier would be like, no, no, don't worry. I'm going to help you through this. Nowadays, the mentality among younger people

is more so like, I want to be that. Give me power. Give me power. Yeah. I felt like DC was all, maybe not always, but I didn't read a lot of DC, but it felt like DC was more just about raw power and Marvel was about psychological stuff.

Did you guys get that vibe? Yeah, I mean, DC Comics was aspirational heroes. Heroes to look up to. Heroes to feel hope. They're going to save you. See, that's the thing I love about Superman, that they flopped with the new movies. I mean, when you see Christopher Reeve,

you know everything's going to be okay. You're like, oh, Superman's here. Finally. I'm terrified of the Man of Steel version of Superman from the Zack Snyder movies. Can I just complain about the scene in Batman v Superman where Batman is about to kill Superman

and then he's like, you're letting him kill Martha and then Batman goes, your mom's name is Martha? My mom's name is Martha my mom's name is Martha too as if anybody actually calls their mom by their name what should have happened and I'll say it every single time is that when Batman had the spear to Superman's neck what would have made it work

is then Batman saying the famous line let this be the day you never forget the day I defeated you and then throw it they should have just recreated that scene and then he throws the spear away and he says my intention was always to make sure you knew you were not invincible not to actually kill you and then it would be like damn that but instead he was like my mom's name's martha too want to be friends i was like oh no yes it was he basically says like i could have i could have made the i could have made it out of a stronger mix of kryptonite.

I could have made this far stronger and killed you much easier if I wanted to. Yeah, it should have been. He proved his point. It was never. Because Batman's not a murderer. He wouldn't arbitrarily want to kill Superman. His point was to make sure Superman knew he wasn't a god. You know, instead.

All this, like, my mother is your mother. We're brothers all this crap this like nepotism is like european uh monarchies they're all cousins like it's a bunch of this crap it's like psychological manipulation to make you think it is some value if the guy's your brother if he's an idiot he's an idiot this is uh what i was always told is that marvel was people trying to be heroes and d DC was heroes trying to be people. There you go. So like,

I noticed watching the Justice League cartoons, they always refer to each other as their first given names. Batman doesn't call Superman Superman, he calls him Clark. Clark calls him Bruce. They refer to each other as people, but they are heroes. And then the interesting thing is Superman's identity is Superman, Kal-El, and his secret identity

is clark kent whereas in marvel often it's like peter parker is the person and his secret and secret identity is or like his you know the costume is spider-man whereas for superman the costume is clark kent who are you guys favorite superhero of all time superman he just is the definitive hero i believe believe in him. You like Batman better? That's why I was really disappointed by the movie. I love the comic fan trope of

given enough time, Batman can defeat anyone. Bat God. They called that at DC. Batman with enough planning. I feel like Superman could kill Batman at any time if he wanted to. Batman carries Kryptonite. He blasts him from orbit. Batman with enough planning. But I feel like Superman could kill Batman at any time if he wanted to. Nope. Batman carries kryptonite.

Yeah, but he blasts him from orbit. I would say technically, but I guess the issue is there are a lot of super powerful villains who are on par with Superman that haven't been able to take down Batman because Batman is a figment of our imagination. What makes him a good character is his ability to survive and overcome with no superpowers. That's why I like Batman. Granted, he's a very, very rich dude, you know, and he's able to buy this stuff. You know, it is what it is.

The fantasy is we could be Batman. Yep. We could train ourselves. We could have enough money. We could be Batman. Yeah. That's the whole thing. But you can't, you know, fly.

You can't do those things. Batman's just a dude. But he's a martial artist. He trains That's the whole thing. But you can't, you know, fly. You can't do those things. Batman's just a dude, but he's a martial artist. He trains right. He eats right. He gets beat up. He gets injured sometimes. He gets his back broken, and he rises back up to the challenge. That's a superhero, man.

That's fantastic. I mean, early Batman was silly, and they made him really amazing throughout the years. I really love the history of how, like, the golden age of comics was kind of hokey. Superman could fire little Supermans from his hand. Did you know that? Mm-hmm. Yeah, it makes no sense. You know, whatever.

They invented new powers all the time in the Silver Age. Whatever. Oh, yeah, the Silver Age. The 80s. No, Silver Age was from, like, the 50s to the 70s, I think, the early 70s. It was the golden age before that golden age was the like yeah the 1930s or late 30s to the early 50s but i want to say the 80s is when things i think got really mature yeah and the writing got really good um and then actually i think one of

the most profound moments in comics but i guess guess it's technically cartoons, is Mr. Freeze, the story arc, the retconning of his history in the Batman animated series. I think the first cartoon ever won an Emmy. And that was, I think that was, was it really that the first, maybe not the first time, but one of the first times

a villain's story arc was sympathetic. It used to be all one dimensional. I'm going to rule the world. I deserve power. That's what I love about the old Batman in the animated series. It's actually super anti-corporate. All of them are just generic corporate villains, but Mr. Freeze was actually

a fairly three-dimensional character given the story with his wife in that. Wasn't Clayface's story in the animated series that he was a guy who was negatively impacted by a cosmetic product that turned him into a monster? There were a bunch of different Clayfaces. One was an actor. I think there were like five different clay faces. He was like, he put on a cosmetic and then his skin started to melt.

Manbat was great in that, too. Manbat was great. It's Mr. Freeze, right? Yeah. He was always one-dimensional and then they made his story arc that his wife was dying and he would stop at nothing to save her life. And then you're like, you feel bad because he's a bad guy. Plus his delivery on all that dialogue in that episode

is so good. They should do an arc where he gets an honorary degree from Harvard and then they call him, he's like, I'm Dr. Freeze now. No, you're not. It's not even a real degree. I'm just kidding. Just wait. There's going to be a comic that comes out soon where Mr. Freeze

teams up with Greta Thunberg to reduce the global They'll do that. She got the honorary degree. No, that's why I brought it up. Marvel and DC. Look, I hope they keep producing this garbage and they destroy themselves. And then your comics, all caps. We're here.

Comic Skate's here to step in. That's a good... See, we love comic books. I could talk about this all day long. I grew up with these superheroes. I love these superheroes. I've been a creator. I've worked on these superheroes for most of my life now. But,

unfortunately, the way things are at Marvel and DC, they're inhospitable. Remember, what was that super woke comic they made with Safe Space? It never came out. And they should with safe space and it never came out they never released that what is it the new new warriors yeah new new warriors I wonder if that was

a joke like I feel like that whole thing was a hoax it definitely became one yeah it sure did oh what a horrible concept look at this okay for those that don't know you need to understand that the hugging brother and sister right they were brother and sister yeah snowflake and safe space and one of them they actually described one of them they actually described as being a stereotypical jock which i've never seen a stereotypical jock with

pink hair but that's just me wait wait the best one is the door of the explorer trailblazer is that that they called her chubby inuit yeah Who had a backpack that she could pull anything out of? Yeah. And the other one had- The door of the Explorer. And the other one is powered by internet gas. Yeah, the internet. What were- Oh, yeah, that guy with the green visor. This had to have been a joke.

It was a troll. It must have been. It wasn't as bad as Gotham High. It's on the website, introducing. Yeah, it's real. I mean, if they had released it, people would have bought that. I would have bought that. This is an important story for those that don't understand the culture war.

