 One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. Okay, I think we're good, but 11, 12. Trouble is when I was real young, I knew like one through 12 in pretty much like five languages. And then 13 and up till I went to school. Sesame Street didn't really go above 12 most of the time. The 12 felt like a real big number. Okay. What, why is the stream health low? What's going on? Trick the video resolution resolution is 1920 by 10. Wait, the current resolution is 1920 by 1080, which is not optimal. What? What? 1920 by 1080 is the default. I'll look at. I will try to watch this stream on my iPad. I'll see you, I'll look at that later because I haven't changed anything. Let me just watch this on my iPad. I wonder if YouTube changed something. I could stream in 4K, but, yeah. That's not it? Hold on. Doot, doot, doot. 10, 11, 12. Do you hear me coughing? Seems like it's fine. All right, whatever. I'll look into that later. Usually it would yell at me because it's like, hey, you're in a 16 by 10 aspect ratio. That's bad, but now it's telling me I'm the standard HD is bad. All right, Ed Piscor. It's Wednesday, May 2nd, 2018. I'm rim and this is Geek Nides. Tonight, we are reviewing Ed Piscor's X-Men. Grand design. Are you so quiet? Yeah, I never unplugged that. Just say I'm Scott again. I'm Scott again. I'll just leave that in. It's fine. That's fine. Everything's fine. Woman. It's not woman. You realize it's warm today. Warm today. Warm yesterday. Even warmer today. Today is the warmest tide for the warmest May 2nd. Dude, it's 89 degrees. Of course it is. In New York City history, it says 85 degrees, first of all. But that's fine. My watch says 89, 87. 87, anyway. It is 87 right now. The high was 89, according to the watch. That's why it is I neglectfully forgot that yesterday was the first of May. Oh, outdoor fucking. Weather's just in time. It was a good day because I started a new job and... I also started a new job. Yeah, you wonder why we've been busy. There's been a lot of life changes in the rim and Scott households. But as you know, in my last job, I'd bike to work every day and it was like a seven-ish mile ride. So like 25 to 28 minutes. Let me check on the Strava how long the ride was to work today. Yeah, so, but I'd bike hard and get sweaty and wear shorts and everything. And I had it like in New York, there's always this minefield of will your building let you bike even though the law says they have to. There's a lot of loopholes in the law. Oh, it's not about the... It's not always about the building. But anyway. Yeah, maybe your employer might just suck. Anyway, so this morning to the new work, which is 7.2 miles, it took me 39 minutes from my home on the slow heavy bike. Nope. And to get to rims house. I'm not logged in. Okay. To get to rims house, which is much closer than my house from work took 30 minutes and it was 5.3 miles. It took me to get home 12 minutes to bike the 3.2 miles to get home. That's a real nice bike. What's interesting is it takes me. You're so my God, that's unfairly close. Yeah, I'm telling you. You're cheating. Oh, even better. If we move offices, I'll be here. What? Oh, at 59th and Lex? Yeah, 59th and Lex. They're building with the weird... Yup. That would mean I would literally just bike over the bridge and I'm at work. Bike over the bridge and I'm home. It'll be like seven minutes tops. So the difference is when you bike, you try to go fast. Only on the way home. I don't want to show up to work. I'll huffin' and puffin' and sweaty. I basically, even when I'm biking, on the weekend with the biking group, I never huff or puff. Oh, but not even. If I feel any... But blacked out of mind, I'm huffin' and puffin' in the community. If I feel any difficulty or strain or exercise happening, gear down and slow down. This is why it took you two more hours to do the Hudson Valley Rail Ride than it took me. It took two more hours. It was a long time before you rolled in. I'd already eaten a full dinner and had a couple beers. But I huff and puff. I bike hard and fast wherever I am unless I have a reason not to, like I'm with other people. I like it. I still do that thing where I run everywhere if I have a good excuse. And I'm doing a thing at work now. So I try to not ever use the elevator in the high rise. How, what floor is your office on? So previously, previously at a room's job, I was on the 10th floor. That's a little too high. That's fine. That's like a five minute walk up. Like it wasn't a big deal. I used to be a little like out of breath by the time I got to the eighth or ninth floor. But now up 10, like no big deal. I'm just skipping steps is fine. We moved up to the 18th floor. And let me tell you, 18, 8, 10, 18, 8, 10. You know what? I was, but it's even worse because the 13th floor is where there's like the unlimited food and coffee and stuff. So now I'm going up and I hit 13. It's like, yeah, fuck it. And I go and get like some breakfast that I take the elevator the rest of the way. My previous work was on the seventh floor, right? But guess what? Or the eighth floor, I think. But anyway, my apartment is on the third floor. Your apartment is on the third floor, right? My new work. Guess what? Third floor. That's right. I mean, ever I get an elevator, whenever I get an elevator, I only got to push three. I don't got to push no other buttons, only threes and ones. Yeah. Don't got to push nothing else. No matter where I go, I can't forget. Dude, it's either three or one. To this fucking day, two jobs ago, my company was on a certain floor. I will, if I'm really tired and not paying attention when I'm going to work anywhere, I'll hit that floor number. I haven't worked at that