The Culture War #42 - Fighting Woke Comics, Movies, And Music, Rise Of The Rippaverse w⧸Eric July
Episode Stats
Length
2 hours and 16 minutes
Words per Minute
205.66191
Summary
On today's episode of The Culture War, we're going to talk about winning the culture war, and it's a lot to do with movies, video games, and comic books. But in order to win a culture war you have to make a culture. Which is why, as we're getting started with this episode, I'm proud to say that Together Again's cover of Smokey Mike and the God King has debuted on iTunes at No. 1! We're also joined by Eric July of the Ripverse, a comic book series that launched a wildly successful $3.7 million campaign that has now gone on to become a multi-million dollar enterprise, and now has a non-ISOM product in AlphaCore, written by the legendary Chuck Dixon. Thanks to everyone for all your support, stay tuned for Part 2 of the Culture War coming soon! BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly! If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge, or call in to speak with an advisor for free, zero-service, free-of-charge. BetmGMGMG Casino is the king of online gambling. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at your fingertips with the same Vegas Strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like Blackjack, Baccarat, Roulette, and Roulette with the MGM Grand, Blackjack and Blackjack. with the GameSense Casino app today! Download the MGM's Casino App today. . BetmoGMGMGM & GameSense reminds you that you're not playing responsibly, betmGM Casino, bet meGMGM Casino - Betmo GMG Casino, the King of online casinos. - I'm betting responsibly! BetmoGambling! - M&MGM & Gambling Ontario only, betMGM Casino - I'll bet me $19, 19+ to Wager Ontario only! , I bet me MGM & I'll play responsibly. I'll be playing responsibly! . BetMeGM & I'm Bet MeGM, I'll Play responsibly, Bet Me GMG - Bet Meek & C's 19+ To Wager, I bet Meek and C's19+ to wager Ontario Only, I'm Playing responsibly, Bet Meck & C?
Transcript
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On today's episode of The Culture War, we're going to talk about winning The Culture War.
00:01:05.660
And it's a lot to do with movies, video games, comic books especially.
00:01:11.960
But in order to win a culture war, you have to make a culture.
00:01:15.080
Which is why, as we're getting started with this episode, I'm proud to say that together again,
00:01:19.800
TimCast's cover of Smokey Mike and the God King has debuted on iTunes at number one!
00:01:25.640
Honestly, it was kind of funny to wake up and be like, normally we put out a bunch of songs already,
00:01:31.360
and when we do, we're like, hey, let's see if we can make number one by the weekend or something.
00:01:35.800
And then, you know, maybe Friday night, it's like, yes, we hit it!
00:01:38.740
I wake up, the song's only been up since midnight.
00:01:41.300
So we're talking like people at three or four in the morning buying the song.
00:01:45.780
And I wake up and Together Again by Smokey Mike and the God King, performed and covered by us,
00:01:53.260
It bumped down a little bit as the day is winding on, but I guess when the song released, you know.
00:01:58.020
So we put out the song, it's doing really, really well.
00:02:02.340
For those that aren't familiar, we released this song.
00:02:05.080
It's out officially today at thebestsongever.com.
00:02:07.480
We took a song that was written by Jeremy Boring and Michael Knowles called Together Again,
00:02:12.580
and they did this as a big F-you to the music industry that was trying to lock them out.
00:02:17.000
Jeremy Boring had offered $150,000, 100 times the market rate to perform a song and was rejected.
00:02:24.580
I assume, I think Jeremy assumes it's for political reasons.
00:02:27.540
And so we did a modern version covering their song once again as we're going to team up with them,
00:02:33.820
we're going to give a middle finger to the music industry,
00:02:35.540
we're going to make music, and we're going to chart.
00:02:41.320
So now we launched this song together at the Daily Wire.
00:02:44.380
We're both teaming up to promote it, and we debuted on iTunes at number one.
00:02:49.140
I'm hoping that the song can chart fairly well,
00:02:51.580
and then we can continue to laugh at the music industry because they can't shut us out.
00:02:54.720
But speaking of industries trying to shut people out,
00:02:57.520
hanging out with us today to talk about winning the culture war is Eric July of the Ripaverse.
00:03:02.160
Chris, you launched this new comic book series, and you're wildly successful now.
00:03:13.780
But yeah, Ripaverse, it was only, believe it or not, only a year and a half ago
00:03:17.500
when I launched that thing, which is crazy, with ISOM,
00:03:21.260
and then that turned into a $3.7 million campaign.
00:03:25.660
And we had another multimillion-dollar campaign after this,
00:03:28.840
and we just released our first non-ISOM product in AlphaCore number one,
00:03:35.200
which was wrote by the great legendary Chuck Dixon.
00:03:45.160
But obviously for the better, man, I'm really blessed to be in this situation, man.
00:03:49.920
And I asked Ian to join us because Ian is a huge comic book nerd.
00:03:52.860
I actually have comics right here on the table with me, the Infinity Gauntlet.
00:03:57.760
I used to, in like 1993, I got into comics pretty hard.
