Podcasts/Episode 263

The Letters Page: Episode 263
Writers' Room: America's Finest Legacy #171/NightMist #10

Original Source

• Libsyn Audio

Primary Topic

• General Geist
• Legacy
• NightMist

Intro

Good morning, Sentinels fans! Rise and shine... FROM THE GRAVE!

Show Notes:

Run Time: 1:37:30

We're back with another thrilling tale to delight and horrify! You thought you'd seen the last of General Geist?! Well, who can say.

This is one of our favorite episodes in a while. We hope you like it too!

Join us next week for a HOWLING good time!

Characters Mentioned

• Josef Schmidt
• GloomWeaver
• Haka
• Argent Adept

Summary

Overview

• General Geist Returns! No prep! We’ll do it live! We last saw him in what was actually his first on-page appearance, Justice Comics #58 in February 1945 (three issues before the first appearance of Baron Blade). We last saw him then because he died. He had a machine that could reanimate people as zombies under his control and he was using it to create soldiers.
• Adam has an idea for what to do - in TV it’s something called a “rare pair” where there’s an episode involving two characters that don’t usually interact all that much, but do this time. As such, he thinks Legacy/NightMist is the way to go here. Christopher likes that. They said before that General Geist’s return would have been in the ’80s. That works out pretty well since NightMist’s solo book starts in June ’85. Alternatively, it could go in Legacy’s book. Or both! Two-issue crossover! This could actually be an excuse for America’s Finest Legacy to do marketing for the new NightMist book by crossing over into it early on in its run. They put it in AFL #171 and NM #10 both from March ’86.

Cover Discussion

• A bit early for Cover Discussions, but here we are and Adam doesn’t want to stop. They could do a fun thing where Adam does both covers for this week such that you put the covers next to one another to get a shared image. It’d be a bit weird because the books would have different artists.
• Adam has an idea for that. You have the connected cover, but the main draw of the cover is General Geist’s face, which is split down the middle with half on either cover. There’s not a huge amount of coordination required - just knowing how big to draw his face. The art doesn’t have to match perfectly, just well enough. You then have Legacy in the background on one fighting some zombies or something and NightMist on the other dealing with some magic nonsense.
• Oh, they also swap things around. Legacy is on the NightMist cover and NightMist is on the AFL cover.

