[Intro Music] 

Hey, everybody! Welcome back to another episode of COMICS ROT YOUR BRAIN! …the show where screenwriters talk about the comic books that we love, mostly from the 1980s. And I am Steven Bagatourian-- ...And I'm Chris Derrick. --And, Chris, we are talking about a character that I love so much, today: Vic Sage a.k.a. The Question. And he is a character that was originally invented by none other than Steve Ditko, the co-creator of SPIDER-MAN. Let me give the people just a quick sorta logline on this character here: Vic Sage is an investigative journalist by day and an urban vigilante by night. This reinvention of THE QUESTION retains some familiar elements from the original Ditko version, including the iconic faceless mask that Vic Sage wears when he goes out to fight crime in the horrific environment of Hub City. Now, Vic Sage, also, though, courtesy of O'Neil and Cowan, was imbued with a unique Zen philosophy; very unique for comics at that time. And this forced him to ask vital questions about the methods he was employing while fighting crime in the corrupt city known as Hub City that he lived in. Now, there are deadly martial arts assassins and political intrigue galore to contend with. The question is: Will one man — even a master of unarmed combat — be able to make a difference? And this was uh when Ditko went to go work for Charlton Comics in the '70s, and people may or may not realize this, but the character emerged out of Ditko's strong belief in the philosophies of Ayn Rand and what you'd call Objectivism. And this philosophy essentially is the belief that there is a strong sort of line between good and evil, right and wrong, good and bad. And that was the initial inspiration for The Question's mind state as he was out there fighting crime. But it became a very different kettle of fish — a whole different vibe — when, in 1987, Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan decided to reinvent the character and reboot Vic Sage, a.k.a. The Question, and they turned [him] into a character that I'm not quite sure that Steve Ditko would have recognized, and I would have been curious to find out his thoughts on it. But they turned THE QUESTION into a character that I personally fell in love with in '87. And there's just there's so much to talk about here; it's super exciting. 

Yeah, this book was amazing; it came out at a time right before Vertigo Comics launched and probably gave Karen Berger and the brass at DC the confidence that they could launch that mature reader line. Oh, 100%… 100% …I totally agree. I think between THE QUESTION and Alan Moore's SWAMP THING, and, you know you had these early DC books, and maybe Grant Morrison's ANIMAL MAN… you had these early books that were kind of like the proof of concept for what would become Vertigo Comics, and I think THE QUESTION is a book that is not talked about enough, because I think it was an essential piece of the puzzle that ultimately did lead to what would be Vertigo Comics five or six years later. So, yeah. Yeah, this is important comic book history, folks! 

Just to tell you about the time when this book came out, right? So it's 1987…This is the year when X-MEN was burning up the charts. It was during the Marc Silvestri run. It's also the year that Marvel launched its first PUNISHER series. And it's the year that the black-and-white [indie comics] explosion died. And what's crazy is this was the year that WATCHMEN first debuted in trade paperback — to little fanfare — but it was about to explode in popularity, as we all know. And, you know, the rest of the stuff that was going on in the world at the time, if people remember, was: This was the trial of a Bernard Goetz, who was the New York City subway vigilante, and it was the year that the Iran Contra Affair scandal was wrapping up. And now get this: This is the craziest thing… This is how fertile this creative period was… Here are some of the movies that came out in '87: PREDATOR, BEVERLY HILLS COP 2, PLATOON, FATAL ATTRACTION, THE UNTOUCHABLES, LETHAL WEAPON, ROBOCOP, FULL METAL JACKET, DIRTY DANCING, THE PRINCESS BRIDE, THE RUNNING MAN, STAR TREK IV, and Eddie Murphy's RAW. Can you believe that?! And this is the year that DC decides to put out THE QUESTION. Wow, what a moment. What a moment in pop culture for Denys Cowan and Denny O'Neil to drop this sophisticated rebranding and reimagining of Steve Ditko's urban vigilante. And we've got a real… we've got a real heck of a deep discussion here about every aspect of THE QUESTION. 

And it's phenomenal; you see so much evolution over the course of this series in the writing of Denny O'Neil himself — it's really a high watermark for him — and I think this is the series where Denys Cowan also truly comes into his own as an artist. He'd done a little bit of work beforehand on POWER MAN and IRON FIST for Marvel; he'd had a run on that. And he'd done some one-off work for DC Comics on books like VIGILANTE and TEEN TITANS, but you know we've talked about this before, Chris: It was really THE QUESTION, I think, that defined Denys Cowan's style and put him on a path where he's going to go on to become a legendary artist himself, co-founder of Milestone Comics, and, you know, just a tremendous figure in comics history …as is, of course, Denny O'Neil. This is just an amazing high point, I think, for both of these men and what a what a comic. What a comic. Yeah, it was crazy just to go back to, you know, to read this again, and I think we had an explosive, amazing like wild discussion. And so, now, let's get on with the show….

Today we're talking about THE QUESTION, Chris. Yeah, so let's just jump in. Yeah, let's discuss the book by "the two Denys/Denny-s, the two Denys/Dennis-es" — Cowan and O'Neil. And I also want to give respect to the rest of the team on the book: We've got Rick Magyar… Rick Magyar on the inks, and Gaspar Saladino doing the lettering, and Tatjana Wood as the colorist, and Mr. Mike Gold was the editor. So, a very well-respected team across the board there, folks who'd worked on a lot of comics. But, really, this is Cowan and O'Neil's show primarily, I would say. They're bringing a tremendous amount of just vision to this book, and it's a really unique book for the time. And I will say that there's a lot to talk about here. Oh, for sure. Just one thing: The covers are done by Denys Cowan, at least these eight, and inked by Bill Sienkiewicz. Oh, yes, I'm so glad you said that! It's fascinating because these guys become lifelong friends, probably from working on this book. Yeah, I think they were… I think they were friends a little time a little time before this, but they definitely have been friends for, god, going on like 30 or 40 years now? Or something crazy. Because this book — I can't even believe it, Chris, because I was doing the math — and this book came out in '86, if I'm not wrong. Is that really 35 years ago?! Yeah. Like that's [ __ ] insane. That's [ __ ] insane to me, because I remember reading this book as a little kid. It's [ __ ] wild. So, I'm guessing Cowan and Sienkiewicz's friendship goes back four decades 'cause they were sharing a studio — famously — with Michael Davis. And they were next door, like we were just talking about a second ago, they were next door to Chaykin and Frank Miller and Walt Simonson, I believe. Like this was a crazy crazy time, and a crazy studio space… I mean, just legends, stone cold legends, all those guys, in the comic book business. And all of them working in the same general studio space that is just wild to consider. I think what's wild is that, you know, these guys are all working in New York at the time, and I don't think that kind of studio space, today, would be affordable for anybody …in New York. I don't… I think that's kind of like why the '70s and '80s were a magical time just for artists, and in New York, in general, obviously. That's [around] the time of like Warhol and Basquiat and Keith Herring and Robert Mapplethorpe and stuff like that. But it's like because the studio space was cheap, you know. Yeah. That's obviously, you know, like that whole kind of like you know like midtown Manhattan like around like Times Square was just like a [ __ ], you know, it was like persona non grata… What do they call them now? No-go zones? In like certain cities where, it's like, you're not supposed to go. I mean, I think people cannot… I don't think people could believe that, looking at Times Square now, but that's what that was [like] from around the early '70s to around like the late '80s — it's just like this wasteland. Yeah. It was a different world. Yeah. 

But this is an interesting book. I think the creative team is fascinating on this, like you said, this is pre-Vertigo. It's weird reading this now, and after having been exposed to Vertigo books, you know, because this doesn't… I mean certainly doesn't feel like a Marvel book of this era, which would have been like a DAREDEVIL or a PUNISHER …or something like that. It's way more… it's more cerebral, you know. It's extremely cerebral; that's a good word for it. It's very spiritual, spiritual and cerebral, I would say, because it's like I'm thinking spiritual, because of all the Zen sort of Buddhist stuff, and all of the stuff that Denny O'Neil brings to it where we're talking about Vic Sage having these like near-death experiences or actual experiences of death, and so it's this really interesting kind of combination between this very cerebral intellectual political storyline, and as we get into describing what it's about, it's a very political story, too, but it's like smashing all of that real world political stuff and the more cerebral stuff up against this spiritual kind of Zen/New Age whatever-you-want-to-call-it, more of an Eastern philosophy, and I think it's really fascinating, because it's not something, certainly, that I was ever exposed to in American comics prior to THE QUESTION. And like you say, this is before Vertigo, so this was just a comic from the company that brought you BATMAN and SUPERMAN, you know? It was just another comic and BATMAN even makes an appearance in THE QUESTION in these issues here… Whether it's in a dream or not, Batman appears to Vic Sage and talks to him at one point, so it's just such a weird mashup of just disparate elements in this story, and it does feel entirely unique, like I really don't know any other comic that feels like THE QUESTION and certainly Steve Ditko's original conception of THE QUESTION was nothing like this. And Steve Ditko, famously, is a guy who's all about Objectivism, and he's all consumed with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and you know, that really you know it's a philosophy that could not be further from, sort of… like Denny O'Neil, and, I think, the political orientation that he was approaching this book from. Because I think Denny O'Neil, from my understanding, was a dyed-in-the-wool progressive… like a super progressive kind of "bleeding heart" quote unquote liberal kind of a guy whose politics probably frankly are a lot closer to mine than Steve Ditko's. And so I think it's really interesting that O'Neil chose this character of THE QUESTION also to make a lot of political statements in a way that I don't know that Steve Ditko necessarily would have appreciated because Ditko famously, like Ayn Rand, was all about black-and-white, good and bad, right and wrong, and I think what O'Neil and Cowan are exploring here in THE QUESTION and what they continue to explore in the series quite brilliantly it really comes down to a whole lot of gray areas and a lot of in between sort of moral areas where there are not necessarily always great decisions to be made and I I think it's really just it's a very ahead-of-its-time book It's a lot deeper and had a lot more on its mind than many books from that era and although I don't think it succeeds perfectly in every single respect and there's moments here and there I think that work better than others I think overall to me it's a real like jaw-dropper of a book just in terms of how ambitious it is and how much they're going for and you know it's part of a monthly comics grind so of course I think there's going to be moments that are a little clunkier here and there because it's not something that they have infinite time to work on but overall like I I got to say I was pretty impressed looking back at this book at how much the good moments did work well but I'm really curious to hear your take on a lot of this, Chris, because I we haven't really talked too much in detail about this story before I think we talked about like oh this would be cool to talk about on the show but I'm really curious kind of what your takeaway was reading all this stuff and we can also jump into like actually describing the story soon for those who've not read the story before read 

I mean look I don't remember reading this book I actually don't think I read this book when it came out but I know the character from you know they you know I guess he was in Blue Beetle before this they were saying in the in like in the in the letter column and I do so and I I'm pretty sure he showed up in crisis I I don't know like I'm I'm familiar with the character I just hadn't read this book and again I'm familiar with K's art and I'm familiar with a lot of stuff that Denny O'Neil wrote when he was writing other stuff but this is you're right is this such a different type of book and when I when we talk about that it's not that this the storytelling is different but the thing that makes it different really is the is the philosophy of the book is discussed in the captions you know like this's this it's interesting way of like talk because it's this interesting kind of third person discussion of what's happening and I feel like there's a lot of I think was cool and they get it from this you know pretty quickly but she hangs over the book as Lady Shiva right so she saves him at the end or but you know we'll get to it happens in the book but she takes this guy, Vic Sage, and gets him on the path of being THE QUESTION for really non-selfish reasons and I and I think like very even like it's you know she it's like interesting which she has this discussion with him when she says you know I'm trying to figure out what your passion is and your passion is for like curiosity right right and it's like it's not for the violence it's not this and it's just and it makes you understand that it's like oh yeah that makes sense he's called THE QUESTION but he's already THE QUESTION before that gets revealed to him and unless you know that he's going on this path of trying to solve he's trying to answer questions about stuff and interesting that he's a reporter like is you know that that's his alter ego I think it's interesting too that he's not doing this because of a typical they say a typical typical superhero kind of like or this might have been said in the in like the letter column might might have been in the book but he's not doing it for typical reasons like there's no dead parents there's no like you know there's no like there's no spider bite there's no he's like he's no millionaire he's no alien no like child of the Gods just a regular dude who has this mask that makes you can't see his face and he's trained because you know I think what's fascinating is kind of jump into the first issue 

the first issue begins the first caption is you know you know like Charles Victor Szasz yeah you know like Szasz whatever his name is he's got 25 he's got 25 hours to live yes and it's just ticking clock ticking clock ticking clock and then it's like you realize maybe like a little when he meets his partner Aristotle his name is that's his name it's his name is Charles Victor Szasz, like sash, but he goes by Victor Sage and you're like what does that mean he's got so many hours you got now you you fig that when he's like 10 hours left to live I'm like what does that mean you know and then so you know the first the first you know he's already questioned he's doing some stuff and he goes and he's trying to like stop this Reverend who's part of the connected with this milksop of a mayor and he goes to meet this you know this he goes to a trap essentially a trap and gets his ass kicked and he gets killed yeah he's essentially killed he's basically killed and we should describe for people that don't know the character that he's dressed up in this kind of opening sequence where he gets beaten pretty much to death he's dressed up in a trench coat which is like the classic Ditko costume and a fedora and he has no face and that's basically the iconic look of The Question… THE QUESTION is a man with no face, and it's a surprisingly effective really simple design that feels really iconic and so we see him in the trench go and the fedora and he's trying to do something with some [ __ ] criminals on a dock somewhere where they're hiding out in a shack and he wants some kind of videotape that they won't give him and they get the drop on him they outnumber him and they basically seem like they're just you know they beat him they beat him pretty badly yeah it's interesting because it's like he doesn't survive this assault and he gets he gets thrown into like this icy waters at the end of the first issue and it's like oh and he's dead yeah he's did you know and it kind of coincides with like here we are you know with like you know it's like he th in the water and says oh there's like 2 minutes left for this guy before he dies and then he FS to the bottom of the water and says those 10 minutes pass his death you're like damn this [ __ ] is dead and then the issue ends I mean it's you know and it's like it's really interesting the way he gets like your main character is killed essentially killed at the end of the first issue and I think that's pretty cool yeah and it's also a dope metaphor for like what's going to happen here to s right he's on this journey of discovery and spiritual metamorphosis and all that and I think the other players kind of on the board in the first issue are that we meet you mentioned Lady Shiva and Lady Shiva is like an Asian woman who's working with these criminals but she's kind of mysterious and she's a fighter herself and we don't really know what her motivations are but she's clearly more sympathetic in a way toward THE QUESTION Vic Sage than these other criminals are who he's fighting and Vic Sage himself like you said is a reporter at a news station and we realized that his co-lead broadcaster on the news is is this woman Myra right and she's this beautiful woman who Vic clearly has some kind of chemistry with so I mention her because we see that Vic also is having a romantic relationship with her and we see a little bit of them together in this first issue kind of waking up in the morning together and so Vic's got a relationship with this woman Myra who he knows from work they're both News broadcasters this is going to be critical as we move forward though because when Vic disappears and goes off to go do some training and he returns to Hub City Myra is gonna have a very different role in the city and then the other character you mentioned Aristotle who's like Vic's kind of like his best friend / quasi mentor he's not his only mentor but he's sort of like a very spiritual-minded older man who's constantly speaking in these like Zen sort of truisms [koans] and just kind of talking to Vic the way that you know like Mr. Miyagi talks to Daniel in the KARATE KID almost like he's forcing Vic to question things about himself or his assumptions and you know I had the strong sense looking back and reading the issue this time that I wonder if that character of Aristotle who goes by the name Tot I wonder how much Denny O'Neil saw of himself in that character because I think O'Neil probably was around a similar age to that character taught at the time he was writing this he was like I'm guessing like a man in his 50s or 60s who'd seen a little bit of life and was probably like looking back on things with a little bit more of a philosophical eye and so I don't know what the answer is to that but I I did have the thought that Denny O'Neil really might have seen a part of himself in that character of Tot well I think that's interesting observation because I think it's it's weird when reading comics because you think of everyone you think of all the creators of being kind of in their like 30s and 40s you know or young or or 20s even like or younger like like you don't think there's these older men who lived life to bring a different kind of life perspective to the comic it's fascinating that you say that because you know I know that you were reading these digitally which you didn't like and I was really pissed about that yes but see here's what's interesting about the letter column in this is that this is and this kind of hearkens back to what we were talking about when we talking about the NEXUS is that he is that at the end of the letter column there is a you know recommended reading by you know like Denny O'Neil the last thing the letter and he's always suggesting these high-end kind of white philosophical books like I remember there was one where he's suggesting like this fascinating book that I think that every writer should read is called THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT by Bruno Bettelheim and I first I first heard first heard about this book when I was reading an interview with the her name is Diane something or other she's the co-writer of THE SHINING and she was saying that Kubrick gave her this book when they started working together Oh wow [ __ ] and it's because like because Kubrick said that I want the in the book not in the movie but they shot it but it C have out of the movie was there was this it's a photo album that was the corrupting device of Jack Torrance in the book he grabs it and all it's all the photographs and all that you know and you know that thing the end where you see him with parting at the back and it's got all these kind of photographs of like these different kind of eras of The Overlook and he was saying that in that book THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT he talk it's like a it's a breakdown of where enchanted items are used in various type of story time and there's this thing called like the The Poisoned Apple which we know from like SNOW WHITE but that comes out of Russia and he talks about how that's it's really not just the but it's like a it's a gift like whenever you get a gift that is gonna [ __ ] with you that you think is gonna be good it's gonna [ __ ] with you is The Poisoned Apple it comes out of and that's in that book that's one of the enchanted things that's in that that Bruno Bettelheim book and I read that I was like that's [ __ ] amazing type of like storytelling because because because when you do stuff like that you're tapping into something like fairy tales are like these longer tales that are part of a culture that kind of have this like you what's that Carl Jung calls it like The Collective Unconscious right the culture is very aware of these things and even though you're not told it's it's just shown up so many times so many different stories and that's why I mentioned oh it's like Snow White like in Snow White you remember you know Snow White that apple that she gets from the [Evil Queen] who wants to kill her like she eats it and bites and then she's you know put into the trance it's like that's what all that [ __ ] is and I and I was like why did he put this as a recommended reading in the back of THE QUESTION I love that and then that I think just say I mean because L does begin like the third third issue or something like that obviously with most new comics the first two are them just you know what if they have coms at all they're just talking about how the book came together or or just just weird kind of commentators by the creators but but once the letter song coming in he starts putting those recommended readings in there but it just but go back to but it tells you again he's a very you know well read writer and he quotes a lot of stuff in the book I mean there was one issue later on I issue eight when he's talking about like that Gilbert and Sullivan opera it's just like he's really draw drawing a lot of like influences and and not just but ideas from you know things in literature in a way that you don't expect in comics now that became more of the norm and like there was Vertigo books obviously and then what's that one book that James Robinson did the sh yeah because he because he did that too he was just this lace in his book with stuff that he was reading and and and somehow was was able to make it fit within the context of the story without being like some sort of like hello kids I have a lesson to teach you kind of yeah right right yeah actually it actually worked and we should mention here I think because like I think you touched on it briefly and I think we started to talk about it before but we had some technical problems and we'D had false starts to the episode today so I think we should be really clear to everyone that this is very pre-Vertigo that this book existed in a DC Comics where Vertigo Comics had not yet really had not come into being and in a lot of ways THE QUESTION books like THE QUESTION and Alan Moore's SWAMP THING I think were really kind of like the proof-of-concepts for the idea that there was a need or a desire for these types of literary comics in this space that we're still dealing with genre fiction but like you say bringing a much more kind of elevated mature kind of literary eye to this material and I think Denny O'Neil I don't know that he often gets the credit that he deserves although he's like a well regarded legendary writer editor in a lot of ways I really think this book THE QUESTION was a seminal book for a lot of creators and a lot of people who saw like wow you could really push things in a Direction that went a lot deeper and a lot further than comics were doing at that time and I remember Chris when I was a kid like I was really [ __ ] young reading THE QUESTION came out in '86 '88… '87 so I was literally like 9, 10 years old when this first issue came out, and I read every issue off the rack so I was reading it for the next three years from the time I was like 9 or 10 till I was 12 or 13 I read the whole run monthly and I was obsessed with THE QUESTION and Denny O'Neil's recommended reading was something as a kid that I remember like thinking about and I went out and I bought [ __ ] ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE yeah because Denny O'Neil recommended it and as a kid I don't think I got too far into it but you know looking back just how cool is that that Denny O'Neil was planting seeds for these kinds of like Eastern ideas these spiritual sort of philosophic