Podcasts/Episode I-73

The Letters Page: Editor's Note 73

Original Source

Libsyn Audio

Intro

The saltiest Editor's Note!

Show Notes:

Run Time: 1:47:18

Christopher is sitting! Adam did art! We eat candy! And talk about a schedule!

Upcoming schedule:

Tuesday, December 5th: Episode #269: Writers' Room: Young Legacy and Expatriette team-up
Tuesday, December 12th: Episode #270: Writers' Room: Alternate Freedom Five Line-Up (not Disparation)
Tuesday, December 19th: Editor’s Note #74
Tuesday, December 26th: Episode #271: Writers’ Room: Captain Cosmic and/or Naturalist Story Where Neither Are Responsible For The Relevant Problem And Both Contribute Positively To Its Satisfying Resolution And Neither Are Tricked By Anyone In The Process

There are questions, answers, goofs, and gaffes. Essentially, everything you've come to expect from The Letters Page!

We're recording the next three episodes in the next weekish, so get your questions in ASAP, especially for the episodes annouced here!

Characters Mentioned

Summary

Questions

[We start off with a bunch of questions from somebody who’s still working their way through the podcast backlog.] In episode 60 you mentioned that the Prime Wardens briefly used the Ruins of Atlantis as a headquarters, but how did some of them get there? Tempest has no problems, Captain Cosmic and Argent Adept one can see ways in which they could bypass the difficulties, but how do Fanatic and Haka get there? The main way to get there are to use the gates around the world that have been mentioned [although that was a detail that came much later, episode 169]. Beyond that, Fanatic probably could just teleport as we’ve seen her do that kind of thing (albeit rarely). Haka probably could swim down there, too. It might not be a pleasant experience, but he’d get there eventually. [This spins off a brief discussion about a scuba Haka which Adam makes canon in that there was an action figure - like a line of “Hydro Force Prime Wardens” or whatever toys that don’t represent anything that actually happened in comics. They come back to this occasionally to flesh out the details like Fanatic with an oversized (holy) water gun, or Captain Cosmic having big construct flippers and the toy will “swim”. Tempest comes with the submarine playset toy - you can’t get the Tempest figure separately.]
Was there ever a Sentinel Comics Cookbook in the Metaverse? Definitely. Probably more than one. People license stuff like that all the time.
In episode 69 you bring up the Inversiverse: what’s the inverse version of Madame Mittermeier’s Fantastical Festival of Conundrums and Curiosities? After a suggestion from chat, it’s probably “wish fulfillment” the carnival instead of “preying on your darkest fears” the carnival. Like, you walk in and can find whatever carnival-appropriate stuff that you want there to be present. It’s much less chaotic and is just a good time.
I loved the Radio Play episode. No question, just wanted to say that.
In Editor’s Note 20, when discussing the Citizens of the Sun you mentioned Citizen Lance and kind of offhandedly mentioned his partner Citizen Boil (ew) - do you ever talk more about him? What are his powers? Adam starts to talk about him making lava boil up or something, but Christopher suggests that they have enough fire-based Citizens. Maybe he can still heat things up, but not explicitly manifesting as fire/lava.
[Now we’re going to give some answers for you to provide the questions for. This also ends the initial letter of the episode.]
- The Good Samaritan would win that fight. Who would win in a fight, the Good Samaritan vs. the Lost Child?
- That’s the most obscure comics homage we’ve worked in that nobody has noticed before. Is the name of the company “SC Comics”, “Sentinel Comics Comics” in the way that “DC Comics” is “Detective Comics Comics”? [This is me editorializing a bit - they think that most of their obscure references have been pointed out by somebody at one point or another and this “SC Comics” thing was just kind of thrown out for lack of a good answer.]
- The Lost Child would win that fight. Who would win, the Lost Child vs. her parents trying to get her to go to bed?
- They’re deathly afraid of sock monkeys. What are Aeon Men’s greatest fear?
- The Lost Child’s teddy bear would win that fight. Who would win in a fight, the Lost Child’s teddy bear vs. [unspecified other stuffed animals that are weaker - this is a tough one since the only other stuffed animal of note is the Dreamer’s monkey, who is not weaker and also kind of stops being a stuffed animal after a certain point.]
- That was inspired by Kurt Busiek’s comic, Astro City. [They don’t have anything specifically inspired by that.]
- Bunnies. What pet do Tachyon and her wife keep?
- That’s a secret we’ve wanted to talk about that for ages, but nobody has asked us before. What’s Zhu Long’s true origin? [The trick here is that the answer isn’t actually talking about the secret, only noting that it’s something that is a secret that they haven’t (and won’t) talk about.]