00:03:59.940
My buddy gave me Infinity Gauntlet number four where Thanos,
00:04:02.880
basically where he starts, this is number three,
00:04:06.840
Like that's the episode where he goes ballistic,
00:04:09.560
and on the cover it's just Thanos saying, come and get me.
00:04:17.880
I mean, we came up in an era where the out of prints,
00:04:22.280
like comic book stuff was like at its apex, you know,
00:04:25.120
in the 90s where you had Batman, the animated series,
00:04:34.420
but my mother introduced me to Flash when I was a kid.
00:04:39.780
So yeah, very, very early on was I in the comics.
00:04:43.280
And I think every youngster kind of has this dream.
00:04:45.720
I don't want to write this character or something like that when they get older.
00:04:50.820
I'll never actualize that because I'm in a way better position being able to do my own stuff.
00:04:56.340
But yeah, man, it was the 90s just coming up in that era, man.
00:05:02.240
Let's tackle the first component of this and then we can go wild.
00:05:04.780
I'm really excited to talk about how movies have taken characters,
00:05:07.900
everything that's going on with like the Marvel's failure and all that stuff.
00:05:10.660
But the first thing is basically comic books are going woke.
00:05:14.340
I remember a New Warriors when Marvel actually created characters Snowflake and Safe Space.
00:05:23.920
And so here comes this guy, Eric July, and he's like,
00:05:26.040
I'm going to make just like regular comics and bang, you're a millionaire.
00:05:31.560
You worded it that way, but that's exactly how it happened.
00:05:33.860
I just kind of, obviously we have this like reverse code of ethics is what we call it.
00:05:38.100
And it's more of a guideline where my folks and the other writers and everything,
00:05:46.700
And this is something that the audience can hold us to.
00:05:49.120
And in it, we talk about some of the other issues,
00:05:51.100
because a lot of it was content related problems.
00:05:55.580
But there's other issues that I had with comic books as well.
00:05:58.780
Continuity issues, lack of canon, stuff like that.
00:06:02.360
And that's all stuff that we put in our code of ethics.
00:06:05.280
And we promised people a universe, not just like a one-off thing that I was,
00:06:10.440
It was something that I wanted people to be able to get invested in.
00:06:12.800
And I think that's why it worked, because we let people know who we were,
00:06:21.240
But yeah, that demand, the Riververse show that that demand was truly there.
00:06:27.220
especially with the big two, be just completely bastardized.
00:06:32.300
They made, like, the son of Superman is gay, things like that.
00:06:49.040
And I see a lot of people saying the same thing.
00:06:50.500
I'm like, dude, I don't care if you make a character who is, like,
00:06:56.540
Don't take Iron Man and turn Iron Man into a black woman.
00:07:00.900
Like, if Wolverine, you know, Jean Grey and Cyclops were married,
00:07:05.560
And, like, you see a scene where they're talking,
00:07:08.480
And then it shows Wolverine, and he's, like, sad.
00:07:10.720
But then it goes on to the next action, action.
00:07:13.900
Nowadays, well, in these weird comics, you'll get, like, Wolverine sad.
00:07:17.120
The next scene will be Wolverine crying at the bed, like,
00:07:24.560
I'm pretty sure if they were to write the Logan, Scott Summers,
00:07:31.320
They'd show it in the bed and all that weird crap.
00:07:33.100
And they'd be like, Wolverine, we're not excluding you.
00:07:48.920
I think that was more of a shot at Chris Pratt,
00:07:50.860
where they made him part of this, like, weird threesome.
00:07:54.680
But, yeah, they're trying to do this throughple thing with –
00:07:57.000
with Jean Grey and Cyclops as well as Wolverine.
00:08:02.820
That was right around the time that I completely checked.
00:08:14.540
look, this is what's happening in the industry is that
00:08:16.680
these people are writing themselves often into these characters,
00:08:20.860
and they've just effectively just hijacked them.