place in like a decade. This is why it's real good to have one of those fancy buildings like the building Microsoft is in, where when you go to the front desk. Oh yeah, you just tell me what floor you're going to. Or if you're an employee, you wave your card at this turnstile and then an elevator comes with no buttons on it and knows that a person going to floor 12 or whatever has gone through the turnstile and an elevator comes programmed to go to that floor and no other. Oh, it's even better. For it's not only secure, it is also convenient, which is great because usually security, you know, usually means a decrease in convenience. That technology of the elevator with no buttons is a dramatic security increase along with a dramatic convenience increase. Like any hotel that has that will literally never have the checkout problem in a con again. The only problem is people who don't know. If you, if you go through the turnstile, right? And the elevator comes and you don't get on. Are you strapped? You have to go back out and then go back into the turnstile again. Yeah. Because there isn't like a place to wave your bar code. So a cool thing about the building I'm in now and actually a lot of the buildings here, they are, they're double decker elevators. So the elevator stops at two floors at any given time and algorithms just manage that. Oh, so the elevator is two cars, one on top of each other. Yeah. And then open on floor one and two at the same time. Yeah. And then it goes up. And it just cleverly tries to multiplex the rides. So you might, but you might be, say, in a car stopped while the people above you are down. It's rare though. It avoids that when it can. And it might as well open the doors. Yeah. So the other thing is, and just because the kind of company I work for now, they really want people to walk because it's good for you. So elevators by default, unless you have a special access card that says you have, it's like privately, it basically flags you as some sort of disability or reason why you should be able to pick your floor. Elevators only go to odd or even floors. So you got to use the stairs. Unless you're real lucky and you're on an odd numbered floor, because then you can get to the food floor and your office and theoretically never have to use the stairs. One final thing, there's some health insurance companies in the US now giving discounts to people who do enough exercise. You know, like there's things that you can put in your car that will monitor your car and see that you drive safely and give you a discount on your car insurance. They're doing the same thing where it's like, wear a Fitbit equivalent device and we'll check the data on it as if you're healthy enough, we'll give you discount on health insurance. Dude, I get a credit because I bike to work sometimes. But most of them are really just like pedometers. People on Amazon are selling devices that will shake your pedometer to give you the health insurance discount without exercising. That is amazing and very American. Yes. Both sides of that conversation. But where's that going with that? I don't know. That's all we got. Go to the news. All right. So in the news, there's actually some pretty interesting news about Hasbro and the Power Rangers. Right. So, right. It seems like in the world of the US at least, all of the popular culture nerd properties, right? Are being gobbled up by Disney and or Hasbro, which is extra complicated because Hasbro already has the rights to like Disney princesses, like Disney stuff. So if Disney gets something, Hasbro basically has a license to like toys. Right. There's a difference between licensing and owning. Yeah. It's like Disney owns fucking Star Wars, right? But they don't make the Star Wars toys. Someone else makes them. Well, Hasbro makes them. Oh, yeah. Oops. Full disclosure, I own a lot of Hasbro stock. I've been buying Hasbro stock for like a decade and I'm continuing to buy it for reasons like this. Rims eventually is going to own Hasbro. Well, holy, but surely. And my current rate of buying, when I'm 130 years old, give or take. You'll own like a fraction of a percent. I'll own enough to where I could actually vote in a proxy election. And if it was real close. You could they one day the Hasbro executives are going to call them and be like, who are you thinking of voting for for the board? Rims, a 90 year old man. They're all like these 40 year old executives. He's like, son, my save games are older than your grandpa. Don't try to tell me who to vote for. It ain't you. My goal in life is to walk into Hasbro's office, vote in one shareholder election and then immediately collapse into a skeleton. And they'll make a toy skeleton. That's fine. That's my one vote. You got to make a skeleton rim. All toys then will just be cyber constructions anyway. You'll use your hands. What is this a baby game? You'll be going to their virtual executive. You have to hack your way in. But yeah, this there's a lot of things going on here. Yeah, Hasbro bought the Power Rangers from Saban Saban. However you pronounce it, right? Yeah, they didn't license it or anything like that. They now own it the same way they own Watsi and Transformers and My Little Pony. They fucking own it. Meaning they can make the shows. They can. So if you want to make a Power Rangers movie, you have to buy a license from Hasbro. If they want to make Power Rangers and My Little Pony Transformers crossovers, guess what? They can just fucking do it if they want. You can't stop them because they own it all. Yep. They probably will. And it's real interesting. This is all happening right now. The people that they currently license to, like IDW, who