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Episode 716 - Not Hair f/ Benito Cereno
1k Plays7 days ago
Matt and Benito sat down for a chat about Benito's upcoming book Blood and Thunder, then took a bunch of your listener questions!
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:12
Speaker
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00:00:29
Speaker
I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today?
00:00:39
Speaker
He's got War Rocket Ajax to bring back his body.
Introduction to War Rocket Ajax
00:00:54
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to War Rocket Ajax. This is the Internet's Most Explosive Comic Book and Pop Culture Podcast, and my name is Matt Wilson.
00:01:06
Speaker
Because usually Chris opens the show, ah but Chris is sick this week. You may have seen him describe on Blue Sky as having a clinch-like super sickness.
00:01:24
Speaker
So... I'm just hanging out this week with my guest slash guest host for the week. We're just going hang out and chill and talk. Bonito Serino. Hey, Matt, is it Halloween already?
00:01:40
Speaker
No. it is okay It is like, I was going to say almost exactly halfway between. yeah Or halfway away in the year from Halloween, but I'm not going to do that exact math.
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah. but we're But we're in the neighborhood of that. Yeah, we here we are on March 54th. ah ah Yeah, but okay. That's good. I was worried ah that the year had gotten away from me.
00:02:13
Speaker
if ah Honestly, Benito, if I'm being honest, I kind of wish... we were that I wish time was passing that quickly, the way things are going. i i get we're i'm I'm picking up what you're putting down.
00:02:27
Speaker
I got it. i i don't I don't disagree. yeah we we could all We could all just rip Van Winkle through the next couple of years, right? Yeah, the boy.
00:02:40
Speaker
But you know, Chris has started a tradition, a general... Start of the show thing where he asks me a question that he thinks of.
00:02:52
Speaker
Okay, all right. And I'm going to continue that tradition by asking you a question at the top of the show. right, sounds great.
Soup for Life: A Question to Benito
00:03:00
Speaker
My question for you, Benito, is if you could only eat one type of soup for the rest of your life, because we all know you're a soup boy.
00:03:09
Speaker
Yep. If you had to choose the one soup that you you could only eat that soup for the rest of your life, what soup would it be? Oh, man.
00:03:20
Speaker
That is so tough. ah So, yes. People who follow me on social media know that I eat a lot of soup. Some people think I eat exclusively soup, which is which is not the case.
00:03:34
Speaker
um But if you're if they only follow you on social media...
00:03:40
Speaker
As far as I know, the only food you post is soup. Yes. um Before I got into the the bit with the soup, I used to post every time I ordered a half chicken at a restaurant.
00:03:51
Speaker
ah um That didn't catch on the way that soup has. And the thing is, I think a lot of people now primarily know me as this a soup guy. They don't know I'm a writer or a podcaster or that I have family or emotions. They just know this guy eats soup.
00:04:08
Speaker
A lot. this is this This is the soup guy. This is the guy I need to send a picture of soup to. And you know what? I love it when people send me pictures of soup. This is not an invitation for that activity to suddenly like exponentially increase.
00:04:22
Speaker
But when my homies tag me in a picture of soup, I feel loved. But i I tend to so ah eat a lot of noodle soups, right? um like like ah Like entree soups, a lot of Asian soups.
00:04:41
Speaker
Ramens and so forth. Yeah, ramens.
00:04:47
Speaker
Pho, I'm a fan of as well. There's a Thai restaurant that we have in town that has two soups that are probably up there as my favorite.
00:04:59
Speaker
they do um They have a Tom Yum with noodles that's really good. And that might be it, but they also do, it's like a curry sauce.
00:05:11
Speaker
noodle soup I can't remember the Thai name for it. And I would probably mess it up if I tried to say it. But it's like a... Yeah, so it's like curry, noodles, ah chicken, peanuts, tofu.
00:05:27
Speaker
All sorts of good stuff. It's delicious. It's pretty heavy, though. So i don't know if I would eat it as my only soup ever. So and the I'm going to go... Let me go with the... tom Tom Yum with noodles.
00:05:40
Speaker
i think so Let's go that. That's a good one. i ah My answer for this, I'm notably not a soup guy. Right. that's how i That's how I tell people they can tell the difference between you and me.
00:05:54
Speaker
Right. it's It's the main way to know the difference between the two of us. if if you're if you're If you see a guy standing next to Chris Sims and you don't know if it's me or if it's Matt, check and see if they're eating soup.
00:06:08
Speaker
But... If I chose a soup, then I would be like, I could eat this. And this is maybe a bit of a cheat because it encompasses a lot of different soups.
00:06:24
Speaker
But I also, i mean, broths, I guess. So I could choose one specific broth for it, but hot pot is what I would choose. Okay. I mean, pot pretty good.
00:06:36
Speaker
Hot pot pretty good. And and you get to you get to cook your you meat in your boiling soup bowl, and it's it's like a fun activity and soup at the same time. what you could You had a real opportunity here, Matt, I think, to blow everybody's minds if you had been like, melted frozen yogurt.
00:06:59
Speaker
I can't do it. I can't do it. Not even as a bit. Not even as a bit would I dare do such a thing. But, you know, if you had frozen yogurt and it melted, it wouldn't just be yogurt.
00:07:17
Speaker
It would be something else. Some third thing. It would be gross is what it would be. I mean, like, melted ice cream is is bad enough Melted frozen yogurt. wow i mean yeah and i'll say Melted ice cream is essentially flavored creme anglaise, right?
00:07:37
Speaker
So it's at least a something. Yeah. But melted frozen yogurt is not it's not even just it's not even yogurt. It seems like it should turn back to yogurt.
00:07:48
Speaker
I was about to say the same thing. Melted frozen yogurt should just become... regular yogurt. Right. it doesn't even do that. No, it's some secret third thing.
00:07:58
Speaker
Disgusting. Something between states. I hate it. Yogurt plasma.
00:08:09
Speaker
Now that is is is ah intriguing to me. Yeah. hu Bonito, okay. So we're not going to do like the typical... um top of the show bits here. We'll thank our Patreon backers next time and do comics reviews and checks and recs and all of that.
00:08:28
Speaker
So Benito, in a bit, we're just going to start taking some listener questions and do that until we feel like we've done enough. But before the listener questions, do want to talk about ah your new comic book, Blood and
Upcoming Comic Book: Blood and Thunder
00:08:43
Speaker
Thunder.
00:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, boy. Let's please do that. Yeah. Now, Benito, what is the release date of the book? ah May 7th, 2025. All right. So, people... all right so people Now is the time for people to go ahead and and put in their their orders at their local comic shops for it.
00:09:05
Speaker
um I was, let's see, I just had a meeting with my editor today, and I believe he told me final order cutoff. That is the last date that you can place a pre-order before it goes to press.
00:09:17
Speaker
If you ever see the term f FOC, that's what that means, um is April... fourteenth I believe he said. ah So, ah you know, if you're if you're hearing this, you you have time to get in a pre-order.
00:09:32
Speaker
um But, you know, it's best if you can pre-order. But if not, a post-order will also be fine. But yeah, ah May 7th is when the first issue will drop. And April 14th is FOC.
00:09:48
Speaker
ah So, Benito, I have... read through the first issue of Blood and Thunder. And i um i I enjoyed it greatly. it it's Thank you.
00:10:01
Speaker
definitely has that kind of like grimy sci-fi feel that I'm a big fan of. Yeah. there's some ah There's definitely some Blade Runner, for example, in the DNA of the early parts of the story.
00:10:16
Speaker
Blade Runner-style flying cars, definitely in here. Yes, for sure. um There's a taxi that definitely looks like it could come out of that world.