What happened, in my opinion, is that Marvel started getting a bunch of emails saying, you need to do this. And then someone went to a board meeting and said, this is what kids want. You've got to sell a product they'll buy. And they went, you're right. Then they made it. And they got roasted and said, we don't understand. They're emailing us saying they want this because they don't realize it is a it is a cult of annoying loud people and

they wasted tons of money and they're destroying themselves by supporting this but they don't buy it's not kids buying these comics right the the majority of the the large-scale audience is still men in their 30s yeah it's 40s and 50s now. And that's the problem. Kids have moved on to manga. I mean, the kids, the teenagers are buying manga now. We lost two generations to manga. From crappy storylines? I don't know. It's because manga storylines are better.

I grew up on Batman and DC animated series, Justice League and X-Men and all that stuff. And then when it started getting bad i just went straight to to manga stuff where the storylines were still good dragon ball z i grew up with that as well and so then as i'm getting older and look i'm a big fan of static shock but it was it was preachy it was okay i liked the show but it was very preachy then Then I see Naruto. And the only preaching in it is,

you know, try and save your enemies. Like the character arc for Naruto is that, I absolutely love this writing, some of the best writing ever done. Have you ever read or watched Naruto? So I'll give you the very quick breakdown of the best of my abilities. For those that aren't familiar,

Naruto is about a world where there are ninjas, and they can use inner energy called chakra to do, you know, I guess you'd call them spells. Anyway, Naruto is an orphan. His dad died sacrificing himself to save their village. Naruto finds a teacher, a guy named Jiraiya, who's this legendary ninja. I would call them techniques instead of spells. But like throw fireballs and stuff yeah and they can like walk on water and so anyway naruto gets a teacher he's this old creepy guy he's a pervert he wrote several books uh he wrote these books because he was you know inspired throughout his life

naruto eventually encounters a villain in the story arc who goes by the name of Pain. And they fight. And you find out that this guy, Pain's real name is Nagato. And he is a former pupil of Jiraiya, the same teacher Naruto now has. And then after this great battle, Naruto is like on the verge of defeating this guy, and then he says this famous line of, you know, like, I will save the world or something like this. He's like, I'm going to be the hero and make my enemies my friends,

and I'm going to not allow the pain, and it was a direct quote from Jiraiya, his teacher, who wrote this book about a character, and Jiraiya had been quoting his pupil. So basically what happens is when Jiraiya's younger he trains this kid who's idealistic wants to save the world who says this inspiring line as like a 13 year old jiraiya is so moved by it he writes this book which is you know he then teaches naruto and so i love this because the villain is now facing down this younger you know ninja who says his own quote back to him,

realizing he's become the villain he swore to fought, and Naruto now embodies his past ideals and ideology. I'm like, that was just brilliant. Wow. It was really, really good. That's terrific. I can't do it justice. You have to read it.

But basically, he says the line, and then the villain's like, that's my quote. You're saying it to me. That's who I used to be. That's what we're supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be teaching lessons like that in comics. We're not supposed to, you know, be trying to instill politics or ideology in anyone. We're just supposed to be teaching kids, like, basic morals like that.

How to be a hero. Self-sacrifice. Put others before you. Save the villain, of course. There's very little of that. Like you mentioned earlier with Captain Marvel, that's the funniest part about that, is it's so simple to understand that Captain America

telling a story of self-sacrifice and wanting to help his fellow man, and even the idea that you could even tell a story now about an idealistic person wanting to serve his country, they probably wouldn't even do that story anymore. Let's talk about the first big three of Marvel. Iron Man, a military industrialist who's selling weapons for profit, has a profound experience and realizes his weapons are being sold to both sides, causing this conflict, and then says, I'm not doing this anymore. And it destroys his company. So he builds himself a suit of armor

taken to his own hands. And then he fights the military industrial complex warmonger, ironmonger, to stop it from happening. And then the company does better than ever. They do renewable energy. Like, that is an amazing arc of a guy who had everything and was this cocky a-hole, who still is. But he then decides it's not worth it to be a part of this problem captain america scrawny young guy wants to serve his country we should talk about the cultural victories of the first marvel movies are then thor an arrogant prince who has everything gets

his powers taken from him and comes to realize humility i'm like these are great character arts that's stan lee but yeah i mean you know stan lee i mean those are his stories you understand like uh we don't have guys like that anymore you want to know why marvel is in the rut that it is it's because stan lee's gone why is disney the way it is walt disney's gone why is star wars the way it is george lucas sold it i mean you know there are rare creative geniuses that come along and they have the heart uh and and the empathy to be able to write stories that touch people in a unique way and build their childhoods. And then when they leave or they die, Jared Tolkien, gone, then other people parasitically inherit it and destroy it. These are people who are forged in the world

surrounded by war that's absolutely the lessons being told now what we have are people who are forged by gluttony oh yeah we were talking about writing stories of what they're owed when we were when we were reviewing prey we were talking about how nobody in this movie looks like they've lived through anything actually difficult in their entire life nobody looks like they've lived in the wilderness nobody looks like they've ever had to hunt difficult in their entire life. Nobody looks like they've lived in the wilderness. Nobody looks like they've ever had to hunt for any type of food in their life, right? So people are trying to write stories now from a world that they just can't understand. Stan Lee, was he Silver Age?

Was he around in the early days? Yeah, yeah. Stan Lee was interesting because... World War II veteran, sorry. World War II veteran. Yeah, he was around in the Golden Age too. But the Silver Age, he launched it. He really did launch the Silver Age, even though before there was Flash and Green Lantern, Hal Jordan that really launched the Silver Age.

But Stanley was so disgusted by the politics of comics in the 1950s with the Comics Code and the way things had become so silly, that he just wanted to quit. And he told his wife. I'm so inspired by this. He told his wife he wanted to quit, and his wife said, just do one your way before you quit. 1961's Fantastic Four number one. That was him doing it his way.

Launch the Marvel Revolution. That's when the Silver Age really took off. Stan Lee enlisted in 1942 after the attack on Pearl Harbor. What a guy. What a guy. It's one of the things like gone are the days there used to be dozens and dozens of actors

all who'd served in the military who had extensive military whether through draft or because they enlisted because they believe in that country and as that generation of people has died off you start seeing that less and less of the stories less and less of our culture's empathy towards its own country is gone. We talk about this every

time an actor passes away that was older, right? It's like they were born at a time when there was a relative amount of support for America and they believed in their country and they believed in what it stood for. Now, I believe a lot of that has kind of been manufactured in a lot of ways by the media and that there's a lot of problems there. But you don't see that anymore. I think like Adam Driver is like the only one I can think of off the top of my head that's a newer age actor that served in the military.

And you just don't see that. And it's going to be, it's going to lead to even more anti-American storytelling, whether it's in comics or in film and television. You know what's interesting about manga is that there is a common trope. Black Clover. Have you ever heard of it? No.

Another really great show, really great manga. I've not, I stopped after a while, but in this world everybody, not everybody, but many people will get a magic grimoire and magic abilities. So one day a grimoire comes to you and then you have your book of spells

and you can cast certain spells and certain elements there's one kid who really wants to be a magic knight and work for the you know he wants to join the service basically but he has no magic powers so unity does he works out until he's so incredibly powerful that when he's in these like when he's in the trials to become, you know, a knight or whatever, he has no spells, but he just, like, they, he's extremely powerful. Like, he jumps and the ground cracks and he shoots in the air super fast and they're like, what? When, when they first see him with no magic, they're like, what a pathetic loser. How could he even try and bother? But then he's so physically powerful that he actually ends up winning. And then there's, like,

an arc where he, like, a book does appear to him. It's an anti-magic book. He gets a sword. And all of his capabilities are basically his physical ability to wield it. There's other arcs too, like anti-magic and stuff. But the general idea was you can work hard and if you do you can be a magic knight.

