Podcasts/Episode 246

The Letters Page: Episode 246
Writers' Room: Freedom Five #445-447

Original Source

• Libsyn Audio

Primary Topic

The Citizens of the Sun

Intro

We've got three action packed issues coming at you!

Show Notes:

Run Time: 1:40:57

We tell the story of the Citizen Dawn Event from Definitive Edition Sentinels of the Multiverse! Then, we go on to answer a bunch of questions, both about Citizen Dawn and about the recently revealed Grimm!

Also, check out this very cool crowdfunding campaign, in German!

Join us next time to kick off Adam's birth month with one of many Creative Processes!

Characters Mentioned

• The Freedom Five
• Citizen Dawn
• Expatriette
• Visionary
• Citizens: The Seasons
• Citizens Blood, Sweat, and Tears
• Grimm
• Guise

Summary

Overview

• Today’s story is used as Citizen Dawn’s standard Event (“Wayward Sun” - the name of the 3-issue arc overall) in the core set of Definitive Edition. It runs from Freedom Five #445-447, May-July 1987. In the first issue, the Freedom Five intercept some kind of transmission from an apparently alien spacecraft. They track it and it crashes on Insula Primalis. They go to check it out, and Expatriette and Visionary come with them. They arrive and are opposed by the Citizens of the Sun. That’s basically it for the first issue. A fight starts, but isn’t resolved. We end with a shot establishing that Citizen Dawn herself is “communing” with the artifact. Y’know, let’s just copy the text from the Event card itself:
  • Front: The Freedom Five have picked up a strange transmission that seems to have come from beyond the stars! Some piece of alien technology has made its way through the planet’s atmosphere and is transmitting a distress signal as it plummets towards the Earth. Could this be some alien in need of aid, or might it be a trap left over from the recent Thorathian invasion? Heroes including the Freedom Five and their new ally Expatriette head to Insula Primalis to investigate, though they know that Citizen Dawn controls that island. She and her hordes of Citizens will oppose the heroes at every turn.
  • Back: Before this event, the Citizens of the Sun were a mostly faceless group of powerful minions for Citizen Dawn, other than a couple of notable exceptions. However, with the alien artifact empowering the Citizens, they each took on new aspects of power, making them greater threats and paving the way for later events featuring the Citizens of the Sun. After the artifact was unearthed by the Citizens, it hovered around the island, avoiding capture and monitoring the fight between costumed heroes and super-powered extremists. Eventually, it apparently had observed enough of the conflict, and the mysterious artifact flew away, having left its mark on the Citizens of the Sun and their home.
• So, the story is notable for fleshing out the characters making up the Citizens of the Sun, but the third issue itself was notable for the artifact just leaving at the end. An important thing that first happens in the middle issue of the story is that it’s the first time that Citizen Dawn pulls the “Return with the Dawn” trick to get defeated Citizens back on their feet. While she’d done some healing with her powers before this, it is a notable example of her powers giving her at least some control over the “animus of life” in this way. While they were powerful in previous outings, this story was a notable “power up” for her and the Citizens generally. Before this, the Citizens (with a few notable exceptions) were basically just all in the same uniform and while you’d see them using different powers, they weren’t picked out as individuals. This story starts the process of more individualization that really becomes a thing in Sunrise later on.
• We also get some Expatriette history stuff peppered throughout as well. It’s not necessarily new information - her backstory was covered extensively in Emigrant’s Song and other things in the early ’80s - but it’s important to get some of that information in front of Freedom Five readers who might not have cared about her previous appearances. She had just started working with the Freedom Five this year during the Thorathian Invasion, and that continues for a while.
  • [They do some talking about story timing stuff - Expat fought Mr. Fixer in ’86 [May], and the Thorathian Invasion began in December ’86 (although the Thorathian Gene-Binding Journal One-Shot was in November [a date I didn’t know yet, thanks Christopher!] and was foreshadowing that something was about to go down). Another timing thing to consider is that Wraith just came back from being “dead”/missing in the same month this story starts.]