00:08:26.160
I've had this discussion with Chuck Dixon a lot,
00:08:43.920
what we're getting is these people have their ideology,
00:08:46.680
or whatever political, social political position,
00:08:50.800
this is the only platform where they can even get away with it,
00:08:53.220
because if they try to do their own thing with their own property,
00:08:59.140
this is the only way that I can sort of platform this sort of stuff,
00:09:51.960
and Batman is just mercilessly beating the inmates
01:34:36.760
pursuant to an operating agreement with i-gaming
01:35:30.080
them back it was kind of lame well no that that
01:35:39.300
in the gap especially in the 80s and 90s uh that
01:35:46.140
hell they recently killed off ms marvel i don't
01:36:10.920
to collapse it and we need to streamline it and
01:36:24.640
but but then the funny thing is so in house of m
01:47:42.220
connects ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an
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01:48:14.240
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entertainment right it's better entertainment uh
01:48:27.340
considering the american like alternatives if you will and
01:48:31.040
that's why uh they they are winning not just in jip in
01:48:34.500
asia they are winning in north america you go to your uh
01:48:38.620
those bookstores and you see comics versus the mangas and
01:48:42.620
there's just a whole freaking deal of manga and only a
01:48:46.580
little shelf jujitsu kaisen is awesome yes uh like i i don't
01:48:51.320
want to spoil it because some of it is relatively new but uh
01:48:54.560
it's it's a it's a great show it's great comic they're not
01:48:57.400
afraid to have people be killed in conflict i'm like it's good and
01:49:01.200
again i like the world mcu's gone to me they it's just the
01:49:06.300
stupidest garbage ever there's nothing clever about miss marvel
01:49:09.020
that show was awful just total garbage and now you've got um and
01:49:13.940
it sucks with loki it's just multiverse garbled nonsense that
01:49:17.360
there's nothing matters so the first season of loki i'm like oh
01:49:20.580
okay the time authority what's he gonna do and at the end of it
01:49:23.800
they're like everything was changed in your race none of it
01:49:25.680
mattered and i'm like have a nice day i stopped watching
01:49:27.580
how can you look think about what it is you just said and this has been the
01:49:30.800
problem with comics as well like how do you get invested in something
01:49:34.220
like that you can't it's like you're telling me to not be invested in it
01:49:37.680
because you might change some stuff or and nothing matters right that that's
01:49:41.900
that's the problem with the the whole multiversal aspect that i think
01:49:45.360
you know people like the idea of this stuff like oh here's a spider-man but
01:49:50.100
instead of spider-man he does he's he's this he's a transformer spider-man now
01:49:53.780
and it's like yeah okay it's a cool idea but nobody's buying this could you
01:49:58.440
imagine invested in it could you imagine if from the beginning of these
01:50:02.900
iconic characters they never multiversed maybe crossovers are fine like that
01:50:08.520
spider-man lives in the same world with mutants is fine
01:50:10.600
but imagine right now we'd be on episode what like comic book number
01:50:14.880
several thousand remember they used to go really high back in the day now they're
01:50:18.380
you'd be lucky get 20 up 20 issues out of it and reboot it and what they could
01:50:22.400
have done is let's say spider-man starts they never reboot they never
01:50:26.540
multiverse eventually spider-man's 50 years old and
01:50:30.300
then there's a i can no longer do this there needs to
01:50:33.400
be like a passing down of powers or something that connects the story in one
01:50:37.160
go because what you have with like dragon ball for instance
01:50:39.660
dragon ball starts goku's a kid dragon ball z he's a young adult he's got a kid
01:50:43.560
dragon uh the dragon uh gt or super i i guess not gt i don't know it's kind of
01:50:48.820
weird my point is now go at the second arc of z uh gohan's an adult he has his
01:50:54.700
own kid so you're actually seeing the characters develop over time this the
01:50:58.740
continuity does not granted to be fair they made dragon ball gt it did its thing
01:51:03.640
nobody really liked it so they restarted with dragon ball super and it kind of
01:51:07.840
rebooted it in a way but if they kept the story arc going where characters were
01:51:12.180
aging and and and these stories like the characters just passed on or something
01:51:17.260
like that happened you'd have a continuity and you'd be like how do i
01:51:20.120
understand this where do i start it needed to be something like well
01:51:23.800
there's several arcs the the origin arc of magneto starts here
01:51:27.540
however if you're trying if you're trying to get something more modern you don't
01:51:30.900
want to go back to the 50s or whatever you can start with episode you know
01:51:33.340
episode 200 which gives a recap and starts you off things like that
01:51:37.020
instead they just reboot they change it and and here's the problem
01:51:40.320
magneto is an excellent character world war ii uh backstory yeah it's not
01:51:44.500
going to work anymore it's too he'd be way too old what's what's now
01:51:48.520
they're going to be like what what happened he got rejuvenated or
01:51:51.120
something right yeah some of that nature yeah he got de-aged it's like i mean
01:51:56.600
again if you're gonna you you gotta whatever way that you write it i mean you
01:52:00.860
gotta set the rules up and i think that's the problem so even if they're
01:52:03.980
aging slower whatever the idea may be you have to set those rules and
01:52:08.820
establish them and don't treat it like it's an absolute free-for-all
01:52:11.840
and that's what it is that the comics do and i think people don't understand how
01:52:15.940
difficult that is for people to get in on this stuff it's like
01:52:19.640