philosophical concepts in the minds of kids like me who were reading these books and where else was I going to get exposed to this stuff you know like I wasn't going to get exposed to it anywhere else certainly not in popular media at that time and that's what was so [ __ ] cool about comics and that's why your Denny O'Neils and also of course your Alan Moores your Grant Morrisons all these writers back then they were dropping these little idea bombs and these little thought bombs into the minds of unsuspecting kids and you know I for sure was one of those kids and for me it had a huge impact on just what I expected out of stories and the possibilities for what I saw you could do with these stories stories well I the thing about this being what this like five years before Vertigo and I think not sure if it was that I don't know let me I'll check that we'll keep talking I'm gonna look that up I think I think Vertigo was '91 right '91 or '92 and this is so is '86 it's it's at least I think it's four or five years at least it might be longer than Vertigo and but I think the only book that was similar in kind of like graphic tone was the book VIGILANTE oh that's that's an interesting point and actually you're totally right Vertigo didn't start according to Wikipedia until '93 so that's actually later than I thought this is way before so this is seven years before Vertigo yeah seven years before Vertigo this book comes out and you have to and it's interesting because reading it now like it's hard to imagine and this is the thing that I kind of love to do is I kind of love to look at a piece of of of a piece of art work or like this like a movie or TV show or a comic and try to imagine what it was like when it came originally came out like what was the impact of this work when it hit people because a lot of times because you might read this now and be like yeah what's so special about this totally it's like but you got to realize that in '86 there was no books coming out like this oh no this was [ __ ] this was groundbreaking and I think VIGILANTE was a really interesting book and that's a book I would actually like for us to talk about here sometime because that was like kind of a batshit crazy book in its own way also you know but I think that what THE QUESTION brought to things that vigilante didn't as much in my memory is THE QUESTION brought this more kind of like literary but also like just really just the spiritual philosophical bent that was so interesting that that I think came out of Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan both as far as I know being students of the martial arts in real life so they're both people who are martial artists and I know I heard an interview with Denny O'Neil at some point you know that was near the end of his life where he was talking about how he was seeing an acupuncturist and he it sounds like he's had a he had a lifelong respect and interest in sort of Eastern philosophies and ways of looking at things and I think that's a really unique thing that Cowan and O'Neil brought to this book and it really points to why they were so perfect to do this story and it's like we were talking about a little bit earlier Denny Denny O'Neil originally was going to be doing this book with another artist and it was going to be Ernie Cologne the legendary artist in his own right who's done a ton of stuff and for scheduling reasons deadline reasons Ernie wasn't able to do it and Denys Cowan got called into dick Giordano's office one day and we're getting this from an interview we read with Denys Cowan himself and he said he was offered this book just sort of through happen stance you know and really it could not have been more faithful and more perfect because I honestly can't think of an artist who would have been more perfectly suited for this book than Denys Cowan and I think that him and O'Neil it seems like they had a true partnership like they did this book not only did they do the full run of this book together although the inker changed from Magyar from Rick Magyar to Malcolm Jones III about halfway through the run but then they came back even after the initial run was over and I think O'Neil and Cowan just the two of them did like four or five issues of this giant book that was called THE QUESTION quarterly where they were just releasing these huge 60-page stories and those are also fascinating in their own right because that was the first time that I saw Denys Cowan inking himself and and the art on those was actually beautiful and really gorgeous in a different way and Cowan's work had become a lot more just loose and and really unique in a lot of ways so I actually loved the way he pushed his art ultimately when he started inking it but him and O'Neil my point being him and O'Neil had a true partnership and collaboration the likes of which you don't see that often in comics where two guys told one character story for really the equivalent of I don't know over 40 over 40 issues together and it's a very sizable and significant run so I think it's amazing I mean I think the thing the think you the fact that you said they're both martial artists they're both and to be a good martial artist no I'm take that back to be to be a dedicated martial artist you got to get into the philosophy of the martial arts which is which is a lot of this kind of stuff that filters into like what's going on to THE QUESTION and the and the questions that are posed to Vic Sage as he's going through this and you're right I do you know what I remember THE QUESTION like quarterly like more than this book that's what I remember and you're right it's interesting looking at Denys's art in this because I was telling you earlier when we first got on earlier it's like like you know it there's so much of at least to me it looks like Paul Gulacy and kind of like the form that he's doing here I was cool when we were talk that the interview we read with him is he was saying that like he was learning so much as an artist and you know when he was talking with Howard Chaykin and Chaykin was telling him hey man like you don't worry about like drawing the figures and getting the figures right like think about everything is like shapes think about like and design the page not the panel and I was like that's actually really dope cuz I just want to like kind of harken back to I mean jump ahead a little bit I don't know what issue it was it was maybe issue five or something like that I think it's issue five where there's a riot going on in Hub City oh yeah you know and there's a and him and Tot are driving around town and there's and there's and he's like oh my God just look ahead you know it's like at the it's at the bottom right of one page of spreads you know and you turn to the next page was the top left next page and and they're looking at like this this looting going on you know but what's fascinating is he's got a character in The Extreme foreground that's covering up like half the page with an arm going across you know when it's like blue and I was kind of like oh that's kind of cool because he didn't want to draw all this like people in the background of craziness going on he just wanted to show you like the the sense of like chaos but he can control it better by putting something in the extreme foreground that was kind of like you know like like maximize your eye attention but not with a lot of detail because it's all kind of blew it out as opposed to the other stuff is more Ditko it's interesting how he you you see how he progresses as an artist I see I see the page you're talking about here I just pulled it up yeah that's fascinating it is actually F because he draws that one that one arm in the foreground in extreme kind of detail and he's got also some kind of like duo shade, duoshade or like zipatone or something on it and then you see a whole lot of chaos and a lot of people looting sort of in various like sort of levels behind the guy but that in interesting the way that that arm draws so much attention and it's it's like a really chaotic sort of movement and motion of that character also allows so that so he doesn't have to draw too much on that page like he draws a lot because that arm wasn't there he'd have to draw like storefronts getting looted and yeah but but so it works it helps him economize what's happening with the art on the page and draw your eye more eff because I think the guys like like he was saying that shaken was saying to him you you know this the thing that's interesting I was just thinking about this it's like a lot of times when you think about an artist in a comic book you think about you might you might acquaint him to the cinematographer of a movie or TV show right but I think it's more than I think he's the director and the cinematographer it's so much more than that he's the director he's the cinematographer he's the costume designer or she he or she is the production designer I mean it's like you know the artist has to do so much and yes the writer is the screenwriter if you want to do the movie metaphor the movie analogy but the artist is everything else like the artist is the actors you know act the actors the casting director everything and that's why comic artists like we've talked about this a lot comic artists don't get enough credit for the incredible level of difficulty that their job you know requires of them and the incredibly High degree of facility you have to have at all these things to be an incredible comic artist it's the degree of difficulty frankly is very high and like as as someone who has attempted to both draw comics and also has has written movies myself like I would say that the the degree of difficulty for for me at least I would say is it's much higher if you're talking about putting together this whole comic book by yourself a screenplay it's difficult it's not necessarily easy but the amount of things you have to be good at to me doesn't feel quite as daunting as the amount of things you have to get good at as a comic book artist like it's for sure for sure it's it's an extraordinary amount of stuff you've got to be great at to be a master cartoonist and I think most people just don't realize because they have no concept of it they no concept because but but you know what it goes back to I think we're talking about this maybe with like the the episode when we talking about Mr monster we're talking about but it's like it's about like how you design the pace you it's not when they talk about the portfolio review and who's G you know who's gonna because maybe he say his interview how when like they were they were looking at like Bill Sienkiewicz's portfolio when he first came on the scene it I think Neal Adams was looking at it thing about being being a cartoonist is not just being able to do… the illustrative art it's being able to design the page to understand how the panels fit as a shape and as a method of storytelling and you know just like the panel itself was going the composition in the panel and then composition of the comp the page composition of the seven eight 2 3 1 15 19 whatever it is like those panels to that helps to like guide the eye around and then you got to have the letter come in and it's got to like he got to place those letters those letter [word] balloons in the right place to guide your eye to tell you where to read you know every time I think there's a few times in this where the where the lettering kind of confused me I was I would agree yeah I would agree oh wait it's like it's what panel I look at oh so that to me I think is is one of the detractors of this but I think it's because I think they needed like a better letterer on this because what Denys is doing art-wise is very complicated yeah and it's and he makes it look easy I mean like the like the fight scenes are really fantastic oh it's extraordinary it's extraordinary you can tell that again like he is a fighter in real life because he gets these kind of angles and these kind of like these body gestures and and movements and stuff that aren't particularly like when he like fights Lady Shiva in episode issue two or something like that it's very like oh this guy really knows everything and it was interesting that he was saying in the interview or something like that that that there wasn't going to be any sound effect in this book yeah it's hard there's no so there's no like explosion boom bam shotgun there's no punch sound or anything like that and Denys is like that made it so you had to be so much more clearer with what you're drawing on the page because you're not getting any other crutches and it's fascinating to look at the artwork like that just really really good but I think that's also a testament of like what Denny O'Neil trying to say with their script it's like I'm gonna be as I'm trying to tell like this dual handed story where it's like I gotta like infect your thinking brain as well as your physical brain I mean like like your visual brain like with what I'm trying to tell you and still keep it simple and flowing because it flows really I mean like we were talking before about like sometimes these 8s books they have a lot to say and there is a lot to say in this book but it doesn't seem overwhelming at all or like verbose because the artwork is so fluid and the way kind of like lays out on the page and and how he's telling a story it's it's really fascinating I mean I guess we should jump into the issues because details I want to talk about are about things that happen like per issue you know yeah we should totally get into the plot because I think we always jump past the plot because we're so excited about talk to talk about the other stuff yeah I I just want to touch on the one thing You' said about the sound effects though because the sound effects and the lack of them was such a jarring and original thing for me when I was a kid reading these Comics because it was so noticeable and that's one of those things today that maybe you've seen other comics do that by this point and so it may not be as big a deal to a reader today but back then that was a jaw-dropping thing to read a quote unquote action heavy comic where there were no sound effects and you had people not only getting punched and kicked but people getting shot with no sound effects and that was something you did not see I don't think there was a single book that I can think of in mainstream comics that did this before Cowan and O'Neil did it with THE QUESTION and one thing that was funny looking back at this also Chris was that there were sound effects I believe in just like one issue I think it was like the first or the second issue there were some very light sound effects and then after that they decided to do away with them completely but I think it was I think it was the second time actually it was issue number two I think it's the second time that Vic fights Lady Shiva after he goes through his training I remember noticing that there was just like some very light sound effects and I thought oh that's yeah that issue I don't know if it like the letterer just didn't get the memo that issue issue number two when the helicopter comes to pick up Vic to take him to his training there's like who helicopter sound effects and then Vic goes and does his training and when he has that final that second fight with Lady Shiva you'll see there's a crack flap pat smack just on one page though and then on the next page they fight a little more and there's no sound effects on the next page so I almost think it was a mistake looking at it now is that they had sound effect on literally just two pages of issue and I have to believe that might have been just a mistake and then they were like hey, yo Gaspar, what the [ __ ] are you doing here? remember no sound effects and he was like oh oh yeah oops so I think that might yeah it seems like that Mike Gold he might have overlooked that when he was doing the final the final look not overlooked it but like it's it it'd be easy to forget that that you sound effects because you're probably doing so many books you go OK there is sound effects here I think that's probably what it was like poor Gaspar is probably doing lettering on five different books cuz yeah looking at the rest of issue to there's other punches and other kicks or whatever and Vic getting thrown in the water and there's no sound effects so yeah I think it was probably just a mix up on that one page or two right right so OK so we talked we talked about issue one where we we meet Vic Sage meet these the players the Reverend, Tot you know he gets his he he gets his ass I mean he gets his ass beat in a way two it's so bad where it's like he gets hit in the head with with the lead pipe I think so dead three time four times yeah he's [ __ ] dead and what's crazy is you know there's a guy named baby baby baby gun or brother gun or somebody whatever he shoots Vic Sage in the face with the air gun yeah that was weird like why an air gun cuz well he shoots someone else with the air gun too but it's like I you know this is something I bet you that ty O'Neil read about and he thought this might be kind of cool to use it's like I remember reading somewhere where a lot of times when police would get you into custody they would put a phone book on you and then hit you with the billy club oh yeah I've heard that too yeah you know because then it's like like you feel the the hit of the billy club but it doesn't leave a bruise because like the the the like the sheer like like the real blunt force is being absorbed into the phone book but you're still going to feel like like the the kinetic energy so I feel like this guy was doing the the air gun to prevent you know from you being a real gunshot you know that's interesting cuz yeah I was a little confused by the air gun I was also confused while we're on that topic by the incredible sort of overabundance of knives in Hub City as opposed to guns and I was just like oh all right well this is interesting like every single sort of hoodlum or street criminal that Vic encounters everyone's got a [ __ ] switchblade or a knife and I was surprised by the the relative pity of firearms in Hub City for for a city that's so out of control I was just like wow everyone's running around with [ __ ] knives like yeah I mean there that knives in the street I mean enough people like like have guns but it just seemed kind of you're right well that's in too I think you know like you always think about what is the the analog City for this city of a you know Fawcett City or Central City these things these DC Comic things and I feel like Hub City is either like Cleveland or maybe like Buffalo or maybe Detroit… Detroit Detroit is what I was thinking like a city that's been like ravaged by lack of industry that used to be something special but now it's fall into disrepair and the of the country doesn't seem to and like it's it's considered yeah and it's considered a war-zone that's been abandoned or whatever yeah because I feel like you because it's winter time in this in this thing and there's that one issue where they talk I think issue four or five or six when they talk about the origin of the city and it's like you know it was time with the with the with the the the the settlers and stuff like that I was like oh this is such a weird it's not number one it's it's not a east coast city it's not a west coast city it's a it's a city in the middle of the country where there is a lake so it's got to be e CL Cleveland or Detroit possibly Buffalo but I think Cleveland or Detroit which is an interesting place to have it because I remember when I was growing up in Cleveland you didn't hear about guns a lot you heard about knives a lot I mean that's so interesting you know you heard about guns a little bit but but knives and stuff was more of how people kind of handle things and getting guns and stuff was more of like you know like a West Coast thing or or east coast thing it's it's interesting to see that that was the play in this you know OK so we talk about issue one yeah I mean so an issue too like we said so Vic's dead he's dead he's not dead yeah he's he's he's actually been saved by Lady Shiva and she's rescued his body and they explained some weird kind of way where he could have survived drowning they mentioned some little yeah it was something called like "the diving reflex" and or no yeah yeah the diving reflex Tot says there's a phenomenon called the diving reflex it kept a little girl in New York alive for nearly 3/4 of an hour stored oxygen keeps the brain from dying even if the rest of the life systems stop it only works in cold water and only very rarely nobody understands why but nothing to count on next time you're in trouble at the beach so I that's kind of a cool little detail yeah it's cool detail I'm assuming he read about that somewhere and he wanted to put in here to to help with the story because because otherwise you are gonna quickly be out of this book like what the hell's going on you know he got his head broken and is and he got shot in the face and he still survived but then the rest of the almost the rest of the story is you know him in the bed and then him going to train at this guy named Richard's place he is that his name Richard yeah yeah it's Richard Dragon who is like you know from wait this is Richard Dragon that's Richard Dragon from the DC Comics [ __ ] mythology yes that's Richard [ __ ] Dragon this Richard Dragon yes that is Richard dragon that is who THE QUESTION goes to train with the resident martial arts master of the DC Universe wait but do they call him Richard Dragon in this I I don't know if they call him Richard Dragon but they call him Richard and I'm pretty positive that I I've read or I remember reading elsewhere or maybe even in later issues of THE QUESTION that that was Richard Dragon that's fascinating because there was like a book he had his own book in the '70s yeah yeah yeah he did he was a member of the he was he was a member of The League of Assassins yeah and I'm pretty sure he was because I have because one of my favorite DC characters is the Bronze Tiger and the Bronze Tiger he made his first appearance in one of these Richard Dragon issues and I remember I bought like I don't know like maybe like like you know I think maybe eight to 12 issues I hunted them down yeah you know of these Richard Dragon Kung Fu things to read the Bronze Tiger origin and stuff like that and I didn't even know that was yeah yeah yeah yeah no it's it's definitely Richard Dragon I just looked up some other reviews of of this question series online and yeah I'm reading someone someone reviewing this elsewhere talking about how Aristotle Rodor represents science and reason in this story while Richard Dragon represents a mystical worldview so so yeah so this is a it is interesting how they're working in the DC Universe in a way into the story because because Vic is having dreams of Batman he goes to train with Richard Dragon but at the same time the story feels so unlike a a DC Comic any sense yeah then after he spend having what six nine months training he which goes by it goes by very fast in the comic yeah but they they do that cool thing they do on what I don't know what page maybe is it page let me see what it says I can't see is that the the montage page yeah the Montage page it's like page 18 yeah like that's like a little page I've seen in like [Music] Jim Steranko did something like this in like a old like NICK FURY: AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D. from the '60s we kind of covered like all this kind of like time passage in a single page like this and it's really fascinating it's something again that …only comics can do something like that I mean there other ways to do montages for sure but to do it all on a single page and there's all this kind of conversation about the philosophy of things and that he gives a little that metaphor about the man who dreamed he was a butterfly the butterfly was dreaming as a man that and and then he kind of gets and then and then to graduate from time he's going to fight like Lady Shiva again now I want to say that Lady Shiva was part of the The League of the Assassins too because when when is it Jason Todd there's like the third Robin, the third Robin, I can't remember was [ __ ] I forget who the third Robin is but oh well there's a Jason Jason Todd before that was Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Tim Drake so so Tim Drake was was trained by Lady Shiva too oh is that true oh [ __ ] I didn't know that's how he knows how to fight oh wait oh wait a second OK this is interesting Wikipedia says Lady Shiva was co-created by Denny O'Neil and Ric Estrada and Lady Shiva first appeared in Richard Dragon, KUNG-FU FIGHTER number five ah it all it all comes together so fascinating OK so yeah so Lady Shiva she's a martial arts Grandmaster she's also an assassin-for-hire and is oh wait wait a second and she specializes in killing her targets with her bare hands and she's the mother of Cassandra Cain a.k.a. Batgirl and what I didn't know all this I didn't realize all this about Lady Shiva I just kind of knew Lady Shiva from THE QUESTION I didn't realize her tentacles reached into the whole DC Universe like this wow this is fascinating yeah they go deep they go deep so it's interesting seeing her in this book because like she's one of my favorite characters see you I remember like when that Tim Drake's ROBIN came out I was kind of like oh this is a you know she's in the at least the first three issues he's popping up the trade him I was like oh this is a [ __ ] cool as [ __ ] character and I didn't realize until I got some of those Richard Dragon comics that she been around for a very at least since 20 25 years I I didn't read a lot of that Tim Drake ROBIN stuff I think I was kind of checked out of that ROBIN stuff at that time and so I didn't realize Lady Shiva's involvement this is super interesting yeah THE QUESTION I tell you I you know what's funny about Tim Drake's ROBIN is that like I didn't read BATMAN I read the ROBIN book most of the time I so my way to understand what's going on in the BATMAN Universe was to read ROBIN because he would intersect with him all the time plus I kind of felt like he was an interesting character it was a new launch on the the Robin kid and Batman was Batman is always like is a little it's a little inscrutable to me as a as a character you know because he's there's no personality Bruce Wayne right you know I think it's it's pretty you know it's I don't know it's not as interesting like he's he's just Batman sure you know like there's no other it's kind of like Captain America where Captain America's he's never Steve Rogers he is but he never really is they almost are just the icon of that character like it's hard to say it's hard to write like