• Anyway, “aliens” were in the zeitgeist when our story begins due to the Voss event, so another alien thing crashing to Earth so soon afterwards gets attention and the heroes need to investigate. We have the heroes arrive on the island and have to fight Citizens. You know the Citizens of the Sun and how they work, right? Standard stuff. Come to think of it, between “Aliens!” and catching readers back up on Wraith being back and the reasons for Expatriette’s expertise on Insula Primalis, that’s a lot of recap in this issue. The majority of the stuff you play out in the DE Event is from the latter 2 issues of the arc rather than the first one.
• It’s as the heroes start to work their way closer to the artifact that we start to see the Citizens being empowered by it. Slight timeline adjustment/correction: Christopher wants to do a thing with the Seasons here as the “empowered” Citizens we see. He says that while the backstories of the Seasons get relayed to us during Sunrise, they appeared before that. Some of the named Citizen groups still first show up in the Sunrise arc, but they think that having the Seasons working together here, while empowered by the alien artifact, and be a match for the seven heroes arrayed against them is a good story. There’s four of them with distinct personalities, a recognizable gimmick, and they work well together. That’s a good group to throw up against a hero team.
• Man, it’s a little weird for Visionary to be here. Not like, bad, but what’s our powerful psychic warrior (with definitely no dark impulses) doing here? Maybe while the Freedom Five are fighting the Citizens, Visionary’s in a more supporting role and/or trying to locate/connect with the alien consciousness. That fits with the “investigation” theme that her own solo stories would become. She had New Memories that wrapped up at the end of ’85, then kind of bounced around homelessly for ’86 and then in ’87 she was part of the Thorathian event, this event, and will close out the year in her new Mind Over Matter ongoing which is where the conspiracy/investigation stuff (with Raymond Mantey as a supporting cast member) really gets going. We’re in a period where the idea is that she “used up” much of her pyschic powers to do the time travel thing and while she is still powerful, it’s presented as more of a strain for her. It’s later that this starts to shift to be more specifically that letting loose with more power results in the dark side of her personality coming out, which has its own implications later.
• In any event: #446 starts with the heroes fighting random Citizens, then another group of random Citizens who are a bit stronger, then the Seasons who are suddenly a match for them. The Visionary is meanwhile having a subplot where she’s trying to figure out what the alien artifact’s deal is. We get to the end where the heroes have succeeded in defeating the various Citizens of the Sun and make it to Dawn and the artifact, ending with Dawn getting her army back on their feet.
• The fight in #447 then is this big thing where the heroes have to fight all of the enemies they just got done fighting (and who are now all even more powerful due to the artifact). This is a really good story to use as the basis of Dawn’s deck since, sure, she’s powerful and dangerous, but for the first time we really get the Citizens as a major problem on their own.
• However, this is also where the alien artifact starts doing stuff. It’s not just content to hover there in the Citadel; it starts zipping around to various parts of the battlefield, observing things and actively empowering Citizens. Then, at a certain point it just leaves. Why does that turn the tide? Does it take power with it? We can say that Dawn was first able to do her mass-revival of the Citizens because this thing was empowering her and when it leaves it doesn’t necessarily “take” power with it, but when it goes her powers are no longer actively being boosted and so the defeated Citizens aren’t being artificially kept on their feet and so go down again.
• What’s the resolution? It’s not like the heroes have a reason to take Dawn to jail over this since they started things by coming to her island. Maybe the heroes “lose”. Once the artifact is gone, the fight can continue and maybe the Citizens actually win and have the heroes dead to rights, at which point Dawn just tells them to leave. Well, the ones of you with powers can stay if you want to join; looking at you Absolute Zero… No? Okay, get out. There’s a bit of a moral superiority thing here at the end from the Citizens. The main narrative point to take away from this story is how powerful the Citizens are now but also that they’re more or less happy to just exist on their island and be left alone.
• So there we go, they knew some of that but hadn’t really talked about a lot of it and needed to hammer some of it out, but it’s nice to talk more about Events. Some are these massive things spanning many titles, but this was a fun little 3-issue thing that’s pretty easy to dial in on.