makes all the pony and Transformers, GI Joe comics, I think they also make. They might even already make Power Rangers comics. I fed her makes the Power Rangers comics. But guess what? If the IDW doesn't already, they're going too soon. You can expect any place that you currently see Hasbro stuff, the Power Rangers are going to get in that mix. You'll probably go home and you'll probably watch My Little Pony on the hub. Is that still a network? I don't even know. I don't even know anymore. But Power Rangers. Well, because Hasbro's. Hasbro is on TV. Rocking Power Rangers is going to be on right after it's over. So Hasbro is down right now because of an unrelated thing. Because as you all recall, Toys R Us is gone. Bye bye. And it's while it's not gone for any good reason, like the reasons why Toys R Us actually went bankrupt are just really fucked up. Yeah. But because the last national toy chain is gone, that's really hurting Hasbro's sort of short term value. And the stock market cares about short term. But RIM is going to be 90 to get his one vote. Yeah. It's not care about short term value. I am not giving investment advice. Do not construe anything that I'm saying as investment advice. I swear to fucking God. Do not talk to me about this. But don't do what Donnie and RIM don't does. But I am continuing to buy a lot of Hasbro stock now that it's down. Just because someone does something, does not mean they're suggesting that you do. Yeah, because I also drink a lot of poison and Huff and Puff on a bike, sometimes not wearing a helmet. So yes, I don't wear a helmet if I ride a city bike. But on a city bike, there's even I already feel like the city bike. I should be wearing a helmet. I or I already don't Huff and Puff on a road bike on a city bike. I even somehow do somehow negative city bike. I fuck and fuck city bike. I'm rarely even in that top gear. I'm just like putter, putter, putter. The city bike is just so heavy and slow. That's not a single. I'm not going to carry a helmet with me. Not a single drop of sweat is going to come from my brow on a city bike. I'll tell you what, I used one the other day because yesterday I didn't bring my bike to work and it was so nice. I was like, fuck it. And I took a city bike home. Yeah, well, you're close enough. Yeah. For me, it would be cutting it. I could I could do it. I could make it all the way to work in one ride without docking. But it would be close because I mean, I'd lose time because it's a big. But even better because I bought the day pass. It was 24 hours. So later that night. Oh, you don't have a permanent thing. I used to and I cancel it because they doubled the price. I might get it back. So I paid for it. Right. But I paid for it back when it was like a hundred bucks. You know what? My new job, they pay for it. So as soon as it expires, I just renew it for free. I'm probably going to get it again because they're screening Porco Rosso at Kips Bay. We just watched it. I haven't watched it in a while. OK. So I might go see. In fact, I gave a computer to George and I left my Porco Rosso DVD in the DVD player. And then he's like, oh, we watching this and I'm like, oh, good. Man, that's good because the thing I left it in there. He was just asking me. He wants all my old computers too. Good. Take them. Yeah. Start mining those bitcoins or whatever you're going to do. I don't know what you're going to do with them, but please take all of my unused technology. So in some other news, more of a geek bite. Scott, I want to review this on Geek Nights, but I got to get Scott to watch it first. But Emily, I have been watching on Judith's recommendation and also the Internet's recommendation because this is one of those things we talk about with Judge Anime by its cover. I ignore a lot of anime, even if I'm positively inclined toward it, unless people keep talking about it and people keep talking about me than abyss. So I felt like I had to watch it. So I watched one episode and it was intriguing enough to watch the rest and I'm almost done with it. It's not long. It's like 10 or 11, 13 episodes the season. Supposedly I haven't seen the end yet, but supposedly it ends in a reasonable place, unlike, say, Attack on Titan. And what I have to say about it is that if you're an anime fan, it is definitely worth watching. I'm really enjoying it. I think Scott will really like it. It reminds me of the good parts of Jewel Sey if you even remember that show. I remember there was a show called Jewel Sey. That was the one with like the brothers on the planet with the plants that'll eat you. Oh, I thought that was number nine. I don't know anymore. Or number six. Yeah, I can play. I can play all these shows together because I can't. Anyway, the show with plants that eat people, but coupled with Secret of Mana. Like Secret of Mana has got cute slimeies. Yeah. So imagine a show that is the terrible Secret of Space, which is there's this pit and it no one knows how deep it goes. And it's called The Abyss and like Dragon Quest. Everything is like cute Dragon Quest looking characters. Everything's set up like an RPG with people like upgrading their equipment and like levels. You know what? Delicious and Dungeon is a lot like that. Only it's about eating the monsters, but it's still about going deeper in the dungeon to different deep. But the deal with this show, I'm not going to spoil anything, but here's the real deal. This pit is Golgotharoth. This might as well just be the prequel prequel to the Prince of Nothing. But it's framed in that there's these kids who live in this town. Is it Golgotharoth or is it placed in Lord of the Rings? It's Golgotharoth. OK. Like specifically it's a pit. There's