again if i have i can't you can't start at number one for any batman because
01:52:23.980
well batman rebirth is different from batman in the new 52
01:52:27.760
which is different from the batman before that so it's like uh
01:52:31.600
it where do i start well i gotta try to explain it to you
01:52:35.320
yes some of the fun is getting lost in this stuff and yeah there's going to be
01:52:39.300
little things that the diehards know that the normies do not know i have
01:52:42.980
absolutely any no problem with that the issue is is that for one yeah maybe
01:52:47.620
you're not prioritizing entertainment but also you're not making it easy for
01:52:52.060
people to get in uh on it because they cared so much
01:52:56.500
more about doing all this quote-unquote cool stuff
01:52:58.840
that they have 75 or like the fact that there's that many spider folk doesn't
01:53:03.540
even make sense i hate no i hate it i hate the whole spider verse stuff i hate the
01:53:08.180
whole web of spiders i remember when that stuff got introduced in comics i
01:53:11.040
like this is the dumbest thing ever aunt may spider-man everybody's spy
01:53:14.740
there's literally i didn't even make that thing up about the transform of
01:53:17.360
spider-man that is a literal thing there's a transform and i think of the
01:53:20.440
kids asian that uh that pilots that damn thing so it's like
01:53:25.060
you got this version spider-man it's like you're cheapening the brand man why
01:53:28.700
would i get into this i i've these companies should be ashamed
01:53:32.060
you know i grew up with batman superman spider-man i used to watch spider-man the
01:53:37.420
animated series and x-men and that's that's what i had access to
01:53:40.700
and then once i get a bit older i'm a late teenager
01:53:43.980
i start reading anime and manga well i actually i started reading it when i was
01:53:47.880
like a younger teenager but then i remember when
01:53:50.420
every every wednesday i would wake up and i'd pull up the scanlation for the
01:53:56.680
for i it's like 10 years every week i had to read the next issue from shonen
01:54:05.600
i was not interested in waiting for the next comic i didn't care
01:54:08.720
because it's like you said there's no story no i'm there's nothing to follow
01:54:12.020
yeah it's just a random version of batman and this this version likes
01:54:15.780
insurance companies apparently there's nothing to read with with naruto
01:54:19.240
it was like i as a kid i also watched dragon ball and dragon ball z
01:54:22.700
and so when i'm when i'm i watched the episodes of naruto i'm like oh wow i can
01:54:26.720
see the character if like growing changing getting new
01:54:29.820
skills you have this this arc where it's like in the beginning naruto sucks
01:54:33.620
then he gets these abilities then later he's like master disability then you get
01:54:37.520
shippuden a little bit older and and i'm reading and it's like if you if you
01:54:41.540
jump from this episode if manga 100 to 200 you're gonna be like whoa what how did
01:54:46.420
that happen yeah you go to batman and you're like batman's electric now
01:54:50.560
yeah i don't know nothing matters nothing nothing matters and
01:54:54.720
and i think you know definitely for these for the alternatives i think the
01:54:58.620
alternatives should really pay attention to to those mistakes that were made by
01:55:02.140
the major comic book uh publishers because i think again they
01:55:05.340
it's the cheap gain that you may get of entry well oh well look oh that's very
01:55:11.260
cool spider-man's a transformer now but are the people going to actually go buy
01:55:16.040
it the answer is no they're not actually because there's no reason to get
01:55:18.880
invested how did they pull off the transition of x-men from the uncanny x-men
01:55:22.400
into 1991 they released it again it's number one x-men number one they were no
01:55:26.860
longer uncanny but it was jim lee and it was really good the new x-men and
01:55:31.300
they did they committed to it for like i don't know how many hundreds of
01:55:33.720
episodes uh episodes but issues but how did they do it tastefully what did you
01:55:38.560
were you reading it when oh yeah when they flipped yeah no most definitely well
01:55:42.160
back then in general there were a lot of high issues right you used to get to
01:55:46.460
issue 100 200 and all that stuff detective comics thousands like you would get you
01:55:51.180
would get up up in the in the issues and i and i used to love that now they're
01:55:55.640
afraid of that because again they started to rely on on the reboot thing as a
01:55:59.820
gimmick it's like we're never gonna see more sales than what we see with number
01:56:04.100
one so anytime we get a chance to have a number one definitely if it has like a
01:56:08.980
batman or a superman on it we know that that's gonna sell like hotcakes so
01:56:13.400
they relied on that as a gimmick because the story is not what's selling it now
01:56:17.260
they're trying to focus solely on like what's rare and what's uh uh uh like a
01:56:22.160
secondary market and all that sort of sort they care more uh they cared more
01:56:26.200
about that element than they did the actual story so they're not selling you on
01:56:30.760
anything really at all because to your point you pick up a book now and it's
01:56:35.700
going to be an unrecognizable character uh top top to bottom and again you're not
01:56:39.960
going to even have a true actual starting point i guess technically it's
01:56:44.480
like number one was 2016 i think was when that that that uh dc
01:56:48.720
universe or rebirth uh period happened and then everybody got
01:56:52.240
rebooted so you had batman number one superman number one and all that sort of
01:56:59.200
just it wasn't what four or five excuse me like
01:57:01.840
five years ago prior to that batman had just had a number one
01:57:06.080
so they're not they're not they're rebooting their stuff they're afraid of
01:57:10.220
high issues and again the story is the that's on the back burner man that's what