As We Were Saying…

• How does General Geist come back? How do we want him to look because that will likely inform at least some of it? Christopher’s first thought was something of a combination of GloomWeaver, Red Skull, and Ghost Rider. You get the full Nazi officer uniform going but with the floating, flaming skull head. Christopher thought green flames, but Adam suggests blue instead. In fact, to further differentiate between him and those other characters you don’t show the full skull detail. Like, there are indications of the skull in there, but it’s mostly washed out by the blue-white flames.
• Why does he rematerialize as a ghost now? They still don’t think this is a GloomWeaver thing. Adam thinks that we have an old Nazi survivor in the present (i.e. 1986) who’s also some kind of cultist. As in, there is a reputation for the Nazis to be interested in the occult generally and this guy was a member of the Thule Society, but he got picked up as part of Operation Paperclip and has just been living out his life. Some sweet, nice old man with a family and grandchildren. But he’s still got his old stuff and goes down to his basement to do Thule Society stuff/rituals in secret.
• This is where we open, briefly showing this guy and his life (it’s the Legacy book so we do very Legacy things - sunny day in the park as he feeds the pigeons, has dinner with his large family, etc.) before then showing his secret life (goes to the basement, we get shading changes to the art as he drops his public demeanor). He changes into his Nazi uniform and goes through some ritual that’s unsuccessful - either through his thoughts/talking to himself or through a narration box we learn that he’s been trying this for decades without success. He heads back out, gets into bed and lovingly touches a photo of a woman at his bedside. Like, everything about this guy except the underground Nazi ritual chamber is idyllic.
• As he falls asleep, we transition back down to his ritual chamber. A blue spark of something begins glowing in the ritual circle. Whatever he was trying to do failed, but something is happening. What we’re going for is the next time this guy goes down to do something in his ritual chamber, he’s basically consumed by this. He dies and General Geist takes over his body.
• Maybe the final reagent that makes something work here is that he’s managed to capture some of NightMist’s mist? It’s a question of whether we want to tie things to NightMist directly like this or just have Legacy reach out for help once he figures out that he’s dealing with magical/ghost nonsense. Or maybe she just shows up once magical ghost things start happening because of course she does. We could also do some nonlinear storytelling.
• We can go straight from the spark in the ritual chamber to Legacy fighting some Nazi ghosts. As we move forward through the story of Legacy and NightMist fighting these jerks we occasionally get glimpses backwards showing how we got to this point. It’s near the end of the Legacy issue that we get the reveal that it’s General Geist. It doesn’t matter that his face is on the cover - nobody knows who that would be.
• After some discussion over how much we can expect of readers, they decide to start this story with a “three days ago” caption and we jump to “now” when we get to the Legacy part.
• They also like the idea of having the writing teams collaborating. Like, it’s relatively common to have two writers for a comic (plot by vs. written by credits) and they think that we mix it up so that we swap the writers between the two books’ teams for this story.
• Do we keep the jumping-back-and-forth thing in the NightMist issue too? That might be a bit much - we do that to set things up in the first issue and then the story is more straightforward once we know who we’re dealing with.
• Do we name the old guy? He’s only around for a few pages and then dies - it’s not like General Geist keeps his identity as a cover or anything. We could throw in some generically-German name like Hans or Otto or whatever. Is there any dialogue or narration that would even both naming him? Christopher thinks that other than the “three days ago” bit the visual storytelling they’ve described is enough on its own. Adam thinks that this is better, but it’s not what an ’80s comic (and especially an ’80s Legacy comic) would do. That’s too bad. They name him Josef Schmidt (“Joe Smith” in his public life). It’s not terribly important because he’s dead before this comic actually starts. We see him in the flashback sequences here through where General Geist consumes him (probably as the opening flashback at the beginning of the NightMist issue).
• Anyway, sequence: Joe Smith does his ritual that isn’t entirely successful (although whatever it does “wakes” General Geist and starts the process of his return) and goes to bed, we cut to Legacy fighting Nazi ghosts. Of course General Geist would want to bring about Nazi ghosts, but what’s his actual plan? Is he still specifically Nazi-motivated? Probably. Is he bringing about the Fourth Reich? Hmm… not just that - in his time being dead he’s come around to the idea that that’s better. He wants to bring the world to darkness and destruction and the Nazis will rule that. It’s the Dead Reich. That’s also now the name of the story (parts 1 and 2).
• So, he brings back Nazi ghosts, but he’s not entirely “spirit” here as he’s inhabiting a body. Sure, that body could be destroyed and that wouldn’t destroy him, but he has a physical presence and in theory somebody (like NightMist) could capture him.
• Adam suggests that Legacy is able to punch ghosts because he has a silver ring. That’s a bit flimsy, but it’s comics. Christopher thinks that is a bit weak for justification in the ’80s. Silver Age, sure, but by now we’re probably going to need a better explanation. Maybe he can’t punch ghosts, but then NightMist shows up, does a thing to him, and now he can. As they said before, having her just show up because there’s something major going down involving magic/the undead would definitely just get her attention. Maybe the ghosts have even managed to “catch” him and are in the process of draining his life force or whatever and she saves him.