If there was a Legacy game for the Nintendo 64 (or equivalent system in the Metaverse), how bad was it? How many rings do you have to fly through? Are there even any copies still out there? [Adam begins by telling Christopher about the absolutely abysmal Superman 64 game.] There are probably a handful of Legacy games, both good and bad.
Who comes up with the universe numbers (I mean, other than you - my theories are either La Comodora due to the home universes of the two Hakas being Universes 1 and 2 or at the very least just somebody from Universe 1 given its prominent place in the scheme)? At first Christopher thought you were asking who in the Metaverse came up with the numbers, for which the answer is probably just that writers for random issues would come up with a new universe and give it a number that wasn’t in use yet. They don’t think that initially the numbers were an in-setting feature - they were purely editorial at first. However, they eventually start getting used in the comics themselves, at which point we need to decide where they came from. La Comodora is insufficient given that her numbering scheme wouldn’t be communicated to others in the setting. You’re probably right that Universe 1 being Universe 1 means that it’s somebody from there. Maybe it’s something they try to work in post-OblivAeon. Like, they recognize that these editorial labels started getting used in the comics themselves and decide at that point to finally find the excuse for how/why. There’s some department in G.L.O.B.A.L. that’s responsible for it. When that comes up, they retcon the existence of some scientist who’d been working on Multiverse theory stuff for a long time and it’s their personal categorization system that only came to prominence during/post OblivAeon.
Baron Blade made the Regression Serum for the purpose of weakening Legacy, which it does - but then he reverse-engineers it to give himself powers? Look, it stands to reason that if you make something that weakens a strong person that the inverse of it would strengthen a weak person. That’s just plain logic. It’s like you’ve never done science before.
Also, it can take away NightMist’s power? Well, you see… the Regression Serum that takes away NightMist’s powers/curse is a different formulation than the one that was used on Legacy. The original was done specifically to use on Legacy and was from a relatively early story. The one that worked on NightMist was part of the Vengeance plot where Blade knew that he would be up against a number of different heroes and so made a multi-purpose version. Or maybe forget all that and think of it like this: Legacy’s powers come from Wellspring. Baron Blade doesn’t know that, but what he’s created is something that nullifies the metaphysical effect that’s applied to a normal person. When NightMist also has a metaphysical effect applied to her physical body, the Regression Serum is also able to disrupt that. (Going back to the previous answer, this also implies that the Reverse Regression Serum is applying a metaphysical effect to his body, so Baron Blade is actually creating a magical effect via science.) He’s looking at cause and effect and is interested in the results, even if the actual mechanisms involved aren’t clear.
What is this stuff anyway? How did Baron Blade make it? Did he know what it could do or did he find out over time? They talked about what it is. He makes it by putting chemicals into one of those spinny things. Let’s say he manages to get a sample of Legacy’s blood at some point and then goes around acquiring samples of blood from his blood relatives who don’t also have powers so that he can identify what’s different. He isolates that and figures out how to cancel it out. He wasn’t sure at first what it would do. Maybe it would poison him, or weaken him, or what.
What else can it be used for? Could it cure werewolves or vampires? Could it depower somebody like Anubis or GloomWeaver? It could probably cure werewolves. It could cure vampires as well, but then they’d just die. It probably couldn’t depower Anubis or GloomWeaver (GloomWeaver doesn’t even have an actual physical body at this point - when he has a “physical” body that’s still not fully “him”, it would probably do some damage to his Skinwalker form, though). Anubis is just the way he is rather than it being a metaphysical alteration to an existing body. Ra it could affect, though.
Could the Regression Serum cancel other powers derived from Singular Entities like Guise or Captain Cosmic? Yes.
Which characters would it not affect? Any of the non-powered ones like Wraith or Bunker. Setback was part of the Reverse Regression Serum project in the first place, so either it wouldn’t affect him or it would super affect him (it’s probably going to depend on at which point in the story he’s exposed to it). Any actual Singular Entity is probably immune. Apostate would likely get kicked out of whichever body he was in at the time, but he’d just show up elsewhere. Tempest is immune. There’s also a very low amount of this in the world - it requires some very rare component so it’s not like Baron Blade has just vats of the stuff ready to go all the time.