00:10:28
Speaker
um And then also, it's it's about a futuristic, not cop. the the It's stated very clearly but she's not a cop.
00:10:39
Speaker
Right. ah She is police adjacent, as we'll see her explain later in the series. But ah yeah, so our...
00:10:51
Speaker
Our primary character is ah Blood Bledsoe, Akaldama, Akaldama, Bledsoe. ah And she is a bounty hunter um who works in conjunction with ah the IPPF, the Interplanetary Penitentiary and Peacekeeping Force,
00:11:18
Speaker
Definitely remember my own initialisms here. um ah She works in close conjunction with them, basically, ah like you know like a bounty hunter seeking out ah people who've skipped on bail and other people.
00:11:33
Speaker
But specifically, she ah it's it's kind of alluded to that because... Oh, I didn't mention this. She is an alien. ah and she works ah She lives on Metro 1 topside, which is metro one is a large asteroid that has ah two metropolitan cities built on opposite sides of each other. it's ah so like They're 180 degrees rotated from each other on each side of the asteroid, right if you can imagine what I'm what i'm saying.
00:12:11
Speaker
and They're Very tall cities that are built into different tiers. And it is a mixture of human and alien society, or exogenic society, as it's called, because it's a sci-fi book. And so I have to make up a fake word for alien.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yeah. And then and and and it's it's very stratified. It's that kind of like the different levels represent different yeah it's not social statuses. Right. It is not subtle.
00:12:41
Speaker
um So, the yeah, the top the top tier is the cleanest. It's the business district. Then you have the second, which is like a shop more of a shopping kind thing. Eventually, you get down to the floor, which is made up primarily of um Alien, citizens of various stripes, and it is more crime-ridden and ah dirty.
00:13:05
Speaker
Literally, the the filth of the higher tiers washes down to... Again, it's not subtle, and I wasn't trying to be subtle, so you don't have to tell me it's not subtle, because, ah you know, the thing about subtext and cowards, et etc. But...
00:13:19
Speaker
um but to so But yeah, so blood is ah blood Blood is an alien, and so she is commonly brought in by the IPPF to search for criminals in the areas that are less trusting of human law enforcement.
00:13:41
Speaker
and she So she's the blood of the title, and the thunder of the title is her talking gun. Yes. Which, i um my favorite thing about the whole book is that Thunder, the gun, has a moral code.
00:13:58
Speaker
Yes. And um as we learn across the early parts of the series, um Thunder has some psychological issues. um he has He has the Depression.
00:14:13
Speaker
part in large part because he is ah pacifist, um, who has been forced to live his life as a weapon. Um, and so he tries to, he, you know, he does his best to try to, uh, talk blood out of using lethal force.
00:14:31
Speaker
Um, and you know, it works and it doesn't, but that causes them, uh, to bicker. But, uh, yeah. So, you know, it's, uh,
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, Thunder is a talking gun with depression. So those are are those are the those are the leads, the book's leads. Yeah, and I love Thunder the gun.
00:14:53
Speaker
ah Great, great character. pretty yeah He's pretty good. Yeah, and also so like it's a special sci-fi gun. where so the So the idea is like in the The Police of This Future...
00:15:05
Speaker
um have these guns with artificial intelligence in them ah to basically help, um basically like what a golf caddy does, right? They help the the person holding the gun determine ah what's the best ammo to use at this point, to aim assistance, but also it has other functions like GPS and tracking, and ah you can make calls with it.
00:15:33
Speaker
And it has ah it has like a matter recycler and a fabricator, and it makes all sorts of different um Ammunitions that it can fabricate um out of ah matter that you have fed into it.
00:15:49
Speaker
So Thunder is one of those, um but he's considered old fashioned because his AI allows him to have a personality that um Whereas the more up-to-date ones have had the personality aspects removed while the ah while the like service functionality is is still there.
00:16:06
Speaker
It turns out that when the guns AIs were allowed to develop personalities, ah they tended to not like killing people, for example, which made it difficult for them to work ah for the police.
00:16:20
Speaker
So I have two key things about the book I want to bring up. ah One, it is not explained in the first issue, and i'm I'm kind of glad about that. I like it at this point as just being like the cool visual element of the book.
00:16:40
Speaker
But it is very clear... that Blood's hair is not hair. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely not. um You know, like I said, if she is she is an alien, yeah and um her hair is the source of her nickname, because it looks like basically a ah floating ah cloud of glossy red plasma, to use plasma again.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's almost gaseous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and And it doesn't, it's not like, it's not like physically attached to her head.
00:17:20
Speaker
It's like a cloud for which the, like her head is the center of its gravity. So like it it floats around her head, but it's not like attached to her scalp, which is a thing that has caused my wife to, when she looks at the covers to go, is her hair supposed to look like that?
00:17:38
Speaker
And I have Yes, because it's not normal hair. She's an alien with a gaseous floating cloud of ah hair-like substance. It's not even actually hair-like at all. It's it's like gloppy. I don't know.
00:17:56
Speaker
it's its It looks very cool. I like the bits visually when its like there are little pieces of it that are just kind of flying off. Yeah, yeah. that's That's always a ah cool look.
00:18:08
Speaker
But that leads me to my question, which is – because I know you've been working on this book for a long time. That is true. How mad were you about Superman's cape and Absolute Superman? Yeah.
00:18:21
Speaker
ah Man, ah no, not not so much. that's That was okay. There's been plenty of other things where I've been like, ah, that's that's kind of similar. But it's just like, I have to be cool about that kind of stuff because um other people won't necessarily notice those similarities if you don't point them out.
00:18:41
Speaker
um Usually. like yeah no no there was like um like When the first Hector Plasm book came out, we had a story in there about Hector fighting a mummy.
00:18:51
Speaker
And that came out like around the same time as the Hellboy story, Makoma, which had like a ah frame sequence about a mummy. And I was just like, oh everyone's going to think we ripped off Makoma because it's got the mummy parts are so similar.
00:19:05
Speaker
Nobody said anything. ah And I was like, I guess I'm the only one who sees... but nobody owns mummy Nobody owns mummies. Yeah, but there's similar punchlines about, like, hey, that guy like guy wrecked the mummy at the end of the story, but ah but whatever. But yeah, you know, there's a couple of other things that made me go, ah like, when they announced Thor Love and Thunder, I was like, oh, no. ah Because, yeah, what I mean...
00:19:32
Speaker
Yes, we have been working on this book for a a long time. we i so i started writing this 2017. so It's been in production for a while. so A lot of things have come and gone as I've been working on this.
00:19:49
Speaker
Second question. Did you intend... i not i don't want to give away necessarily a plot point from the first issue.
00:20:00
Speaker
But didn't I intend for that guy to look like that one guy? Well, yes. That. Okay. ah But also, did you intend to get just a little bit of Apocrypals in this comic?
00:20:17
Speaker
ah No, because I started writing this before Apocrypals existed. Okay, so so this is just it's just ah something something that's just you.
00:20:32
Speaker
Because as soon as I got to it, I was like, is that Bible? but don't I don't know. it You mean just the fact that Like, that there are books in this?
00:20:44
Speaker
Well, it yeah like, you know, the idea that they're, like, religious texts that they don't quite know what they are. um yeah Yeah. ah No, yeah, that's just And...