• Okay, the ghosts are terrorizing a place before Legacy shows up to stop whatever is going on. This gets back to the question of what General Geist’s overall plan is and how he’ll go about it. He’s raising/summoning ghosts to kill everybody and once everything is dead he’ll rule over that. Is it just ghosts or can he do zombies too? At this point they think it’s just ghosts. He did the zombie thing with the help of a machine back in the war. There is definitely narrative space for later stories to get into additional methods, but it’s probably easier to just restrict things to ghosts for this one - or at least the Legacy issue here. We’ll see if they want to get more esoteric in the NightMist issue that follows.
• Let’s have this start in a nice, sunny park in Megalopolis. It’s the same park that we saw Joe in at the start of the issue. How is General Geist going to scale up production here? In spitballing a little Christopher suggests the concept of “Death Zeppelins”. Nazi ghosts in the park is just a first effort/proof of concept. His next move is to head to a airfield - no, an aircraft museum and do something. Adam suggests that rather than that, he goes through the park to get to a graveyard and conjures up a Zeppelin made of bone. General Geist can even walk up specifically to Joe’s wife’s grave to start with her remains (as “the last gift you will give him”). That’s for later, though, since we don’t see General Geist yet.
• Back to where we were. Legacy is fighting Nazi ghosts in the park. He’s losing. NightMist shows up and helps him. Together they defeat the ghosts. We’re in the Legacy comic and so NightMist can be totally inexplicable. She has magic and knows where the ghosts are going - it’s the book from Legacy’s perspective and so he doesn’t need to understand any of this nonsense. She can see the “ghostly trail” heading in that direction - she’s not very familiar with Megalopolis. What’s over there? gasp The Megalopolis Cemetery. cue the Death Zeppelin rising in the distance
• Christopher wants to change “three days ago” to “two days ago” for the prologue portion, so that the flashback we get now is “one day ago”. Hmm… combining things mentioned in various points above - they move the “one day ago” to the start of the NightMist book. We end the AFL issue with Legacy and NightMist heading over to the cemetery and being confronted by General Geist on his Death Zeppelin where he gives a monologue.
• Hmm… that cuts out the thing with Geist walking through the cemetery. Maybe we cut to that just after NightMist shows up to help Legacy, but we just see a figure walking through the cemetery so the reveal of who it is doesn’t happen until the end. Rather than a flashback caption we just get “Elsewhere”. They name her Clara Smith. Oh! His text bubbles are cool. Blue flame skull head means that he’s got blue flame text bubbles. He says the line about her last gift and whatnot and then bones start emerging from the ground and that’s when we cut back to the heroes.
• Okay, so the Death Zeppelin goes up, the heroes fly up to it (NightMist in mist form). They land on the observation platform where General Geist is standing. Villain monologue, etc., then a Ghostbusters-style trap thing activates and captures NightMist. The issue ends with Legacy confronted with the fact that he has to deal with ghost stuff without her.
• His monologue can be about the “freedom of death” and how he’ll bring about the Dead Reich. He can even thank Legacy… Does he think this is the same guy? Doesn’t have to: he wants “to thank you, or rather your father. I’m sure he’s told you of General Geist!” The point being that we get the name-drop of the story title and the reveal that this is a Nazi that Legacy’s dad fought. We could even have a flashback panel with an editor’s note to the relevant issue (and pointing out that it was from 1945). We get two reveals here, first that Legacy’s dad fought this jerk and that his defeat at that time has only made his return with more power now possible; second, that NightMist’s curse leaves her open to being captured and he’ll be using her power to further his scheme.
• So, on to NightMist #10. We open “One day ago…” where Josef Schmidt goes into his ritual room and there’s the blue flame in there. He talks to the flame and he has to be convinced to give himself over. The flame doesn’t just take over, he has to agree to be taken over. They discuss a bit exactly how much trickery is involved here, ultimately landing on that he lies - he claims that he’ll just be a voice whispering in his ear. He has an important role to play in the coming Reich, but he has to let the flame in. The guy is a true believer, but that doesn’t mean he wants to die to make it happen. In any event, Joe agrees and is subsumed by General Geist.
• We then transition back to “Now.” We get a brief recap monologue for what happened last issue (defeating ghosts, Death Zeppelin). The Zeppelin is also releasing Geist Gas or something, beginning the process of turning the population (people’s eyes start glowing with blue flame or something). This is just the beginning - more Death Zeppelins, finding “the faithful” out in the world to join him, etc. Oh, the gas is made from NightMist’s mist and he points it out as what makes him able to do this so quickly - once he gets his whole fleet going he’ll need no such crutch.
• Legacy goes to punch the Nazi (unlike the other ghosts, he has a body he’s occupying and isn’t intangible), but Geist catches his fist and just throws Legacy aside with a laugh, now being constrained by ghostly energies. He is dismissive of Legacy to the point where he doesn’t consider him capable of disrupting his plans.