Questions

• Was this artifact actually an alien in need of aid or a Thorathian trap? Does this thing originate from an alien faction we know of? The green color scheme makes me think Endling or Tribunal tech, but is it the wrong era for such things? It’s not necessarily the wrong era for Endling or Tribunal stuff to show up, but it’s not related to either of those (nor is it a Thorathian trap). It’s not a “manned” ship - it’s a remote viewing drone that’s there to observe/scan/experiment to further some secret purpose.
• Does the UFO sustain damage before or after it crashes into Insula Primalis? It was designed for planetary entry in this way, so “plummeting” to Earth and crashing into the ground was its intended operation.
• Are there any Citizens we know that were especially affected by this thing? How? Was any of the flora/fauna of Insula Primalis similarly empowered? They can imagine that some of the plant life was affected - we don’t see the giant man-eating plants until later, so maybe that’s due to this thing. The specific “mark” left on the island that Christopher was referring to in the card text was meant to be the impact crater, but sure, let’s say it augmented some plants/animals. It’s kind of weird that it didn’t do anything to the heroes and seemed to focus on the Citizens, isn’t it?
• Does this thing show up again in other environments or notable stories? Are we likely to see it in additional game materials? It doesn’t exactly show up in other environments; there are other noteworthy appearances. Regarding it showing up in later game stuff: Who can say? Time will tell!
• How does Citizen Dawn feel about “magic” as a superpower? We know that she accepted Blood, Sweat, and Tears, but they also had their bodies transmuted into odd materials; would she accept, say, Virgil Miller? This is standing in for a lot of questions along the lines of “would she accept [x]?” that are trying to find edge cases (like Benchmark, who doesn’t have powers, but has technology embedded into his body). She wouldn’t take Benchmark or Bunker. It’s largely a judgement call of her looking at you and recognizing that you have powers - this isn’t a democracy and she’s the ultimate arbiter of what “counts” as a power for her purposes. Werewolves likely could count if they weren’t just being rampaging “animals” - if you’re acting like a person who is “making use of” the powers being a werewolf provides, you might get in. Alpha and Apex probably count in that regard, but Gumbo and likely Flint wouldn’t. She might be into Chel and maybe Rowan and Timber. Chel especially since she’s doing “person things” and magic. If you’re an ancient sorcerer doing a whole ancient sorcerer shtick she might actually pass since you’re doing your own gimmick instead of buying in to hers. NightMist likely could get in, but maybe not Argent Adept due to the whole Virtuoso “job”. It really is up to Dawn’s whims.
• Who is the healer and the person being healed on Healing Light? You must be talking about EE since the DE version is fairly clearly Dawn healing Hammer and Anvil. The EE version is just a random Citizen. It’s handy to bring up the DE card since that’s showing her using healing powers all the way back in 1967. They think that for somebody beaten up to the point that they’re unconscious, she could still use her Healing Light to stabilize them/close wounds, but it’s not going to get them back on their feet instantly - that’s the new thing that the artifact in today’s story let her do.
• Let’s say that Dawn has some non-powered person held hostage at a nuclear plant and winds up dropping them into some toxic waste - this being a comic book, that person emerges not only alive, but now with powers [yeah, that’s basically how you got both Doctor Toxica and Professor Pollution after all]; if this person were to then ask to join the Citizens, would Dawn welcome them despite just trying to kill them moments before? Depends on the setup, but there are definitely ways that could happen (especially somebody wanting to join already that Dawn basically has an “ew, get rid of it” reaction but when they come back with powers and still want to join she likes their moxie). They even had an idea for a product that they were working on at one point that wound up not happening (although they may still do something with it and so don’t want to talk too much about it) that actually involved Dawn trying to give powers to people, so they know that she’s okay with the proactive approach. That was even her plot in Vertex - she was collecting Oblivion Shards to give people powers. [It wasn’t clear to me whether those were the same stories: whether the “product that wound up not happening” was a Tactics thing.]
• What’s the day-to-day culture like as a Citizen of the Sun? Adam thinks of it as halfway between life in a cult and life on a military base. Most of them are on pretty good terms, but like any sizable group of people there are cliques and groups that have varied interests and rivalries. Then when Citizen Dawn shows up and says that it’s time to Do the Thing™ then the thing gets done. [The question asked about listening to rock music on the radio as part of the flavor of the question] They probably don’t listen to the radio since they don’t have a radio. There are likely musicians among them, though, and it’s possible that somebody’s powers let them “tune in” to radio broadcasts, but the focus on creating their own culture likely would take precedence over listing to human music. Yuck.