an idiosyncratic Steve Rogers or an idiosyncratic Batman because that wouldn't quite be who they are like they're these symbolic figures that represent you know pain and trauma and loss and you know revenge vengeance or patriotism and the best of us in America blah blah blah but you're right they they feel like ideas even more than they feel like characters almost yeah yeah it's interesting to Richard Dragon and [ __ ] Lady Shiva yeah this is It's deep with Easter Eggs apparently for people who you know who want to look for that stuff there more than we realize I just want to also call out too before we move on to issue three because issue two we've covered most of it here with kind of the training Vic Sage disappears from Hub City after Lady Shiva rescues him and he goes off and trains with Richard Dragon becomes something of a martial arts master and then has to fight Shiva again but before that issue number two opens with some of that sort of philosophy stuff we've been talking about and I just wanted to read a couple of the captions at the opening here and again just to point out this is so different than that existed in comics at that time in '86 like if one were to read the opening pages of the other [ __ ] 15 DC Comics that came out this week none of them would read like this so the opening question issue number two it's this incredible full page illustration of like Vic Sage in Black and white from behind looking like he's facing just like an incredible I don't know like a burst of light and darkness it's just it's like light piercing through some darkness it's a very striking full page splash page image the title of the issue is butterfly and the caption that opens it says this is the secret the dead learn time is an illusion when he was alive Charles Victor Szasz thought he knew time but really all he knew was motion and change in persons places and things time does not exist in death there is no motion no change so it is senseless to ask how long he has been floating toward the white light an eternal moment a fleeting eternity no difference no matter in life he had been a creature of turmoil of violence now at last he is at peace and so then it goes on with the rest of the story but like that's a pretty heavy sort of introductory page to this comic about the the crime fighter with no face it's like pretty pretty heavy stuff and then that beautiful Steranko-like splash page that you referenced which comes like 15 pages later O'Neil returns to that same caption mechanic and over that lovely page where we see Vic training for the next year with Richard Dragon now we come back to these words again and and we hear time being an illusion is infinitely malleable it can be stretched it can be contracted a wise man dreamed he was a butterfly when he awoke he had a strange realization he realized that he didn't know if he was a man who had been dreaming he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was a man and that's the end of the training montage and as we get to the end of that Richard Dragon says OK school's out yeah you're done you're done that's it that's it and it's really cool to me the way that O'Neil dips in and out of these really he pondering sort of searching yearning captions talking about these massive concepts of life these sort of existential questions but he's not beating you over the head every page with it which would get exhausting it's like he dips in and out of it and then we get back to some fighting or some craziness in Hub City or whatever but it's really fascinating how O'Neil kind of dips in and out of this stuff and I think it's really what makes THE QUESTION feel like it's got weight to it and there's some substance to this book where it's really saying a lot more than any comic was attempting to say at that time you know what I completely completely agree with you on that and what he's trying to do and what he's trying to say and you know and it's how he's shaping this character you know it's kind of like how is he doing how's he creating this character for us now because is this it's not an origin story but it's a way to like well I have to tweak his origin he's been around for a little bit but like the creator this is me and Cowan are gonna create this character and let's create him in our mold so we can start so he can start telling the stories that we want to tell with him as opposed to what was there before yes I think that's part of why he goes through this this training thing because that BATMAN thing that might have been a dream might have been real because because he did meet Batman earlier was to tell him that you can only do this if you do it full-time right you can't do it h you can't half ass doing this type of work because you get yourself killed this is when he's already got his head broken in and his whole body broken up and [ __ ] like that yeah seems like good advice from Batman potentially drowned and [ __ ] like that yeah it's crazy it's crazy you know yeah so then later on in the book how a book you know two3 of the book he meets he has this fight with Lady Shiva you know and it's interesting because she never tells him why she saved him no because she was part of the she was she was she was part of the gang that had she beat his ass right you know so it's kind of like what the hell and then you know and and then he goes back home after like I don't know how long he's been gone but he starts to be THE QUESTION again I mean he's got the mask you know because apparently it's like like Aristotle was the one who designed this the faceless mask that sticks to his face and the belt with this weird gas that that changes his suit coloring it's very it's a very I don't to say it's a very peculiar because it's like if he's not like Alfred but he you know what I'm saying he's not like but because he helps because he's really the one behind like how the technology works right but he's not yeah it's… a weird like that duo is very is kind of like is different than most CICS it is yeah and the Tot character is really interesting and I I remember him making a big impression on me as a kid and if I'm not mistaken I think there's a story line that comes up later on in the run of THE QUESTION where Tot gets kidnapped by some of Nick by some of Vic's enemies and I remember being shocked by that as a kid too because Tot had been such a gentle kind of peaceful character and suddenly he's pulled into this world of violence himself but yeah he's a unique character you're right he's given a lot more agency than like an Alfred character and Vic seems to respect him and see him more as like a a father figure in a way but yet it's a father figure who he's not going to always listen to but Tot to is kind of like the voice of reason telling Vic to like you know stop being so hard on yourself get some sleep you're gonna kill yourself be careful all that stuff like Tot… Tot clearly cares about Vic and Vic himself and Vic's been very alone his whole life he hasn't had a whole lot of people to care about him his backstory you know like it's pretty sad and minimal he was an orphan apparently at at an orphanage and there some there was some mention in this in these issues here you might remember this but they were talking at some point about when Vic was brought to the orphanage and this kind of shocked me it said something about I think that he was like six months old but that the the child the baby that was brought to the orphanage had like the signs of abuse on the baby like that there was like burn marks or some sort of abuse that had happened to the baby that was Vic Sage when he was brought to the orphanage and it was just like a little detail that was mentioned when Vic was talking about his childhood but I just reading that I was like whoo that is that is really heavy if O'Neil is suggesting that Vic Sage's parents or whoever was raising him as a baby was was literally like I'll try and find it it was something about how this child showed up as a baby at the orphanage already with the telltale signs of some horrific abuse and then at the and then at the orphanage he went through further hell and he was bullied terrorized and then there was incredible cruelty from the num at the orphanage so so Vic's childhood was a horror show oh yeah there's that really great montage when it's like when you showing him as a kid it's like the nuns are whooping his hands and [ __ ] like that with like with like rules and stuff like that yeah I mean I I think that I can't remember I think that's in Issue four maybe or I think it's Issue four maybe issue three Issue four when he this is like when you later finds out he's come back after this six months maybe he's even long maybe he been a year away and he finds out that Myra she's been forced to marry the the mayor who's like who's a drunk and a figurehead for this terrible guy yeah this crazy ass Reverend who was interesting because like you read it about it I'm reading it now and I'm like to have your villain for the first story arc be a deranged you know Christian yes is very I mean like he's you know he's on the level of like a Taliban type of person he's trying to sacrifice children yeah it's I mean it's a very it's a I mean but there's a lot of stuff in this in these comics terms of like the the the victim characters are it's pretty heinous yeah it's pretty it's pretty like this is you know there's that old woman who almost gets [ __ ] brutalized by those and he's got to sit outside by the bus for like six hours yeah there's that guy who tries to rape his secretary or I think he does rape his secretary well yeah you know it's yeah he does and he and then he commits suicide I mean it it goes to very dark places yeah this I mean this book does a lot of again seven years before vertigo yeah jumping in and doing this kind of intense intense stuff and the preacher the Reverend I mean he's like from he was in Vietnam and he gave up the cross in Vietnam and was just like like saw wholesale it's interesting that this is how that this is the first the film that he's gonna first attack or or go up against is this kind of like he's not a superhero villain you know I THE QUESTION does not deal with superhero villains he deals with people who who come out of like the corruption of like of an urban landscape yeah and then but and then you know by the end of what I love at the end of issue one is he says yeah you know this guy's not gonna come back to kill me unless he sings "Oh Danny Boy" sure enough issue two THE QUESTION shows up to confront the Reverend he shows up by and he's singing "Oh Danny Boy" I was like that surprised me I mean that's like a good little in that's a joke It's a good callback hook or whatever the hell it is but that but that was good and that and the end of issue two is just like OK Question meets the Reverend you know and he's like hey it's about to be us it's about to be us against each other like the mano-y-mano which is a great way to end that second issue and he and he is basically confronting the Reverend now wait that's are you are you on did you say issue two issue two yeah issue two the last page issue two yeah yeah OK so all right just trying make sure I'm I'm there with you so so yeah so and he says I want you to pray Reverend and then and then issue three is is kind of interesting because issue three now we have this other story line that kind of pops up that's connected to the Reverend story line but for the moment we have a separate bad guy that Vic has to stop that has been hired by the Reverend to plant a bomb on a bus full of school children yeah now that to me was a bit shocking yeah and I try to say to myself what part of it well I say to myself OK here's the thing that's shocking right this was [ __ ] up this is how this is how this is how people like view this is how the world I really view [ __ ] right they're making it sound like we're gonna blow up a bus of kid this a school bus MH and it's white kids from the suburbs Y and we're going to blame it on a Black guy that was that was the plan by the bad guy yeah I was like goddamn that's like and they do it because they know the Black guy will would will get blamed like very like it's just like the scapegoating will be believed and it's just [ __ ] no wow it's just yeah it's pretty jaw-dropping and it's something like you know I know we talked a little bit off mic about this it would be really just interesting to discuss with Denys Cowan at some point just how he felt about the various racial politics at play in THE QUESTION because I'm sure it must be something him and Denny O'Neil must have talked about but the fact that Cowan was a young Black artist and Denny O'Neil was an older white man… writer and they were tackling some of the racial politics that they were tackling and the story quite you know head-on and directly in a lot of ways I'd be really fascinated to hear Cowan's take on how he felt about some of the issues and some of the material here because as we get further into the run there are some issues that deal even more directly with the racial politics and the racism in Hub City and you know it's they're not they're not hiding from it it's just one more of the horrors that they're going to deal with here in the story in Hub City well here's interesting I'm I'm looking at cover of issue two and three and one no comic code Authority on this book so I kind of feel like they could have used the n-word and they didn't maybe I mean it might have been in the scripts earlier and I bet that Denys is like I he might have been like I don't know if you can do that but there's a lot of like there's a moment in issue three when Myra is trying to help THE QUESTION and she like damn near strips down to her lingerie to kind of like to throw these cops off yeah you know and I I was like that's a pretty gutsy move it's a smart move to do as a as a character and situation to do that in a comic yeah at this time again this is seven years before yeah they're really they're really pushing things like it's super on the edge like yeah as a kid it really blew my mind reading this book and again we can't emphasize enough how different this was from the average comics that were on the stand from both DC and Marvel at this time in '86 I mean it's extraordinary and you look at it now and you may not have the awareness of how different this is but just please be aware that this was an incredibly bold book for a mainstream publisher to put out in so many ways here and by the way speaking of that I found the panel that I was thinking of that was here in the issue where Vic's talking about his own childhood and it's when he returns to the orphanage and he says relax breathing heartbeat become calm don't think about the medical reports the ones that relate how a six-month-old infant was left at a hospital his tiny body covered with scalds and bruises don't remember the orphanage the bullying of the elder other boys the cruelty of the teachers the consuming loneliness forget all of that let calmness happen let relaxation because there can't be any mistakes and so so here again it's like Denny O'Neil just reaching for Zen philosophy in terms of how to calm a character's mind in the midst of remembering this horrific person trauma he suffered and you know this is so just like unique in talking about stuff because it's not like Batman it's not like he saw his parents get killed in front of him it's not like Superman it's not like he's the sole survivor of an alien planet it's nothing like that's kind of sexy and cool in a certain way like o what a dark you know interesting origin story you know you're a survivor who family was killed but you were this or you were that it's it's not something that you can say that you can wrap up in a neat little cool sounding pitch like that it's more like oh no you're a deeply traumatized infant who is abandoned at a hospital because your family was a bunch of horrible [ __ ] up people who scald you scalded you as a six-month-old with burning water and apparently beat you enough that you were bruised as a six-month-old and then abandon you at a hospital or somebody did like that is hardly the average superhero origin story it's just it's very dark and it goes by in a single couple panels there I mean it's super dark I mean like the thing too it's like I don't even I mean you know like later on like you meet the guy named Musto you know and he's beating up his son who he doesn't like and he and he and he says something like you call that a boy what I call is an abortion that lived and I'm kind of like you look at this you look at the scene about how the child is being beat and abused and I'm kind of like there aren't even movies at this time that are doing this no you know I I can think like the movies are afraid to get this dark this like this kind of like domestic abuse is untouched in… any popular media like like obviously like you know like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna include like novels I mean because novels have been doing that forever but right just of like you know this pop pop popular popular media though like and sure there might have been like indie cinema on the fringes that maybe touched on this stuff but indie cinema at this time not that much though not that much really no no because like the kind of indie cinema that would touch on this stuff was coming out in the '90s wasn't in the I mean there wasn't really that much of an indie the indie cinema scene in the '80s at this time was like those Cannon Films with… Golden Globes you know this is premier max what what year was you would know this maybe what year was SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE it's '89 '89 OK [ __ ] so you're right, Chris, [ __ ] this is this is before that yeah yeah this '86 yeah it's it's really interesting because when we talk about this book and SWAMP THING from Alan Moore and like what was so subversive and insane to me was that books like this you know I think THE QUESTION I'm not sure because it was like new format and it's like whatever Baxter format or Mondo paper whatever DC was calling this paper but I know SWAMP THING for sure some of these books were available at new stands you know just ordinary new stands for like you know liquor stores and supermarkets and gas stations where kids could pick up these comics and with the type of content that was being explored and the ideas being explored that to me is what's so subversive and amazing about comic books in this period is that you would have these kinds of ideas and thoughts and issues being discussed in a place where a kid who had a dollar in their pocket could just go pick up this story and I was that kid on many occasions and it just [ __ ] blew my mind to be reading about some of this stuff and your parents think you're picking up a [ __ ] superhero comic and it's all la dah but meanwhile you're reading about domestic abuse and like all these horrific things that are important for a kid to be aware of but it it's also a lot and you know I could see some people probably not being comfortable with their kids reading this my parents were totally cool with it thankfully for me but yeah it is really fascinating and you're right these subjects are not ones that popular media was comfortable tackling in the '80s and yet here they were front and center in a comic that is just frankly unrelenting as you know we read the first eight issues and if we went further it's not like it lightens up if anything it gets darker you know like it keeps getting darker as they get more comfortable with the world are probably getting their getting in their stride I mean like you know because it's like this the get again I was saying earlier about like context of when something is is released to the world has a lot to do with its impact impact and its artistic merit you know I mean look to a certain degree some of the abuses in his book and the vigilante-ism and stuff that would have shown up in like one of these Charles Bronson movies or like STRAW DOGS or something like that but those movies from the '70s received such it was such a public outcry you know WALKING TALL I can't remember the name of those Bronson movies DEATH HUNT, DEATH WISH yeah DEATH WISH death rage other one you know like I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE you know all this kind of stuff there was a it was a and then and when Reagan came in in 1980 there was this big pullback on like the type of movies that could going to get made what about dirty what about DIRTY HARRY where would you put DIRTY HARRY and all that? OK so DIRTY HARRY was again I think the first one was like '72 or '74 [1971] By the time you by the time you're getting to '86, I think there is no more DIRTY HARRY movies The last one like I mean the most I think the one that had "Welcome to the Jungle" in it as part of the music that wasn't DEADPOOL or it might have been DEADPOOL not the not the DEADPOOL people are thinking of no no… like the the DIRTY HARRY movies were DIRTY HARRY MAGNUM FORCE SUDDEN IMPACT DEADPOOL and I think there was one more I can't remember offhand but I know those four there might have been a fifth one the one with "Welcome to the Jungle," that Guns N' Roses song was used in the advertising I don't know if it was just used in the movie but that's but those type of brutal films like that and those kind of like a cop on the rampage like a not the way that you know not like Jack Bauer and [ __ ] like that like a real rampaging cop yeah we're kind of petering out of this but I only think that I only think that the Kingwood movies were working he was doing those DIRTY HARRY films in the '80s because he needed to do those to like satisfy some Warner Brothers because he wanted to do stuff like bird and want to do like UNFORGIVEN and stuff like that and they were like well we do that if you want to do that art [ __ ] Clint you better do some DIRTY HARRY right right that's why that's why he did it but you know but that's like a big M and that's like what installment five and six in or four and five in a big-ass franchise the but these guys are pulling this whole-cloth out of nowhere and this is like right around the time when like Nancy Reagan was tripping about [ __ ] and just like it's the level of like violence that was available to children and just and teens…was being was being monitored a lot in… you know but not in comics no no …not in comics and actually and another thing like hearing you talk about those movies Chris another thing that kind of occurs to me that I'd be curious about your thoughts on is that all those movies really they're coming from a very conservative perspective or conservative point of view politically speaking right like the DEATH WISH films and you know Charles Bronson and DIRTY HARRY I mean those movies to me like they're all coming from this sort of like conservative paranoia about crime and cleaning up the streets and whatnot and those are all kind of like uncomfortable movies to watch now because you know there's I mean I haven't seen those movies in forever, or ever, but my understanding or my impression of them is that they seem like they're coming from a very conservative place, whereas it's interesting to me that THE QUESTION is being written by Denny O'Neil and it's kind of like Denny O'Neil himself is grappling with how do I write a vigilante crime fighter character in a city that has been ravaged by corrupt politics and all this crime is a natural outgrowth of these political policies and the greed and corruption of all these leaders And so I know Denny O'Neil's personal politics have to be very anti- …sort of… DEATH WISH or DIRTY HARRY or that kind of thinking and so I feel like there's an interesting tension in THE QUESTION which is O'Neil sort of having almost like the prompt of like "Hey, you want to write a vigilante story?" and for him it's like, "Yeah, but it's going to be my kind of vigilante story, which is not going to be the kind that Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood might do… mine's going to be a really philosophical story where we're also we're going to point the finger at the corrupt politicians even more so than these criminals in the streets. And my character is going to be really grappling with what he's doing, and it's going to be a lot more nuanced than just like all this bullshit [ __ ] that you saw in these Chuck Bronson or all these other movies where it became so reductive and simplistic in terms of like who the problem was… Like, "The problem is, you know, these criminals…!" Blah blah blah, but in Denny O'Neil's worldview, that's not the problem — I think Denny O'Neil's worldview is like, "No, that's the crime we're seeing as a result of these other larger [problematic] systems…." and that's kind of what I'm going to be talking about more so well it's interesting you bring that up because two things one you know outside of DIRTY HARRY these other things like again like STRAW DOGS and some of those horror films from the '70s and obviously Charles Bronson things those are like the like those vigilantes again and like BATMAN they are on a revenge kick you know like they've had a parent killed they've had a daughter raped there's that one really good George C. Scott movie where his daughter's been kidnapped and like she been white put on the white slavery road and the porn road and she he's going after her and tried to burn just's a lot of that kind of revenge like what happens if you do this and Vic Sage he's like I'm a product of that broken time-period too right and I you not to per but… the broken society and it's up and he's mad that people aren't that this city the city like the structures of the city you seeing the systems of the city have gotten so decayed and no done anything about it like he personally hasn't been harmed outside of he you know the the orphan upbringing but there's it's and but and he's risen above that he's not even taking it as like I'm trying to [ __ ] people over it's like he knows that people aren't going to survive the right way if you don't look at the systems yeah and you know and you're right it's like how does he want to tackle being a vigilante because I we mentioned the book VIGILANTE which we want to talk about like came out around this time I mean that guy I remember his name is Adrian I can't remember his name Adrian Chase… Adrian Chase he had a pro it's a it's a revenge thing too you know PUNISHER is a revenge thing yeah yeah yeah totally and I think VIGILANTE and PUNISHER are much more in the in the mold maybe of like the DEATH WISH films or right because like yeah those are those kind of revenge stories yeah and which is I think a little bit more of like a simplistic sort of approach like OK you killed one of mine so I need revenge I'm going to go kill kill you get revenge