00:20:56
Speaker
and
00:21:00
Speaker
We don't necessarily learn more about those specific texts, but that that concept, that idea ah does recur yeah throughout the story. I thought you were asking about ah the chief and did I intend to
Creative Team Behind Blood and Thunder
00:21:14
Speaker
and tend for him to resemble a particular supporting character from ah popular sitcom? And the answer is kind of... I did say he could kind of look like this guy, and then he almost he very much looks like that guy.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, ah this is not the only comic where a police chief or cop character looks like that guy. if um and In retrospect, I kind of wish I had made him look like... ah I mean, it's great how it is, and I think everyone will laugh when they when they see the book, but ah he should have looked like...
00:21:56
Speaker
um I can't think of the actor's name. Bunk from The Wire. ah um Oh, yeah. yeah Wendell Pierce is his name? Wendell Pierce, yes, that's his name. he's ah He's currently playing... um the police chief on Elsbeth on CBS.
00:22:16
Speaker
And so now when I'm going over and revising some of the dialogue for the future episodes, or future issues, I'm hearing his voice, hearing the chief in his voice, and i was like, oh man, could have been bunk.
00:22:31
Speaker
but Hindsight. I mean, he could just look completely, he could show up and look completely different at some point. Yeah. ah He had he had had sci-fi plastic surgery.
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah. like yeah so Sometimes characters just look different yeah after an arc of a comic. ah ah That's true. Think about how in ah in Christopher Priest's Black Panther, Everett K. Ross is meant to be a Michael J. Fox character.
00:23:04
Speaker
parody character or type character like from spin city and he basically looks like michael j fox in the first issue and then never again well that that may have been that may have been a legal well consideration maybe so uh so but you know just to run down the creative team of the book it's you writing yeah uh Robert Kirkman, whose name is on the cover, is co-creator consultant?
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, so yeah this was a concept that ah he and I came up with together. ah original The original concept is actually even much older than 2017. But um yeah, it is something we developed together based on his a kernel of an idea of a space cop with a talking gun and and that kind of stuff. So...
00:23:58
Speaker
So yeah, it some it is something ah we developed together, and he was involved in ah the plotting process. you know I would give my ideas, and he would give suggestions and and that kind of stuff. so ah Art by E.J. Su.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yes. Who is amazing amazing. And I i really hope... um If nothing else, I hope this book kind of like rockets him to superstardom because you guys have no idea like where so some of us where this is going to go. like the This book really goes places. like We've been talking about stuff that happens in the first 20 pages, but like issue four is a completely different thing than issue one.
00:24:42
Speaker
And EJ gets to draw all sorts of different stuff. But you might you might know him. He was the... um He was the original artist and co-creator of Tech Jacket, now on TV, appearing in the ah end of season three of ah and Invincible on Amazon Prime.
00:25:00
Speaker
But yeah, he was the original Tech Jacket artist, but he's also done a lot of ah Transformers art, as well as more recently he's been doing ah Godzilla and ah Ultraman stuff at Marvel and elsewhere.
00:25:14
Speaker
Um, so he's got a lot of really great stuff out there and, um, but he really kills it on, on this book. I think people are going to be really amazed at some of the things because it definitely hit a point where I was like, my main goal in this book is to give EJ cool shit to draw.
00:25:33
Speaker
And so, uh, I really, really stretched to do my best to make sure the pages looked as cool as possible by you know, trying to give him cool scenarios to draw.
00:25:46
Speaker
ah Colors by M. Sassy K. Also great. And letters letters by Russ Wooten. yeah And they are as as professional as ever, those Russ Wooten letters. Yeah, ru I mean, Russ is a real pro, long time. And he does a ton of books, right? He does he does most of Kirkman's stuff. he's He's been working with Kirkman for like 20 years or more at this point.
00:26:11
Speaker
ah So, again, go go order Blood and Thunder from your local shop because, yeah yes, please, you're going to want to read it. It's it's ah it's really good, but you know i I'm not even joking.
00:26:28
Speaker
Thanks, bud. um And, yeah, if if your retailer carries the image scene ah catalog, it's um it's the first page. open like Open the cover, page one, launch of the month, Blood and Thunder number one.
00:26:41
Speaker
So literally the first page of the image catalog, in case you forget the title or my name or anything. ah Yeah, it's it's right there. should be easy to find, I hope.
00:26:52
Speaker
um And there's a ah you can find ah preview pages online. There's a couple... all over the place But they're also going to be running a preview in the back of ah Battle Beast number one, the new um Invincible Universe spinoff that sees Robert Kirkman and Ryan Otley return to the universe that they have brought now to television um that is apparently breaking sales records and possibly outselling Hush 2. We'll see.
00:27:23
Speaker
But there will be a preview in the back of Battle Beast number one as well, if you want to check that out. Take that, Hatoosh. Yeah. ah All right, Benito, let's take some listener questions. What say?
00:27:37
Speaker
All right. I think that's a ah cool and good idea. Okay, these listener questions come to us both from our Discord, which you have to ask for an invite to join, but as long as you ask nicely for an invitation, ah we hand those out pretty liberally.
00:27:54
Speaker
And you can also ask questions on BlueSky. ah You can follow us on BlueSky at warrocketajax.com over there.
Quick Meal Stories
00:28:04
Speaker
ah So here's the first question. This is from RavishingRileyRude.com On our discord.
00:28:11
Speaker
What is the fastest either of y'all ever ate a full meal? ah Oh man. ah
00:28:21
Speaker
I didn't, I haven't like timed myself. Well, I, I, I could say i have safely say that I have eaten an entire full meal in less than five minutes.
00:28:33
Speaker
Yeah, i can I can feel pretty confident in that, right? um You know those ah you know those like videos on ah Instagram and stuff where it's couples and they're like trying to match my wife's eating pace or you know trying to match my husband's eating pace? know what I'm talking about?
00:28:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife and I are definitely that kind of like thing because it's like, I'm i'm done and 80% of her food is still on the plate. Yeah.
00:29:01
Speaker
Usually Marlene ah finishes faster than me ah nowadays. i'm i'm a I'm a more leisurely eater than I used to be. But when I was a teenager, like high school age, and I worked at KB Toys, in the mall where I worked, there was sincerely, at the time I worked there, one place to eat inside the mall.
00:29:30
Speaker
It was a Chick-fil-A. Oh, yeah. Okay. And look, it being my only option, I ate there a lot. But after a while, there's only so many nuggets you can eat.
00:29:46
Speaker
And so there was a McDonald's that you could walk to, but you have to walk across the entire mall parking lot to get to it.
00:29:59
Speaker
And so I would leave on my 15-minute break, walk to the McDonald's, which was definitely a five-minute walk.
00:30:11
Speaker
but Okay, we'll say it's a three-minute walk. Walk to the McDonald's, three-minute walk. I now have 12 minutes of my break left. Order, wait for the food, eat my food, then make the walk back and be back.
00:30:29
Speaker
Just as my 15-minute break was ending. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. so i'm i'm thinking that's that was definitely five minutes or less eating whatever it was i got at mcdonald's ah on all of those breaks when i would go to mcdonald's to eat yeah ah So, yeah, I would say typically i eat pretty fast.
00:30:55
Speaker
The main things that slow me down are if it's really hot, the food, which is often the case since I eat a lot of soup. The soup is often quite hot.
00:31:07
Speaker
And the other thing is if it's crab legs.
00:31:13
Speaker
um If I'm mean getting if i getting crab legs, um and I'm going to be there a minute.
00:31:20
Speaker
Because you've got to do work to get... got to work for that, yeah. got to work for the crab meat. And, ah yeah, so I don't know. If I had some kind of, like, crab legs in a hot broth, I might be the slowest boy eating at the at the restaurant. ah We've gotten ah several questions, Benito, about...
00:31:44
Speaker
movie recommendations and so forth, but I'm going to encapsulate them with this question from WCWit on our Discord. Who wants to know, what's the best horror movie of 2025 so far?