• The next step is saving NightMist, obviously. What form does the “trap” have? Runes? A bone cage? It’s part of the Death Zeppelin, but it can’t be something that was prepared in advance for her since he couldn’t have known who she was or that she’d be involved now. She’s a convenience rather than being necessary for the plan - Geist just recognizes her curse as being something he can use. Maybe he makes some glowing sigil with his hand (aside, he’s wearing gloves but if he wasn’t his hands would also be skeletal surrounded by blue flames), slams it into the ground and the same sigil appears beneath her (burnt into the bone floor) and growing a skeletal cage (also in flames) which traps her.
• Okay - heroes arrive, Geist does the sigil thing, monologues, Legacy goes to punch him and is tossed aside, more monologue, and Geist leaves them there while he goes off to man the Zeppelin or whatever. Legacy slowly crawls his way across to where Geist slammed the sigil into the floor as messing with that is what’s ultimately going to free NightMist. Just before he gets there NightMist calls for him to stop as “it will kill you!” - Legacy must anyway, because it will save her. He uses his one-hit negation power to survive the backlash when he tears the thing up (he’s still messed up by this, but he survives). The sigil under the cage flickers and dies and then NightMist does some magic to blow up the flaming cage.
• She flies over to Legacy see if she can help him. He’s got some kind of ghost curse now and she can’t break it - she can lend him some of her mist curse in a way that will help mitigate things, but they’ll have to figure out the long-term ramifications of that later. Now we’ve got weakened NightMist and ghost-touched Legacy vs. General Geist on the Death Zeppelin. They want this to show that they’re outclassed but manage to win through sheer grit, determination, and heroism. We have two heroes that are probably in the top 5 most-powerful heroes in Sentinel Comics (other contenders are Argent Adept, Fanatic, and Haka - although the depths of his powers aren’t really “known” yet) but this guy managed to “ghost sucker-punch” them almost instantly - the heroes will win in the story, but not in a “and then we captured General Geist” sort of way.
• They know that they’re not going to stand a chance going toe-to-toe with this guy. What if they crash the Zeppelin with him on it, destroying his physical form? Maybe being on the Death Zeppelin makes him more powerful, and NightMist can’t break that connection. What she can do is perform a ritual to reinforce that connection, trapping him on it, and then crash the thing. She’ll do the ritual, he’ll bring the Zeppelin down. It’s not like this thing is just an envelope full of lighter-than-air gas - this thing is animated bones full of ghosts. Legacy flies around the thing and his method here is to grab it and push it into the ground. When he picks his spot and grabs it, the bones in the area form into skeletons that fight him. Meanwhile, NightMist goes to the command deck to confront Geist and her part of that confrontation is simply “I will hold you here.” She’s accepted that nobody is getting off this thing and will be going down with the ship herself.
• Ultimately, the thing crashes, smashing all of the bones, and destroying Geist’s physical body. NightMist “cheats” as usual by turning to mist. Hmm… or maybe something happens there so she can’t use that for a while or something? Maybe she’s using her mist form in the process of holding Geist here, but that means she’s locked into this thing too. Legacy gets it on its crash course and comes to help her. She waves him off - “We don’t leave soldiers behind.” In order for her to escape, she has to turn off her mist form entirely, relying on Legacy to fly her out of there before it crashes.
• Where do we crash this thing? The ocean would be the “safest” place to do so, but we kind of want it to crash on land for the drama of it. Maybe just some farmland outside the city? Crashing into a mountainside would be great, but there just aren’t good options in the immediate vicinity. Crashing into a forest is good. That also opens up “that forest is extremely haunted” story options later.
• After the thing crashes, we see people who had been affected by the Geist Gas turn back to normal as the energy leaves them. There’s probably at least some property damage and loss of life as a result of this story, but at least the major plot was thwarted and Megalopolis wasn’t turned into a necropolis (Megnecropolis?).
• Man, they’ve once again created a cool villain that they’d have to retrofit into any game product. This is kind of a big plot; what does a minor one look like for this guy? Maybe he doesn’t have minor plots - just really big ones that are very infrequent. Or maybe he’s bound to the Zeppelin such that now he’s kind of stuck in the forest/weaker. “Haunted forest + underground necropolis” is a fun environment for stories, though.
• How long do we have “ghost-touched Legacy”? Does it get cleaned up right away? We could have a coda back at Diamond Manor where NightMist is clearing things up. She’s getting rid of the ghost-curse thing, but she gives him a warning. Undead energies now have “hooks” in you that they can exploit. Having this happen to him and surviving isn’t like an immune response where he’s stronger for it - it’s now a vulnerability. This may not ever be something that is addressed in later stories (although it is just as easily something that is brought up several times).
• It is refreshing to have villains who are just allowed to be evil. No sympathetic backstory explaining why he is the way he is or whatever. General Geist is just a bad guy. And he’s also not subject to the trope of the pure evil villain also being kind of stupid. This won’t be the last time we see General Geist, but having him show up a dozen times might be pushing it, but they’re going to be bigger deals; he’s never just a jobber.