for what happened to my people but like THE QUESTION I think like you say it's an interesting origin story for a comic book character for a crime fighter because it's a very diffuse sort of an origin story if that's the right word because it's not it's not like it's directed at one incident you know what I mean like where most comic book origin stories there's a particular flash point there's a particular incident or a trauma that's launched this character onto this path where with Vic Sage like you say it's more like he's a product of this broken corrupt society that Hub City is particularly emblematic of and he has just he's had enough of the corruption and the crime and he decides he's got to fight back for those who are not able to and but he sees himself as one of many victims instead of like one specific person who has been victimized and needs revenge for themselves think that's think politically speaking because Vic Sage is not about himself and what happened to him he's more about the greater good right he's about the society and this is wrong and so I will step up because if not me then who I am able to I know I can do this so I'm going to yeah well because the whole part later on I think issue five when the city's burn down for the riots and he and Tot says him hey man you've been up for 36 hours straight not taking a break and he's kind of like I have to because there's no one else who will help me you know yeah it's interesting I just want to you know just as we get back through Issue four two things I want to say you know when he confronts Street like the street criminals the people who would get shot in a Charles Bronson movie like who would attack you know he always gives them the chance to hey let's not go this far you know like he always gives him a chance to like don't you know what like walk away so you can stay alive but if you're not I'm giving you the opportunity you know it isn't always but he does it a few times where he's like not trying to just just go off half-cocked and just whoop everyone's ass who looks like a criminal he's kind of like you can stop right now and we can end this and then they don't you know they [ __ ] it up but I want to bring up this part in the middle of issue three when he goes to see this old Black man who runs the bus stop all right you know what like the kids are gonna get blown up at the bus station I believe this is the first Black character in the comic and we're issue I guess three it might have been one issue two but I don't remember I think there might have been like one of one of issue one not issue two because that was a training issue but what Denys does in this that I appreciate is he actually like like every Black character has the kind of like like obviously Denys is Black but he's drawing them to give them a personality and to give them a a like a very kind of like the the the various shades of the like the what I meant to say is the features are different you know right like if you look at a if you look at the way a lot of white guys draw ra Black men in the '70s and '80s they all kind of have a very specific kind of look of someone who hasn't really studied the way Black people look with their features and stuff like that and it's interesting that that Denys is a is a Black guy and this is something that like you know I the H and I say a lot on the the rent room podcast is you know particularly being Black writers and Black filmmakers we're very aware of the white world around us we're very aware of the kind of like the nuances and how white people look and as well as how new how Black people look one really cool about this book is is that every character has a very kind of distinct look to them you know and this old this old Black guy like he looks like an old Black guy like his language is kind of broken up and it's very very it's not stereotypical you know like you know like jive street slang but it's like he speaks in a way of of like of a of uneducated Black man who's been at this job as like the dispatcher for these school buses for like 50 years and can't get out of this and you can kind of read like the world weariness in his face of like this this rundown like you know like job that's got no future and he stayed at it for you know you know like past the better years of his lives and now into his like his his golden years I mean and all throughout the book whenever you meet Black people they have that kind of like you know specificity in the drawing and I just don't I mean because C because you could look at [The] Falcon you could look at Power Man you could look at Black Lightning you could look at Black Panther if you pulled out those characters from you know from White drawn by white people and just put their faces next to each other and find a way to strip out their costuming it would all kind of look the same they it's the same type of look or it's the same type the same kind of like archetypal you know like drawing because because later on in this there's this one guy I don't remember his name oh here his name is Jake it's that one guy who's working for the Reverend the muscle with the orange hair and then like he looks like one thing in that guy named must and his son he's driving with someone else who looks like a [ __ ] you know there's enough difference like this is a great thing about Denys's work is and even Myra like the way she's drawn like she doesn't look like you know like a typical kind of like like a look it's like a I don't know it's an arch type that you see a lot and oh totally yeah and she doesn't look like a typical comic book you know sexy woman yeah not at all not at all she's got a very unique look to her and she's attractive but not in not in a cliche or or commonplace way and just you know she looks like a you know an attractive brunette but she has very distinct features that don't look typical right and what also greatest is that that Denys is not drawing her with like you know like the magnified DD-breasts oh god no none of that no no no there's like zero there's really almost zero lasciviousness in the way that Denys is portraying the women here except if there's like a specific scene that calls for that for some moment where there're the sexuality is a part of what's happening but otherwise I think that's something where Denys is really ahead of his time here as an artist in comics is he is not drawing these cliche looking women who are you know the type that we've seen for decades in comics that really a lot of artists still were drawing most artists were still drawing at this time so well I think I think that that most artists still draw now I think a lot of artists that that they want to draw I think this is like just thing about this book is that PC you know I think this is something about movies too for a long time and I still think it it it holds true to movies and it at some degree I think it needs to is that you want to draw beautiful people you know it's like it's it's like that or not I say beautiful people but people who but people who are at their pinnacle right you know and like whatever it is their looks their muscles their sexuality you know their brawn whatever it is that's kind of what you want to do and I feel like the fact that he doesn't do that with anybody in this you know like you know like even these gangsters don't look like really mining gangsters everyone everyone looks kind of [ __ ] up in Hub City which feels very appropriate given the context of the story even Vic's AG also but also because it's in the Midwest and I feel like in the Midwest there's that sense of like people are like just they're a little more dumpier than they are in the East Coast and West Coast it's just you know being from there I kind of gonna say you can say that because you grew up there like I'm kind of a tune oh yeah yeah yeah this looks like this look like this you know I mean what you call the rest of issue three is he's got to save that bus the kids from being blown up on the bus which is really cool there's a I mean you know like where we at page 22 23 and 24 are you know it's when these the Musto kid is gonna throw this some dynamite into the bus and there's a little bit of dialogue on the top of page 22 but the rest of it and maybe one line of page 23 it's all silent like it reads like that silent G.I. JOE issue where it's just Cowan's art yeah telling you the action and showing it to you in like this like boom it's very cinematic it's very cinematic and it's also just brilliant comic book storytelling and you know it like we keep saying is so unusual for that time but yeah looking at this page 20 here and page 20 22 and 23 there 24 it's a lot of largely silent pages and it's just done beautifully like really elegant storytelling totally clear what's happening and yeah it's also cinematic but I think it's specifically just great comic book storytelling too it's it really works yeah this a great thing on page 24 when he's throwing the dynamite those three panels back to back to back that kind of show he like his arm cocking back to throw the dynamite oh yeah that's really cool just like page layout and page design and at the end of it he goes to an orphanage where he's gonna meet Myra's daughter because Myra although she had a daughter that she never told him about this is prior to their engagement before he be you know he got beat up by Shiva and that she's kind of uses a pawn by the Reverend as it's keeping her away from Myra who's kind of living like a kept woman with the with the mayor yeah and this was like a little confusing to me too that Myra had kind of just abandoned her daughter at the orphanage like there's not a lot said about it to me I didn't really like she abandon her daughter I to me the way I read it is that the Reverend like forced her to put the because you find out later on the Reverend forced her into this marriage and to me at first I was reading I was like oh she lied to him and didn't tell him that that she was married to this like you know like like when they were [ __ ] like that was wow this woman is scandalous as [ __ ] you know but then it comes out as like oh no she's in like some loveless marriage that she's been it's like she's like a kept woman and the guy didn't want the kid around and it's I mean it goes to this level of like the human misery that that Denny O'Neil kind of keeps conjuring up in this within Hub City is pretty it's you know it's shocking now it's like the [ __ ] dude like damn yeah it's very dark it's very very dark and you're right all the characters are suffering and so much misery even the character who is going to plant this bomb and then eventually throw this dynamite onto this bus full of school children even that character who's like the despicable terrorist character that you wouldn't think twice about in the average comic even he is suffering under the incredible sort of iron Rule and abuse Ive rule of his father who's like the head terrorist who's treating his kid horribly and like you mentioned earlier saying he's like an abortion who lived and all this [ __ ] and beating him up and so O'Neil is even exploring the real suffering of this quote unquote terrorist who's about to kill a bunch of innocent school children and he's doing it to kind of prove his worth to his father who's this abusive monster so it's like no one in this story is having an easy go of it in Hub City no I mean anything thing I love about the I don't know of any again what I love is not this is something that you would do in a Vertigo book obviously you know seven years later but to have the kid who can't be who can't get his father's love and is hated by his dad is a in… a superhero comic in the mid '80s is such and that's a villain it's such a like we said earlier it's like it's like the not the Ayn Rand black-and-white thinking like the grays in this Yes are so it's like that what's that guy Ansel Adams with his zone system like there's seven shades of gray you gotta look for oh [ __ ] the photographer yeah yeah yeah yeah it's like this it's like you you're like what is going on with this totally I mean he just a side character he's not but he's getting his ass beat by his dad his dad is like punching him in the face he's putting out on his face he's just doing all this wild-ass [ __ ] I mean what's even worse is the one issue I think it's the number eight the Mido one we'll jump it ahead but it's like yeah this that one fat guy who's like not feeding this kid oh yeah I was like what the hell so brutal no it's [ __ ] wild man like it really this story explores the depravity and just the darkness and like the hearts of people in a really intense way and like Hub City is almost like it's Dante's INFERNO it's just this place where everyone is in some version of hell and everyone's going through their own particular crucible whatever it is but you know Vic Sage and THE QUESTION is here kind of as our guide through all of it but it's it is really rough goings-on all around and so I I think what is especially noteworthy though as we're talking about with some of these characters is that O'Neil and Cowan they even they make you feel for the villains they make you feel for some of these characters that seem so despicable and are but yet they don't stop at that and they don't act like oh these are just evil people they they show you much of the time what has caused sort of the descent into what we would call evil and they show the reasons for it in a way that sometimes is quite sympathetic like this kid being abused horribly by his father and when you see that you're like oh poor kid poor kid I feel so bad for this kid but then like 10 pages later the kid's like, "OK Dad, I'm gonna go blow up a school bus full of innocent children to win your love because that's how much of a psychopath I am," right? And then you're like, "No, kid, no! Don't do that" like I fell for it a second ago, but no that's not the way to deal with it, no, so it's interesting so let's jump into Issue four real quick yeah yeah so Issue four picks up we back at the orphanage where we left Vic Sage when he was helping Myer's kid build a snowman, but there's this interesting little scene with that guy Jake and he's with this Black guy who's got dreadlocks and he kind of reminded me of Gary Oldman in TRUE ROMANCE oh yeah that character oh my god that's a wild character it's like that's his kind of he kind of has that he's not high like that but he does have that kind of like flavor to him again a Black guy who's got an entirely different kind of look and feel and like just execution and expression that I thought was really really cool I'm glad you're pointing that out I'm glad you keep on not because I think that is so rare and unusual you're right for comics at that time and I mean because like remember in DAREDEVIL the fright M DAREDEVIL there's that character named Turk that Black guy who was showing up you know like he was like a street hood who always kind of like kind of like a he like a ne'er-do-well street hood like I like that character as what he was but he was always drawn like this a certain kind of Black guy that's like he exudes the and even though the guy he wasn't a thug he was a criminal but he wasn't like a thug he was trying to be smart but always got outsmarted by a DAREDEVIL but he never looked but he never looked like he had any intelligence and this guy looks like he's got some of he's got a beret on he's got some those John Lennon circular glasses and he's got dreadlocks and it's kind of like kind of crazy it's also like specific though right like you know like we always talk about with writing like good writing is like you know your characters have to all have specificity and you got to make choices you can't just have generic Thug 2, 3 and in this case you're right like these are very specific choices that are being made this thug has a very different fashion sense than this other thug and you would imagine very different interests and tastes and you can see all that communicated the way he's dressed yeah yeah I mean everything you know it's interesting there's a little panel on page three when he's like finish up the snowman and he and he's using that like zipatone or duotone to kind of give you the shadow of the tree because yeah I see that that's really subtle because there's not a lot of that in this book it's occasional but it really worked there because they're in the snow and in the white and I I don't know how else he would get that kind of yeah you're right that is actually really pretty and honestly I feel like that points out we've gone a little bit light on discussing the art in this episode but there are there are just like increasingly so many beautiful moments in the art and I I want to call out especially that I think Denys Cowan does some incredibly striking splash pages like even in this issue number four the opening splash page of the Reverend just looking so decrepit and just so crazed and it's a giant closeup on the Reverend he's literally drooling like he's clearly out of his head he's also got these Black beady eyes that like are just his eyes are ensconced in darkness you know like there's no light in his eyes whatsoever and that feels very intentional because this guy's his soul is clearly lost and he's a guy who's very very far gone but these are incredibly striking splash pages in issue after issue I mentioned issue number two had that incredible full page image of Vic Sage the Black and white one yeah a lot of these are amazing cool about this is is that that in this ep- this issue called "The Sacrifice" you find out that the Reverend is like he's hearing voices you know and it's interesting now that you see you this like this twisted corrupted face is like because he's he believes he's almost like SON OF SAM yeah he thinks he's hearing some voices telling him to do evil [ __ ] and he's gonna do evil [ __ ] in this book he was he's gonna try to kill like Myra's child like he's gonna sacrifice like gonna sacrifice her like was it like Jordan the or Abraham and the whale was him yeah and he's got he's got the child up on a [ __ ] altar and he's got a knife and he's literally about to do some Satanic sacrifice type of [ __ ] with Myra's child and again man like I I just got to say like this is not the kind of material you saw in most comic books and you know you would see it later but I mean [ __ ] it 1986 this was very jarring content to find in any kind of comic book it's still a little jarring now but something I went upon it that I thought was actually like a cool little thing I've never seen anybody do this you know Vic Sage he drives like a Volkswagen Beetle you know so if this is probably like in the '80s this is before the new Beetles came out so this is a body of one of those from the '70s right But he's got it like tricked out where it's like got like a Porsche engine and like racing shots and like Ferrari transmission like he's a great kind of like camouflage for what he's trying to do you know which I think it's kind of it's kind of funny but it's also kind of cool like I didn't know you would do this [ __ ] like that it is a cool detail it's a really cool detail and I think O'Neil was particularly happy about that because he mentions it in two separate issues CU I think he was very pleased with that he was like oh I love the way you do this you know the story keeps going on he's trying to fig oh so yeah so Myra's gets kidnapped so Myra's daughter gets kidnapped by these cops and Vic can't do anything about it and then you know the rest of the book they're trying he's just trying to figure out to find out like you know like what's going on with the girl the like you know the mayor is showing how much a drunk he is showing how much of a weak puppet he is a puppet of Reverend Hatch you they just interesting in this you know like Vic Sage because his car gets damaged he steals a cop car was like dude you tripping still don't see that don't see Batman do that yeah yeah you don't see that every day and another thing you don't see every day is Vic Sage right after his car breaks down he also goes home and what is he doing while he's talking with Tot at his house because apparently like him and Tot are pretty much living together which is weird but that's OK they're just kind of I guess I don't know if they're roommates now or did you get the sense of like has Vic moved into Tot's house is that what's happening I kind of feel like he's he moved in after he got hurt and got rehabilitated yeah I think that's it and I think that he never went back to he went his he one placed an issue two to get the crush in uniformed but I get the feeling that that he doesn't hang out there because he's he hasn't confirmed with the world that Vic Sage oh yes you know what that's right yeah right you're right I forgot about that because he says at the end of these issues at the end of these eight issues that he's about to like tell the rest of the world that Vic Sage is back and he's got to make up a story for what happened to him that's right so yeah so he's staying with Tot but the thing I wanted to point out is that he's doing yoga and he's doing like an increasingly difficult series of yoga positions while him and Tot are talking for two pages and that also just the casual the casual way that that's done was pretty fascinating yeah yeah cuz he's like he's like doing like on his back and like doing some like some Lotus pose what on his back or actually bouncing on his shoulders but it tells you again it's like one of these cool things where it's like he's continuing with the education and the and the honing of his body and mind that Richard Dragon taught him exactly he's not he's not gonna reach that that plane of like I gotta be a better me I gotta be a better me to be better for the people that's totally true and then even when to offers him to offer some coffee here and and Vic says he's doing yoga and he says no I can't afford what coffee does to my nervous system not

today it's like I mean it's really across across the board Vic is Vic is honing his body into perfection and it's another place where I feel like you see that Cowan and O'Neil are you know aware of yoga and martial arts and these don't they're not these are not [ __ ] yoga poses these look like real yoga poses that Vic is doing and I think Denys Cowan was probably one of the few artists in comics that probably even knew what real yoga poses looked like right right right you know the story keeps rolling again you know the part where he steals the cop car there's these two cops the Black guy and a white guy and again that Black cop looks entirely different than but like he looks a little overweight he's got jowls he's got a mustache he he doesn't look like a generic Black guy again I I think that's kind of fascinating and then we go into the story where Vic Sage he's he knows where Myra is and where the kid is and they're all hold up at the governor's mansion and he's going there to like do like do the final showdown and the final showdown is is gonna be against the Reverend this is when the Reverend is like talking about he's waiting for to hear some angel to save him or to save the baby his eyes kind of [ __ ] up I think his eyes [ __ ] up because in the previous episode remember he jumped out the window and he was like on fire oh yeah yeah yeah that's right [ __ ] up that way it's weird too because if you look at him though Denys is drawing the Reverend in an increasingly bizarre way where he's looking really like he's in the grip of madness like I'm thinking particularly on page 22 where he's about to sacrifice this child who is Myra's kid like the Reverend is being drawn to look almost like a demon on these pages those first couple panels there well yeah I mean like you know what on this on page 23 the top of page 23 when he's getting ready to stab the child and is get stopped by the by the Vic Sage he almost reminds me of like rot ghoul yeah I can see that got the little white hair in the back I mean that that that's like a r go not the rich would be killing people like that but it just feels like it's that kind it's like a homage to that you know and what I love in this scene is again is that Vic is not gonna he's not gonna kill the Reverend he's like you know what as evil as you are I'm not I'm actually gonna like try to take you in or let you suffer some other way or I'm not gonna be I'm not going to sink to your level I don't want yeah I'm not going to become something I despise like you something vicious and corrupt I will let you live and then Myra breaks free oh no not me not me she stabs won yeah I mean she stabs them so hard the blade comes through his chest like I mean like you know how hard that is to stab like that it takes a lot of rage because it's like I mean I've tried to stab through like some meat it's hard to stab like meat I'm going to cook and she's like gone through this guy's whole chest cavity and put I mean that's like a really angry woman well you know I mean you can understand why she was so angry given the circumstance yeah well here's what great right is that this last page this is again why this book even though it's called THE QUESTION it always like you know it leaves you thinking about a question about the morality of this you know so so so the Reverend Hatch is dead. Vic Sage as THE QUESTION is saving the child and Myra and they go outside and meet the police and the fire people because the house is on mansion is on fire and then she says to him wait don't you have anything to say like to help console me for killing this guy or anything and he's like no I don't he says he says he says then he says better you than me you know you know what I'd rather you deal with that guilt than me I and that's such a pretty and then again had a full splash page but it's a good closeup on his face yeah and just The Question's face we don't see any expression so we just get this kind of like extra blank sense of like what's well what's he saying what's he thinking what again what's THE QUESTION that he's put into her mind by not accepting like any blame for any of this it's pretty crazy yeah it's a very just a very kind of eng and unique way to end that story you know just by the way leaves you with a lot of thoughts the letter column this month's recommended reading presented by Denny O'Neil WAY OF THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR written by Dan Millman and published by HJ Kramer is always let us know your thoughts I love that anybody who showed up in here oh my god god who is one of the writer who wrote who wrote in a letter for this you would not believe John Ostrander oh are you kidding oh that's [ __ ] great that's cool did Ostrander have anything interesting to say Mr. John Ostrander writer of THE SUICIDE SQUAD comic says