 This is the SF Productions podcast network Wednesday the 10th Thursday the third imperative show welcome to bass wasteland the video journal of popular culture I'm Mark Schmidbauer now. I'm Robert Neil and tonight. We're gonna talk about yes DC Comics again We're gonna finally finish DC Comics tonight. At least we think we will make a valiant attempt it's another one of course of our comic book shows and Before we get into the big extravaganza. Oh fun Just want to tell you that we're on Tuesdays at 6 Wednesdays at 10 and Thursdays at 3 p.m. They're on a CTV Also if you want to write into bass wasteland like this upcoming letter did yeah But actually the letter didn't write us in somebody wrote the letter and Senate isn't into us You want to write in to box 15 14 11 Columbus, Ohio 4 3 2 1 5. That's right And tell us to stop doing this things soggy thing between the two of us Well in fact here is a very a letter that someone actually sent in a Joe Neff of oh, yes Just Columbus, okay writes in dear bass wastelanders. Howdy from the west side undoubtedly Columbus's number one community Anyway, just wanted to drop a line saying how much I love your show undoubtedly the most creative inventive show on TV today Well, we agree with you while the network's crank out a steady stream of dribble you guys constantly entertain in an unparalleled way Keep it up, and I'll keep watching just to ask a couple questions. I never did see the DC Comics show. Did it happen? Well, yes, yes, this is in fact the third one if you blink you missed it There was some sort of technical problem And how come you guys were preemptive for two weeks on Wednesday before November 11th? Well same reason technical difficulties There's nothing I hate more than to tune in attend and see a ctv switch to community channel 3 Well, notice everybody else. Where's the justice in this world? Well as a loyal fan for more than a year I hope to see many more years of VW on that great forum for the public access cable 21 Until mark holds up in the attic and has drooling spasms make mine vast wasteland. Thanks Joe Neff Bs. Yes, Wilbert. I'm the kid you met at the comic book show. You know the one at the Sheridan by Northland Mall Oh, he's the guy That guy, okay, you gotta show the album. Oh, yeah And apparently Joe was Joe was somehow like I don't know He was he must have dropped it or was chewing on it or something. We're not exactly sure what happened It actually appeared at to my place looking this way. So we don't know it's pretty pretty scary But thanks for writing anyway, Joe. Maybe he was running and tripped and fell in a puddle He wasn't such a hurry to send it to us. That's right. There you go. Once he scribbled it down. Well Thanks, Joe. Thanks a lot Well onto DC comics when we were last talking about DC we had just gotten past the imaginary period the imaginary tale period of the late 60s um So pretty much after that moved through and we actually got back to real continuity People had just gotten so darn tired of imaginary stories that It was decided that no things have to be more serious and the reason they decided that because marble comics was pretty much Beating them really badly in the in the industry. So And my marvel was doing serious stuff. So DC said, maybe we should do the same thing Jesus like um, you know, not not that not that comics aren't imaginary anyway, but they just uh Well marvel was dealing with more, um, realistic subject. I guess The heroes had problems and you know, there was drug abuse and and you know Violence well teen violence not comic book violence And girlfriends leaving, you know They dump you for somebody else And all this or they would die things like that so DC decided to jump on the big reality man Jump on the reality man So they did uh with uh with a groundbreaking series Of uh green lantern green arrow from neil adams and i'm blanking on the other name Well, it was neil adams. I know it was neil adams People are gonna write in write in and tell us who the other guy was And the other guy Very very important guy though. I can tell you Denny O'Neill. We've been just told Our our crack research team has just Called in with denny o'neill was the other guys. Well, anyway They won lots of awards because it was a it actually showed them Seeing realistic subjects and there's this this this famous, uh scene and it's a landmark scene where this um Where this black uh old guy was asking green lantern, you know, you help the what is it? You help the purple the purple guy the purple skins and and the yellow Yeah, but why don't you help why don't you help the black skins? And he and he's like i can't answer that and he then realizes You know that he's been so busy in space. He's kind of forgotten that he was supposed to protect earth and uh, you know And so they go on this journey across america With um didn't wasn't one of the one of the guardians showed up and came along with them Yeah, and so this was like a landmark series and it began for dc The realistic period that went on for a while actually at the At around the same time they decided well, it's time to Kind of change superman a little bit because by that point Superman was you know, he could uh as I as I think I read in one book. He could uh He could destroy distant galaxies by listening hard. I mean this guy was This guy was pretty much god. I mean Could do absolutely anything So it decided maybe we should cut him back a little bit. He's just too darn super because let's let's cut him back Because he's just too darn unbeatable. They almost had to bring in kryptonite or magic Every single issue to make it even a slightly fair fight He's usually the villain to come in without one of those two things superman just backhand him and it would be all over It wasn't particularly interesting So so They had this series where um They well first they decided they weren't gonna get they were gonna get rid of kryptonite as as a plot device so so uh Unbeknownst to superman the the army or somebody I forget what it is the military will say uh figure out a way to turn all the kryptonite on earth to lead or iron And so they they