Questions

• Did General Geist re-brand at all (since, depending on the era of his return certain iconography might be… frowned upon)? In this story he is a Nazi-brand Nazi. There’s probably a swastika on the side of the Zeppelin. Or at the very least since the SS cap emblem was a skull, that probably gets worked in prominently. Probably more skulls than swastikas as he would lean into the death connotations. The whole “they were on the right track, but what if everyone were dead instead?” kind of direction lets them move away from the WWII-era-specific stuff over time. He’s still ideologically there, but this lets us move away from the Aryan race bullshit [swear left uncensored by Trevor and I applaud that choice]. We can let him be arguably less… problematic, while still being evil. (Him: “I just want everyone to die!” Onlookers: “Well, at least he’s not racist about it.”)
• Did General Geist amass any more supernatural power, relics, etc. while he was… away? Yes. He’s got deeper knowledge of magic/spells. He had some awareness of that with regards to his old infernal machine as he needed access to the “ghost energy” to make that work. Him being dead, and being dead for a long time, and then coming back is the power source that he’s using now. He got a lot of terrible, dread knowledge in that time. There’s probably indications of him learning “dark secrets the living aren’t meant to know” or something in his monologues. He didn’t come back with relics, but later stories with him almost certainly include some that he gets his hands on.
• Is he in the running to replace GloomWeaver in the ongoing power vacuum struggle after OblivAeon? No. That’s not his jam. He’s an Earth villain. He’d be a strong contender if he went for it, but he’s not going for it.
• Did any of his current followers (if any) get recruited from the Cult of Gloom? He doesn’t have any followers in this story. In later stories it’s possible, maybe even probable, but the Cult of Gloom is a very different vibe despite the “flaming skull” aesthetic similarity. GloomWeaver and his cult have the “bringing gloom to the world” thing going for them. General Geist is specifically wanting to bring about the Dead Reich.
• What precipitated the return of General Geist in the Metaverse? Was this a case of the general “bringing back Nazi villains” as a theme like we had in the ’70s here? Was this return a specific lead-in to the return of Proletariat? This was mostly just a case of somebody reading through back issues and thinking that this guy could make for an interesting villain in the modern day. It may have also been born of a desire for a Legacy/NightMist crossover story - like, Editorial wanted the Legacy writers to collaborate with NightMist’s to give that new book a shot in the arm and one of the guys had this idea in his back pocket. As far as Proletariat goes, this may have been something that reminded somebody that he existed. Bringing back a long-dead (or “dead”) character is mostly just a matter of a writer wanting to do so.
• What kept him so minor in comparisons with the likes of Baron Blade? Once he was back he didn’t make it big mainly in that they didn’t want to overuse a Nazi character. “The more we talk about it the more problematic it is, so let’s just use him occasionally.” Additionally, from a character goals perspective, his goals are achievable and even the attempts are capable of mass destruction. Overusing him means a constant source of devastation. Most General Geist plots probably end with a feeling of “and now he’s definitely dead forever.” Not even in the Spite way where his gimmick becomes that he keeps coming back, but at least a few times the writers intended for him to be put down for good and that limits how much he gets used.
• Why did it take so long for General Geist to be brought back from the dead (I mean, it seems obvious that this guy would come back, right - 40 years seems like a very long time to sit on him)? His first/“last” appearance was in 1945, right at the end of the war. For many years after that you didn’t really see Nazi villains - the war was over and they lost. They’re played out and readers want to move on. Then he just got forgotten. That happens.