Dear Denny Denys Rick et al OK OK OK I'll buy the second issue I don't have to you know Mike's a good buddy work on a secret project together and I could've probably wheedled it out of him I could have probably done that and Denny's my editor here over on FIRESTORM and I probably could get him to give me a copy or I could call Bob Greenberger, my editor on SUICIDE SQUAD, who is also a continuity cop and makes me make a pitch to him, but I really needed to get a copy and get him to send me one, but I'm not gonna cash but he goes but I'm but I'm not going to do any of that I'm going to go pay cash money for it and do you know why? Because the first issue was that good so so where is it that's it says via MCI mail I don't know what that is that's weird MCI mail I wonder if that's some sort of like internal like internal company mail kind of thing that's yeah what if that's I wonder if what if that's like an early version of email yeah I have no idea that is bizarre but very sweet of John Ostrander to write in supporting his buddies there I know awesome awesome that's really cool so that was issue four it's a pretty awesome I mean and that end the first story that was the end of the Reverend who had been playing yes and in case in case we hadn't made it clear before the Reverend basically was the like you said he was the figurehead in a way but he was like the Reverend kind of was the one who had the actual control in a way it's like I guess in a way the mayor the mayor was the figure head cuz he seemed to have control but the Reverend was the one really pulling the strings behind the scenes but the Reverend Reverend Hatch was the one running Hub City essentially while mayor Wesley Fermin was just this drunken kind of a mess and he was out there giving drunken speeches but it was the Reverend really running [ __ ] in a corrupt way behind the scenes and also I gotta say Denny O'Neil did a pretty good job with some of the names here because I think Wesley Fermin as a name for a who's a drunk kind of ineffective mess it's a good name because while Fermin is not quite Vermin it Rhymes it's close enough that I think it's one of those names that's like intentionally chosen by a writer to evoke a certain feeling and and I think Wesley Fermin is a good name for a mayor who who basically has no has no value to the city but also but Fermin also sounds like it's like fermented oh that's a good point yeah yeah it feels like it's like you know it's rotten yeah fermented with alcohol yeah yeah yeah and he's he's drinking all the time great scene where there's a great scene where he [ __ ] up and Myra like pours alcohol in the back of his head I love that little little little I think that oh oh right yeah yeah my Myra is it right on him yes I I think that O'Neil like I get the sense that you know he is choosing so many of these names purposefully and intentionally and I wonder what the story is behind all of them but even Reverend Hatch I think think it's like is it Reverend Jeremiah Hatch or something like that yeah even Hatch even that kind of evokes to me the idea of like a trapdoor maybe falling into hell you know it's like these are like very poetically chosen names but they're not so heavy-handed they're not so over the top that you're like oh damn dude that's pretty ham-fisted they're just kind of like walking the line where I feel like there's a some thinking behind them but they're not they're not banging you over the head too much so I I'd be curious I would have been curious to ask Denny O'Neil what some of his thought process was on some of these names but these are these are things that I think often other writers wonder about more than most people no you're right you're right so issue three like with the mayor drunk and with the Reverend dead, the city kind of goes into chaos issue issue four Issue four Issue four oh yeah oh sorry issue yeah so issue five we're in the aftermath we're in the wake of the chaos beginning yes again here go on page three have we have we have three thugs with knives trying to stick up a old lady and there's two Black guys and looks like a Latino guy maybe Asian but those two Black guys look different they all look different than the previous Black guys we we've seen one guy's got a Kangol hat on with some square glasses of like we were saying like their costume designers these guys are like drawing how people were looking of the time like very much of the time which is kind of great you know and Vic is out trying to just stop street crime wherever he can because he sees how the police are so inept and just can't help on any level and he just wants to yeah he goes yeah this a great line he goes the city is going to hell around us and it's my fault and he goes like I feel responsible and it's this level of like personal sense of responsibility that he's trying to take on yeah it's crazy that he feels that yeah which is not the way a lot of other superheroes take on because again he's not been wronged by anything he's does no one's really personally wronged him you know except when he was except when he was a kid but it was like again it was like it was that diffuse the diffuse kind of trauma from multiple sources yeah yeah of being in the system like being a child of the system you know I mean the city kind of keeps because the show the chaos and the riding begin to unravel you know he's so trying to find out what's going on no one's really doing anything to help anything we meet that cop named Isadore O'Toole who's pretty much just a corrupt dude yes meet that guy Mr. Josephson what the hell is his name is it Bernie Josephson Bernie Josephson yeah I mean it's basically this businessman who's stuck at his office with his secretary and they're afraid to leave because of the rioting outside and he and he rapes her yeah just it's brutal I mean it's a brutal sequence and it's brutal also because we get the dialogue in the aftermath of the rape and that was like that's a scene that you don't often see anywhere like this is just like such a brutal scene where in the in the wake of what's happened the woman says you're disgusting you're a disgusting old man you're old and disgusting and stupid-looking and the rapist Bernie says I know and then he begs for forgiveness and she basically says [ __ ] no I'm not doing that I won't do that and then he gets up on the roof of the building and [ __ ] commits suicide and jumps off the I mean this is like this is Hub City like this is this is the world that Cowan and O'Neil have brought us into it's like it is unrelenting it's just horrible things happen bad people do bad things whatever or you know people have bad things done to them and then they do bad things to other people it is just like you see this never ending daisy chain this series of dominoes constantly falling where the effects of everything just look like they're more just it's more and more horror and trauma being created in the city and yeah it's just it's incredible to see this play out in the story because again there's no there's no easy answers to a lot of this and this was I thought a particularly well-written issue in that the storyline kind of weaves between multiple threads and I don't feel like O'Neil got as much credit as he deserved a lot of times as a writer during this period because I think Denny O'Neil had improved significantly as a writer by the time he got to THE QUESTION compared to his old GREEN ARROW GREEN LANTERN stuff which I I think the GREEN ARROW GREEN LANTERN stuff had a bigger impact on comics in a way as and on culture because it was dealing with all these heavy socially conscious issues at a time comics didn't do that in the '70s but I think if you go back and you read those stories they're bit they're a bit of a tough read those stories because they they are a bit more ham-fisted and heavy-handed but I think by the time that O'Neil got to THE QUESTION I think he was actually a far more skilled and subtle writer in a lot of ways and I don't know that he always gets the the credit he deserves because I think this is a particularly really brilliantly written issue and he's got so many disparate threads from the old woman who almost got mugged at the beginning who's waiting for the bus to like the opening where we see the beginning of how Hub City was discovered and first founded you know with a guy being murdered and then there's the you know the Vic dealing with the riots with Tot driving through the city and then we also flash to Mayor Wesley Fermin given a giving a drunken speech which we see a couple pages of and then we go back to Vic and Tot in the car listening to that speech on the radio then back into that scene of the riots that you described earlier that Denys Cowan drew so beautifully and then we off the street of Vic and Tot driving by the riots we switch perspectives as they talk to the corrupt cop Izzy O'Toole and now they're talking to Isadore Izzy and now we're following with the corrupt cop for a while and then that's what leads us to the the dude Bernie who and the and the secretary who ends up being raped and her name is Miss Tolchuk Francine Francine is raped by Bernie Josephson we get that whole horrific scene and then we go back to the woman on the waiting for the bus and then we see the guy about to commit suicide and then we cut to Myra Myra in her house and she's grappling with the after effects of having killed Reverend Hatch the issue before and then as she's looking out her window right nearby the dude commits suicide jumps and then the dude committing suicide lands on the street in front of Izzy the corrupt cop as he Witnesses people trying to rob the dude the dude who just committed suicide and he snaps at this moment and the corrupt cop has an epiphany and discovers after 20 years of corruption rediscovers that this is what being a cop is all about and he's not going to let these scumbags Rob this guy who's barely cold and he goes to stop them goes to actually be a cop for once and then he [ __ ] up and they get the drop on him and they're about to kill him and then THE QUESTION shows up and now THE QUESTION has one of you know one more fight scene interaction with Izzy and then a little talking to Tot and then back to sort of what's happening in the city a little bit and then we check in with all of our characters like all six or seven of them and we come back to that old woman sitting on the bench and it's and she's frosting over with snow all over her face and she sat there for like six hours there for six hours like yeah over the course of our whole issue and she might be there forever and anyway I I just wanted to play all that out like that to point out that like that's like over a half a dozen separate plot threads that are all interconnected and we're elegantly weaving between all of them what other [ __ ] comic was doing this at that time? but but also the story about Isadore the story about Josephson and Francine and the story about Ma these are all new characters who just show up in this one issue you're right Right and the issues they're done by the time the issue is over I I think he made an interesting point that I never thought about this I've never seen this I've never this that the a what happens the conversation after the rape yeah because this isn't one of those rapes that they show a lot on the TV in the movies where it's like somebody is raped you know like in THELMA AND LOUISE just raped in the parking lot and like that kind of random rape that's like the guy got spurned he got rejected and wanted to [ __ ] her over and then but we see a lot of these like these sexual harassment rapes at jobs and stuff like that we see the beginnings of that you know like so someone drops their pants and you know and even movies like DIRTY PRETTY THINGS like you know like she's sucking that guy's dick and a few times like audio tattoo and then next thing you know you're cutting to her like spitting his s3men out into the thing like that but this little moment like after he's [ __ ] her and the conversation they have I don't think I've ever seen that I don't think I've ever seen exactly I wonder if it's a weird thing because like I'm like to go this far into what to as a writer like into the after-effect of the climactic moment here is like you really got to delve into somebody's head yeah he's really deep think that most yes that most writers wouldn't because they'd kind of be like I show you what I want to show you I want to show how this is Now I'm out and I don't want to deal with the consequences of me showing you that with the characters you might have this scene look I mean when this guy jumps off the roof it's a great little line when right when he's about to fall he's like I mean he's already falling about to hit the hit the ground it says he's changed his mind yeah he doesn't want to die he thinks he could live but nope you already jumped dude it's like it's really I mean like I mean this look on his face on page 14 when he's putting the glasses on like before he leaves and he goes I'm sorry really I mean yeah when the [ __ ] do you see that he says for me guy like you don't hate this guy this is I don't know I mean or if or if you do if you do if you do if you do hate him you might hate him but you understand him more or you feel like you've gone inside his psyche a lot more than you typically would inside the psyche of someone who's just committed a horrific act like this and I think O'Neil does this consistently throughout all these horrible characters he takes you inside their psyche whether they're rapists whether the murderers whether they're whatever type of horrific character about to kill a bunch of children he takes you into their psyche and he forces you he like forces you to almost empathize with their perspective and it's uncomfortable you know and like that is very unique like remember the guy starting the rape he says something that really just hits home he's like my wife is sick she's been sick for 15 years I haven't touched a woman in 15 years like that's telling you something about this guy yeah and oh almost really great is there's a little moment there's one panel like the into this like you said the little recap the little thing in the mo in the TV show where there like the little two page two-minute montage at the end of an episodes you know yeah we catch that one shot of Josephson's wife she's wondering where her husband is and why is he called oh my god that's a great point Chris I forgot about that that's yet another character where O'Neil is taking you in to empathize with that character and it's funny cuz I remember thinking like oh that would suck for that woman because she doesn't know a her husband's a deadbeat she doesn't know her husband's a rapist she doesn't know all these things and like it's one panel it's one [ __ ] panel that O'Neil shows I'm so glad you pointed that out but I remember feeling like a pay of emotion reading that panel like oh that poor woman she's been sick she's sick 15 years her husband's a rapist and now he's dead like and he's committed suicide like that's incredible and that's just [ __ ] amazing storytelling to go to the trouble of showing that panel and it's a really interesting decision even like from Cowan to not show the woman's face and it's just We see her from behind and she's holding the alarm clock and staring at it and wondering where her husband is like these are all choices and they're very very interesting choices But yeah I'm really happy you mentioned that panel because it's yet another example of sort of how generous in a way Denny O'Neil is as a storyteller and he's got so much empathy for every character and in a way I could imagine this making a lot of readers is very uncomfortable because O'Neil has empathy for everyone you know and it's a really compelling and fascinating thing to do as a writer but I think it's also an uncomfortable thing for a lot of readers to experience like how can you show this character as a human being I remember there was that movie that came out about Hitler that was made by a filmmaker like 10 years ago I think DOWNFALL, DOWNFALL right Right so you know that film took a lot of fire like the filmmaker took a lot of fire for "humanizing" quote unquote Adolf Hitler and that's like the most extreme example obviously of this kind of thing we could talk about but I think there is this desire for a lot of people to think of like just a monster is a monster and you don't want to think about what created them but I think Denny O'Neil rejects that here as a… storyteller he rejects that idea well here's something interesting that he does too this something that Denys Cowan does I think is fascinating Denis Cowan and the rest of the inkers and the colorists you look at page 11 and 12 this is this this is the rape setup right 11 is the rape setup 12 is the rape it's the pages are black oh yeah oh you're right the pages like like like gutter yeah the gutter is all black on that right and then and then when the rape is over it's back to white it's white it's white again next time the page is black is we go to Myra when she's recalling the fact that she she's struggling with her own guilt about killing that guy that's a great point dude and it's like again it's like the gutters and bleed is all black and the rest of the book doesn't have that and I was like this is again where it's like Cowan with his ability to like how he's composing the page now he wants to like set your brain and he wants to put you in the darkest space possible of their psyche by having the page black I mean that's I mean he's they like when he's raping her he's overwhelmed by his own his id is taking over you know and again Myra it was her id that would that took over when she killed that guy and that's what's like getting her again it's really this is a I mean you thing I want to say you about you were saying that like Denny O'Neil didn't enough credit it's like I feel like after he did those Neil Adams the what the hard-charging HEROES with GREEN LANTERN AND GREEN ARROW yeah he was the editor for a while right yep yeah for a long time he was the the editor on all the BATMAN books forever in the '80s for a long time so it's interesting is like oh I bet you he's again as a student as a probably a lifelong student yeah he's like oh storytelling has changed now that I'm reading people who are giving me scripts that are more done this way that are more they're more modern so now I'm been reading all that and me being a writer I can go back around and figure out a way to improve my writing and to deliver a different type of content when I next get a chance to do a book which is this and it's fascinating that's a great point yeah because this is all post, post-editing hundreds of books yeah I mean it's it's something you know like I don't know if I told you this but it's like you know there was a time period where I had hit kind of like a wall with my screenwriting and I was like I couldn't like I couldn't understand where I was failing I was and I and I and I gave up writing screenplays for about from like maybe 2012 to around maybe 2014 or something like that oh [ __ ] I didn't even know this yeah I gave up I gave up writing screenplays for about two and a half three years but I was writing prose I was writing short stories the whole time was I must have written like maybe seven or eight short stories like it was you know in such a different form different medium and in write writing short stories is even so different than even writing a novel because you don't you trying to like compress story in a way and it taught me a lot as a writer you know in a way that I feel like it was very I mean I mean look I tried to get a couple of them published but not like early ones and things like that I mean and honestly like you know that comic I want to do ECLIPSE OF THE NINE SUNS that started out as a short story oh [ __ ] I didn't know that oh crazy and and it it was something that I couldn't I wrote it one time from like third person and then someone read it and liked it but it was like well how come you never wrote it as first person because your main character is so compelling and I went back and wrote the whole thing as like first person and I and it which taught me like I could do different things with how to like get into the psyche of be more in with the character in a way that you don't do like sometimes when you write third you write third person sometimes you're you're you you're standoffish and a bit judgmental because you're just talking about someone if you're going to write a first person then it's like I got to write this like as I'm experiencing it myself and I'm conveying that to you and really get inside of a character and it just taught me something different and then when I got rid of that version of the first person I was like I like this a lot but I think it would work better if I did it as a comic book and then I could tell it in first person as a comic and I could use it was just it's just something that I learned about like you know I stayed around the writing craft not doing the thing I've been out here to do for a long time and then when I went back to writing and this is like about the time that I met you like I was about to ask I was about to ask you because I feel like we've been friends now for like about what seven, eight years or something like that so that would have been right around that time where you were starting to pick up screenwriting again yeah yeah wow oh [ __ ] man that's so wild I had no idea well well because I mean I mean I was thinking about writing comics and I mean that when we first met and I was like talking you so much about comics because I was like that was in my head more than anything you know in terms of like terms of like how you could tell a comic story because comic stories are fascinating because you a lot like a screenplay and you know and like a short story it's like you have like a finite amount of real estate like remember John Rogers the great screenwriter did like you know he created leverage and stuff like that yeah I mean he was always saying like comics are really hard because of those 22 pages and then you have like a panel there's a there's a panel quantity you can't exceed per page and… we've talked about this before how like Warren Ellis is talking about there's a certain number of like words you can put in a panel they go on a page and it's like there's all these kind of limitations that the the medium just can't withstand like like bro I mean you can tell when someone [ __ ] all those things up top many panels too many words on the page it's just like it's too much for you to kind of digest and it's just so like to learn these other kind of like these other forms of writing I know just I mean I could I know that Denny learned a lot to help his own writing by doing editing by staying around it but not a actually doing it and then in the in these last six years this BATMAN time like this is when like DARK KNIGHT's coming out this is when you know like the book like the like comics were hitting their stride I mean DARK KNIGHT and DARK KNIGHT and WATCHMEN DARK KNIGHT and WATCHMEN were both hitting right around this time of THE QUESTION and that's the kind of energy that's in the air as O'Neil like you say is returning to writing after his time just kind of stewarding other writers for a decade or whatever so yeah I think that's because THE QUESTION issue five we're looking at and looking in that little thing in the beginning of the checklist is WATCHMEN issue 10 this exactly you know yeah it's all happening and and WATCHMEN and you know DARK KNIGHT they were in the works obviously for a year or so before that and Denny was an editor so he knew what was coming down the pike right like he was reading those works and talking about them with Dick Giordano talking behind the scenes with Jenette Kahn so he knew the direction that DC was heading and he knew oh this is that new [ __ ] and this is amazing like I and probably for Denny like he might have just recognized wow maybe comics is ready for this type of writing which didn't really exist in the mainstream so much before that had greater subtlety greater nuance and you know more more transgressive content I do think that what you said though Chris is really really interesting about just when you write in first person and you have more empathy for characters because I think that's one of the things that a lot of aspiring writers or unsuccessful writers really kind of fall down at is that they judge the characters or they play favorites amongst the characters and you can feel it in the writing like certain characters are like oh this is the scumbag character this is is like the despicable character this is here's my hero character and you know nothing bad's going to happen to them because they're my hero or whatever and then you can feel the disdain for the other characters and like anytime I read a script or a comic or anything and it feels clear to me that the writer has just complete disdain for some character without like a glimmer of understanding or empathy it just makes it feel infinitely less interesting to me, because I feel like that's your job as a writer your job is not to be the one judging these characters; your job is to be the one telling a story that illuminates these greater truths in some way that we all can kind of take away our own meaning from, but I feel like when the writer takes on that job of like the judge who's going to tell you these characters are evil these characters are good and here is my judgment and my decree then I'm just like No no I'm good like I don't really feel like I'm interested in reading that Because it just it closes the loop and it stops any kind of engagement for you as a reader and it just feels like infinitely dumber it feels more reductive it feels more simple and like I don't want to read a writer telling me that they don't like their own characters or that they're terrible and so in as much as it's uncomfortable I think that there's something craft-wise and effect-wise that's really powerful about what O'Neil's doing here, and certainly Alan Moore does this, and other great writers do this, where you're showing these despicable characters, but then you're forcing the reader to empathize with things that they've gone through or things that have turned them in this way and then like you say again we come back to the gray areas of THE QUESTION, and I'm sure that Steve Ditko probably hated what became of THE QUESTION his character Steve Ditko like hated this kind of thinking didn't even believe in this kind of thinking it's like it's the complete antithesis of what Ayn Rand preached and this sort of like very black and white reductionist [objectivist] approach to life, and I think O'Neil