In Episode #266, you referred to post-OblivAeon Xian Niu as “the Scarred Master”, a name I think you’ve only used once or twice before. Is that what the character is generally called in that era, in and/or out of comics? And am I right to assume it’s a sign of just how badly it went for him when NightMist drew the power out of the capacitor he was working on? Yes, you’ve got it exactly. Post-OblivAeon he’s known as “The Scarred Master” and is in the Realm of Discord vying with Spite for control there. He’s covered in a bunch of arcane scars from when the capacitor exploded.
How do you feel about power scaling superheroes? Are you on the same line of thought as Stan Lee, that the writer always decides who wins? Or are you more interested in the ‘Death of the Author’, where the heroes seem to have consistent feats of strength and such? Well, the thing to keep in mind is that heroes don’t have consistent feats of strength. They just don’t. It depends on where the focus is. Like, even non-powered heroes - take the Wraith for example. In a Freedom Five issue we might have her step into some shadows and basically just disappear, to pop out of another shadow elsewhere. In Mystery Comics in a story more focused on her, we see the process of her being stealthy rather than it being treated as just an effortless thing she does that may as well be a power. Now, as a writer you’re supposed to hew close to the “truth” of the character in question - Captain Cosmic isn’t personally strong enough to lift a car without using his constructs. You might occasionally get outlier things where you can kind of pick out that the writer was probably wanting to use a set of characters that were not available to them and things make more sense through that lens, but those are weird edge cases and likely turn readers off whatever that writer was doing (“you may not have noticed what was wrong, but your brain did”).
Are you mostly interested in power scaling only Sentinels of the Multiverse, such as in Cosmic Contest? Or are you into the deep-diving that occurs on reddits and such? To put the question in another way; do you prefer shipping or power-scaling superheroes? Those things belong on reddits and stuff. They prefer shipping for sure.
Adam, I am having some real trouble visualizing how one of your characters fights: Fashion. Could you please describe what some action panels with Fashion would look like? Is she just like, spinning with a razor sharp dress, or is it like a utility belt, or etc… Basically, how does Fashion fight? All of the above. Her outfits are rather modular. Sometimes she’s in a “battle dress” but others it’s more gadgety kinds of things. Or she’s got laser guns (something she has in the Colosseum). She’s a Swiss-army knife of a character.
So given Tachyon’s love of stage magic does she ever try to perform it herself, and would she “cheat” using super speed or try to perform it old school? There might be a backup story in an issue where she tries to do magic but people keep calling her on how things are done, with her eventually “cheating” using her speed for the finale just to have something work. Then she immediately owns up to it because she feels bad. She takes magic so seriously.
Which SotM characters does Christopher think he could defeat in a duel? Good Samaritan and Lost Child. Brianna Hawke is scary but he thinks he can take her. If we’re talking a formal duel with rapiers and there are rules and everything, he thinks he could take Greazer. There are likely a few characters like that (he starts saying that Baron Blade is among them, but he seems the type to have formal fencing training - in some of the early drawings he even had a sword). Idealist - he can beat up children all day!
When was Young Legacy born in comics? Justice Comics #182, June 1955. And by the end of the Multiverse in 2016, she’s a teenager! [Or, rather, she’s in her early 20s given that she was a college student those last few years.] She is a really weird case even involving Comic Book Aging in general since she ages in bursts. She’s a baby for like 5 years. Then after about 30 years she’s a young teen. Then after another 30 years she’s a late teen.
Who among the Sentinels cast is the worst patient? Who will keep working through injury until they just stop functioning (more whether they’ll sit still for treatment and rest)? A lot of them (probably the non-powered heroes even more so, though). The most notable one who will keep fighting even when they should stop and rest is probably Stuntman.
- [Moved from later in chat] I meant more who is bad about sitting for treatment and rest rather than who will keep fighting through injury at the time? Fanatic is another good example of that, but she can just nonsense her way into being better. Man, who would actually take doctor orders seriously… That’s not really a superhero thing to do. You want those stories where they keep fighting despite the broken arm (like Setback in Run of Luck). They’ll name one character who is good about that. Captain Cosmic. Somebody wrote him in one issue where he was feeling under the weather and insisted on staying in to recover rather than going out to fight crime and that one incident solidified a fandom reputation for being a big baby about being sick.