• There are a lot of Citizens that we don’t know about - just how far does the “naming scheme” go? How silly do the themed groups get? What does Dawn do if she wants to pair up some Citizens but there’s no obvious “theme” for them (say one who can dig really fast and one that can shoot acid from their hands)? Does she ever get bored of thinking up names and just phone it in? The names don’t have to form an existing phrase; you can get away with words that just “go together” (Christopher’s suggestion for the digging/acid pair are Citizens Trench and Trash). You also get a lot of single Citizens who aren’t part of a themed group (like Citizen Gate). The conceit of the Citizens of the Sun is that everybody has their Citizen name, but the readers certainly only learn the ones who are important to the story. A lot of writers just lean on existing characters, but you’ll get new ones here and there. They don’t think that in-continuity you get “silly” names like Citizens Cookies and Cream.
• Are Citizens Blood, Sweat, and Tears stuck in a game of “Goth Chicken” where none of them feel like they’re allowed to turn it down a notch even though they’re each individually tired of the gimmick and are just waiting for one of the others to bring it up? Nope. They’re all true believers. When they stopped being Citizens and became the Vandals they had a perfect opportunity to drop the shtick and rebrand and the brand they chose was to go all in on the darkness. To be clear, all three of these people are just exhausting to be around and will never grow out of it - it’s not just a phase.
• Have any of the Citizens of the Sun had a change of heart and/or attempted to change the “politics” of the Citizens? Have any left? There’s a lot of ground to be explored there. There’s a “civil war” event in the Citizens and there’s plenty of story space available for getting into this kind of thing. There’s likely an early inventory story involving a Citizen trying to escape that ends tragically.
• When Dawn first discovered this island that would be unlivable for any normal person, did she smile? Does she ever smile? Any other emotional displays beyond anger and disdain? They can see the moment where she’s taken over city hall and gotten all of the gold she asked for which she then destroys being accompanied by a little smirk. She probably smiled more in the earlier stories, although she likely still smirks a fair bit in the later stories (which is the equivalent to a full-face smile for her). Sorrow might be in there occasionally too, but she gets that pretty well locked down eventually and she’s very grim. Sunrise is likely the point at which she’s just all business all the time, but background flashback stuff we likely see a fair bit of pain, sorrow, fury, etc.
• Taffyman writes in some additional voice actor suggestions [which they provide some feedback on beyond just noting a few roles they might know them from - they largely trust Taffyman’s instincts for this, though. It’s tough where they already did so many voices before - Adam is sure they’ve used Grey DeLisle before but thinks she’d make a great Painstake. (In fact, she was cast as the Wraith the last time around.)]:
  • Alpha: Wendee Lee
  • Apex: Tony Todd
  • Chel: Cristina Vee - The worry here is that you’re under-utilizing her since Chel isn’t a major character.
  • Flint: Todd Haberkorn
  • Gumbo: Jim Cummings
  • Magistra Damaris: Elizabeth Maxwell
  • Rowan: Nicole Sullivan
  • Timber: Jim Beaver
  • The Dagda: Kaiji Tang
  • The Morrigan: Laruen Landa
  • Champion Lugh: SungWon Cho - This is solid since he’d need the versatility involved in voicing a shapeshifter like Lugh.
  • Elder Ogma: Linda Young - They don’t see this one as she’s mostly done “old lady voices” and “Ogma’s a dude”. Maybe there’s some character she’s done that they’re just not aware of, but this winds up being the only real quibble they have with the list.
  • Trickster Puck: David Tennant - That’s almost too easy. There’s a risk of under-utilizing him for this, but they could see it as a stunt-casting thing where he’s only available to do a small part in the first place.
  • Painstake: Kira Buckland
  • Darkstrife: Zeno Robinson
  • Fashion: Erica Lindbeck
  • Soothsayer Carmichael: Michael Sheen
  • Boris the Bear: Troy Baker - Adam actually likes under-using him for this as he thinks that Troy is over-used. A fine actor, just everywhere.
  • Doctor Toxica: Cree Summer - She might make a better Professor Pollution than Doctor Toxica, but either way…
  • Rambler: Lance Reddick (R.I.P) - Man, that was so unexpected a death. He wasn’t particularly old (just 60) and apparently just had a heart attack. He’d be great as Rambler.
  • Mister Jitters: Kellen Goff
  • Oracle of Discord: Souad Faress - The thing with the Oracle is that if you’re choosing one actor you’re still modulating it to sound like a bunch of voices. Adam thinks he’d just have everybody in the studio that day record the lines and overlay all of them. Christopher suggests maybe doing somebody like the suggested voice and then James Earl Jones so that you have these really different vocal registers going at the same time.
  • Censor: Ben Diskin
  • Busybody: Paget Brewster
  • Antimox: Steve Blum - Yeah, that’s a good use of Steve Blum.
  • Casa-Nova: Kayleigh McKee - Christopher sees that she specializes in both feminine and masculine roles, so that could work.