It's the Rocky story. It works every single time it's tried. Just a normal guy who's determined. He's an underdog. The underdog story. I mean, it works every single time it's tried. Just a normal guy who's determined. You know, he's an underdog. The underdog story. He works his way up. And through hard work, through diligence, and through faith, all of these things, he becomes a hero. And self-sacrifice.

You can tell that story over and over and over again. He beats unbeatable odds, you know, just out of sheer will and determination. Nobody's ever going to get tired of that. You could tell that story with a million different characters. They're doing it in Japan right now. That's why they're kicking our ass. They're raising our kids.

Right. I mean, look, I like it. I think a lot of it is really great. Not all of it. Some of it's stupid. You know, not everything is perfect. Bleach, for instance, also very, very good. More of a reluctant thrust into adventure hero's journey.

Still, great story, great ideas. You're not getting beaten over the head with the preaching. It seems like I'm thinking about the age of comics. We have the Golden Age. We have the Silver Age, which ended in the 70s. Is that about right? Yeah. Then the Bronze Age was like the 70s. Is that about right? Yeah. Then the Bronze Age was like,

you know, the 70s through the 1980s. People are saying what this is today is called the Iron Age. That's funny. It's getting worse. It's rusting.

No, no. The Iron Age, the Iron Age is really, you know, independent creators rising up and taking over the culture because we have no choice.

I would like to see a Diamond Age, if possible. We're on the verge of graphene anyway. Also remember, a lot of those characters and a lot of these amazing stories were written at a time when these were not major conglomerates that were homogenizing their storytelling

down to the most basic, safe, and inoffensive model that they could make for people to watch. So people were willing to take risks with their storytelling down to the most basic, safe, and inoffensive model that they could make for people to watch. So people were willing to take risks with their storytelling in a way that they're not willing to do anymore. Or the ones that are aren't getting jobs by these corporate conglomerates that are selling these major properties. Yeah, let's talk about taking risks, Ethan, because I want to hear about Cyberfrog, too. What's the story? Oh, OK. cyber frog too what's the story oh okay so cyber frog is the story of uh uh an evasion an alien

swarm of hornets that goes from world to world and just takes over and destroys they're they're the ultimate parasites uh they live in the in these gigantic hive ships that are made of the desiccated and digested flesh of a million alien races. And they're coming to Earth to make their last stand. And the oxygen-rich atmosphere of Earth is going to allow them to be strengthened and unbeatable. There's a world out there called Perdonia that has survived this. They're the only world that was able to fend off the Vespas. And we don't know how yet. But they get this idea to send an agent with a secret power to planet Earth that will be able to fend off the Vespas. We don't know how yet, but they get this idea to send an agent with a secret power

to planet Earth that'll be able to fend off the Vespas and stop them. Within this being is the ability to push back the Vespas and destroy their invasion. That person ends up being Cyberfrog. Through a sheer accident, he accidentally becomes a frog and a machine cyberfrog. But he still has the power to stop this invasion, except that he fails. The year is 1998. Bill Clinton gives his speech confessing that he lied to the American people. And right then, August 16th, 1998, the invasion hits. Bill Clinton's pulled away from the cameras and the entire world is swarmed by these hornets and and i don't i don't want to too much spoilers but just an incentive i'm on like page three and

a guy explodes yeah are they like i don't want to yeah i also don't want to spoil anything are they like mechanical horn are they like no they're they're they're alien hornets. They are very large, super intelligent alien hornets. What they do is they chew up human beings. They see humans as cattle, livestock. They chew up human beings and their bones with their saliva. They can make paper like hornets make nests. They paper over our cities with our own bodies. And they can change with their saliva, change our blood into honey to feed their young.

First book's called Blood Honey because of that. So that's the situation. Cyber Frog is absolutely obliterated in the first issue. He has to go into regenerative hibernation, wakes up in the year 2018, and the Vespas have just dominated planet Earth. Humanity's been basically torn to shreds. Like 90% of humans are gone 10 of them are

still around and hiding uh and that's where wreck planet picks up uh it is cyber frog alone versus the entire world so cyber frog to wreck planet uh it is a hero's journey um you know a cyber frog in that book asks himself how he can make a change. Like, how do I begin to change this? How do I begin to fix this? And his best friend, Heather Swain, is living in the woods. She survived those 20 years. She has a daughter now who lost her father. And he just realizes that step one is to try to take the frown off of this little girl's

face and try to make her life better. You know, step in for dad and sort of, you know, make her life happier. And that's the first way to kind of save humanity. This is episode two of four, is that right? Two of four, but I'm going to keep going. Yeah, the next one's called Red Extermination. I'm launching that one on the 4th of July, Independence Day.

Now, certainly going independent and leaving the big successful industry, certainly you're not making lots of money off of this venture, I'd imagine. First one made $1.2 million. The second one made $1.45 million. So it's actually doing better. It's doing great. This is crowdfunding. And this is the wonderful thing about it like you know the comic book industry doesn't have any incentive

uh to make the comics that people want because their parent companies are paying for them we talk about that a lot we're in the pro the post-profit age for a lot of these companies that especially for comics i think for like for warner brothers it's a write-off like they don't they don't know like they're you Zazz Lab's like, we have a comics division? You mean the written ones? Holy crap. They see their comics. Comics are just sort of going to

reflect the political stances of their parent companies. And that's a reason to keep them around for ESG purposes, etc. But we at Comicsgate, and Comicsgate is basically the term that describes an affiliation of comic book creators and fans who are

tired of woke in comics. We love comic books. We're not going to support the mainstream anymore with our money. We're going to make our own comics and we're going to use social media to promote these comics and crowd funding to be able to fund them. Now, I do want to say there are some really funny spoofs of manga there's one called walmite uh so are you familiar

with my hero academia yeah yeah yeah so it's donald trump as uh you know like the main guy all might right it's called walmite yeah i remember that there's a couple of other ones that are really funny oh yeah the one punch manoof. I can't remember which that one was. We have them over in the other room. I don't know if they'll look up, but they're really funny. I'm looking at Cyberfrog's first appearance in 1994 in Hall of Heroes. So when I first started in comics, that was the whole thing. Now, I did about 10 issues, 12 issues of Cyberfrog in the 1990s and then went to work for DC. So what's so wonderful about this is the idea of bringing a character

that was created with enthusiasm in the 1990s. It's very meta. And trying to make him work in 2018 in a world that's infested with woke. The Vespas are the woke, you understand? So, you know, you've got a character who's used to existing and thriving in a world of Deadpool and the sarcasm

and the ultraviolence. And he wakes up in 2018 where the world has been utterly taken over by these creatures that disrespect everything that humanity built. Philadelphia looks even worse now. You can see it on the first page of the book. You can see what Philadelphia, open it up and look. Next page. Boom, That's Philly. Aren't you glad you left? Yes. That's amazing art, man. That's crazy. Does Powers like jumping?

Can he jump super high? Yeah, he can jump. He's got a tongue. Those are his natural abilities, but the whole thing is, his mother is a spaceship, a living spaceship who represents the internet. When they're connected together, he can rapidly evolve and change his body to meet any threats. So she's been taken out by the Vespas.

He's offline through this entire book and therefore he has to rely on his natural abilities. So the cyber aspect is connected to the mothership? That's correct. Yeah. And of course that represents the internet and communication and all that stuff. The whole thing is... I guess the issue that I see with all of this is if we make stuff because we like it, we're a bunch of old dudes. How do we get this stuff to younger people to inspire them and share the ideas and ideology that will make their lives better? I think you get through to the parents and then they end up watching it with their kids sitting on their lap. I'm seeing more of that. I'm seeing a lot of friends of mine who love old comics, love old media, who aren't, they're not watching new Star Trek with their kids.