like a probably an alien ship buried down there. And the story is there's this orphanage. And kids in the orphanage are forced to go down into this pit and bring back artifacts. And if they grow up and survive, they eventually level up. And now their employees of this thing that goes down deeper into the pit to bring up artifacts. And they don't really understand the artifacts work, but they use them. And if you go, the further down you go, the harder it is to come back up because it starts fucking with you. I mean, that's how all holes are. Now, like can you tell me a hole that is, but where that rule is not the case? No, we're talking like go down 100 feet, trying to walk back up 10 feet. You start getting sick, walk back up 20 feet, and you start vomiting. Walk up 50 feet, blood starts coming out of your eyes. Yeah, I mean, that might be harder than a normal hole. Yeah. The same is true in a normal hole. The farther you go down, the harder it is to get back up. But it's framed in this like very cute JRPG, like Secret Amana looking way. So it's a Japanese fantasy show. Yeah, but unlike a lot of these shows that have nothing going on, really feeling it. Really good. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I just want to watch Aggretsuko. But we're going to watch the shit out of Aggretsuko. It is A plus as well. But have you watched any of it? I watched one episode. I'm going to watch again with Emily. It is Aggretsuko. If I had to give the shortest gigabyte possible, there is a lot more to it than you would have guessed. It is a it's a legit show. It isn't just DMC, which as much as I loved it, DMC is basically just the same joke over and over again. The DMC manga is a complete manga. But Aggretsuko feels like it'll be very simple jokes. And it's not. It's actually a pretty good character drama. But Made in Abyss is good and way dark. Like one of the things is these kids, like the environmental storytelling, like they find one of the things that they find and no one knows what they are is skeletons. All that is why you like this show. All around this pit, like everywhere. People who tried to walk up from 200 feet deep. Oh, no, no, it's way worse than that. They just turned into what if you're just down there? Like let's say you're a thousand feet. And you just stay? Sure. No, no. I'm saying you're a thousand feet deep. Right. And just like you jump. You just jump in place. Do you like disintegrate from going up a little bit? So I don't know because the characters I am following are only in the fourth level now. They're four levels down, which is way beyond what normal people do. And the people who are allowed to go down there, like the black whistles or the white whistles, they're all fucked up non-men now. Like they've been fucked up by this stuff. But they keep finding just thousands and thousands and thousands of skeletons. And they're all buried in the same way they look like they're praying. And they're all facing toward the center of the abyss. And they're so old, no one knows what the deal is. It's fun stuff. This is a good show. And there's a reason why everyone's talking about it. Hi, that's a good opening. First bits. Save this. What's going on in the chat? Yes, 18 is greater than 10. Poop emoji. So does the change of job mean fewer renters to London and Turkey? Yes, I have not been to London since I changed jobs. And I'm currently not traveling like I used to, which is kind of a good thing. It's kind of good to be home. As much as it might appear from my social media that traveling everywhere around the world all the time was like this glamorous, fun thing. And it was. It's also real tiring and stressful. Well, it'd be better if you weren't in New York because then you don't want to leave. If you were in shithole, it'd be like, please let me travel. Yep, it's definitely this. I'm in New York. I don't want to travel anymore. You want to come here. I didn't move here to go somewhere else. Uh, anything else in here? Some live news in London. Car just drove into a bus and a bunch of other cars. Ban human drivers. Yes, I agree. Ban human drivers forever. You should not drive cars. All right. Just ban cars. Yeah, we ban cars unless you can prove that you have initiality skills. You can pause that shit. Yeah, I just did. But why would downloading games affect your uploading? Is it non-symmetrical? No, mine is symmetric. So I don't know. All right, whatever. I'll do with that later. Anyway, back to the show. But anyway, things of the day. We got a double thing of the day feature. Well, one of them is a thing of a remixed thing of the day. And one of them is a just the unoriginal thing from the olden days that's not remixed at all. So I found this because the sort of the buried lead here is that all those psychedelic awesome shorts from Sesame Street in the back, back in the day. They're all just on YouTube, like all of them. And they're amazing. And I've been watching them when I'm bored. And it's shocking to me how little I remember some of them until I hear that first note. And suddenly my brain remembers every single possible detail of this animation. But this one is one that has been stuck in my head for the last 36 years. And it is the Sesame Street Pinball Song. This is a remix of the Sesame Street Pinball Song with the animation also remixed. And it's pretty great. Yeah. I mean, the original song is already great. Yeah. So while talking about things that are great, this video reminded me of another Sesame Street video. So we searched for it. And there it was, the King of Eight. He's really great too, but he's not remixed. It's just the King of Eight on the official Sesame Street YouTube