• I remember a long time ago seeing an art that Adam had drawn of NightMist fighting a Nazi ghost - was that General Geist? One of his generic soldiers? Is Geist a recurring villain for NightMist in particular? That was not General Geist - we can say now that it was probably one of his minions, but they didn’t know that at the time he drew it. The whole Ghostapo thing is probably a story that happens eventually. They don’t think he’s a NightMist foe - she probably fights him more than once, but he’s a big enough problem that he’s more of a “whoever is around, drop what you’re doing and help” kind of villain rather than a member of a specific hero’s rogues gallery. We probably don’t get something big enough to warrant, say, the Prime Wardens teaming up with Dark Watch to fight him, but you get a grab bag of 2-5 heroes that are available. If he was going to be a recurring foe of anybody it kind of has to be Legacy, especially given the vulnerability they just gave him and the connection to his dad.
• Did any Sentinel Comics writers ever give into the temptation to present a villain as a thinly-veiled stand-in for a disliked public/political figure (say, General Geist working for some politician in Florida or Professor Pollution working for an oil company with a name suspiciously similar to Enron)? Was there controversy around such a thing? Was there an editorial mandate to avoid that kind of thing? Adam hates this kind of thing, but as much as he wishes they could just say that it never happened in Sentinel Comics, that breaks the verisimilitude they’ve built up here. If Adam himself was in charge of a real comics company he would make such an editorial mandate, but that’s not the story they’re telling with Sentinel Comics and the Metaverse. General Geist wasn’t used this way here, but they can’t say that there isn’t some bad story with him later that falls into this kind of category. They don’t have a specific spot in mind for it either, but they’re just not ruling it out. As for examples of it happening, the Naturalist probably has at least some stories like this where there’s some big oil spill or whatever and then there’s a Naturalist story that’s basically a one-to-one parallel to it with him just helping with the cleanup efforts given that he was unable to prevent it from happening. “When will we learn? Surely someone can do something about this.” looks pointedly at the reader The Naturalist’s stories are probably where the most heavy-handed stuff happens. That being said, by the time in the real world where “currently year problems” work their way into mainstream comics like this, Sentinel Comics is kind of busy with OblivAeon. As such, it’s not that there’s an Editorial Mandate to not do x or y, there just happens to be an Editorial Mandate of “we are doing this big thing, everything gets connected to this”. That did result in other stories getting cancelled/cut short (like the Skinwalker GloomWeaver thing).
• [Letter starts with a “thank you” for creating a villain that we can enjoy them getting beat up without feeling any remorse.] You’re welcome. The two groups you can typically get away with that are Nazis and robots, and they made the mistake of making up some very sympathetic robots, so here we are.
• What do other villains think of General Geist (Baron Blade in particular given their love of alliteration and their hatred of Legacy)? Was General Geist invited to participate in Vengeance? There’s space for something interesting there… They’re not ideologically aligned at all. General Geist doesn’t really even specifically have a hatred for Legacy (sure, your dad killed me, but honestly that worked out pretty well all things considered). They like the idea that General Geist has a “Ah, Legacy. Always a pleasure,” kind of reaction to Legacy showing up to stop him. WWII Legacy kills him -> nifty undead powers. Legacy crashes his Death Zeppelin -> acquires haunted forest and underground necropolis. Like, it’s a ton of fun for every defeat to make things better for him in some way. [They have a good laugh over ways in which OblivAeon happening could work out great for him, what with all of the death and destruction.]
• Is General Geist still around post-OblivAeon? If so, how would Mecha-Stalin react to him? The rest of Perestroika? Perestroika would have been adversarial with him even while he was alive. Now that he’s going even further with things, what with the “killing everybody” angle, it’s something where it could be a story where heroes are fighting Perestroika while they’re doing some plan, General Geist shows up, and they team up with the heroes to stop him. That probably goes for most of the villains, honestly. This guy is just the worst, but he gets stronger with every appearance. Man, it’s hard to stop an undead necromancer once they get the snowball rolling isn’t it?