00:31:59
Speaker
2025 so far? Okay, hold on. bring heo I don't know if I've seen any released this year yet. I'm i'm going to bring up my Letterboxd, and you guys can follow me on Letterboxd. I do and encourage you if you want to see If you want to see my real movie reviews, follow me on Patreon for $1.
00:32:18
Speaker
And you'll see my real reviews there. But I i tend to post little like ah snippet, kind of glib reviews ah on Letterboxd.
00:32:32
Speaker
As people do. of the The only movies from this year... The only movie from this year that I've seen...
00:32:44
Speaker
that I can think of is weirdly enough, uh, Captain America, brave new world, which I did not even necessarily anticipate going to see in a movie theater. Yeah. But, uh, but friends were going to see it and I was like, okay, I'll go.
00:33:01
Speaker
Um, ah it was pretty bad. Yeah. Was it? i yeah I thought about going to see it and then reviews were bad enough that I was like, uh, I will either watch that on Disney Plus or not at all.
00:33:14
Speaker
The wildest thing about that movie is that it is a sequel to The Incredible Hulk 2008. I had heard that. That's wild. Because it's kind like it's got the abomination in it?
00:33:25
Speaker
and Or the leader? The leader, yeah. Okay. yeah it's it Bruce Banner is not in it. Wild. But Harrison Ford as ah Thunderbolt Ross...
00:33:39
Speaker
is like kind of the lead character of it. And yeah, uh, Betty Ross is talked about constantly. Wow. All right.
00:33:54
Speaker
Betty Ross, who I don't think ever like broke up with this Bruce and stayed broken up for 15 fifteen years
00:34:05
Speaker
But yeah, it's it is mostly the sequel to a movie from 17 years ago. That's wild. but then Okay, so so looking at 2025 releases, um
00:34:18
Speaker
i've i have seen four. ah And I've seen Companion, Heart Eyes, The Gorge, and The Monkey. ah The Gorge is on...
00:34:31
Speaker
Apple TV, but otherwise I saw the rest in the theater. um And apart from The Gorge, they're all pretty good. ah But I would say definitely Companion is really good, but also The Monkey is really good.
00:34:46
Speaker
ah They both are kind of um
00:34:52
Speaker
horror comedies, although the ah Companion's not horror comedies. in a straightforward kind of way. It's a, it's a dark comedy with lots of violence, uh, kind of stuff. Um, whereas the monkey is, yeah, is, is more leans more on the like splatter comedy kind of direction.
00:35:11
Speaker
Um, but both of those are
Recent Horror Movies
00:35:14
Speaker
really good. and Uh, so it'll, For so far, it it'll be one of those. But, you know, I'm trying to keep an eye on... I try to see movies as often as I can. ah i've I've been out of town the last couple weekends, so I haven't seen... i was going to go see Mickey 17. I was going to see Novocaine.
00:35:34
Speaker
Neither of those are horror movies, but um I might see Novocaine tomorrow. ah Opus is out, but the reviews on Opus are pretty bad. Have you seen the trailer for that one, Matt?
00:35:45
Speaker
I don't think so. I'll tell you of the of the movies you mentioned, the one I'm most excited to see is Companion. Yes, that is the one you would like the best. um Hard Eyes is also is also really good.
00:35:57
Speaker
um Yeah, i ah I'm going to eventually see Hard Eyes 2, I'm sure. Yeah, um it's ah you know it' Josh Rubin who's done a lot of stuff on ah Dropout, but he also did Werewolves Within and Scare Me as another movie he did. That was really good.
00:36:14
Speaker
um But it's a really fun mashup of ah slasher characters And rom-com, it's like a genre spoof. So it's kind of like if Scream was also a rom-com.
00:36:29
Speaker
um And it's pretty fun and in that way. And also, Devin Saw was in it. I totally already talked about this on our other podcast that we have. Well, not everybody listening to this may listen to that. That's such a mistake.
00:36:45
Speaker
Well, ah this leads into... ah Hot Spring Summer on Blue Sky asking this, which is their stealth way of promoting Friends Till the End, our formerly Chucky podcast, now Purge podcast. It's ah it's ah the Purge podcast.
00:37:06
Speaker
Hot Spring Summer says, Benito, please tell Matt the most ridiculous Giallo or J-horror film title you can recall, and have Matt try to guess what the film is about. Oh, man. Oh, man.
00:37:18
Speaker
I can't remember if I've ever done it on on Mike, but I have definitely suggested to you and Erica, what if we just became Jollopodcast at some point? but yeah've We've also talked about just becoming a J-horror podcast. Yeah.
00:37:33
Speaker
Jollop, J-horror, or what if just watched all the Puppet Masters? Okay, we watched we watched one of those and that was enough. ah Yeah. i ah I'll tell you this.
00:37:46
Speaker
i've seen I've seen a handful of Giallo movies. Yeah? Do you know which ones you've seen? Like the big ones. Like Deep Red? like yeah Yeah, like the Mario Bava stuff and stuff like that.
00:37:57
Speaker
ah Okay, so you've seen like... ah Blood and Blackmail? Bay of Blood. Bay of Blood, okay. AKA Twitch of the Death Nerve.
00:38:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. um I've seen a ah few. But I've seen way more J-horror movies. Yeah. Way more. Yeah. um so So that's where I'm at with that, if that is but's informative for you at all.
00:38:23
Speaker
Okay. All right. So have you seen Blood and Black Lace? I don't think I have. That's the one, the guy, he's got the mask. He looks like, well, he looks like the question because it's a completely like blank mask.
00:38:35
Speaker
And he, um, that one's pretty good. If you haven't seen that one, it's kind of in some ways, it's not as Andrew Hickey, the host of the amazing ah history of rock music and 500 songs podcast, AKA the best podcast. Sorry, all other podcasts, including my own podcasts.
00:38:55
Speaker
Uh, as he always says, there's no first anything, but, uh, to the extent that we might want to point to a first Jallo blood and black lace might be it.
00:39:07
Speaker
Um, but that's a good one. I definitely recommend that. Um, uh, Oh, death laid an egg. That's, uh, it's a pretty good one, but it's not, it's not that long, right? Four words.
00:39:21
Speaker
Um, Oh, Oh, wow. And it's also, even, uh, it's, it's pretty rare that the English titles and the, no, that's not true. I guess, I guess part of the reason the English titles are so weird is they are direct translations of the, of the Italian titles. I was looking at yeah Black Lace, the, the ah real blood or Black Lace is a totally different title. Yeah. Yeah. Six, six women for, for the murderer is the, yeah, yeah, yeah. it But yeah, death laid an egg is, uh, death made the egg.
00:39:52
Speaker
So, um, ah The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion. Good title. um Hatchet for the Honeymoon? That's a Bava one.
00:40:04
Speaker
okay ah oh Five Dolls for an August Moon? Also Bava. I don't care for that one very much because it doesn't make any sense.
00:40:16
Speaker
um Lizard in a Woman's Skin? That's Fulci. That's a pretty good title. I like that title. I like that title. a Black Belly of the Tarantula.
00:40:29
Speaker
All right. what what Give me one to guess what it's what the movie is. All right. All right. Let's go with... All right. here's Okay. Here's a classic one. Dario Argento, besides Bava, the other like main dude of Jallo. There's a number of main dudes of Jallo. but i've I've seen some Argento movies. Have you seen Deep Red?
00:40:49
Speaker
Deep Red is the one that's got to pup the ventriloquist dummy scene. Yes, I think I've seen i think i've seen Deep Red. If you're only going to see one Jallo, probably Deep Red is the one. Yeah.