Now that both a licorice based character [the episode began with them trying the Extreme Licorice-flavored candy that Moritz gave them) and Scuba Haka are confirmed, when are they going to team up? They don’t know why those would team up.
[Regarding a note early on that episode 300 of the podcast will happen in the coming year so they should plan around that.] Whatever happens for episode 300, it better be an extra special giant size issue, as is good and proper. Yeah, however something to note about a fair number of “giant size issues” in real life is that the actual story in them is rather short, but then they reprint a few classic stories in the back pages. Something they could do for episode 300 is to find an issue #300 that could be interesting. For example, Mystery Comics Vol. 2 #300 is the actual, for real this time, death of Spite.
How was Akash'Bhuta’s name derived and do you have any tips for people/a person trying to derive a related name (that isn’t another form of Akash’…)? They started with Sanskrit but weren’t looking to make an actual phrase out of it, but were more picking words that had the right meter/cadence while also feeling ancient/barely understandable.
Looking forward to the up-coming Freedom Five alternate line-up episode! Have groups like Freedom Five, Dark Watch, or Prime Wardens ever had a hero rotate into the line-up for a period of time, maybe because an existing member was unavailable? We know Alpha is frequently around Dark Watch and various heroes were fairly common in Prime Wardens stories, but were there extended periods where an alternative character was actually considered part of a group? They think that the answer is, unfortunately, no. It’s because of the way they structured the teams because of the card game. Any additions like this would be very short-term. That being said, a non-zero number of fans probably considered Alpha to be a part of Dark Watch during the big crossover arc despite it not being stated on the page.
I was looking at the EE card where Tempest and Mr. Fixer are teaming up at the fake Oval Office, and I realized that I can’t imagine Fixer and Tempest interacting. I can think of pairings with less chemistry than the two of them (Tempest and Sky-Scraper come to mind), but even negative pairings are easier to imagine writing for, because you have an angle to write from. In my mind, Tempest and Fixer really wouldn’t have much to talk about, and I imagine tense, awkward silence. Is my assessment at all accurate, and more broadly, which characters in Sentinel Comics do you think would be the toughest to write a dialogue scene between? They would argue that Tempest and Sky-Scraper have a lot of chemistry - it’s just antagonistic. The problem you have with Tempest and Fixer is that they have zero chemistry, not negative chemistry. Yeah, the scene with Tempest and Fixer probably went something like “So… we just do the thing?” “Yeah.” “So… you’re from some fish planet?” “Yup. You fix cars.” “Uh huh…” [awkward silence as they do the thing] That was part of the point of that card - Miss Information was intentionally putting people off their guard, thus the odd pairing. It would be tough to write scenes involving several Prime Warden/Dark Watch member pairs. Haka can talk to anybody, but Fanatic is very limited in who she could have a productive conversation with. Captain Cosmic probably also does okay. Most Golden/Silver Age characters probably have an easier time with more people as a general rule. Of course, this is actually flipped a bit for Christopher since the “generic” heroes he often tries to write something more interesting for and the weird characters have a hook he can lean on more.
Marty Adams is describes as having black hair in the starter kid, but his hair is red on a certain cover [this is a reference to something from the History that has been previewed in the Patreon Discord - another reason to join today!] - is the black hair a new look after OblivAeon or is it an earlier development? His hair color was inconsistent for a long time. He is a support character who is not always around and so people weren’t super consistent with it - mostly just because they couldn’t be bothered to look up what he looked like the last time he appeared. Eventually it was settled on as black hair, but it took a while to get there. That probably happened by the ’90s.
More injury related questions, if you were injured in the OblivAeon battle and Dr. Medico MD is in full on red mode which hero would you want to treat your wounds? Are there any heroes you still pick Malpractice Medico treating you instead of? Sure on the last bit - there are many heroes who don’t have healing abilities/skills at all and Dr. Medico can still heal while in Malpractice mode. Painstake and Fanatic can heal (she might actually be the best at it if she were to focus on it). Unity can make a medical robot who can heal. Scholar can likely do a good job.