They're watching old Star Trek with their kids. Well, hold on a second. I don't think there's any reason to be really afraid. Understand, we have the internet. I mean, we have the internet. They didn't have that in the early 1990s or anything like that. People were dependent on these big corporations to get their comics out to people. I'm on your show right now.

Probably people are buying Cyberfrog because I'm telling them about it. We have this mass communication device where we can potentially speak to 7 billion people. There shouldn't be any reason to stop us. There shouldn't be a way to stop us. People got to watch The next generation with their kids. Yeah. Oh, Star Trek next gen? Yeah.

The best. The best Star Trek, in my opinion. I think part of it also, Ethan, is that people need to learn to, the ones who want to go out on their own are going to have to understand there's going to be more work. That you don't have the infrastructure that's built up through these mega corporations that do the printing, they do the packaging, they do all this stuff. It's going to be more work, but you'll reap more of a reward and you'll be able to keep the profits because you own the IP.

Yeah, owning the IP is amazing. You own your own material. I own Cyberfrog outright, which is the first thing that I've actually owned entirely by myself, which is great. It is a lot of work. A lot of work.

I was going to say, we talked about this like a year ago that we wanted to launch some kind of comic or manga style portal for TimCast.com and I've talked to a few people and the challenge is the amount of work that goes in. Like you said, how many years did it take to make this? Two years to make

that one year to fund it and in between we made action figures and a bunch of other stuff as well. I should have bought some. In order to actually make a subscription-based weekly thing is a tremendous undertaking. How many people would you need to put something together? I wouldn't be able to draw it myself. I might be able to write it. But it's not the production.

It's the fulfillment. Because we don't have the direct market. Cyberfrog isn't in comic book stores if you want to buy cyber frog you can look on google look up cyber frog dark harvest that's the next book on indiegogo you can back it there um you know we we basically have to ship everything by hand but the great thing about crowdfunding is there's no real possibility of loss you know um how many issues that you're going to need to make. You know how much money you have to spend.

I knew I had $1.5 billion to spend. I was able to make PVC toys to give away for free, trading cards, bonus comics that came with that. For like $25 is the lowest level to back at. And the book looks like that. You don't see comics like that anymore. Yeah, it's like a foil. We can kick their asses. Is there like a universe of heroes?

Yeah, there's going to be. I'm building it out. I'm building it out. Cyberfrog can't do it alone. We need a psychic gorilla from space. But it's too close to God. Gorilla Garad? Yeah.

I think it is like, oh, the people that are going to be successful are going to be the ones that are business-minded. And a lot of them, I think the ones that might be working, they feel attached to like, oh, the people that are going to be successful are going to be the ones that are business-minded. And a lot of them, I think the ones that might be working that are, they feel attached to DC, Marvel, even IDW. It's like they feel like they need to stay there because they need the infrastructure. And they don't. But they are just going to have to put in the work.

And another part of it is like you've had to become your own promotional arm. A lot of them might not want to be doing live streams, might not want to be out there promoting their stuff. So they feel like they're stuck at these companies because they don't know how to do the promotional aspect. That's what Comixgate is meant to do. Comixgate, you've got loudmouths like me. And I'll come over. Tim will be nice enough to let me come on his show and talk Comixgate, Comixgate. Comixgate.org.

Go to that website. You'll see a bunch of other creators who have similar stories. Yeah, we have to promote each other. We have to do this as a group. We can't do it as individuals. And hashtag Comicsgate. What's the biggest difference in your daily activities since you've left the big companies, started your own? What does a day look like as opposed to what it used to look like when you're working?

I wake up in the morning. I put together 200 packages of that book. I ship them through UPS. Then I start drawing and writing. And then at night, usually around 8, 7 or 8, I do this. I live stream and promote people. What was it like before when you were at DC? Nothing but drawing.

I would just draw and I'd scan my pages and turn them in. It's a much bigger job i mean you know running your own business obviously is way different do you ever draw live yeah and like do you ever do like time lapses where it's like this ow and then i have i just i don't want to bore people i'd rather people just get the experience the fact that i'm drawing is not that interesting it's the final result to me i I want you to enter the world. I want to take you to an annihilated Philadelphia. I want you to visit the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. We can go to an annihilated Philadelphia right now. That's not that difficult. Only a couple

hours drive. It's really close. I want you to go to the Pine Barrens and live with these raggedy survivors. I want you to see Cyberfrog represents everybody. He's not black. He's not white. He's definitely not gay. He's just a frog. And that means he represents everyone. I want you to see yourself in him because he has emotions, feelings, ambitions. And he makes mistakes.

He's not perfect. He's made a terrible mistake in the fact that he failed in 1998 and the world has suffered for it. Someone mentioned that Deep Space Nine is better than The Next Generation. I just want to say, actually, I agree. I don't like Star Trek at all.

Oh, really? Me and you, man. Me and you are the only ones in this world that don't like Star Trek. What do you guys not like about it? It must be difficult being so wrong. What is your biggest problem with Star Trek?

Star Trek. I don't know. I just find it. I don't want to say I don't want to get into it too much because I'm so some Trekkies are watching right now. But I was going to buy this comic. But screw this guy. In this world, there are things you're just not allowed to dislike.

And that's it's one of the funniest things about it. Like you can say, like, I don't like this. And like, you're wrong. It's a lot of guys standing up straight and yelling at each other face to face that's star trek whereas star wars is like running and blasting and like wookiee screaming and stuff star wars is dumb i am however kind of excited to see that picard season three is actually picking up the story for once my problem with star trek is that you get deep space nine and you're like, wow, this is incredible. And then they're like, okay, for the next 15 years, prequels and no story development. And I'm like, I'm out.

The problem is three seasons in, right? Like you're like, I love the people who are like, dude, you got to watch the show. By the third season, it's fantastic. I'm like, dude, they get one episode. You get one. Like I have the worst ADHD. I shuffle between seven and eight shows at a time where I can maybe get through two to three episodes at a time before my brain needs to put something else on.

If you can't hook me to your show in one episode, you get no more from me. I just had a dream. And real quick, sorry. Just one thing that bums me out is Picard is finally picking up after, like, the latest developments in the Star Trek universe, but it's all remember

Deanna Troi remember Commander Riker this is the problem with all of these creators who didn't realize what was going to happen when they sold their creations to these mega corporations 50 60 years ago right he didn't realize that some

dude in an office who doesn't have a creative bone in his body was not going to see it as something that's beautiful and artistic and something that elicits human emotion. They just look at it as a way to look at somebody's going to make memes about this. Look, somebody's going to be able to sell this on social media. It happens in

short time frames as well. You take a look at the first Pirates of the Caribbean. How did they do so well? Pirates 1 is an amazing movie. That's just sequel-itis. But like the famous line, you best start believing in ghost stories. You're in one. It's like meme-able.

It's like, wow. The ending where he shoots Jeffrey Rush and then he's like, after all these years, you waste your shot. And then Will turns like he didn't waste it and he drops it. And then he turns and dies masterful and then they went okay now we'll take the iconography

we will jam it into a sequel extend the play and do it ten times they also turned it into theme parks which became a big part it was a theme park first it's a

oh yeah oh no you're right holy crap but like for a lot of this stuff it's because it cross promotes into toys it cross promotes

into other mediums that they use. Johnny Depp, Jack Sparrow wasn't supposed to be all crazy. And then Johnny Depp decided to make him like, listen here. And it worked really well. He still goes to hospitals in uniform as Captain Jack Sparrow to visit kids in cancer wards. The first movie was really well done. And it was just like the lore. It was really interesting. Then the second movie was garbage that made no sense it was just like the lore, it was really interesting.