explode this bomb that sends radiation everywhere and does it it actually turns everything All the kryptonite and iron it also knocks superman flat on his back and And he's like while he's in the sand for some reason. It's a very strange thing part of his essence goes into the sand and creates this this other superman and Suffice to say when it's all over with This other superman goes into this other universe and permanently takes a third of superman's powers with him And and so for about for about a year. Well, I'm probably less than that they decided, you know That they would actually be seen where superman's like boy, this used to be You know really easy, but now it's pretty tough because I don't have all those powers anymore uh, and also at the same time they decided that um In kind of a swipe at how at the time dc was being bought out by warner communications The daily planet was bought out by edge communicate our galaxy communications so And and the and the chief guy at uh at galaxy morgan edge decides that clark kent, you know, this is a now He's a natural for television I don't know. He's a natural for tv. Yeah, apparently Yeah, so it made him an anchor man So this thing went on and and this went on for several months until Basically the the people who had come in and done this moved on to other projects and These the standard writers came back in and and blew it off because he basically said well He was infinitely powerful. So taking away a third of infinity is still infinity Basically can't stop us. That's right. So it went back to silly plot lines Well, what else do we have? Well, let's see about that same time. I guess um batman got his big um Well, not his biggest redoing but a redoing where he was no longer at Stately Wayne manner wasn't this where he got the uh, the penthouse apartment downtown or somewhere and He worked from there, which this was really odd, but You actually saw him doing stuff as Bruce Wayne once in a while. Yeah He actually had to run the huge corporation he had The Wayne foundation the Wayne foundation Or I guess the Wayne corporate Wayne court or whatever Wayne foundation was more of their um, their charity organization, right? And so he had this substitute bat cave under the skyscraper And it was a lot more and it was a lot more dark than it had been because it'd gotten pretty silly just like most of the comics had It was mostly fighting, you know Dippy aliens and going back and it was batman and robin go back and help robin hood Or or batman and robin go to the stonage, you know So they were doing kind of like they suddenly met somebody with a wayback machine or something They were doing a lot of things with superman too where they would go back and batman robin and superman will become the three musketeers There's something It was all very silly Just silly Very very silly and of course they for a while they tried to do the camp that the that the uh, the 60s tv series Was so much on they tried that for a while and they realized this is really doesn't work in a comic book. It's too dark stupid Anyways, the fabled Aunt Harriet was in there for maybe that long in the comic book and boom she's gone They just decided to ship her on off somewhere And that here is in a home somewhere now, so let's see so um the 70s kind of continue and There was kind of a period really as far as i'm concerned from about 75 to 80 where As far as i'm concerned, uh, dc was pretty much creatively bankrupt They they were doing just absolutely their their sales plummeted They couldn't do a darn thing. It was things were not doing well. The only things that I can remember The the the last big event was swamp thing Uh Bernie rightson. Yes. Yeah, Bernie rightson was uh came out with this wine Yeah Came out with this character. Let's see. I'm trying to remember the basic concept of swamp thing um, let's see you've got uh, this professor who's working in a swamp and he um It's come up with so What is it a new growth something that already grow things almost virtually anywhere As long as there's a drop of water you can just have plant life and you can feed the world Yep, and well the the guy that he was now was he Somehow it blows up It blows up it blows up it kills his wife and blows him into the swamp covered with the stuff and the swamp kind of Reforms him and nurtures him and everything and grows on to him and he comes back as this shambling um carpet of moss and veins and vines and things and He becomes a um A doer of good, but nobody can understand him and they just think he's a big monster and they are scared Kind of a kind of an incredible Hulk kind of thing except for the fact that he's always swamp thing He doesn't turn back at some point. He is swamp thing forever So swampy swampy swamp. Yeah So, uh, but that was like the last major thing that I can think of before Before the 80s that That they did. Well, there's there's a couple projects. I want to show this they did a miniseries and um They did a miniseries in um, I think this was like mid 70s called uh called camelot 3000 and The idea basically was that um this this um It's in the year 3000 aliens are attacking earth and this kid whose father was an archaeologist Uh, they're working at this dig in britain And he runs away because the the uh aliens are attacking and they kill his parents and and he and he finds himself at stonehenge and and of course the the the history of of camelot and king arthur is that when in If britain is in his hour of every hour of need. Yeah, then then king arthur's return and he they he goes into this passage And sure enough there's a crypt with king arthur and he wakes up And it turns out that all the other uh all the other members of his court were reincarnated somehow into 30th century people. Yes And so it's kind of like it and it's it's a lot like king arthur except it's King arthur in the year 3000 in the future It's and it was and uh, it was actually kind of groundbreaking for dc because there's there's actual graphic much more graphic violence much actual I think there's several Lots of nudity There's you know, I mean and it was really a departure for