Is Young Legacy closer in age to Expatriette or Harpy? [After some back-and-forth] It sounds like Young Legacy is closer to Harpy than to Expatriette, but they’re all in kind of the same nebulous age category. It would also likely change depending on when you’re talking about. Post OblivAeon we’re probably looking at an age situation where Expat is oldest, then Legacy, then Harpy. Of the three Expatriette has aged the most over their heroing careers. Harpy has aged the least and is an even odder case in that she had a very unorthodox retcon - she was an adult in her original appearance as Matriarch and got retconnecd to be a teenager later. [I would note that the Girls Night Out issue had Harpy older than Young Legacy so, they crossed over in comic book aging time in the Post-OblivAeon jump.]
Was there ever a team made of previously known heroes that just didn’t stick and that we therefore don’t know about? Maybe some attempts by some writers at various points put a group of heroes together for a story in the hopes of creating a team out of it, but it doesn’t stick. It probably happens at least a few times.
Where did Gloomy’s tail go? We know he had one, we know it was there, so where is it now? Was it retconed away or was it just a sometimes food in the history of the comics? Adam didn’t like it as part of the design for the “vanilla” GloomWeaver, but does for the Skinwalker version. It’s a sometimes thing now.
In the most recent Guise episode, spoilers, Green Grosser can make “living” creatures, such as Draculas?! Could Green Grosser always make animate/‘thinking’ plants? The Draculas couldn’t really think - they had a basic “program” that Green Grosser was able to instill in them. It’s kind of like what Unity does with her robots only with plants. It’s closer to what Unity does than it is to what Biomancer does.
I have a question here about Fanatic and one her powers being…Deus Ex Machina? The theming seems appropriate. She has other powers, of course, but was that your intent? Yes.
Any news on “The Trial of Baron Blade”? The news is that they still want to do it someday and probably will. So, the same as it’s been for a while and not really “news” I guess. As soon as it’s in a state such that they could do it they’ll let us know that it’s fair game for submission/voting.
Unity’s initial episode stated she first appeared in the ’90s Freedom Five cartoon before being added to comics a few years later. As her first comic appearance has been Definitively stated to be June 1990, I assume the general story is still correct but the timeline, as is often the case post Timeline Project, has shifted. Do you know when her first television appearance was, and how long did it take for publishers to start pushing to add her to the print Universe? The cartoon actually started in ’88 or in ’89, but ran long enough that it’s generally thought of as a ’90s show.
If Adam were to do “Sentinels of the Night” art for Alpha, Darkstrife, Painstake, and Young Legacy, what horror monsters/archetypes would you assign to each? Alpha is a “final girl” (i.e. the trope of slasher movies often having a single character, usually a young woman, surviving the story). Darkstrife and Painstake are “creepy horror twins”. Christopher first suggests Nurse Ratched for Young Legacy, but then they realize that because Legacy was a vampire she should be too. So, let’s have her be more of an Anne Rice, Queen of the Damned style one. They also consider doing a Carrie thing for Alpha, but they like the flip of monster/victim instead of good/bad.
Has K.N.Y.F.E. ever tried to flirt with Anthony Drake and how much mutual confusion was involved? Their paths don’t really cross. They could see a thing where they meet and she says something like “Och… I love a tall, red-headed man.” To which he replies with just “Okay.” [beat panel] And she gets that there’s nothing going to happen there and moves on.
What is the Watsonian reason for Argent Adept’s creation - he’s an unusual character by a number of standards: he’s a “bard superhero” which isn’t really a thing in real comics to the point that “This game has a bard superhero?” is a selling point, he’s a “Mr. Fanservice” character with red hair (which outliers like Matt Murdoch aside, red-haired men typically get dorky comic relief like Jimmy Olsen or are creepy weirdo villains like the Riddler) - so, what led to his creation in the Metaverse? In the ’70s they talked about a creator who was doing a bunch of cool, weird things and Argent Adept was one of them. It was specifically to be weird. This was coming out of the Silver Age where hero backstories were, if note “rote” exactly, were at least pretty straightforward. This was an experiment of doing something really different. This is also where we got into NightMist’s curse backstory