00:41:05
Speaker
But to here's an Argento one. ah Four Flies on Gray Velvet. o
00:41:13
Speaker
Four Flies on Gray Velvet. I mean, the thing is, like um I'm going to guess what that movie's about, and it's going to be way off, because a lot of times these titles aren't actually descriptive of the content of the movie.
00:41:30
Speaker
um But I mean, what what it evokes is like... An old dilapidated house ah we're where possibly things are rotting.
00:41:42
Speaker
That's i that's like it's a good thought. Here's the synopsis as given and on IMDb. Roberto, a drummer in a rock band, keeps receiving weird phone calls and being followed by a mysterious man.
00:41:56
Speaker
One night he manages to catch up with his persecutor. and tries to get him to talk, but in the ensuing struggle, he accidentally stabs him. He runs away, but he understands his troubles have just begun when the following day he receives an envelope with photos of him killing the man.
00:42:12
Speaker
Someone is killing all his friends and trying to frame him for the murders. This is basically Lost Highway. Oh, hmm. hadn't thought about that.
00:42:23
Speaker
That's very similar to the plot of Lost Highway. i mean, Lost Highway takes a turn after that. yeah but But I've been thinking about the movie Lost Highway a lot lately. i can imagine, yeah. yeah The Forgotten Lynch is what I think that is.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah. So there's also another Fulci called Don't Torture a Duckling, ah which is that's a great title. great wow Great title. And it does have like a so like a stuffed toy duck in it, but I feel like it would be really easy to mistaken to mistake it for um the New York Ripper, which is a different... um Gosh, is that one that one might also be Fulci, but i'm I might be wrong.
00:43:04
Speaker
But... ah That one has a killer who talks in a Donald Duck voice. ah So it might be easy to confuse those.
00:43:16
Speaker
but
00:43:19
Speaker
All right. here's Here's our next question. This is from Other Josh, who says, with Chris absent, which one of you is the scholar and which is the clown? um It's all clowns.
00:43:31
Speaker
Well, here's the thing. Even when Chris is around, it is entirely
00:43:41
Speaker
relative. It is entirely contextual. yeah I can be a scholar in some contexts, and I can be a clown in others. But same with Benito, same with Chris.
00:43:55
Speaker
Yeah, and and so, like... So the the scholar and clown thing, I think as like a meme, as a joke, as a running gag, it's funny.
00:44:06
Speaker
I don't like it as a sincere framing of the show, um, of Apocrypals. Um, partly because that's not even what the original review was.
00:44:18
Speaker
That's just what it morphed into. Um, and, uh, And, you know, a lot of people i know use it as shorthand because the idea of a lay person and an experienced person doing a podcast together on a particular topic where one person knows more about it than the other, that's a common, it's a common like double act for a podcast. And so I've seen a lot of people start to refer to that as, you know, a scholar and clown, but, you know, as a sincere framing of Apocrypals, um,
00:44:51
Speaker
I don't love it, yeah, partly because
00:44:56
Speaker
Chris has, you know, Chris is Chris. And ah
00:45:06
Speaker
there was nothing I could say that he's not going to yell at me via text message um afterwards. Chris is great and so handsome and undeserving of whatever illness he's suffering right now.
00:45:18
Speaker
Chris can be very insightful on a Parker Pals. Right. And that's what I was getting at. Right. yeah um And so I don't like it because it hurts Chris's feelings, but also, but it also hurts mine because it's like, I think Chris is the primary driver of insight on the podcast. Right.
00:45:37
Speaker
I can prevent, provide a lot of like contextual information for the texts we're doing. I think Chris is the one who's really good at um making emotional connections with the texts and providing, um,
00:45:49
Speaker
insightful interpretations, which is what he's always been so great at right? that It's the reason he became ah the only ah comics critic that anyone could name, right?
00:45:59
Speaker
But also, it undervalues my extremely good jokes that I make all the time yeah it's on the podcast. i Yes, I agree. I think a lot of people would think that it's complimentary to be the the scholar and insulting to be the clown.
00:46:20
Speaker
But if you're trying to be funny, yeah and you're only being referred to as the scholar, then that's insulting. So, like, you know, don't put people in boxes. So, so I mean, I know the other part of the the joke and the meme is me saying it's impossible to know which one of us is the scholar and which one is the clown. But also, I'm not joking, because, um you know, at any given time, it's it's either of us, right?
00:46:45
Speaker
um Yeah. we I think we both, you know, okay, you know, I have experience with ancient literature because that's what my degree is in, but it's like, it doesn't make me the scholar, and i I literally don't have a degree in biblical studies, so it's like... and And as far as textual analysis, you've both done that professionally.
00:47:08
Speaker
Right, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Our buddy Ben, Franz Ferdinand 2 on Blue Sky, he says... i love Ben. I love Ben too. If you could have a lock-in at any building besides a church, where would you have a lock-in? Daddytown.
00:47:27
Speaker
aye ah I would have a lock-in at i mean, any building at all? ah Jungle Jim's.
00:47:39
Speaker
Oh, okay. Well, all right. Matt wins. It's got to be Jungle Gems. I thought I was like, Gaddy Town, I got Party. i don't know if I don't know who has Gaddy Town. It's a pizza buffet with an arcade in it. you know It's like a Dave and Buster's or a Chuck E. Cheese kind of, but it's a pizza buffet. So it's like if this it's like a CC's.
00:48:00
Speaker
And there's also a movie theater in there. And then there's video games and there's a merry-go-round. i kind i mean, that's pretty good. yeah That's pretty good. I am not as very familiar with Gaddy Town, but I'm looking at it now. don't know how many locations there are. I don't know to what degree it is a chain.
00:48:17
Speaker
I'll tell you this. When when you when you search for it ah which I was going to say Google, but i don't Google is not my go-to search engine anymore.
00:48:29
Speaker
Yeah, you had to bang it? I duck-duck-goed it. um um When I searched for it, first of all, I misspelled it.
00:48:40
Speaker
Ah, right. Second, the Lexington, Kentucky location is the one that came up. Okay, alright. It might be the one. But also think about this.
00:48:51
Speaker
um If I was in a lock-in and like other people weren't there, then I could yell, who ruled Gaddy Town?
00:49:02
Speaker
It would be me. I nearly said some kind of pizza place. Yeah. um But then I realized like I can go anywhere. i can make this any building at all.
00:49:13
Speaker
I'm making it Jungle Gems. I had a conversation... is the clutchest possible answer to this question, I think. I had a conversation with a friend the other night where I just offhandedly brought up Juggle Gems to her, and she was like, yeah, Juggle Gems, I've been there!
00:49:29
Speaker
and And her our whole face lit up. and And we had a ah ah nice ah conversation about Juggle Gems for a while after that. Nice. so it's It's a place that sparks joy.
00:49:45
Speaker
jungle gyms Absolutely. Mordillo the Magnificent asks, is Hectorplasm a case of nor nominative nominative determinism or a chosen alias?
Origin of Hector Plasm
00:49:57
Speaker
ah If you read the book, you'll see it's not his it's not his real name. right it is ah yeah It is a name that is given to him by one of his mentors because it is not safe to let your enemies know your true name.
00:50:09
Speaker
um Hector is his real first name, or Ettore, at least. He is Italian. But Hector is his real first name, but Plasm is not his real last name. It is it is an assigned alias given to him by one of his mentors.
00:50:23
Speaker
King of Doma on our Discord says, There's always talk about the probably never going to happen Sims-Wilson writing collab. What would never be written about in the Wilson-Sereno collab that never shall be?