Then the second movie was garbage that made no sense because they just wanted to profit off of it. Third, same, fourth. I think what was the Dead Men Tell No Tales? Yeah. I think that one was actually decent. It was like the only other good one. Look what they could have done. Like J.K. Rowling ruined Harry Potter on her own. She owns everything. Like, she got the last great publishing deal

where after those movies or those books were so successful, she has almost full creative control over everything she does, right? But she ended up just ruining herself by being a major feminist. I'm imagining she's just, like, sitting in a room, like, with her eyes half closed, and she's like, Oh, Dumbledore? Yeah, he's gay. She was always a feminist.

Hermione Granger? You know what I thought would be a cool tactic for a movie or a comic, and I'm going to say it publicly, someone might create it, is if the episode follows a piece of an item, and then it's all the people that pick up the item and get killed with it,

and then the item falls, and someone else gets the item. That then it's all the people that pick up the item and get killed with it and then the item falls and someone else gets the item. That's actually been done. I don't know what the original story is, but I know that American Dad spoofed it with Roger the Alien. Wait, explain it better. Like there's a like I say, there's a gun and everyone the comic book is about the gun itself

and the people that carry it are kind of secondary, but it's about the weapon or the item like the data cube or whatever. So watch American Dad Roger takes a dump and it's gold gold poop encrusted with jewels and then there's an arc

periodically throughout the seasons of American Dad that follows the item and the people around it. That's it. And so it's like a janitor's cleaning and he's like what's this and he finds it and then his friend goes he's like he's like hey mike what'd you find there what you got and he's like uh nothing and he goes let me see it let me see it and then he clubs him and takes it he goes it's mine and then he runs and he gets in his car then later on abruptly it'll like pan away from

stand and then show the truck driving on the road turns widescreen the music gets eerie and then it shows him driving to like a mountain to like bury it yeah that's good because you get to show and they follow it that's been I think the X-Files

did something along that line where something keeps going through pawn shops and it ends up turning whoever buys it evil what I like about it is it shows the main characters as secondary characters

and you get to see how they react to the world rather than how they create the world like if you did that to the X-Men and there was an item and you just watched each x-man deal with the item you'd get like another perspective on their personality the best the best recurring characters in television are actually designed to do that a good recurring character in movies and uh well not in not movies but intelligent is designed to take a main character that you

that you see exist only within the realm of one universe, and they have the same interactions with the same people all the time because the world requires it. A good guest, like a guest character or recurring character who lives in a world outside of what they experience every day is supposed to draw out different performances from those characters so you see a different side of them. We are going to go

to Super Chat, so if you haven't already, would you kindly smash that like button, subscribe to this channel, share this show with your friends, And I guess right now our big thing that we're trying to promote is head over to Trash House Records and purchase the song Bright Eyes that we just released. As of today until next Thursday, that is the time period we have to sell as many songs as possible so that we can try and once again chart on Billboard and then basically give a big middle finger to all of these companies that are trying to put their boot on us

because they don't like the fact that we're pushing back and developing culture. So if we can get a decent amount, I think we only need like 10,000 sales because that's like a big number, you know, in one week. But if you want to support our work, I say do it. Let's read what you got. All right. Dirty Jimmy says, The pace of repression outstrips our ability to understand it.

If you know, then you know. I've been actually feeling kind of mixed a little bit, sometimes confident. The fact that the conversations we've been able to have have been expanding. The calling out of the lies, calling out Fauci. We just saw the International Sports League banned males in women's sports, which was massive. I feel like we're actually gaining a lot of ground. I mean, look, if you look at the success

of Ethan's comic, a million dollars, you're outside of the big machine and you're more successful. So it's almost like the independent decentralization is actually winning and the cult is being pushed back. Ethan and Eric July are probably the two fantastic examples of people that are proving that it can be done on your own.

Are you working with Eric? Anyway, you know, listen, yeah, it just goes to show. You know, if you listen to the fans and you're paying attention to the fans, you're going to make money. That's what we'd like to impart to Marvel and DC. Hilarious that that's hard to explain to people now that don't understand that listening to the fans is actually just a great way to make money.

What happens is people are getting confused by the loud minority and they think that's the fan base, so it's a little bit of a diffusion. SA Federali says, Tim, Ewan Bill's announcement today was epic. He's like Jack's benevolent twin, and you're becoming better than Cronkite every day. Walk to walk the walk,

dudes. Also, thank you. Check out youtube.com slash timcast and the latest episode of the Culture War podcast, where we basically announce we're suing California, and then we're, that's like actually happening. It's like the paper, like they had me do the paperwork, I signed some papers.

As for our band camp, we are beginning the preliminary exploratory options of how we take legal action. Someone, I saw several super chats from people saying that they do not have access to the song they purchased,

which would mean something weird happened. I mean, you bought a song using their platform and then they took that song away from you, so did they steal it? Do they owe you the money? I don't have access to any of those people.

I don't know their emails. I don't know who they are. I don't know who lost it. I don't know how to get in contact with them. So this seems like a contract violation between the user and me. Like, Bandcamp should be liable for this. This used to happen a lot

on iTunes and stuff, right? You'd buy a movie and it would be on the server and then when rights would be renegotiated and the movie would be taken off that platform, you suddenly don't have access to the movie you purchased anymore and you don't know whether they're going to get back or not. You always buy physical media, exactly. Shane H. Wilder

says, love seeing you and Tom taking over the charts. Keep it going. Rock on, guys, and peace be with all of you. I will say, when we released the other songs, we did a heavy promotion Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And I think we're getting to the point where the music thing needs to just become its own entity and be responsible more for itself, which is what I'm basically saying is

I won't be promoting it as heavily, though we will still do like promo shout out, please buy it throughout the next week of episodes. We got to get to the point where we just start putting out music and let the machine build itself in the snowballs roll down the hill. So we can't treat every song like the biggest release ever. We can't just try and hyper focus every single one. No, we put out this song.

We've been sitting on it for a year. We'll put another song next month and we'll just let the music be the music and then exist as its library. And then hopefully the snowball rolls down the hill. But more importantly, we also need to spread the resources around to start just producing more music from other artists. All right, let's see. Zimemaru says, Ian, please come back to us. What happened to Tim isn't your fault. The real Tim would want you to move on,

not spend all of your time in the metaverse reliving Timcast episodes from 20 years ago. That's a message from the future. Thank you. All right. John Curson says, Some bangers dropped today with Bright Eyes and Dr. James Lindsay Workshop on inclusion. Both left me speechless, john curson says some bangers dropped today with bright eyes and dr james lindsey workshop on

inclusion both left me speechless like brandon casacas story on being framed by the fbi haha smothered by memes james eden just said i requested a refund from bandcamp no response well see here's the issue if you request a refund from them but they've deleted my account i don't know where they get the money from. They've not contacted me. So we got a problem, guys. I don't have a list of the people who need a refund. I have no idea.

I have no idea. I'm looking at it. You go to timcast.bandcamp.com. It's blank. It just shows your name. Then you go to the Wayback Machine and it shows Only Ever Wanted. Yep. That's nuts.

Well, so there's... It's Tencent. Are you suing Tencent? Like, are you going to sue the owners are epic games which owns band camp band camp is an entity and they're based out of north carolina i guess so it's going to be really interesting um but i were like i got you know whatever um i hope they they should expect it and i don't i don't know how far this goes but they try to do this thing these tech companies companies, where they're like, you must go to arbitration.