  • Headlong: Shameik Moore
  • Rockstar: Cherami Leigh
  • Aeon Girl: Kate Micucci
  • Muse: Seychelle Gabriel
  • Muerto: Antony Del Rio
  • Myriad: Eric Vale
• We know that the artifact flies away after the events in today’s story; do we ever get a call-back to what this thing was? Any lasting effects on the Citizens? The lasting effects on the Citizens is the main result of the story. There is stuff in the future relating to the artifact that they’re not going to get into details for now.
• How modern a story can Grimm use? Is it a matter of how popular/well-known the story is? Could he use a Hans Christian Andersen story? Wizard of Oz? Lord of the Rings? Star Wars? Harry Potter? Is it just “whatever he can get away with given the US copyright laws”? Do his characters look Disney-ish (say, a tri-color Snow White for ease of recognition)? Hans Christian Andersen is fair game. Even more modern stuff is probably possible for allusions rather than dropping you into the full story. Like, he could give somebody a light saber, but he’s not going to do a full Star Wars story - the copyrights allow things at the level of a parody and so that’s where you’d wind up for some of it. Wizard of Oz is likely one of the more recent things you could have expected to see given a full Grimm treatment. For Metaverse reasons it winds up being the US copyright thing, but as the characters are still themselves and are essentially just “wearing a costume” you can get away with more than you might think.
• How meta does Grimm’s storytelling get? Are they in believable settings or are things clearly fake with stage props and whatnot? It’s all of the above. Sometimes things look “normal”. Other times the colors are all off in some way or the perspective lacks depth or something. Other times as the heroes figure out what’s going on they can suddenly tell that this tree is just a piece of stage scenery.
• Can he duplicate himself to fill multiple roles at once? Can other participants tell when it’s him? Are there NPCs in his stories? Usually other participants can’t tell when Grimm’s playing a role, but observers who weren’t part of the story can. Once you come into the story you become part of it, though. They don’t think he can duplicate himself and so can only play one character at a time, but that doesn’t stop him from changing roles backstage and coming back out. He’ll also force “civilians” into roles to pad out the ranks of extras, though.
• How do Grimm’s powers work? Inside the story it seems he has a large amount of control over the heroes’ minds/memories and the setting and things revert to normal when they defeat Grimm within the story; but what happened to Grimm himself once he was defeated in his giant form? Can he even be interacted with outside of his stories? He has never gone to prison, super or otherwise. Whatever story-form he’s taken can be “destroyed” in an appropriate manner (if he’s a Harvest Lord you might smash his pumpkin head or the bundle of sticks making up his body or whatever). But he has ways to either overtly or subtly fleeing a story that’s not going his way. He gains power from the stories and so if the story is going off of the rails, his power wanes. He will have to build that power back up. His powers “work” by him having complete editorial control over what’s happening in a story, somehow. The amount of power he has is tied to how many people currently believe in his story and so you have to break things down such that you’re disbelieving his “reality” to be able to defeat him. He’s not explained. He’s an eldritch, story-based entity.
• How does Grimm factor the various Environments into his plots? Will Grimm pull elements of the place into his stories or does he reshape the environment completely to fit his story? If the former, could people or environmental elements come in from outside of the story parameters to disrupt things? If the latter, do heroes have to be in one central location to get pulled into the story realm/dropped back to wherever they were before once Grimm is defeated? Grimm overlays reality with the stories he’s telling rather than his stories taking place in a pocket dimension or something. Like, if they’re in a city but the story is in a forest you might get things like stoplights turning into trees. The gist of it is that Grimm is nigh-omnipotent within the story as long as the story is being followed and as more people get involved in the story that power expands, potentially infinitely.
• How often, if ever, does Grimm try to teach in his story? Quite often, although generally it’s an Apostate-style “See, you can’t really trust what you believe” or “I’m going to teach a true thing, but that’s somehow going to be bad for you to know.” Less trickery than Apostate, but that kind of antagonism. He might also do small-scale things as a power-rebuilding thing. Like, “Oh, I’m going to show you a thing and you’re going to complete it and learn a lesson” and just by going through that process you’re complying with his “story”. Lots of fables.
• How often did he show up in non-Tome of the Bizarre books after he became a character in the story? Not regularly, but occasionally other books would have stories that either referenced him or had Grimm stuff going on. His big plots were all TotB stories.