and Cowan they go really hard in this other direction like, "No, almost everything's in the gray areas," and we're going to force you guys to just look at it and deal with it and like I think it's really powerful And it's really unsettling And I think that it's it's very effective storytelling Well there's two things I want to say about that you mentioned that you know that Denny O'Neil's editor he's around DARK KNIGHT when it's being conceived when it's being pitched when the scripts are coming in when the the seeing the early pages from Miller and stuff like like that I don't think I was reading any any BATMAN comics at the time when that came out I think I was was still very much of a Marvel guy I think the only kind of DC stuff I was reading you know was again like this I I tend to love to read stuff that's not the popular mainstream books again like I was reading like you know like SPECTRE remember reading that I remember reading like LEGION OF SUPERHEROES I remember reading VIGILANTE TEEN TITANS TEEN TITANS was a big book but it was again you know the fact that they're TEEN TITANS are not the they're not the core heroes of those I mean those are the side characters I thought that was interesting but I remember that in DARK KNIGHT the way the Joker is portrayed in that you have a sense of like of empathy for this character you know like he's been in the asylum for a while now he's getting out he goes on that talk show to try to like explain who he is do all this kind of worship to to make you to… reduce the like the like the clown character that he is that that we can kind of push away as like oh you're just a you know like a psychopath that you know you know that I don't have to worry about you're just constantly evil like with no sense of sense of other humanity I thought that was a really fascinating way that they Miller did that because in the way he goes around he like rapes Selina Kyle and like puts her in like her Wonder Woman costume and like all that kind of… like the mind that he has is twisted as [ __ ] but it's still it's still kind of like the imagination is very fertile and it's kind of it's kind of it's you have to look at it in awe because he's gonna like poison all those kids with the cotton candy and it's like there's a really twisted perverted genius in this there there's an image there's an imagination to the horror you kind of have to like find like interesting in that you know something I remembered in this that I I I wonder I need to I would I've never seen the movie BLOOD SIMPLE but there's a line in here when he goes BLOOD SIMPLE Joel Coen Dashiell Hammett called it this raging mindless lust to kill and I'm like did the Coen Brothers take that line for their movie? I had the same thought, Chris, I had the exact same thought, and then I thought yes they probably must have, and then that was followed by another thought for me, which was like at that point who the [ __ ] was narrating? Was that Vic Sage narrating? I think it is yeah because then then I immediately had the thought hey did the Coen Brothers take that for their movie title and then b) I thought like did Vic Sage grow up reading Dashiell Hammett? Like how does he know that? Like I instantly wonder I mean it's funny because it's like you know he's going up he's going up in the in the like… you have no idea what books are available someone like that you know I mean I mean it's possible I mean I I don't remember how I had interested I think maybe I had seen THE MALTESE FALCON… Did he write THE MALTESE FALCON? Yeah, Dashiell Hammett did. Yes yes he did yeah I remember watching I remember seeing it as a kid and I was like who wrote this yeah I know you said Dashiell Hammett based on the book and I remember getting the book when I was about maybe like 12 or something like that and reading it it's a fascinating book yeah and I always think there there's a story in there about how those guys stole THE MALTESE FALCON before it showed up in San Francisco were they're like in Turkey or some [ __ ] like that and I was all and I kept saying to myself that needs to be a movie you should find out like whatever studio has the rights to that you should pitch that the next time you have a general at that studio just pitch the prequel to THE MALTESE FALCON yeah I was like how is a story yeah there's like a it's like a chapter in that book when like when the guy the professor played by Sydney Greenstreet is telling them the story and it's way more complicated in the book than it is in the movie because you're trying to like get it down to you and I always is like because it's like you know the whole thing is the Falcon is like covered with this black lacquer they're like oh oh they did it to hide it because it's just it's this gold thing and it's like explain it's this really interesting explanation and I was like why isn't that a movie or it's to it's too fertile it's like a throwaway story they through to give it it's like the origin story of the item in the piece that you're stealing and it's enough to in my opinion to be his own movie I think I think you could do it in a way and I think you do it in a way and not let anybody know why am I telling story but you do and not let excuse me and not let anyone know that it's the Maltese flying to the end of the movie like oh they dip it in the black lacquer they go that's the Falcon oh [ __ ] so that's a cool idea that's a really cool idea yeah you should talk to somebody at Warner Brothers about that that would actually be really dope I there's a woman over there who wants to give me a job for a television thing I need to write I need to talk to her about there you go make a note of that yeah it could be I forgot I haven't thought about that in like 30 years but OK OK so that was that was issue five basically I think issue yes that was issue five was a great issue and again I also want to just point out another brilliant cover by Cowan and Sienkiewicz just the covers on THE QUESTION are pretty much every single one of them is just a jaw-dropper like these are it's just one brilliant brilliant cover after another Cowan and Sienkiewicz are just an amazing team together I love I love the way that their work actually looks together I think it's it's very different than the way Cowan's work looks inked by Magyar or by Malcolm Jones III and it's also different than how Cowan's work looks when he inks it himself And I actually love, like we were talking earlier, I love Denys Cowan's work when he's inking himself on THE QUESTION quarterly later that's actually some of my very favorite Cowan work even though it has very bizarre coloring by Bill Wray, but it's just beautiful beautiful line work and I feel like the European influences in Cowan's work really come to the fore as he continues working and especially when he starts inking himself it looks a lot more like Sergio Toppi and a lot of these European masters that Cowan has mentioned were like giant influences on him artistically and I see that a lot more when Denys gets more full complete control of the work but before that I think my favorite anchor on Cowan in some ways might be Sienkiewicz just even though it's in these brief spurts I think it's just these are gorgeous like really iconic covers the thing about Denys's work that I recall when he inks himself it kind of feels like John Romita Jr's work in a way he at least the stuff that John Romita Jr did on SPIDER-MAN like the really good the really good John Romita Jr yeah yeah yeah yeah I I I I don't know who was any J J know SPIDER-MAN or when he did that brief run on it's not brief run I just remember there's one issue of X-MEN he did X-MEN count X-MEN like I think the introduction of Forge and it was like I think the cover was one that was like a Barry Windsor Smith cover with it was like WOLVERINE and it was like all this it was like weird it was like a red cover all different shades of red and it was like he was like pulled across with some weird-ass background I think it was like… issue 184 or something like that 185 and I was like I mean there's just there's like this the way that Denys does his own kind of like the hatching the crosshatching and everything is so like it's so kinetic you know just just it feels like there's like electricity like running through like all the art it's really really fascinating kinetic kinetic is a great word for Chris it's very very kinetic it feels very alive to me and back when you know I wanted to be a comic book artist when I was a kid, I filled up whole sketchbooks literally just copying Denys Cowan's work on THE QUESTION and some other stuff but mainly THE QUESTION And it's funny you mentioned his crosshatching because Denys would also do like really just fascinating crosshatching on people's faces that I had not seen other cartoonists do and it was really interesting to me as an aspiring comicbook artist and he would do like specifically these really interesting sort of line lines like very just like lines that were really close together like hatching kind of in between someone's eyelids and their eyebrows, just sort of like right above the eye, and that was something I hadn't seen any other artist do, but I [ __ ] copied that [ __ ] like crazy when I was a kid, and I was working on drawing faces and stuff I started doing these very like Denys Cowan crosshatching sort of lines like above like the eyes and in between the eyelid and the eyebrow of all the characters I was I was drawing I just thought that it looked dope as [ __ ], and I I didn't see anyone else really doing that so much But it was almost like a signature move in his inking or in his linework that reminded me of how Chris Bachalo used to do kind of like these horizontal lines across the nose of every character like the point of the no I mean so it was like it was like Bachalo when he was being inked by Mark Buckingham they would do that together constantly and it looked like every character was almost like drunk, cuz that was like comicbook-speak for being drunk was like you know having a red nose or something, but I remember loving that [ __ ] too. But it's funny, when you're a kid, you're noticing all these little aesthetic details and idiosyncrasies and like signature moves that these different artists have you know and when you want to draw comics you're just like cribbing and stealing from all of them, so for me Denys's line work on faces, that was the thing that just always blew me away, and I found it to be so unique and so compelling, and like you say, extremely kinetic, and just super alive. Well, we talk about Sienkiewicz as an inker you know I'm looking at issue six there's a house ad for THE SHADOW oh yeah Sienkiewicz did the pencils for we gotta talk about that book too by the way cuz because Sienkiewicz's pencils around like this is like post this is all post NEW MUTANTS oh yeah and his style became something entirely different and so much more like fluid like it feels to it kind of feels like this like you know like volcanic lava spilling out you know very it's like when he works with Denys it's inking Denys it's I it's interesting that his style so fits well with what Denys is doing and then because it's what he's doing to like it just melds really well I think really interesting work together it totally so it's such a great combination and think the I love your volcanic lava description of Sienkiewicz I think that's perfect I think that what they both have in their line work that is so unique particularly to comics at this time is I feel like they both have a deep well of emotion in their line work like there there's a real emotion to their drawing and it just doesn't feel like dead sort of artwork the way so much mainstream work felt like you know quote unquote hackwork or jobbers or you know people who were just kind of going through the motions Sienkiewicz and Cowan their line work doesn't feel like that to me it just feels extremely alive and just really really compelling and unique for the time and and I would love to hear Denys Cowan talk about his own feelings on the various anchors he'd worked with because he worked with some very distinguished inker who I think did a great job in their own ways Rick Magyar Malcolm Jones III Bill Sienkiewicz and you know other people but like I say when Denys finally starts inking himself I think it comes to life in a whole different way and it's really really beautiful work and I yeah I'd be really curious to hear Denys's thoughts on just how his Line work was communicated and how it kind of matched up differently because because I I've seen some of his like raw pencils I remember there was a book he did with Selwyn Hinds some Voodoo story [VOODOO CHILD] yeah it was a Vertigo was Vertigo book it was like Marie Laveau something yeah and it's like I remember seeing like some just like the pencils of that somewhere maybe it's some little house at or something like that and it looks I I I don't know there a he has a really fascinating style that the inkers do something to him he does something different with himself I know he was saying in that article we were reading that he when he did that BATMAN run around issue 600 yes that that he got he got inked by Giordano yeah Dick Giordano and that the that the regular penciler was mad because even he didn't get Dick Giordano that's awesome well getting Giordano to ink your work was probably a real coup at DC at that time because he was one of the big dogs there and a legendary inker I mean yeah and I mean because he did that I think he did Burns's work on MAN OF STEAL right and he did that he did Neil Adams's work on SUPERMAN VERSUS ALIENS so it's like I mean there's just some highlight I mean I can look him up and just be like shocked by how much work he's done but let's J in issue six yeah let go for it which again opens up with one of these amazing splash pages single panel of splash pages on page one of this guy about to pour acid on his my god I was like what the [ __ ] what are we reading it's that kid it's that kid Musto's kid who tried to throw the bomb the dynamite on the babies on the SCH back in issue four and you see him getting beat up by his father and why he wants to pour ass on his face because he wants to show his dad says look at that face it's not a man's face it's a [ __ ] boy's face yeah so he's trying to like burn his face to like I mean to get his dad's affection in some perverted way this is such a bizarre set of can't understand so [ __ ] up I can't understand I just it's like I get it I get what this guy's going through I so do but then like that on page four when he like tripping asset across it's like OK dude again it's great because there's no sound effects yeah great and it's great storytelling it takes like literally four pages of this guy thinking of his father abusing him before he finally drops the acid on his face you could see another writer doing this in one page but yeah O'Neil and Cowan they let this moment breathe for four pages so you really feel it yeah it's fantastic and he's doing that little thing I love that it's like the… eight panel grid on page three and well page two and three yeah which is very much reminiscent of what your boy does this so well STRAY BULLETS guy oh yeah David Latham does the eight panel [grid] yes like a master it's really hard to do I mean although when although when Denys does it here I see that the the bottom two panels are a little squarer than top six but what but Latham does it it's like they're they're all the same size squares yes interesting it's interesting choice of why he did that but yeah it it's it's interesting kind of restriction again like you was saying earlier technique like the page design panel design composition within the panels very yeah he's I mean he's this feels like you know you saying in that article about Walt Simonson said his work was crap because it's not this is and saying published work was crap and he like and then Howard Chaykin gave him a couple hours said man this is how you got to make it work you got like you got to make the page has got to be designed you can kind of see here we are six issues in I mean his art is getting so much it's so I mean it's been good throughout but it's like he's now like shifting gears yeah you know you can like see him shifting gears and putting in the putting in the turbocharge gasoline P totally really stepping up just stepping up yeah it's a weird story about like a what's this about it's about like a like some some gunrunner or something like that some gunrunner well you know what but this goes into what we were saying earlier about the politics of the time yeah he's talking about this guy is involved with Gustavson burned his face who wants him to run guns in South America but the issue is about acid rain yeah yeah the politics of that and like the environmental consciousness of the story and it's yeah it's actually really really odd and and totally really shows you a lot about Denny O'Neil's politics at that time that the villain in the story well it's weird because there's a villain who's trying to kill a character who's also kind of a villain and it's like the god it OK let me see if we can describe this simply for someone who hasn't read it the kid who was going to throw the bomb on the bus a few issues ago where Vic Sage saved that bus full of school children he's now pour pouring acid on his face at the beginning of this issue as we said to make himself look tougher to his dad and after he does this this kid has to bandage up his faces his face and now he looks like this really iconic character like Negative Man from the DOOM PATROL or something or he's got bandages all over his face right and so and that kid is now he is hired or asked by his father to go and kill the father of this other dude that the that the gun runner the no no he's not as by as father he oversaw this guy killed and he thinks that he can get in his father after burning his face by going to kill this man this guy his name is like McVey or something like that yeah and yeah oh no his name is McVey yes I think this is prior to Timothy McVeigh and that but I read that I was like [ __ ] this is just crazy but this is you know and this guy name F this guy Ian Angus McVey created this company he stepped down now he's living out in the retired in some farm community and it's interesting this is the issue where now we're issue six where Vic finally comes back to to his job as as a news reporter and and he's he's got to work part-time yeah so Vic is back at work but this dude who's living out in the countryside was like I guess he he's a rich guy whose company basically poisoned the environment and he made a he made a fortune off it and now he's chilling now you know what's really interesting on this issue in page 17 after he's been after Vic has been stabbed in the arm he's coming back and he's driving with Tot he's talking about yeah this cop this doctor didn't give us [ __ ] that I got stabbed yes and this is an interesting kind of setup for what happens to issues later yeah this is like the this is because now it's like a I I don't think I've seen somebody plant a story like this this is like this is like a Mike Baron trick PL a story two three two or three issues before that was going to become the story like Mike Baron did this all the time in NEXUS all the [ __ ] time and I I'm a throwaway it's just throwaway at first it's way to S but he's not he he was stabbed and this and it and it makes sense to the context of this story but when it comes up two issues later yeah you don't think it's gonna come back like you don't you don't it's like a throwaway you don't at all think it's gonna come back and I think there was very few writers and comics that were adept at kind of juggling multiple plot threads like this I think Chris Claremont would do kind of stuff like this in his way and I think maybe Paul Levitz in the LEGION OF SUPERHEROES was juggling multiple plot lines and he would kind of move them the front and the back issue to issue but you're right this was a very unusual and kind of rare trick slash setup for a comic writer to do you know two issues beforehand it's like it's such a quick elegant throwaway I was shocked honestly when it came back two issues later and it became the whole story line I know I mean but the thing is in these other comics like Paul Levitz when he's doing it in LEGION OF SUPERHEROES you know it's happening to a degree because it's like he's showing you like he's showing you one of their villains do something yeah OK no you're right that's that's true you know that those characters are actually part of the fabric of the story where with what O'Neil's doing here it's it's kind of on another level because it just feels like it's a complete throwaway mention of a doctor an intern at a hospital you have no reasonable expectation that's ever going to come back around yeah and it makes sense because it's like he's apathetic because the town's apathetic yes you know I mean I mean so then we jump into to to Ian to Ian Angus McVey when he's dealing with the dude who burned his face and he's gonna have coffee tea with him and he's like you know what I'd rather kill my he was I hoping I'd kill myself because I made all this money and I poison the environment for doing yeah yeah this was a fascinating scene because the bandage face kid who's looking extremely iconic and by the way I just want to point out an incredible Denys Cowan visual just as the kid is on his way to confront this dude I think it's when the kid is it's like on page 16 it's when the kid overhears the father that that scene that you mentioned that last panel on page 16 with the kid's face with the bandages and the glasses like like tell me that's not a great panel like that's just stunning he's using like it's that duoshade again zipatone I think it's duoshade yeah I mean it is because of like how faint it is but it's like but it's also colored blue with it's just I mean this is Master this is a master class on on how to do shadowing but still div a closeup it's just that's just a master class yeah right it's that that just that that floored me when I got to that panel I just thought goddamn if you look at his jacket he's got like a fur collar yeah down below the fur the the material of the jacket is also got that duotone on it so it's like this very subtle way of like playing in the shadow but not like but not going to silhouette the way that you could e do this you know it's amazing and glad you pointed out the fur collar because like it's such an unusual and awesome decision for Cowan to make that this like [ __ ] up kid with his face burned off from the bandages has like a fur collar around his jacket like I know it's crazy it's crazy it's such a unique choice for the jacket and now that you say that I noticed on the very next page that Tot when he's driving with Vic, Tot is wearing like one of these puffy like kind of like a camping jacket and that's another very specific choice so yeah Cowan is like really killing it on just the very specific and unique fashion choices of all these characters and I don't mean that lightly I mean that as a real compliment because most comic artists just don't know [ __ ] about fashion and don't make choices they just kind of draw generic looking clothes on people and Cowan's not doing that at all no he's doing a really good job I mean even when they shows the old man a couple pages later I mean is such a great thing when he's like you know I I bought this what he bought like 15 what he bought like some 15,000 acres yeah a fishing game in plant life when he saw this he's probably younger maybe 20 years 20 years ago yeah and then he gets here to retire it's like a dead lake it's just like it's yeah and he realizes it's his fault that his company his company is the one that's poisoned the environment for his own property yeah the irony is shocking it's amazing and that's such an amazing scene because the bandage-face kid shows up on the dude's porch at his estate whatever and he says I've come to kill you and the guy is like huh all right I bet I guess my my son probably sent you right or whatever like yeah yeah that makes sense yeah don't don't shoot me in cold blood come on inside we'll warm up have some tea truth is I don't mind dying it's such a anticlimactic amazing moment and you kind of watching what the [ __ ] is wrong with me you realize he's he's [ __ ] himself yeah like the one thing he wanted you know and and then Musto gets there not knowing that his son is there and then he mistakes his son for THE QUESTION because he's wearing a trenchcoat and a hat tries to shoot up the old man and his son who he thinks is THE QUESTION and then THE QUESTION is there you know and he takes out like all Musto's people and then you know it's a great moment where Musto charges into the house but ready to kill who he thinks he THE QUESTION yeah sprays all these bullets and then when he's switching magazines yeah his son shoots him yeah and it's all and it's all silent yeah like no gunshots all silent actually those two those two pages again it's like hearkening back to like you said that almost the G.I. JOE silent issue that's one of the only reference points I could even think of '80s comics doing this in America but yeah this is crazy for a climactic moment to be two pages of silence and then what's crazy is you know he's got get shot out he get the dad gets shot and he looks over his dad's body and then he like rips the bandages off and see gu face this is so intense and his face looks like ass face from [ __ ] PREACHER yeah yeah like PREACHER yeah which is like 10 years later 10 years later PREACHER does a Tor a face this guy's half his lip is missing his eyes is missing some hair and he's like now do you love me? O it oh man it is rough like that that face like Cowan really kills it Cowan and Magyar kill it on that face because it it kind of lives up to the weight you know like you're wondering the whole time how bad does this kid's face look pretty [ __ ] bad yeah terrible absolutely [ __ ] terrible I mean I I kind of I kind of was wondering is the dad even dead but I mean he is dead but I almost feels like a really just hitting too is that these these books are these are it's like 27 28 pages they're long yeah I kept noticing that man comics used to be so [ __ ] generous back then like good lord like it was $1.50 and you would get like 20 there are like 27 to 30 pages some of these are like 29 30 pages so you're getting almost 30 pages of story and you're getting a two-page two- or three-page letter column plus you're getting an editorial from Dick Giordano or Jenette Kahn or whoever like Jesus man for a top of the thing yeah for $1.50 for this is like such generous sort of storytelling and you get so much content for your money and know we've talked about this a lot but it's like just modern mainstream comics do not compare to this in any way shape or form like you thing I love about this question is that the the opening the inside cover of all these comics is everyone had a different like editorial from someone high up in the food chain at at DC yeah like this one this one is is Roy Thomas giving an it an obituary to Gardner Fox you know and it's like a personal remembrance by Roy that's it's two comics thing it's probably like 500 words maybe probably 500 words like maybe 700 words yeah and just I mean it's pretty amazing pretty [ __ ] amazing you get so much like we've talked about this a lot but it's like you get so much content man it's such an experience in between these covers it's easily a half an hour plus of entertainment and there's just a lot to take in so yeah it's quite a package yeah it's amazing yeah and 30 pages like 27 28 29 30 pages that surprised me when I realized how long these issues were but they don't feel long and I feel like the extra pages that's what gives you the chance to really let some of these moments breathe because that's why we can get two or three or four silent pages in these issues but they don't feel like they're slight stories not at all not at all because if this is like Warren Ellis doing like fell yeah it'd be like he couldn't handle it no handle it yeah it would be over so quick yeah that was a that was another showstopper of an issue that's another really terrific self-contained story and after that opening four issue story arc I feel like THE QUESTION really goes on a run of these self-contained issues that are just [ __ ] jaw-droppers like there's just a bunch of self-contained issues that are just like home run phenomenal stories and this goes on for a while like we read up to issue but that's what I remember about the book was just feeling like it had these one-and-done stories that were just so powerful yeah I mean that's the thing that's fascinating about again let's jump into issue seven real quick talk about because it's like this is another weird story that I don't really I I couldn't understand what was happening in this but do this character looks kind of like Wolverine yeah it's a lot like Wolverine but it's not his name is Volks yeah and which means people in German and he's like like a Gypsy it's just like this what's kind of what's kind of interesting about reading comics from the '80s