  • They don’t really want this guy to be shaping up to be the next OblivAeon, but it sure seems like things are headed that way. It’s frustrating how much they like this jerk as a baddie - he’s a supervillain, but he’s a supernatural supervillain who’s also a pulpy supervillain and is also the type of irredeemable jerk such that you don’t feel bad just having the heroes go to town on him, but that’s also usually not enough and you have to be more clever to defeat him. With Baron Blade, who they like for a lot of the same reasons, they gave him enough good qualities that they could play around with him maybe being a good guy occasionally. They don’t need to do that here. He has no good points at all. If they add anything to his character at all it’s just to make him more evil.
• [about 1:20:40 letter from Cult of Gloom, responding to General Geist’s application which they are rejecting. They doubt his sincerity and assume it’s a ploy to get his hands on their various relics. #kicknazisoutofoccultspaces] Yeah, that tracks. He’s devious like that (another thing to like about a villain).
• How does General Geist feel about Parlor Quoits? He disdains all games of the living. He’s got Dead Quoits or something.
  • This prompts a bit closer discussion of his ideology. Rather than a White Supremacist, he’s a Dead Supremacist. He’s dead and likes it that way and has reasons for wanting to make everyone dead. You use fewer resources, things don’t grow or change so that you can design a perfect society that won’t grow away from that perfection over time. There are a ton of problems with all of this, but there’s something there to begin with that makes perfect sense to him. He’s internally consistent.
• Have there ever been flashback stories to what characters who are old enough to have been around during one or both World Wars, but weren’t created in the Metaverse that long ago, were up to? Say, the Scholar or Haka (General Geist sounds like the kind of guy whose plots Scholar would notice, and Haka was based on real - well, Metaverse, but they happened in the real world too - Maori soldiers during WWII)? How old was H.R. Walker during WWII? Robert Johnson was certainly older than WWII (although I’m not sure if he’d have been Rambler by then), so what was he up to? Yes, for sure. They could see doing a limited “Haka: The Lost Years” kind of thing, on top of the fact that Christopher remembers that there already is an Anzac Haka story. There’s also a Freedom Squadron book that’s a throwback to WWII stuff that came out in the ’70s and people can get pulled into that one. [!!! - possibly involving Grandpa Legacy, Vernon Carter Bunker, La Louve, and Tommy Atkins!?]
• Have any Sentinel Comics characters punched Adolf Hitler in the face on-panel? If so, is there any chance that could be chosen as a Writers’ Room so we can get that cover? Legacy definitely did. It sounds like somebody did the art of that for the History (although Adam doesn’t think it was him).
• Given the amount of French in the naming schemes for characters (Ambuscade, Expatriette, Argent Adept), do either of you know French? If you’ve listened to them talk about Ambuscade at all it should probably be fairly obvious that neither of them can speak French given how terrible their pronunciation is whenever they try. The -ette suffix definitely has French roots, but is fairly common in American English as well. “Expatriette” came about not because of French, but because they were just taking the word “expatriate” and making it into a character name. “Argent Adept” was due to them needing the color word in there. The “Verdant Virtuoso” was the original name, but they decided against that since “verdant” has more nature associations than simply “green” (also why his EE power signature was green). They then changed it to the Virtuoso of the Void, which is great, but as a title rather than a character name. The name “Argent Adept” was just about the last part of his creation process. Like, they had something like a 3 hour phone conversation that involved a lot of yelling, not at each other, just at how much trouble they were having coming up with something suitable.

Cover Discussion 2: Electric Boogaloo

• So, we’re doing the 2 covers thing with half of General Geist’s face on each. The Legacy cover also contains NightMist being swarmed by Nazi ghosts. The NightMist cover is Legacy and the Death Zeppelin (you don’t want him on it because we want to see the whole thing on the cover). It would be fun if the front of the Zeppelin is a huge skull with an open mouth, as if to swallow Legacy.