and Fanatic. Even Omnitron and Omnitron-X fits in here - if Omnitron had happened any other era the time travel component of the solution would probably not have been in there. There’s usually not an intention behind somebody becoming Mr. Fanservice. That just happens organically and is almost an accident of which artists are assigned to a given book at the right time - if they’re good at drawing certain kinds of things, that can generate a reputation for the character. There was probably some fan response that he was nice and likeable in a way that many heroes aren’t, so as soon as there were even a few pretty-boy arts of him it just snowballed from there as the next generation of writers and artists already have that reputation cemented in their mental picture of the character. To give a real-world example, Nightwing wasn’t a fanservice character at first, then he became that to the point where now we have covers of “all his butts”.
What does being a correct and properly-trained Virtuoso of the Void involve? The answer to that is lost. That’s Argent Adept’s story; figuring out what that means. Part of the story with him post-OblivAeon is him coming to grips with the idea that he never will be whatever that was, but the world has changed and maybe Virtuosos should too. Akash’Bhuta is no longer a threat, so what does being a Virtuoso mean going forward?
Sure, we get characters like Soothsayer Carmichael yelling at him for doing things wrong and Diamond Diva showing him up, but most of Anthony’s flaws are not training related (being bad with people, having a “hold my beer” attitude in how he approaches a problem, etc.), so what’s the “right” way to use the Void? The right way to do it is to have been brought up from youth under the training of a master. The right way to become a Virtuoso of the Void is directly analogous to the way in which Young Legacy becomes Legacy. In terms of execution - what he is doing wrong that a proper Virtuoso would be doing differently - it’s partly in his normal flaws, but also in that he’s not good at keeping these things separate in general. He should be attempting to prevent the world and the Void from really ever having to do with one another and he’s pretty bad at that. Additionally, a Virtuoso is typically doing things in one way, by oneself, to save the world. Argent Adept has always done his best work as part of a team. Most Virtuosos in history had a real “lone sentry” kind of vibe to them.
It’s often stated that OblivAeon Shattered the Timelines (which makes time/universal travel possible - or at least much easier), but the other realities already existed and mostly run parallel to one another, why was the event referred to as “shattering” them given that the word would usually imply a singular thing that is then fragmented? The word choice is “cool marketing copy”. More accurately, what is being shattered are the barriers between timelines. Things were usually kept separate from one another just in the usual way things worked, but now everything has broken boundaries between them so things cross over much more easily.
Why is Akash’Bhuta’s second form called Akash’Thriya (get it, three-ya)? There was an intermediate form! Akash’Mecha, which was definitely intended from the beginning. You’re welcome. Also, “thriya” wasn’t supposed to indicate anything related to 3.
We know that Singular Entities were at least occasionally referred to as “space gods” within the comics, but when did that practice stop? They don’t think it stops. Once the concept of “Singular Entities” becomes a thing there’s a transition period where “space gods” gets used less often, but because they are still “basically space gods” it never stops entirely. We’re also leaving open the design space for there to be space gods that aren’t Singular Entities.
Is there any metric you use for whether or not to include a non-question letter? They do the Marie Kondō thing. Does it spark joy? A lot of the stuff that gets cut are fanfic things.
What’s with all the hate on the west coast? San Alonso got destroyed, the Space Needle (and one presumes a good chunk of Seattle) got wrecked when Sky-Scraper fought OblivAeon there, and the Southwest Sentinels are treated as B list heroes at best until they got powered up and transcended their regional identity - was Los Angeles rude to Adam during his time there? Did Portland kick your pets? Adam loves L.A. Now, it was also very rude to him, but he loves it. There’s a Decemberists song “Los Angeles, I’m Yours” that is everyone’s experience with L.A. It’s a horrible, horrible place that you can’t help but love.