channel. The King of Eight has the same exact voice as the Muppet Rolf, the piano playing dog, which is obvious. Ooh, take out those hot princesses. I feel like these Sesame Street shorts were a big foundational part of my life. And I'm starting to notice as I'm older that between these and things like Donald Duck in Math Magic Land and the anime I watched when I was a little, little kid, I can see why I'm the way I am. Yeah, it's hard not to draw a connection between the aesthetic of these and the aesthetic that I like in artworks today. Yup. I do really like late 60s, early 70s, semi-psychedelic stuff. So yeah, in the middle of the moment, the Geek Nights Book Club book remains, Homa's The Odyssey. I got a bunch of travel coming up, so I'm going to finish it in the next month or so. If not sooner. Oh, I thought you had finished it and were waiting for me. No, I stopped reading to wait for you to start reading again, but I'm well on my way. I'm probably going to read, you know, when I'm chilling in the park, laying down in the sun with the grass and such. Yup, I'm going to read on some trips. Because another part of the meta moment is that I'm going to be scotless in Lancaster, Pennsylvania this weekend for Zankai Con, where I'm doing three panels, anime openers from around the world, which important point, this is the last time I'm running this fucking panel. I'm done. Thank God. I've run this so many versions of it, so many years, and it is not feasible for me to make new versions of it. And because I can't put it on YouTube, I'm increasingly unwilling to make content that I can't put on the internet. So I'm letting that ship sail. This is the final performance of anime openers from around the world. And I got a couple of little gems I'm going to share, but that's it. I'm done. Underrated anime, you should see. The first brand new Geek Nights anime panel in a long goddamn time. It's anime you should see, only ones that you just cut the list apart to be different. I'm really, because I looked, every anime panel we've got has bullshit old slides. So I'm making this like we make modern panels. So I'm making it from scratch. And Apocalypse Zero was in there. No, it's not an anime you should see, nor is it underrated. I feel like everyone needs to see it exactly once. No. When they're an adult. No. So they know. That is that type of anime is an important area of anime. No. And knowing what the fuck it's deal is, if you're going to watch one of those fucked up, violent, weird ass old anime, I feel like that's the one. No. I mean, name in that genre, name a better show to watch. The educational channel, which is turning TV off and go outside. I mean, we said people should play pandemic legacy in our 40 table top games. I don't like that shit. I don't know. Pandemic legacy is different than pandemic, which is garbage. Oh, yeah. You don't need to play regular pandemic. I haven't played pandemic legacy. So, you know, I've heard some people say that it might have some redeeming qualities over regular pandemic that I want to point out that that is the most positive you have ever sounded about pandemic. I cannot confirm or deny. No, do not watch Mad Bull 34. I think you're better off watching Apocalypse Zero. No. Anyway, when I'm not doing those three panels, I'm either going to be playing board games in my hotel room or playing board games in the tabletop area. And also, I'm not going to be there on Friday because I'm just going to work. I will not be wasting my time going to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I don't know why you're so down on Zenkaikon. It's basically review con. Plus, I do some panels. And otherwise, it's just review con. In Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Yeah, with amazing food. It's a short train ride. Except on Sunday. No, they fixed that. And at night. No, there's food now. I talked about this when I reviewed the con last year. There's plenty of food now. All these non-religious restaurants opened up. Apparently, the locals are mad about it. And apparently, only non-locals eat at these places. There are literally restaurants there that basically people who take the Amtrak from New Yorkie had to know what else does. Which is sad because when I was on the ski trip this year, we ran into the same thing. There's this place we eat at, which ironically is called the Common Man. And its motif is like, I don't know, farmer peasants. And the logo is literally like a peasant pushing some peasant-ass thing. But the proprietor of this establishment, I was talking to him because we were there alone, because we were there in a time when most tourists don't come in to ski. And he was like, yeah, literally no one who lives within 100 miles of this place will ever eat here. No one can afford to. This place exists solely for New Yorkers, mostly New Yorkers who come out here to ski. And that's it. And that's a sustainable business model, apparently. All right. So Ed Piscor. Right, so we talked about him on the show before, I think. Because he did those awesome posters, right? Well, no. Ed Piscor is the creator of a comic known as Hip Hop Family Tree. Oh, yeah. Hip Hop Family Tree is a comic which is in Ed Piscor's unique. It has a unique style, yet it is familiar to you. You feel like you've seen this style before, yet you can't name where you've seen it before. Anyway. But he made a comic called Hip Hop Family Tree, which is the history of the creation of the genre of music. In somewhat documentary, but also somewhat not. Oh, definitely documentary. From what not documentary form. That is a photograph, I'm assuming. So it was such a mega amazing awesome comic that you should read if you can