01:57:14.780
it is right now it's all on the back burner did you get a bunch of the good
01:57:18.060
writers joined your team you were saying what are the writers
01:57:20.320
chuck dixon uh was the he did the first non-isome story for people that don't
01:57:25.100
know who chuck dixon is again he's one of the most prolific writers not just like
01:57:28.980
in comics but like period of all time uh again you guys know him as the creator
01:57:34.220
of bane uh he is the one he's the care he's the man that create alongside my
01:57:38.660
man's graham nolan uh shout out to him as well uh he's doing a lot of cool stuff
01:57:43.380
with his deal on with compass comics so i want to make sure i give him a shout out
01:57:46.900
but uh chuck's part of the team he did a lot of uh again bat a lot of the bat
01:57:52.460
family stuff he did detective comics he did he also did some stuff with marvel with
01:57:55.840
punisher uh as well um another group of writers uh they they are tandem and saska
01:58:02.280
sisters they are uh they did an incredible run uh of black widow called no restraints
01:58:08.860
play which uh we joke about it all the time how they got that how they got that
01:58:12.940
past marvel because it's actually uh nat taking it to pedophiles you can believe
01:58:19.100
marvel they they were already two issues there before they realized oh crap we
01:58:23.380
made this happen now we got to see it through uh they've also done some stuff
01:58:26.820
with marvel in the past uh they even have some unreleased work for dc as well
01:58:30.860
there with us mike baron oh incredible talent he's uh arguably who did the
01:58:36.240
definitive definitive punisher uh mike baron uh you maybe know him as the
01:58:40.380
badger done some stuff with the badgers well but
01:58:42.300
these are talented ogs uh in particular and i knew definitely for my growth as a
01:58:47.380
writer i had to have guys like that that i was surrounding myself with uh with
01:58:51.240
this universe if it's gonna if it's gonna be taken serious and it's i want to
01:58:55.320
say this the fact that those guys were even a free agent like freaking chuck
01:58:59.540
dixon was even a free agent just goes to show how screwed the industry is yeah
01:59:03.200
what you were saying with your contracts are you public about what you do to
01:59:05.580
contracts to bring the writers in and yeah they all get favorable contracts uh
01:59:10.220
for definitely for characters it is that they create um you know that's stuff that
01:59:14.660
they're gonna be able to make money off of for forever um so in if a character
01:59:19.080
maybe ends up in a movie or something like that or action figure for a character
01:59:22.840
that they specifically created they're gonna get they're gonna get a kickback for
01:59:26.980
that every uh uh single time so that that was a big attraction like i i pay
01:59:32.560
these guys very well in terms of their page rates uh top to bottom artists as
01:59:36.940
well as our writers and uh for these guys that are are uh you know being part of the
01:59:42.660
actual creative team they get they get to reap the benefits from the stories it is
01:59:46.700
that they're telling i i had an i have an idea that i want to tell you i just don't
01:59:50.780
know if i want to say it on air because i want your company to launch it first probably
01:59:54.280
i can just tell you in 15 minutes probably should you said shouldn't i'll tell you in
01:59:57.700
15 minutes when we come in the chat we got uh steven drake who makes a really great point
02:00:01.340
he says naruto totally grows with the character naruto started then shippuden had him as a teen
02:00:05.920
with the movies and the manga he gets married to hinata now boruto is his kid with his own series
02:00:11.220
yeah think about this that you might be someone who for the first your first foray into that
02:00:16.600
universe is boruto and you're watching this young kid who's a ninja and they have like powers and
02:00:21.660
stuff and then you can go back and decide to read the earlier arc this is what i was saying about
02:00:26.840
like if we did spider-man this way so you could watch dragon ball z you get a quick recap introduction
02:00:32.980
to the characters but it starts off its own story with these characters at this point and then you
02:00:36.860
can always go back and watch dragon ball if you want to learn about the past and and these things
02:00:40.420
come up but it's one massive arc for decades yeah for decades and there's nothing wrong with that
02:00:45.220
like there's nothing like and manga shows that people will play the long game right like again we
02:00:50.340
talk one pieces yo how many volumes so uh dragon ball z the reason why it had a hard time coming
02:00:57.780
to the united states is because cartoon network and a bunch of these other networks believed no kid
02:01:03.840
would want to watch a ridiculously long story arc that they couldn't that it was too difficult to
02:01:09.080
understand and so they wanted to make shows that were one-off episodes yeah they they thought
02:01:14.820
continuity didn't matter spider-man comes in does his thing the story's over everything resets in the
02:01:19.500
next episode and then finally someone was they did someone decided to bring in dragon ball z and it
02:01:23.960
instantly became one of the most popular shows among kids of all time of all time yeah with the crazy
02:01:28.460
thing about uh like goku i went to japan they have billboards with goku on it they've got like
02:01:35.820
statues of goku and loop on the third and uh these prominent anime characters because they're like
02:01:42.460
celebrities they're these iconic characters they have the u.s just like look we're talking about 20
02:01:49.000
episodes of batman then restart we've got 18 different number ones and no one has any idea
02:01:52.540
nobody because again they don't understand and i hate that they insult uh the audience especially
02:01:58.160
of youngsters like that right they think that they wouldn't want to keep up with a uh like long-term