And I'm like, that's for a judge to decide. Like, if we file and a judge says there's an arbitration clause, we'll go to arbitration, I'll say okay. But the judge might be like, no dice. Like, this is, it's up to the judge. So my attitude is simply, I feel wronged. I think all the people who purchased the song from Bandcamp, which is thousands, were wronged. And we may be dealing with something like 5,000 to 10,000 arbitration claims.

I mean, for the people who... Here's what you've got to understand. It's not just the song. It's that if you were on that page, you could comment and see other fans of the song. You weren't just buying the song. You were using the platform to gain access to a community. That's what you were paying for,

and they've taken it away from you. And Bryson Gray. He was unceremoniously removed and five times august yep harpy says checked band camp and no longer have access to song all right well here's the thing i never revoked that license from you i say that you if you bought it you have a right to listen to that song whenever you want band camp took it from you sounds like there's a lawsuit. Sounds like some kind of theft or something. I don't know. Like, if you went to Best Buy and bought a CD

and then you're like, I have a right to listen to Metallica, and then a guy from Best Buy showed up at your house and took the CD from you, that'd be like a weird thing, you know what I mean? And it's like, well, look, the CD was ours. You bought a license to it. It's like, hold on there a minute. No. The license was from them. I just went to your store to buy it.

Yeah, well, you know. I don't know. I think it's weird. At the very least, I don't understand how this will affect the future of commerce. And thus, there's some kind of precedent that needs to be explored. Because obviously, Best Buy couldn't send an employee to take a CD from your house. That is your copy of the CD. You don't own the music.

You own the right to that copy of the music to listen to. There are certain restrictions on how you can distribute or play it, especially if you're a business. But I'm like, it's, I don't know. And technology changes so fast that the law and precedent never catch up. Let's try it this way. Imagine you bought a ticket to see a movie at a theater. And then when you showed up

at the theater the movie just didn't play anything yeah you'd be like hey dude i bought a ticket for this movie and they went we banned the movie it's like well i bought the ticket from you dude yeah i don't know like the money for the movie theaters goes to the goes to hollywood right and the theater 60 60 to hollywood 40 the theater gets a cut just like band camp takes a cut yeah so imagine going to the movies and buying a ticket and then sitting down and the movie never plays. And they say, well, we banned the movie from the theater. It's like, well, then you owe me my money back.

And they go, get out, you're banned. Any chance that you would put a CD out? Not a CD, vinyl maybe. Vinyl? This is what we talk about a lot. When you try to call up these tech companies, if you have an issue with Facebook, do you actually get on the phone with facebook and talk to them no they just assume that your problem that you're just not going to want to deal with the vast

bureaucracy bureaucracy and the inability to get a hold of someone and actually take care of these issues so they end up winning either way you know a big problem here too uh they got bought band camp got bought march 2nd of 2022 by epic games it was march 17th two weeks later of 2022 they changed their terms of service so get a copy of the terms before the sale and then put that up against the terms now and see what they change and see if it's legal to do that well it's a customer that signed under the old terms yeah but probably what happened is they sent out an email saying the terms have been updated. You know what I mean? Yeah, which is heinous. But the terms don't matter.

People don't understand. Judges aren't robots who are like, let me see here. Ah, the code script reads, if this, then that. Sorry, have a nice day. They're human beings. And if someone comes in and says, your honor, our terms say that we can take all of your money whenever we want. He's going to be like, shut up. Can't do that. It's crazy to me. I talked to so many people and maybe this is something for people who don't understand how business operates and they've not run a company, but they'll be

like, well, if you had a contract, then you have to do it. And I'm like, that doesn't mean anything. I can go ask a judge. Like, so people seem to think that if I, if I say like, Hey, well, let's do a deal, Ethan, where, you know, comics and for every comic I sell, I get a percentage cut. Just sign this document. And then you say you got a buddy and you sign it. And the document actually says I hereby revoke, give all rights to Zim Pool. He owns it 100%. That would not fly in court.

You'd go to court and I'd be like, he agreed to give me the full ownership of all of his IP. And then he would just say to the judge, that's not what we agreed upon. And that's insane. I would never have signed that. And then the judge would be like, why didn't you read it? I'd be like, I did. I misunderstood it. The judge would be like, okay, the contract is void.

Like a judge can simply be like, no reasonable person would actually agree to what you're talking about. You were trying to exploit someone. The contract is voided. I hear by rule. Bang, gavel. People think judges are like, but there's a contract and you signed it sorry now if it was something more reasonable like i said i'll give you i'll take five percent but the contract says 20 now you're in trouble because you're gonna be like i never agreed to 20 but well you signed 20 like now you you might be lying to me but for something so

absurd so if in their terms it's something like like you have no you can't sue us. A judge might be like, get out of here. They can sue you. I'm letting it go. Or they might say no. Depends on what the judge wants to do. Sometimes judges do get real rigid and just say I'm bound by statutory law or whatever. But sometimes you get good or bad judges.

That's why there's an appeals process. All right. Fat Boy says you have no clue about TikTok, apparently. I've been on there two years and have never seen China influence. I did, however, learn more about what happened in Ohio and all the chemical food processing plants blown up, etc. News. That is it. Don't you get it?

You don't see the influence. That's the point. But showing you chemical and food processing plant explosions to make you think that there is something, some inner turmoil in this country is a part of their attempt, in my opinion, to sow discord. You look at it's not about a video popping up being like China is great. You love China. It's a video that pops up that says you should sterilize your children. And other people seeing videos saying your country is falling apart. Everything's burning down.

Quick run. That's the attack on your psyche. If they're showing you tons of chemical food plants and explosions, that is literally it. Right? I talked about this with all the food plants burning down. They happen all the time. And everyone kept saying, look at all these. You see all the stories about train derailments?

We didn't talk about it because it's not news. East Palestine was news. A major chemical spill explosion they burned it off then all of a sudden everyone started saying look at all these train derailments that are happening all over the country and then i looked it up and i'm like yeah that's actually par for the course oh yeah there's like a thousand like there's 1700 per year a lot yeah so we're talking about more than a hundred per month that happened but because of east palestine media outlets were like let's keep showing these over and over and over again because

it gets clicks and i'm like it's not news showing these over and over and over again because it gets clicks. And I'm like, it's not news that these things happen. So much of our lives now is algorithmically manipulated because so much of your life takes place looking into your phone almost all the time. When you really think about how often you look at your phone on a daily basis, you really are at the whims of what your phone is showing you, and whether that's Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, any of these places, your mood, your state of mind can ultimately be controlled by your phone. Just the radiation coming off the screen, I think. We were just talking the other day,

I was like, dude, have there been any long-term studies that tell us that these things aren't going to nuke our brains in 50 years? I don't know. Show me one if you see one. Does that exist? I don't know.

But Ethan, do you write on like a Wacom digital tablet or do you write on paper? No, I write on paper. Yeah. Does it free your mind? Do you feel freed from the algorithm when you're working? I just, for me, it's a tactile experience that I really need to touch paper and a pen and actually feel the drag of the pen. I can't really put that into words, but it's how I've always drawn.

And I'm not looking to change that in any way. I see Wacom tablets and everything. Don't hate me for this, fellow artists. I see it as cheating. I mean, it really is like you get one shot at it and you can use white out and everything like that, but when

you can just blow up this part and move this around, it doesn't feel like the digitization of music. Yeah, it just feels a little artificial to me. But no judgment. You know, people do their thing. I'm old-fashioned. All right, what do we got here?