00:50:36
Speaker
I think this is a slam dunk easy answer. Oh, man. or All right. In fact, I think if we got offered this, this is this is when we would do a writing collab.
00:50:51
Speaker
All right. And also, Erica would have to be involved, too. Okay. If we got approached for a Chucky tie-in or spinoff comic. Yes. Absolutely.
00:51:04
Speaker
Or the Purge or Final Destination. Yeah, I mean, any of those. But I'm envisioning something where
00:51:14
Speaker
we're like the credited co-writers and Erica is doing the art, but also Erica is doing plotting with us. Yeah, the problem is that Erica's a better writer than either of us. She doesn't need us is the is the problem. That's true. Erica could just do it.
00:51:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think if someone were smart, they would offer her that, actually. um so i don't know who has the... and i don't I feel like there haven't been Chucky comics in a while, but there have been Chucky comics. like There's definitely at least two hack-slash-Chucky crossovers.
00:51:54
Speaker
yeah so Someone's got There hasn't been... like okay There was a Devil's Due chuck ebook Right, and that would make sense.
00:52:06
Speaker
the At least the first Hackslatch crossover, probably. ah Which was by Brian Polito. ah Master of Horror, Brian Polito. Yeah.
00:52:17
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know who would have... I mean, my guess would be if someone was going to put out a Chucky book now, it would probably be like Dynamite.
00:52:31
Speaker
That does make the most sense, actually. actually, now that you say that. Yeah. um But yeah, there haven't been Chucky comics in quite a while that I'm aware of. The the last one that I can tell is was this Devil's Due book.
00:52:49
Speaker
That was like a straight-up Chucky comic. I mean, crossover stuff. yeah yeah um But they could... they could people are People are aching for for more Chucky since the TV show ended.
00:53:02
Speaker
and Very true. I bet there's going to need to be some connective tissue between the end of the TV show and the but whatever the next movie is. Yeah, exactly. You've got to fill in those blanks.
00:53:14
Speaker
Yeah. So... Just saying. Yeah. You could do anything... not like ah Not like a Gigi solo story, but like anything else.
00:53:30
Speaker
I think Erica would love to do... Actually, that's probably true. yeah A Gigi solo story, or yeah more more likely a Tiffany solo story. People... Yeah, you're just leaving money on the table.
00:53:44
Speaker
I would read Erica's... Okay, here's an idea. A line of Chucky comics... Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Erica just gets the Tiffany book.
00:53:56
Speaker
Right. Like, Erica's working on the Tiffany book. And then you and I maybe write the Chucky book. Okay. And then eventually they cross over.
00:54:08
Speaker
Of course, yeah. Obviously. Yeah. Mike Donahue has questions for each of us on Blue Sky. Okay. The one for me is, if you could do an improv show with one wrestler, who would it be?
00:54:21
Speaker
um There's only one wrestler I know of that actually does improv, because I've seen him do improv live, and that's Colt Cabana. So that's who it would be. Because doing improv with people who don't know how to do improv, like yeah there's an element of improv in wrestling I know.
00:54:40
Speaker
But like comedic improv, doing that with people who don't have some stage experience or training yeah is a lot of work. so what do you think How do you think that um Dimension 20 with the WWE wrestlers is going to go?
00:55:02
Speaker
I think it'll be good. I'm i'm of mixed feelings about it because... Everything with w WWE wrestlers in it has to be like weirdly w WWE branded brand and fit in like their their media portfolio and shit.
00:55:23
Speaker
And that grosses me out, and I don't like it. But the people who are involved, ah was it Xavier Woods and Bayley and... I forget who else, but like everybody who's involved with that is, is like good.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah. So it will probably be good. I, I can, ah I can imagine it being good. Oh, Kofi Kingston and Chelsea green are the other ones. Yeah. yeah That'll be good.
00:55:52
Speaker
Yeah. um I haven't watched a lot of dimension 20 just because it's really long. Yes. Always. But that might, that might get me to like have it on in the background during work or something.
00:56:07
Speaker
Mike's question for you, Benito, is what Apocrypals adjacent person would you love to discuss a horror movie with? Ooh. Like someone who's been on your yeah episodes with guests or any that?
00:56:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:26
Speaker
Man, I don't know which of our guests like horror movies. Any of the multi-pals. Any of the multi-pals, yeah. I mean, love talking to Aaron Higashi, and so I'd talk to that dude about anything, but I don't know if he likes horror movies.
00:56:41
Speaker
I suspect Dan McClellan might. ah and i I don't know. i would love to talk to Dan McClellan specifically about the movie Heretic.
00:56:54
Speaker
yeah which i know you Which I know you've watched recently, Matt. I did. I
00:57:00
Speaker
i would i came away from Heretic being like, ah that didn't really have much to say about religion, really. um But it was entertaining. like Hugh Grant was entertaining.
00:57:11
Speaker
Hugh Grant should have won an Oscar for that performance. For for that part where he sings Creep. Yeah. um I'm not...
00:57:23
Speaker
I'm not sure how much I agree agree with you that it doesn't have anything to say about ah religion. um But um I actually... i haven't, but I thought about messaging ah dan ah Dr. Dan McClellan ah like right after I saw the movie. I saw that one in the theater because...
00:57:43
Speaker
This is a minor spoiler, but there's a part where Hugh Grant's... Well, you already talked about it last week. Hugh Grant's character talks about... um Yeah, the bit where he sings Creep and it's talking about how songs melo rip off melodies from each other.
00:58:01
Speaker
And yeah so he uses that to talk about how religions rip rip each other off. And the thing is, he's he gives a whole presentation with like slides and everything.
00:58:12
Speaker
And all the stuff he's saying is complete bullshit. and um And it's specifically a kind it's specifically a series of claims that Dan has debunked multiple times on his channel.
00:58:25
Speaker
Right. Well, and the and the two missionaries say as much, right? like yeah theyve Yeah, yeah. They tell him that he's cherry-picking his argument. and Right. so but so But also, to be clear, a lot of the things he's saying is wholesale made up.
00:58:39
Speaker
um and ah And so the reason I wanted to message Dan about it is I wanted to be be like be on the lookout for a resurgence in people making these claims because they're going see this movie and not realize that you're not supposed to believe the things that he's saying because he's constantly lying, ah which...
00:59:01
Speaker
That's also a spoiler, but I guess people probably picked up on the fact that Hugh Grant is the villain in movie. I think he's pretty obviously the villain. Even in the trailer, it shows him imprisoning two teen girls. yeah Yeah. so um But to yeah, I would... Oh, man. now i Now I feel like we've got to invite him on Apocrypal to talk about Heretic.
00:59:24
Speaker
um Chris would never watch it, though. That's the trick. Well, Chris was interested because of the Hugh Grant. Because a trap house, yeah. But it's not really a death trap house. no and also Once you see what's in the basement, I think Chris would tap out.
00:59:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think it becomes too intense by the end. yeah But it also like the movie also lost me at that point, kind of. like It became less interesting to me at that point. I definitely think the the mind game stuff is the most interesting part of the movie, first for sure. sure.
00:59:54
Speaker
I think the part before they even go into the room where he's like talking about songs ripping off other songs and board games ripping off other board games. Yeah. um like When they're just in his like sitting room and he's kind of stringing them along about his his wife.
01:00:15
Speaker
Yeah. I think that's the best part of the movie. that's I mean, that's probably true. Yeah. David Williams on Blue Sky asks, I just saw that we have four Bojangles in Dallas.
01:00:27
Speaker
What should we try first besides biscuits? We're definitely getting biscuits. I would say make those Cajun Filet biscuits. yeah I mean, look, i they have a lot of things on the menu.