02:02:03.520
sort of uh storytelling and again we have an example i would be thrilled if i was a youngster if i
02:02:08.660
let's say that i just discovered batman right uh and i'm like oh wait a minute i can you know
02:02:14.180
and maybe you get him on a ladder arc or whatever it is that he's he's doing something different
02:02:19.940
and then you're like oh wait a minute there's there's books that have been wrote for decades
02:02:24.700
i'm about to get lost in this like i'd be stoked i'm like oh well i i just not found out about him
02:02:30.080
and there's mountains and mountains of source material that i get to get lost in i'm like i'm like
02:02:34.380
it doesn't matter whether i'm you're a youngster or an adult you get stoked about that sort of stuff
02:02:38.880
like you know you can imagine getting into luffy uh uh late and you're like oh well i got a thousand
02:02:43.900
uh freaking uh uh volumes that i get to read and i get to collect like that's what that's part of
02:02:49.140
the fun and for whatever reason modern creatives especially at the corporate level think that
02:02:53.540
people don't want that and it's just simply not true the problem i think you're gonna run into is
02:02:57.260
you know you need to putting you need to be putting out a book every week yeah yeah like we're
02:03:01.520
speeding up for sure our um that was one of the first things that we wanted to attack going into uh 2024
02:03:07.760
uh uh is having yeah we release bigger books but we want to make sure that we're speeding up our
02:03:13.160
our release calendar so it looks like it's about like i sum number one is about the size of three
02:03:17.920
conventional comics or maybe four four yeah about four so do you do one a month is that the goal uh
02:03:23.560
well uh the goal right now it's it's a little longer than that because you think about it like
02:03:28.740
four issues that's going to be like four months worth of uh uh worth of material so we for example with
02:03:35.880
isom 2 that dropped that this has been the quickest release so isom 2 came out like three months ago
02:03:41.420
right and now we're already fulfilling uh alpha core so ideally perfect world once we really have
02:03:49.460
our footing i love to release a book a month what's the challenges you have between now and then
02:03:55.400
uh a lot of it's uh infrastructural like we had them we you know because we we do our own
02:04:00.920
distribution right that was a big thing about what it is that we created i didn't want to
02:04:04.240
replicate the model of the big the big guys and using someone else as a distributor and we go
02:04:09.480
directly to customers so a lot of it's like logistical stuff so making sure that you know
02:04:14.640
a warehouse is big enough to to get this this material uh in and all that and we're we're now
02:04:20.180
we're sort of we're basically there which is why uh right after this campaign ends that's active right
02:04:25.560
now alpha core number one uh technically ends in january on january 20th that's when the uh the the
02:04:31.260
pre-order window technically is closed uh right after that i like to next month that that following
02:04:37.220
month go right into yaira do people subscribe to isom and then they just get mailed a copy every
02:04:41.920
month and they get charged every month we've been releasing it in like a campaign format um uh with
02:04:47.380
isom one isom two and alpha core yaira will be the next one as well so we we dump a bunch of like
02:04:52.760
merchandise items with it as well that people can get and you can kind of just pick up we have bundles as
02:04:57.280
well that'll make it cheaper uh so people can pick up whatever it is they want and even if the
02:05:01.900
campaign closes we always are selling a version of that book so yeah isom one happened last year
02:05:07.480
but you can still go to reverse.com and get isom one you can even get alpha core is a perfect we got
02:05:12.820
like a 65 bundle that you can get isom one you can get isom two and you can get alpha core for
02:05:17.880
only 65 dollars it's like over 300 pages right of material so i would love to move to a subscription
02:05:22.900
yeah that's because if i could have done that in the 90s i would have signed up
02:05:25.400
three bucks a month and you don't have to worry about an issue every week or whatever three bucks
02:05:29.160
a week and it's i would say yaira one uh once that gets released after that i think we're going to be
02:05:34.760
moving away from the campaign format and doing a more pre-order format to where we can add like a
02:05:40.700
subscription element uh to it i would love that way people don't have to think about it it's like i
02:05:44.480
just want everything river verse all right cool and you sign up you get the money up front to pay for
02:05:48.780
infrastructure to get the mixture of the stuff's out in six months bingo so uh but yeah ideally
02:05:53.100
like we're not going to be there i don't i'm not going to say we're going to be there in 2024
02:05:56.980
but perfect world i want to work to where a rip a verse book it's not going to be the same title
02:06:02.820
but a rip a verse book at least one is is released every month are you hiring right now are you
02:06:08.740
expanding the company yeah so uh we just technically got fully staffed for um uh for our warehouse and
02:06:16.240
that's the fun thing about it we're offering different types of jobs right we have yeah the back
02:06:20.180
office stuff and every and the creative stuff but you also got a physical presence because we do our
02:06:24.220
own stuff with our books so uh you we keep everybody up to date if you do go to reverse.com
02:06:28.720
you can see kind of the jobs and stuff it is that we're offering we're we're still catching up to our
02:06:33.940
demand and we're always growing um there's a lot of opportunity a lot of people that work for me now
02:06:39.420
we're part of the community a lot of these guys got brought up it brought over that were part-time
02:06:44.560