is there's a sense of like this character OK maybe he's 60 he's he he would have been alive and but he's he's got resonance back to World War II and the and the Dr Mar Hatch resonance back to Vietnam and it's like nowadays there's not that kind of like depth of character design like you really couldn't have a character today who who who was like a World War II survivor because he'd be like 90 yeah you know or something like that you know so it's like that's that you can't even really do like a Vietnam War vet right now because he'd be like in his mid-'70s yeah that's true it's like it's interesting that that that I mean like what you could draw upon from recent relatively recent history because look this book was published 35 years ago right we were saying that right 35 years ago blows my [ __ ] mind but yeah 35 years so if you pull back 35 years ago from this it's it's it's 1952 yeah you know so we're in the middle of the Korean War in terms of like the difference between this book is published and now you know what I'm saying like it's a when this this book came out and it's just a just what you could do I mean I mean place you could pull characterizations from on what they're about also think it kind of adds to like the level of like it's not like there's like it's not like it's naive but it's because there's a lot of violence in this a lot of crazy violence in this but society changed quite a bit it became a lot more cynical in a way that yeah is not reflected in the comics of then yeah that are reflected in the comics of now yeah you're right there's an earnestness there's like a real earnestness which yeah for me often makes for better storytelling but you're right it's something that you don't see nearly as much here's something fascinating to me again let me know something about like where Hub City is set in issue was it issue seven on page seven where they're hiring like some Thug to kind of take out the the the I think take I think they want to take the mayor out right yeah is a guy from Detroit a guy from from Wilmington Wilmington, Delaware and a guy from Montreal I love the way the guy from Montreal is dressed also he's got like a yellow beret and an orange jacket I mean but like and also again Denys although these are all white guys yeah their faces all look different so different I'm glad that you observe this and that you keep pointing this out because you're right I hadn't thought about this but you're right Denys Cowan draws some of the most distinct faces on people and they don't feel like they're all kind of cut from the same kind of rubric or the same sort of mold you're like they're not just versions of like one artist's face like one they're all very different shapes you know and that is like so unusual and it's great to see well yeah because like certain character certain artists who are great artists like John Burns or Alan Davis yeah their faces I mean like if he's drawing a woman like is there a difference really difference between like Storm's phase and Jean Grey's phase and She-Hulk's phase like if if they weren't colored or ink you wouldn't be able to determine who was you're totally right that's a great point they're the same shape and these artists are some of Denys's contemporaries and peers from that time like your Alan Davises your your John Burnses your George Perez's and I think Perez also it's like there's a certain shape to the faces that generally repeats and you don't see that with Denys Cowan. Denys Cowan is is doing something very different yeah so so this is so this is when Vic is trying to get back into Myra's life they're they're not they're not gonna get together but they there is like a pull from their previous relationship and she's just like I don't want to [ __ ] you because I'm married and I I have to respect that even though I don't like my husband so you have to like it's really like you gotta wait until I can get rid of him before I can yes page 10 where they're like you know if this is really one of the it's just yeah she she goes look I I believe we we have to stand by what we say he goes I hear you because if we don't keep our word we betray pray and and that's one of the real sins you know she goes I still have strong feelings for you but if I broke my vows and made love to you then you wonder if I was buying your help and what's worse is I couldn't be certain I wasn't I mean it's like very like it's like a damning situation to be I mean like you know like and and almost it's just it feels there something very human and truthful about this yeah because in other kind of people's ways they like well they're just gonna [ __ ] you so we know that there can like there's a sense of hope between their relationship but you read this and you don't know if there's any hope between their relationship yeah and you realize that if Vic is going to help her or if she's going to help him like it's not simply because they're [ __ ] it's not because of all of these baser instincts it's because he really wants to help her and there are deep feelings here and I think it's really just frankly good writing from O'Neil because he's building that tension right like he's making us wonder like what's gonna happen with them it's not it's not an easy payoff for these characters no not at all not at all you know so then like you know like the questions go after this guy named Volk who's like some sort of underworld player who's trying to retire yeah and he's a member of the Roma people the Romani community and he refers to himself as a Gypsy at one point but this also kind of points to I think how times have changed because I know the word Gypsy is considered offensive by a lot of people these days and it's like a word that has really fallen out of fashion in terms of being OK to say and I think that it's considered like oh no you need to say the Roma people because I think the origins of the word Gypsy even like it connects I believe to the word "gyp" and like people "gypping" people, and there were like negative connotations to it, and so lots of people find thieves these days but here this you know O'Neil the character identifying himself with that word even though he is one of the Romani people and apparently was not considered offensive back in the '80s '87 at all it wasting because it's kind of like I feel like the word "Gypsy" has taken on more of like a like a, at least in America, like a this kind of like flighty almost like descendant of a hippie type of connotation whereas yeah you wouldn't call these people from Europe like the Romani you wouldn't call them that anymore right you know And you're right about the origins of that word too again but this guy's like he's telling you like he got beat you know like you know again the gypsies were considered undesirables by Hitler and they were getting rounded up and [ __ ] up in World War II and it's like this guy got his eye got whipped out yeah was like what the [ __ ] oh god he had a tragic backstory and we should say this guy this Wolverine-looking when we say when we say he looks like Wolverine he looks like Logan like he looks like yeah it's got like that really bizarre unique Wolverine-haired with that kind of a shape to it but also weird chin hair yeah like some very extreme mutton-chop sideburns that almost turn into a beard they're so huge they're coming around they almost connect and he's just a very violent character who's a criminal who's come to Hub City from Europe to make some kind of a deal with the mayor but the mayor is too drunk to make the deal with him and so now he's here and and it looks like like who OK so these these three guys are being hired to to kill Volk and and then the story line kind of we see the Vic and Myra stuff you mentioned and then it's it's a fairly simple story we have a scene with Vic and Tot kind of meditating and talking and hanging out a little bit more and then we see Volk is with the prostitute and he's given her a very generous tip apparently he's handing her a $1,000 bill and then Vic as THE QUESTION goes to confront Volk it's a pretty simple story he breaks into Volk's you know room he's staying in while he's here in Hub City to do this criminal activity and then Volk kind of just tells Vic about this history that he had in Romania in Russia and like this trauma that he went through and then Volk basically describes how he was a wild child who was left for dead dead in the wilderness and then he says that was when and he lost his eye from Nazis whipping him and then he was left to die and then a bunch of… a pack of wolves found him as a child and this pack of wolves took care of him and he says they brought me food kept me warm nurtured me until I recovered and when I could travel by myself I left them and there's the most hilarious kind of adorable panel on page 18 of like the adult Volk now waving goodbye to the back of wolves that has raised him and the panel is like drawn quite seriously but it also kind of made me chuckle because it's like this very like buff like you know tough toughened guy wildchild like Mowgli-type situation yeah but this guy's now an adult and he's looking all ripped and he's like waving goodbye to the wolves who are like standing on a cliff staring after him you know like it was well that's why that's why it's kind of weird that's why I when this at the end of the story here's a panel I didn't even recognize until I get to we're look at it again now on page 18 when he's telling THE QUESTION the story he goes I have these dreams and there a quick flash panel of like of like a wolf with his eye missing and a scar just like the scar of that Volk oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I see that that's right here yes it's like I I kind of didn't catch this at first or catch the significance of it because I didn't see the the thing with the eye slash didn't quite register when I first was going through it but he just kind of says you know like you know I'm just I'm ready to die I've I've I and I actually like I'm trying to get back to where I came from yeah and then those three guys got killed who the guy who got hired by the guy from Montreal and Detroit stuff like that you know like Volk and the and THE QUESTION take these guys out in a pretty in a pretty brutal pretty brutal way yes I love the coloring on page on those those first two panels where the asants kind of break into Volk's motel room and and Volk just [ __ ] I don't know what what is that is that a knife of some kind he throws at them but the panels are colored all red and they look very if you look at the page before he's got like a whip that's got like a knife at the end of it right well it's got several knives like a cat o' nine tails type of thing knives it looks like it's yeah seven or eight knives what not five or six knives on the tail of this whip and he like whips them so and the knives hit as the whip tip I mean that's pretty [ __ ] brutal It's very brutal It's very brutal that those two panels are very striking and props to I guess it's Tatjana Wood doing the coloring here but that's a really bold choice for the coloring on those two panels and I think it's very effective just bright like just really it's just a really pop red and it just it really kind of hits hard when you see those panels yeah I mean the next and then as Volk is going to kill these guy kill the last guy he does even kill the oh no that the one guy just says I'm not even the one guy from Detroit is like Iying [ __ ] around with these guys he just leaves yeah and then and then Volk goes kills the last guy who hired everyone gets shot himself and he dies and this is where it gets metaphysical again He's like you know he goes for years I was two bodies one soul now I unite I survive yes yeah this is amazing it's kind of like was saying it's like that's why that panel with the with the wolf when he's saying goodbye to the wolf like didn't really I know it was a little funny but it's like it meant that it's like he had never he left part of his soul there yeah right and it's also yeah and it kind of reminds me too now that we're talking about it of like Denny O'Neil's kind of ideas from issue two where that opening voice that we read from issue two where Denny O'Neil is saying there is no such thing as death there's only time and motion and our mind but there is no such thing as death you're just your energy is going to go somewhere else and return somewhere else and I think it's interesting in a very different form that O'Neil is coming back to the same idea that there is no death and there is no death for THE QUESTION at the beginning and there's no death for Volk there's only a change of form and you know a change but there but it's not what we think of what we perceive is death so you're right it's getting extremely metaphysical once again which is what THE QUESTION does so well you know what's fascinating is the final page of this it's like you know he wants he gets told by Volk where you can find like some sort of like information yeah to solve this riddle about what he's saying and he like he's got to go to Bavaria yeah and he goes Vic Sage goes to [ __ ] my job I got go check this out but it's like again is master class in storytelling on this final page yeah he's got 10 panels like two rows of five panels a piece so tell this moment of when Vic Sage arrives at this tree it's shaped like a question mark you know to find and he gets he's confronted by the wolf the wolf that has the eye like cut out yeah or whipped out the same scar mark I don't know that's I mean there's something very poignant and beautiful about the way that page was executed almost feel like some sort of Terrence Malick type of type of [ __ ] yeah I could see that because it's very much like in in nature in this kind of like natural landscape dealing with these very metaphysical human concerns and yeah I think it's a beautiful ending to the story and also I I can't believe I didn't even think about it until just looking at it again now but the fact the tree where he where Volk has directed Vic Sage to come is shaped like a question mark like duh it's the story is THE QUESTION yeah Vic Sage is THE QUESTION I didn't get that 'til right this second looking at it again but I'm like oh yeah there's that motif once again of THE QUESTION kind of like all of us are asking these questions in life about existence and the afterlife, etc. and Vic Sage is just like any of us constantly like grasping for an answer and now in this weird story once again he's sort of told the same message that he learned at the beginning that there is no such thing as death Vic Sage here ending because I guess we should say to people when Vic gets to Bavaria what he realizes is he comes face to face with a wolf and this wolf has a similar scar on its eye to this gangster Volk and and Vic realizes like oh [ __ ] Volk is that you and then Vic just kind of smiles to himself and says like what Volk's last words were which were someone some should know something interesting in the in like you know like in the letter com of this book somebody who's size who's whose name is just me that's all it says just me doesn't give a name he goes dear Mike this is the best ongoing series since INFINITY, INC. every aspect is amazing the writing the art the coloring and most interesting of all the absence of noise words in course this has been the most constantly annoying feature in other comics I'm overjoyed that you've left this out of this already amazing series whoever made this decision deserves a hearty handshake and part of knowing that he has made a difference what does everyone else think me and then then Mike Gold is responding just been a lot of comments about the absence of sound effects all positive I must admit say sound effects F to check out the classic Harvey Kurtzman and while the story sound effects from MAD number 20 February 1955 whereas the original edition is rather pricey our old buddy Russ Cochran is almost done reprinting the entire MAD comic run in a four volume hardcover set I I guess there be I guess this probably be an issue where they didn't do the effects or they or they did do the effects I don't know fascinating is that the recommended reading is STEPPENWOLF by Hermann Hesse oh wow that's some heavy recommended reading Denny O'Neil he is really trying to get all the readers to kind of level up in our in our reading habits yeah you know he's like come on everybody keep up let's all go on this metaphysical journey together OK so now we're gonna get to our final EP final issue talk about for this episode brain yes it's quite a story called called "Mikado" now they open up with another [ __ ] amazing splash panel page the thing that really got me the most about this is it's a man man who is in his underwear tied up hanging upside down yes and I'm looking at this and I go oh he's got a chain of a of a of a cross hanging around his face that's kind of come off but what's more shocking is when I'm looking at this see his hands are tied yeah are tied to his feet I noticed that his legs and his legs are bent and I'm like I'm like is this guy being hung by his knees are bent this is [ __ ] crazy and then I turn the page and lo and behold he is being hung so like he's kind of hog tied but hung by his feet and he's hanging over this boiling cauldron yeah and this guy named Mikado this Japanese guy or so we think so we think is dropping him into this barrel to be scalded yeah then we come back to so this is now we harken back to the episode from issue six issue six yeah we're going time Vic Sage has been stabbed and he's hearing some information and this when the doctor says to him hey man you got stabbed you should you rep to the police but you know but why bother and it's kind of interesting that and and then you hear this little story where it go like Dr F as you hear they just brought in a man to the burn unit A transl from of state a man named Chester Franny remember the name Franny the kid I treated last month the baby the one who was scalded in the bathtub well this is her father and he was scalded too in the exact same way that dude who was lowered into the cauldron up front you realize that he had burned his baby in hot water and so he suffered the same fate I mean that's pretty [ __ ] up yeah the next page is this dude named Gordon who has this wife and two kids looks and who might be pregnant too and they're skinny they're so skinny they look like they're Mal nutrition like they got those sunken eyes and cheekbones and no lack of food yeah and then he's up here this looks like he weighs 250 pounds with this five with a full turkey yeah and a full-ham some I mean all this food on the table and he's letting his kids starve yeah and he like slams food in the in the wife's face and he says some [ __ ] like he goes hey [ __ ] listen I married you I said I give your bastards a name I didn't say nothing about feeding them did I I mean that's it's so dark it's so [ __ ] up level of inhumanity in that statement that I know he read this I I know he read this in some police report or something like that because it's like the guy was when Andrew Kevin Walker wrote SE7EN it's like he witnessed [ __ ] was working at that Times Square Tower Records he was like I can't believe the humanity stoops to this low that's what he kind of like put into the seven then this guy this guy Gordon he goes outside someone offers him a ride because he's some sloppy dude and it's and it's Mikado the Japanese guy from the beginning yeah shoots shoots him in the neck paralyzes him and then he skins him yeah yeah this just this just skin take take that skin him he cuts the meat off his bones they say something called a flint yeah I never heard of the word flint flint to look it up never heard of that word either but I guess I guess what they do to like to animals when they butcher them it's just [ __ ] brutal it's horrific I mean SE7EN is a good reference point because I don't know any other stories that I can think of really popular entertainment stories that go into these kind of dark places so consistently and unrelentingly as what they're doing here with THE QUESTION and we should mention also that in between the Mikado story the reason that we're saying we've caught up with the story from six issues ago is we actually see the moment that Vic described to in the car in issue right like we see it here after the Mikado intro with the guy boiling over the cauldron we see Vic at the hospital and he's being treated by a doctor who's a Black doctor and he's talking to Vic and he says Mr. Sage you got one tetanus shot coming up and then he says so so how did it happen like the reason Vic was in there and then this is where Vic tells the guy I was mugged and then the doctor says like oh you know you had to tell the cops well well on second thought why bother you know stay out of trouble and this was the interaction that Vic had talked with Tot about in issue six that you and I thought the way that we thought was so brilliant because there was no way you'd ever know you were gonna come back around and see that but here we see it and now this doctor who is just you know a character mentioned in an off-hand way in issue six now has become a character in this issue issue eight and he's be he's going to become a far more important character we go forward well was interesting is that so this guy Gordon the guy the fat guy who gets his gets his the meat chopped off his bones one of the cops calls this in to try to get some money he's gonna call it in you know yeah and then so now you're back with Myra and Vic Sage and they've heard they've not called into the cops because they called into the news yeah and Vic says hey I remember something I heard a couple months ago so you realize that the scene from the beginning of this and issue 6 was a few months ago right and now it's like an interesting little and right right here this page is Myra and Vic somehow this reminds me like this this art reminds me of like of early Jackson Guice oh I could actually see that yeah that's a good point something about the way he's drawing Myra here also yeah way Myra and the the way Vic is positioned on on that desk it's very interesting that's a great a great pull, Chris. Yeah I hadn't thought that I wouldn't have thought that but that's a really great pull and Jackson Guice is a terrific artist in his own right and he's also really great at body language and things just kind of feeling natural oh for sure what was that book that he did that I remember reading like some weird ass title remember now was it recent RESURRECTION MAN remember did the book RESURRECTION MAN yeah yeah that was like a DC Book I think it was Andy Andy Lanning writing it DC a DC book in the '80s and they were doing all this wild-ass [ __ ] and here it is where Vic and Myra are trying to have a relationship still but Resurrection I think RESURRECTION MAN was later than the '80s maybe '90s early '90s it was I think I want to say it was Abnett and Lanning writing it I think it might have been before they broke up so yeah but did Jackson Guice do like some of that flash some of the oh yeah yeah oh Jackson Guice he was definitely drawing other [ __ ] in the '80s he drew FLASH for Mike Baron at one point I think with Mike Baron yes yeah yeah RESURRECTION MAN was RESSURECTION MAN was '90s for yeah for the record it was yeah OK OK yeah yeah yeah yeah so then you know it's like THE QUESTION trying to figure out about this killing is it he has got two choices and he and he you know and then he gets he's talking with Tot and he tells him about the crime and punishment thing and he makes a quote from Gilbert and Sullivan it's called the Mikado you know that's that's where that's really the title of the the book comes I mean the side of the villain and then you meet this guy this doctor what was his name Dr. Spaulding right he's walking down the street and he's going through like some bad neighborhood he Dr. Spaulding's Black he meets these two Black thugs who could have killed them and they all have distinctive looks for Black dudes the one guy's got a knife still but you know yeah I mean it's just like got a Run-DMC hat on I think he's wearing think he's wearing a Beastie Boys shirt by the way which is a unique choice also who's wearing a Beastie Boys shirt guy with the Run-DMC hat oh he is he is yeah he is totally is