• Were there alternate versions of Grimm in Disparation? Presumably - he’s not a Singular Entity, so you could get different versions of him out there. They could do an Ancient Greece World and have him as like Homer or something [come on, guys, Aesop is right there]. Dante or Cervantes could also fit - just famous storytellers.
• Did Grimm ever appear in any of the animated series? They don’t think so. He’s a pretty deep cut so they may not have “gotten there”. A Grimm-hosted animated show could be fun, though. It’s very disruptive is the thing. They could see if the Sentinel Comics Animated Universe got to the point where the MCU/Disney+ is now, they could see a Grimm-hosted Tome of the Bizarre show being made that’s along the lines of what the Marvel What If…? show did. It would just be a straight “we tell this fairy tale using the Sentinel Comics characters in the role” thing, though.
• Was the Metaverse treated to Grimm merch? Yes. It’s probably mostly focused on the Golden Age version, though.
• How about a book-and-cassette Read Along series, possibly with a creepy plush Grimm along the lines of Teddy Ruxpin? The Read Along thing is fun, but likely not the plush version. People who are into Grimm are probably the same kinds of people who have Bettie Page tattoos.
• Could we maybe get one of those as a PDF to follow along with a Spooky Season episode? Man, that’s a lot of work. They’re not against the idea, but it’s just a lot. This is another case of “if the podcast were their full-time job, they could maybe do it.”
• Was there a time where Grimm met his match after targeting Guise? Does Guise win just by getting the spooky storyteller to shelve the book due to being so annoying? They got a lot of Guise vs. Grimm letters. There are a lot of Guise comic issues they haven’t filled yet. That does make a lot of sense and they like the idea of that being how Guise gets out of the situation. The other option is that Guise is “trapped” in these stories, so he just leaves the comic and then shreds it.
• So, given that it’s obvious that Grimm isn’t actually dead after 2014, what was he up do during OblivAeon? He was dead and not around for OblivAeon.
• How powerful is he/what are his actual goals? He can mind-control the heroes, but to what end? Does he feel a compulsion to tell stories like Wager Master does for playing games? Grimm has these stories and will tell them. From his introduction as a character up through his taking over TotB again in volume 4 the readers never really get a feel for what his goals are. He’s just doing these things. With the reboot of the book he’s got some big plot he’s building towards - taking control of all reality by having everybody act out his stories. He’s immensely powerful - possibly one of the most powerful beings in Sentinel Comics, but it’s a very localized power which starts small and grows outward as he ropes in more cast members.
• Does Grimm have a cosmic awareness of, say, the readers or does he just “believe” he’s in a comic like Guise? Is it a coincidence that both characters that routinely talk to the readers are shapeshifters? It is a coincidence. Their shapeshifting is very different, as is their fourth wall breaking. Grimm’s “true form” is the ghostly, spectral spirit thing we see in TotB volume 1. All of the other physical forms he has are just adaptations to the scene he’s in. When he’s talking to the reader it’s because he knows he has an audience. The way we talk about Guise, especially post-OblivAeon, is that he’s crazy and thinks he’s in a comic book (and it’s a coincidence that he’s right). Grimm is aware that he’s telling stories to an audience that’s beyond his own realm, but man is this hard to wrap your head around. Grimm is probably also cross-dimensional since he’s also a conceit within the reader’s world. Guise may address the reader, but he’s still a character in the story where Grimm exists outside of the story too. It’s all shenanigans.
• [Letter just before the 91 minute mark does a pretty good Twilight Zone intro spiel] Is Grimm aware of the Letters Page podcast? They don’t think so, but it’s very possible for them to do a “Grimm presents: The Letters Page” episode if this was their job. That would be a lot of fun if they had the time. Alternatively, for as much as people equate Adam and Christopher with Citizens Hammer and Anvil, Grimm is so much more of an avatar of the two of them. They don’t think that Grimm is aware of the Letters Page because it doesn’t exist in the Metaverse. Grimm is aware of the Metaverse and that’s a distinction between him and Guise - Guise thinks he’s in a comic, but he isn’t aware of the world in which those comics exist. It’s weird. It makes sense to them, but articulating it is very difficult.

Cover Discussion

• Adam’s thought: he does the cover for #446 because the other two already exist. He’d never have another reason to do this one, and this way Christopher could post all three covers in the show notes. He’s not in a huge time crunch for other arts at the moment, so do it!
• So, what do we want to put on the cover for part 2 of the arc? The Seasons fight seems obvious, but do we want to stick to the style established in the other two issues, or does Adam do an Alphonse Mucha thing? Probably not the Mucha reference this time. There probably is such a cover (or set of covers) at some point, but not this one. They could see the Sunrise series have variant covers, although they weren’t quite as common in 2000 as it became a decade later. Anyway, the seasons vs. the Freedom Five seems like the obvious direction.