Why is the western US so often seen as a minor player in comics? Most of the time what happens is that you say “I want a city for this to take place in” and what’s the most City Brand City imaginable? New York. It’s the archetype. London is the “really old” city. Paris is the “weirdly romantic for being such a garbage city” city (Christopher did not have a good time in Paris). Portland is the “weird” city. Even Chicago has mob overtones and so gets “crime” city (and is younger than NYC). So, your main comics city of tomorrow is usually either NYC itself or is obviously patterned on it, and is therefore on the east coast somewhere. If you want your characters to interact, you need them to all be in the same general area, so that just happens. That being said, Adam’s been reading through Marvel’s backlog and notes that Daredevil, so closely associated with Hell’s Kitchen in NYC, spent like a decade set in San Francisco and that Son of Satan was set entirely in St. Louis. Things do branch out, but most of it is set around Megalopolis as a matter of practicality.
What’s the deal with Heartbreaker and pencils? Even if he’s good with improvised weapons, wouldn’t it still be better to use the knives he’s got on him? Or… does he run out of them on a regular basis and they happen to be around so often that they seem to have become somewhat of a signature weapon? It’s the closest thing to an arrow in most people’s everyday lives. It’s a wooden shaft that’s sharp on one end. As opposed to pens, they’re also easier to draw and have what they are be instantly recognizable. They are an improvised weapon for Heartbreaker after he runs out of knives and whatnot.
When did Ignacio Gallo live? When was he cursing objects? They think “late Renaissance”, so like 16th or 17th century.
Guise knows he is in a comic (or believes it and happens to be right from the Metaverse’s point of view), but a lot of times he isn’t. Does he know when he is off panel and refers to those times on-panel? What about alternate universe Guises who are in comics a lot less often? Do they envy “main” Guise? They think that latter comes up. They’re not sure what the initial question is asking - he’s aware of whatever medium that he’s appearing in so in a comic he “knows” he’s in a comic, when in a game he “knows” he’s in a game, etc.
- [Follow up, moved here] What I mean is, do things that are not depicted in the comics even happen to him or does he only live in the comics? And if the former, which seems more likely, does he refer to things that “you [the reader] weren’t there for”? Anything that happens in Universe 1, does happen with the idea being that later in the comic when it gets acknowledged, so you might have a comics writer have Guise acknowledge that something happened “in the video game”. Guise writing is also extremely variable in terms of what’s “canonical” and just overall quality of how he’s handled. Like, you could have a video game that’s an adaptation of a specific comics story line, which is obviously not canonical as it’s a retread of the canonical event - but Guise could be in it and then later Guise in a comic could refer to that non-canonical game. It’s weird. [I think they’re still missing the point here: they’re asking whether interstitial events between panels/pages still happen for Guise or if he only exists for the things that happen on the page/screen/etc. Like, if we see him at Freedom Plaza and the next scene we see him for is back at his apartment, did he walk home or does he only exist in those two places with no intervening activity?]
Who has the most romantic encounters between K.N.Y.F.E., Haka, and Captain Cosmic? Haka’s certainly been around for the longest… but it’s probably K.N.Y.F.E. then Captain Cosmic, then Haka (for as long as he’s been around, he is pretty sparing in terms of relationships). Also, do you mean on-panel or within the character’s fictional life in total? On panel it’s definitely the order they’ve given. Haka may only have a couple on-page things.
Since it’s still the spooky month, who would you put in a Castlevania-esq story outside of the obvious of NightMist and Fanatic? Expatriette would be a fun one. You could easily do an Alpha one. Post-OblivAeon, Anubis is great for that kind of thing.
We sometimes see the Chairman resort to fisticuffs when cornered. Who taught him how to fight? Is he any good at it? He’s very good at it. They start describing his training having been “on the mean streets”, but then consider that he probably has some private instructors brought in and he’ll train with them right up until the point where he kills them, because at that point they can’t teach him any more to start with and it handily keeps his identity secret. There aren’t any specific “notable” trainers, though.
Idea for episode 300: A day in the life of Proletariat (with him split into 300 copies). I’m sure that will be great! So for episode 300, you’ll do a shorter recording and then replay two older episodes? They love both of those. It would be fun to do that, not to shortchange people, though. Like, do a full recording normally, but then just append two previous “story” sections, so you wind up with a 4-5 hour episode, but a good chunk of it is not new material. Just to give the full experience.
Random question, did Sentinels comics ever do a fake out wedding issue (big lead up, but leading to no wedding/quick divorce)? That’s probably happened, but they don’t have specific characters in mind for it.