dc And it was the first time they had really gone into this kind of thing and And it was the first time they they had dared to do something that was outside the comics code authority Is it is it lamps a lot or gala had the lamps a lot I believe it comes back as a woman Uh, um, no, it's um tristan. Oh, okay. I think I was kind of thinking it was lands a lot No, no lamps a lot this french industrialist. Okay, everybody else is pretty much Turns into people that you would would would make sense For the most part, uh, except except for tristan who comes back as a woman And and that that it itself creates some interesting um, so yeah situations So so they had that but for the most part they really weren't doing a lot They were trying little experiments like that But it looked like from they just kind of whatever thing they could mark it They were uh Because atari was another division of warner, so they had a tarry force and I mean it was just silly silly concepts And then the 80s came along in an event that didn't happen at dc kind of changed the the shape of the entire industry The series called elf quest came out from warp graphics uh in the like 80 81 and um This came out and it was the first really uh good selling or High sale or high whatever it sold a lot of copies for an independent nobody had ever sold a lot of copies for an independent And it was in black and white and it and it blew off most of the comics code authority stuff and uh also at the same time it uh They and a number of other companies said we're going to start actually paying our Artists royalties and our writers royalties for stuff because before until 1980 If you were working in a comic book company you created a character the instant you created it you had no rights to it You basically were paid salary and that was it and If they ever did anything with that character too bad so Well and these independent companies did it and there was a huge uprising in the community The creative community and they said why don't the big guys do it too and they did So from and from the 80s on in they said We'll pay you you know Obviously the company's still on the character You couldn't take the character to another company if you wanted to but they still in the character But no matter what they did with it if they kept using them you got royalties So as a result of that there was an explosion of new characters because everyone cool. All right We'll make money. So we'll crank out characters. So there was an explosion of new characters And at the same time the comics code authority just kind of faded very quickly away And so let's see we as we get into Let's see. I'm trying to think about 1985 really the The most earth shattering Multiverse shattering event in the dc universe the crisis on infinite earths occurred Where basically the There there were all these various universes which we went into in an earlier episode There was earth one and earth two and earth three and earth s and you know lots of different earths And and it was just so confusing that nobody at dc understood at all Even people who worked there for years you had to bring several people together to explain everything So there was too many details and they said we have to simplify stuff. We have 50 years of screwed up continuity that it's just you know, it's just suffocating the storylines Because you have to relate everything back to everything from the beginning So they said well, we're just gonna wipe out most of the universes And we'll kill off some heroes and show that we're really serious about this because they had tried stuff like this before and people said well It's just gonna be an imaginary story Nobody believed them. So they said oh, yeah, well, we're gonna kill off the flash and super girl And you know and they were just killing heroes and they really killed them There wasn't you know, it wasn't well, they kind of you know went into a coma or or they disappeared into another continuity They were dead They were gone So this uh By the time the series was over there was only one earth All the heroes were on it although there were a lot less heroes because a lot of them faded away from Lack of interest or something and others were killed. There's lots of them killed um And really at that point you really saw that uh dc had Changed this opinion You know, I said we really have to revitalize dc comics. So we're gonna go back and Kind of throw out continuity for each one of the heroes or our major heroes And reshape them in a more 80s style And the first one Was the big s He showed up and they said well got 50 years of kandore and and uh the fortress of solitude And super family green kryptonite I mean like red and gold and jeweled kryptonite and the and the legion of super pets And I mean just ludicrous stuff that had been done like mostly in the 50s and 60s, but was still continuity So they said we're gonna redo it. They threw everything out They took the whole continuity went it's out of here out the window and we'll start over and so john burn came in and uh Redid the hero. We did superman. Uh, there was no longer a super boy Monpoch hint. We're still alive by the time he was superman. They're still alive in the continuity Although superman isn't Well, he just got killed but this is the superman that got killed And uh, they they kind of brought back other concepts, but in doing so they Kind of tinkered around with them a lot like luther is now a rich industrialist who Does a lot of evil stuff, but he does it with uh, you know loopholes and he has a lot of lawyers And he never gets thrown in jail as a result. He doesn't look corporate way, right? And and he's about the same age as perry white now instead of the same age as superman So let's see, uh, but then now what what was the whole thing there? He touched some kryptonite at one point He was wearing this kryptonite ring for several months and again another change was in the old continuity You hurt humans had no, you know had kryptonite had no effect on humans at all Well, it turns out under prolonged exposure kryptonite does have an effect in humans in the new continuity and