get your hands on it, which you can just buy it. That Marvel, the Disney hired him to make a comic called X-Men Grand Design, which he made joyfully as he is a big ass X-Men nerd. A little younger than me, but still a big X-Men nerd. He grew up drawing some X-Men as a kid. That's how he ended up doing comics. And this X-Men Grand Design is, thankfully, an X-Men comic a normal person can read, or at least a normal nerd can read, because it is not involved with any current X-Men stuff. It is basically the same thing as Hip Hop Family Tree almost. You could almost call it X-Men Family Tree. It is a retelling of the original X-Men story in a new digestible form, yet also an old form. And then at the very end of this first volume, there's also a bonus, which is basically a redrawing of the first issue of X-Men, just redrawn, but otherwise exactly identical to the first issue of X-Men, just in his style instead of in the original style. I'm going to say that I really enjoyed it first off. But it's definitely, it captures a lot of what X-Men is really like in condensed form, meaning that the statement I just said is either a strong positive or a strong negative, depending on who you are. That's all. Yeah. It's still X-Men, right? It's not, you know, sort of taking the X-Men out of X-Men. It's not rewriting anything. It's not really changing like plots or back stories. But what it does do is sort of tie things together, right? Because if you actually read the original real X-Men comics, let's say you get your hands on every fucking X-Men comic ever and you freeze time for everyone but you, so you can read them all. You know, there are things that happen and some of those things, you know, sort of come out of nowhere. They don't have, you know, it's like you get time travel, you get characters coming in, you know, and it's like things happened and changed over time because writers would change, new series would come up, crossover events would happen with the rest of the Marvel Universe. I wouldn't read for a while and then I'd go to a comic shop and literally just buy like whatever Uncanny X-Men was there and it would just be like, I wouldn't know what was happening. Yeah, that'd be retcons and this and that and all, you know, things would happen. But like if you were to say, see something happened in X-Men issue 200, it's like the things that foreshadow that may have been a nonexistent or b only go back a few issues. Here, for example, you've got like, you know, the Sentinel thing, which came, you know, quite a bit later, you know, tied in from the beginning, right? They're showing you. Tied it back to like Xavier Finding Storm. Right. Farouk and all that like really old ass nonsense. You've got, you know, the Phoenix Force, you know, being foreshadowed heavily like, oh, they're like, hey, the Phoenix Force is coming. Even though if you actually read the comics, he's sort of like Phoenix Force. Like, what's that? Yep. Here it is. I remember as a kid when the dart in the Phoenix shit happened, I remember feeling dumb and thinking, wait, I should know if I shouldn't I know what this is? Did I just like not read this? And I didn't like, I didn't understand what the deal was. Yeah. I mean, I actually bought, I didn't read the the actual Phoenix, you know, the famous comic or Cyclops is holding the dead dream girl in the cover. Yeah. That comic and the couple issues before or after it until I was living in Beacon. And I bought basically like Marvel Essentials, Essential X-Men volume, something that contained all those issues in black and white. And it's really only like a few issues. It's not like this big mega thing that leads into it. Right. And it's, you know, it's like uncanny X-Men from like the 80s. I think it's like, you know, it's like it comes way deep in. Yeah. The story where he's here. You've got, you know, in this retelling that's sort of trying to take all the major plot points of X-Men, the, you know, the big things that happen. Right. Get rid of all those meaningless details. And, you know, month to month garbage that doesn't matter. You know, even between the real issues, just take the big major plot points. Right. X-Men are created because X there. Magneto is here and Xavier is there. What's Magneto's deal? If you want to know, like, other than, oh, he was in the Holocaust and then he has reasons. Right. It's like, basically he, you know. Well, how did, why did Professor X already know Storm? Like, what's Jean Grey's deal? Where does he really come from? Yeah. All this stuff is, you know, told without any cruft and it sort of feels a bit hurried because you're only going over these major details. And it feels somewhat disjointed because literally you read a page and it's like Professor X deals with Farouk over the span of like six panels, like that entire story. The next page is like, what was Magneto doing? Yep. It's like, you might not even realize. You're like, oh, it's Magneto. It's like, actually took me a couple of panels. I'm like, oh, right, that's what's going on. But in that only it helped that I had all this X-Men knowledge. If you don't have X-Men knowledge at all, I can't. I don't know if this will be. I can't tell this will either be great for you because it'll allow you to get the big picture of what the all the major things that happen to the X-Men, the important parts of the story without the garbage. That's hard to understand. Well, like, honestly, I didn't know or you might not know what the hell is going on because you've never run any X-Men before. You're like, who the hell are these people? There's no character development, no character advance. For the X-Men that I had read, I never knew who