yeah totally is totally is totally again this is Denys like just pulling he's making it pop making it current totally yeah way that other people weren't yeah he's loading it with like Easter Eggs for those who are looking you know and then is you know he's he's doing his little procedural detect stuff the drug dealer who he thought like might have been responsible for these killings is not responsible and then he goes and he's like oh here's Mikado killing someone again like taking someone his kidney out because this is a great this see this is a great story too a doctor yeah with gambling debts took out a woman's kidney to I mean that's pretty [ __ ] just the level of like what the [ __ ] is going on here is just insane you're right Hub City Hub City again and you're right it's almost just like a throwaway line here but that could be a whole issue in itself yeah or could be an episode of like LAW AND ORDER or some shit like that I mean it's crazy you know and then this question he finds out where Mikado lives he meets Mikado was the Black doctor I just have to say at that moment after we hear about the kidney or whatever when we cut to Vic Sage at home with Tot just look at the pose that Vic Sage is in as we cut doing some weird ass thing where his he's like so contort like I mean his feet like his he's doing a back band to the point that his feet are touching where his chin is yeah it's like I'm not even describing it no it's incredible it's like he is just in such an insane twist of a shape it looks like the most advanced yoga that one could imagine and he's just kind of casually doing this while he's having a discussion quite casually with Tot while his feet are kind of like wrapped around his face and his whole body's contorted yeah I mean it's like a back I mean it's like I've seen women do this like like do yoga and do but I've never seen a dude do it it can't be done just never seen but I love how casual how casual this is yeah it's wild just any and a scene where like a lesser comic would just have Tot and Vic like standing next to each other talking like THE QUESTION is like we're making such great choice like I think to to is doing some kind of science like scientific [ __ ] he's got like beers and stuff that pouring while talking and Vic's doing high-level yoga it's just it's so cool and creative and it's all these choices that really play into who the characters are yes wild so then is so next rest of the story is the next part of the story is question discover Spaulding finds out he's the killer they have some interesting kind of like conversation M and you know the Spaulding of the Black guy gets the drop on THE QUESTION shoots him with a tranquilizer dart tranquilizer dart but something that paralyzes him it's like a paralytic yeah and he's about to [ __ ] kill THE QUESTION but THE QUESTION keeps talking and makes him think and tells him about you know I mean he's saying I'm doing this stuff to restore the balance again it's like this he goes I he goes no my friend not for revenge rather a need to restore some balance every day for years for decades I witnessed the results of wanted cruelty hideous suffering of the innocent is the reason I became a physician a physician to elevate the suffering I thought that would make it right but it didn't and then he's crying in this panel yeah it's really fascinating like he knows what he's doing is wrong and then he's about to you know kill THE QUESTION THE QUESTION is goes well you know what I'm not an innocent bystander you're killing me but you know what you should kill me because of all the [ __ ] that I went through I who whooped people's asses yeah I hit a girlfriend I broke her nose I beat up a professor you know a sixty-year old man who had asthma I mean all this stuff and then he's like so you should be killing me cuz I'm one of the people that you should be killing you know but he goes but they that's bad [ __ ] but here's some good [ __ ] that I did yeah you know the bomb is all stuff he's as THE QUESTION he goes so I'm Not Innocent but should I deserve to die and then what's his name Spaulding's like well it's a good argument I guess I'm not gonna kill you and then Spaulding puts the Mikado mass on and he's got his sophisticated like opiate drug and he stab and THE QUESTION is still suffering from like the paralytic and dude just stabs himself with the drug collapses yeah and and that's a great page by the way like the page is beautiful panel composition by Cowan right there very very unique and super dramatic panel composition very odd like I saw I saw Matt Wagner do something like this with a GRENDEL one time where it's kind of like like there the panel like it feels like it's like a a a clock hand swishing you know and so it shows you like the passage of time it's like and in this page it's like he gets stabbed and he's got to fall down and the drugs got to get him and then Vic Sage has to he's got to wake up from the paralytic and then he's gonna turn the mask off and turn the S and he goes into goes into the bathroom so it's kind of like this like these shards of time are being fractured away and the panels designed to look like that again Denys showing master class you know work with like how to do time like how to show elapse time on a comic page it's brilliant brilliant brilliant brilliant Y and then you know Vic Sage goes into the bathroom to wash his face take a little quick shower goes outside and Mikado was gone yeah who we thought thought was dead is gone and all that's left is that syringe that maybe he had nothing in it right had something in it that was a very compelling ending to kind of leave things here Vic Sage is now in an empty room he sees the empty room and he knows without searching further that the Mikado is is gone deep inside himself he feels the beginning of laughter which is a very interesting way to end things here and Vic Sage is you know perhaps going to face the Mikado again on another day in the future but but yeah I remembered reading this story when I was a kid this was one of the standouts to me when I was young just because it was like such a just such an unusual story about this doctor wearing the Mikado mask and having this rhyme from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera that he says when he kills people and being so emotionally invested and conflicted in the in the work he's been doing in this city that ultimately he snaps and just decides life's not fair and he wants to make it fair but you know this was this was not the kind of story in 1986 that was your average one-and-done comic and again it's THE QUESTION just living in these gray areas and like you were saying, Chris, Denys Cowan just continues to really progress and increase the facility of like his artwork and the original panel compositions and like and just the way that he's approaching this as he's getting more and more comfortable with this world and with this story I feel like Denys's work is just looking increasingly tremendous as we move forward and these splash pages just continue to be killers and yeah man I feel like THE QUESTION largely I feel like it holds up very well in terms of my memory of it like I said earlier like there's brief moments in the storytelling here and there that I would say where you know some of Denny O'Neil's writing in moments here and there is like it's a little clunky some of the transitions whatnot like if you wanted to nitpick there's moments that could be done a little more elegantly and whatever but I think the context that we all have to remember when we look at these old comics is that they were on a monthly schedule and so to be putting out work at this level on a monthly schedule is frankly pretty astonishing you know because it's not like this was a quote unquote graphic novel that someone had a year of their life to work on every last piece of it like no this was under the gun deadline driven work where they're just taking these huge swings these big ambitious story swings and so you know if they're connecting on seven out of ten eight out of ten moments that they're going for and maybe like I might quibble on a moment here and there like all things being equal this is a pretty phenomenal piece of work and I feel like it really should be talked about and remembered more which is why I'm glad that we took the time to talk about this because my as I remember even Beyond these first eight issues it never falls off like in my memory it's a it continues to be a very strong and like powerfully inventive and and just really just wild series as it moves forward so this is definitely a book that's very worthy of people going back and looking at again I think it's largely out of print I think there was a collection of trade paperbacks that was put out at one point but I I looked recently and it seemed like a lot of them were quite expensive on eBay so I don't think this is a work that DC has kept perpetually in print the way they should let me just just let me interrupt you I saw on Denys's Facebook or Twitter yesterday or Thursday, DC is putting out like putting out like a question Omnibus oh thank god hard that's awesome I think it would be out I mean it's something and dis even know about it he was like oh my god oh that's [ __ ] great oh that makes me that makes me really happy that to know the work will be out there because it so deserves to be out there and like that's awesome news to hear that however as we always do here on COMICS ROT YOUR BRAIN! I would encourage everybody to if they really want to get the full experience of THE QUESTION go buy the original issues because they're not that expensive you know they they'll cost you a few bucks but like you know you could get the first 12 issues of it for probably less than $40 or $50 bucks and I highly recommend reading those original issues because you get those letter columns we mentioned You get the recommended reading from Denny O'Neil You get the reactions of the fans at the time and in some cases the creators at the time to THE QUESTION, which I think is really fascinating to see the kind of reactions that people were having in that moment, to how bold and original and shocking this work was, and then you also get the editorials from Dick Giordano and Jenette Kahn so to me as always if possible get the original issues because it's a far more complete experience and it gives you a real snapshot of the time Well here's something interesting there's… a letter so it's kind of like a negative review in issue let's see issue eight love I love when letter columns do negative letters first off the recommended reading but by Denny O'Neil is CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Dostoevsky so he goes Eric Barnes writes, "Salutations…" I got to keep got to truncate this bit go "Salutations, people. I admit I didn't write to you in issue one two or three I I get felt nervous you know Cowan's been around for a while but I'm writing now and you may wish I hadn't…" and then he goes, "You said THE QUESTION letter column would have a… philosophical is great but where does everybody get off thinking anything philosophical has to be has to be oriental damn it you men some great w of philosophies in number one but why not use them better yet why not use some great American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson or Herman Melville ever heard of them? You're talking about Vic Sage being an unlikable guy maybe he maybe he was because he lived a life of violence and wasn't in touch with his true self but no you cop out and give me shank she revisited Jesus and it's like I read this and he's like you know he goes I saw THE QUESTION the thug for justice thugs use street fighting have you ever seen someone who was never trained by anyone to fight who fights naturally well it's savage untrained spontaneous fighting Sure martial arts is beautiful to watch despite the fact that it's violent it's not almost ballet skill against skill technique against technique the thing of the sort of thing that martial arts is not so street fighting it's strength speed endurance savagery everything else you can think of against you come against sure ugly but if you think it's about that so violence it's any kind now breaks off and says I feel if I had not changed my personal views of life then I was probably going to become a street and I'm just like this is the letter writer [ __ ] letter writer gives it a more [ __ ] and he goes yeah but THE QUESTION becomes philosophical martial arts martial artist and the coast in Co and the closest character around today who vaguely fits that description is the brain-damaged Flaming Carrot wow despite all this I'm still buying THE QUESTION I'm desperately trying to like it I'm thinking I may stop buying it though I don't know Barnes Virginia Beach, Virginia just like it's a weird letter to reprint Wow see I love that though because I love that the letter columns would not just always print fluff I love that they would print these hostile letters at times like that's phenomenal That's awesome Hilarious, man, that's actually hilarious house oh there's a house ad for this comic called THE OUTCASTS by John Wagner and Alan Grant I don't remember this yeah I don't remember it yeah it's Cam Kennedy drawing we should we should look at that book it's like a total 2000 AD team it's like 2000 AD comes to America because all those guys are 2000 AD stalwarts Wagner, Grant, and Cam Kennedy. So yeah we should we should look into that I don't think I read that at the time either I'm just looking at the response to that incredibly hostile letter in that letter column and it and the response from Mike Gold the editor is "I agree, non-superpowered heroes who are martial arts masters abound in comics, but then again if you're in that line of work, you have to have some skills…" and then he says, "by the way, both writers O'Neil and Cowan are quite experienced in the world of martial arts; would be a shame to let all that knowledge go to waste." It's a pretty classy response from Mike Gold kind of sidestepping all the hostility there from the letter-writer the letter-writer seems frankly a bit racist and yeah not a bit frankly just seemed like could not imagine that there could be some worthwhile philosophy coming from other parts of the world, so yeah that's [ __ ] crazy [ __ ] crazy Well so that's that's us talking about THE QUESTION fantastic book fantastic work by Denys [Cowan], fantastic work by Denny O'Neil… Yeah you're right it holds up it really holds up it's pretty… I'm actually very curious to see the Omnibus thing to know how now that you know see what it looks recolored you know wonder not that I like the recoloring stuff I wonder if they're gonna do that I wonder if they're gonna recolor it that's a good question cuz I think it's in the '80s where I feel like they recolor stuff from from earlier eras but I don't know that they always recolor the '80s stuff so I'm curious if they will yeah just I I mean it depends if it's newsprint or this higher quality paper I think this is that Mondo paper you're talking about which might excuse me which might which might like retain the color better the color separations better I think that a lot of the stuff from the you know like '60s and '70s stuff and even early '80s I just don't know if they have if they even have the original materials to reprint they might be doing scans of comics that they're then recoloring I you know I mean it's unlikely that they're keeping I mean look they don't have the original pages anymore you know this just all been thrown away or sold so I don't really know like how they do like reprints of stuff yeah I'll be really curious to see how this turns out I was listening to a Cartoonist Kayfabe episode recently and Tom Scioli on that show was talking about how just color sits on different types of paper differently and it was really fascinating because they were looking at a book that had been reprinted on like glossy white paper and then they were looking at the original newsprint and the color looked so much better on the original newsprint because it was soaking in instead of like being sort of rejected by the bright white yeah like popping off the paper and it was shocking when they were showing the pages by side because the reprint looked garish like it looked garish and gaudy and looked awful and then I forget what the book was but the original the original book looked like actually the coloring looked a lot more subtle and it kind of like it popped but it soaked into the paper more and it looked just so much more like rich in a way so like people don't realize what a difference I mean I you know I think there there's a version of Mazzucchelli and Miller's BATMAN: YEAR ONE that if you buy like a hard paper a hardback version there's a special version like there's some deluxe version of that that they use Mel's personal scans to recreate the color and I kind of feel like that's a chance because that's such a important book and they're trying to make like some like you know some foundational like benchmark version of it you know whatever like a you whatever like a 4K restoration for a movie kind of thing I think they I think from what I could tell I don't have it but it sounded like they were they'd like the original scans that Mazzucchelli had so they could kind of like match the color when they put it on that white paper so they would if they needed to bring it down the you know the saturation and all that kind of stuff they could or that's what the plan was because they know that it doesn't it I mean that's a book that if you just ran it like get the trade paperbacks stuff like that and you ran it off of what was originally there I don't think it would look the same that's a book that I don't recall the book had a very specific color palette to it I don't I don't know if that was like done by the same color process that they were doing either it was Richmond Lewis who would I'm not sure if she was she was at the time but she would become David Mazzuccheli's partner in real life and so I know Richmond Lewis colored it and she colored very few comics but she had a very rich palette and she was I think a painter in real life and she had just an incredible color sense but I think it was one of the very few things she colored but I yeah I don't know exactly what her process was at the time she was definitely on the cutting edge of coloring at that moment yeah yeah because I remember the covers of those I you know I remember the most there's like I think in the first issue of that there's like a scene when like Bruce Wayne is dressed up like a drifter he's walking down the street and he like is fighting this pimp and like can you see like Selina Kyle like up in like a like an apartment looking out of her window she's kind of like half-dressed in like you know like some lingerie or sex worker gear and just the way that it's lit like the neon the neon coming in the window but it's kind of like dirty neon and it's just like just like the colors in that book are fascinating yeah are really fascinating I agree they were beautiful beautiful colors and I think that's something that doesn't get enough attention is how much the color palette on year one and also on DARK KNIGHT really really played a huge role I think in the reception of those books and just how you know how stunning those works were because they didn't look or feel like anything that people had seen before and I think the coloring was just a massive part of that yeah well I think that you know I was looking at you know I got that book that that DC and the '80s thing that think of the experIence looking at looking at the reprint of RONIN number one I don't remember who colored that I think that was Lynn I think that was Lynn Varley but Lynn Varley's definitely painting DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and that was published on that backer paper so like I'm sure that she's actually painting on some sort of like cardstock to whatever so that's part of why that book has a look cuz they knew it wasn't going to be on newsprint so she had a chance to kind of she is a painter I mean she obviously did you know whatever elixir returns all kind stuff like that so it's like she gave that book like a feeling that was like nothing else because who else is painting who else is a painter like that with that skill and understanding of color who's working in comics oh yeah oh 100% yeah so yeah that's why that book had such a just you know like that shot when like he's fighting the mutant leader and he like dives at him and he's like you know it's like just the tank the Batmobile like the way it's all like feels like it's curled over and it's all those browns I mean like she just had such a way of like of of of using a lot of primary of using a lot of like I want to say it's like it was almost like duotone or monotone but they're not they're colors that were like side-by-side on the color wheel kind of thing yeah so that it so that it doesn't feel I mean there is a monotone shot in there when I think when Batman like leaps out of the Batmobile for the first time in that it's like a full color a full splash page M I think so and it's it feels kind of monotone she just did so much cool [ __ ] in that book and yeah people don't give the coloring enough and you know it when you see these bad reproductions and and trade paperbacks if you're like oh they [ __ ] this up particularly if you're familiar with the original Oh totally yeah like the recoloring yeah the recoloring is almost always terrible like it's almost always worse than the original coloring and then the paper stocks [ __ ] up up it doesn't match right yeah it's a mess but yeah I'm glad you mentioned that that ELEKTRA book too I think the ELEKTRA LIVES AGAIN book that was the hard cover that came out later that Lynn Varley painted over Miller's art that's also one of my favorite things they ever did together and it's very subtle painted color but it's just jaw-dropping it's gorgeous work so yeah we could we could do a whole episode on coloring but anyway but today's episode was about the beautiful work on THE QUESTION and I really think the whole creative team showed up and did a phenomenal job on THE QUESTION and I mean it's a book that I'm thrilled to find out that the Omnibus is coming and I hope this signals like a little bit of a [THE] QUESTION renaissance for people to go back and rediscover this book another thing I'd like to call out as a final note the logo is really strong too it's a really good logo I mean it's I don't know who did it I'm guessing probably Todd Klein who knows but Todd Klein did a bunch of the DC logos back then but whoever did it great work very strong logo could be T… who's the guy who just they fired him like two years ago oh oh Chiarello yeah [Mark} Chiarello, Mark C… phenomenal funny because it feels kind of like a hammer and sickle like the Soviet play off of that that's a good point actually you know what and yeah that's interesting I hadn't thought about that but that's that's very possible I don't know if that was on purpose or not but it's like I think it's supposed to be like it's it's weird because I think is it supposed to it's a question mark But I almost feel like it's supposed to be a magnifying glass too like THE QUESTION as a detective well yeah yeah yeah well well the Q in THE QUESTION is definitely that and then it is a magnifying glass I mean that could be the magnifying glass the Q yeah yeah then the the and then the the the symbol around there is definitely a question mark yeah but it could be magnifying glass like a double magnifying glass I don't know it's a very smart smart smart logo yeah it is right like you could just see the thought that goes into it and that's another thing with these older books from the '80s is like the logos are you can see they're just they're so much more smartly designed they's so much more intentional kind of thought to put into them and then also frankly it's amazing because many of them most of them are hand-done like these are hand-done logos these aren't fonts these are hand-done logos that are being created by your Todd Klein and your Mark Chiarello or whoever I mean I mean that guy he does a lot of work for an image now his name is like… Thomas Mueller… yeah he does some amazing amazing design work a lot of covers in designs but I kind of feel like you know I mean look like Marvel and DC don't put out a lot of they don't put out like a bunch of new books anymore just and new characters and they don't they're not launching something like THE QUESTION like now it's always a I mean I don't know there's like what ten BATMAN books out a month or some [ __ ] like that I mean it's kind of crazy what they're doing so they don't really have the opportunity to do you know like I think that was the other day and I saw like a like a CHECKMATE book when I was in the store oh yeah Bendis Bendis just did one with Maleev I was tempted to buy it but I was like I don't you know you know I got my issues with Bendis so I didn't buy it but I but I remember when the first CHECKMATE book came out like that was a cool logo too I was like oh that's a smart logo that's like you know a weird like a I don't know it's just but you don't see a lot of that but again that's a book that they're reviving from before like the yes THE QUESTION is a revival from the old series but it hadn't it probably hadn't been published in like 20 years when they did this you know oh yeah it says on the first issue it says Cowan and O'Neil and Magyar they introduced THE QUESTION it's like that's the title on that you know yeah that's interesting they made that choice to say that because it clearly is the Steve Ditko character but it is completely reimagined you know so like it's it bears only the most surface resemblance I think to what Ditko did although I mean I can't say for sure because I didn't read those Ditko issues but I but I know that Ditko's QUESTION did not have did not have like the all the philosophical leanings and all the new age stuff that that O'Neil and Cowan brought to this I think yeah they really did reimagine the character as far as I know for sure for sure So well cool, man, that's this week's episode of COMICS ROT YOUR BRAIN! Yeah, this was a special super super-sized episode we did an extra long episode on THE QUESTION because apparently we all… we both had a lot to say, but I think the material was worth it It's a brilliant book and I heartily recommend everybody get out there and read THE QUESTION. It is really unlike any other comic that you've read. It deserves to be very well remembered. That is true. That is true. So, until next time… All right, until next time. Until then. We will see you.…

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