guys in the full-time guys even from the creative standpoint we recently brought on i talked about
02:06:50.060
the sasca sisters they started off as just regular contractors now they're uh on on the team as
02:06:55.300
lore masters as all as well as still doing the writing canaan white's another one big shout out
02:07:00.200
to him incredible uh uh artist he's done uh some covers for us uh uh he did our short box we released
02:07:06.680
this cool little uh comic book short box that he did the artwork for he's now here full-time so
02:07:11.580
that i'd argue is to me the most fulfilling part of the ripperverse is that i get to give people good
02:07:19.500
paying jobs fair jobs um and we continue to grow which means more job opportunities for the people
02:07:25.740
that are out there do you people apply like on the web do you have like riververse.com yeah
02:07:29.180
riververse.com if we ever have any jobs that are available uh like we recently had with our with our
02:07:35.000
warehouse they'll be able to submit their their resumes and everything directly online just go again go to
02:07:40.240
riververse.com and you'll see the jobs tab and all that and we're right there do you guys sell to
02:07:44.740
comic shops are comic shops still up and going we do oh man a lot of them been closing down but our
02:07:50.060
our customers is direct to is the customer like uh we do sell some we do have actual retailers portal so
02:07:57.260
if there does happen to be people that are coming shop owners that do want to get in on a retail rate
02:08:02.360
they can go to riververse.com retailers and they can get in on that that is available uh for them and
02:08:08.920
they can get some great rates look if you want to make money on comics you sell ripperverse stuff
02:08:13.960
those those are for sure going to go off of your shelves but that is available uh to them but i'd
02:08:19.040
argue well over 90 percent of our customer is the the actual reader um which benefits us we cut out a
02:08:25.380
lot of middlemen there how much is it uh so that one right there now is only 20 so uh uh it was released
02:08:31.700
at 35 now it's 20 uh our page rates have got more competitive with us printing more uh nowadays that
02:08:39.100
is a that is about as good of a book you're going to get the the paper is above industry standard uh the
02:08:44.680
it's my zone as well so it's uh we we we we we print quality that's what it is that we we do we don't go
02:08:51.840
the traditional uh just regular uh approach with r so that's 20 uh the book right now uh is also the
02:08:59.640
same page count is uh only 28 so we're working on getting even more competitive uh now uh with our
02:09:06.500
with our books as we continue to print them so we want to make sure we give you something that's
02:09:10.660
going to last uh as well and we're again we're getting even more uh competitive with our with
02:09:15.640
our actual rate it smells really good oh yeah there's something about fresh paper oh yeah oh yeah
02:09:20.200
you can't beat it's printed right here in uh in america as well uh and yeah it's uh again those are
02:09:26.200
printed above the industry standard um as far as the actual paper paper stock uh that is and again
02:09:33.080
it's my song it's not just traditional what's that what's my song so you'll if you you probably
02:09:38.200
will be able to tell but if you open it really well you'll notice that it's kind of sewn uh as far
02:09:43.480
as just glued as opposed to just glued that uh makes it kind of open will read very very well
02:09:49.680
and keeps it uh keeps it bound together oh without ripping the binding yeah that's one of my
02:09:53.880
my original finny gauntlets just the cover came off because i read it so many times yeah yeah so
02:09:58.100
that one's gonna last man it's gonna be be really good for you movie oh uh it's funny i i believe it
02:10:05.720
was uh the guys over angel studios were in this seat and they were talking about they were talking about
02:10:09.540
us on y'all's on one of y'all's show look we we got ripper verse studios um i'm taking that very
02:10:16.060
seriously uh i there's two other wings of the ripper verse that i would love for it to be
02:10:21.960
very profitable for us that's obviously river verse studios and i want to enter into the toy
02:10:26.260
market at some point uh as well but we we started off with our animation stuff that was a big that
02:10:31.840
was uh we did these kind of shorts uh we have some more stuff it is that we're working on river
02:10:36.140
studios as well if you guys want to go go check that that longer form animations about two and a
02:10:40.800
half minutes you can go do that over at riververse.com but i would love to enter into the live action
02:10:45.660
i did a video not too long ago talking about video games perfect world again we'll keep talking
02:10:53.360
about what's ideal i would love to do that because i'm a gamer you guys know that um it's expensive
02:10:59.700
card game rpg would be pretty sweet now i would love to do that like 16 bit man 8 bit something like
02:11:05.680
that be bad card game probably the easiest tabletop i think uh i think some tabletop and we've been
02:11:11.100
reached out by some people that really are into that sort of stuff i didn't know the market was as big
02:11:15.500
as it was really until i started the riververse of like tabletop gaming uh hell that's how some of
02:11:21.980
these comic shops are able to thrive because they're starting to sell like a lot of the tabletop
02:11:26.840
stuff so i've been doing some research there uh if there if there's a demand for that i'd be down
02:11:32.260
you could have a game just where like it's a bunch of squares like in rooms that appear as you go you
02:11:36.300
like flip over a card and that's the next room and you have like six characters choose from six of the
02:11:39.640
heroes and each of them have different abilities one's got like long range attack one's got close up
02:11:43.480
and then a bunch of the villains or just cheap villains like dude and green like monster with