gave him cancer in fact, uh, in fact He was going to be dying of cancer in any Supposedly killed himself in this jet plane accident, but he got his brain put in this this other body It gets kind of silly, but that's pretty much comic books for you. That's why they're comic books That's why they're comic books. It would be news if they're allowed to be silly Well, let's see. Um, and then the next hero that they got the treatment With the bat dude Yeah He got a big treatment Frank Miller came in and just kind of just He just tinkered around with it a lot and he took him it was some years into the future There it is some years into the future. It's uh The dark night kind of idea The dark night returns and it's like well, where was he before right? What happened? So he read into it and it's um, it's some years into the future. Um He's like in the 60s now And um, he's retired. He hasn't done the bat thing for so long because well, he He goes back and looks and um, well, there was there was dick gracing who moved on and then there was Jason who oh, he was the second robbing. He got killed Yeah The joker kind of did a number on him, but I figured that was kind of well There's there's a two-fold thing there one was um, he was just an arrogant son of a gun and And they they didn't really like him and the other part was he his parents where he found his parents. Yeah And he was it was gonna be happy. I can't have that We can't have that because the whole idea behind batman and robin is They actually had a uh a ground breaking story line where in the in the next to the final story they said One of these three people are gonna die and the next issue and it's going to be It's going to be the joker robin or I think it was commissioner gordon I think and and they said and here's a 900 number You Who should be killed and and they picked robin the public shows jason boom. He's out of there Oh, and the joker does a number and a half on him, too And then when he finishes that well, he blows him up So and so wait, he got this book and it's some years in the future and batman's looking back at the whole thing and Well, well, um bruce wane's looking back at the whole idea and thinking well No, it's just not worth it for me to go back even though crime is rampant and things are just terrible going on and so um it's actually a Girl that dresses up Apparently is the fourth at least the fourth robin Well, because there's now a third robin There's tim drake. Yeah, but this must be a at least a fourth robin. It was a girl And she actually gets gets back to Him gets in that she gets into the back cave actually to pull in there. I don't remember off hand But it was she she gets him to come back as batman But a batman who has absolutely no problem with killing anybody. That's right Joker's like this old joker is laughing at him. You know, it's like you won't kill me He blows him out of the one and so basically he's just going through his whole rogues gallery and taking him out And he's got a big tank of a batmobile now It's just you just incredible superman who's a government agent comes in and tries to stop him and He doesn't listen to him as green arrow All these all these heroes come back. He's like got one arm now He doesn't work. Uh, they try to cat woman tries to talk to him. It's just all it's crazy But that was uh, and that was pretty much, um tim burton's um his his his um He looked at that and said hey, this is how I like this dark idea I'll do a movie. Yeah When he did the first batman, he basted pretty much on the the dark nights The dark nights the feeling more than the continuity right the feeling that um, batman didn't really care if he killed somebody or not To take him out of right now when when did the watchman thing? Okay? Watchman was another concept. They came out with uh, 12 is your mini series that Uh, it was an alternate alternate reality where there are a bunch of heroes But most of the heroes are batman types. That is they don't have any powers They just they have gadgets and or they're really athletically inclined right, okay? And it's it it tries to show what would probably really happen if they're actual superheroes. They'd be Uh forced to become government agents or be vigilantes It was probably right. It's kind of based around I think we're on 85 86 It came out but on the the time frame and it's kind of around um In and around like the McCarthyism kind of thing where they're well It kind of goes all the way from the 40s to to the 80s. Okay And uh, there's only one actual real superhero called, uh, dr. Manhattan Who's this guy who was locked in a uh, some sort of atomic chamber and it's it's set off and his I forget his intrinsic field is removed from his body. And so he becomes this God-like being who can do anything and because of him Uh, the u.s wins vietnam very quickly Like you know in like a couple months So as a result in the 1980s nixon is still president because he's kind of like roosevelt now He won the war, you know, he got out there and so so nixon An older nixon is still president in the 80s And it's and it's also, you know Graphically violent. It's uh, it's very very convoluted. Yeah And it goes kind of there's kind of takes swipes at merchandising And and most of the most of the the trends in the superhero, you know in the comic book field at the time And it would it won Buku awards basically. Oh, yeah, people just loved it because they said this This is what comics should be So so and finally we just want to talk about the uh, the event that just occurred The death of superman. Yeah, superman's been killed. So, um Plot point or marketing boy, you decide along this last We don't know if it's a milestone or just uh, just a cheap way to get money a cheap way to sell work That's right. So Anyway, we've been going to get out of here. So next time We're going to be talking about, uh More toys and games early. Yeah. Yeah, that'll be another poultry show. So it'll be more toys and games more fun I'm surprised with and next time on the comic book version of the three shows now. We're finally going to get the marvel. So We'll be back next time good