Son of a Murph says, is that a Novo guitar hanging behind you? Had the chance to play one today and they're freaking sweet. Enjoy the weekend, everyone. No, it's a Harmony Silhouette. Beautiful machine. Yeah, it's actually one of my favorites. The Strat that I'm playing in the Bright Eyes music video

is my favorite guitar, followed by that one. It's amazing. Sounds so good. I love it. Good play, good action. So good. G Fazer says, I said this on Stixx and Hammer. If TikTok gets banned, Elon needs to jump on this

with his own version or better yet, bring back Vine. Seriously. TikTok is Vine, essentially. Elon, bring back Vine. Bring back Vine

and TikTok is done. We don't got to worry about it. I wonder if Vine, was it costing them money for hosting? No, they wanted people to use Twitter instead. They wanted people

to post the same things they were posting, but on Twitter. But that's not how it works. Remember Periscope? Oh, yeah. It was Twitter's video. Yeah.

And then it... Yeah. A couple years ago. Well, TikTok started as like a karaoke app, right? It started as like people just singing. Wasn't it called Musical.ly? I believe so. Yeah.

And so I'm wondering if that was by design or if they just stumbled across something like, oh my God, we control 150 million Americans. Like, let's do let's do something with this. This is a powerful tool. I don't I don't believe they're real. Like, look at the comments on TikTok posts. And I'm like, I don't think that's real people. We were talking about that because they did that.

We were looking at the Gotham Knights reviews and all of the it's got like an 18 from critics and if the critics hate it it means it's either really really good or even worse than you could possibly imagine in this case it's worse than you could possibly imagine but most of the comments for the positive ones all look extremely fake because the audience score was like 53 and it's like it's all the most generic stuff you've ever seen and most of them they either have egg you know egg avars, they don't have actual pictures there. No way to know. We got to snag that duet functionality if we want to make something as good as TikTok

because being able to video respond to someone in the video is so key. Tell Bill to do it. On Mines? Yeah. Bill, make a video shorts app that rivals what TikTok is. You know, Mines is about to build out

a sweet video app. That's the way to do it. And ban dancing videos. No dancing videos. And then we'll keep the kids serious. rivals what TikTok is. You know, mine's about to build out a sweet video app. That's the way to do it. And ban dancing videos. No dancing videos. And then we'll keep the kids serious. I like the dancing videos.

Oh, hey, I love the dancing videos. No, I was talking about, you know when you talked a couple weeks ago about the girl dancing in like the Sam's Club? You talked about it

on the channel. That girl went on to be like, she has like three million followers now and she does like 3 million followers now. And she does choreography for Shania Twain and built an entire ridiculous career because she used to record those videos. But that's the way it started. Adrian Curry says, thank God Stan Lee left us before women destroyed nerddom. Comic Con, E3, DC, Marvel, and now Lord of the Rings all lost to us because of feminism.

Not only did Stan leave us, he built Stan Lee's Superhumans. Nerddom. Comic-Con, E3, DC, Marvel, and now Lord of the Rings all lost to us because of feminism. Not only did Stan leave us, he built Stan Lee's Superhumans, one of the greatest shows on television before he left us. And it's a masterpiece. Hey, I don't want, by the way, I want to just, I don't think women destroyed nerddom. I think feminism did. And I think, you know, woke destroyed nerddom. I mean, we had, we've had females who understand that mostly, you know, when you're writing Daredevil, you're writing it for boys. And they understand that and they do a great job. So women, you're welcome in comics

but understand, 95% of your audience is male. It's just knowing your audience. This is an attack on masculinity. They hate it. That's correct. During Gamergate, the big thing was they wanted to make walking simulators. They're like, why are games always predicated on violence? And it's like...

Sex and violence is what sells. Have you played the new Harry Potter game? No. It's like, it's Harry Potter, but there's combat in it. And it's funny because there's substantially more combat than Harry Potter had in its whole story. Like, granted, there were big battles in Harry Potter, but later on, for the most part, it was like solving puzzles. Well, because that was the structure of the story, right? It made sense for the battles to happen later on.

And there is good feminist media. I will always push people to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you want to watch actual good feminist television with a feminist character that actually exists in a world where she has emotions, she's a fully-fledged person, and she is not somebody that just beats up a bunch of men and makes a bunch

of quips. She's actually vulnerable. Watch Hunger Games. Yes. Now, if you want to get a comicscape project by a completely based woman, Irene Strakowski left Marvel Comics of her own accord to come be comicscape, just out of a moral sense. She's got a book called Fiendish 2 on Indiegogo right now. I promise you, it is amazing. You will love it. Go back to Fiendish 2 on Indiegogo right now. I promise you, it is amazing.

You will love it. Go back to Fiendish 2 on Indiegogo. What if we find a way to team up and we can help distribute this stuff through our website? Tim, are you that good of a guy? Are you an angel from heaven? I'm saying like we keep talking about how like the number one thing we do outside of talking politics is trying to build culture. So I've said this before. Look, I could hire 10 more conservative commentators, libertarian commentators, disaffected liberals, and just be talk radio.

Or we can try and win a culture war. The Daily Wire does that, and they do it very well. They've done a great job of finding personalities who are in this space of the freedom faction to talk about these ideas. They've also done big cultural endeavors. My thing is like, I'm going to focus strictly on the cultural stuff and try and just build that kind of stuff. So if there was a way that we could create some kind of portal or some kind of hub on timcast.com that like i was mentioning before we wanted to do some kind of like weekly chapter release or something you know maybe there's a way to do it shonen jump style are you talking about like digital release yeah like uh because amazon did comiXology right and then they they the infrastructure for it was like really hard to

upkeep from what i understand ethan do you know anything about that like uh comiXology which was bought by amazon right yeah yeah they they they destroyed the technology and made it really hard practical and hard to use here's what i'm thinking i i'd have to know what you guys are working with and what you guys need but my idea is like if we had a way to do like i wanted to do weekly chapters of comics kind of like how shonen jump they'd put that release out and then you have like chapters every week the new naruto would come out and i would read it but if it's too hard to do one chapter of a comic every week that's what people said it could be like one chapter every other week and you interlace them so if it takes someone two weeks to do a chapter then you know you put that up and then two weeks later the next one goes up

and then in between you're you're you're skipping out or maybe even three weeks or something like that some way to have like, hey, this Wednesday is the latest release of the chapter of whatever. We have to create stories. This is the thing. I mean, you know, comic books are easy, an easy way to put stories out there.

And the problem is right now the left has complete domination. Woke has all of the storytelling that Americans at the West are feeding to their kids. And our kids are hungry for it. They're going to Japan for their needs. We really do need a way

to get our stories out there to more people. This non-woke stuff. I would love to talk to you about that. Let's figure something out. We got Dushanaw says, Superman can beat Goku. Batman proved he can beat Goku.

Batman proved he can beat Superman. Therefore, Batman is greater than Goku, and everyone that Goku defeated, Batman is the greatest superhero. Let me just pause and say, you don't need to do that. Batman can defeat Goku, and it's not even an argument.

Okay, look. If you're going to be like, who would win in a fight? Batman or Thanos, or Batman or a named character? You know, Eternity. And it's like, well, here's what Batman would do. No, no, no, if you're going to be like, who would win in a fight, Batman or Thanos or Batman or name character, you know, eternity. And it's like, well, here's what Batman would do. No, no, no, no, no. Batman versus Goku is no question, no argument.