02:11:47.700
claws and they just go through blast shit like it doesn't have to be yeah uber complex and then it'll
02:11:51.980
be in the rip reverse universe like they'll just all the whole game can be in like a building yeah
02:11:56.060
yeah yeah yeah i would love to to do all of that like this is something that i'm taking very seriously
02:12:01.260
this is why our uh you know our release schedule sped up the way that it is you know we're hustling
02:12:05.840
because i don't want people to think that hey you know we came out ice on one it was a 3.7 million
02:12:10.880
dollar campaign and it was just i'm just gonna sit back kind of kick back and i'm done here no no no
02:12:15.120
i got i got to work immediately and i want to take stuff like that serious i would love to enter into
02:12:19.860
gaming i would love to enter into uh like uh movies and all that stuff we take it step by step we don't
02:12:26.520
bite off more than we can chew but you know i i want to be that competitive it'd be like each character
02:12:31.940
has like three attacks and each of the attacks are on a cooldown so like you could do your long range
02:12:35.780
attack which goes six squares the one is the second attack is a cone attack in front of him like an arc
02:12:40.000
and then his third ability would be like to jump back three spaces and if you use one it goes on
02:12:43.900
like you got to wait three turns before you can use that ability again yeah and every character
02:12:47.400
would have three different variable abilities that'd be super easy to make yeah easy i think table like
02:12:53.220
more research about that i got humbled by the toy market recently man understanding like how
02:12:58.680
the margins are very thin on those but i do believe that like with that sort of gaming um i i believe that
02:13:05.960
there's just just the market's wide open for it and people are thirsty for it man that's what this
02:13:10.260
ultimately boils down to as we talk about culture um is that look people are tired of giving money to
02:13:15.820
people that hate them right uh so the fact that there's companies like ours that exist where people
02:13:21.140
understand exactly where it is that i am on various issues um but we're here to create we're here to
02:13:26.880
entertain first and foremost and at least you know you're not giving your money to a dickhead and also
02:13:31.060
people don't like giving their money to regurgitated crap they want fresh stuff yes new stuff yeah and
02:13:35.700
that's what it is that we're doing like we're we're trying to come up with unique concepts that's
02:13:39.660
actually where we start with a lot of our characters that it is that we're we're creating
02:13:43.800
stuff unorthodox this is why hell the first where it's not just because i'm from texas
02:13:47.660
that the first city that we're entertaining is florist park texas just because well that's not really a
02:13:52.840
place where i don't know how the hell new york city has all this damn crime considering like every
02:13:57.520
superhero in the marvel universe is it is there but yeah you know that's the type of stuff that
02:14:02.480
it is that we're entertaining we're trying to do things that are new uh and refreshing so it's it's
02:14:07.260
a perfect time to get in perfect time to get in ladies and gentlemen uh we are about to go to have
02:14:11.880
our our tim cast christmas party so it's gonna be a lot of fun a lot of people are gonna come hang
02:14:15.780
out but i appreciate all of you guys hanging out the uh we're we're memeing the song the best song
02:14:21.580
ever so a bunch of people are tweeting about how they grew up listening to smoky mike and the god king and
02:14:26.860
there's one really good tweet where they're like does tim have no shame taking a timeless classic
02:14:31.080
and mucking it up like what are we trying to conserve as conservatives it's really good
02:14:34.440
so uh go to the best song ever buy the song for 69 cents if you want to help uh uh us at timcast
02:14:41.100
music as well as a daily wire blast this song off hit the charts if you want to support the work that
02:14:45.420
we're doing you can follow uh me personally at timcast make sure you subscribe to tenant of course
02:14:50.440
eric do you want to shout anything uh shout anything out yes uh you know i'm at eric d july
02:14:55.000
everywhere but right now our active campaign is uh at ripperverse.com is alpha core number one it's
02:15:02.460
already at 1.1 million i believe uh it's it is the number is closing in on 1.2 great universe to get
02:15:10.360
lost in uh for you guys that are looking for an alternative in the comic book spot and again i
02:15:15.260
appreciate y'all having me back here man so fun this is always fun yeah we're gonna make and cat mickey
02:15:19.660
that's that's i love it um and i'm ian crossland tim this is my gift this is it man merry christmas
02:15:25.040
brother you're giving me the infinity gauntlet all six of the original infinity gauntlet so good
02:15:29.080
he's gonna go right here next to my mom yeah and i got more it's just a beautiful that's the way
02:15:33.700
comics should be it's like all the heroes it's it's really really it was like a culmination moment
02:15:38.060
of the heroes of the marvel universe coming together and just suffering to win it was it was
02:15:43.420
really great thanks for having me tim and eric great to see you again man and also kellen's been
02:15:47.220
here the whole time he's been pressing the buttons what's happening yeah i am i don't have a camera
02:15:51.600
but this was an awesome one i was like grinning ear to ear the whole time so uh it was great to meet
02:15:56.120
you uh i did get isom one and while the show was going on just purchased isom two and alpha core
02:16:00.900
can't wait to read them but yeah great show guys thank you let's win this culture war ladies
02:16:05.600
and gentlemen thanks for hanging out and we will see you all tonight at 8 p.m. over at youtube.com
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