the fuck Namor was. Oh, you didn't know who Namor was? I never read those parts. I had no idea. That's that. Well, see, the thing is that's actually a very interesting part of this X-Men grand design because Namor the Submariner was, you know, he is a mutant. But that part of, you know, establishing why humanity hates mutants, it being Namor's fault of sort of making the wrong first impression was not really in X-Men comics. That was a mother fucking comics. Namor is way Namor is like one of the original Marvel things from like decades before the X-Men. He predates the X-Men by like a zillion years. The fact that he's a mutant, I'm pretty sure came way later. See, this is originally just like the Prince or King of Atlantis, who is evil. This is actually the thing that caused me to not really evil, but sort of, you know, seen as evil by humans, right? So when I was younger, like middle school, elementary school, every time I started reading X-Men, the other kids who read more comics than me would always like, like I wouldn't know about shit like Namor and they all knew. And it wasn't until much later in my life that I realized there were like you had to read non X-Men comics to understand what was going on. I just assumed that they knew and I didn't understand why. See, I cheat. When I was a kid, there were only three kinds of comics that I read. I read Spider-Man, but I read Spider-Man 2099 because it started at issue one and in 1990, whatever, two, three, and it was cyberpunk. So it was the best. I read like still the best. If you want to read, I highly recommend Spider-Man 2099. I also I read X-Force and like later on candy X-Men. I also read all that infinity stuff, which is becoming very relevant. It's good to have that knowledge today. Even though I'm not watching that movie and three. So the best part about that movie is, of course, like a ton of characters die from what I gather. Well, in the comic half the superheroes died, but then they undied. So from what I learned, yeah, this is something like I was curious about this. It appears that the majority of the people who went to see this movie have mostly just been watching MCU. And I realized if you've never actually read comics and just watched the movies, the idea that superheroes die all the time and like that's just a thing is unknown. All right. So teenagers who have watched every Marvel Cinematic Universe thing and red zero comics are freaking the fuck out because all their favorite characters are dead. They'll be back in the next movie. They have no idea. They'll have different actors coming back. Those are mostly just to kill off the contracts. Yeah, but they literally don't know that like Superman died a hundred times. He died. Well, the first time he died, it was a big deal. Well, yeah, the first time a big superhero died. It was a big deal. And then we learned and knew better. But yeah, well, anyway, what was I saying? Right. And I read the Infinity comics and I read X-Men comics. Right. And the way I knew about other things in Marvel anyway. Well, it was like collected superhero cards. I collected the cards too. But I knew who these characters were without having to read. I didn't read any Namor Moon Knight or Fantastic Four. I mean, I read them later, but as a kid, I didn't read any of those other comics. I never read an Avengers comic. I never read any of that garbage. But I knew who Iron Man was. I knew Captain America was. I knew what their origins were, what their deals were and all this stuff because I read those superhero cards that I collected. I feel like there was when they were they like single panel references to these other characters and things. And also there was, for example, one time there was a series right after there was Fatal Attractions, which was the the crossover between all the different X series, which let me learn all the X-Force. Yup, I read Fatal Attractions. There was. That's the one where Wolverine got all the metal ripped out of him. Yup. Right after that. Because then he had the bones. Right. Right after that, the next there was immediately a second crossover, which is the X-Men Avengers like blood ties crossover. That is when I stopped reading. But I read that and that's how I knew who some Avengers were at that point. Right. And things like that. I never read any Avengers. I mean, I that's the only Avengers I read was. Yeah, not even that. I just didn't care later on. I guess I read Crease Girl War, which is include some of the part of what messed it up is that because I got an anime so young, I was like trying to read X-Men after I'd already discovered anime. Hmm. So as soon as I found as soon as manga was purchasable by me, I basically stopped reading American comics for like a decade. No, I stopped reading the comics when they comic bookstore went away and then I got anime. Yup. But like I read one manga and I was like, whoa, this is a comic anyway. But yeah, if you so this X-Men Grand Design, by the way, is like a large it's not a you're going to get the trade paperback. Don't get the trade yet. This giant as book. That's it. Well, no, then this is the trade paperback. Oh, hard cover is the other one. Don't get the hard cover. So this is this is like it's like a Marvel Treasury edition. It's not a normal size trade paperback. It's like this big fucking thing and the pages are like not quite newspaper size. But they but they feel very newsprinty. It's bigger than an old life magazine, I'd say. Oh, easily bigger than life magazine. It's the point is it's big. It's not a normal size book. I can't actually like get it all in frame here. Yeah. It's at least it's probably like it's like a legal pad, but wider almost. I