01:00:41
Speaker
There's a lot of things you can get. Cajun Filet biscuit, though. Like, you gotta. It's probably the best thing to have. Yeah. For sure. now But, let me say this.
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, go ahead. as As someone who has had Bojangles around since I was a tiny child, because I grew up in the region where it has been around since, like, the 70s, because it started in Charlotte, and I grew up an hour away from Charlotte.
01:01:16
Speaker
A lot of people don't go to Bojangles for the chicken. But I'm telling you, get just the regular chicken at Bojangles. Oh, yeah. You mean like i like like right in the bone-in chicken?
01:01:32
Speaker
Yes. yeah a box Get eight-piece box of chicken with the biscuits and... I can't vouch for the sweet tea there anymore. it used to be good.
01:01:43
Speaker
Somehow it stopped being good. I don't know how that happened. yeah But definitely get the box of eight pieces of of like chicken ah with biscuits.
Food Recommendations at Bojangles
01:01:58
Speaker
And you know you you can get like a couple of big sides. Get the seasoned fries because they're awesome. Yeah. So I was going to ask where you land on fries versus bow rounds.
01:02:14
Speaker
I'm always a fry guy. Okay. Because if – I mean the bow rounds are great, obviously. Yeah, they're good. I just i prefer the seasoned fries. The seasoned fries are some of the best fast food fries I've ever had.
01:02:26
Speaker
If you get get them hot and fresh, there's nothing like them. Here's the thing about Bojangles across the board –
01:02:35
Speaker
You can go to Bojangles even sometimes at the exact same time of day. And the quality of what you get can vary so wildly.
01:02:48
Speaker
like i've never There's no other fast food place where you're so where you're rolling the dice so hard on... These biscuits might be great, or they might be undercooked, or they might be overcooked. yeah like These fries might be fresh and delicious, or they might have been made two hours ago. like I've even gotten Cajun filet biscuits that like you can tell that this was just not a good batch.
01:03:22
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's part of the appeal of Bojangles to me, honestly, that you go there and you're not quite sure if it's going to be ah transcendent experience or one where you're like, oh, this was a bad one.
01:03:38
Speaker
It adds an element of danger to the experience. Well, it also makes it feel real. Sure. right Oh, yeah. like Like McDonald's, you're always getting the same thing every time.
01:03:49
Speaker
Absolutely. Always the same. Because it is manufactured food. At Bojangles, it's like – it depends on who's working there that day, when the last batch of food got made.
01:04:03
Speaker
like You're probably going to wait on your French fries. Yeah. And that's just that's just part of it. Yep. um And you said you said sweet tea, which, okay.
01:04:16
Speaker
But if the Dallas locations offer Cheerwine and you've never had Cheerwine, you should get a Cheerwine. Yeah, i'm I'm actually not recommending the sweet tea. Right.
01:04:27
Speaker
but Do the ones near you have the... um The exclusive ah Mountain Dew, the southern-style Mountain Dew or whatever it's supposed to be.
01:04:39
Speaker
i don't think they have that anymore. They had it for a while. That may be it that may have been a limited-time thing that went away. I tried it once, and it was bad. Yeah, i don't I don't drink any varietal of Mountain Dew.
01:04:52
Speaker
um But yeah, if they have Cheerwine... You should get Cheerwine. Cheerwine is my go-to Bojangles drink. If you want a simple meal, Cajun filet biscuit, seasoned fries, Cheerwine, I think is a great way to start.
01:05:09
Speaker
Yes. that's To me, that's that's absolutely the stuff to get at Bojangles and i've I just happen to know a lot of people that will only get Cajun filet biscuits or whatever at Bojangles if they go.
01:05:24
Speaker
Yeah, and they never get the chicken. I've never had the regular chicken, so you got me there, Matt. I'm advocating for getting the regular chicken because with my some of my local friends from around here, we actually have something that we call the Bojangles test. Yeah.
01:05:43
Speaker
Which is, if you go to a restaurant, particularly an expensive restaurant, and you get some kind of fried chicken, is it better than Bojangles' fried chicken? Eight out of ten times, it it does not pass the Bojangles' test. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ah So, simply for the benefit of being able to do the Bojangles' test, I would say, get the bone-in fried chicken.
01:06:13
Speaker
ah we're We're over an hour, so a couple more questions and I think we'll be done. All right, cool. um This question is from SluggoaSummers on our Discord.
01:06:26
Speaker
Benito, are there springtime monsters? We have lots of springtime spirits and stuff, but who is out there eating people or whatever in March? ah ah Yeah, although you know i don't...
01:06:38
Speaker
um That's not the time of year that i my particular ah studies focus on, my particular focus is on. um But, I mean, certainly ah the carnival season, right, which is the period between Epiphany and then Lent, so that ends with Mardi Gras or Trove Tuesday or Pancake Day or whatever you call it in your ah local...
01:07:07
Speaker
culture uh so i mean we're in the linton season now so carnival has ended but uh there's plenty of carnival monsters that depending on um you know what culture you're looking at, but again, the Alps in a big way. um You'll see a lot of stuff that will ah that you know would look like Krampus to you.
01:07:30
Speaker
ah Perixen and other similar things, but the Kinderfresser is a carnival carnival figure, the child the Child Eater, and all sorts of other ones.
01:07:41
Speaker
ah There's also in Sweden, or I think it's Sweden, some some Nordic country, but I think Sweden, ah where they have a tradition of ah Easter witches.
01:07:54
Speaker
um You can hear me talk about those on an episode of the Weird Christmas podcast where we talked about Christmas witches, but then as a bonus, we also talked about the Easter witches, and so you can hear about um that whole tradition and and and what's up with that. But um yeah, certainly...
01:08:10
Speaker
you know, ah around any time anytime of year, ah that's like a major astronomical slash astrological event. um Equinoxes and such, you can expect there to be some folklore surrounding it.
01:08:27
Speaker
And it's usually witches, or it's ghosts, or it's elves, or fairies, depending on what part of ah the world you're in. So, yeah.
01:08:37
Speaker
Yeah. I wish I could name um another more specific one other than the Easter witches off the dome, but ah that's about all I can think of right now. But they definitely exist. They definitely are there.
01:08:50
Speaker
I mean, this time of year, people are always thinking about leprechauns. Leprechauns, of course, too. Yeah. um You know, ah it it is leprechaun time, even though my local McDonald's is out of Shamrock Shake Mix.
01:09:08
Speaker
ah Yeah. Unbelievable. That's a tragedy. ah Stone Cold HCC, an account that exists only to oh man oh hell yeah ask questions of Warrock. Jay Ajax wants to know, what the hell is the difference between a bloke and a governor?
01:09:25
Speaker
ah Well, um a bloke works at a local or a municipal level. A governor works at the state at the state level.
01:09:37
Speaker
I think – here's what I think. I think if we're going to substitute American English words for bloke and govna – Yeah. Bloke is like dude.
01:09:49
Speaker
Yeah. ah but A bloke is a dude. Govna is chief. Yeah. Yes. So when you call somebody governor, it's like you're calling them chief.
01:10:02
Speaker
yeah When you're calling somebody a bloke, it's like saying dude it's like it's that dude. it's Yeah, some hey it's just some bloke. yeah But, hey, governor, nice spats.
01:10:15
Speaker
I wonder if there's the sarcastic governor. like ah Like there's the sarcastic chief? Without doubt. yeah i would I would almost guess the...
01:10:27
Speaker
ah certainly the plurality of governors are sarcastic. If not, majority. yeah Much like Chief. That's much like Chief. Much like Chief.