Batman is a ninja. He is stealth. He is tactical. Goku is overly trusting. It is in Goku's character arc to be extremely trusting and can take advantage of. Batman would walk up to Goku and then do a single move that would incapacitate Goku. He'd like nerve pinch him and Goku would just like fall

asleep because Batman would trust him. He'd be like, I have no reason to fight you, Batman. You're a good guy. And then Batman would go and then Goku would just go. Yeah. Superman would kill Batman. Nope. Blast him with heat rays from space. The thing is, Superman's a good guy, so he wouldn't do that.

That's the point of the debate. It's like having the Deathstroke versus Deadpool debate that everyone always has. There's the guy who did the video reenactment of it. But look, so you could say, I personally believe it would be a deus ex machina for you to say Superman could heat blast and kill batman because batman's superpower is actually his ability to escape and solve problems so it's like i i've heard it described as peak human as the way to describe it it wouldn't make sense for batman's character to instantly be taken out by superman yeah he'd be ready for it he thinks ahead right he wouldn't always be ready for it

i mean he'd have to have kryptonite on his being. He does though. And Superman, does he? He has a belt. Always. Yep. Oh my god, what a jerk. Yeah, well. And then there was a hard world. There was the Justice League arc where all of the superheroes' weaknesses are being used against them.

Someone stole Batman's counterplans and started executing him against the heroes. And then they find out they're like you drafted these strategies to take us all down is that from the Judas contract? yeah I think that's what it was and then Batman's like yes he just says yes

the best part of that is he says they all get offended that he has the list of how to defeat them all and they're all super offended he's like I'm not offended you're basically like weapons of mass destruction you want me to do yeah yeah i think bradley cooper from limitless could be batman on the limitless pill oh which means i have to do my daily shield watch the limitless tv show which is one of the very few examples of a television show

that should not be good but absolutely really got one season and then they killed it the movie was so dumb he's like this pill is gonna be super superstar forgot to pay my bookie like what i guess the show the show is great it's got jennifer carpenter from dexter purple says black cover naruto dragon ball you like all my favorite manga you can finish black cover clover in manga it's still going you need to check out one piece and one punch man also attack on tit. One Punch Man is so good. It is so good. In fact, it was so good, it actually broke into American mainstream. And it was like Vice was writing how good it was.

Fantastic. One Piece I've heard tremendously great things about. Never got into it, though. And Attack on Titan is a masterpiece. Seriously, if you are involved in culture war politics, you really need to watch Attack on Titan. It is like, there's that joke where Jordan Peterson says to watch it, but I'm like, I'm pretty sure he would tell you to watch it if he, if he did, because it's a, it's about privilege and like it, it, it, it covers like woke politics and postmodernism. It is brilliant.

You're familiar with Attack on Titan? Uh, I've seen it. Yeah. But I've not read it again. I'm, you know know manga is kind of i've only barely uh scratched the surface of manga all right we'll grab uh we'll grab one more what do you got jasper plan nine says i'm new here tim is winning me over with his promoting a parallel economy cheers panel that's what we are trying to do so head over to trash house records dot com by bright eyes so we can start creating these. We are but a humble acorn in the ground. We are not a massive oak tree

or anything like that. Maybe 10, 20 years, maybe in 100 years there will be a massive TMG, big parent media corporation that has American values and believes in the family and meritocracy

and individualism. For today, we are but a few humble shows. But if we win and we keep winning, here's what you got to understand. Three of three songs hit Billboard. I am telling you, there are people out there who wish they were musicians, rock stars, who wish they could get their song charting. And they're like, how do I do it, man? Right now, many of these people are working for woke record labels or signed to them. And they're being told, do as you're told, take the vax, kick out your band members who vote for Trump. Otherwise, you will

never make it. And they're going, I wish I didn't have to, but I have no choice. Then off in the distance, they look and they're like, that dude on his own got all three of his songs on Billboard. What am I doing with these guys? We want to steal them all. We want people who are in that woke machine to be like, there's clearly a way to do this because that guy's more successful than we've ever been. And we're sitting here bending the knee of these crackpots and he would never make us do that. That's why I'm like, we got to win. Now, here's what I think. We can't just keep doing like, here's another one of Tim Pool songs, which is why we're like, we need to expand.

But it's like we started pushing a snowball down the hill. I think the fact that we got three of three on Billboard gives us a tremendous launching pad to be able to go to people and be like, don't do those deals. They can't get it done for you. Start working with us.

We will plant those seeds and your song will be more successful with us than with anybody else. Then you'll start seeing these people be like, I'd sign with you, man, but I'm not confident you're actually going to get my song out there. We're going to do a deal. You're going to forget about the music. If I go do a deal with Tim Pool, I'm going to be on Billboard. My debut release is going to be a hit and it's going to be top of iTunes. And they're going to be like, no, wait, don't be woke. And they're going to be like, nah, I'm okay. We need the Freedom Faction to have these cultural tools.

I don't care if it's me or anybody else who's doing it. Comicsgate's clearly doing it. Support Comicsgate. Thank you. Can you say hi, Comicsgate? Hi, Comicsgate. This is what we need to do. We need people who work at Marvel and DC to stand up and say, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore.

It doesn't make me feel good. And then go independent and win. So with your support, we will become a member at timcast.com to get access to our discord, our hangout, where we share a lot of this cultural stuff and, and, you know, um, beta testing. We're working on basically giving people in the elite club, early access, and then people in the VIP chat room access to our call and show. So, uh, become a member, support our work if you really do believe in it and you want to help us out. The time is now. There's not much time left. We've got to be active.

So I really do appreciate your support. You can follow the show at TimCastIRL. You can follow me personally at TimCast. Ethan, you want to shout anything out? Yeah, I'd like to shout out John Malin's Godlike on Indiegogo. I'd like to shout out Shane Davis' Inglourious Rex 2 on Indiegogo. And of course, Cyberfrog Dark Harvest on Indiegogo. I'd like to shout out Shane Davis' and Glorious Rex 2 on Indiegogo. And of course, Cyberfrog Dark Harvest on Indiegogo.

If you'd like to buy any of the old Cyberfrog stuff, you can find it on eBay. Just search for Cyberfrog. Our seller name is Cyberfrog9. We ship same day that you order. You'll have it in a couple of days. Thanks for listening. Comicsgate.org.

And then follow me on Twitter at EthanVanSkyver. ethan van skyver guys uh if you want to follow me you can follow me on instagram and on twitter at brett dasik on both remember pop culture crisis is monday through friday 3 p.m eastern standard time this is noon pacific right here on youtube me and mary talk about pop culture celebrities movies all that good stuff come hang out with us you guys follow me at ian crossland and i just want to shout out car Banks for his epic production of Bright Eyes. He did a lot of the work on that. He did a lot of the harmonies, too. So I mentioned that I did vocal harmonies on it.

Tim, myself, Carter, we all did vocal harmonies on it. It is magical. It was really fun to work with. Carter did a lot of work on that. I'm kind of feeling like I would love to do a Soundgarden cover with Phil Labonte for like our next song. We've been listening to Soundgarden before the show.

I know, I just love Soundgarden. So good. Chris Cornell. Good. I want to call him Jesus. Jesus Christ Pose. Wasn't that a, was that a Soundgarden song

or was that Pearl Jam? No, that's Soundgarden I'm pretty sure. Jesus Christ Pose. That guy, man. What a love. All right. All right, let's move this out.

You guys follow me at Kellen PDL. Hey, I love, this was like one of the best Fridays so far. At least in my experience. This was an awesome conversation. And yeah, if you like conversations like this, watch Pop Culture Crisis. That's what it's all about. And I am on there every Wednesday.

So yes, KellenPDL. Thanks, guys. We will see you all this weekend with our clips. And Monday when we're back for the show. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see y'all then.