had trouble. I was reading it in bed and I wanted to set it down and it wouldn't fit on the tiny table. It's not thick or heavy. It's just big. It's going to take up like it's like laptop size. Maybe even like 15. This is way bigger than my laptop. It's bigger than my laptop, too. But it's bigger than my big iPad. So it needs to be that big because the the art blows up to that big really well. And I'm going to say even though like it includes a lot of the corniness. You don't want to if they come out with a smaller edition, you don't want the smaller edition. But just got to know it's a big book if you buy it on Amazon. But most of the joy I got from reading it is just that it was a condensed feeling of what it was like when I was reading comics as a kid. But condensed to my adult let's move it along sensibilities. And I really enjoyed just looking at all this art. I really like like this style of comic art. Yeah, you know, Ed Piscor is real good. Yeah, like any one of these pages would be a great poster. There's another series. Also you get Charles Xavier with Dot Eyes. And Dot Eyes is one of my favorite things. Google eyes. But there is another X-Men series from that was not super recent, but somewhat recent. I think it's I don't know if it's X-Men forever. It might be called. And what that is is it's basically, you know, there's the we this uncanny X-Men, but then there's adjective less X-Men. That's the one we read where the first issue would jibble on the with all the multiple foldout covers. Yeah. So that adjective less X-Men sort of got away from where it started at a certain point. And there's that more recent series is basically ignoring all other X-Men continuity. It basically just picks a spot in that series where it's veers off and cancels everything that veers off and just starts at that veering off point and keeps going as if it had been had the same writer the whole time. Now, this is one thing I like about the MCU. And it has all these 90s character designs. I'm hoping the MCU will keep its continuity and never split off again. Like they're releasing the movies that have slowed up right to where the people are the realities of actors and money making that will never happen. Yeah, but we'll see how it goes. Because right now it's coming at a sustainable rate because instead of read this whole series, then this whole series, it's literally there's 19 movies. Just watch a movie and then watch a movie. Yeah, 19 movies wait until there's 190 movies. Yeah. But I mean, I've watched all of Sailor Moon in a weekend. That's 200 episodes. You're going to watch all the superhero movies in a weekend. They're movies. It must be 90 minutes, right? These things I mean, I've seen a few of them. They're at least 90 minutes each, right? Yeah. The trouble is the ones I enjoy the most were Guardians of the Galaxy one. And I haven't seen Thor Ragnarok yet, so I don't have any opinions on it. Yeah, Guardians of the Galaxy. Doctor Strange was OK, but I don't need to watch it again. The main problem is that they don't have the 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12. Aesthetic enough. The way the comics, you know, Marvel Comics that I like have that aesthetic. Yeah, Marvel Comics. Well, even in this one, in grand design, in the very beginning, you get the watcher and his recorder. Yeah, that's actually really, you know, because the watcher doesn't show up in X-Men comics very often at all, right? So the fact that they bring him in there really sort of sets the tone of like, what this. Just I love the fact that he's standing there with his hand on his chin just like, I have watched, now I'm going to record on a tape. Well, the reason he's watching, right, is not just to sort of, you know, provide a non-corny intro at the start. Yep. Which is often the watcher's use in Marvel Comics is to provide this sort of narration. Yep, let's see what's going on here. Well, but it is here, it actually serves a second purpose and that it shows, it says he is the story of the X-Men, which is usually a very local story, a very American story, an Earth story, right? It only goes into space when you're dealing with Cyclops' dad, which actually, they totally bring into the fold here properly, right? And you know, instead of having it come out of nowhere, the star jammers. But he, you know, combined with the Phoenix Force, it shows how the X-Men, it sort of takes the X-Men story and shows how it is a grand, you know, universal design of some sort and not just this local story, right? Yeah, this does do a very good job in this comic of fitting the X-Men shit into this like giant, apocalyptic, future space world. Right, it sort of, you know, whereas before, again, it was just sort of like, you know, a Marvel comic, if you read it over time, it just sort of bouncing around. It's like, well, what do we do with the X-Men now? Into space with you, right? Yep. Where, you know, here it's like, you know, by having that watcher there, all the stuff for the Xiar come, I guess Professor X didn't date the Xiar queen yet, but that comes later. Spoilers. And the Phoenix Force is on its way. Wait until they find out what Magneto's up to. Right, but they, you know, they sort of, you know, it helps tie these, tying all those random X-Men bits together into a grand design, right? Which is what makes it great and more comprehensible. Yep, I think this is definitely worth your while. I really enjoyed it. I think Emily's going to read it before we give it back to you because I think she'll like it too. Not good, I don't need to carry a giant-ass book home. I'm going to give it back to you though, but not today. All right, good timing. We just finished. Yeah.