01:10:38
Speaker
um And this reminds me, you should have put you should have put a Greggs next to your British consulate on Gimmick Street. Yeah, we should have put a Greggs there. Get a sausage roll. Yeah, i was I was talking about ah when we were told that people in other countries don't... Wawa and Sheetz sounds like gibberish to them.
01:11:06
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it ain't no different from Gregg's. Gregg's and Tesco and... Yeah. ah yeahp Now I'm blanking on the name of other... Sainsbury's. Those are grocery stores, but yeah. ah yeah ah Alright, here's our last question.
01:11:28
Speaker
From Margo City One. Hi, Benito. What's the best old-timey comic strip that no one ever talks about? Oh, man. That's a great question. And ah yes, I am going to ah say that the um the best one that I think I never hear anybody talk about um that I would recommend is ah The Kinder Kids.
01:11:59
Speaker
um by Lionel Feininger, who went on to become like a renowned like painter and fine artist. But it was a relatively short-lived strip that ran from 1906 to
01:12:13
Speaker
to 1907. I had to look this up because I wanted to get the years right. But um it's not to be confused with the Cats and Jammer kids, which was a very long-running strip. ah I think so the longest-running, longest-continuously-running strip in history ah that was about two kids, ah Hans and Fritz, who lived with the captain and they made trouble and that that kind of stuff.
01:12:37
Speaker
ah The Kinder Kids is like is more like a... It's almost like a Kirby-style kid gang. Um, they have, uh, let's see. Hold on. Their names are strenuous Teddy, Daniel Webster, pie mouth.
01:12:51
Speaker
Um, the somewhat unfortunately named little Japanski who might be a robot. Um, I think he's a robot. And then they have a dog named Sherlock bones. Um, but, uh, they have adventures, but the art is just, it's beautiful in a very, uh,
01:13:12
Speaker
verging on a surreal, but like, uh, it's just a, it's a funny adventure strip where it's like you have, uh, it's if imagine if, if Kirby made little Nemo and that gets you in the ballpark, I think.
01:13:28
Speaker
Um, if, you if you imagine the, kind the Kirby who made, um boy commandos or, uh, you know, the dingbats of danger street or newsboy Legion.
01:13:40
Speaker
If you imagine him, ah trying to take those characters and make, and make little Nemo or crazy cat. And that kind of, gets you an idea a little bit of, of what that strip is. And, uh, that's a really, it's a really good one. And because it only ran as a Sunday for like a year,
01:14:00
Speaker
yeah It's very easy to get them all in one book. right um it's ah It's a slim volume. um and In fact, they usually ah include a second strip he did called We Will A Winkie's World.
01:14:13
Speaker
um You can get those all in one book. and I think that's probably still in print. um and if so If you can get that, I definitely recommend it. um It's very fun. so I'm going to guess that...
01:14:27
Speaker
The joke of that title is that it's Kids Kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it is it's spelled it's spelled with ah ah hyphens, so it's Kinder Kids. But yeah, it's ah it's absolutely, yeah, the Kids Kids, yeah.
01:14:42
Speaker
Yeah. But um in in searching for that just now, um a lot of... um Montessori schools and preschools and daycares have come up. Where I guarantee you that people who started those, some of the at least some of the people who started those, do not know that that is kids' kids.
01:15:05
Speaker
yeah Yeah, for sure. But you
01:15:11
Speaker
know, thanks for hopping on here and chatting with me for a while. And Chris, ah my my beautiful, brilliant friend, of a million talents.
01:15:23
Speaker
I hope you're feeling better soon. Yes. Hopefully Chris will be back next week feeling hail and Hardy. But, but know, before we get out of here, please let everybody know where they can find you, where they can find your stuff, where they can follow you and how they can get blood and thunder.
01:15:44
Speaker
Yeah. um You know, the easiest place to find me is on blue sky, um Benito Serino, all one word and dot BSky dot social, or just search my name and you'll find it.
01:15:55
Speaker
um You can, and from there you can go to my profile and I've got a link tree and you can find um links to all my own personal stuff, all the Apocryphal stuff, all the friends to the end stuff is it's, it's all on there.
01:16:07
Speaker
And um also the other major important one is my Patreon page. where I do all sorts of ah work, including, like I said, horror movie reviews. $1 a month is enough ah to get, ah i would say, at this point, about six horror movie reviews a month.
01:16:27
Speaker
um and And also access to... news and updates about what I'm doing. You can, of course, subscribe at higher levels where you can get my serialized translation of the 18th century sci-fi satire, The Underground Journey of Niels Clem, which I've been working on for over a year now.
01:16:48
Speaker
um And other stuff, including work on my Santa Claus book, which will resume soon. ah And if you go to the top level, you get all sorts of secret art previews and that kind of stuff.
01:16:59
Speaker
So, but you can But there's also a free level. I try to make it easy for people to to follow my Patreon. um And yeah, again, if you have a local comic shop, that's the best way to order Blood and Thunder.
01:17:15
Speaker
If you don't have one, DCBS, the Discount Comic Book Service, dcbservice.com, you can pre-order it there for 50% off. So $2 for 40-page comic. for a forty page comic um Issue one is 40 pages, 28 pages of story.
01:17:32
Speaker
And then we're going to have design stuff and text pieces in the back. So $2 if you pre-order off of DCBS. So if you don't have a local comic shop, try that. But if you do have a local comic shop, I do recommend that you order through them.
01:17:53
Speaker
Thanks, Benito. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Matt. thanks Thanks for having me of ah of a Thursday. ah If you would like to email us ah a Listener question, or if you want to sponsor the show, or if you want to spend it send us an Every Story Ever list, or get in touch with us about whatever else, our email address is warrocketpodcast at gmail.com.
01:18:20
Speaker
You can support this show and all the other shows that Chris and I do by going to patreon.com slash warrocketajax and kicking in as little as $1 per month.
01:18:30
Speaker
to make sure that we do this show weekly, that we do Comics Catch-Up monthly, Every Story Ever monthly, Movie Fighters and Snack Situation, all that stuff is made possible and helped by your support at Patreon and as a patron.
01:18:45
Speaker
You get every single one of those shows completely head-free. And we will thank you on the show if you become a patron when Chris is here. You can follow us on Tumblr, warrocketpodcast.tumblr.com. You can follow us on BlueSky, warrocketajax.com over there.
01:18:59
Speaker
You can join our Discord. If you ask for an invitation on any of the places I just mentioned, then you can ah join over there on the Discord. We'll send you an invitation, and you can be part of that community.
01:19:12
Speaker
Our website is warrocketajax.com. It has every episode of the show we've ever done. warrocketwiki.com is the fan-run repository of information about this show, War Rocket Ajax. If you want to find me and my stuff, go to mattdwilson.net to find links to my comics, my books, my other podcasts, and my social medias. And if you were curious, yes, ah my books were stolen in that meta thing.
01:19:41
Speaker
I searched for them today. oh man. And they're in the database that got stolen. So, but hey, maybe I'll be part of a class action lawsuit pretty soon.
01:19:52
Speaker
Nice.
01:19:56
Speaker
Bye, everybody. We'll be back next week. Hopefully, Chris will be with me ah with another show. In the meantime... Please remember, and Benito, you can do this with me if you like, that black lives matter.
01:20:09
Speaker
Trans rights are human rights. As are abortion rights. Drag is not a crime. And cops are not your friends. And diversity is not the problem. There we go.
01:20:20
Speaker
But we love you. We love you. Yeah! He's born every one us. He's every one of us. He's saved life. He every man. woman. child.
01:20:30
Speaker
He's man.
01:20:37
Speaker
to flash.